Free Landed Gently by Alan Hunter Page B

The dead men were lying with us. There’s some who lies there yet.’
    ‘Hmn. Nasty experience, what?’
    ‘It’s one I won’t forget.’
    ‘Sort of thing to give you dreams, and that?’
    ‘Sometimes I dream I’m down there still, and wake up tearing the clothes off my limbs.’
    Sir Daynes rubbed his hands with a sort of grisly satisfaction, and leaned back comfortably in his chair.
    ‘Suppose you never get blackouts – that sort of thing?’
    The ex-miner shook his head.
    ‘Ah well … get on with your statement, man. Tell the inspector what you know about the “deceased”.’
    Johnson’s statement followed the now-familiar pattern in its early stages. He had been working at his loom when Earle had been brought into the workshop for the first time. Johnson, who was an artist as well as a weaver, was at work on a tapestry from his own cartoon picturing the Glaslyn and Yr Wyddfa, and Earle, with his customary tactlessness, had taken it upon himself to assure Johnson that the colour-values were incorrect. Johnson had thereupon catechized Earle on his knowledge of colour-values, more especially as applied to tapestry and the uncertain art of dyeing. Earle had been obliged to admit his profound ignorance, at least touching the two latter.
    ‘Took him down a peg, did you?’ enquired the subtle Sir Daynes.
    ‘Oh yes, a good peg or two. He knew nothing whateffer of dyeing and sunlight tests.’
    ‘Sent him off with a flea in his ear, eh?’
    ‘Well, no, not exactly, he wasn’t a man you could handle like that. But I read him a good sermon, that I’ll warrant you. By the time I had done he knew a good deal more about tapestry than when I had started.’
    Nevertheless, Earle had got off on the wrong foot with Johnson. It was easy to see that the Welshman found it difficult to forgive the reckless strictures on his expert art. When he found himself being neglected by Brass, till then his constant admirer and teacher, the grudge, already in being, was fanned into active dislike.
    ‘I don’t mind admitting I could neffer get on with the man. Americans within reason, I say, but this one was a plain nuisance about the place. He was always upsetting the womenfolk, man; there wasn’t half of the work done when he was around. And he had no respect for his betters at all. You would think he was a Royal Tudor at least, the way he carried on.’
    ‘Not so big, either, but you could have put him down, eh?’
    ‘Do you doubt it, man, when I have been in the ring with Tommy Farr himself, down there in Tonypandy?’
    ‘Boxing man, are you, Johnson?’
    ‘Good gracious yes – I have my cups to prove it. Five years I was the Area Middleweight Champion, and not far past it now. I have fought the best, I tell you. There are many good men with the mark of Hugh Johnson’s glove on their jaw.’
    ‘Wonder you didn’t clip this Yank one.’
    ‘I have wondered myself too, before today. But you could never get him fighting, man, that was the whole trouble. You could say what you liked to him, it would never get him mad. Some men are made that way. They haven’t got the wickedness to play on. I tell you, it would have been like meat and drink to me sometimes to see that young man with my blood in his eye!’
    Sir Daynes angled a bit further, but there were no fish to be caught, so he handed the questioning back to Dyson.
    Johnson, at all events, hadn’t received the news of Earle’s Christmas visit with enthusiasm. Had he known in time, he would have arranged to spend his Christmas in his home town, along with a married sister. But the uncertainty had prevented that. Christmas leave had been cancelled at Sculton, and was only restored at the last moment. Sullenly, the Welshman had brooded over the prospect of what he considered to be a spoiled Christmas.
    ‘You will say I was no true Christian to take against the man that way, and after what has happened, now, I may be sorry that I did. But God help us, man, there are some