‘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