Died and Gone to Devon

by TP Fielden

  ‘I hope you’re not thinking of putting that on your expenses. There’s nothing in the diary to say you should’ve been out there.’

  ‘I went to interview Mrs Phipps to see if I could get a piece out of her about next year’s season at the Pavilion Theatre.’ It was a lie, but lies never count when it’s the editor.

  ‘I don’t want any more rubbish about noisy beat groups – look at all the trouble they caused last summer,’ grumbled Rhys.

  ‘She’s thinking of Pearl Carr and Teddy Johnson.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Pasty-faced woman, man with a straw boater and bow tie. They croon sickly songs at each other.’

  ‘That sounds a bit more like it.’

  Actually, Mr Editor, she’s going to have Gene Vincent – ripping off his leather jacket as he mounts the stage at full revs on his Triumph Bonneville. That’ll increase your heart rate a bit when he hits town.

  ‘Rr… rrr. Anyway, Freddy Hungerford – apparently Betty rubbed him up the wrong way at the Con Club on Friday night – when you should have been there, Miss Dim – and he wants an apology.’

  ‘Don’t call me that! I’ve told you, Richard, I am Miss Dimont, or I am Judy. I am not the other thing, and well you know it. Anyway, Betty’s at M’sieur Alphonse having her perm done, she can pop over to the club the moment she’s finished, it’s only round the corner.’

  ‘No,’ said Rhys, fishing in his pocket for a box of matches and not meeting her gaze, ‘I want you to go.’

  ‘And apologise for something Betty said?’

  ‘You can do it better than her.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Richard! What did she say, anyway, to upset the old goat?’

  ‘I have no idea. Just get round there and smooth him down.’

  ‘And have his hand up my skirt? No thanks! He’s retiring in the spring and finally we’re going to be represented by a woman who’s diligent, caring, and knows what she’s doing.’

  ‘Not necessarily. Could be the Liberal who wins.’

  ‘Same thing – she’s a good candidate too.’

  ‘I suppose you would say that of the Labour contender as well.’

  ‘Certainly! It would just be nice to have an MP who actually turned up here occasionally and cared what went on in the constituency.’

  Rhys lit his pipe and a foul smell instantly filled the room. ‘Off you go. Smooth him down. Find some story to write. I see John Ross spiked the piece Betty wrote; there has to be something else worth saying.’

  ‘I suppose you mean his forthcoming peerage? That the lazy good-for-nothing has bought himself a coronet and an ermine robe?’

  ‘Don’t be so impertinent!’ snapped the editor. ‘You’re the chief reporter on this newspaper and my personal representative – an apology from you will go a long way. Hop round there now!’

  ‘Just got to finish the Caring Volunteers story first, Richard.’

  ‘Oh bugger the volunteers and their blithering care. Get round to the Con Club and get down on your knees!’

  ‘I don’t sleep much, do you?’ he was saying.

  Miss Dimont could take it or leave it, but it was Mulligatawny who needed the requisite seven-and-a-half hours, trapping her feet under the eiderdown and prompting dreams of having been manacled and thrown into a dungeon.

  ‘I have the usual quota.’

  They’d met in The Nelson but there was a bit of a scuffle going on so they’d come outside until it was sorted out. Apparently, the Tuesday night crowd tended to get a bit excitable.

  ‘I find the thoughts keep coming and it seems a waste not to get them down on paper,’ David Renishaw went on. ‘How about you?’

  Miss Dimont found his conversational style a little alarming. Though he offered nuggets about his life, each sentence ended with an interrogative, as if he were trying to break into her house and steal her valuables.

  ‘Rest is essential in our job,’ she said, firmly. ‘Otherwise you lose concentration.’

  She didn’t know why she was saying this, but Renishaw unnerved her. She was trying to get to the bottom of why he was here in Temple Regis, what he was running away from (that surely had to be the case?), and why he was interested in Pansy Westerham and her violent death all those years ago.

  They were sitting outside The Nelson on a wooden bench. A small green square hemmed by fishermen’s cottages lay in front of them, illuminated by the winking lights of the neighbourhood Christmas tree. It was extraordinarily warm and as she unbuttoned her coat, Judy thought of dear Geraldine Phipps, still up on Dartmoor in Wistman’s Hotel, looking out of her window towards the snow-capped Hell’s Tor a mile distant.

  ‘Extraordinary, the meterological variances in the area,’ said Renishaw, looking up at the sky. It was if he was reading her mind. ‘Sun, snow – all at the same time.’

  ‘I was with a friend at the weekend, over in Brawbridge. Snowed in. She needed an extra Plymouth gin to keep out the cold.’

  ‘That wouldn’t be Geraldine Phipps, by any chance?’ asked Renishaw quickly, turning towards her.

  In the glow cast from the Christmas tree he seemed strikingly handsome, but of course that was probably the light. She’d decided on first sight he was not to be trusted.

  ‘Let’s talk about you, David. It seems extraordinary that someone as gifted as you should want to come and work on the Riviera Express. How so, may I ask?’

  ‘I needed a change.’

  ‘From what?’ Good, now it’s me asking the questions, she thought.

  ‘Canada isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Land of infinite promise. You work hard, you get ahead. You don’t like one place, you go to another. Nobody bothers you, asking questions.’

  ‘Like me, you mean? Asking questions?’

  He looked up at the sky again, smoothing back his hair, tamping down the irritating curl. ‘You’re an exceptionally clever woman, Judy, I don’t mind you asking. It’s all the others – with their official forms and their fact-checking and their overbearing manner…’ his voice trailed off.

  This seemed a bit of a contradiction, but I’ll leave it lying where it is for the moment, thought Judy. ‘So what do you do while the rest of us are wasting our lives snoozing?’

  ‘Think up things.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Well, everyone has a novel in them, so sometimes I tap away at that. It started out as an autobiography but in everybody’s life there are bits which are plain boring, or you don’t want to revisit, and you need to skip if it’s going to be at all readable. So in the end it was just easier to change the names and make it into a novel.’

  ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘I’ve called it On the Road to Calgary.’

  ‘Would that be a tribute to Jack Kerouac? Or do you think you’ll end up being crucified?’

  Renishaw turned to face her and leaned forward. She caught a whiff of something exotic – was it his hair cream? – and involuntarily drew a deep breath.

  ‘Calgary, Alberta. Where they have a stampede. I worked there for a time on the Calgary Horn. Cattle country. It’s a bit like the wild west out there – you’re an instant star if you can lassoo a chuckwagon to your ten-gallon six-shooter.’

  ‘Ha, ha!’

  ‘Fabulous people.’

  ‘Rather different from Temple Regis.’

  ‘I’ve travelled a lot. Something always seems to make me want to move on.’

  ‘And Mrs Renishaw…?’

  ‘Who can say?’

  ‘Anything else you do in the wee small hours?’

  ‘I started an organisation called Underdog. When you’re working on a paper you hear all sorts of things – you know that yourself, Judy – people with genuine grievances against their boss, or their neighbours, or the police. Sometimes as a reporter there’s nothing you can write to help them – the laws of libel and so forth – but a telephone call, or a foot in the door, from someone who’s not afraid of autho
rity can work wonders.’

  ‘I don’t quite follow.’

  ‘A stiff talking to. A reminder of the complainant’s rights. A suggestion that they should think twice before bothering the little person again.’

  ‘That sounds like issuing a threat.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that, Judy,’ he replied with a smile. ‘And anyway, don’t tell me that during the war you didn’t use threats to get what you wanted.’

  Now how do you know about that? thought Judy. I never talk about my war work.

  ‘Mr Rhys is an old friend,’ explained Renishaw.

  ‘I doubt he told you anything about his war work,’ said Judy coldly.

  ‘There are ways,’ said Renishaw with a nod. He really was supremely arrogant – so self-assured, so careless how he stepped. This whole conversation is not about sleep, or Geraldine Phipps, or the weather, or lassooing cattle in Canada. It’s about him putting me in my place, demonstrating his supremacy, indicating he knows yards more than he will ever share. What’s it all about?

  ‘I still don’t understand why you chose Temple Regis.’ And I do wish you’d hurry up and choose somewhere else, you’re bothering me.

  ‘I was working in Fleet Street after I arrived from Canada. I didn’t like the atmosphere. I like fresh air, a small community.’

  And now you’re here in Temple Regis, are you going to go round knocking on people’s doors, telling them they can’t do this and they can’t do that? Is that part of a journalist’s job?

  ‘You mentioned Geraldine Phipps.’ She wasn’t going to do this, it felt as if she was handing Renishaw an advantage, allowing him to extract more information from her than she’d get from him, but she couldn’t resist.

  ‘Isn’t she wonderful?’

  ‘It does seem strange you know her and Mr Rhys. You, all the way from Calgary via Fleet Street, knowing two people who to my certain knowledge have never met. That’s an extraordinary coincidence wouldn’t you say, David?’

  ‘Not really. She knew my mother. I was walking past the pier on my first day here and she was just coming out of the theatre door. Hadn’t seen her for years.’

  How strange, thought Miss Dimont. How strange that two women whom I call my close friends – Geraldine, and Lovely Mary – both know about you, and yet don’t mention your name to me. I know we as human beings have a habit of making and keeping secrets but really, I work on the same paper as David Renishaw! I’m his chief reporter! Why haven’t they mentioned him to me? What is the mystery about this man?

  Pushing these thoughts to one side, she ploughed on. ‘And then, Pansy Westerham. I was a bit surprised about that – that you knew her name, and when I’d just been talking to Geraldine about her.’

  ‘Simple. My mother knew her too. They were all thick as thieves back in the old days. I brought up her name and it set Geraldine reminiscing. She does that quite a lot, doesn’t she?’

  And why ever not, she’s had an extraordinary life. And now the prospect of Gene Vincent, roaring his motorbike on stage next summer – there’s no stopping her!

  ‘She’s adorable,’ Judy agreed. ‘Well, I think I ought to be going.’

  ‘Oh, come on, we’ve only just got here. It’s fun – forget the fisticuffs earlier, they were just horsing around. You’ll find there’s real life here at The Nelson.’

  ‘I think that’s why we don’t come here.’

  ‘Then I’ve got a wonderful surprise for you,’ said Renishaw, getting up and taking her hand. ‘Come along!’

  Inside the pub, the crammed bar where they’d arrived an hour before was now empty. ‘Come on,’ said her fellow reporter, and pushed her through a side door. In this room, once a coach shed, cobwebs swung from the ceiling. An overpowering smell of dust and horse dung came up from under the feet of a crowd gathered in one corner.

  Nearby, a makeshift bar was making light work of replenishing people’s glasses, while next to it an old fellow stood on a chair shouting. There was a tall box on a bench with half a dozen shelves, around which a group of men, their sleeves rolled up, were busying themselves. What with the dust and the jostling crowd, it was difficult to gather what was going on.

  ‘What is this?’ asked Judy. He hadn’t let go of her hand.

  ‘Wait and see,’ he said and strode forward to the bar.

  ‘FYVTAWUNNERTHESIX,’ bellowed the man, red-faced and clearly loving every moment. ‘AAAAAYVANSTHETOOOO.’

  In a moment Renishaw was back with a ginger beer for Judy and one for himself.

  ‘What is this?’ he heard her shout, the noise was getting beyond a joke.

  ‘You’ve never seen this before? It’s mouse-racing.’

  ‘It’s what?’

  ‘MOUSE-RACING,’ yelled Renishaw, but his words disappeared into thin air.

  Miss Dimont had bolted.

  Eight

  Though adored by many, there were a few who disliked Athene Madrigale intensely; and they tended to be the ones who worked closest to her.

  This wasn’t to say that Devon’s finest soothsayer was anything other than lovely. Miss Dimont felt instantly better if she could spot Athene across the newsroom, half hidden behind her lopsided bamboo screen adorned with ostrich feathers and silk scarves, staring at the ceiling for inspiration and puffing gently on a Craven ‘A’. She lit up the room with her clouds of smoke, her oddity and originality.

  No, it was the sub-editors, the down-table reporters, the photographers and, of course, the printers, whose lordly attitude towards all was a bit of a disgrace – these were the ones who sneered at her ethereal presence.

  ‘Call that work?’ one would say to another. ‘Dreaming up rubbish like Capricorn is rising – oh what a glorious week you’ll have! To think we struggle to fill the newspaper with real news and she just sits there making it up.’

  It was no coincidence that in the newsroom the editor’s placard, near to Athene’s desk, had had its message:

  MAKE IT FAST

  MAKE IT ACCURATE

  Augmented thus:

  … MAKE IT UP

  Mercifully, serene Miss Madrigale was above such common slights, and anyway at the moment she had too much on her hands to worry about trifles. Apart from her weekly column – the first item everyone turned to when they paid their sixpence for the Express on Friday mornings – there was her children’s page.

  Nobody knew where Athene came from; she seemed to pre-date most of the shifting population which made up the Express’s editorial staff. To be fair to Rudyard Rhys, when he took the editor’s chair he started to promote his astrologer, printing little teases on Page One, and found himself rewarded by an increase in circulation. For him, Athene could do no wrong.

  Even the sunny-natured Miss Dimont found this vexing while out and about in town plying her trade, to be confronted by townsfolk eagerly demanding – ‘Do you actually know Athene? Could you give her a message from me?’ – just at the point where she, Judy, was breaking a murder or worse. There was a special magic about Athene; and it was just as well they were friends, for there was quite a lot to be jealous about when the plaudits came to be handed out.

  One of the unbelievers was John Ross, whose job it was to make up the Athene Predicts… page. His rugged Gorbals childhood had not permitted glimpses of an azure-coloured future.

  ‘What’s this?’ he growled, holding a sheet of Athene’s lightly scented copy paper at arm’s length.

  CAPRICORN – FULL STEAM AHEAD

  The frustrations of last month will resolve themselves. Those things you tried to restore to some semblance of beauty from their shabby former selves will now look radiant, even if that means yourself. And – whatever you do – watch your aura!

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘It’s rather nice,’ said Denise Hopton, a new sub-editor fresh from university, speaking from the bottom end of the huge wooden desk they occupied. ‘She writes well, doesn’t she?’

  Ross looked up sharply at the newcomer, and from under his f
oot came the agitated rattling of the whisky bottle.

  ‘This,’ he said with a contemptuous sneer, as if he need add no further explanation.

  PISCES – HARMONY replaces the nasty little rash-like irritations of November. Personal achievement, expression and success are all on the cards, undoubtedly as the result of the special effort you made to say what you think. Satisfactory adjustments will be made. Some aspects you thought you’d put in a drawer need minor adjustment, but this really is the last of them. Postpone new projects until after Christmas.

  ‘I give that A for Admirable,’ said the young girl, who was not in the slightest bit frightened of the old warhorse.

  ‘I give it G for Gobbledegook. Or mebbe S for—’

  ‘She’s lovely. And the wonderful tea she makes!’

  ‘Aaaaayyy…’ growled Ross, ‘ye wouldnae know. Ye’re young, ye didna have to break windows and rip out phones to get your space in the paper. Ye didna have to lie and cheat and rob because your news editor told ye to. But now here we are with this… this… gobbledegook filling one of our best pages, week after week. When we have important news to impart.’

  ‘News? Like this?’ said Denise, faintly lifting the copy paper she was subbing.

  At the November meeting of Regis WI, Mrs Inchbald gave a thrilling demonstration of seven new ways to make wallpaper lampshades, and just in time for Christmas! She…

  ‘Ayyy, ye may mock, but that’s what sells our newspaper, girrlie – real life! Not made up fiffle-faffle!’

  ‘These lampshades look pretty fiffly-faffly to me, Mr Ross.’ There was a keen intelligence about the girl. She wouldn’t last long.

  Just then the teleprinter behind Ross’s desk sprang into life. Its rattle was rarely heard except when an away football match was played and no reporter sent to cover it; or, less often, when the Sovereign died. Apart from that it usually slumbered in the corner, an expensive piece of journalistic vanity which convinced all that the Express was not only in touch with the rest of the country, but the rest of the world.

  ‘Denise,’ said Ross without lifting his head. He could easily have reached the paper spitting its way out of the machine, whereas she had to get up and walk from the other end of the desk – but that’s the price you pay for contradicting your chief sub-editor. ‘And – milk, two sugars, while you’re about it.’