The Show Must Go On

by Bernard Ross

  In reality I had very mixed emotions; I was pleased that I had arrived at a rite of passage into manhood, and proud that Mr Rose had trust in me driving one of his (albeit beaten up) wagons. However, I was aghast at the thought of having to get behind the wheel and take control of a temperamental and barely serviceable vehicle and drive it on the narrow, twisting lanes of Devon. I was chuffed to be getting a new skill and a new responsibility, but I was not happy at having my wages reduced to pay for it.

  I pasted on a smile,

  “Thanks, Mr Rose” I said quietly, taking the cardboard and string from his hands. Turning to Don and Charlie, I gave them my most confident and casual expression, “Come on then, girls, let’s get this sign on the van and then get to bed!”

  There was much joshing and many descriptions of bizarre road accidents, slipping loads, drivers lost and similar whilst we tied the L plates on to the radiator and what was left of the rear bumper of the van.

  It took a long time to fall asleep that night, as I went over and over in my mind the sequence for starting and driving a vehicle. Eventually dawn came and we roused ourselves, ready for the off.

  Anne provided cups of tea in the weak pre-dawn light and Mr Charles came and told me that one of his gaff lads, Davey, would sit with me as tutor and wet nurse. I knew Davey, though not well, but he seemed to be quite pleased with the arrangement.

  Mr Charles drained his teacup, handed it to Anne and shouted out,

  “Right then, let’s get a flippin’ move on!” At this command everyone started to move briskly to their vehicles and engines began to fire up. Davey stayed stock still, sipping his tea.

  I drained my tea and turned to put my cup on Anne’s tray. Davey shot out a hand and grabbed my arm.

  “Slow down, son” he said

  I looked at him, confused and a bit lost for words, weren’t we supposed to be moving?

  “Feeling confident?” he asked quietly

  “Not really” I admitted in a whisper

  He turned to Anne and smiled, “Don’t worry about our cups Mrs Rose, we’ll bring ‘em along with us, if that is alright?”

  Anne smiled back at him, and me,

  “That’s fine Davey, good luck Bernie!” And with that she picked up the tray and headed back to her living wagon ready to move.

  Davey turned to me, sipped his tea, and then said “Last thing you need this morning is an audience, mate! Let them all get under way, and then you an’ me, we’ll take a nice, slow, gentle drive to Taunton. We’ll keep out of their way, especially Don and Charlie who will never let you forget every stall, missed gear or bump of the day”

  Suddenly it dawned on me that this was actually what I was most afraid of; not that I wouldn’t be able to drive well, but that I’d look like an idiot in front of my travelling mates. Davey may only have been a 40 something year old gaff-lad on a travelling funfair, but he knew a lot about psychology.

  Ten minutes later the fairground was empty except for Davey and me.

  “Right lad, let’s see what you can do” he said decisively and we walked over to the van.

  Davey unbuttoned his fly and took a pee on the front wheel.

  “For luck!” he called, “bomber pilots apparently always did this before a really dangerous mission”

  “Thanks, tosser!” I replied, as I climbed into the driver’s side and sat in front of the controls.

  I’d seen enough of the difficulties the traveling show’s vehicles presented to their drivers to know that this wasn’t going to be easy, so I took it slow and really concentrated on the job in hand. I can’t really remember much about the trip now and frankly I couldn’t remember much about it at the end of the journey when we arrived in Taunton. All that sticks in my mind was that the morning was bloody with lots of stalling, missing gears and screaming of tortured clutch plates and gear wheels. The afternoon was much less painful for me and the truck. I can’t speak for Davey; I could hear his voice constantly cajoling, instructing and encouraging but I was too intent on the road and the controls to look at him for the entire day. I also remember that when we drove onto the showground at Taunton. Don and Charlie both downed tools and came to watch my arrival. I steadfastly refused to make eye contact as I drove faultlessly onto the ground and parked up perfectly, even though I had obviously been given a bitch of a pitch that required quite a lot of reversing to get between two trees and a truck.

  The two man round of applause was quite genuine after I turned off the engine and reached for the door handle. Davey quickly said,

  “The first pint is on you tonight, mate. To ensure I keep my mouth shut about the morning eh?!”

  I smiled and nodded. Frankly I felt knackered. But really great!

  Later that evening, when we were all leveled up and ready to start the build-up, Davey told Hammerton that yes, I was ready. Now all I had to do was wait for the test. And take money on the rides to help pay for it!

  Chapter 15

  I’m Legally On The Road!

  Taunton was uneventful but there wasn’t time to arrange a driving test for me. Back in those days virtually everyone took their test in their own vehicle and so I’d be taking mine in the 30 hundredweight van. There was also only one driving test; pass that and you were legally allowed to drive anything o the road.

  A couple of weeks later we had reached Salisbury and there arrangements had been made for me to take my test. The examiner was a middle aged man by the name of Cartwright and with my L plates on I drove the station to pick him up for the test. He was clearly unimpressed when he saw the state of the outside of the van. The vehicle was clearly hand painted and though it looked quite dramatic from a distance, close up you could see the rust and the patches under the several layers of paint. His level of contempt for the external appearance of the van was, however, nothing in comparison to the look of a combination of horror and disgust when he opened the nearside door to climb in.

  Several years before there had been a rather nasty incident which had rendered the passenger seat a reeking mass of soggy padding and, since cleaning the seat and removing the disgusting smell had not been an option, the decision had been taken to simply remove the seat. It had been replaced; but with an old orange crate. This simply stood there, held in place by nothing more than gravity and several years worth of Woodbine stubs and fag-ash. As a sop to creature comforts, and an avoidance of splinters in the bum, an old and tatty chintz cushion was nestling in the warped boards of the top side of the box.

  Mr Cartwright’s nose wrinkled, he reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a crisp, white, linen hankie with which he flicked the indented surface of the cushion. He then studiously wiped the dash in front of the crate, and the window sill and armrest on the door. After pointedly checking the hankie, he carefully folded it so that the wiping surface was all inside and then put it away in the side pocket of his leather briefcase. We went through the little necessary paperwork though it was clear that the appearance and condition of the van, and my own youthfulness and near whiskerless chin, filled him with neither joy nor confidence.

  He climbed in and closed the door behind him. Winding down the window he took a firm grip on the doorframe before prissily instructing me to “Start the engine, engage gear and proceed to the car park exit before turning left”

  After about five minutes of faultless driving on my part, his knuckles were returning to a more healthy pink shade and he was clearly relaxing. He had already briefed me about the requirement for a demonstration of my ability to carry out an emergency stop, and suddenly, as we accelerated along a straight stretch of a B road, he banged his clipboard on the dash in precisely the manner that he instructed me about. In a matter of micro-seconds I had checked the rearview mirror, stamped on the brake and the clutch whilst tightening my grip on the steering wheel to counter any possible skid. Since these were pre-seatbelt da
ys, my arms were locked to keep me from being jettisoned forward. The van came to a rapid and shuddering halt and there was a loud clang as a dozen or so large pieces of packing timber in the back of the van were hurled into the back wall of the cab.

  I applied the handbrake and put the gear into neutral. Then I turned to see if Mr Cartwright was looking pleased with my maneouver. He wasn’t there!

  I looked down.

  There was Mr Cartwright, no longer looking dapper, but looking distinctly pissed- off. He was crumpled in the foot-well amongst the dog-ends and the bits of gravel. On top of his immaculately suit coated shoulder was the orange crate, whilst the cushion, teetering on the dash board slowly and ceremoniously slid onto his head as he stared at me with undisguised loathing.

  Oh, shit, I thought, bang goes my driving license!

  I told him that I’d just drive the van to a safe place and then we’d sort out his seat. He nodded with gritted teeth and off we went. Luckily there was a lay-by only fifty yards up the road and so his indignity was short-lived.

  He barely spoke for the next ten minutes of the test which was, happily, uneventful.

  We returned to the station and he looked at his clip board in silence. The seconds ticked by very slowly. Then he fixed me with a basilisk stare and said, in a completely toneless voice, “Congratulations, Mr Ross, you have passed!”

  I was speechless; I’d nearly killed him, but I’d still passed.

  With no further ado, he climbed out of the van and walked with as much gravitas as he could muster, and without a backward glance or a cheery wave, off into the station. I was left to presume that he was simply being charitable; not to me, but to his fellow examiners, any one of whom could otherwise have been my next victim.

  I was now a fully fledged driver but that didn’t mean I had a vehicle to drive every time we moved. Mr Rose and Mr Charles were quite blunt about it; if they needed me to drive one of their vehicles, I had to, and if they didn’t need me to drive, I didn’t. This created a little challenge a short while later, when I got my own old banger, as sometimes I’d have to drive a show wagon to the next fair ground and then hitch a ride back to the previous one to pick up my car.

  Chapter 16

  Bashed up in Basingstoke

  We reached the last night of the fair in Basingstoke in mid July. After we had pulled down we were not intending to move on for a couple days. I had just acquired a new car! My first ever wheels and not only was I immensely proud of owning a car, I was also keen to use it at all possible opportunities.

  When I say “new”, I mean ‘new to me’; it was called ‘second-hand’ but I suspect that tenth-hand was probably closer to the truth. It was a British Racing Green Austin A10 but the colour was about the only thing racy about it. The single biggest problem was a substantial hole in the floor under the driver’s feet that let in the rain and sent a cold draught straight up your trouser leg. Other than that it was, fundamentally, just a temperamental old banger, but it was mine and it gave me freedom!

  Three of the gaff lads and I decided to go out on the tiles and so we drove in my little Austin 10 to the Wellington Arms, a country pub in a small village called Sherfield on Lodden. There we sunk several pints of excellent ale before deciding to go and look for some girls in Basingstoke town centre. Dave had seen a poster advertising a dance at another pub called the Beaulieu Arms in the town centre, and so off we went, slightly tipsy and looking for a good time.

  We found the pub, I parked up in the car park and we climbed the stairs to the function room up above the bars downstairs. The dance was in full swing and for a half hour or so all went well, we were chatting up girls and dancing and drinking more beer. Then a group of teddy boys appeared and one of them overheard Dave and Mike who unfortunately used some of the fairground slang. One of the teddy boys started goading my mates about being ‘bloody gyppos’ and the scum of the earth. Clearly the teddy boys weren’t looking for a fight; they knew how to find one. There were five of them, and Dave and Mike were looking a bit vulnerable. Charged with about a gallon of Dutch courage, yours truly went in and started to argue with the teddies, in his best middle class accent. I think I got about ten words out before one of the teds on the sidelines rabbit-punched me in the back of the neck and another drove a fist into my belly. Within seconds, I was on the floor in the foetal position, hands over my face, gasping for breath and getting a right kicking. They literally kicked me along the length of the dance floor, drawing as much attention to their bravado and their protection of the virginity of the local girls from the filthy gyppo scum. After a couple of minutes I had rolled, thankfully but with no conscious effort on my part, under one of the trestle tables at the end of the room. This reduced the number, severity and the direction of the painfully heavy brothel-creeper laden kicks. The landlord had also started to remonstrate with the teds and so my ordeal ended as they left the dance victorious but with shouted warnings to me that they were going to get me later and “do me proper”.

  Very shortly afterwards the dance ended and soon I was alone in the room with the landlord. Alone because apparently as soon and the Bernie soccer match had started my gaff lad mates had shown a strong sense of self preservation and had legged it, leaving me to take the kicking, and worse, alone.

  The landlord took out a bin and returning a couple of minutes later told me that the teds were loitering in the car park, watching the pub, clearly intent on continuing out game of kick-about as soon as I showed my face. I asked if I could stay in the pub but the landlord’s hospitality was wearing a bit thin and he said that as soon as he had cleared up the function room I would have to go. I didn’t offer to help him clear up as that would have simply speeded up my moment of destiny.

  It took him about twenty-five minutes to tidy up, a job that in reality he could have done in less than ten. In fact, under normal circumstances I reckon he’d have left it until the next morning. Eventually it became clear that he’d finished and it was time for me to go. He had, cunningly, turned off the lights on the back of the pub and in the car park so the teds had surmised that if I was going to leave I’d be going out at the front of the pub. They were now hanging around the bus-shelter just outside the front door.

  The landlord let me out of the back door and with my keys in hand and my heart thumping almost as much as the bruises on my back and legs, I sprinted to my car, unlocked the door and leapt in. Quickly locking the door behind me I breathed a massive sigh of relief and turned the key in the ignition.

  The starter motor screamed but the bloody car wouldn’t start! Alerted by the sound of the car trying to start, one of the teds peered round the corner and instantly saw my face illuminated by the courtesy light, which at this moment was the only bloody thing on the car that was working, worse luck.

  With a quick shout and throwing his fag to the ground he ran towards me and within a couple of seconds the air was rent with the competing sounds of me swearing and praying, the starter motor screaming and teds yelling “There ‘e is “ and “kill the fucker”.

  The five of them were yanking at all the doors but thankfully the locks held. Then they decided that if they couldn’t get in, they’d at least stop me from getting away and keep me where they could damage at leisure. They started to rock the car from side to side with the intent of quickly getting up enough roll to turn the car on its side or its roof.

  I was, in fairground patois, ‘trashed’. I was sure that I was going to get the beating of my life and, knowing teds, probably a slashing as well. I was cursing, praying and frantically turning the key with one hand and hanging on in my bucking bronco of a car. Whether the violent rocking motion triggered it or whether my guardian angel finally got back from his tea-break I don’t know, but suddenly the engine coughed into life and, due the fact that my foot was rammed down on the accelerator as hard as possible, the engine roared like a Spitfire in a power dive. Taken unawares the
teds leapt back just as I shoved the gearstick into first. I’m fairly sure that the two offside wheels were actually still in the air when the car shot forward. I was so trashed that I missed the actual exit of the car park and went between two of the wooden perimeter posts that were connected by a streamer of bunting. This tore off and remained wrapped around the radiator and streamed down the flanks of the car. Thus I arrived back at the fairground, pulse at last returned to a normal rate and festively decorated in red, white and blue.

  The gaff was in darkness when I got back and other than the dogs all going briefly berserk, it remained so as I got into the Luton and went to bed.

  By morning I was a stiff as a board and I had a black eye, a split lip and visible bruises all over my body. Surprisingly, no one so much as asked what had happened to me and Mike, Dave and Joe; my three fleet footed comrades-in-arms never mentioned the escapade at all. Ever. I’m not sure which were the bigger bastards; the teds or the gaff lads who abandoned me to take the kicking that had been initially aimed at them.

  Chapter 17

  A Salt And Battery in St Albans

  In the late spring things got a bit quieter and one evening I was sitting at the yog chatting with one of the other gaff lads by the name of Arthur. Arthur was in his late twenties and quite typical of the gaff lads who came from a flattie background. A physically very strong fellow he worked for a chap by the name of Mal Bede who ran a boxing and wrestling show that we often worked alongside. Arthur was one of Mal’s wrestlers, he would either appear as the ‘house’ fighter, masked and mysteriously anonymous, or he might also appear as an apparent member of the public who would respond to Mal’s challenge for “Any man; Army, Navy or civilian who was prepared to go a three or four round bout for a purse of money”.

  During the winters Arthur usually returned to his pre-show trade as a hod carrier and general labourer on building sites and construction gangs. He had a reputation as a good hard worker, and a man who was reliable and not in need of constant supervision.