by Bates, H. E.
On the luxurious dove-grey seat at the back the Brigadier started to say something and then realized that, hermetically sealed off as he was by the car’s glass division, his voice couldn’t be heard with anything like precision in the front. At this instant Pop barked down the speaking-tube:
‘Use the tube, General, old man. Use the tube.’
Hanging on to a yellow silk cord with one hand and taking up the speaking tube with the other the Brigadier gave several dry, gruff coughs and then said:
‘Larkin, my dear fellow, it was in my mind to ask you something.’
‘Strike me if I don’t think it’s my old pal Fruity,’ Pop said. ‘Old Fruity Pears.’
‘How’s the swings and roundabouts? How’s the fair lark, Fruity?’
‘If it ain’t me ole china Syd. If it ain’t me ole china.’
The fragile monkey-faced figure in charge of the coconut shy, dressed in black trousers, a cream polo-necked sweater and a small old-fashioned black bowler, needed only a towel slung over his shoulder to be a second out of some fairground boxing ring. His toothless mouth shot open like a trap. His eyes, completely colourless, watered suddenly with surprise, disbelief and pleasure. His scrawny yellow fingers gripped Pop’s hand like eager talons.
‘Must be ten year. Must be ten year.’
His voice was cracked. Pop, pump-handling with friendly vigour, asked again how the fair lark was, the swings and roundabouts and all that and then, taking a swift look about him, knew there wasn’t much need for an answer. Four children on the roundabout, where the fat little figure of Mrs Fruity was turning the handle, and two youths with heavy side-burns and stiff crew cuts, in black sweaters, drain-pipe jeans and winkle-pickers, made up the entire custom of the afternoon. There wasn’t even any music coming from the roundabout, which went round and round in silent procession, cockerels following little racing cars, peacocks after buses, like a ghostly quaking wheel.
‘Finished. Busted. Thinking of turning it in. Can’t compete with telly. Some days we don’t take half a quid.’
Another little bit of old England gone, Pop thought, and in an immense effort to be cheerful slapped the fragile Fruity on the back, a blow which made him quiver like a straw in the wind, and then introduced his friends Miss Pilchester and the Brigadier.
Fruity, gazing at the pinkly arrayed figure of the Brigadier, said something like ‘Strewth!’ under his breath and silently wondered if he hadn’t better start up a freak tent again, with two-headed dogs and a bearded lady, like the one he’d had twenty years ago. He’d never seen anybody quite like the Brigadier before.
‘Well, we’ll have to see if we can’t boost the till up a bit, shan’t we? What’ll it be, General? Roundabouts, coconuts, swings or what? Don’t have no music on the roundabout, Fruity. How’s that?’
‘The old organ’s busted and I can’t git it mended. Couldn’t afford it even if I could.’
‘Edith, what about you? Try the lot? Go on the swings with me? What’ll you start with?’
‘I should absolutely adore to knock a coconut.’
‘Coconuts it is an’ all then. Give us five bobs’ worth o’balls, Fruity old man.’
Over at the swings the two youths in winkle-pickers were larking with the boats, swinging them at crazy angles. One boat splintered against an upright and Fruity paused at the business of handing out coconut balls to yell creakily for them to stop it and merely got a gesture of two stiff obscene fingers in reply.
They was ’ere one day afore,’ Fruity said. ‘It was them what busted the old organ up. Didn’t like the tunes it played. Not new enough, they said.’
‘Ignore ’em,’ Pop said. ‘Only thing to do. Edith, your first throw.’
‘The old organ cost me fifty quid when I bought it. Hi! cut that out, you young bastards! I tell you stop it, the pair of you!’
Laughing, the winkle-pickers crashed the boats again.
Throw, Edith. Ignore ’em. Take no notice.’
With surprising force and inaccuracy Miss Pilchester hurled wooden balls at the coconuts. The Brigadier started throwing too, with no success at all and so vigorously at one attempt that his pink cap dropped off. Fruity picked it up for him, and staring at it with greater disbelief than ever, laid it on the crate of balls.
Pop also started throwing, with a mixture of athletic flourish and abandon, twice striking a coconut with such force that Edith Pilchester shrieked ‘Splendid!’ at top voice. Playfully, when the coconut didn’t fall, Pop accused Fruity of having ’em stuck on with glue or summat and Fruity looked pained, more monkeylike than ever, and said he never went in for that sort of thing and Pop ought to know him better.
The balls were expended rapidly and Edith Pilchester cried with a sort of rapturous lack of hope that it was absolutely ghastly and that she’d never get one and it was the one thing she absolutely must have.
Pop started to call for another five bobs’ worth of balls but his voice was smothered by a shattering crack of wood against wood from the direction of the swings as a boat, upended, twisted from its hooks and fell.
The alarm sent three children scurrying from the roundabouts. Fruity, his monkey face grey with rage, started running too. Pop held him back. The Brigadier thought it prudent to pick up his umbrella and started to say something about ‘Hadn’t they better close ranks?’ when the two winkle-pickers, suddenly tired of the swing-boats as of a broken toy, started sidling across the paddock.
‘Keep throwing, Edith. Ignore ’em. You’ll get one yet.’
Something in Edith Pilchester’s normally rather loose and ungainly frame seemed to tighten up. She limbered herself to throw and did so with such accuracy that she actually struck a coconut fair and square. For a few seconds it wobbled but failed to fall and she cried out again in typical anguish that it was absolutely ghastly.
The winkle-pickers were now at the shooting gallery. The taller of the two, who sported a thin red boot-lace tie, picked up a rifle and started loading it. Fruity yelled again and over at the roundabout Mrs Fruity hustled the remaining children away.
‘Put that bloody gun down! Put it down and git orf, I tell you. Put the bloody thing down!’
The winkle-picker with red boot-lace turned and with arrogant calm pointed the gun straight at Fruity. The horror of seeing a loaded gun pointed at someone so outraged every military instinct left alive in the Brigadier that he ripped out sternly, shaking his umbrella:
‘By God, don’t be a damn fool! Never point a gun, you idiot!’
The tallest winkle-picker slung the gun over his shoulder, holding it by the barrel. Together the two of them sidled over to the coconuts.
‘Everybody’s got big mouths round here. What’s all the shouting for? Everybody shouts.’
Pop turned his back and threw two balls with calm and accuracy at the coconuts.
‘Keep throwing, Edith. We’ll get one yet.’
‘So the lady wants a coconut, does she?’
The Brigadier was pale. He thought the situation sticky. It mightn’t be so bad for himself and Pop but he feared for Edith and said:
‘Now look here, you fellows –’
‘Belt up, Tweedledum.’
‘Now, one moment –’
‘So the lady wants a coconut, does she? So the lady shall have a coconut. Give the lady a coconut.’
Nobody moved.
‘I said give the lady a coconut, grandad. You ‘eard.’
Again nobody moved and again something seemed to tighten up in Edith Pilchester.
‘All right, if grandad won’t give the lady a coconut somebody else’ll ‘ave to.’ In two lazy strides the taller winkle-picker was over by the pile of coconuts. He picked one up. He spun it in the air, turned and thrust it into Edith Pilchester’s hands. ‘In fact two coconuts. The lady shall ‘ave two coconuts.’
He picked up another, put that into Edith Pilchester’s hands too and said:
‘Everybody ‘appy now? We want everybody to be ‘appy. Everybody ‘
appy? No, grandad don’t look very ‘appy. Why you not ‘appy, grandad?’
‘You leave my bloody gear alone!’
‘Nobody’s not touching no gear. Nobody’s not touching nothing. Not touching nothing, are we, Jed?’
Jed said no, nobody wasn’t touching nothing.
‘I ought to bust your clock in!’ Fruity said, ‘you ignorant bastard.’
‘You called me that once already, grandad, but not no more.’ The butt of the rifle made a short swinging stab through the air. It struck the left side of Fruity’s monkey face just behind the ear. Without a cry he made an almost trance-like fall over the pile of coconuts, pouring blood.
Pop, not often enraged, turned with fury, only to find the shorter of the two winkle-pickers, Jed, pointing an open razor straight at the pit of his stomach.
‘Go on, stick it in. I’ll just bleed shandy.’
‘No funny business. Back over there. Go on, back.’
The razor made sinister bright passes at the air and Pop backed seven or eight paces away from the coconut shy. Nobody said a word and the dull damp afternoon seemed curiously dead until suddenly a cataclysmic fury broke out in the form of the demon rising out of Edith Pilchester.
With an accuracy born of pure rage she hurled a coconut. It struck the shorter winkle-picker dead in the small of the back. His surprise was not merely infinite. It paralysed him where he stood. His fingers stiffened open with shock and he dropped the razor.
Pop, stooping to pick it up, was confronted by the extraordinary spectacle of Edith Pilchester running amok or going berserk or whatever it was they called it. He’d never seen anything like it. The demon was in full cry. A second coconut struck the shorter winkle-picker in precisely the same place as the first. The thud of it sickened the air and he crumpled slowly to his knees with a sort of gulping tender sigh.
A moment later Edith Pilchester started madly hurling coconut balls in all directions. Pop, having now picked up the razor and turning just in time to see the red-tie winkle-picker in sharp retreat, found himself in a shower of wooden rain. Balls were falling wildly all about him and one, straight as an arrow, hit him full in the left eye, as plumb as could be.
Half-blind but undaunted he tore after the retreating winkle-picker. He caught him by the top scruff of his crew cut with one hand and with the nimblest of gestures slit the razor through the thin leather belt with the other. The slow resulting fall of the trousers half-way to his knees brought from Edith Pilchester a low howl, which in turn rose to a scream and finally to a great burst of demonaic laughter.
The Brigadier, helping Mrs Fruity to staunch Fruity’s blood with a handkerchief, paused to utter cryptic congratulations.
‘Well played, Edith, good show. Stout fellow, Larkin.’
Edith, coming out of a sort of mad trance, could only stare at Pop’s face and howl again. My dear, how in heaven’s name had she come to do anything so absolutely ghastly? Pop, in turn, felt momentarily a bit cock-eyed and started to walk round in odd circles. The eye was going to be a beauty.
It was enough to make you die laughing, though, in a way, he thought. He’d never seen anything like it. It was almost worth a shiner to see Edith like that. It really made you wonder what was inside people and suddenly he actually began laughing and said:
‘Well, we’ve had the winkle-pickers but somehow I don’t think Ma’ll get her whelks and winkles now. We’d better get old Fruity to a doctor.’
Back at home, Ma looked with remarkably dispassionate interest at the eye, now darkening beautifully, and asked what had happened to the other fellow?
‘It was a woman.’
‘Oh? Well, I’m always telling you how you’ll end up.’
Pop proceeded to explain, with an almost light brevity, that it had, in fact, been Edith.
‘Oh? Went too far for once?’
‘No. Nothing like that. She hit me with a coconut ball.’
At this Ma laughed so much that she couldn’t get her breath for several minutes and had to be thumped hard on the back by Pop, just as if she’d swallowed a fish-bone. For a time Pop seriously thought she was going to have one of her turns.
When she had calmed herself again and dried her eyes Pop apologized about the whelks and winkles but said that after all he and Edith and the Brigadier had really been very busy with other things. Ma said it didn’t matter a bit: she’d make do with a drop of champagne and smoked salmon instead.
*
Coming home the following evening from visiting Fruity in hospital, where he had taken him a few modest comforts such as grapes, strawberries, cherries, half a pound of tobacco, a bottle of whisky and a tin of butter-balls, Pop kissed Ma in prolonged and passionate greeting, as if he hadn’t seen her for a month or so, and then said, laughing, that he had a big surprise for her. Could she guess what?
‘How many guesses?’
‘Three.’
‘Well, I’ll start with women.’
Rather to Ma’s surprise – though she never really experienced any very deep or protracted surprise at anything Pop said or did – Pop said no, it wasn’t wimmin.
‘Funny. By the way your eye’s come up lovely.’ There was something peculiarly funny about the eye; she very nearly collapsed every time she looked at it. ‘Hurt much? Shall I put a bit more steak on it?’
No, it was a waste of good steak, Pop thought. Next guess?
‘Not been drowning anybody again?’
Pop said no and what was more he’d never drowned anybody anyway.
‘Charley says it was a good job too. He says it’s what’s called being an accessory before the fact.’
‘Never? Accessory, what’s that? Blimey. One more guess.’
Ma, laughing warmly, said she hoped it hadn’t got anything to do with any more Regency pots? and Pop said no, it wasn’t that either.
‘Well, go on then. You’d better make a clean breast of it straight away.’
Pop, who by this time had lit up one of his Havanas, blew exquisite smoke, looking exceptionally pleased with himself. He looked what Ma called extra cockatooish; almost like he sometimes did just before he got half-whistled, so that she could only guess he must have brought off some very nice deal.
‘No, as a matter of fact, Ma,’ he said, ‘I just bought a fair.’
‘Oh! really? A fair? What sort? Roundabouts and that?’
‘Swings, coconut shy, shooting gallery, one roundabout and a dart stall.’
‘Oh! really?’ Ma said. ‘Sounds very nice. Where’d you pick that up?’
Pop went on to explain about Fruity: how the telly and all that had pretty nigh ruined Fruity and how, what with one thing and another, getting old and teddy boys playing him up and now the blow on the conk, he felt he couldn’t carry on. Had to sell out.
‘Felt I had to make it up to him somehow. Might never have happened if me and Edith and the General hadn’t been there. After all it practically all started with Edith and her coconuts. By the way the doctor says if Fruity hadn’t been wearing his bowler he’d have been in Kingdom Come.’
‘Makes you sick.’
‘Edith’s looking a bit pale round the gills an’ all too today. Says she can’t understand it. Can’t think what got into her. I told her it was the Ancient Briton coming out in her.’
Oh? Ma said, unperturbed by this inconsequential reference to the distant Britannic past, how did he account for that then?
‘Sort of throw-back,’ Pop said. ‘She’s been making woad or something. The General told me.’
Woad? Ma said. Something to drink, wasn’t it?
‘No, that’s mead,’ Pop said. ‘This woad stuff was what the Ancient Britons painted their bodies with. She’s going to dye wool with it. Blue, it is.’
Really, Ma said. Still, they did funny things in those days, though she supposed it wasn’t all that different, when you came to think of it, from rubbing yourself with sun-tan lotion and all that.
‘Suppose not,’ Pop said.
‘B
y the way, who do you think you’re going to sell this fair to?’
Pop, looking mildly pained at this question, said:
‘Sell it, Ma? Sell it?’
‘Course. Got to hock it to somebody, haven’t you?’
‘Not going to hock it, Ma. No fear. Going to keep it. For myself. For the kids. For us.’
‘Us? Bit on the big side, don’t you think?’
Pop’s voice immediately took on that special tone of velvet fervour he reserved for more eloquent soliloquies on his beloved countryside, its nightingales and blackbirds, bluebells and primroses, hay-time and high summer; and above all his beloved England.
It was, he went on to explain to Ma, – the fair, he was talking about – a little bit of old England. He wanted to save it for himself. Very like, in a few years, you wouldn’t see no more fairs, like Fruity’s, in little paddocks, behind little pubs. They would all be gone, like harvest home and may-poles and all that. The telly would have killed ’em all like it killed everything. Pop was getting tired of telly. They were all going boss-eyed, watching telly. What was on tonight anyway?
Ma said she thought there was nothing on worth watching at all. It was all a load of rubbish, like old Monty talking about winning the battle of Agincourt.
‘Got the wrong battle, haven’t you, Ma?’ After all they’d got to be fair to old Monty. They’d named a son after him.
‘Well, they’re all the same,’ Ma said. ‘Battles. Not a pin to choose between ’em. They make you tired.’
‘Going back to the fair,’ Pop said. ‘It might sound sentimental and all that to some folks. But that’s how it is. That’s how I feel.’
‘Where are you going to put it anyway?’
In the paddock, he told her. He was going to have the old busted organ repaired too, so that they could have a bit of gay music. He’d already asked Fruity what sort of tunes the old thing played and Fruity remembered there was Waiting For the Robert E. Lee, Lily of Laguna and several others, including that waltz, Gold and Silver. Did Ma remember that waltz? They’d danced to it a good few times in the old days.
‘And I’ll tell you what else I thought.’