Make Room for the Jester

by Stead Jones

  I shook my head.

  ‘What then? Civil Service?’

  ‘Never mind now what he’s going to be,’ Meira said. ‘For a start, he’s going back to the County, going to try for his Higher. Might make a Minister out of him…’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Owen protested, ‘he’s not joining the black battalion. For sure he’s not…’

  ‘No need to get excited,’ Meira said. ‘Only a suggestion.’

  ‘Wales and Spain,’ Owen went on fiercely, ‘too many bloody priests, that’s what…’

  I left them arguing and went up Lower Hill to Rowland Willams’ workshop. Rowland was standing at his bench, a half-finished coffin in front of him, a book propped against it. He looked up as I entered, then slipped a piece of paper to mark his place in the book, closed it and placed it carefully on one side. ‘You’ve come to talk,’ he said, ‘so I’d better get some work done. You can’t read and talk, but you can work. In fact, you have to.’ He pointed a chisel at the coffin. ‘There’s someone waiting for this…’

  ‘I passed,’ I said.

  ‘Matric?’

  I nodded.

  Rowland scratched his nose and looked me over carefully. ‘Any book you like,’ he said. ‘Take it and keep it for ever.’ Piles of dusty books stood up like gravestones on the workshop floor. Rowland, although a carpenter, had never got around to making shelves for them. ‘Look around you,’ he went on, ‘take your time and pick one…’

  ‘For passing? I’d rather you chose one.’

  It was the right thing to say. Rowland grinned then turned to spit in the fire. ‘Diplomat you’re going to be, Lew? Knew I’d like to pick one, didn’t you? All right. Let’s say that one, shall we? Anton Chekhov – The Cherry Orchard and Other Plays.’ He picked up the book and passed it to me after wiping the dust off its covers. ‘You read it some time, Lew. When you’re about twenty – read it then….’

  I sat back on a stool and leafed through the pages while Rowland talked. It was a great honour to receive a book from Rowland, especially a book that had belonged to him. He had taken up his work again, was planing slowly, sending small curls of wood into the air, talking all the time. ‘Drudgery, that’s what this is. If you’re creating something it’s all right. Making something – like the great sculptors, like Michelangelo. People like that. Seeing something, feeling for it, shaping it. That’s all right. But this – this stuff’s no good at all. Mending, not making. Mending and coffins, coffins, coffins. By God, there’s not much art about an old coffin, is there?’

  He was launched now on a subject, a small, dark man, full of secrets – a dirty man, Meira said, but I didn’t think so – talking quietly as the rain swished on the workshop window and made the fire spit. Soon he would get emotional, and then tell me that the trouble with the Welsh was an excess of emotion. I hugged my knees and listened only occasionally. The exams were passed and I was warm with success.

  ‘…Lost an eye in the last one,’ Rowland was saying. ‘What will it be in the next, I wonder?’

  I was all attention, suddenly. ‘Is there going to be a war, Mr Williams?’

  He rubbed his thumb across the bristles on his chin. ‘Sure as tomorrow…’

  ‘Serious, though? I saw the news in the pictures. War like the last one?’

  ‘Worse.’ His voice hardened. ‘They all want one, you see. Building up for the big bang, all of them…’

  Ever since I had started going to the pictures I had seen films about the war – all the guns and the grey men running in the mud, and the poison gas…. War scared me worse than Frankenstein. All I could think of when someone said war was Warner Baxter in a steel helmet swallowing aspirin and waiting to go over the top.

  ‘All over Europe,’ Rowland went on, ‘men limping or carrying an empty sleeve in a pocket. Men with trenches across their hearts…. All of them crosses, Lew. All that one minute silence. Mockery, Lew! Mocking the dead! Scars everywhere, and men lying awake…. All those names, Lew. Jesus Christ!’ Rowland threw a chisel on the bench in disgust. ‘It’s coming again. No doubt about it…’

  I had a pain deep in my stomach as he spoke. Whatever you might say about Rowland – that he was small and bandy-legged and didn’t wash much and had hairs growing out of his nostrils, stuff like that – yet you knew he spoke the truth, that he was a genuine man.

  ‘Thirty-eight when they took me last time. Too old, Lew. A man’s very sensitive, time he gets to thirty-eight…’

  ‘Will it change everything, though, Mr Williams?’

  Rowland took up a plane and squinted along the blade. ‘The last one did,’ he said softly. ‘Can’t see any reason why the next one shouldn’t do the same.’

  ‘Honestly?’

  ‘Bound to,’ he said flatly. ‘Nothing else for it.’

  I wanted to run away from the workshop then. It was all so inevitable. Nothing anyone could do about it. But outside the rain swept down and I stayed, feeling the way I felt at the pictures with all those guns thundering against the roof of the Palace.

  ‘Marius Vaughan was in the war,’ I said, just for something to say. ‘Lost his leg.’

  Rowland nodded. ‘Captain in my unit. He’d have a word with me sometimes – us coming from the same place, him a boy, me already an old man, like. He was hard, Lew – much too hard, as if he feared men. I knew a boy come from over Llandrindod way – and he was all for shooting Marius Vaughan.’

  ‘Great God,’ I said.

  ‘Never did, though,’ Rowland went on. ‘Was blown to bits first… Oh, hell, aye – there’s scars everywhere, even on Marius Vaughan, I shouldn’t wonder…’

  ‘That’s what Gladstone says,’ I broke in.

  Rowland’s bushy eyebrows went up. ‘He’s a character, that Gladstone, and no mistake. Reckons Marius has a scar, does he? Thinks about people, Gladstone, doesn’t he? Concerned about people.’ He picked up the chisel and held it so that it was pointing towards his good eye. ‘How would I feel, d’you think, if I jabbed this in my eye, Lew? Be a bit stupid, wouldn’t it? Not much sense in doing it?’ He turned and pointed the chisel at me. ‘Know what – I was not so far from Marius Vaughan when that shell copped him. Saw him carried off…’ Rowland looked at the smears of rain on the window, considering things carefully. ‘Know what, Lew? I reckoned Marius Vaughan wanted that wound – was after a scar all the time. And not like the rest of us. Not to get out of that hell. No – I reckon he wanted hurt. Really wanted hurt.’ It was very silent in the workshop, but somewhere in the distance a dog was howling. I was being told something, and I couldn’t quite grasp it – like it is in a dream.

  Rowland shook himself, then picked up a long piece of elm and carried it over to the sawing bench. ‘Give a hand, Lew,’ he called. I went over and watched him measure off. I wanted to ask him to explain, but somehow the moment had passed. He began to saw through the wood.

  ‘No art in this job,’ he grumbled. ‘No art at all for the man with one basic qualification for an artist. Know what that is, Lew?’

  He wasn’t going to explain about Marius Vaughan. I shook my head.

  ‘Not the matriculation, I can tell you that. No – that’s only good for getting you in the Civil Service, God help you.’ He stopped sawing. ‘Lew – the one basic qualification for an artist is intolerance. After talent – intolerance. Now, I’ve no talent, Lew bach, but I’m sodden with intolerance…. Hold the wood, boy.’

  He finished sawing, then carried the wood back to his bench and fixed it in a vice. ‘A patcher-up, that’s what I am. A creator of man’s last resting place – and by God the dead are uninteresting, aren’t they? Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, if it’s a box you’re after, Rol Williams’ a must. Doesn’t scan, Lew, but not bad, eh?’

  I went back the next afternoon, hoping he would start on Marius Vaughan again, but that day we had the Spanish Civil War, Herr Hitler, and the League of Nations.

  Even during this week away from Gladstone, the Vaughans still managed to come through. I was think
ing about Marius Vaughan being carried away on a stretcher, and Rowland Williams watching, and the rain coming down, and the mud everywhere, when Eirlys Hampson came running out of her shop and called after me.

  ‘Head in the clouds you’ve got,’ she said, laughing. She always seemed to say everything through a smile. ‘What were you pondering on, then? And what’s the idea of passing without even a wink?’

  I was in the shop now, very embarrassed because there were knickers everywhere, but liking it all the same because Eirlys was making a fuss, flirting with me all the time.

  ‘Just thinking,’ I said.

  ‘Aye – and take your eyes off those private clothes, old brainbox,’ she said, shielding my eyes. ‘For shame on you.’ She smelled nice – of powder and scent. She was wearing a silk blouse and I could see her shoulders and her arms through it. ‘Now, tell me Lew Morgan,’ she said, ruffling my hair, ‘how’s the Vaughan Society going on, then?’

  ‘Don’t know what you mean,’ I said.

  ‘You got him to go back, didn’t you?’

  I nodded. There was a woman in the shop doorway looking in. I felt myself blushing because I was going to be seen in there, alone with Eirlys.

  ‘Miracle worker, your friend Gladstone.’ The woman came in. ‘Oh, damn,’ Eirlys said, lowering her voice and not smiling. ‘Thought we might have a chat about how our mutual friends are getting on at the Point.’ She gave the woman a look that would have turned away a dog. ‘Anyway, call again, love – will you?’

  ‘All right, Mrs Hampson,’ I said.

  ‘That’s a good boy.’ She came to the door with me, her arm around my shoulders, holding my head against her breast. ‘This old bitch,’ she whispered, ‘be here for hours, ask to see everything, then finish up buying a penny elastic….’

  My face was burning when I got out to the rain, but I thought she was nice all the same. It didn’t strike me for a long time that she should have known how things were at the Point without calling me in.

  The Vaughans kept coming through. It was annoying, but it was inescapable. They were different from anyone I knew in Porthmawr, and because they were different, even without sight or sound of them, they intruded on me all the time. It was a relief when, at the end of that week, Gladstone’s inimitable knock came on our front door.

  ‘Lew – come round, can you?’ he said, not facing me directly at all.

  ‘They’re at the pictures,’ I said. ‘I’ll leave a note.’

  It wasn’t until I reached his house that I saw why he had shown me only one side of his face. The other bore a bruise below the eye, a bruise which seemed to grow and darken even as I looked at it.

  XV

  What happened to you, then?’ I asked. ‘Have a fight?’

  Gladstone shook his head and knelt by the fire and made a great business of tidying up. I crouched beside, him. ‘Harry Knock-Knees, was it? That crowd?’

  He smiled then, but went on shaking his head. ‘Big fool – that’s what I am! Big fool!’ He stirred the fire with the poker. ‘Do you ever do things, Lew, that make you crumple up inside afterwards? Just thinking about them makes you feel all withered up? Do you?’

  ‘All the time,’ I said.

  He stood up and walked the length of the room and back again. ‘Lew – I went up there. Tonight – just before it got dark.’

  ‘To the Point?’ I got to my feet as well. ‘You didn’t cop that there, did you?’

  He nodded, then turned away hastily. I knew I was saying all the wrong things, but I couldn’t help it.

  ‘You never had a fight with the Vaughans, did you?’

  ‘Not a fight. I was thrown out.’ He came back to me and seized my arm. ‘Lew – this doesn’t matter.’ He jabbed his thumb hard in the centre of the bruise. I winced for him. ‘This doesn’t matter at all…’

  ‘Marius Vaughan hit you?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, Lew. He didn’t hit me. Just sort of pushed me out and I fell. Knocked against the door as I fell.’

  ‘Pushed you?’ was all I could say.

  Gladstone brushed the hair back clear of his forehead and tried to smile. ‘Well – I made a mistake, didn’t I? I went up there. Nosing around – that’s what I was doing. Lew – I shouldn’t have gone…’

  ‘Well you did,’ I said. ‘You did – and that was no reason for throwing you out.’

  Gladstone clapped his hands impatiently. ‘I wasn’t thrown out, Lew. Nobody did that to me.’

  ‘Pushed then,’ I said.

  ‘He just asked me to leave, that’s all. And we sort of collided – had a collision – and big fool me fell against the door.’

  He looked at me, waiting for me to comment, but there was nothing I could say.

  ‘I shouldn’t have gone up there,’ he went on. ‘Sit down, somewhere, Lew. Don’t stand looking as if you’re going to take on the whole town.’

  ‘Not the whole town,’ I said. ‘Just the Vaughans.’

  His hands came up in despair. ‘No, no, Lew. Don’t be childish, now. It wasn’t the Vaughans. It was me. I should never have gone up there. Never in a month of Sundays, I shouldn’t… I should’ve minded my own business and let them be.’

  I moved to the old rocking chair by the fire and he went over to the couch which was his bed. He sat down heavily, then clasped his head in his hands. The silence seemed to go on forever, and how to break it was beyond me.

  Then he stirred and smiled. ‘Heard some good news about you, haven’t I? Congratulations, Lew. Always said you were going to be an intellectual.’

  ‘Oh – hell,’ I said.

  ‘Never you mind hell – you’re going to be an intellectual. I know it. And an intellectual man, Lew, is the finest there is.’ His eyes, suddenly, were no longer dulled. ‘That’s what I think – an intellectual is different, Lew. He’s got style. I like people who have style – know what I mean?’ He was sitting forward eagerly now, not talking to me or to anyone – just letting words and ideas wipe out, for a time at least, what had happened to him up at the Point. ‘I wish I had real learning inside my head. I wish I was an intellectual man with style – with a style of his own… and I’ll tell you something else, Lew – I wish I was a cosmopolitan as well – not a stuck-in-the-mud native of Porthmawr. A real cosmopolitan, able to move freely about the world, mixing with high and low, able to talk about the big things, important things, like art and music and books. That’s what I wish.’ He sighed deeply, then leaned forward to stir the fire into life. ‘Ashes,’ he said, ‘that’s all you’ve got here. Ashes and mud. The trouble with us, Lew, is we’re sunk in the mud of Porthmawr respectability. This is the primeval swamp of respectability. They invented the word here. The clean front and cuffs – and the dirty shirt underneath.’

  He put the poker down. ‘They ought to have maps in school – like those average rainfall ones, only these would show the distribution of Hypocrites per square mile.’ He grinned, and I knew he was feeling better. ‘Be black all over, this place would… brighten up the old Geography lesson too, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Fair enough,’ I agreed.

  ‘And let’s have textbooks as well. Guides to the young – how to tell a hypocrite, how to detect a fraud.’ The idea delighted him. His eyes were shining now. ‘We’ll line them up for inspection – the people with two voices, Lew, one for posh English, one for poor Welsh. The ones who come back from England and can’t remember any Welsh, poor things. The ones who pronounce Porthmawr ‘Pommower’ to suit the English. The ones who tell us to love Wales – in English!’ He sucked in his cheeks and did an imitation for me. ‘Then there’s the other crowd – the ones who want to shut everything out that isn’t Welsh. We’ll have them in as well. The ones who say no to everything… all frauds, Lew bach – and we’ve got them here in this little half and half town. I tell you Owen Glyndwr would spit right in their eye. He had style, Lew. He wasn’t a respectable fraud forever changing to suit the company….’

  The excitement left him suddenly.
‘What’s the use?’ he said, and for a moment he was silent again.

  ‘Lew – honest to God, some days I feel I’m choking here,’ he went on. ‘Don’t know what stops me getting the little ones together, packing a bag and away to go…’

  ‘Go on, then,’ I said, keeping my voice light, but worried all the same because he was so serious with it. ‘You’d never go. Told me yourself…’

  ‘Not for ever, maybe. But – there must be somewhere to go to, Lew, somewhere nice.’ He picked up an old school atlas – it had Porthmawr Council School stamped on its cover – and opened it at the middle page. ‘Plenty of places here – the Mediterranean Sea, Athens, Rome, Alexandria…. Oh, hell, spoilt for choice, once you’ve worked out the getting there.’ He closed the atlas and threw it down behind him. ‘It’s either go away, or stay. And if you stay you have to be like the Vaughans.’

  ‘Never,’ I said, looking at the bruise on his cheek. ‘What did you want to go there for? You shouldn’t have gone.’

  He stood up quickly. ‘I know. I know I shouldn’t. You’ve no idea how ashamed I feel about it. I was interfering, breaking in on them – acting like all the people in Porthmawr would. Spying, Lew…’

  ‘What made you go, then?’

  He paced up and down the kitchen, his hands tightly clasped in front of him. ‘I wanted to see for myself, I suppose. I couldn’t wait. Wanted to find out if it was working out – if they managed to bury Jupiter at last.’ Standing there directly under the light he was all skin and bone, somehow. His arms were limp at his side, the palms of his hands turned towards me, appealing. ‘You know what I mean, don’t you?’

  Why does he have to ask me? I thought. What makes him think that I understand? But I nodded, though: there was nothing else I could do.

  Then the children upstairs began to cry, and before Gladstone had moved from his position under the light they had come tumbling downstairs and into the room, and were pressed against him, little old people in their nightshirts, faces puffed with sleep and tears.