by Bernard Ross
The girl came back out of the pub, she did look really attractive, and I have to say that my teenage hormones were set jumping by the sight of her low cut blouse and her short skirt. Charlie introduced her around the table to the people she didn’t know, her name was Helen and that was it....no surnames, no locality, just Helen.
Conversation for the rest of the evening was normal, we talked about the economy and funfair and past events and where we were going next. Then we all turned in to our respective bunks. I didn’t see Helen again that evening, so I don’t know where she slept, but she didn’t seem to be on the fairground the next morning as we got ready to open. I wondered if she had moved on.
We opened as usual on the Thursday afternoon and, being a bank holiday weekend, were more busy than usual. Though I was concentrating on the job of money-taking, I couldn’t help but notice quite a lot of young fellers looking flushed in a different way to the normal fun-of-the-fair. There also seemed to be quite an few incidences of whispered conversations between blokes, these normally ended in one of them tipping his head towards the fairground’s entrance and the other looking pointedly, but furtively in the direction indicated. Once we had wound down, and the rush eased off, I excused myself on the grounds that I needed to get something. Don kept an eye on my cars for a few minutes, and I shot out of the fairground to investigate.
Leading up to the back of the wagon in which Charlie had his bunk was an orderly queue of young men. Some looked a bit sheepish and some were clearly looking as keen as mustard. Just then the door opened and a flushed young chap came out still buckling his belt. He wouldn’t meet the eye of any of the chaps in the queue and before he had travelled five yards, he had managed to get a cigarette out of his pocket and light up. He took a huge drag and, with a slow smile staring to spread across his face, he at last looked at the faces waiting in the queue. Then a voice from near back of the line, called out to him,
“Oh, Gawd, Phil, I’m not having your sloppy seconds!”
I’ve never seen a blush literally rush up from someone’s neck to the top of their head. He nearly choked on his lungful of Virginian tobacco smoke and, as his verbal assailant fell out of the queue, many of the other waiting men chuckled knowingly.
Charlie told me the following day that Helen reported her tally (she actually kept a score of little hash marks on the cardboard packaging from her stockings) was ninety seven in one night.
No money changed hands, no one profited from the event, no one was coerced into anything, it was simply a “hobby” activity. I can’t believe that there was any pleasure involved for either party but then, ‘chaque un a son gout’ as they say in France; each to his (or her) own.
I can’t imagine this happening in 2014, not because of any change in people’s morals, or even because of the rise of feminism, but simply because the “event” would doubtless be on Twitter within a matter of minutes resulting in the imminent arrival of the media and the police. Besides which, you can image the thousands of hours of grainy, and ‘grubby’, mobile phone camera footage that would be uploaded almost instantaneously onto YouTube.
Chapter 11
The Winter of Discontent
I suppose it was naïve of me, but it never entered my head that my new job, friends and way of life was something that would be just end at the end of the autumn. I confess that I hadn’t given it much thought at all, but I suppose that if someone had asked me, ‘What will happen when it gets too cold and too dark in the evenings for the punters to come to the funfair?’ I imagine that I’d have said that we would all just park up somewhere and work on the rides and the transport and basically wait out the winter.
What actually happened was rather different.
We finished pulling down at the end of a fair in November in Poole down in Dorset. I went to Mr Rose as usual to collect my £5 in wages and as he handed it to me he gave me a cheery smile and said
‘Well, lad, that’s it for this year. Thanks for all your help. You’re welcome back at Easter; just get a copy of ‘The World’s Fair’ to see where we’re going to be and, if you want to come back, meet us there on the Sunday night before the Easter Bank Holiday weekend.’
There was a loud thud as my jaw hit the floor. I was shocked. Here I was in bloody Dorset, miles from anyone I knew or anywhere I knew. I had no home, no job or income, virtually no possessions and a few quid in my pocket. I was 17 years old and I was suddenly even more adrift and alone than I had been earlier in the year when I’d joined the funfair.
I am not one to dwell on misfortune; my life to date had taught me that grumbling seldom helped you to make any headway. I came out of Mr Rose’s van and immediately set off around the fairground asking all the travelling people if they had any ideas or contacts that would help me to survive the winter. Nowadays it is called ‘networking’ but in those days there wasn’t a name for it; you just did it to survive!
After many a brief but fruitless conversation one of the side-stuff stall holders remembered a bloke called Ernie. They couldn’t remember a surname but they did know that he had a yard not far from Heathrow Airport. Again they didn’t know the actual address but did know that the yard was next to the Three Magpies pub. Ernie was a former circus traveler who had moved into the funfair business as a stall- holder selling peanuts, toffee apples and candy floss. He had already moved off the tober for the year and was thought to have some plan for a winter business.
Believe it or not that was the best lead I could get! I spent my last night in the Luton van and the next morning I packed my few possessions into an old canvas kitbag I had acquired, added an army surplus blanket and set off before anyone else was up and about.
I intended to travel in the traditional manner of the young and the hard-up in the 1950s; by hitch hiking.
In the 21st century hitch-hikers are rare in the UK. Whether this is simply because everyone seems to have a car or whether it is due to the general fear of being mugged or sued, I don’t know. Back in the 50s and 60s, however, every major road junction seemed to have a person standing by the roadside with their hoped for destination written on a piece of cardboard, and their thumb hopefully stuck out at every passing vehicle. Commercial travelers and truck drivers were often grateful of the company and most people, with the possible exception of obvious tramps, found it quite easy to get lifts part way or all the way to their destination. I’m not saying that hitch hiking was the fastest way to travel; it took me eighteen hours to reach Heathrow, it is about a hundred miles, so that actually equates to about 5 miles an hour, but I got there and it didn’t cost me a penny.
I arrived at the Three Magpies at about two in the morning and spotted a place that looked like it was probably Ernie’s yard. One thing that you don’t do as a matter of courtesy, is wake someone up at two in the morning when they don’t know you, they aren’t expecting you and you don’t even know their surname. One thing you don’t do for reasons of practical health is try to wake up someone who probably owns one of Princess’s relatives. My brief reconnaissance suggested that Princess’s second cousin was not only in residence but also loose in the yard, guarding Ernie’s worldly wealth.
I was going to need to wait a few hours until a respectable time, and I needed to find somewhere a bit warmer and drier than the verge on the side of Bath Road.
After a few minutes of wandering, I found myself passing a small garden centre. Just inside their perimeter fence, they had several sheds set up as display models. Unlike domestic sheds in people’s gardens, display model sheds are seldom crammed full of junk, but often have garden furniture in them. They are also seldom locked, as they are inside the supposedly secure perimeter fence and customers want to see inside.
A few moments later I was over the fence, inside a shed and stretched out on a rather comfy sun-lounger, under my army blanket and snoring quietly. It was actually one of the most comfortable, if short, night’s sl
eep I’d had in quite a long time!
I awoke early and before any of the garden centre staff arrived, I put away the sun lounger, packed my meager belongings, had a quick wash in a water butt and was back over the fence. It didn’t take long to find Ernie’s yard and, since there were plenty of signs of life; the dog was on a chain and the gate was open, I went in and asked for Ernie.
Ernie was a big man, a good six foot six tall and broad to boot. Now in his late fifties he was beginning to run to fat a little but he was still clearly as strong as an ox. Ernie and a younger man were hefting large sacks of coal onto the back of an ancient and rust perforated old Thames 4D truck. I was acknowledged and invited to tell my story. Ernie agreed to take me on for the winter as a mate to help with his business of domestic coal deliveries. Inwardly I breathed a huge sigh of relief; this may not be an entry-level job, or even an unpaid internship in a merchant bank but I was back in the wage earning fraternity. I don’t really know what I’d have done if Ernie had told me to get on my bike.
Back in the fifties and sixties most houses still had coal fires and many relied entirely on coal for their heating, water-heating and in some cases their cooking. Consequently anyone prepared to work bloody hard, live a bit rough, get black and dirty every-day and accept a total lack of union protection or Health & Safety could make a half decent living over the winter by doing door to door coal deliveries. Especially if they had an old, flatbed truck that they didn’t mind reducing to a heap of scrap in one season. Ernie fulfilled all these criteria and I was now one of his ‘mates’.
I put my bag in the cab and was immediately put to work loading sacks of coal onto the truck.
A single bag of coal weighs one-hundred and twelve pounds or eight stone. In old measures that is also called one hundredweight. Twenty bags weighs a ton. The Thames 4D truck was a five ton version so in theory it could carry one hundred sacks of coal. We must have loaded about a hundred and fify, which was a real bastard of a job because the truck was standing nose down on a good 10 degree angle on the lower slopes of Ernie’s enormous heap of loose coal. By the time the truck was fully loaded there wasn’t a lot of clearance between the tops of the pairs of (almost bald) rear tyres and the rusted and dented curves of the rear mudguards.
We stopped for a cup of tea. Whilst we took this break Ernie explained the day’s plan. He and I would go out in the truck; we would deliver to the customers that he already had on his ‘round’ and we would door knock all the other addresses we passed to see if we could add to the regular customer base. In the meantime the younger man who had been loading sacks with us would stay in the yard and carry out two functions. Firstly he would fill, weigh and stack as many ‘new’ sacks as he could. Secondly he would deal with any walk-in trade that the yard might get, by selling them sacks of coal. Ernie had written up a price list on a grubby piece of an old tea chest, this was lucky because the younger man had the most impenetrable Glasgow accent I have ever heard. He was introduced to me as simply “Jock” and as far as I can tell his first words to me were ‘eyeeeepleezdameeya’. However, since he said this with a friendly smile and a very, very strong handshake, I interpreted it to mean “Aye, pleased to meet you.” That was the extent of our conversation on that chilly November morning, we were not to exchange another word until late that night, but that is another story.
Ernie and I climbed into the cab of the Thames and Ernie turned on the ignition. Nothing happened but this didn’t seem to concern him. He put the truck in first, depressed the clutch and foot brake, and disengaged the handbrake. After having peered both ways over the fence to check for oncoming traffic, he released the footbrake and the heavily laden truck began to roll silently down the slope of the coal-mountain. With the seven or so tons of coal in the back, the truck gained speed and momentum quite fast and, as the back wheels cleared the coal, Ernie lifted the clutch and gave it some accelerator. There was a cough and a bang, followed by a mighty roar, and a cloud of black smoke, Ernie throttled back and we cruised, without a pause, out of the yard’s gate and on to the Bath Road. We were now running, and Ernie wouldn’t let the engine stop until the truck was safely parked back, nose-down on the top of the slope of the mountain of coal.
We sold and delivered all the coal that we had on board. Each sack was heaved out onto your back and carried to the customer’s coal bunker or cellar trapdoor. Then the sack was up-ended and emptied, the dust shaken out and the sack folded in two and stacked back in the back of the truck for Jock to refill tomorrow. There was no waste or discarded packaging, but by God the filth that came out of the bags! Carrying them wasn’t actually that dirty a job, even though they were bearing down on your clothes with the pressure of a small and unyielding adult. Emptying the bags though, let loose the most awful clouds of choking black dust that got in your eyes, up your nose, in your mouth and in just about every bit of exposed skin and clothing. It don’t think it took more than three sacks for me to learn to take a deep breath and shut everything a spit second before the sack reached tipping point. I then kept everything shut and didn’t breath in until I had not only emptied, but also shaken and folded, the bag. I even learned to take a few paces to clear out of the slowly settling cloud of muck, before opening my eyes.
By three pm the truck was empty of full sacks and we headed back to the yard. After Ernie had reversed the truck up the slope and switched off, we loaded the filled sacks onto the truck and dropped off the empty sacks we had brought back with us. By the time we had finished it was almost dark.
Travelling folk maintain a very strange balancing act between not accumulating material possessions but never throwing away anything that might have a use; nestled in the crook of the fence at the north eastern corner of the yard was the old and battered, dismounted box body of an old van. When I asked Ernie about the sleeping arrangements, he pointed to this and said that I was welcome to make up a bunk inside. I grabbed my bag and set off to try and make as good a bed as I could before it got too dark to see.
The box body contained two heaps of large hessian sacks of raw peanuts, each sack about fifty pounds in weight. These heaps were stacked neatly and in a very stable form along the sides of the van, leaving a neat walkway in between, at the opposite end was a platform created by the over-cab area, this was free from peanuts and therefore, like my bunk in the Luton, that summer, a perfect small bed-space. I scavenged some boards and found a dozen empty peanut sacks to create a makeshift mattress and quite quickly I had a relatively comfortable little bed. After a quick wash in a water butt, I walked down the road to the Three Magpies and had a passable meat pie and cup of tea. Then I returned to the yard just as twilight turned to darkness and just before Ernie locked up the gates. I crawled into my bed, arranged my trusty army blanket over me and, knackered by the exertions of shifting a couple of tons of coal, fell almost immediately to sleep.
I dreamed about Sarah and how, in different times, she used to run her fingers through my hair and tickle my chest as we lay in bed together. It was a very pleasant dream and in it we chatted about events that we had shared and events that we had not shared. I told her about my recent life with the funfair, and she told me that she now had a job as a clerk in a bank and was going steady with a man who was much nicer than me. As she told me this her tickling-fingers moved up to my neck and then my face and she altered from using her fingertips to using the tips of her finger nails. She wasn’t hurting me physically but her tone became unpleasant and the tickling became a scratching. I could hear the scratching becoming harsh as well as feeling the scratching on my face and neck. Suddenly I realized I was awake and I could still feel the scratching. I jerked upright and smacked my head on the roof, that however, was the least of my worries. In the very faint light, I could see, as well as feel, the dozen or more rats that I dislodged from my face as I sat up. I don’t think that I had ever screamed before in my adult life, and I’m certain that I have never screamed since, but at this moment
I screamed. It was almost a mute scream because something told me to try to keep my mouth firmly shut.
I tumbled out of my makeshift bed and scuttled on all fours, to the tailgate of the van-body. I lurched out into the cold moonlight and drew a huge breath of fresh air. Then I vomited.
Ernie’s dog, Bruno, bounded over, but, having seen me during the day with Ernie, knew that I was not a threat. He just came to investigate, and so now he simply contented himself with eating the recently regurgitated meat pie that I had just donated to him. I felt disgusting. My skin was crawling. I ran to the water-butt and plunged my head into the icy rainwater to try to purge myself of the smell of rat urine. After a holding my face under water for as long as I could I came up for air.
I calmed down a little, my breathing returned to normal and my heart stopped pounding. However, there was no way I was prepared to return to the rat infested hell hole in the dark. Marching resolutely across the yard I knocked on the door of Ernie’s caravan. It took quite a bit of knocking and quite hard knocking to rouse Ernie. The lights came on and he came to the door.
My explanation tumbled out of my in a rush; a mixture of facts and reactions but all overlaid with a determined and oft repeated assertion that I could not go back and sleep again in the van body with the peanuts and the rats. Ernie listened in an attentive but bored looking fashion. He didn’t sympathise or offer restorative brandy, he didn’t apologise or offer a more suitable bed. He simply let me talk myself to a standstill.
Then he asked,
‘Get bitten?’
‘No,’ I replied.
‘No harm done, then.’ he said in a monotone, ‘Few rats won’t hurt you, they just want the peanuts and there are plenty of them, you’ll be alright lad, you’ll get used to it, think of ‘em as pets.’