Make Room for the Jester by Stead Jones Read Free Book Online Page B

sense. Once that was done they all realised that, as Romeo explained, he couldn’t marry Juliet because she was under age, and even a bit young for her age too. The ending came with Romeo and the nurse eloping to the South of France, which seemed to me more satisfactory than the version we had just pawed through for the Senior.
    Maxie said, ‘What about having the Fall of the House of Cadwallon ?’ This was a comic one. If you made everything happen to people, like Edgar Allen Poe did, Gladstone used to say, then it was bound to be comic.
    Gladstone shook his head firmly.
    ‘Can we have Silas Morfa by George Eliot?’ Dora pleaded, but again Gladstone was firm.
    ‘No more tonight,’ he said, and sent Dewi up with the mattress.
    ‘Not even Llywelyn Macbeth Williams ?’
    No. Not even that. The children had a small mutiny straight away, and we had to have a couple of dragging, missionary hymns to get them into the right mood for sleep.
    Finally they were marched off, and after a whileGladstone came downstairs, a smile on his face. ‘If I had a Woodbine,’ he said, ‘I’d give it to anybody.’ Dewi gave him a Woodbine. ‘What a struggle,’ he went on. ‘Listen to them laughing up there.’ He stood with his back to the blackleaded fireplace, the cigarette dangling from his lips. ‘Nice though. In about half an hour sleep will have collared them all, and they’ll be lying there like new puppies close together…’
    ‘Tell us, for heaven’s sake,’ I said.
    ‘Tell us what, then?’ Dewi asked.
    ‘He went to see the man on the boat,’ I said.
    ‘Oh, yes – Ashton Vaughan,’ Gladstone said lightly. ‘I paid him a call this evening.’
    ‘What did he say?’ I asked. ‘Tell us…’
    Gladstone sat down. ‘I had a word with Martha after tea,’ he said, brushing his hair clear of his forehead. I asked her about Ashton Vaughan. She told me a lot…’
    ‘They fought with daggers,’ I said, getting it in quickly. ‘Him and his brother.’
    Dewi whistled, high pitched. ‘Daggers? Never…’
    ‘It’s true,’ Gladstone said. ‘They had this fight, then Ashton vanished into thin air. Never been back till today.’
    ‘Where’d he go?’ Maxie asked.
    ‘Oh – everywhere. Australia. America. All over. He can speak six languages – fluently…’
    ‘Did he say so?’
    Gladstone nodded. We all considered this.
    ‘Including Welsh?’ Maxie asked.
    ‘He’s been a sailor and a rancher…’
    I envied Gladstone now, having heard this before any of us.
    ‘A gold prospector, too…’
    ‘Did he find the lost mine?’ Maxie asked.
    We ignored the question.
    ‘Went away in 1920, and this is his first time back.’
    ‘Fought his own brother?’ Dewi said. ‘With daggers – seriously?’
    ‘By the harbour,’ I said.
    ‘And he’s going to live on the old Moonbeam , too?’
    Gladstone’s face softened. ‘“Only the old Moonbeam for me”, he said. Never said a word about his brother in that big house…’
    ‘Marius Vaughan’s a big bastard,’ Dewi put in. ‘Our Tada worked for him once. Hard, our Tada said. Hard like iron.’
    ‘Won’t take his own brother back?’ I asked.
    ‘Ashton hasn’t asked him,’ Gladstone said. ‘He told me he wasn’t going to lick any man’s boots. Said he wasn’t a pauper.’ He thought about that for a moment, then he added, ‘Ashton Vaughan’s a sick man, though. You can tell by his eyes…’
    ‘Has he got malaria, then?’ Maxie asked.
    We ignored that as well.
    ‘Years and years wandering away from his native land. “Funny what a grip the old place has on you,” he said to me. He had to come back, you see.’ The electric went out as Gladstone said this. There was no more money in the house for the meter so we stirred up the fire and made do with that. ‘He was sitting alone in the cabin there – looking at the stove. I put a fire in for him. He didn’t seem to have anything, except bottles…’
    ‘Glad to see you, then?’
    ‘Oh – very