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?
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