by Lynda Paige
Solly stood on the doorstep and watched him go before he returned back into the kitchen area where both him and Gem let out great exhales of relief.
It was Gem who spoke first. ‘What a thoroughly unpleasant man. I could tell by his face that he took your threat to him seriously so I think we can safely say we’ve seen the last of him. Let’s go and tell Col the good news.’
They went along the narrow corridor off the living area, one side of which was their sons’ shared bunkroom, the other the tiny washroom, pulled aside a floor-to-ceiling curtain and entered their bedroom together. The bed itself filled three-quarters of the space at the back under the deep-silled leaded bow window. At the bottom of the bed on one side was a curtained-off space for hanging up clothes and opposite a narrow long-shelved cupboard, with a long mirror on the door, held underwear, woollen wear, shoes and suchlike. A foot or so below the bowed ceiling ran a continuous shelf which held all sorts of Solly and Gem’s personal possessions. Gem took off the bedclothes and piled them on top of a row of their shoes in the makeshift hanging wardrobe, then together they pulled off the thickly filled feather mattress and piled it in a heap behind them. This left them both looking into the empty box base of the bed.
To the untrained eye the base of the box appeared to be the bottom of the van itself. At the front in the right-hand corner though was a tiny knob of wood which, using a thumb and index finger and pulled on, lifted up to reveal another box-type space underneath, roughly four feet wide by five feet long, originally created by the maker of the caravan as storage space, which is what Gem and Solly usually used it for. But on occasion, as with the case of Kathy Folds desperately trying to escape her violent husband and now with Col from the clutches of the bully Archie Cox, it could conceal a body. For the person hiding inside, it was cramped, uncomfortable and claustrophobic, time crawling by in the pitch black, apart from the light from a torch whilst the battery lasted. But to them it was more than worth enduring the suffering to escape their miserable lives at the hands of their persecutors.
Col’s terrified face greeted them, worried that Cox had taken control of them somehow and were forcing them to reveal his whereabouts. Col was blinded for a moment as light flooded into the box but, as soon as his eyes accustomed themselves to it, he saw Solly and Gem smiling down at him and he visibly relaxed, heaving a huge sigh of relief.
Extending a hand to aid Col out, Solly told him, ‘I suspect you won’t be sorry to say goodbye to our hidey-hole, Col.’
Standing upright now, he looked at them blankly for a moment before he hesitantly ventured, ‘Does that mean he’s… he’s gone for good? I really won’t ever see him again? When I heard the noise of the mattress being taken off and then his voice I was so frightened he was going to find me I daren’t breathe. Any second I expected the lid to lift up and see his face… and… and… him force me to go back with him.’ With great pleasure Gem laid a reassuring hand on his bony arm and emphatically assured him, ‘You won’t ever have to see that man again, Col. Not after Solly warned him what would happened if he ever caught him nosing around our fair again.’
A great flood of tears filled Col’s eyes and gushed down his face. He leapt on Solly and hugged him crushingly, blubbering. ‘Oh, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. Oh, thank…’
‘I think we’ve got the message,’ laughed Solly as he prised Col off him.
‘Although you don’t have to hide inside the hole any longer it might be wise to stay out of sight until we move on Sunday morning, just as a precaution in case Cox didn’t believe us. He might lurk outside somewhere, hoping to catch us out. After the fair closes tonight, we’ll sneak you over to Iris and Bert. They’re desperate to meet you and welcome you into their family. Every time I see either of them they want to know how you are and if you're looking forward to coming to them as much as they are. Iris has got your bed all ready and has sorted out some clothes for you. I’m going to give her some of my boys’ clothes for you too.’
Col was too choked to speak.
Chapter Six
A while later, having fed her family and cleared up afterwards, leaving Col happily sitting on the sofa wading his way through a pile of her sons’ old childhood comics they’d refused to part with, Gem was just leaving the van to go over to the helter-skelter when she frowned, perplexed to see a policeman entering the living van area. Immediately, a great worry filled her. A visit from such officials usually meant they were in trouble of some sort. What they could be in trouble for, she had no idea though. As far as she knew, they’d had no problems of any sort at the fair during this annual visit here so she just hoped that one of the fairfolk hadn’t caused any bother while they’d ventured out into the wider community. If serious enough, the fair could be ordered to pack up and leave and their revenue for the rest of the week would be lost to them all. Then she noticed that trailing subduedly behind the policeman were sixteen fairfolk children, ages ranging from five to thirteen, that had been seen off to school by their individual parents earlier that morning.
Confusion written all over her face, she bounded down the van steps and rushed over to meet the policeman.
Before she could ask him why he was here with the children he asked, ‘These yours?’
‘Well not personally, officer, but they all belong to fairfolk here. Why are you here with them when they should be in school?’
He was a middle-aged, portly man with a large walrus moustache and bushy eyebrows. Although he was acting stern, Gem couldn’t fail to notice a twinkle of amusement in his hazel eyes. He breathed deeply in, then puffed out his barrel chest before he responded, ‘Should be but that’s not where I found them.’
All the children were looking guilty, shuffling uncomfortably. She demanded of them, ‘And just where did this nice policeman find you all?’
They all looked at each other. It was the eldest, Tommy Dawson, whose father worked for Grundy’s as an all-rounder – labourer, driver and helping to man the rides, his mother helping out also wherever needed at the time – that finally elected himself as spokesperson. He was a tall, well-made boy with a shock of jet-black hair well overdue for a cut. He raised his chin in the air and said in a defiant manner, ‘Playing on the bomb site the other side of the canal.’
This was not the first time the children had been caught playing truant. Secretly she couldn’t blame them as she knew that attending a different school every week during term times, most times, was a very unpleasant ordeal. Except for the isolated occasion when they had a compassionate teacher that encouraged the rest of the class to be accepting towards them and at least tried to actually take the time to teach them something. She heaved a sigh and shook her head at them before saying to the policeman, ‘I’m so sorry, officer, the children know they’re not supposed to leave the school without permission. I promise this won’t happen again.’ The promise was a hollow one; whilst certain teachers perceived fairground children as they did, the children would retaliate against their unwarranted treatment by disassociating themselves from it.
He took her aside, his eyes twinkling humorously. ‘Can’t say as I blame them wagging school. I hated it too and got a thick ear many times from my parents for being caught doing it. One of the local women reported them to us. She told me she hated to spoil their fun and, believe me, they certainly were having that when I arrived to round them up, but she was worried they might hurt themselves as the site is dangerous. It’s been cordoned off by wire fencing but some bright spark cut a hole in the fence. I’m always being called to herd local kids off from playing on it.’
Gem eyed him, surprised. It was a rare occasion for an outsider to show compassion towards fairfolk, not seeing them as the dregs of the earth. ‘Please thank the lady for me.’ Then she asked him worriedly ‘Are the children in trouble?’
He smiled kindly at her. ‘Not this time but if I catch them again…’
‘You won’t, officer,’ she assured him.
He looked towards the main fa
irground. ‘I’m looking forward to tonight. Bringing my wife and six-year-old granddaughter along. It’s her first visit to the fair and she’s so excited.’
‘In that case I’m on the House of Fun tonight so I’ll make sure you all get a free pass. My way of thanking you for being so understanding about the kids.’
He accepted her gesture with great pleasure and, after reiterating his warning to behave themselves to the children, he made his leave.
With hands on hips she sighed with frustration as she scanned them, still looking guilty. But, before she could say anything, Tommy spoke up. ‘Please don’t send us back ter that school, Mrs Grundy. It’s ’orrible, it is. The teacher don’t like us, said we were dirty tykes that hadn’t the brains to learn nothing and shouldn’t be allowed in the school with decent kids. She told the other kids to have nothing to do with us in case they caught lice.’
Gem stared at him, horrified. ‘She said what?’
‘She did, Mrs Grundy, ’onest,’ he declared. ‘She made us all sit in the cloakroom and gave us some tatty old books. She told us if we made a sound we’d get the cane.’ He put his arm protectively around a young boy standing next to him. ‘’Arry was so scared of that ’orrible teacher he daren’t ask to go to the toilet and he wet himself.’
Gem looked down at the young lad’s crotch area, appalled to see the dark stain on his grey short trousers and her heart went out to him for the embarrassment this must have caused him.
Eight-year-old Molly Adkins, whose parents owned the rifle range stall, spoke up then. The hem of her dress had partly come down; Gem assumed she had caught it on something jagged when playing on the bomb site as her mother would never have sent her to school looking anything but immaculate. She had lost one of the ribbons securing her long fair hair into two bunches, so one side was hanging down. ‘At breaktime one of the older kids pinched my sandwiches and threw them on the bike shed roof. I sawed the teacher had seen him do it but she just turned around and pretended she hadn’t. Tommy was mad when I told him what the boy had done and started to climb the bike shed to get them for me or I’d have had to go hungry at dinner time but the teacher sawed him and came and dragged him off and started whacking him with her stick, screaming at him he was a vandal. That’s when we decided to leave.’
‘It was my idea to skive off, Mrs Grundy, and I made the others come with me,’ Tommy told her boldly.
Gem saw another child go to speak up then and the warning look Tommy shot him to keep his mouth shut. It was obvious to her that it wasn’t Tommy who had been the instigator of them all playing truant, it was a unanimous decision, and she couldn’t at all blame them. As the oldest he was taking the responsibility for it by way of protecting the others from the possible backlash from their angry parents when they found out what had transpired. She admired him for that.
Anger was bubbling away inside her. She had known all of them from the moment they’d been born and, same as any children, they all got up to mischief at some time or another and didn’t always obey their parents but, on the whole, they were well-behaved and well-mannered. Had the teacher allowed them to sit in her class and given them some encouragement they could have learned a lot during their week there and even enjoyed it. Gem did appreciate how frustrating it must be for any teacher to suddenly find their class swelled by an extra dozen they’d to accommodate for a week; the time-consuming task of finding out what level of education each were at and advance that in someway. Most didn’t bother, just gave them books to look through or paper to draw on to while away their time. But this particular teacher had deliberately done what she could to make their time at her school as miserable for them as she possibly could. No child deserved to be treated so appallingly and especially by a teacher whose job it was to educate, nurture and protect those under their charge, no matter their own feelings on the society those children belonged to.
It wasn’t Gem’s decision as the children were not her own but when she explained to them how their children had been treated, she doubted the parents would be sending them back to that school again. Nevertheless, as a member of the family the children’s parents all worked for, she felt a deep responsibility for their welfare and an overwhelming need to confront the teacher over her despicable behaviour towards them.
She sent the children off to find a parent and explain to them why they were home early. Then she asked Tommy to go and find Solly and tell him she had a sudden urgent errand to go on and could he find someone to man the pay booth of the helter-skelter during her absence. She returned back into her living van to collect her outdoor coat and handbag, then set off for the local school.
The school was a one-class, one-teacher type, a remnant of bygone times when the area used to be a village a mile or so away from the town but had been swallowed up inside its boundaries when the town had slowly expanded. Like all such small schools dotted around the country, it was to be closed when the construction of a modern school was finished and all the pupils from several smaller schools surrounding it were amalgamated. Gem arrived just as the pupils were heading back into their classroom after dinner hour was over. Gem expected the teacher to be an elderly, bony, pinch-faced, humourless woman, based on her behaviour. It was the image of a formidable, spinster-type governess she had conjured up whilst reading novels and portrayed by actresses in films set in Dickensian times. Therefore she was utterly shocked, on enquiring from the caretaker of the teacher’s whereabouts, to be pointed out a young, pretty, slim, fashionably dressed woman with a happy smile on her face, arms filled with books, jauntily heading down the corridor towards the classroom they were all heading into.
Gem went over to waylay her.
Looking enquiringly at the smartly dressed woman exuding an air of confidence about her, assuming she was something to do with the school board or council education department, the teacher asked politely, ‘Can I help you?’
‘Yes you can. You can help me understand why you treated the fairground children so despicably this morning?’
The younger woman looked at her, taken aback. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘It’s not my pardon you should be begging, it’s all of those children’s.’
The woman said with conviction, ‘I had to be firm with them as they started to cause trouble from the moment they arrived, wouldn’t do as they were told. Anyway, what is it to do with you how I manage the children? I am the headmistress. Just who are you?’
Gem cut her short. ‘Firm! Is that what you call making the children sit in the cloakroom by themselves and turning a blind eye to an older boy bullying one of the younger fairground girls? Her sandwiches were thrown onto a roof and when one of the fairground boys tried to get them back for her so she wouldn’t go hungry at dinnertime, you personally dragged him down and thrashed him with your cane. That is more than being firm, that is pure cruelty. And I dispute that any of them were causing trouble from the moment they arrived. They have all been raised to respect adults and know what the consequences are if they’re sent home for being disobedient.’ Gem then shot her a look of disgust. ‘You have no right to call yourself a teacher. A teacher is someone who wants to impart their knowledge to anyone who is willing to listen and to nurture and encourage that learning in them. You did none of that for those children today. You never even tried. You should be thoroughly ashamed of yourself. They might not be able to read and write as well as your pupils and that is simply because teachers like you never bother to take the time to teach them how, but the fairground children could have taught you and your pupils so much if you had encouraged them to. They could have talked about nature, all the places they have visited up and down the country, about how to navigate by the stars as their parents have showed them and so much more, but that is you and your pupils’ loss. Anyway, I expect you’ll be delighted to hear that those children will not be returning to suffer any more of your unjustified tyranny towards them.’
She made to turn and walk away, but the teacher stopped her by
asking, ‘Just why is an educated, well-bred woman like you so interested in such dirty low-lives? Are you just some do-gooder with nothing better to do?’
Gem took great delight in informing her, ‘Yes, I do come from a decent family and had a good education. When I was a young girl I was as narrow-minded and bigoted as you are. But then I met a man that introduced me into a community of people I was taught were scum and it was proved to me I was so wrong to make judgements based on what others had told me. I saw for myself how hard-working these people are, just trying to earn their living in the way their ancestors have done for hundreds of years so they could look after their families the best they can, the same as the people I come from were doing and those you live amongst too. They take pride in their homes and raise their children to have good manners and morals. The only difference is that they have to travel around to make their living so don’t have the benefit of having some of the modern facilities that you have at your disposal. I am no do-gooder. Those people you feel so beneath you are my people. I have been married to a showman for the last twenty years, very happily. I have never once regretted swapping the wonderful life I live, travelling through the beautiful countryside, staying in a different place every week and meeting some lovely people along the way for the drudge of a life I could have lived had I not met my husband. For the one you live, in fact, in your little rented flat or house with only other brick buildings to look at through the windows, the condition of your place dependant on whether you have a good landlord or not, trudging the same treeless streets every day and nodding a good morning to the same miserable people off to airless factories or offices, breathing in smoke-filled air. The only thing for you all to look forward to is a few days at the seaside every year if you can afford it and having yourselves a few hours of fun once a year when the travelling funfair comes to town, which I will remind you is provided for you by those people you think so little of.’ She paused for a moment to take a long breath after her long tirade before she added, ‘Maybe now you might take the trouble to find out first whether gossip and rumours are true, such as the ones you hear about fairfolk and their lives, before you take them for gospel. Then you won’t have to face the embarrassment when you find out you were so very wrong to. Good-day.’