Читать книгу Died and Gone to Devon - TP Fielden - Страница 15

Betty hated it when Judy found an excuse to skip Magistrates Court. The chief reporter’s shorthand was better, her concentration sharper, her ability to sift the contents of grey interminable proceedings and find a nugget of interest somewhere in the debris, all seemed so effortless. But for Betty, it was a penance.

Every Tuesday and Thursday since time immemorial, the duty reporter from the Express put on hat and coat and trudged across Fore Street and round the corner to the pretty redbrick Edwardian building, adorned with its nicely stained glass and rash of oak panelling – the same old journey, taken so often, you wondered why there wasn’t a groove in the pavement.

But this moment of freedom – the joy of exercise and window-shopping and bumping into friends and acquaintances – was cut short once you entered the building. There, slumped in the featureless front hall, was the menu of the day: a collection of drunks, petty thieves and nuisances – men too free with their fists and women too free with their wares (though the Express studiously ignored the latter, however fruity the case). Their misdeeds would be judged and, if only Betty could stay awake, reported in print next Friday.

The editor, Mr Rhys, had a difficult battle on his hands. Often a story of great national interest would emerge from these proceedings, but any article which suggested in some way that Temple Regis had lost its moral compass was instantly strangled to death, consigned to an obscure corner of the Express somewhere below the gardening column.

This led some, his staff included, to protest that Rudyard Rhys had no right to call himself a journalist, and should have stuck to his previous career as a failed novelist. But in fairness to the bewhiskered old procrastinator, he was subject to the desire of the city fathers and especially their sovereign, the Mayor Sam Brough, to keep things clean. This was a view shared by his proprietor, who owned a lot of property in Temple Regis and didn’t wish to see its value fall through injurious headlines. If men fought in the streets, if ladies of the night beckoned you into the murky depths of Bosun’s Alley, these were matters for municipal self-regulation – not national fascination.

It made life difficult for Miss Dimont who, since her arrival fresh from secret Cold War duties a few years back, had seen journalism as a refreshing way of shedding light on a community, good or bad. In Temple Regis there’d been a number of questionable deaths – but the Coroner, Dr Rudkin, often managed to pass these off as ‘accidental’. He too believed in the Temple Regis idyll.

In court, however, justice still had to be done – and seen to be done. Since the departure of the Hon Mrs Marchbank and her habit of detaining anyone with so much as a nasty look on their face, the magistrates’ bench had behaved itself pretty well. But a dreary long day in their presence was not dissimilar to a jail sentence, and Betty sat down on the reporters’ bench with a desolate thump.

The door behind the bench burst open and Mr Thurlestone, the magistrates’ clerk, issued his clarion call, ‘Be upstanding!’ as he swished down to his desk, all black gown and tabs and disreputable wig.

In filed a bewildered-looking couple of Worships who should surely be spending their days in a rest home, and the chief magistrate, Colonel de Saumaurez, who at least looked as though he knew which day of the week it was.

Proceedings got under way with the usual squabbles between publicans who wanted to extend their licensing hours and the magistrates, who didn’t go to pubs but drank wine in their dining rooms at home. To them, the idea of a man putting a glass to his lips after 10.30 p.m. was a crime in itself.

Then it was onto the main course.

‘Call Hector Sirraway.’

A tall white-haired man was led up the steps from the cells and entered the dock.

‘Are you Hector Ransome Sirraway?’

‘I am.’

‘Hector Sirraway, you are charged that on the night of the twelfth of December you did cause a public nuisance in Harberton Square. You are further charged that in resisting arrest you assaulted a police officer. How do you plead?’

‘Not guilty.’

‘Sit down. Sergeant?’

The comfortably proportioned Sergeant Stanbridge rose to his feet and prepared to deliver a damning indictment of Mr Sirraway’s inexcusable behaviour.

‘Did the constable get his helmet back?’ asked Colonel de Saumarez, fatally disclosing prior knowledge of the case. Nobody took a blind bit of notice.

‘I believe so, Your Worship,’ said Stanbridge, nodding.

‘Very well. Proceed.’

‘Your Worships, this is a simple case. On the night in question, the accused took up position outside the Conservative Association building in Harberton Square on the occasion of Sir Frederick Hungerford’s annual Christmas party. As guests arrived, he began shouting and carrying on and despite a polite request to pipe down, he took no notice and shouted even louder.

‘Police Constable Staverton arrived at the scene and warned the accused that he would be causing a public order offence if he did not immediately stop. That’s when the accused knocked off his helmet.’

The magistrates were still sufficiently awake to smile at this.

‘The accused was arrested and bailed to appear today before Your Worships.’

Colonel de Saumaurez eyed the man in the dock. He did not look like the usual sort of ruffian the town had to put up with.

‘Mr Sirraway, you have pleaded not guilty to these charges. What have you to say?’

‘I have a statement to make to the court.’

‘No, no!’ barked Thurlestone, the magistrates’ clerk. ‘No statement! You are being given an opportunity to speak in your own defence. Do, I pray, stick to that!’

Sirraway stared at the clerk’s ancient wig and, unblinking, pulled out a piece of paper from his pocket.

‘As I was saying,’ he continued firmly.

‘No, no, no! No statement!’

‘Your Worships, last night I spent a good hour checking the position with Stone’s Justices Manual, and I am within my rights, in responding to the clerk’s question, to make a statement.’

Mr Thurlestone did not like this one bit.

‘On the night in question it is true I stood outside the Conservative Hall in order to make a peaceful protest. I alerted the party faithful entering the building that their Member of Parliament is guilty of a number of illegal acts which…’

‘No, no, no!’ shouted an infuriated Thurleston, the wig on his head waggling. ‘You can’t say anything like that!’

‘Court privilege,’ said Sirraway, reaching for a handkerchief to wipe his nose. He’d certainly done his homework.

‘I really don’t think we need…’ said the Colonel, who’d had dinner with Sir Freddy only the other week.

‘… guilty of a number of malfeasances inconsistent with the public office he has held for the past forty years. In simple terms I pointed out to the party workers that their MP was a crook, is a crook, has always been a crook.’

‘That’s enough!’ snapped de Saumaurez. ‘I’m ordering you to put that piece of paper away! Anything else to say?’

‘It’s jolly easy to knock a copper’s hat off his napper. Have you ever tried, Your Worship?’

The chief magistrate growled through gritted teeth. ‘Anything known?’

‘Nothing, sir,’ said Sergeant Stanbridge.

‘Fined ten shillings. Bound over to keep the peace – and I mean that, Mr Sirraway, keep the peace – for a year.’

‘It’s Professor Sirraway,’ warbled the man joyously over his shoulder as he was bundled away.

Such a moment is always a testing time for the reporter. Your duty is both to cover the rest of the court proceedings, but also to chase up anything that could make a bigger story which might shine its light from under the hedge clippings of the gardening column. An impossible dilemma for Betty when, as on this occasion, there was no other reporter in court. Should she go out and chase the professor, if that’s what he was, and lose the next three cases while she interviewed him and called the office to get a photographer round, or should she carry on drooping over her notebook, inspecting her split ends and waiting for the endless day to be over?

Boldly, she decided on action. Gathering up her things she made for the door under the furious gaze of Mr Thurlestone, who knew his proceedings had been abandoned by the Fourth Estate and that whatever secrets the man Sirraway had been prevented from airing by the Colonel would now go before a greater court, that of public opinion.

‘Just a moment!’ called Betty as she emerged into the front hall. Sirraway was making a quick-march out of the building. ‘Mr… er… Professor…!’

‘Can I help?’ The man who’d been so beastly about the Christmas tree in the public library seemed perfectly charming, if more than a little odd.

‘Betty Featherstone, Riviera Express. I was there at the Conservative Hall the other night. I didn’t see you, though.’

‘You arrived at approximately 5.39 p.m.,’ said the Prof. ‘With a photographer.’

‘Yes, yes I did. But I didn’t…’

‘I thought I recognised you while I was in the dock,’ he went on. ‘But I wasn’t sure. You’ve changed your hair.’

‘Oh,’ blushed Betty, ‘d’you like it?’

The professor did not say. Instead he explained that he started his protest almost as soon as Betty entered the building, then went on until about 6 p.m., by which time his throat was hoarse, his wrists were bound, and a police constable was chasing his helmet down the gutter.

‘It gave me time enough to let the party faithful know the worst.’

‘And what is it they need to know?’ She had her notebook out and nodded with her head to a nearby bench.

‘I came to give Sir Frederick Hungerford a bloody nose for Christmas,’ said Sirraway in lordly fashion. ‘Perhaps you’d like to help me do that.’

‘Oh!’ said Betty. She could smell a big exclusive, even though she didn’t know the details yet, and how she loved to see her name in big print on Page One!

‘Won’t you come and have a cup of tea in Lovely Mary’s?’ she smiled, touching her newly permed hair and secretly blessing M’sieur Alphonse for his finesse.

‘Will ya no’ look at this rubbish,’ spat John Ross. He’d adopted his customary posture in the chief sub-editor’s chair, lolling sideways and flipping bits of copy paper over his shoulder as he read and rejected them. His foot pushed the bottom drawer of his desk back and forth, and from within you could hear the rattle of a half-empty bottle of Black and White whisky.

A couple of junior reporters looked up, then hastily down again. They may only have been here since leaving school in the summer, but already they’d learned the perils of being sucked into Ross’s vortex of cynicism and derision.

‘Betty Featherstone at her vairy worrrst! Listen to this:

FOND FAREWELL TO TEMPLE’S

TREMENDOUS SIR FREDDY.

‘Friends, admirers and well-wishers gathered at the Temple Regis Conservative Club at the weekend to give a rousing send-off to Sir Frederick Hungerford, who steps down as the town’s MP next spring.

‘Sir Freddy, as he is known, has for forty years served the constituency with distinction and dedication. His place as Conservative candidate at the general election will be taken by Mrs Mirabel Clifford, a prominent Temple Regis solicitor whose Market Square practice was established in 1950.

‘A much-loved figure in the…

‘I canna go orn,’ wailed the chief sub-editor. ‘Did the man write it himself? I canna imagine anyone else getting it so wrong!’

He got up and stalked over to the juniors’ desk. ‘I’ll expect better of ye when it’s yeur turn to write about politics. This man – he’s turned himself into a saint.’

There followed a lengthy monologue along the lines of how this businessman’s son had reinvented himself as a member of the aristocracy, and even now was awaiting the call to the House of Lords as reward for the years of his devoted service in the bars of Westminster and Whitehall.

Hungerford, ranted Ross, never visited the constituency, discouraged visitors to the House of Commons, served on no parliamentary committees, and spent a lot of time toadying round the fringes of royalty. His service to self-promotion was exemplary, however.

‘Betty!’ he yelled, but to no avail – she was having her hair done. Again. She’d taken the wiser course of action and written a chunk of syrupy prose rather than the mutinous squib she’d threatened Sir Freddy with on Friday night. The editor liked Betty and gave her extra big bylines on Page One – why rock that particular boat?

With a grunt Ross picked up the pieces of copy paper he’d scattered to the four winds and shoved them viciously on the spike. ‘Picture caption only,’ he ordered one of his underlings. If Freddy Hungerford lived by the oxygen of publicity, he could suffocate as far as John Ross was concerned.

‘Next!’

It was Tuesday morning, and though the Riviera Express described itself as a ‘news’ paper, most of what would appear on its pages this coming weekend was already sewn up – Renishaw’s entry-fee piece for Page One and a small picture of Betty having her hair done with a turn to Page Two. Page Three top, Judy’s hospital crisis. Then, through the rest of the newspaper, the customary smorgasboard of inconsequence and run-of-the-mill which each week was lapped up by the readership.

There was a piece on a new operating table at the local vet’s, an item about lost anchors in Bedlington Harbour, and a picture story on an irritating child prodigy who would go far (and the sooner the better). The centrepiece, as always, was Athene Madrigale’s glorious page of predictions for the coming week:

Sagittarius – Oh, how lucky you were to be born under this sign. Nothing but sunshine for you all week!

Cancer – Someone has prepared a big surprise for you. Be patient, it may take a while to appear, but what pleasure it will bring!

Capricorn – All your troubles are behind you now. Start thinking about your holidays!

If there was a ring of familiarity to these soothing phrases – indeed, if any reader had a sharp enough memory – Athene might easily be accused of self-plagiarism. But no right-minded Temple Regent would do that, for she was a much-loved figure in the town with her long flowing robes a kaleidoscope of colours, her iron-grey hair tied back with a blue paper flower and, often as not, odd shoes on her feet. When Athene spoke – whether in print or on the rare occasions she granted an audience – the world slowed its frantic spin and everything in it seemed all right again.

Only slowly had Rudyard Rhys come to realise what an asset this ethereal figure was to his publication, but when he tried to make Athene his agony aunt – offering tea and sympathy, solving problems, restarting people’s lives – she was driven to despair. For Athene discovered, when given her first batch of readers’ letters, that there is no solution to some problems – indeed, to most problems. And being Athene, she could not bear to face that eternal truth.

So instead she now doubled as Aunty Jill, writing the Kiddies’ Korner which featured the birthday photographs of some of the ugliest children in the West Country. This, too, was a great success – they loved her and, having no children of her own, she loved them.

A centre-spread of photographs sent in by readers, a welter of wedding reports, a raft of local district news, and pages and pages of football reports, made up the rest of the wholesome mix which constituted the Riviera Express. That was enough for its readership – leave the scandal to the Sunday papers!

Temple Flower Club – Our demonstrator for the evening was Mrs Lydia Sabey, a florist from Dartmouth, and her exhibit was titled Going Dutch. She started off with a copper urn and created an arrangement depicting the Dutch artists using coral and red dahlias, cosmos, red trailing amaranthus, berries and grapes…

Riviera Writers’ Group – Mrs Bellairs read her first piece since joining the group and held us spellbound with her account of a Christmas party with a twist – she took us on a visit to a stately home with dark-panelled walls, hidden chambers and relics belonging to a persecuted Catholic priest. She then proceeded to find herself trapped between time dimensions…

Bedlington Social Club – Mrs Bantham led the meeting and introduced our speaker, Mrs Havering from Torquay. Her first recital was the Devon Alphabet, never heard by any of us before!

Occasionally there was room in the Express for something meatier, and certainly the goings-on down at the Magistrates Court could provide enough spice to fill the paper several times over. But as an editor Rhys lived cautiously, caught between angry city fathers desperate that nothing should besmirch the town’s reputation, and underlings desperate to tap out the truth on their Olivettis and Remingtons. It was the city fathers who invariably prevailed.

In the far corner of the newsroom by the window overlooking the brewery, a tremendous thundering could be heard. It was the newcomer David Renishaw, evidently putting the finishing touches to what was destined to be the bombshell Page One splash – that Temple Regis would soon be charging holidaymakers for the privilege of walking its gilded streets.

The rate at which you could hear the ‘ting’ from the carriage return showed just how rapidly Renishaw worked, with barely a pause to consult his shorthand notes. Such industry in a weekly newspaper was unusual and, to be frank, unnerving: if you were lucky enough to get the splash, you could save up writing it till Thursday morning – this was only Tuesday!