‘I thought you’d retired Barnacle Bill,’ said Bryant, sitting down alongside him. ‘That were just me messing about,’ Dudley explained, finishing his fag to the last strand of tobacco. ‘I told the children he’d died of woodworm just to get rid of them. I thought they’d never stop crying. He had a lingering death in Blackpool, I’ll bloody tell you that. We did the panto season there. It were bloody awful. Our Widow Twankey went to prison for molestation. How he got a job asking children to pull his bloomers down I’ll never know.’
