TP Fielden

A Quarter Past Dead


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her clothes, Miss Dimont put the story back in her Quiet-Riter and xxxx’d out this rather delicious detail. She also refrained from mentioning that Bobby Bunton had deliberately placed his new helter-skelter ride right next to the boundary of the Marine Hotel, so that shrieks and cries from his punters would shatter the calm and sobriety of the guests on the posher side of the fence.

      ‘All done,’ she said, handing over the copy-paper to Peter Pomeroy with a smile, and in that moment her face lit up until she looked quite beautiful. Peter often remarked to his wife how Judy could seem so plain one minute and so dazzling the next, and Mrs P agreed. They sometimes wondered why someone so worldly and so accomplished had come to Temple Regis to be a reporter on the local rag.

      It remained an unanswered mystery.

      Over in the darkroom Terry Eagleton was busy sloshing developer fluid into a tray, happy to be back in Temple Regis after a boring stint in the Plymouth head office. Sooner or later the images painstakingly captured from the top of a schooner’s mast would appear, as if through the fog, and he would hang them up to dry. He was tough, efficient, handsome, and occupied that parallel universe where photographers exist – linked to humanity, but not quite part of it.

      ‘I suppose it’s all that time you spend peering down a lens,’ Judy Dimont once observed as they sat in the Minor in the drumming rain, waiting for the Regis lifeboat to come in. ‘Separates you from the real world.’

      ‘If you want the real world,’ grunted Terry, who did not squander precious time pondering the human condition, ‘just look at my pictures. Pictures of real people doing real things.’

      ‘Very fine they are too, Terry,’ said Judy, and let the matter drop. Oil and water, water and oil – they’d worked together as a successful team for five years, yet neither could see inside the other’s head. She admired his courage and tenacity and undeniable skill with a camera, but couldn’t understand why he never read a book. Terry felt protective about Judy but when the editor called her ‘Miss Dim’ he could see what the old boy was getting at. She had a brilliant mind but was not altogether trustworthy in polite company.

      After all, hadn’t there been that extraordinary incident at the Regis Conservative Party ball? Apologies were offered all round afterwards, and everybody pretended they’d forgotten it ever happened, but you’d never catch a photographer behaving like that!

      Just then the maverick in question popped her head round the darkroom door. ‘All done for the week,’ she said.

      ‘My Buckingham Palace pic?’ said Terry, washing the developer off his hands under the cold tap.

      ‘Seven.’

      ‘Ridiculous. Should be on One – the readers’ll expect a good show on that. First Mayor of Temple Regis to get a gong!’

      ‘Don’t worry. Sam Brough will be wearing that medal everywhere, even on his pyjamas, I shouldn’t wonder. Word will soon get about he’s met the Queen, no need for the photographic evidence.’

      Terry turned and looked disparagingly at Miss Dimont. She just didn’t get it – didn’t even try. The lighting in the Palace courtyard that day had been very tricky – up and down like a yo-yo – the trouble he’d had with his aperture!

      ‘Coming to the Fort?’

      There was only one place in Temple Regis on an early Thursday evening if you had any connection with local newspapers and that was the Fortescue Arms, just round the corner from the Express offices and handily placed if you needed to be called back. As with all newspapers, things had a habit of going wrong at the last moment and there was an unwritten rule you did not stray far, even though your working day was over.

      ‘Don’t know,’ said Terry. He was cross about the MBE and wanted to blame Judy.

      ‘They’ve got cribbage tonight.’

      ‘Ur.’

      The pair made their way down the stairs and out through the grand-looking front hall. Upstairs the newsroom looked its usual mess – paper strewn over the floor, glue pots everywhere, overflowing ashtrays and discarded cups of tea, the cleaners as usual having failed to take away the overnight mousetraps. But down here it looked as if they were expecting a visit from the Queen Mother herself – all polished wood, copies of Express front pages lining the walls in oak frames, and an impressive oil portrait of the newspaper’s founder above the fireplace.

      Keeping guard over this shrine to the fourth estate was Joyce, the new girl who looked nice but irritatingly could never remember a single person’s name.

      ‘G’night, Terry!’

      Well, thought Miss Dimont crossly, could never remember a person’s name – except Terry’s. The darling boy lingered, delighted to exchange a bit of banter, but Judy strode on.

      Though it was still early the saloon bar of the Fort was crowded, mostly with muscular types in need of a shave and a new wardrobe. They smelt clean, though, and the racket they made was joyful: clinking and shouting and gurgling and laughing.

      These ruffians were the reminder that Temple Regis was not just a holiday resort, but a fishing port too. And tonight the sailors, fishermen and ferrymen, Customs men and life-boatmen, were here in force, bringing an energy to the place which no crowd of summertime holidaymakers could ever match.

      Across the bar Miss Dimont spotted the Viking-like skipper of the Lass O’Doune, Cran Conybeer, and waved. His beard tilted upward in salute and as he raised his glass to her he looked even more magnificent in his shaggy, unkempt way. There had been a moment when… but somehow nothing had come of it and the two were no more now than smiling acquaintances.

      As she plonked down her raffia bag on a wet table Terry meandered through the door and instantly started droning on about some new high-speed film he was going to try out – really, his idea of conversation! Severely in need of an overhaul! Miss Dimont left him boring a couple of subeditors about Tri-X and push-processing while she made her way to the bar to order him a brown ale.

      ‘What you doin’ ’ere?’ said a familiar figure from the crew of the Lass. It was Old Jacky, a man for whom a day was wasted if he were not at sea. He must have been all of seventy-five.

      ‘Every Thursday,’ shouted Miss Dimont, gesticulating at the barman. ‘Press night. What are you lot doing here? Not your usual haunt.’

      ‘The William and Mary,’ replied Old Jacky, though he pronounced it ‘Willummaree’.

      ‘Oh yes,’ said Miss Dimont.

      ‘Fifty yars agoo nex Sa’day.’

      It remained Temple Regis’ greatest tragedy, the loss of the lifeboat and a dozen souls who’d braved gale-force winds to save the crew of a merchant ship, grounded on the rocks beyond the point and breaking up in mountainous seas. What made the event such a bitter memory, even today, was that by the time the lifeboat reached its goal, the merchantmen had already been lifted off and were safe. They lived, while their saviours died.

      ‘We’ll be putting a big piece in the paper next week,’ promised Miss Dimont earnestly, though she had no idea whether Mr Rhys was even aware of the anniversary. But it was the sort of thing you always said to the public when it looked like you’d missed the most obvious story in town. She backed away quickly in case Old Jacky wanted more details, the brown ale and her ginger beer slopping gently over her shoes as she went.

      When she got back to the far corner there were a handful of familiar faces but no Terry.

      ‘Where’d he go?’ she shouted to one of the sub-editors above the din.

      ‘Shot out back to the office. Someone came and told him to get up there in a hurry.’

      ‘Why?’ yelled Judy. ‘Too late to change any of the pictures now, the presses are rolling.’

      ‘No, it’s a story, I think. Someone found dead over at Buntorama – you know, the place where…’

      ‘I