All the Fun of the Fair

by All the Fun of the Fair (retail) (epub)

  ‘We don’t need thanks, Col. Just knowing we got you away from that brute is enough for us.’

  A rush of mixed emotions washed through Col, ones he had not experienced for so long he had forgotten what each felt like. Excitement, optimism, expectation, hope, amongst others. He had woken this morning dressed in the only clothes he possessed, in a dingy, damp room on an old, thin, stained, lumpy mattress. Breakfast was the remains of a stale loaf and cold water out of the green, mould-encrusted brass tap protruding over a pitted, discoloured sink. There was no money to put in the meter to heat the blackened, battered kettle over the ancient gas stove or heat the room with the equally antiquated gas fire. Cox had still been asleep, snoring pig-like on a mattress close by, and would be for a few more hours thanks to the amount of alcohol he’d consumed the previous night, paid for from the proceeds of an old woman’s purse Col had helped him to steal. Suspecting that Col would try to escape his clutches while he was out or sleeping, Cox would shackle him with ropes to a water pipe by his mattress. The future facing Col this morning at the hands of the selfish, nasty bully Cox had been unbearably bleak, the only ending of it that he could see was when death finally released him – either Cox’s or his own – and, regardless of his lifestyle, Cox was only in his forties so his death might not be for many long years yet.

  That evening Cox had told him he was expecting great rewards as the fair had come to town which meant rich pickings were to be had for types like him. Dragging Col across the waste ground towards the fair entrance, Cox spotted a mother and excited-looking young daughter of about six. They were both cheaply dressed so obviously not well off. Cox told Col they would be their first target and ordered him to bump into the child and knock her over. While the woman was picking her up and scolding him for his clumsiness, he himself would relieve her handbag of its purse.

  A vision of his own mother taking him to the fair when he had been that young girl’s age had risen before him. The money for the rides Col knew had been hard saved for and could have been used by his mother for much more necessary things. But she’d wanted to give him some fun, the same as he expected the mother Cox had targeted wanted to give her daughter and was willing to go without to do so. Something inside Col snapped. He just couldn’t do what Cox was ordering him to do purely in order for that stolen money to be wasted on drink, cigarettes and bets. If this meant that Cox carried out his promise to beat him senseless, even to death, for refusing to do his bidding, then death would be a blessed relief from this purgatory as far as Col was concerned.

  But thanks to fate, or just pure luck for Col, Solly Grundy had happened along and put a stop to Cox’s retaliation. He’d given him an opening to escape his clutches, to be free of him for good and, although he’d been racked in pain from the thrashing he’d already received, weak from lack of nourishing food, he hadn’t waste a second – acutely aware a chance like this might never come along again. So, whilst Solly Grundy had been keeping Cox otherwise occupied, Col had scrambled away like a cat on hot coals, hiding himself under a caravan and covering himself up with tarpaulin, praying Cox wouldn’t find him. He had no idea where he went from here or how he fended for himself in future but at least he was free from that wretched life. And, if that wasn’t enough, his hero and his wife were now offering him a chance of a good future with people who would welcome him into their home and take care of him.

  He suddenly felt terrified that all this was a dream which soon he’d wake up from. That he’d find himself in that desolate room on the thin smelly mattress again, arm and leg both badly aching and stiff from him being shackled all night to the water pipe. But, if this was a dream, he would have woken up by now, like he always had done before when dreaming of wonderful things happening to him. Always, just when he was about to experience those wonderful things – as if the Devil was playing games with him, giving him a taste of what he longed for, only to snatch it cruelly away when it was within his grasp – he’d be whipped out of his dreams back into reality. But this time that cruel awakening hadn’t happened and he was going to grab hold of those wonderful things being offered him and not let them go. He would forever owe his saviour and his wife a debt of gratitude; the amount would be impossible for him to even make a dent towards repaying but if, in the future, he saw a glimpse of a chance then he wouldn’t fail to seize it.

  Chapter Four

  In a modern two-bedroomed caravan was Suzie Douglas. She was dressed in a pink, long satin nightdress which exposed a good amount of her high, rounded breasts. Her long brunette hair was tied back in a matching pink ribbon and she was propped up against frilly-edged pillows in bed, idly filing her fingernails. Her husband Donny – not a tall man at five foot nine and a half and not particularly good-looking but, regardless, with a very pleasant, kindly face that matched his disposition – was at the kitchen sink having a wash down. The water for it had been fetched in a bucket from the council-provided standpipe and heated up in the kettle on the stove.

  ‘She must have felt so stupid having an audience witness her embarrassment of being stuck in a barrel and rolled around in it. Worse that Gem Grundy saw it too. Ren tried to joke it off but, even so, inside, she must have been dying of shame. I do feel so sorry for her.’

  Donny arrived in the bedroom, wiping his torso on a towel, looking at her bemused.

  ‘That was terrible what happened to Ren, but why would you feel sorry for her?’

  His immediate jump to Ren’s defence raised her hackles. ‘Well… just for what she has to put up with looking like she does. She’s not normal, is she? I’m surprised she has never applied to be in a panto to play one of the dwarves when we shut down over the winter.’

  Donny shot her a look of shock. ‘Ren’s not a dwarf, Suzie, she’s just little. That’s all. That was not nice of you saying that.’

  She feigned hurt. ‘I was just stating a fact.’ She realised that Donny was putting his clothes back on. ‘Where are you going?’ she demanded of him as if she didn’t know.

  ‘To check Ren’s alright.’

  The fact it was Ren he was abandoning her for was not what fuelled a surge of jealous rage within her but the fact that her conceited nature wouldn’t allow her to play second fiddle to any woman. She blurted, ‘She’s fine. She thought the whole thing funny. This sort of thing is like water off a duck’s back to her. Anyway, it’s after twelve so she’ll be in bed by now and your place is in bed beside me.’

  He looked over at the alarm clock. ‘Yes, she probably will be in bed, so I’ll pop and see her first thing in the morning.’ He began to take off his clothes again. ‘But you’re wrong that this won’t have affected her, Suzie. She might not have shown it in front of you and Mrs Grundy but I’ve known her since we were babies and she does her crying behind closed doors, does Ren.’

  ‘Huh.’ Then her face crumpled and, forcing tears to her eyes, she blubbered, ‘Sometimes I think you think more of her than you do me.’

  A look of utter astonishment filled his face. ‘What! Oh come on, Suzie. Ren’s my friend, that’s all. It’s you I love.’

  ‘Well, why is it then you always put her before me?’

  He looked astonished as to why she would make that statement. ‘I don’t.’

  She squeezed out more tears. ‘Yes you do. You were leaving me tonight to go to her.’

  ‘Only to check on her after that terrible thing happening to her. She’d have come to see me if something like that had happened to me.’ He looked at her closely for a moment before heaving a deep sigh. ‘You’ve really got a bee in your bonnet about Ren tonight. In fact, you’re always having a go at me about my being friends with her. You know we’re just friends and nothing more so why don’t you like me being friends with her? It’s like…’ He raked his fingers exasperatedly through his hair and sank down on the edge of the bed. ‘Well, if I didn’t know better, I would think you saw her as a threat.’

  She clambered out from under the covers, crawled over to cuddle into him, restin
g her head on his shoulder. ‘Of course I don’t see Ren as a threat. I love you, Donny, you love me. Our marriage is happy and strong, the sort no one can break. It’s just that…’ Her thoughts tumbled for a plausible reason to placate her constant grief to him over his friendship with Ren. The truth was that she was terrified he would realise his true feelings for Ren and leave her before she had found someone to give her a better life than Donny was. When she had, they were welcome to each other. But, until then, her life with Donny was far superior to the one she’d had with her parents and she meant to keep it. She thought she had found someone several times since her marriage but each man either turned out to be married themselves and were just using her for sex or she, thankfully, found out just before she burned her boats that they were no better off, worse in a couple of instances, than Donny. Then an idea came to her. She lifted her head and kissed his cheek before saying in a feigned reluctant tone, ‘Look, darling, I’ve never told you this before because I knew how much it’d hurt you but Ren isn’t the woman you think she is. Well, she’s certainly not the true friend to you, you think she is.’

  He turned his head and looked at her quizzically. ‘What do you mean?’

  She heaved a deep, forlorn sigh. ‘Oh, God, this hurts me so much to tell you but since we started going out together she’s been making nasty digs at me. Such as: what is a very pretty girl like me wanting to be seen dead with a… er… gormless lump like you?’

  He gawped. ‘Gormless lump? Ren called me that?’

  ‘And worse. Village idiot. Chump. At first I thought she was jealous and wanted you for herself and I told her so. She just laughed and said she might be on the short side… you know how she’s always making jokes about her height… but even she could do better than you. She said she wanted herself a real man, not a plodder like you who’d never make anything of himself in life. She joked once that Frankenstein’s monster was better-looking than you. But I used to take no notice of her, Donny. To me you’re the best-looking man ever. James Dean could try and sweep me off my feet and I wouldn’t trade him for you. Anyway, tonight, she really went too far and I can’t keep this from you any longer. Wives and husbands shouldn’t have secrets, should they? When Mrs Grundy left this afternoon I said to Ren that it was a pity you hadn’t heard about what those lads were doing to her as you’d have come haring over and sorted them out, made sure they never showed their faces in our fair again doing something like that to one of us.’

  ‘And I would have done,’ he said with conviction. Donny never shied from protecting those he cared for.

  ‘I couldn’t believe what that… that… woman… said.’

  Quizzically he asked, ‘What did she say?’

  She made him wait a moment, pretending she was reluctant to hurt him with what he was asking her to divulge before she finally answered. ‘“Huh! A wet lettuce would give more of a slap than one from Donny’s limp hand. Thank God it was Mrs Grundy that came to my rescue because if it had been Donny I’d still be stuffed inside that barrel being rolled around.” She said she was glad I’d come along as it meant she hadn’t got to pretend to be your friend so much now you were spending more of your time with me. She said you bored her silly and she would never have picked you as a friend but had been forced into it by both your mothers being such good friends then expecting you two to be.’ She then eyed him sorrowfully. ‘Now you see why I didn’t want to tell you.’

  He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. The nasty-mouthed woman his wife was describing was nothing like the one he knew Ren to be. His first thought was that Suzie must be lying but he couldn’t come up with a valid reason as to why she would. He felt so utterly stupid for unreservedly believing all these years that Ren valued his friendship as much as he did hers when, all the time, she was just pretending that she did because of the friendship their mothers had shared and, in truth, thought very little of him as a person.

  Suzie was stroking a finger down his cheek and said, ‘It’s not nice the way you found out how Ren feels about you, Donny, but at least you know now.’

  He was still reeling from this, such an unexpected revelation, that he felt like he’d had the stuffing knocked out of him. He solemnly nodded. ‘I’ll not go where I’m not wanted. I’ll keep out of her way as much as I can in future.’

  A smug glow filled Suzie. She had no care whatsoever that her deviousness had just devastated her husband. She had achieved just what she wanted and that was all she cared about. Now Donny thought Ren despised him. Even if he did realise his true feelings for her, he would now never tell her as he believed they’d be laughingly rejected. Her marriage was safe until she was ready to end it.

  * * *

  A couple of vans away from Donny and Suzie’s, sixty-five-year-old fortune-teller Madam Velda May was relaxing outside her small, wooden gypsy-style van, painted traditionally in bold bright colours. It used to be pulled by a horse but was now moved around by a battered seven-year-old Land Rover. She was sitting in a comfortable but shabby Lloyd Loom wicker chair padded with cushions. On a small black Chinese lacquered table at the side of her was an empty tea cup and plate that had held a cheese sandwich before she had eaten it, a bottle of malt whiskey and a tumbler. Another wicker chair ready for visitors, should she receive any, was at the side of that. She was a tall woman at five foot nine and a half and, as usual, was wearing long, flowing tent-like robes over her rotund body. Tonight, to ward off the icy chill in the air, she had added a black gypsy-type heavy shawl around her shoulders. Her homely-featured face was always heavily covered with make-up, in particular darkening around her eyes to give herself a gypsy-ish, mystic look. She always wore a black scarf too, pulled tightly around her head and knotted under her chin. As she’d been working earlier she had the traditional fortune-teller’s small silver discs dangling across her forehead. Her greying hair was long and worn in a braid which hung over her shoulder and down her chest.

  Clasping thick hands over her stomach mound, she gazed distantly up at the millions of stars twinkling down from the clear sky above. This was her favourite time of day, when all the noisy crowds had gone home and the loud music switched off. All the Grundy community children were in bed fast asleep and, apart from the odd raised voice from arguing couples coming from open windows in surrounding vans, silence reigned. Not that Velda’s hour or so tonight had been all peace and quiet for her as it had been broken several times by visitors and passers-by. Not that she minded as Velda was a very warm and welcoming woman who never turned anyone away from her door. She was much loved by the Grundy community and, especially in respect of the other women, one of the first they turned to in troubled times for help and advice. No one really knew where Velda came from or anything more than a scant knowledge of her background that she had travelled around a lot until she had settled down with Grundy’s nearly thirty years ago. She was a very private person and, no matter how hard anyone quizzed her, her past, as far as she was concerned, was her business alone.

  One of Velda’s visitors tonight had been Ren. In fact it was a rare night when Ren did not call by just for a quick catch-up, to check on the older woman she had come to look on as her second mother since her own had died. She always made sure she had had a good day and that there was nothing she wanted Ren to help her with, before she retired herself. Velda loved and cared for Ren as much as had she been her own daughter. She’d fill her coal bucket from the sack she kept in a box under the back of her van to fuel the small cast-iron stove inside and topped up her water bucket from the council standpipe. These were both jobs Velda was still capable of doing herself but she knew it gave Ren such pleasure to do for her. Tonight Ren had regaled her for the ten minutes she stayed with the incident with the barrel and, as always, Velda inwardly marvelled at – and was somewhat in awe of – how the tiny woman always chose to see the humorous side of such wicked happenings. She never wallowed in self pity over her situation but, regardless, deep down, Velda was well aware that such incidents greatly upset
Ren and if she did shed a tear over them it was always done in private behind her closed van door.

  A few minutes after Ren had left, Glenda Kitchen had stopped by to ask Velda for a quick tarot card reading. It was something she did quite frequently, as she was desperate to learn that her domineering bully of a husband, one of the dozen labourers Grundy’s employed to do the heavier types of work and also help drive rides from place to place, would meet someone else or die. Either way, to leave her and their five children free of his tyranny to live in peace. Despite Velda being very much in sympathy with her plight and feeling very helpless as there was nothing she could do about it personally and wanted therefore to give Glenda some good news, unfortunately, the cards – as usual – showed that nothing in her life was set to change drastically in the near future. All Velda could offer Glenda was her own belief that, sooner or later, everyone got their just deserts so she should have patience until her errant husband got his. Glenda left Velda no happier than when she had arrived. After a couple of dogs walkers had stopped and swapped a few moments of pleasantries with her and another near neighbour called on the cadge for a cup of sugar, her last visitor of the evening was Sam Grundy. She had been expecting him as he always called by on a dry evening after having supper with his family before he retired to his own living van, knowing he’d find her in her usual spot.

  Easing his ageing body down into the empty wicker chair, resting his walking stick against the side, he smiled at her warmly and asked her, ‘How goes it, gel?’

  She smiled. ‘It goes well, thank you. Made enough tonight to keep me in bread and marge for the rest of the week.’

  As he helped himself to a large tipple from the whiskey bottle, knowing he didn’t need to ask as Velda purposely put it out for him just in case he fancied one should he call upon her, he chuckled. He knew from the steady queue of customers he’d seen at her tent that evening on his rounds that she’d made herself enough tonight to pay for all her groceries for three days at least. ‘We had not a bad night too but then the first and last nights are always the best, profit-wise.’ Taking a sip of his drink, for a moment savouring the taste and the warming sensation as it hit the back of his throat, he then looked up at the sky. ‘Likely we’ll have a frost tonight. Got plenty of coal in to keep yerself warm?’