by John Masters
Bill Hoggin came back with a pint of foaming mild-and-bitter in each hand, and sat down beside his wife Ruth. Ignoring his father-in-law’s frown he said, ‘Drink up, Ruthie. It’s good for the little ‘un.’ He drank, wiped his lips, and turned to Bob Stratton. ‘You never told us what you’re going to do when you retire, Dad. When is it?’
‘September the first,’ Frank answered for him.
Hoggin continued, ‘Going to take Mum round the world, Dad, like old Rowland?’
Bob shook his square head and brushed a few drops of fallen tea from his beard. His Kentish accent, when he spoke, was stronger than his wife’s or any of his children’s: there had been little education when he was growing up in the small market and county town of Hedlington. He said, ‘No, I’m not. I’m going to stay at home and work on Victoria. I’m going to go a hundred miles an hour on her, before I’m finished.’
‘A hundred miles an hour!’ Ruth gasped. ‘Why, Dad, that’s impossible!’
‘It’s not impossible, woman. It’s only a matter of hard work, and using your head, and your hands.’
‘Go on, Bob, you’re sixty-five; you can’t go that fast,’ his wife said. She drank more tea, and repeated, ‘You’re sixty-five.’
Bob said, ‘Aye, and I’ll likely be sixty-eight before I break the record.’ He turned to his eldest son. ‘And the way you said “September the first” just then, about my retiring, I suppose you’ve got a calendar all marked out, counting down the days till I go, eh?’
Frank nodded amiably, ‘That’s right, Dad.’
‘You won’t find it easy being Works foreman of Rowland’s, I can tell you.’
‘I reckon I can do it. I’ve had enough training to get ready, like.’
The old man softened his tone a little. ‘It won’t be so bad. Mr Richard’ll have to find a better steel for the valves, and another supplier for steering wheels – these hand-made things need too much labour … and we might look at aluminium for the windscreen frames. It’s difficult to solder or weld, though … but the worse will be the men. The Union of Skilled Engineers is weak in the motor trade, but they’ve sent some men into Hedlington, to try to organize the factories here. There’s only us and four, five others, so that Union men don’t have to spread themselves too thin. Keep an eye on Bert Gorse. He’s the sort that would listen to them.’
Willum Gorse, leaning over the table nearby to set down another pot of tea, said, ‘Bert don’t like the wages, Mr Stratton, nor the hours, nor the rules. Bert don’t like anything. Bert ain’t in the union, but if he had his way we’d all be on strike all the time.’ He laughed cheerfully.
Anne said, ‘How can Bert be so different from you, Willum? You’re half-brothers, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, Mrs Stratton … but my mother was kind. She never hit anyone. She hugged me. Dad would ’a kept her, only she died. Dad’s next woman, Bert’s mother, was bad. I didn’t like her. She beat me and shut me in the cupboard. When Dad found out, he hit her on the nose and threw her in the Scarrow. She ran away after that.’
‘Proper unreasonable woman,’ Fred murmured.
Jane turned to her husband. ‘That reminds me … Niccolo’s beating our Ethel, Dad. And he says he’ll divorce her if she doesn’t have a baby, a boy, soon. The very idea! You men must speak to him.’
‘Oh, Mother,’ Ethel Fagioletti said, sinking her head into her hands, her elbows on the bare table.
‘I’ll have a word with him, that I will,’ Bob said heavily.
‘But how, Dad?’ Jane said. ‘When? He works in London. He doesn’t come down here. He daren’t. You can’t go up unless you don’t go to chapel one Sunday.’
‘I’ll go,’ Fred said shortly. ‘I’ll tell him.’
‘He gambles, too,’ Jane said, ‘and loses money so Ethel doesn’t have enough to keep body and soul together. Look at her dress!’
‘We can’t pay the rent,’ Ethel said, raising her head. She was crying, Fred saw, and thought she had been crying a long time, perhaps all day; perhaps she cried all year round, now. He remembered her laughing in the water, a seven-year-old girl, her dress splashed with mud where they were playing together in the edge of the Scarrow in North Hedlington, near where the barges unloaded. He was fourteen but she’d been fun then, in spite of being a kid, and a girl.
‘You can’t take a day off from the farm, can you, Fred?’ his mother asked anxiously.
‘ ’Course I can! Rowland doesn’t own me body and soul, Mum. I’ll tell him I have to go. I’ll give him two or three days warning and he can damn well…’
‘Don’t swear, Fred.’
‘… do the jobs himself that day.’
‘Shhh! There’s Mr Harry and Mrs Rose, and Miss Alice.’
‘Ask them to come and sit here, Frank. Hurry now!’ Jane said, ‘and Fred, you go and get some tea for them. Make room there, Ethel, and wipe your eyes. You don’t want Mr Harry to see you like that. Move along on the bench, Ruth. Mary, clean those children’s faces. Agnes, take that bun out of your mouth …’
They all stood up as Harry Rowland approached with his wife and daughter, the last leading three dachshunds on a single leash. They wound through the noisy crowded tent, the dogs straining and dodging among people’s legs, everyone tinged a strange shade of brown from the sun’s rays filtering through the dun canvas.
Jane gave a small, almost invisible bob as she greeted Rose Rowland, and then the two elderly women embraced, briefly enfolding each other in their pleated and starched white-clad arms. Harry put out his hand. ‘Kind of you to ask us to share your place, Bob.’
Bob shook his employer’s hand. ‘Sit down, Mr Harry, sit down.’ The two men smiled at each other, hands clasped. Both had short square-cut beards, Rowland’s pure white, Stratton’s grey flecked; their height was nearly the same, about five feet eight; and their manner was somehow the same; but there the resemblance between the parson’s son from Devonshire and the plumber’s son from here in Hedlington ended. Harry Rowland was strongly built and ruddy of complexion, with a shock of curly white hair and a beak nose; Bob Stratton was thin and hunched, snub-nosed, grey skinned, and wore glasses. They had known each other, and relied on each other, since the year Harry came to Hedlington and founded his bicycle factory – 1876, thirty-eight years ago.
Then Harry was shaking hands all round, and Rose was sitting down next to Jane Stratton: and Alice Rowland by Anne, the dachshunds bouncing under the table with Anne’s little girls, and everyone was saying, ‘You’re looking well,’ and ‘Here’s your tea, m’m,’ and ‘I hope your husband’s well, Ethel,’ as though they had not set eyes on each other for a year; whereas many of the men saw each other every day, and the women frequently enough. But this was Hedlington Sheep Fair and it was only on this day and one or two others that the families sat down together, and then only briefly, for Mr Harry did not spend much time at the Fair now. His sons hardly ever came at all, but Mr Harry was about the most important manufacturer in Hedlington, and a leading supporter of Hedlington Rovers, the town football team, and of the town band, and a score of other worthy organizations, and he felt it his duty to attend – to see, and be seen.
‘How did the gymkhana go today, Bob?’ he asked.
‘Oh pretty good, pretty good. The best on it was that one of ours won.’
‘What? One of the new ones? A Sapphire?’
‘No, Mr Harry, and this’ll surprise you. It was the Ruby, built in 1910 – I looked at the serial number. She’s easier to start and stop on a hill. Johnson did all right with the works Sapphire, but – ’ he shrugged ’ – wouldn’t start a couple of times. Valve trouble. Mr Richard’s going to have to design a better one, and that’s a fact.’
‘Bob!’ Rose Rowland said, shaking a finger at him across the table. ‘Shop, shop! This is a holiday. Do you and Harry never come out of the factory?’
‘Sorry, m’m,’ Bob said, grinning. ‘Mr Harry knows there’s nothing else inside my head, except motor cars – and Victoria – eh, Mr
Harry?’
Then for a time everyone was asking about babies and children and whooping cough, and a listener suspended invisible above the long table where they sat would have thought again that these people had not seen each other for a long time.
Harry Rowland broke the chatter by saying, ‘Now we’re all talking like a Women’s Club outing, and that’s just as bad as men’s shop. Have we nothing else to think about, at the Sheep Fair?’
‘Frank Woolley will be playing at the County Ground, August Bank Holiday, Mr Harry,’ Willum Gorse crowed, ‘an’ I’ll be there, watching him make a century!’ He swished an imaginary cricket bat through the air, beaming.
Harry Rowland said, ‘Only the Almighty could guarantee that, Willum … but Woolley is a god, to you, isn’t he?’
Willum beamed wider, but said nothing.
Frank leaned towards Harry Rowland. ‘What’s going to happen about the murder of that Duke at that place, blowed if I can pronounce it?’
‘Nor can I,’ Harry said. ‘It’s a storm in a teapot, Frank. Oh, Austria might invade Serbia, I suppose. They might have a little war down there, even – nothing to do with us.’
‘I hope not,’ Jane said fervently. ‘Those nasty foreigners can’t behave themselves for five minutes.’
‘Thank heaven for the English Channel,’ Harry said. ‘Why, if they had a war and we were in it, I could hardly take Mrs Rowland round the world, could I?’ Everyone laughed.
Frank said, ‘How’s the major, m’m?’
‘He said he was quite well, in his last letter. Though I wish he’d get out of Ireland, for his sake as well as mine. There should not be any British soldiers in Ireland.’
There was an awkward silence. Everyone knew of Rose Rowland’s views on Ireland, but that did not make them any easier to accept, in such a place and among such people as these.
Ruth Hoggin said in a small voice, ‘I see Eton College didn’t do well at Henley, Mr Harry.’
Harry said, “Fraid so, Ruth … but I didn’t know you followed rowing.’
Ruth said in a still smaller voice, ‘It’s Eton College, Mr Harry. I always remember there was a picture of Master Richard, as he was, in the papers, rowing for the College. I cut it out and kept it till I lost it. I was only a little girl, then.’
Harry laughed, ‘Well, well! Alice, those dogs of yours are jumping all over everybody …’
‘Down, Bismarck! Down, Freda!’ Alice Rowland snapped. ‘These animals have no patience … or too much energy. They’ve been trying to pull us in here for the past hour – they smelled the food – and now they’re trying to pull us out.’
Harry said, ‘I suppose we’d better be going, Rose. I’ll take the dogs, Alice … Goodbye, Jane. See you on Monday, Bob … goodbye, goodbye …’ They went out of the tent, the dachshunds straining at the leash.
‘Miss Alice is looking very nice,’ Jane announced as soon as the Rowlands had left the tent. ‘It’s a crying shame that some nice gentleman hasn’t asked her to marry him long since.’
‘She’s no chicken,’ Fred said. ‘Must be thirty-five if she’s a day.’
‘Thirty-four, and a real lady,’ his mother said firmly, ‘and it’s a shame.’
‘Perhaps someone has asked her,’ Ethel Fagioletti said timidly, ‘and she said “no”.’
A man at the next table got up and came towards them. He was short and slight with a big head, ginger hair, high cheekbones, green eyes and a wide, down-turned angry mouth. It was Willum’s younger half-brother, Albert Gorse.
Willum saw him and said, ‘Hello, Bert. I didn’t know you was in here, or you could ’ave came and sat with the rest of us, couldn’t he, Mr Bob?’
Bert ignored him and spoke to Frank. ‘Frank, I heard you ask old Rowland about the mess in Europe, but couldn’t hear what he answered, the woman next to me over there was making such a bloody row. What did he say?’
Frank said coldly, ‘I’m Mr Stratton to you, Bert Gorse, and don’t you forget it … Mr Harry said that it was nothing, least, not to England. He said it doesn’t concern us.’
Bert Gorse’s lips readily formed into a sneer; but Fred thought that he didn’t always mean it as that, it was just the way his lips were made. Now they went deliberately to that sneer, as he said, ‘If the bosses and the capitalists think there’s money in a war, we’ll be in it. Money’s the only thing that concerns them, always, anywhere.’
‘Hey, are you talking about Mr Harry?’ Willum burst out. ‘That’s … silly, Bert!’
Frank said, ‘You’re talking – ’ he checked an expletive, and ended ‘ – nonsense!’
‘It’s no nonsense, you’ll see,’ Gorse said, the sneer deepening. ‘There’s money in war for the bosses. For the working man, death.’ He walked cockily back to the other table. Willum shook his head slowly from side to side, like a puzzled weary ox; then caught Fred’s eye and smiled generously and waved a hand. He never had understood Bert, or what he wanted, but he liked Fred.
Fred stood up, saying, ‘I’m going to take a breath of fresh air.’
The ground shook to a heavy thud, soundless, carried through the earth. Almost simultaneously there was a loud explosion – then silence. After a few seconds’ hush, the silence was drowned by a roaring hiss, by screams and cries and the crunch of rending wood. Frank and Bill Hoggin were on their feet, Fred running for the exit of the marquee, three long strides ahead of them. Men followed from other tables. The women slowly huddled together. Ruth started after her husband, brushing off her mother’s restraining arm.
‘Wha’ … wha’ … what was that?’ Ethel’s voice was tremulous.
‘I don’t know,’ her mother whispered. “Twas like nothing I ever heard on this God’s earth.’
Fred was among the first half-dozen men out of the crowded marquee and almost as soon as he reached the open air, he stopped dead. Fifty yards away the great merry-go-round was half hidden in a cloud of steam. Shards of metal lay scattered on the grass among seated or prostrate figures, some moaning, some silent. The machine’s wooden canopy was shattered, the painted horses and gryphons and giraffes broken and twisted. Half hidden in the steam and drifting smoke, the sun now low in the west, children and a few adults crawled out of the wreckage, some dragging a blood-soaked leg or arm, some holding their stomachs and retching, some scalded an angry scarlet by the steam.
Fred found his sister at his side and pushed her roughly back. ‘Go back, Ruth, this is no sight for women. Stay inside, all of you.’
He didn’t wait to see if she would obey him, but ran forward, nausea rising to his throat. He realized that Willum Gorse’s wife, Mary, was running at his side and he shouted roughly, ‘Go back!’
She said, ‘I’m not afraid, Mr Stratton. I can help.’
Then they were among the ruins of the merry-go-round. Fred saw a hand sticking out from under the heavy wood and steel platform that had once carried sedately bobbing riders round and round. He seized the edge of the platform in both hands and grunting like a madman tried to lift it free of the hand and the child – it was a little girl’s hand – that lay underneath. Bill Hoggin ran to him, shouting roughly, ‘You’re wasting your time, Fred. We can’t lift that – it weighs a ton, the supports are broken and she’s dead as a doornail, must be. Come here. Look.’ He pushed through some smashed hobby horses to a small figure lying among them face down, motionless, in a lake of blood. He lifted a hot, jagged, steel plate off the boy and together they gently turned him over. He was alive, a painted splinter from some wooden animal sticking into his stomach, which was streaming bright blood, part of his entrails hanging out below the splinter. ‘Christ Almighty,’ Hoggin muttered, wrenching off his coat. He began to tie it over the boy’s wound, by the sleeves, when Mary Gorse joined them, crying, ‘Wait, sir!’ She ripped off her pink blouse, revealing a large white bodice, and knelt beside the boy, who had begun to whimper, clawing helplessly with his one good arm at his belly She propped him up with her knee and said, ‘Hold him there,
one of you.’ Fred took over, feeling his gorge rising. He turned his head and vomited, still holding the boy, as Mary Gorse pushed the trailing entrail back into the cavity and tied her blouse round the whole, fastening it at the back. ‘Carry him out now, both of you. On his back, lest more falls out.’
They took him up, and stepped out slowly through the dying steam, over and through the wreckage. When they were well clear, Hoggin said, ‘Put him down, Fred. We got to go back and see if there’s any more. ’Ere, you, look after this kid till a doctor comes. Don’t let him move.’
They went back together into the carnage, to join a dozen others on the same task. Blood was everywhere, in pools and still-dripping rivulets, slowly congealing. And hair, and skin, and once a hand and wrist, wrenched off the man to whom they had belonged. There were only three more people too severely hurt to move without help – two children and a woman; other rescuers were freeing them and taking them out. No sign of the man without a hand, Fred thought; he’s probably somewhere in the crowd, walking about, dazed and shocked, his dangling sleeve ending in a bloody stump.
‘What happened?’ he said to another man.
‘Boiler burst. One of the Fair fellows said it’s only happened once before in England – Croydon, 1912, he said. Now we have to get it.’
‘There weren’t too many people here,’ Fred said.
‘I reckon not, not being dark yet and all … but there’s half a dozen bad from the steam, besides those who got bits of wood or steel into them.’
‘I saw,’ Fred said. The taste of vomit was sour in his mouth. There was nothing more he could do. A man was kneeling on the grass beside the boy they’d carried out. He recognized one of the Hedlington doctors. With the doctor were a couple of women, sleeves rolled, blouses stained. A man had lent Mary Gorse his coat, to cover her near nakedness. The two bobbies on duty at the Fair were holding the crowd back, ‘Stand back there now, stand back, sir … stand back …’