The Children Of Dynmouth Read Online Free PDF Page B

solemn words were said and mourners paid respects. He continued to follow people about and to look through windows and to attend funerals, but he had also determined to enter the Spot the Talent competition at the Easter Fête with a comic act and he now spent a considerable amount of his spare time trying to work out what it should be. He instinctively felt that somehow it should incorporate the notion of death, that whatever charrada he devised should be of a macabre nature.
    In bed at night he thought about this, and continued to do so during geography lessons and tedious mathematics lessons, staring ahead of him in a manner that was complained of as vacant. He would smile when he was insulted in this way and for a moment would pay attention to a droning voice retailing information about the distribution of herring-beds around the shores of the British Isles or incomprehensibly speaking French. He would then revert to his more personal riddle of how to reconcile death and comedy in a theatrical act. He wondered about presenting himself as a female mourner, in a black dress down to his feet and a veiled black hat, with cheekily relevant chatter. But somehow that didn’t seem complete, or even right. Then, a month ago, Mr Stringer had taken forty pupils to London and had included in the itinerary a visit to Madame Tussaud’s. At half past eleven that morning Timothy Gedge had found the solution he was looking for: he decided to base his comic act on the deaths of Miss Munday, Mrs Burnham and Miss Lofty, the Brides in the Bath, the victims of George Joseph Smith. All the way back to Dynmouth on the coach he’d imagined the act. To applause and laughter in the marquee at the Easter Fête, he rose from an old tin bath while the limelight settled on the wedding-dress he wore and his chatter began. He’d never in his life seen Benny Hill, or anyone else, attempting an act in a long white wedding-dress, impersonating three deceased women. It made him chortle so much in the coach that Mr Stringer asked him if he was going to be sick.
    The rain had increased by the time he reached Cornerways. It dripped from his face and hair. He could feel areas of damp on his back and his stomach. His legs and arms were drenched. In the flat he removed some of the wet clothes in order to practise his act. He didn’t turn the television on because he liked the flat to be quiet when he was practising.
    In his sister’s bedroom he eased himself into a pair of black tights. A torn toenail caught in the fine mesh of the material, creating an immediate hole. The same thing had happened once before and then he’d felt something else going as soon as he sat down. Rose-Ann had gone on about the damage for quite some time and had eventually taken the tights back to the shop, where she’d been received with hostility.
    He regarded himself in the long Woolworth’s mirror that Rose-Ann’s boyfriend Len had fixed up for her on the inside of her cupboard door. He still wore his own yellow T-shirt; the tights were taut on his calves and thighs. The hole his toenail had caused was round the back somewhere, which was a relief because Rose-Ann mightn’t even notice it. He picked up a flowered brassiere and held it for a moment against his chest, examining the effect in the mirror. He had perfected his own method with his sister’s brassieres, employing two rubber bands to bridge the gap at the back.
    He took off his shirt, selected a pair of Rose-Ann’s ankle socks, knotted the rubber bands and attached them securely to the brassiere’s hooks. He then slipped the garment over his head, wriggled his way into it, and stuffed an ankle sock into each cup. He put on a dress that was too big for Rose-Ann, which had been given to her by a friend. It wasn’t too big for him. It was wine-coloured, with small black buttons.
    He left his sister’s bedroom and crossed the small landing to his room. He stood on a chair and lifted from the top of a cupboard a small