All the Fun of the Fair

by Lynda Paige

  Just then she felt a hand on her shoulder and she jumped, eyes darting up to see who had accosted her, relieved to see it was Robbie grinning drunkenly down at her. He slurred, ‘We noticed you were missing and I was elected to come back to find you.’ Realising his little friend was tired, Robbie, despite her protests, hauled her to her feet then up onto his shoulders and she couldn’t help but shriek out in laughter as he ran back, with her clinging on for dear life, with her hands clasped around his forehead, to re-join their friends.

  * * *

  Les Pocock sat on his sagging bed, slapping a length of thick chain he was holding in one hand rythmically against his other palm, his face screwed up murderously. Not only was he furious that the girl he considered his own property had chosen a fairground worker above him, those scum from the fairground had got the better of him and, worse, one of them was a freak of a woman half his size. The other members of his gang would get to hear about this, that was if they hadn’t already, and his role as leader could be in question. He couldn’t have that. He was the big man in his world, the name of Les Pocock revered, and he meant to keep it that way. Besides, he had told that lowlife gypsy who had stolen Di off him that he would be sorry he had crossed Les Pocock and he was damned sure he was going to honour that threat and, in turn, redeem himself as the leader of the gang.

  Going over to his bedroom door he opened it and called out, ‘Finished sorting me suit out yet, Ma? If not, get a move on as I’m going out again.’ He had a gang to round up to do his bidding, to make sure those fairfolk rued the day they came to Barnsley.

  Chapter Eleven

  No matter how little sleep was gotten the night before by some members of the Grundy community, no matter how acute their hangovers, all the fairground folk were up and about the following Sunday morning at the crack of dawn. They beavered away over their allotted tasks, all ensuring that the maintenance jobs that had been put off until more time could be attributed to them, such as painting and repairs, as well as the usual daily ride safety checks were done to Sam Grundy’s high standards. Only then would time for leisure begin.

  With the sound of church bells ringing in the distance, eight women were sitting in a circle outside a caravan, shelling peas into bowls for each of their respective families’ Sunday dinners. They had already cleaned and polished their living accommodations, seen to any washing and, after dinner, there was a huge pile of ironing yet to do. So, although what they were doing now was work of a kind, it was easy and enjoyable and a chance to socialise. Four of the women were in their seventies, two of them widows, the other three in their forties; two were married to showmen, one to an all-round labourer and driver and the youngest woman in the group was a teenager lending her mother a hand. The four older women were reminiscing about the past.

  ‘Nearly had a riot on our hands,’ Betty Smith was saying in her aged, cracked voice. ‘Well, I mean, it wasn’t fair was it? Most of the punters were pedalling their hearts out on the velocipede and the rest were just sitting back enjoying the ride and putting no effort into it at all. Course, I am going back to the 1890s now, before we had generators to power the rides. Clever man he was, who came up with the idea for the velocipede.’

  Fourteen-year-old Kitty Pope hadn’t a clue what Betty was talking about. ‘Just what was the velocipede, Mrs Smith?’

  Betty was only too delighted to explain to her. ‘It was bicycles fixed to a roundabout, connected to some sort of pulley contraption underneath. Once the riders started to pedal, it would move them round, how quickly depended on how fast they all pedalled together.’

  ‘Sounds fun,’ said Kitty, putting peas she had just released from their pod into the bowl on her mother’s lap.

  Sadie Mickleton piped up, ‘Not that the rides aren’t fun these days but there was something magical about the times when steam engines powered them. My granddad had steam yachts, called Lusitania and Mauretania after the huge ships, that used to swing really high back and forth. My dad had a switchback ride where all the carriages were carved like Venetian gondolas, painted in gold with red velvet seats. When you rode around in them you felt just like a princess.’ Her old, rheumy eyes glazed distantly as past memories resurfaced. ‘Oh, it was summat so it was. Me as a young girl riding on those great stream tractors as we drove them through the town we’d come to play in to let the locals know we’d arrived. Like a carnival itself it was, all the tractors painted in their bright colours pulling the rides and living vans behind them, the locals waving and cheering as we passed and us waving back, throwing free tickets to some which there was always a mad scramble for. When we arrive in a town now and do our arrival parade down the high street it’s not quite the same to me as it was back then. I know the lorries are all painted up and we still all wave from the cabs and backs and those walking alongside hand out leaflets and the free ride tickets, but lorries don’t quite cause the same excitement as those huge steam-powered tractors did, in my opinion.’

  Gem nodded in understanding. ‘Yes, I remember my father taking me to a stream tractor rally when I was a little girl and, as you say, there was something magical about riding in one. You were so high up you felt you could see the whole world. The man who owned the tractor let me pull the whistle. Whoop, whoop!’ she mimicked. ‘I can still hear the noise the whistle made now and see the billows of steam coming out of it when I pulled the chain. The whistle had a tin cap on the top of it and holes in the sides that made the sound when the steam blew through it and, to me, it looked like the drawings of the Tin Man in the book I had called The Wizard of Oz.’

  Betty couldn’t read so had no idea what Gem was referring to. ‘I often wonder what happened to those two steam tractors me dad and granddad owned. Probably rotting in some farmer’s barn somewhere I expect, as no one uses them nowadays, do they?’

  Fran, who was sitting next to Gem, asked the old lady, ‘Did your dad sell the tractors then, when we went over to generators? Bet you were sad to see them go from what you’ve told us.’

  She nodded. ‘I was sad to see them go, yes. Mam had no choice as she couldn’t run the rides herself when me dad was killed, with us kids all still very young then and with her having Granny to look after as well. Granddad was dead himself when it happened, so all we had was Mam to look after us all.’

  ‘Oh, your father was killed. I didn’t know that, Betty. How did it happen?’ Gem asked her.

  ‘He was fixing one of the tractors, putting on a new belt when he shouted something to the lad that was helping him who thought he’d said for him to start it up and so he did and the belt caught Dad up in it when it started to whirl around. Obviously that wasn’t what my dad did shout to him but what it was we’ll never know. Anyway, it was horrible… chopped to pieces he was and scattered all ways. We owed money on the rides and by the time Mam paid off all that was owing by selling the rides she’d just enough money to bury him and buy the darts stall, which is what the family is still running today.’

  ‘A great uncle of mine had a similar fate,’ spoke up Tilda Pope, Kitty’s mother. ‘He was larking about though at the time, showing off to a girl he had a fancy for by trying to climb up on the canopy while the tractor was still moving. He slipped off and was crushed to death when one of the wheels went over him. Lads still lark about and get hurt, killed even, these days only it’s the lorries they do it on not the steam tractors. Anyway, I meant to thank you for the bit of cake you sent over to me yesterday, Betty. Lovely it was.’

  Betty smiled. ‘My pleasure. Can’t lay claim to making it meself as my wrists aren’t up to whisking up butter and sugar together any longer so I bought it from that grocery shop down the road. Not bad for shop-bought, was it? That reminds me, Gem, what on earth is up with Big Sam lately? I mean, he can be grumpy on the happiest of days but yesterday I asked him if he’d like a piece of the cake as he was passing my van and he didn’t even answer me.’

  Gem thought she had a good idea but family business was kept in the family. She did hope th
ough that Sam got over his disappointment with Velda soon as she couldn’t deny his grouchy mood was getting on all his family’s nerves and, from what Betty had just said, affecting his workers too. She responded lightly, ‘He probably never heard you, Betty. I’ve been suspecting for a while he’s going deaf. He is over seventy after all.’

  One of the other younger women spoke up. ‘Well he heard me alright when I asked him yesterday if I could pay our stall rent late cos I had to get some new shoes for my Billy as there’s more holes in the bottom of the ones he has than shoe leather. Do you know what the old bugger said to me? “We didn’t have shoes at all when I was a kid and it didn’t do me any harm. Rent’s due tonight.” And then he just walked away.’

  Gem secretly felt that Sam had been a little harsh with the young woman as she would have allowed her to be late paying her rent in the circumstances but then, in fairness to Sam, if it got around that he had allowed one stallholder to be late paying their pitch rent then they would all try it on and his authority as boss would be undermined. She said, ‘Well, with respect to Sam, if everyone was late with their rent he wouldn’t be able to pay his bills to keep the fair running and we’d all be up the swanny without a paddle.’

  As a member of the family, Fran was very aware that this conversation would be uncomfortable for her sister-in-law so thought it best to put a stop to it. She announced, ‘That sounds like some of the men coming back so if any of yours are amongst them, ladies, they’ll be wanting their dinner. I’ve enough peas to do us, so I’d best go and check how my meat is doing. Got a nice piece of mutton from that butcher down the road and he was kind enough to bung me some beef fat to render down for dripping so my Yorkshire pudding will be the bee’s knees today, cooked in that. Not often a flattie gives us something for nothing, is it?’

  Gem looked at Fran excitedly and whispered so the others couldn’t hear, ‘Oh yes, Jonny is coming to dinner today, isn’t he? I hope it goes well.’

  Fran went to respond but was stopped by Eunice Sidebottom, one of the other older woman, saying, ‘You’ve got Jonny Hiddles coming for his dinner with you today, haven’t you, Fran?’

  Fran gawped, shocked. ‘How did you know that?’

  She shrugged. ‘Don’t know who told me.’ She looked at her neighbour. ‘Was it you, Betty?’

  ‘No, it’s news to me. Glad for you though, Fran. That Jonny seems a nice man. Helped me a few times without me having to ask and always very pleasant, I’ve found him. ’Bout time you had some happiness, long time ago now you lost your Josh and no one mourned the loss of a husband more than you did, Fran. You could pick far worse than Jonny, to my mind.’

  Gem was trying not to laugh at the look on her sister-in-law’s face that her private life wasn’t, it seemed, as private as she had thought it was.

  Fran bristled. ‘Glad I’ve got your approval, Betty. I’ll make a point of letting you all know how it goes. Better hearing it from the horse’s mouth than exaggerated through the mouths of several others.’

  She made to rise when the peace was suddenly shattered by loud, angry shouts and the bashing of metal against metal. They all automatically looked in the direction of the fairground where it was coming from, although the living vans were blocking their view.

  ‘What the hell is going—’ Gem was cut short as louder crashing noises, of denting metal and splintering wood, and angrier shouts resounded. She jumped up from her chair, unmindful of spilling the bowl of peas off her lap and, with the others following behind her, ran off towards the main fairground. As she squeezed herself between two stalls and entered the arena, the sight that met her froze her rigid. A swarm of Teddy Boys, at least thirty of them, armed with thick lengths of chain, lump hammers, axes, long knives and other assorted dangerous-looking implements, were rampaging around smashing at anything in their wake. The half dozen fairground men who had still been working away inside the main fairground when the gang had first arrived and begun their rampage of destruction had armed themselves with whatever was to hand and were chasing them around, hell-bent on stopping them. A few feet away one of the fairground men was lying out cold on the ground, a gash on his head pouring with blood.

  Gem spun around and shouted to the women behind her, ‘Go and get the rest of the men and, Kitty, run to the telephone box and call the police, tell them what’s happening and to get here quick and send an ambulance too.’

  Gem made to spin back around but Fran caught her arm. ‘Where are you going? You can’t go in there, you could get hurt… killed!’

  ‘Vic Gallows has been hurt. It could be ages before an ambulance gets here so I have to see what I can do for him.’

  Fran knew there would be no changing of her sister-in-law’s mind once she had made it up, so she didn’t waste time trying. ‘I’ll fetch my first-aid kit,’ she called out as she ran back to her living van.

  Unmindful of her own safety, Gem ran into the fairground and over to Vic, dropping down beside him. Despite the mayhem that was going on around her, she calmly assured the injured man, ‘It’s alright, Vic, Fran’s gone to fetch her first-aid box and the ambulance will be here soon.’ But she was talking to herself as the man was out cold. She lifted her head and looked dazedly around at the battle raging around her. Teddy Boys were smashing everything in their wake, a handful of fairground men trying to stop them. Then her blood ran cold as she saw a figure race past her armed with a metal pole. It was Solly. She watched in horror as he encountered a Teddy Boy armed with a metal chain, him swinging back his arm intending to maim her husband with it but, thank God, Solly was too quick for him. Before he could thrash the chain into him, Solly had brought the metal pole he was brandishing hard against his accoster’s legs, sending him buckling to the ground screaming in pain from a possible broken leg or legs. Then all hell really broke loose as the rest of the fairground men got the summons from the women and, now armed with their own makeshift weapons, swarmed into the main fairground. Then, to her horror, behind them came the fairground women, old and young alike, all brandishing rolling pins, heavy-based saucepans and whatever else they could lay their hands on. Amongst them were Ren and Velda and her nieces, Nita and Rosa.

  Fran arrived back then with her medical kit. ‘Take care of Vic,’ Gem told her as she jumped upright and grabbed the large spanner Vic had been holding when he was attacked.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ a terrified Fran cried out.

  But Gem was already out of earshot and in the thick of battle.

  Thirty or so thugs, armed with weapons, terrorising defenceless locals into doing their bidding was an entirely different matter to the same thugs threatening the livelihoods of fairground folk and Les Pocock was soon to realise that he had picked on the wrong group of people.

  Forty-five minutes after the rampage began, a dozen or so policemen piled out of a Black Maria at the entrance to the fairground to find all but one of the Teddy Boys, looking very dishevelled and subdued and many needing hospital treatment, banded together in a group by the carousel, surrounded by a very angry circle of fairground men and women clearly prepared to do anything necessary to prevent any of them escaping.

  In light of what had happened the previous night at the party, Jimmy had no doubt Les Pocock was the leader of this gang and thus the instigator of this attack on the fairground, fulfilling his promise to Jimmy that he would be sorry he had crossed him. But why then wasn’t he amongst the gang of captured thugs? No army would go into battle without their leader?

  He looked around him. His gut instincts told him that Les was still in the fairground, hiding somewhere, watching for his chance to escape and leaving the rest of his gang to face the music. Utter disgust for the man surged inside him. He played the big man but, deep down, he was no more than a coward. But Les Pocock wasn’t going to escape scot-free if he could help it.

  Jimmy’s guess was that Les would be hiding somewhere in the living van area, aware that only the very elderly, tiny or infirm would be there at the mome
nt as all the rest were in the fairground. Hoping he was right, he slipped through a slim gap between two stalls and secreted himself behind a van. He then poked his head around the front and took a look around. He could see no sign of Les Pocock. He did notice though that several of the vans that he could see from his position had damage to them. It seemed that some of Les Pocock’s gang had entered the living van area during their rampage.

  He crept around the front of the van and then dashed the short distance over to the next, looked around that and again saw no sign of his quarry. He kept repeating this until finally he spotted him, looking extremely panic-stricken and shaking in fear, squatting at the back end of Donny and Suzie’s van, constantly peeping around on the lookout for the chance, Jimmy assessed, to move nearer to the boundary hedge where he could forge a way through and then flee across the fields to freedom. That was his intention but Jimmy’s plan was to do whatever it took to prevent him.

  He crept around to the front of the van he was himself secreted behind, which was next to Donny and Suzie’s, then across to the front of Donny and Suzie’s van. Once safely there and praying Pocock hadn’t moved in the meantime, he crept to the back and, heart pumping madly in his chest, peeped around to look. Les was still there but it was apparent that he was about to make a move to the van next door. That van was right next to the boundary hedge and, should a space big enough for Pocock to wriggle though present itself, Jimmy would have little chance of bringing the man to justice for the part he had played in the trashing of the fairground, so it was now or never. Silently taking a deep breath, he jumped from out of the side of the van and then leapt across the distance of the front, landing full force on top of his quarry. Les was so shocked by this unexpected attack, having no idea he was being watched, that he was momentarily struck rigid.