All the Fun of the Fair

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

  It was the star Sirius that was shining the brightest to her. She opened her mouth to begin making her wish but instead jumped in alarm as she felt the pressure of the seat go down beside her. She spun her head to see who it was. She recoiled in shock, then blinked several times just to make sure she wasn’t seeing things. Then, just to confirm they were real, she reached out to touch their arm. Her fingers touched solid matter and, now convinced that the person beside her was definitely alive and breathing, she uttered, ‘Donny!’ Then, unable to stop herself, she cried out, ‘Oh, Donny, it’s really you!’ Her relief and pure joy looking into the face of the man she adored with all her heart was indescribable. She wouldn’t need to use drink to get her to sleep any longer. From now on she’d sleep like a baby knowing he was, at last, home safe and sound. She threw her arms around him, hugging him bearlike. ‘You’ve no idea how worried I’ve been about you. I’ve hardly slept since you went off and no word from you since.’ Then it struck her with force that her zealousness to see him was far more than just a friend would show to another, so she quickly released her hold on him and awkwardly blustered, ‘Well everyone has been worried about you, not just me. Your mother is beside herself.’ Despite being desperate to know the answers, she tried to sound casual when she asked, ‘You are alright, aren’t you? Where have you been all this time?’

  He seemed distracted, something was obviously preying on his mind, and he said shortly, ‘I’m fine. Well, I am now. Wasn’t when I left, far from it.’

  She looked at him in sympathy and said softly, ‘I’m so sorry for what Suzie did to you. She didn’t deserve you, Donny.’ His face was in shadow and it was hard for her to tell whether he was still suffering the pain of his recent betrayal, still trying to come to terms with it, or if he had accepted the situation and was on the road to recovery? Had he lost weight? She could understand if he had. What he had been through was enough to cause anyone to lose their appetite. From what she could tell though, he seemed well in himself. She was a little disconcerted as he did appear to be a little on edge, nervy in her company, and she wondered why as it wasn’t like he didn’t know her inside out. After all, he knew her nearly as well as he knew himself, and there was no reason that she could think of why he would feel anxious with her. Then she remembered that for several weeks prior to his leaving, they had been estranged thanks to Suzie’s lies about her. He was probably feeling guilty for believing her lies that he now knew weren’t true. He knew Ren didn’t hold grudges and so she hoped his visit to tell her he was back was a sign that now Suzie wasn’t around to poison their friendship any longer, he wanted it to return to how it had been before she had driven her wedge between them.

  ‘Your mother must have been overjoyed to see you? Your dad as well?’

  ‘I haven’t seen either of them yet.’

  She thought that strange. Surely it was his parents he would have automatically sought out first to put their minds at rest that he was back in one piece.

  ‘I was coming to see you and saw you coming out of your van and heading into the fairground, so I followed you.’

  She smiled at him warmly. ‘I’m glad you did. Well, I expect you’ll be wanting to see your parents so you can let them know too.’ Intrigue then made her ask, ‘Before you go though, just where have you been?’

  ‘One of the gaff lads that used to work for us that I got friendly with left us to work for the fair in Bridlington. I went to see if he still worked there and he did and let me stay with him in his van. It was a bit cramped, as three other lads were staying in it too, but it was a roof over my head and it gave me time to get my head around all this.’ He paused for a moment to take breath before he continued, ‘Suzie said some things to me…’

  She cut in. ‘Terrible things, Donny, and she was just being spiteful, so you mustn’t take them to heart. She was just saying those things as an excuse to do what she did.’

  ‘Not all the things she said were her being spiteful, Ren. Some of them were the truth about me. One of things she said about me though, I couldn’t understand… that I was too thick to realise who I really loved and should have married. I loved her, so I did marry the woman I should have, didn’t I? But then I got to thinking that I was only young, fifteen, when Suzie came along, that I didn’t really understand what proper love was then. I was besotted with her, couldn’t believe that a woman like her would pick me as her boyfriend when she could have had any man she wanted. Then, before I knew it, we were married. If I knew then what I do now I’d have seen that we hadn’t got much in common, didn’t see eye to eye on lots of things and we never talked, not really, unless it was about something that Suzie wanted to talk about. Time on my own to think has made me see there’s a big difference between infatuation and real love. But that wasn’t all I realised. While the others were at work and I was alone in the van, it suddenly struck me that it wasn’t actually Suzie I was thinking of most and missing like hell, wishing she was with me, helping me through all this. I was missing the way she always managed to cheer me up when I was feeling down; always made me laugh with her funny ways and the things she said. Lots of other things about her too that I loved. Suzie was right. I was too thick to see that it was her I loved and should have married, not Suzie. That’s if she feels the same about me. I know she likes me, I know she cares about me by the way she’s always been with me, but love…’ He slapped his hand against his forehead and exclaimed angrily, ‘It hurts so much and it’s embarrassing to know that you’ve been stupid enough to let someone use you like Suzie used me. It was hard for me to come back and face everyone here, but I knew if I didn’t come back then I’d never see the woman I really love again and I couldn’t bear that. So I came back to find out if there’s any chance with her. I just hope I haven’t left it too late.’

  As she was listening to him, her heart was sinking, knowing that she was going to have to go through the excruciating pain of watching the man she loved marrying another woman as she had done when he’d married Suzie, forcing herself to keep a smile on her face. In truth she wanted to beg Donny to marry her instead. Maybe on the day he married this woman he was now proclaiming was his real true love, his soulmate, it would be best she made an excuse not to be there. But then how could she do that to him; she was his best friend, after all, and best friends supported each other through everything, not just what they handpicked.

  She tried to work out just who this woman was that he did really love? There were quite a few women of their age in the community. Could it be Beryl Evans? She was very pretty but then she’d only ever had eyes for Davie Jimson and the pair had been courting for years, were getting married as soon as Davie had enough money to buy his own stall or ride to support them on, so it couldn’t be her. Charmaine Kitchen? No, definitely not. Donny wouldn’t look at a girl who had slept with most of the single men, and some married ones, in the community and outside of it too. Olive Ilkey? Before she could explore the possibility that it might be Olive, she realised that Donny was still speaking and she hadn’t been listening.

  She apologised to him. ‘Sorry, what did you say?’

  ‘I asked if I’ve got any chance, Ren?’

  He was asking his best friend her advice for fear of making a fool of himself. She leaned over, patted his hand and, resolutely, said, ‘Of course you’ve got a chance with her. She’d be daft if she doesn’t snap you up. You’ll never know though until you ask her, will you?’

  Acute misery washed over her and she knew that, any minute, she was going to cry. Not in front of Donny or he’d want to know why. She needed to get back to her van and grieve in private over what might have been but never would. She started to ease herself off the seat but he stopped her by grabbing her arm and demanding, ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Well, you’ll be wanting to get off and go see this woman and find out if she feels the same about you. It’s late but she might still be up. I need to get back. I’ve clothes to iron for work tomorrow.’

  He looked at
her imploringly. ‘That woman I’m talking about is you, Ren. It’s you I love. Always have. It took Suzie’s home truths to make me realise that. I do have something to thank her for, after all. I know I don’t deserve you after the way I treated you. Deep down, I knew it couldn’t possibly be true that you would talk about me behind my back like Suzie claimed you did. But she was my wife and I couldn’t think of any reason why she would make up such horrible things about you, so I believed her. I should have known better. You haven’t got a malicious bone in your body, Ren.’ He then beseeched her, ‘Can you forgive me? Please say you will. I really do love you. I can’t imagine my life without you in it… not just as a friend, but as my wife. As soon as I get a divorce, that is.’

  She was struck utterly speechless. The words she was hearing from his own mouth she had longed to hear for as long as she could remember. Now she actually was, she was having difficulty believing them. She knew Donny well enough though to know that he was not the type of man who said anything if he didn’t mean it. She should tell him how much he meant to her too, how deep her love for him ran, how it broke her heart when he married Suzie, that to become his wife was her wildest dream come true, but in her shock – that he felt the same as she did about him – all she could manage was, ‘You’d better see about getting that divorce then.’

  * * *

  Donny being such a well liked and respected member of the Grundy community, his return back into the fold was well received. His family were overjoyed to see him so happy and content with the woman they had always believed he should marry. The wedding was going to be a truly special event. All the fairfolk would make sure of that.

  Chapter Eighteen

  It was the end of September. The Grundy fairfolk had dismantled the rides and stalls and rebuilt them again twelve times since they had left Skipton. It was Sunday afternoon and they had just arrived in Hexham, a small market town, south of the river Tyne.

  Gem was feeling, hot, tired and irritable. The move to Hexham from Penrith, their last port of call, a distance of forty miles, had not gone smoothly. Penrith was on the west side of the Pennines, the row of mountains known to all as the backbone of England. Despite the stunning views, the roads were both steep and narrow. Mud on the road caused one lorry to skid, it then having to be towed out of the thick grassy moorland verge by another. To do so, both vehicles first had to be offloaded of their cargo, then reloaded back on again. More time was lost from vehicles being delayed by sheep on the road. One unfortunate sheep did end up on the back of the lorry, having been accidentally hit; the perpetrator being of the mind that it was better to provide his family with several good dinners than leaving it to rot. A lorry got a puncture and, thanks to an unseen pothole, a living van became detached from the vehicle pulling it. The driver behind only just managed to swerve out of its way before it veered onto the moorland to bump up and down over it for several yards until it came to an abrupt stop, finally tipping over onto its side.

  Thankfully none of the Grundy community were physically hurt during any of these mishaps but repairing damage to the vehicles involved was not going to be cheap and would eat into the profits of those affected; the winter months would not be so comfortable unless they could make up their shortfall before the season came to an end at the end of November. Jimmy, his mother as passenger, was driving a Scammell Pioneer low-loader that was ferrying their living van in a convoy of ten others. The vehicles were the last to leave the site in Penrith, half an hour later than intended due to one member of the convoy having mislaid his lorry keys which he finally found in a puddle of water, having dropped them out of his pocket whilst he was having a last check that the cargo was secure. Gem was getting worried about them making up the lost time en route, worried that if they didn’t she would be behind schedule in the cooking of the huge meal to feed all the workers that she was in charge of over in Hexham.

  Unfortunately for Gem, though, they were not going to make up the lost time but would lose even more. The convoy she and Jimmy were travelling in, them being last in the line of in fact, was the same one that the caravan was in that hit the pothole which caused the tow bar connecting it to the ramshackle Land Rover to snap. The vehicles in front had carried on, not realising what had happened behind them, so it was up to the two vehicles behind to help. Consequently, by the time Gem and Jimmy arrived at Hexham and Solly, Jimmy and Robbie had offloaded the living van off the back of the low-loader, secured it, fired up the generator and gotten the fire in the stove ablaze, the delay in making a start on the meal was now over three hours behind. The fairfolk men, labouring away constructing the fair rides and stalls, were all ravenous by now, breakfast being a long-distant memory, and with no sign of their next meal yet, tempers where beginning to fray as a result. The women, aware of this and worried about arguments or, worse, fights breaking out between their hungry men, were doing their best to hasten the meal along.

  Children were severely warned to stay out of trouble and play together. Several women were in their own vans making a variety of puddings for afters, whilst at Gem’s van others were sitting outside in a circle on an assortment of chairs they’d brought along with them, peeling mounds of potatoes to be boiled for mashing. Others were scrubbing carrots and chopping turnips. Several other women were erecting trestle tables, pushing them together to make one long row in a space nearby. Inside Gem’s van, two women were keeping an eye on two massive cauldrons of oxtail and vegetable stew bubbling away on top of the stove, making sure the contents didn’t burn. Gem herself was at her kitchen table using a large pudding bowl to mix a vast amount of flour, suet and salt together to make dumplings. She had already made twelve loaves of soda bread which were cooling on the windowsill, when Robbie burst in.

  ‘Mam, where’s that box of toy cars I had as a kid? You didn’t throw them away, did you? I hope not.’

  She looked at him blankly as she spooned cold water into the dumpling mix, careful not to overdo it which would make the dumplings hard. ‘Box of toy cars?’ she repeated quizzically.

  ‘You remember, I collected them when I was little and by the time I grew out of playing with them I’d got at least forty.’

  She twigged then. ‘Yes, yes, I remember. You used to take one of the cars to bed with you and cuddle it like you would a teddy.’ She then said agitatedly, ‘But why are you mithering me about those cars now when you can see how busy I am?’

  ‘It’s just that I promised Lol Fisher’s lad, Matty, that he could play with them if he stops pestering his dad. He’s being a right little bugger, keeps pinching tools and running off with them, seems to think it’s funny that his dad has to chase him to get them back, even though Lol has warned him he’ll murder him if he doesn’t stop it. I think he will murder him if he doesn’t, Lol’s that fired up. We’re already behind erecting the fair with half the men getting here late and a murder will put us even further behind. We’ll never have it all done before we open tomorrow. I warned Matty to behave himself while I get the box of cars and he promised me he would but I’m worried he won’t be able to control himself and start playing up his dad again, so I need to find the box quick and get back.’

  Had Gem not been feeling so pressured herself to get the meal finished, she would have laughed at Robbie’s comment. She said tersely, ‘Well, yes, that’s a good idea giving Matty your box of old cars to play with to get him to stop annoying his dad, but why are you mithering me about it?’

  ‘Well, as I said, I don’t know where the box of cars is. Can you remember where you would have stored them? I’ve already looked under Jimmy’s bottom bunk and it’s not there.’

  She sighed as she stopped what she was doing to try to remember where she had stored the box of cars. Then it struck her. ‘I remember seeing it now inside the hidey-hole under me and your dad’s bed when we moved some stuff around to make space to hide Col. If it’s not there I don’t know where it could be. Now, leave me be to get on with my work or the men will never be fed. Oi, and make sure
you leave the bedroom as you find it!’

  In his hurry, Robbie yanked off the bedclothes, then the mattress, heaping them by the curtained wardrobe, then felt inside for the small knob of wood in the corner. Once found, he pulled up the piece of wood that formed part of the base of the bed but also concealed the hidden space underneath. To his dismay the space was filled with all sorts of items, some his mother had kept for sentimental reasons, but most of it he could not fathom why. Especially the old clothes of his and his brother, long ago grown out of, and a burnt orange glass punch bowl and twelve cups that hung from hooks off the rim of the bowl, a wedding present from a now-dead aunt of his father’s that he knew his mother hated and had never used. But under that lot somewhere was the box he was after.

  He began pulling out the clothes first. In his haste to get to whatever was hidden beneath them, he did not notice that, as he yanked out an old jumper that he’d been six years of age the last time he had worn it, from out of the folds a small oilskin-wrapped package flew out, to sail over his shoulder and land inside one of his mother’s well-worn wellingtons, standing erect in the bottom of the wardrobe beside other pairs of her shoes.