by TP Fielden
It was 10 o’clock in the morning.
This scene of depravity had an explanation but not one that could ever find the approval of her editor, the fastidious Rudyard Rhys. A stickler for decorum among his staff, he would shudder at the thought of his chief reporter behaving in so abandoned a fashion. In a filthy old fishermen’s pub! At ten o’clock in the morning!
Miss Dimont didn’t care. She shot a waspish remark at her fellow-drinkers and they burst once more into laughter. One more swig of rum and then, picking up her notebook, she moved slowly and almost steadily towards the door.
‘Whoops-a-daisy, Miss Dimmum!’
‘Don’t you fall down now, Miss Dimmalum!’
‘And doan fergit y’r turbot!’
The Jawbones was unused to entertaining female company at this hour, reserving its best seats for the men who filled their nets quickly and sneaked back into harbour for a quick one before breakfast. But there she was, a beauty in a haphazard sort of way, with her grey eyes, convex nose, beautiful smile and unmanageable corkscrew curls. The fishermen liked what they saw.
Miss Dimont emerged onto the street and took a deep breath of the fishy, salty air. Across the quay lay the rusty beaten-up old fishing vessel which had so recently put her life in peril. The memory made her sit down quite sharply.
‘Awright, missus?’ A handsome old seadog in faded blue overalls and battered cap came over and settled himself next to her.
His countenance was like a road map, all lines and detours, and his hands were ingrained with dirt. But he had charm – not like those men she encountered when she arrived before dawn to join the Lass O’Doune. She thought she’d never met such a band of brigands, strangers to the scrubbing brush and razor alike, unfamiliar with the finer points of etiquette.
By the end of her treacherous journey, though, they had acquired other attributes – they had become handsome. They had become warm, and kind. And they were undoubtedly heroes.
But it had not started well. ‘We were tol’ to expect a reporter,’ said the captain, Cran Conybeer, eyeing her with disfavour in the predawn darkness.
‘I am a reporter,’ snapped Miss Dimont, pushing her spectacles up her rain-spattered nose and standing ever so slightly up on her toes.
Captain Conybeer wasn’t listening. ‘We don’t ’ave wimmin aboard,’ he said firmly. ‘Send a reporter an’ we’ll take ’un out.’
Miss Dimont had experienced worse rebuffs. ‘You’ve just won the Small Trawler of the Year Award,’ she said, her words almost lost by the screeching of the davits as they hauled the nets up. ‘You’re the first Devon crew ever to win it. My newspaper has reserved two whole pages to celebrate your courage and skill, to tell Temple Regis how brilliant you are and – just as important, I’d have thought – to let your competitors know how much better you are at the job than they are.’
This last point hit home, but even so the captain remained reluctant.
‘Yers but …’
‘The article has to be written by the end of the day if it’s to get into next week’s newspaper. It’s 4.30 in the morning and there is no other reporter available to come with you on this trip.’
‘We doan allow wimmin.’
Miss Dimont slowly pushed back her hair and looked up into the captain’s wrinkled eyes, sparkling in the gas lamp which illuminated the ship’s bridge.
‘Perhaps this will help,’ she added quietly. ‘I was an officer in the Royal Navy – the Wrens, you would call it. I served my country and I served the sea.’
This last bit was not strictly accurate but it was enough for the wavering Conybeer.
‘Come on then, overalls on, we’m late as ’tis.’
And so, before the dawn light rose, the Lass O’Doune set out down the estuary and straight into a force nine gale – unseasonable in June, but that is the sea. The next four hours were a terrifying combination of chaos and noise, of unforgiving waves crashing across the decks and the ocean rampageously seeking the lives of those who sought to draw nourishment from it. Clad, pointlessly, in hooded oilskins – the sea had a way of finding its way underneath the stoutest protection within minutes – the men fought nature valiantly as they reeled in the nets and deposited their wriggling silvery spoils on the deck.
Fearless under fire, thought Miss Dimont, as she clung uncertainly to a rail inside the bridge – like soldiers in battle. Then, shouting to the captain, she weaved her way towards the deck so she could experience at first hand what his men had to do to make their living.
With a lifeline attached to her waist, she stepped out into the roaring, rushing hell and hauled on the nets alongside the other men. The job was not difficult, she discovered, it just required nerve and strength.
Arranged as a special demonstration for the press, the voyage out into the ocean lasted a mere three hours, though to Miss Dimont it seemed like four days. No wonder she’d found herself in the snug of the Old Jawbones with a jigger of rum in front of her!
And now, the battle done, she sat outside on a bench taking in the sun while Old Jacky shared his thoughts with her.
‘Just goin’ on me ’olidays,’ he was saying.
‘Oh,’ said Miss Dimont, rallying. ‘Anywhere nice?’
‘Down ’oo Spain,’ said Jacky. ‘See if I can get some deckhand work.’
‘You mean – you fish all year, then when you go on holiday … you fish?’
The wrinkled old sailor smiled at her and shifted his cap. ‘’Bout right.’
Just then Cran Conybeer came out of the Jawbones and saw his most recent crew member marooned on her bench.
‘Lan’lubber,’ he said, laughing. ‘You carn walk, can you?’ ‘Of course I can,’ said Miss Dimont in her peppery voice, rising unsteadily to her feet.
‘You come along a me,’ said the captain, hoisting Miss Dimont up gently and putting his arm through hers. ‘You come along a me, I’ll make sure you’re safe.’
At the landward end of the pier at Temple Regis stood the Pavilion Theatre, a crumbling structure with precious little life left in it whichever way you looked at it. If there was one thing the town cried out for it was a cultural centre where visitors could congregate at the end of an exhausting day’s holidaymaking to be entertained and where locals, too, could pick up some crumbs of artistic comfort at the bookends of the season. This was not it.
For years the Pavilion had been run – first successfully, then gradually less so – by Raymond Cattermole, a former actor. Occasionally, a star from London would descend for a short season in support of their old friend, but Cattermole’s homegrown fare was proving less appetising as the years went by. He looked for comfort to his current squeeze, Geraldine Phipps, and sometimes beyond – for after a lifetime of ups and downs on the stage the old Gaiety Girl would rather have a glass of gin than a spot of pillow talk. And so, after a particularly disastrous performance of his one-man show My West End Life, the actor-manager came to the conclusion there was no point in sharing his genius with the oafs in the one-and-thruppennies, and for some days now his doors had been shut.
This afternoon, however, a side door creaked open a crack and from within came a rasping but cultured voice.
‘Come in, dear. Mind the rubbish.’
The young man mooched down the long corridor towards the large back room which, though lacking home comforts, had at least the consolation of a bottle of Plymouth gin.
Mrs Phipps, who had commandeered the only glass, swilled out a mug under the cold tap and placed it before her guest. ‘Pour away to your heart’s content. He left a crate of it behind.’
Her guest made himself a cup of tea.
‘So tell me again, dear, what are they called?’
‘Danny Trouble. And The Urge.’
The ancient Mrs Phipps blenched. ‘Are you sure?’ She lit a Navy Cut and her hands shook slightly as she did so.
‘They’re cool,’ said her grandson. ‘Just what’s needed in a dead-and-alive hole like this.’
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�You know,’ said Mrs Phipps sourly – the gin had not yet mellowed the edges – ‘I learned what entertainment was more than half a century ago, but from what you tell me these young men are far from entertaining, just rude. I’ve seen their sort on TV – no finesse, no culture, no style. They may look sweet onstage in their matching suits and their shiny guitars but from the way they curl their lips and waggle about I’d say they neither seek the adulation of their audience, nor do they even try to charm them.’
‘That’s the point!’ exclaimed Gavin Armstrong. ‘It’s the love-’em-and-leave-’em principle. The girls adore it.’ Mrs Phipps took refuge in the gin.
‘You should see them – they’re positively electric! Onstage it’s like November the Fifth and the 1812 Overture all rolled into one.’
‘There’s another thing,’ said Mrs Phipps sharply, ‘the electricity. They all have these electric guitars, don’t they? That must use up an awful lot of juice. What I need to do here now Ray’s hopped it is get costs down and …’
‘What you need is The Urge, Granny.’
‘What I need, Gavin,’ continued Mrs Phipps, who in her time had experienced more urges than her grandson could possibly imagine, ‘what I need to do is keep this theatre open – and to do that I’ve got to find an act which is cheap and a guaranteed box-office success. Not something that’s going to eat up the profits with sky-high electric bills and frighten the locals away at the same time.’
‘They won’t need all those spotlights you’ve got. They don’t need a stage set. They don’t need make-up – though one or two could do to cover up their spots, I’ll admit – and the last thing they need is people ushering the punters into their seats. In fact the fans’d probably tear out the seats if they did.’
‘Disgusting,’ spat Mrs Phipps, pouring herself another. ‘Nothing but louts and Teddy boys. Don’t you see what people want on a nice night out? They want glamour, they want to be carried away on wings of song.’
‘No they don’t, Gran. These days what they want is deafening noise.’
Mrs Phipps shuddered. ‘To think we fought our way through two wars to end up like this,’ she said. ‘Once upon a time and not so long ago, gentlemen would wait at the stage door of the Adelphi with a gardenia, a bottle of perfume and a taxi waiting to whisk me off to supper at the Café Royal.’
‘Darling thing,’ sighed Gavin, ‘the days of the Gaiety Girl are long gone. The war’s been over for an age, and there’s a whole new generation that wants something different, something original. Danny Trouble and The Urge are it.’
‘They’re noisy and uncouth,’ said Mrs Phipps, who had no idea whether they were or not.
‘They’re definitely that all right,’ said Gavin, with pride.
‘But what will the townsfolk say? The council? The press?’
‘Ah,’ said Gavin, a wily smile on his lips, ‘you can’t fail with the press. They’ll have to write about them, one way or the other. That’s guaranteed! Either it’ll be “Disgrace to Temple Regis” or else “Britain’s Top Beat Group Come to Town”, and hopefully both. The theatre will be full. Every night.’
‘No,’ said Mrs Phipps, exhaling a hefty cloud of nicotine, ‘no, Gavin. It really won’t do.’
‘It’s the new religion!’
‘Then you’re a poor missionary, and I am no convert,’ said Mrs Phipps, absently peering into her glass.
‘Look,’ said Gavin, ‘we both have an opportunity here, Granny. Raymond’s scarpered and you don’t know when or if he’ll be back …’
‘Oh, he’ll be back,’ said Mrs Phipps, ‘he can’t live without me.’
‘You didn’t say that last time he ran off with Suki Raffray.’
‘Don’t mention that Jezebel’s name!’ screeched Mrs Phipps. It had been an ugly business.
‘You don’t know when or if he’ll be back,’ repeated Gavin, seizing his moment. ‘The theatre has to open for the new season next week – what are you planning to put on? I’ve got Danny and the lads on a contract until the end of the year, but that’s all. They’ve just had their first Number One and pretty soon some manager will come along who knows what they’re doing, and that’ll be curtains for me.
‘Bringing them down here, they’ll be the first beat group ever to do a summer residency in a British seaside resort. That’ll give them headlines, it’ll give Temple Regis headlines, and people will come flocking to this …’ he paused, searching sarcastically for the word ‘. . . er, delightful town.’
‘Plus,’ he added ingratiatingly. ‘you can pay them less than you paid Alma Cogan last year. They’d have a regular income, and I’d get paid.’
Mrs Phipps looked across at her grandson and shook her head. ‘You father had such hopes for you, Gavin. The Brigade … maybe the Foreign Office afterwards …’ She sighed. ‘But since you ask, what I had in mind was Sidney Torch and his Light Orchestra. I know Sidney, and he’d come down here for me in an instant, I feel sure of that. They have such beguiling music, darling, just the sort of thing to attract the traditional holidaymaker. He came down here once before, years ago, and you know, they even got up in the aisles and danced!’
‘With Danny Trouble they’ll never sit down,’ said Gavin tartly. ‘What this place desperately needs is something for the younger crowd.
‘You know, Granny’ he went on, ‘this is 1959 – people don’t want to dance cheek to cheek any more, they want rock and roll!’
‘I suppose you may be right,’ conceded his grandmother, who was becoming alarmed at the prospect of having to confess to Temple Regis that the Pavilion Theatre would remain dark through the summer season. ‘We do need something new. People got fed up with Arthur doing his West End Life – that’s why he ran away, you know. They got up and started catcalling.’
‘It wasn’t Suki Raffray, then? Why he ran away?’
‘IT WAS NOT SUKI RAFFRAY!’ shouted Mrs Phipps. ‘Don’t mention that name again!’
‘Then you agree, Granny? That Danny and the boys can come for the six-week season?’
‘What else can I do?’ said Mrs Phipps, shaking her head so hard her fine silvery hair escaped its pinnings. ‘I have no alternative.’
‘You won’t regret it, Gran.’
Mrs Phipps shuddered as she reached again for Plymouth’s most famous export.
‘I feel as though someone just walked over my grave,’ she said.
THREE
The atmosphere in the editor’s office at the Riviera Express was as it always was – dusty – but the moment the newspaper’s chief reporter walked in it got dustier.
Judy Dimont was everything an editor could wish for – a brilliant mind, a dazzling shorthand note and charm enough to entice whole flocks from the trees. Yet, as Rudyard Rhys raised his eyes from the task in hand, a particularly recalcitrant briar pipe, he could see none of this. Before him stood a striking woman of indeterminate age dressed vaguely in a macintosh with its belt pulled tight at the waist, and with a waft of corkscrew curls slipping joyously from the restraints of a silk scarf. A faint scent of rum entered the room with her.
‘Got the fishermen,’ said Judy Dimont, a trifle dreamily. ‘What extraordinary men they are! Why, do you know …’
‘Rr … rrrr,’ growled her editor, whether by way of approval or dissent it was hard to tell, but enough to douse Miss Dimont’s tribute to those in peril on the sea.
Rhys returned to his pipe. ‘There was a murder while you were out on your jolly boating trip,’ he said, a nasty edge to his voice. ‘As my chief reporter I should have liked you there.’
‘There was a force nine out beyond the headland,’ said Miss Dimont, not a little proud of her early morning exploits. ‘Rather difficult to spot a murder from there. Anyway, who …’
‘Had to send him,’ said Rhys, nodding towards a corner of the room. A young man half rose from his seat and, with a slight smile, gently inclined his head. In a second the chief reporter had it summed up – wet-behind-the-ears recruit, probably the
son of a friend of the managing director, going to be useless, a dead weight, another failed experiment in attracting the nation’s young talent into local journalism.
Miss Dimont was not without prejudice but in general she was kind. She did not feel kind this morning.
‘Well then, let him write it up,’ she said, eyeing not without prejudice the item which hung round his neck and which looked suspiciously like an old school tie. ‘I’ve got this feature to write and then, if it’s OK with you, Mr Rhys, I’m going home. I was up at three this morning to catch the tide.’
For a man who once had worn Royal Navy uniform himself, Rhys showed a surprising lack of interest over the vicissitudes of the ocean. ‘Give him a hand,’ he ordered, and dismissed them both with the swish of a damp page-proof.
Pushing up the spectacles which adorned her glorious nose, Miss Dimont stepped, with an audible sigh, out into the corridor. The last thing she wanted – another trainee reporter dumped on her!
‘Have you found yourself a desk?’ she inquired shortly, not even bothering to look over her shoulder as she strode into the newsroom.
‘They … they told me to sit opposite you,’ said the young man. ‘The other lady, er …’
‘Betty.’
‘Yes, Betty’s … um … I think she’s … er, not quite sure. I think she’s been sent elsewhere.’ The words seemed hesitant but he appeared pretty self-assured. ‘Newbury something.’
‘Newton Abbot?’ she said.
‘That’s about the size of it,’ said the young man. ‘She didn’t seem too happy.’
This did not please Miss Dimont one bit. Betty Featherstone was effectively her number two and, though uninspired, was a useful reporter who did her share of filling the copious news pages which made up the weekly digest of events in Devon’s prettiest town. Having her dispatched to the district office was a blow. It would increase the chief reporter’s workload and, at the same time, require her to shepherd this innocent lamb through his first weeks on the paper until he got the hang of it.