Say Goodbye to the Boys (3 page)

Emlyn came in. He was wearing his demob suit, an identical pattern to mine, only he had found a better fit. ‘Here I am father – all ponced up,' he said. Idwal snorted. ‘Has father been entertaining you, Philip?'

‘Oh – Philip knows me, Emlyn,' Idwal said. ‘By the way, I'm going to melt down that bloody trumpet of yours while you're out.'

‘The neighbours will give you a medal,' Emlyn said. At the front door he whispered to me, a smile on his face. ‘That's the first time he's spoken to me today. You've no idea how rowdy this house is.'

We took a short cut to the High Street and grinned at each other when we saw a woman come out of Maison Collette, a silk scarf covering her hair. ‘As a matter of fact I called last night,' Emlyn said. ‘A chat and a coffee...'

We then had to dive down an alley to avoid the Reverend Price who was sailing towards us. Ministers and local girls were in the same boat as far as we were concerned: intent on settling us down. We didn't return to the subject of Lilian until we were on the promenade.

‘Facts are facts,' Emlyn said, ‘and the biggest fact of all is that Mash has got the urge.'

‘Perhaps he'll forget about it.'

‘Not this... Oh Christ, slow down for God's sake – think of my health. No, no – this is the old primeval urge. This no memory can erase. And besides, it's a question of mates.'

‘Ok. We share his car, we share the boat, we share fags and money, we share all the lousy bints we pick up at the lousy dances. So now we've got to share Lilian Ridetski?'

He gripped my arm and drew me to a halt. ‘You don't mind do you? Because if you do – say so.' An anxious look on his face, but I knew Emlyn Morton of old. He was the arranger, always had been. His mind already made up, a course of action planned, but now there had to be an agreement, everything sorted out neat and tidy. If you've got any objections Philip, we'll take them into consideration – and carry on with the plan he devised in the first place.

‘I don't mind – but what about Lilian?'

We walked on. ‘Well – to tell you the truth I did make some preliminaries...'

‘You do surprise me.'

‘Don't be like that. A little dash of Lilian might very well help Mash along.'

‘Been very helpful to us,' I agreed. ‘You take him round; you introduce him.'

We were level with one of the small, pagoda-like shelters that dotted the promenade when a voice called out urgently. ‘Young men! I am in some distress.'

It was Amos Ellyott, sitting there in the shelter, a silver-knobbed stick between his legs. He looked all right to me.

‘An arrogant old bugger,' I whispered to Emlyn. ‘Leave him be.' But Emlyn went up to him and offered assistance.

‘I am locked,' Amos Ellyott said angrily. ‘My joints have seized. Kindly straighten me.' Emlyn at once got hold of his elbow and tried to lift him. ‘Both sides!' the old man barked. I joined Emlyn and we raised him to his feet, where he then ordered us to let go as he took a few tentative steps.

‘Don't forget my book, Roberts. Your friend's name?'

‘Emlyn Morton,' Emlyn said.

‘I am Ellyott. Help him find the
Macaulay
. Don't forget.'

We watched him walk away as if he was facing a high wind. ‘Arrogant old sod,' I said. ‘What about a thank you then?'

But Emlyn liked him straight away. ‘Pissed as a fart,' he said admiringly. ‘A detective, wasn't he?'

‘The trouble with you,' I told him sourly, ‘is you like everybody.'

We were on our way to Mash's for tea and the villas now were spacious and far removed from each other. They had, more often than not, names on their gate posts of places where the owners had made a pile. Solihull and Kidderminster. MT's house was called The Grange. A house belonging to MT was bound to be called that.

Mash and MT were playing tennis when we arrived. MT wore a pair of shorts that came well below the knee, and he was stained with sweat and out of breath. ‘You've just missed the championships,' he panted. ‘And this is the champion himself.' He held up Mash's huge arm. ‘By three clever sets – but not without a fight! Come on, I'll race you to the house – last one stinks!'

Mash took him on. They handed us their racquets, then went scampering up the short drive, reached the front door at the same time and jostled and charged each other as they crashed into the house.

As we followed them in, I wondered who was running the garage on such an afternoon as this. But, as everyone knew, the money came from MT's wife. It was her house too.

She was waiting for us in the big room at the back, a tall, severe looking woman with sparse hair and horn–rimmed glasses. Never a beauty, I'd heard people say, and it was her money that had got her MT, wasn't it? So much I'd forgotten in five years.

She rose from her chair to greet us. ‘Tenth time I've asked that boy to tell you to come.' She gave us a stiff handshake. ‘He forgets, doesn't he?'

‘Something like that,' Emlyn said. He was much better at small talk than I was.

We sat in silence and listened to the howls upstairs as MT and Mash fought over the bathroom. Through the window I could see swallows flitting low over the trim lawns; Mrs Edmunds knitted. We were there as Mash's friends, not because she liked us.

‘Have you started work,' she asked Emlyn suddenly.

‘Percy Davies Auctioneers has come round offering me my old job back,' Emlyn replied. ‘And an enormous salary, of course. I'm giving it my full consideration.'

She didn't smile. ‘You were in the sixth form at school, Philip – when you were called up? You both should try for the university. Both of you clever.'

I caught the bitterness in her voice, and wondered why she had to be so sour, until I remembered that she had Mash as a problem.

Tea time proved to be a conversation between Emlyn and MT. But mainly MT.

‘These boys, Sylvia! Aren't they cases? Back home again where they belong, painting the town red and messing about with that old boat.'

Mrs Edmunds poured the tea, pretending she'd heard nothing.

‘Stay around here, is my advice. We're going to make it the town it was before the war.' He pointed a knife at all of us in turn. ‘Revive, that's the motto! Open the tennis courts; start the tournaments again. And there's the golf club, crying out for members. And the old football team – remember?'

Photographs came out of his wallet and were passed around. ‘We'll clean up our beautiful beach, the old yacht club on its feet again. And the people will be crowding off the trains. I've got the carnival committee going again. It won't be much this year, but it'll be a start. And the sports day – remember the sports day? You, Philip, I remember you winning the egg and spoon!'

I couldn't. When Emlyn, or MT now, spoke of something I had done as a boy I kept wondering why I hadn't remembered without their prompting.

The telephone rang. Mrs Edmunds went to answer it and came back to say, tight lipped, ‘That Garston – for you.' Making Garston sound like a disease, speaking to MT without looking at him.

Mash, Emlyn and I were in the trophy room, when he returned. ‘That old Garston,' he explained, ‘been chasing me for a car for his son.' His face was more ruddy than usual, and he seemed nervous, agitated. He went towards the window, and looked out. ‘You know – you can't touch this place, can you? I couldn't be anywhere else but here. In this town.' MT turned, laughing to himself. ‘Sentimental, that's what I am.'

In the evening we climbed into Mash's car and drove to the Ferryman's Arms down the coast, where there was a dance. A flat affair with only two likely candidates, and both of them had husbands in tow.

Emlyn turned to Mash, ‘now is the hour,' he said. Mash understood straight away. He had us back in Maelgwyn by eleven. I left them on the High Street, and went home smiling.

III

 

 

 

 

I was looking after the shop for Laura when Emlyn arrived with the news. ‘A tremendous success,' he told me, doing a fair imitation of MT. ‘Marvellous. Woke me up this morning to tell me about it. Wants me to teach him the cards!'

‘He knows how to play...'

‘Yes – but he can't understand why he lost every hand.'

‘Anything else to report?'

‘Nothing that you could make sense of. But I am prepared, on the evidence of physical scrutiny alone, to sign affidavits that all went according to plan...'

‘What did she say, when you took him in?'

He began to peer along the shelves, running his finger along the spines of the books. ‘I introduced him. She said ‘fancy'. I said this young man requires a modicum of therapeutic manipulation...'

‘Oh, bollocks!'

‘The truth, my friend. I'm a dab hand at that kind of thing, coming as I do from a long line of brothel owners. Leads me to wonder if we shouldn't open our own whorehouse when we get to foreign parts in the boat.'

‘They usually have a Madame,' I said.

‘I could always wear a skirt – and I'll slap you with my handbag if you don't take that look off your face!'

He went into the shop, following the titles all the way. ‘So what happens now?'

‘Mash? He's going again tonight!'

‘Great! You've done for the two of us now, haven't you? What the hell are you looking for, anyway?'

‘He'll get tired of it. In any case, we can always work shifts. Nothing will change.'

‘You and your fucking theories. What are you looking for?'

‘That Macaulay book – for the old man.'

‘For him? Arrogant old sod like that?'

‘Fascinates me,' Emlyn said. ‘The trouble with you is people don't fascinate you – so you've no chance of being a fascinator like me.'

Laura came in at that point to report a disturbance, and asked for us to take a look, but not to get involved. It was market day, most of the stalls with produce or goods on display, and more business than any other days, in spite of the ration books and coupons. The disturbance was taking place around a stall run by a second-hand clothing merchant named Gareth Ince.

‘It's that German man he's got working for him,' Laura said. ‘The trouble's to do with him.'

The German was a toothless ex-Prisoner of War, a fat, bald man, turnip faced, with tiny porcine eyes. He had elected to stay behind, living off odd-jobs.

When we reached the crowd Mollie Ann Fruits was ordering Jack Partridge to put him down. ‘Everybody has the right to live in peace,' she was saying, her sentiments having no effect at all on Jack.

The Partridge lot were notorious pub fighters, a host of them, their real name was Williams, but they were called Partridge because a grandfather had once run a pub of that name. Wife-beaters all of them, and patriotic to a fault. Jack Partridge was wearing his medal ribbons on his jacket.

‘This Nazi swindled me,' he roared.

‘When did you ever have any money to be swindled,' Mollie Ann inquired.

‘Piss off, woman,' Jack told her, and gave the German a shake. The German's face was puce.

‘Short changed me in the Bull last night,' Jack growled. The German helped out in a number of pubs. ‘The bloody Nazis are taking our boys' jobs.'

‘When did you start worrying about jobs?' shouted Mollie Ann.

‘All Nazis should be hung,' Jack said. Then he hit the German on the mouth. I hadn't expected him to do that and the crowd backed away. They were looking to Emlyn and me, trained fighting men. A trickle of blood ran down the German's chin. He made no effort to fight back, suspended there like a great balloon.

But Mollie Ann stepped in smartly and rapped Jack across his kidneys. He dropped the German and went for her, and she skipped out of reach and took refuge behind us.

‘Oh my God, will you look at him?' Emlyn whispered. ‘My blood pressure's soaring.'

Jack came closer. I could smell booze on him. I was going to have to take him: him or me, I thought grimly.

But Emlyn was clutching at my hand. ‘Maybe we ought to retire to discuss tactics,' he suggested. ‘Tell him we were on his side,' Emlyn was saying as we were thrust aside and Jack was faced with someone much bigger than us, and what he saw made him blink and stagger back.

‘What's up then?' Mash inquired.

Jack took on a beaten look and decided that the opposition was too great and went stumbling off through the crowd. The women rushed past us to tend to the German.

‘Thank God you came along,' I said to Mash.

He stood there staring at the German who was now having tea poured down him and panting ‘
danke,
miss,
danke
'.

The door to the bird man's shop next to ours was ajar. It seemed only right that we should have a look in, a natural progression to climb the stairs at the back, the only access to the top storey of the Market Hall.

It was many years since I had been up there, and it was after all only a repeat of the ground floor – lock up shops, a space in the centre for stalls. This was another of the town's great failures, to be included with a hundred-bedroom hotel, a disaster of a sea wall, building and development projects had come to grief. Here the fault was obvious; the architect had forgotten to include a public staircase in his plans.

The top floor was ill-lit from a number of skylights now filmed with soot, but there was light enough to see the junk strewn about once we were in the open space. I had no memory of rows of tip up wooden chairs, all of them facing a white rectangle on the far wall. But there had been talk of picture shows, hadn't there? Big plans that had been scotched by fire regulations. Emlyn's hand tightened on my arm. There was a man sitting on the front row of chairs. Mash sneezed. The man turned and rose to face us. It was George Garston.

He came down the aisle between the chairs, a curious limping walk, waving a notebook at us. ‘Now then, now then – not allowed. Trespassers will be prosecuted.' The voice he used to scare the local children from the fields around his farm. ‘Clear off! This is private property!' We weren't children any more. We didn't move. And as he came closer and recognised us his manner changed. ‘Oh – you is it? Marshall and Philip.'

‘And me,' Emlyn said.

Garston stuffed his notebook in his pocket. ‘I know you all of course. I suppose you thought you'd have a look? Nothin' much to see up here, is there? Just old rubbish gathering dust. I have to come up here now and then, to make sure everything's all right, but there's nothing worth taking is there?' The poor man now, the blind beggar.

‘Then why don't you give it away?' Emlyn asked him.

Garston avoided the question. ‘Get Marshall to tell his father I am waiting for news of the car.'

Mash hadn't been listening. ‘Tell him what?' he said, then walked over to examine one of the shops, peering through the shutters.

George Garston drew closer to us. ‘I hear he's in a bad way,' he whispered, jerking a long, black thumbnail in Mash's direction.

‘You hear wrong,' Emlyn said.

‘But – a bullet in his head, that's what I heard...'

‘Bullshit.' Emlyn's voice quiet but hard.

‘Well – it's only what I heard. His father's very worried.'

‘You're thinking of someone else,' Emlyn said. Then, in a voice that was tight and harsh, firing off each phrase, ‘Mash is all right. Cured. Nothing wrong with him at all. Just stories they push around the town. Got that?' He waited for Garston to nod. ‘It's just gossip, a bit like your David.'

‘What d'you mean, my David?' Garston snapped.

‘Well, that's only gossip too, about him drinking every night in the King's Arms.'

‘You are mistaken!' Real anger in Garston's voice. ‘Every night he's at home preparing for the exams. You are mistaken.'

‘Like you about Marshall Edmunds?' Emlyn suggested, and he gave me the nudge and called Mash over and left George Garston with his empire.

Outside the Hall in the sunshine Emlyn said, ‘Fancy me telling tales like some old woman.' I was third man where Emlyn and Mash were concerned: always had been. Emlyn cheerfully referred to Mash as an old nut case, but no one else was allowed to do so. Not even me. ‘Now what shall we do tonight?' And we looked at Mash and laughed.

But Mash went every night for a week and I had occasion to fling Emlyn's words in his face. Until, out of the blue, came Dawn and Shirley, on holiday from an insurance office in Liverpool and looking for a good time. Emlyn and I took them out most afternoons and every night, and work on the
Ariadne
, still propped in the mud, went slowly.

‘Mind you,' Emlyn said from a reclining position on the
Ariadne's
deck, ‘we'll have to set to. Soon as these two dollies go home.' We lay there on the top deck. Emlyn inhaled deeply. ‘My God, doesn't this old river pong? Two lungfulls and you've got typhoid.' He leaned over on one elbow. ‘Tell you what though, I wish we could find a couple of rich dollies, who'd look after us!'

‘We're all right for the time being,' I said. ‘Everything's for the time being.'

Mash bellowed from below. ‘Is there only me
working?' A few minutes later he appeared, such enormous shoulders, such a small head by comparison. In order to cover the scar Mrs Edmunds had insisted that he let his hair grow, and now it was thick and curly. He had tar on his face, on his chest, on his arms, as he swung over the side and came towards us we could see the harbour mud had given him a pair of black socks and we laughed. He crouched in front of us, frowning, his mouth in a pout. A boy's face still.

‘You're doing a great job, Mash boy,' Emlyn told him. ‘Just you take a breather.'

Emlyn began to sing to himself as he lay back taking in the sun. Usually Mash could never resist joining in, but that day he was silent, staring blankly into the distance. I wondered what he was thinking; how he thought. Then suddenly, as if he had made up his mind about something, he crawled over and knelt between us. ‘I want to ask you,' he began, ‘something.' Mash closed his eyes so tight that a vein appeared on his forehead. ‘You don't go, do you?'

That was all he said, but we knew what he meant. A conversation with Mash was a matter of making the right assumptions.

‘How the hell can we go when you're there all the time?' I said.

Emlyn's elbow jarred approvingly against my ribs. ‘You're flying solo, old boy.'

Mash's face seemed to light up. ‘Honest?'

‘Look mate, we've got these two girls to see to,' Emlyn confirmed.

‘We don't go, honest,' I said.

‘But she calls me Philip sometimes – or Emlyn.'

‘That's part of the gag,' Emlyn said.

‘It's no gag!' Mash banged his fist on the cabin roof.

‘Well – she makes a mistake. Anybody can make a mistake.'

A silence fell, Mash's lips moving but no words coming out.

‘For fuck's sake Mash, how could we go? Me and Philip – we've got plenty on our hands...'

‘Yes – but I don't want you to go no more!' The words exploded out of him. Suddenly he looked away. ‘Don't want you two to go no more.' The line of his jawbone was set tight. ‘It's what I mean.' He shook his head. I could see the scar beneath his hair.

‘Is that all?' Emlyn said. ‘Well – it's all right by us, isn't it Philip?'

‘But you've got to promise! Promise now. Now.'

He looked at each of us in turn, deep-set eyes, opaque, anxious. ‘You've got my word,' I said.

‘Me too,' Emlyn added. ‘Honest.'

‘Honest?' Mash's face broke into a huge smile. We both nodded. Emlyn punched him gently on the chest. ‘Great then.' Mash leapt to his feet and did a handstand above us, lowering himself expertly to the deck. ‘I'll get some work done, then,' he said, kicking the soles of our feet. ‘Idle buggers!'

He climbed over the side. Emlyn looked at me.

‘You and your theories,' I said.

Dawn and Shirley caught a train back home and we became questing men about pubs and dances once more. Mash was always with us, but only until a certain hour. He was much brighter, we thought, less inclined to fight.

One night we met Amos Ellyott, all alone in the saloon bar of the King's Arms, and three parts cut. It was a Tuesday night, no parties to crash, no dances, all the girls at home washing their hair. I was about to do a smart about turn at the sight of Amos, but Emlyn headed straight for him, and offered to buy him a drink.

‘I never pay for drinks,' he explained, ‘I am a good cause. They have appeals on my behalf.'

‘Catch him when he falls off the stool,' I whispered to Emlyn.

‘I heard that!' The old man said. ‘I have superb hearing. And I am rude and overbearing because society allows me to be.'

‘This is a great ending to a great evening,' I said, and he heard that as well, and went on talking. He knew all about us, had seen us in the company of the giant; young men home from the war. He knew all about Dawn and Shirley and where we lived, all about our families.

‘Your father,' he said to Emlyn, ‘is known as the Rustler. The nick–name is everything in tiny towns, is it not? But only among the true natives, not among the nameless new-comers, all these little old women, all these little old men who have come here for the express purpose of dying.'

At that moment he fell off his stool, and the barman asked us to take him home. I was all for leaving him, but Emlyn insisted we do the right thing. We propped him up and marched him to Ocean View, to the door of his flat. And all the time he talked. He had three honorary degrees; he was the author of learned works; his obituary notice in
The Times
had already been written. ‘The key's above the door,' he said. ‘Take me in, settle me down.'