Baron's Court, All Change

by Terry Taylor

“Things will work out, Liz, you’ll see. Everything will work out.”

  Thank God her crying didn’t last for too long. She stopped suddenly, like she’d turned the tears off with a tap. She gave her nose a good blow on the handkerchief she fished out of her sleeve, and her wet and puffy face all screwed up. “I must look dreadful,” she said strangled-voicedly.

  “What a family we are,” I said, feeling much better by this time. “We’re a load of water heads and worriers. Do you remember when we were both kids? We’d cry our eyes out at the least little thing. We’ll never alter.”

  She was drying her eyes with her handkerchief now, and nearly pressing her face against the mirror so that she could see properly. “Look at my eyes, they’re disgusting. Just look at my eyes.”

  “Your eyes are magnificent. Like cool, blue pools of water, serene and pure and clear.”

  She gave me a playful push. “Flattery, young man, will get you nowhere.”

  It’s great how women hate to look a mess in front of their opposite sex. Even if it’s their own stupid brother they’ve got to look all right. It’s a good thought, though, it wigs me the most.

  “It’s funny,” Liz said, “but I would never have believed a few weeks ago that I could have broken down in front of you like I did without feeling ashamed or embarrassed. I wasn’t, you know. I wasn’t a bit.”

  There was a silence but neither of us felt awkward. The atmosphere had changed somehow. There was a feeling in the air that told us that a great barrier had been broken, a barrier that had kept us at arms’ length through the years, but now it was no more. I felt that I understood my sister completely, that I had got through to her, and for a moment I was right on her plane digging the scene completely. That I was in the middle of her world of insurance and Frankie Laine and romantic novels, and understanding that the fact of her being pregnant was the most important thing that had ever happened to her. Little old Liz — a mother! My sister, who looked like a kid herself, was going to have a baby!

  I’d be an uncle! The greatness and importance of it all flowed through me, and I felt like throwing my arms around her and congratulating her for being able to take part in the greatest creative act of life.

  “Let’s go to a Fun Fair!” I said suddenly.

  “Did I hear you right?” my thin sister said to me.

  “Let’s go to a Fun Fair and swing on swings and eat sticky toffee apples and hold hands in the Tunnel of Love.”

  “Are you serious?” she asked seriously.

  “I’m not serious, but I want to go to a Fun Fair, and you to come with me. Battersea Park it shall be. We’ll be there in an hour and have the time of our lives. Let’s pretend we’re kids again and we’ve run away from mum, and robbed our money boxes as well.”

  The look on my relative’s face was great, man, all naughty and young and even happy.

  “We’d better be going before mum finds out,” she said, combing her birdsnest hair into a beehive.

  We didn’t take much trouble getting ready and looking smart and all that. We wanted to run out of the house as quickly as we could because something was happening to us. It might have been the drama and the tears, I don’t know, but I had the strangest feeling that I’d probably ever had. Even stranger than the ones dear old Harry the Hare whips on you. I felt half happy, half sad, but I wanted to get out of that house, to head for Baron’s Court, and to take my sister with me.

  “I hope the neighbours don’t see us and tell mum,” Liz said, slamming the door behind us.

  We walked quickly to the station, not saying a word, but now and again I’d look over to Liz and find her already looking at me, and we’d both start giggling.

  “Two tickets to Battersea Pleasure Gardens,” I told the ticket clerk.

  “There’s not a station at the Fun Fair,” he told us like an idiot.

  “In that case I’ll have two tickets to the station nearest the Fun Fair,” I said.

  The spot in the distance came closer, showing itself to be a tube train, crawling like a huge red caterpillar along a leaf of earth and grass and signal boxes.

  The peasants in the train eyed us suspiciously. What’s your game? I can nearly hear them say. What are you up to? Don’t think me and Liz are like you, man with the Down & Co snap brim all fur felt twenty-five shillings hat on. We’re devils, we are. We’d drown your cat and set fire to your baby if we didn’t like you. We’d do anything we damn well pleased. Liz and me are going to enjoy ourselves, just for an hour if it must be, so you and your kind won’t be able to stop us. We’re going to forget about you and Young George and Mr Cage and zombie and her lover’s parents and the baby in her belly, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

  “Baron’s Court!” a porter shouted.

  Passports, please! Don’t let them aliens in! It’ll be unpatriotic if you do. It’ll be treason!

  I think we changed trains but I’m not sure, as Liz’s silence changed into a swinging chorus of conversation. Of memories and snatches of scenes half-remembered, of holidays at Canvey Island, where as kids we found our heaven for a fortnight, even if it wasn’t sand, but mud, but we didn’t care. Of birthday parties when we played Ring-a-ring-a-roses, and when we were older, Postman’s Knock. Liz with her music lessons; how that girl tried the piano, but never advanced any further than God Save The Queen. We were happy then, yes, we were happy. Don’t you see what I mean, Liz? We didn’t think when we were kids, we lived. And we were happy.

  Before we knew what had happened, the crazy music was in our ears and the entrance to the Fun Fair was in front of us. We got stuck in the turnstiles and the man who took our sixpences cursed us for laughing at him. We threw ourselves into the laughter and screams, and the cries of the stall-holders, surrendering ourselves to it all, letting it take us where it pleased.

  Past the Big Wheel, standing there boasting to the other rides that it was King of the Fun Fair, like a lion does in the jungle. The Ghost Train we went on, clutching each other’s hand as we went through the dark passages, all cold and wet and spooky; the skeletons, earning their living, danced before us, and the sudden screams of mechanical murderers made our senses reel like a benzadrine highness. The car smashed against the doors, letting us into the reality of the world, and the light startled us.

  The spieler at a side-show, up on a rostrum, introducing the performers like they were just about to appear at a Royal Command performance. He looked real and efficient and even sophisticated, even though his dinner jacket had seen seasons upon seasons of wear, from Dreamland, Margate, to the Central Pier, Blackpool. He told us of the many things that happened on the inside in a cool and not too loud voice: “This is the show that you’ve heard about. This is the show that you’ll go home tonight and tell your friends and neighbours about. This is the show that all London is talking about. This is the show that you heard on ‘In Town Tonight’, when I told Bryan Johnson of the BBC some of the amazing things that happen on the inside of this theatre. I don’t care who you are, where you’ve been, or what you’ve seen. I guarantee that your eyes have never fell on a side-show that is more different, exciting, and entertaining... The price of admission is one shilling. Twelve copper coins of the realm. Coppers. What are coppers? We throw them away...” Then he saw a policeman in the crowd (or pretended he’d just seen him) and wished him a very good afternoon. We didn’t go into the show because we knew that the performance on the inside couldn’t compete with the performance on the outside.

  “Let’s have a lemonade,” I said to Liz, pulling her into a neon-lit snack bar.

  “I want a Cherryade. I’ve always liked them,” she said, pointing to a healthy-looking red bottle that was on the shelf.

  We blew down the straws and it frothed up and came to life, and we laughed at the woman with the Robin Hood hat who was looking at us in disgust. Liz put Frankie Laine on the juke box and we started to dance around it, yes, me dancing, a made-up-on-the-moment dance, but it was great. Before we knew it there were other
people dancing with us, and before the record had finished it seemed that the whole snack bar was filled with young people letting themselves go and joining in. Then an important-looking cat wearing a uniform came in and told us that we weren’t allowed to dance there, so we told him that we were sorry and we stopped, and the other people disappeared as quickly as they’d come. We finished our drink on two revolving stools at the counter, and Liz kept twisting around on hers until she worked up quite a speed and felt dizzy, and in the end the woman with the Robin Hood hat on gave us a putrid look, so Liz stuck her tongue out to her which she didn’t like at all, so she left the bar grumbling to herself about the manners of the younger generation.

  “I’d like to go on the Big Wheel,” Liz said. “I want to be right up there for a moment, above it all. Half-way between heaven and earth.”

  “As high as a kite without having anything to smoke,” I joined in.

  The attendant, who was very un-gipsy-like, locked the bar that went in front of us so that we couldn’t fall out. With a jerk, we were away. Swinging and revolving in a huge circle, high and low. When we reached the top it was crazy, like a sexual climax, then down again to ground level as you swish past the faces of the ants below. High again! With an abstract landscape of colour and noise. Then our ride was finished and we envied the people that were waiting for our seats.

  We passed the bar, yes, passed it. We didn’t need drink because drink would dull our senses and we weren’t complaining about the state of our senses, so we didn’t need drink. I didn’t want a smoke, either. I wouldn’t ever smoke again, I promised myself. I’d just sell it and get stinking rich and become a filthy fat capitalist and have a crowd of crazy mixed-up Jazz addicts begging me for a free smoke.

  We bought some candy floss, pink and silky, it looked so attractive it seemed a shame to eat it, and I disguised myself by using it as a beard and Liz laughed, and after she’d eaten hers she had a bright pink stain around her mouth and it looked as if she’d just finished a marathon necking session.

  “I haven’t been to a fair for years,” Liz said, wiping her mouth. “Isn’t it wonderful? Boy, what escapism. I’ll have to come every week.”

  “You should. It’ll do you the world of good,” I advised her. Then she stopped walking and stood quite still. The Noah’s Ark started up and the shrill, neurotic music pierced our ears. Liz looked at me with child-like eyes. “It’ll never be like this again. Never,” she said in a quiet voice.

  “Let’s go on the bumper cars!” I shouted to her, and grabbed a white car for myself and a red one for Liz. I can even remember the colours. I pressed down on the accelerator and away I went, racing and bumping and turning and laughing, trying to find Liz’s car. There it was, all red and shiny, and Liz looking deadly serious, afraid that someone would bump her, and when they did she forced a laugh but she didn’t like it all the same.

  We had another Cherryade in another snack bar (to hell with the expense!) and this time we seated ourselves at a table and told each other how we were enjoying it all and wasn’t the bumper cars smashing and the Ghost Train frightening? A puzzled clutter of conversation with laughter and trying to talk over each other and Liz all eyes and wet lips.

  Two fairground types came over and sat next to us. The cat nearest Liz was hardly older than her, with large sensitive eyes that had a showing of mascara on them. His fair hair was combed straight back and his unhealthy white face showed up even paler against his companion’s sunbrowned features.

  “I couldn’t believe it when I found out that you’d taken over the mit-reading box. I thought all palmists were Gipsies,” said the suntanned man.

  The serious-looking youth eyed him nervously. “Gipsies are out! Remember we’re entering the Atomic Age. Punters want science not superstition. I’ve got the best flash in the whole gaff. Tony Graydon, South Africa’s youngest authority on the hand. The old girls fall for it hook, line and sinker. I bag the straight punters for a caser, and the mugs I gazump for what I can get.”

  “I saw the edge around your pitch this afternoon. You were ’avin’ a burster,” the other man said.

  “I’d better be going back,” said South Africa’s youngest authority on the hand, gulping down his tea. “Can’t afford to lose anything. It’s going to be a long winter.”

  We went into the photographer’s saloon to have our photograph taken together, because the only ones we had with both of us on had Canvey Island in the background. The photographer had a well-cut suit on and a smile that never left his face. We had the choice of putting our heads through a number of holes, which would make the picture look as if we were a couple of fat ladies doing the can-can, a nurse with a baby (that would be rubbing things in a bit too far), or two sailors. We chose the sailors, and the photographer told us not to be so serious and cheer up and look as if we were enjoying ourselves and we grinned like a couple of overfed gorillas. Then he asked us if we wanted the small set or the large set, so I asked him how much they were, and he told me that the small set was ten shillings as you get four double weight highly glossed large postcard-sized photographs, but I told him it was too much money, so he let me have two and charged me a dollar. I still have that photograph.

  We walked through the lanes of hoopla and shellfish stalls together with the big-breasted chicks with “Can I do you now, sir?” and “Hot stuff from Paris” splashed across their paper hats, past the patient queue for the motor boats, with a loudspeakered voice telling everyone that their time was up and to bring their boats in, by the House that Jack Built, with its crazy angles pointing in all directions, laughing past the Rotor and its pictures displayed outside showing chicks stuck to the wall with their skirts high above their heads.

  Why can’t the world be a fairground? We’ll make sure we don’t fall off the rides but we’ll enjoy ourselves just the same. When we’re one short of sixty-five at the dart stall we’ll not complain, and if we’ve been sports they’ll still give us a prize. We’ll come home skint but we shan’t worry for we’ve had our money’s worth. What value we’ve had! Laughter, fun and thrills — things that are hard to find outside the range of this wonderfully idiotic music. And it’s all so healthy. I envied those that were employed in it. I wanted to be a part of it, to be amongst it all the time, on the right side of those turnstiles, to lock myself in, never leaving the laughing, happy throng.

  As we walked back towards the station, arm in arm, my mind was full of thoughts about Liz and me when we were kids and shit our pants and everything. When we lay together in the cold, damp, Anderson shelter, awake in the middle of the night, hearing each other breathe but afraid to say anything in case our mum gave us a good hiding, while the gunfire cracked and spluttered above our heads. When the sky was full of unknown and terrible things; bombs and planes and shrapnel and barrage balloons... all from the sky. Americans with chewing gum bringing a strange new world of plenty briefly into our lives. Saying good-bye to my best friend who was being evacuated to Wales, but I wasn’t going; my mum wouldn’t part with me. Fitting our gas masks on for the first time. Screaming the house down... horrible smell of rubber... suffocation... no!

  The war is over! Everyone get drunk and have street parties, with trestles and jelly and dancing and a microphone on a stage where people sing, but not everyone; some are crying. Fireworks, too. Pleasant bangs and lights in the sky. The war is over! Surely we’ll all have a banana soon? V.E., V.J., V. everything! Even soldiers returning with V.C.s and V.D.

  Liz! You’re lumbered like me. Lumbered with this whole rotten world. We’re perfect if the world will let us be. It’s you and I that have to fight, if we don’t we haven’t a chance. Let’s do something, Liz. Let’s do something about you being a Gentile. Let’s scream our defiance full-voiced, with all our energy, till we drop to the ground with exhaustion. Don’t let them get away with it, Liz! Let me go to the parents of your lover and tell them there’s no difference between their son and myself except I haven’t had my schnickel cut. Show yourself t
o the Rabbi and cut your arm so that he can see that your blood is red also. For Christ’s sake, Liz, don’t let them get away with it!

  But you won’t do a thing, I know you won’t. You’ll let them do as they damn well please, because you’re an ignorant, stupid, masochistic fool. They’ll put you here and throw you there but you won’t care. They’ll piss on you and you’ll probably drink it. Wake up, Liz!

  And when you’re dead, I’ll come to your funeral and bring fields of flowers and lay them on your grave, but they won’t be of any use to you. I’ll be crying but your tears will never end. They’ll flow into the River of Tears forever. And you’ll scream and knock your head against walls because it’ll be too late, all over, finished.

  You’ll be dead, Liz!

  That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard,” Popper said, taking a bite out of his large, creamy, sickly-looking cake. “You at a Fun Fair, and with your sister as well. You’re a strange one, Squire, you are. Dancing round the juke box, you say? Lord have mercy! I bet you got your kicks.”

  “As a matter of fact I did,” I said, not feeling in the least bit embarrassed. “Haven’t enjoyed myself so much for ages.”

  “You must have been on a weird one, you really must. You say this happened this afternoon? You don’t look too gone to me.”

  “Haven’t had a smoke all day long,” I told him with a trace of boastfulness in my voice.

  “Really?” my junkie friend said, sounding interested. “What’s it now? Bennies, L.S.D., or nems?”

  “Are you kidding? I wouldn’t touch that stuff if you paid me to. Come now, do I look the type?”

  “People don’t look the type, they just are. You were either made for it psychologically or you’re not.”

  “I can assure you, I’m not.”

  He ordered another cream cake and a cup of tea, which he put at least five spoonfuls of sugar into, then relaxed again on the very unrelaxing seat that he’d been sitting on. He looked a lot sharper than he usually did, and it was obvious that he’d been buying new drag: a shining light raincoat that promised to look different in about a week’s time, and an imported Yank suit (so he told me), not one of those I’ve-just-arrived-from-New-York NY looking ones, but a member of the neat and expensive variety usually worn by Stan Kenton or an advertising manager.