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In fact Miss Judy Dimont, ferocious defender of free speech, champion of the truth and the thorn in the side of poor Inspector Topham, hardly looked like Temple Regis’ ace newspaperwoman this afternoon. As she ordered a pound of apples in the Home and Colonial Stores in Fore Street she might easily be mistaken for a librarian on her tea break: the sensible shoes, the well-worn raincoat and the raffia handbag made it clear that here was a no-nonsense, serious person who had just enough time to stock up on the essentials before heading home to a good book.
‘One and sixpence, thank you, miss.’
The reporter reached for her purse, smiled up at the young shop assistant, and suddenly she looked anything but ordinary. Her wonderfully erratic corkscrew hair fell back from her face and her sage-grey eyes peeped over the top of her spectacles, which had slithered down her convex nose. The smile itself was joyous and radiant – the sort of smile that offers hope and comfort in a troubled world.
‘Tea?’
‘Not today thank you, Victor.’ She didn’t like to say she preferred to buy her tea at Lipton’s round the corner. ‘I think I’ll just quickly go over and get some fish.’
‘Ah yes.’ The assistant nodded knowledgeably. ‘Mulligatawny.’
This was how it was in Temple Regis. People knew the name of your cat and would ask after his health. They knew you bought your tea at Lipton’s and only gently tried to persuade you to purchase their own brand. They delivered the groceries by bicycle to your door and left a little extra gift in the cardboard box knowing the pleasure it would bring.
‘I tried that ginger marmalade,’ said Miss Dimont, with perfect timing. ‘Delicious! In fact it’s all gone. May I buy some if you have any left?’
The assistant in his long white apron hastened away and, as she wandered over to the marble-topped fish counter, she marvelled again at the interlocking cogwheels which made up Temple Regis’ small population. Over by the coffee counter the odd little lady from the hairdresser’s was deep in conversation with the secretary of the Mothers’ Union in that old toque hat she always wore, winter and summer. Both were looking out of the window at a pair of dray horses from Gardner’s brewery, their brasses glinting in the late sunlight as they plodded massively by.
They’d all meet again at the Church Fete on Saturday, bringing fresh news of their doings to share and deliberate upon. While the rest of Britain struggled with its post-war identity crisis – move forward to the brave new world? Or go back to the comfortable past? – life in Devon’s prettiest town found its stability in the little things of here and now.
‘Do you have any cods’ heads? If not, some coley? And a kipper for me, please,’ just in case anybody should think she was reduced to making fish soup for herself, delicious though that would be!
It had been a perplexing day, and the circular rhythms of the Home and Colonial had a way of putting everything back in perspective. The Magistrates’ Court, the one fixed point in her week which always guaranteed to provide a selection of golden nuggets for the front page of the Riviera Express, had failed her – and badly. Quite a lot of time today had been taken up with the elaborate appointment of a new Chairman of the Bench, and that had been followed by a dreary case involving the manager of the Midland Bank and a missing cheque.
It shouldn’t have come to court – everyone has the occasional lapse! – and under the previous chairman the case would have been thrown out. But the Hon. Mrs Marchbank was no longer with us, her recent misdeeds having taken her to a greater judge, and in her place was the pettifogging Colonel de Saumarez, distinguished enough in his tweed suit but lacking in grey matter.
‘Anything else, miss?’
‘That’s all, thank you.’
‘Put on your account?’
‘Yes please.’
‘Young Walter will have it round to your door first thing.’
‘I’ll take the fish with me, if I may.’
The world is a terrible place, thought Miss Dimont, as she emerged into the early evening sunlight, what with the Atom Bomb and the Suez Crisis, but not here. She waved to Lovely Mary, the proprietress of the Signal Box Café, who was coming out of Lipton’s with a wide smile on her lips – how aptly she was named!
‘All well, Judy?’
‘Couldn’t be better, Mary. Early start tomorrow though, off before dawn. A life on the ocean wave, tra-la!’’
‘See you soon, then, dear. Safe journey, wherever you’m goin’.’
Miss Dimont walked down to the seafront for one last look at the waves. After the kipper, she would sit with Mulligatawny on her lap and think about the bank manager and the missing cheque. It had been a long day in court and she needed a quiet moment to think how best the story could be written up.
Things were less tranquil back at her place of work, the Riviera Express.
‘What about this murder?’ roared John Ross, the red-faced chief sub-editor. It was the end of the day, the traditional time for losing his temper. He stalked down the office to the reporters’ desks. ‘Who’s on it? What’s happening?’
Betty Featherstone clacked smartly over from the picture desk in her high heels. She was looking particularly radiant today though the hair bleach hadn’t worked quite so well this time, and her choice of lipstick was, as usual, at odds with the shade of her home-made dress. The way she carried a notebook, though, had a certain attraction to the older man.
Betty was the Express’s number two reporter though you wouldn’t know that if you read the paper – her name appeared over more stories, and in larger print, than Judy Dimont’s ever did, but that was less to do with her journalistic skills than with the fact that the editor liked the way she did what she was told.
You could never say that about Miss Dimont.
‘Who’s covering the murder?’ demanded Ross heatedly.
‘The new boy,’ sighed Betty.
The way she said it carried a wealth of meaning in an office that was accustomed to the constant stream of new talent washing through its revolving doors – in, and then out again. Either they were so good they were snapped up by livelier papers, or else they were useless and posted to a district office, never to be seen again.
‘Another rookie?’ snapped Ross, the venom in his voice sufficient to quell a native uprising. ‘When did he arrive?’
‘This morning,’ said Betty. She’d yet to try out her charms on the newcomer, but as ever she was willing to give it a try – he looked rather sweet, though of course those nasty photographers would be calling her a cradle-snatcher again.
‘Where’s your Townswomen’s Guild story?’ growled Ross, for Betty was not his cup of tea and her bouncy figure left him unmoved.
‘Here you are,’ she trilled, handing over three half-sheets of copy paper bearing all the hallmarks of an afternoon’s attention to the nail-varnish bottle.
‘A stimulating talk was given by Miss A. de Mauny at Temple Regis TWG on Tuesday,’ it began, one might almost say deliberately masking the joys ahead.
‘Titled Lady Rhondda and the Six Point Group it gave a fascinating account of the post-war women’s movement, taking in the …’
She could see Ross’s eyes glaze over as he read on. In truth, she’d found it difficult herself to stay awake during the earnest but dense peroration by the town’s only clock-mender. There weren’t too many jokes in her talk.
‘For … pity’s … sake …’ groaned Ross, a man ever-hungry for sensation. ‘We’re short on space this week. The Six Point Group? Naaaah!’
‘Husbands of TWG members advertise extensively in this newspaper,’ said Betty, primly parroting the words of her editor when she’d protested at having to attend the dreary event.
‘I’ll have to cut it.’
‘Do what you like,’ said Betty. Her mind was already on the evening ahead. A drink perhaps with that new reporter, the start of something new?
And maybe, this time, it could be for ever?
TWO (#ulink_7fd1b120-ef9f-50eb-85db-5e0219f5dcfd)
Miss Dimont sat in the public bar of the Old Jawbones, a beaker of rum on the stool in front of her, surrounded by a group of men – bulky, muscular, unshaven and with the occasional missing tooth – who roared their approval as she raised the glass to her lips and drank.
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.’
‘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.’
