Make Room for the Jester

by Stead Jones

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Meira said. ‘Didn’t really like the Vaughans, did you?’ She giggled. ‘Can’t help laughing, neither.’

  And that was true. It was wrong, but you had to laugh. Like the town, I was tickled too – it was no use pretending I wasn’t.

  ‘Heard this one down the dole,’ Owen said. ‘Poem. See if I can remember: “Ashton Vaughan did live on gin, It rotted away his brain: Shot his brother – oh, what a sin, And forgot to pull the chain.” Like it, then?’

  Meira liked it so much she had the hiccups.

  ‘So there we are,’ Rowland Williams said, ‘both dead at one fell swoop, and the town wetting its pants laughing. The interesting thing about us is this craving we have for the comic. Anything, we have discovered, at the right time, can produce the belly laugh – and that’s their real love, Lew. They’ll never admit it, mind; none of us will. We like to think – in the small hours, times like that – of our tragic existence; we like to think of the nobility of man. But the frame is so grotesque, so comic, Lew…. What we see in the mirror is so ripe for the big belly laugh, so we let fly with a typhoon of laughter, and the world is doubled up, eyes streaming. He was watching himself in the window of the workshop as he spoke, gauging there his gestures with the chisel. ‘In the twentieth century there is no place for Hamlet, Lew – follow me, do you?’

  ‘Well, Mr Williams,’ I began.

  He threw the chisel down. ‘What I am saying, boy,’ he went on sharply, ‘is that we are unwilling, probably by now incapable, of recognising and appreciating the dignity of man. Are you with me?’

  I nodded, but he wasn’t looking at me.

  This laughter is a killer,’ he went on, and he was angry now. ‘A killer – tell Gladstone Williams that, will you? Tell him to shape his mouth in a grin straight away, tell him quick, Lew, before the howls and screeches drown him…. Oh, by God, he’s taking a chance, that boy – never a smile, never a giggle…. You tell him I said this laughing’s a killer. Tell him I said that.’

  Then, suddenly, and for the first time to my knowledge, Rowland lost his temper. He picked up a mallet from the bench and flung it into the far corner of the workshop. It made a clatter and raised a cloud of dust, and left a silence deep as eternity. Rowland never turned to give me a grin of apology, either – just stood there looking at his reflection in the workshop window. I left him like that.

  ‘Cheated the gallows,’ Polly said sorrowfully. ‘Have they fixed the inquest, then?’

  ‘Friday – after the funeral.’

  ‘You’ve got to try and get in – understand? I want a full report – who said what – everything. And you can watch the funeral for me, too. Can’t leave Tada, more’s the pity.’

  Poor old boozy Ashton Vaughan, I thought. Were all the great murderers like him?

  Dewi and Maxie and I joined the crowd across the road from the police station on the morning they buried the Vaughans. We were moved along twice by Constable Matthews, but we shuffled back and waited in the sunshine with the rest.

  The clock on St Mary’s church struck ten, and the first of the coffins came out. Hats came off. All talking stopped. The coffin went into the first hearse – Marius or Ashton? I wondered. Then came the second coffin, and at that moment I saw Gladstone. He was on the other side of the road, wearing a black suit that looked new to me, a white shirt and a black tie. He was carrying two bunches of flowers. He looked fine – taller, somehow, and distinguished.

  I gave Dewi the nudge. ‘Gladstone.’

  ‘Going with them by God,’ Dewi said, and the crowd murmured as if echoing his words.

  As the second coffin was pushed into the other hearse, the Rev A. H. Jones came down the steps with the Vaughans’ housekeeper. He helped her into his car and took his place behind the wheel. In the car behind his were a couple of Capel Mawr deacons, and after them Super Edwards and a sergeant in the police car. There was no sign of Eirlys Hampson.

  Car doors were closing, engines starting up, but nobody, I felt, looked at anything or anyone but Gladstone. He stepped off the pavement and walked very slowly past the cars to the second hearse. The driver of the hearse came out, then opened the back of the hearse and let Gladstone place one bunch of flowers on the coffin. They walked together to the first hearse. Super Edwards got out of his car and stood by it on the pavement, watching. Gladstone put his other bunch of flowers on the coffin then said something to the driver. They walked back to the second hearse, and Gladstone opened the cab door and squeezed himself in next to one of the bearers. Super Edwards got back in his car, the funeral moved off, and all around me the mouths hung open, but no one was saying a word.

  Dewi, Maxie and I, after the last car had gone past, stepped out in the road and watched them until they disappeared around the corner of St Mary’s Crescent.

  ‘Let’s follow,’ Dewi said.

  We walked to the corner, then fell into a trot down the hill towards the cemetery. We gave them plenty of time to clear from the entrance before we went in, and even then we kept our distance.

  From where we were standing by the trees we could only hear a murmur of what the Rev A. H. Jones was saying; he didn’t take long anyway. I was watching Gladstone, so stiff and straight by the open graves, his arms tightly clasped across his chest, his head lowered. It was a clear, sunny morning. Beyond the cemetery wall you could see the mountains, very cool and clean looking.

  ‘Two graves,’ Maxie whispered. ‘Should have buried them together.’

  Dewi turned on him fiercely. ‘One of them murdered the other, old fool,’ he said.

  Then it was all over, and the Rev A. H. Jones was leading them all away, the housekeeper crying on his arm. I saw Super Edwards turn to Gladstone and say something, then Gladstone left the graveside and walked towards the gate. The Super and the sergeant smiled at each other, and whispered: having a joke about Gladstone, I thought.

  ‘I’ll give him a whistle,’ Dewi said, but Gladstone never turned. He walked on to the gate and we saw him climb into the front of the hearse. He was a stranger to us that day, but even so I wanted to go after him and tell him I’d seen the smile on the Super’s face. But I didn’t. I stayed there by the trees and watched the two gravediggers get on with their job. The inquest was at two. I ran over to the police station straight after dinner, knowing full well there was little chance of getting in, but even so I hardly expected the doors to be closed and already a crowd outside.

  Dewi and Maxie joined me. ‘Been shut for half an hour, them doors,’ Dewi said. ‘Full house – like Saturday night pictures.’

  ‘Seen Gladstone?’

  They shook their heads, and we took up position at the edge of the crowd. The coroner and the police doctor, wearing black bowlers, marched up the steps looking important.

  ‘See them two going in now,’ Maxie said, ‘police special detectives. Scotland Yard.’

  ‘Gerraway!’ Dewi said.

  I had no idea how long an inquest took. I wasn’t even sure why there should be an inquest at all now that both of them were down the road there in the cemetery. By three o’clock my legs ached with standing, and all the crowd around me had begun to look like birds of prey. Then, shortly after quarter past three by the church clock, the door opened. Constable Matthews came out first, then Gladstone, then Super Edwards.

  ‘Gladstone,’ Dewi said. ‘Trouble!’

  Super Edwards looked angry. He held Gladstone’s arm with one hand and pointed down the steps with the other. You didn’t need to hear to know that Gladstone was being ordered out.

  ‘Thrown out,’ Dewi whispered. ‘Like us at the pictures!’

  Gladstone came slowly down the steps, shaking his head. Super Edwards and the constable went back inside. The door closed behind them.

  ‘Come on,’ Dewi said. ‘See what’s happened, then.’

  We ran across to the police station gate, but the birds of prey were there before us, crowding around Gladstone, yelling their questions. We tried to charge our way t
hrough to him, but they were scrum-tight. A loud cheer arose. We backed away to get a better view over their heads, and there was Gladstone pulling himself on to the wall, hanging on to the railings. Oh, God, I almost cried aloud, let him get down.

  ‘Quiet then,’ someone shouted, ‘quiet for the main man.’

  Gladstone nearly slipped off the wall, but managed to hang on. ‘I will,’ he cried, ‘I will tell you what I told them in there.’ He made himself more secure on the wall so that he was facing them directly. He looked better now, fine in fact, but I still wanted him to get down.

  ‘Threw you out, did they?’ someone cried.

  ‘What’s it about then? A bit of quiet, boys, so’s he’ll tell us….’

  Men at the back of the crowd were standing tiptoe and whispering that it was Martha’s boy, pal of the Vaughans, bit of a bloody young fool, queer and that.

  ‘I tried to tell them what was behind this tragic business,’ Gladstone said, ‘but they wouldn’t let me speak….’

  ‘Talks nice….’

  ‘Quiet, man. Let him tell us….’

  ‘I tried to tell them why Ashton Vaughan shot his own brother dead. There were mitigating circumstances.’

  Someone laughed loud and coarse.

  ‘What’s them? Catching, are they?’

  ‘It’s about Jupiter,’ Gladstone said. ‘You don’t kill your own brother for no reason. Jupiter – that’s what’s behind it all.’ I cringed inside for him – not because I thought he was wrong, but because I knew they wouldn’t understand… and any minute that police station door was going to open.

  ‘Sixteen years ago,’ Gladstone went on, ‘Jupiter Vaughan was shot dead by his brother Marius Vaughan. It was an accident, though – might have happened to anybody. But Jupiter Vaughan was special. He was young and beautiful.’ The same coarse laugh broke across the crowd – not just one laugh, though, but many. ‘And this boy’s death is what caused Ashton to kill his own brother. They couldn’t live with that death, either of them… that’s what’s behind it….’ Gladstone’s confidence ebbed, his voice trailed off.

  ‘Sherlock Holmes has spoken,’ a voice cried.

  ‘Give him a chance, man,’ a deeper voice said.

  Gladstone almost slipped off the wall. The sleeve of his jacket was caught in one of the railing spikes and he was trying to free himself. ‘Look,’ he said, anger coming through, ‘these two men, from the day he died – the day Jupiter died – were broken by his death. Not like ordinary men at all…’

  ‘Damn right you are there, boy.’

  ‘They were scarred. They were broken men.’ Gladstone cried out above the din.

  ‘Bloody rough, they were, for sure.’

  ‘Aye – and better than us, don’t forget.’

  ‘You don’t understand – you don’t understand. They weren’t bad men.’

  ‘Not so bloody much.’

  ‘Lording it over us…’

  Gladstone was speaking again, but I couldn’t hear him now for the noise.

  ‘The Vaughans never loved anybody except themselves,’ a voice broke through.

  ‘It was remembering all their lives this terrible thing that had happened to their brother,’ Gladstone said in the hush that followed. ‘They were broken men, both of them. Ashton didn’t mean to kill his brother. It was Jupiter’s death lay between them…’

  ‘Get off the wall, nancy boy,’ the same voice cried, and I knew then that it was Harry Knock-Knees. ‘Talking cock you are.’

  I saw Gladstone’s mouth open and close, but the noise of the crowd drowned everything. They were urging Harry Knock-Knees to pull Gladstone down, they were telling Gladstone to come down and see Harry off. It was a riot, suddenly. I was watching Gladstone so closely that I never saw the police station door open, never saw Super Edwards and the two constables rush out. The crowd backed away so quickly that we had to turn and run to avoid being trampled. By the time I looked again, Gladstone had been pulled down off the wall, was being marched up the police station steps between the two constables. His tie was off, and there was a rent right to the shoulder in one sleeve of his jacket.

  Super Edwards remained at the gate, pointing and waving. ‘Everybody move on!’ he ordered. ‘Causing a public disturbance. Have you no shame?’

  ‘Bloody Hitlers!’ someone shouted, and for a moment it looked as if the Super might take them on by himself, but all he did was lower his eyebrows and glare. The crowd knew that glare, knew his memory for faces, too. Slowly they retreated towards us, but I wasn’t really watching them. All I could see was the half-closed door of the police station through which Gladstone had been bundled.

  ‘Gone to the cell!’ Dewi whispered.

  ‘Have to bail him out now, for sure,’ Maxie added. ‘Disturbing the peace is worse than bigamy.’

  ‘Shut up,’ I yelled at him. ‘Close your silly mouth!’

  Maxie jumped back as if I’d hit him, but I didn’t care about Maxie or his feelings. Inside I was curling up for Gladstone, sick for him almost. Why had he bothered to tell them what he thought, how he felt? Didn’t he know, for God’s sake, that you had to keep things like that private?

  XVII

  Super Edwards kept Gladstone in the cell until eight o’clock that night. Gladstone had a talking-to, and a warning, and was told to go home to await farther questioning. By then, of course, all Porthmawr knew about it, and the jokers were out again.

  Next day it was worse still. There was Gladstone, hanging on to the police station railings, on the front page of all the papers. Even Polly was amused when she wasn’t telling me how disappointed she was because I’d failed to get in to the inquest.

  ‘Demonstration at inquest,’ she read out. ‘Police warn crowd. Disgraceful!’ She drummed her fingers on Gladstone’s picture. ‘Mind you, Lew – they’re hushing it up. Any fool can tell that. The powers that be are hushing it up. Where was she, for instance? No word about her, is there?’

  Polly was a dribbling witch, suddenly, crying for blood like the old crones around the guillotine did in all those pictures I’d seen about the French Revolution. I was wasting my time talking to her.

  ‘Was she there?’

  ‘Never saw her,’ I said.

  ‘Well – what did you see, then? Only your friend like a monkey on the wall?’

  ‘Gladstone’s all right,’ I said.

  She pulled at her long nose. Was it the light, or something? Had I never seen the spying fox behind her eyes before? ‘Wants watching, if you ask me,’ she said. ‘What did he mean – about Jupiter?’

  ‘It’s a theory, that’s all.’

  ‘Not right in the head, that boy. With your brains you shouldn’t make a friend of someone like that.’

  Forcing me to answer, urging me to defend Gladstone and so tell her things. Had she always got me to talk, to tell the tale, in the same way? ‘Matter of opinion,’ I said. ‘He’s a brilliant person.’

  ‘Fancy! He’ll need to be brilliant, too – all the trouble that’s waiting for him.’

  ‘What trouble?’

  ‘Wait and see. You don’t think they’re going to let him make a laughing stock of himself – getting his name in the paper, and a picture – without…’

  ‘What can they do?’ Old curtain shifter, I thought. Old prophet of doom. ‘It’s none of their business.’

  ‘He’s only a boy, and he’s got too many crazy notions, don’t forget. What did he say, then? Tell me again what you think he was trying to say.’

  I looked at the Captain asleep like an enormous child in his chair. ‘Why don’t you ask Tada?’ I said, and was sorry straight away because it was a blow, and must have been very unexpected, and must have hurt, too.

  ‘I see,’ Polly said in a voice out of the North Pole, ‘I see. Perhaps we’d better go. We are obviously not in a good mood.’ She turned her back on me, picked up the magnifying glass and began to examine the paper again. As I was leaving, she called after me, ‘Won’t bang the door, will we? T
ada might wake up and tell me.’

  I was four inches tall as I went out, and very angry. I’d seen through Polly, I kept telling myself, but I wasn’t really pleased about it.

  ‘Can any man afford to be naked?’ Rowland asked. ‘That is the question we would have to debate, if we were detached enough to want to debate anything. Can any man, we would ask ourselves, afford to unclothe – no, no, that’s a doubtful metaphor – to unmask is better. Can any man afford to unmask – to show his face to the world, his real face?’

  ‘You were there, Mr Williams? Never saw you.’

  Rowland took another pull at the bottle. ‘Among the vulgar and the uninformed, boy. Oh, Gladstone Williams, what an error you made.’

  ‘Shouldn’t have done it, should he?’ Rowland drunk at this time of year! It was incredible. Only on Armistice Day was he ever on the bottle, and then only on ruby wine, I’d heard. But today the liquid looked lighter, more like whisky.

  ‘You’ll excuse me, Lew Morgan, passed matriculation and all set to be a Civil Servant? I never offer a drink. It’s against my Methodist principles.’ He was in his Sunday best, even wore a collar and tie. ‘Made an error of judgement, our friend did – possibly an error of taste as well. He has backed, if you will excuse me, a dying cause,’ Rowland giggled. ‘I was near the photographer, you know – that representative of the great British Press – and I jogged his bloody arm, I did! But to no avail, apparently. No – our friend, our mutual friend, has made the faulty assumption that because men have attachments of gristle and skin on either side of their heads, therefore they can hear. And understand. Fatal mistake, Lew! The world, let me tell you, is deaf, stone deaf. But, as I said, were we in debate, we would have to ask ourselves only one question – a fundamental question – did I tell you I was a fundamentalist, Lew? A dusty fundamentalist with wood chips in his hair and resin clotting his nostrils – that’s what I am… and we would have to ask this question – can any man afford to show himself to the world?’ He waved his arms and grinned foolishly, then had to sit down. ‘Oh, Gladstone, Gladstone, you haven’t a chance – and that’s from the man who has debated like hell, but never made the gesture himself. You haven’t a chance, boy. That you may be right is not the point at issue – who the hell said right is might? What you must understand is that you are in error, Gladstone. You have shown yourself. And that’s the error only the mad make – and you know what they do with the mad, don’t you, Gladstone?’