by Ray Connolly
And then she pushed her body tight against mine. Very tight. Too tight. And the excitement of the moment was marvellous, though so very fast, and after a few seconds we lay still, and I felt knackered, so I pulled myself away from her, gasping for breath. Sandra didn’t move. She just lay there, and in the floodlighting from the window I could just make out lines of annoyance on her face.
‘D’you always come so quickly?’ she said tartly at last.
‘Only when I’m with a virgin.’
I should have been cut to the quick by Sandra’s attitude, but I wasn’t. I’d done it: I’d broken my duck, and even if she was disappointed she was a slag anyway. All that goody-goody talk and fluttering of the eyelashes couldn’t fool me.
The next morning Mike and I lay in our bunks contemplating our previous night’s work. Mike was half-reading a Captain Marvel comic. I was just wondering if they were all going to be so easy.
‘What was your bird’s name?’ I asked Mike at last.
‘Dunno. Never asked her.’ He paused. ‘What was that Sandra like?’
I tried to sound casual: ‘Oh, you know. Not bad. I’ve had better.’
And for a brief moment I thought I heard a low snigger from Mike, as he retreated behind Captain Marvel again.
Chapter 8
It’s easy when you know how, and after Sandra there was no stopping me. The mystique had been shattered. All those conventions I’d been brought up to believe – that a girl would only do it for you if she loved you, and if she did then she was doing you a favour, were now shown to be so much propaganda put out by arch-but-under-sexed feminists who wanted us men to stay eternally grateful for every handful of bosom we cupped. No wonder I’d been missing out. My approach had been all wrong. They weren’t doing us any favours. Girls wanted it just as much as blokes, only they had to pretend that they didn’t. Well, that was how they were supposed to behave in those days.
The next few weeks in the holiday camp were bliss. Sandra had tried to put me down by questioning my performance (as well she might, I decided on reflection and greater experience) but with Mike to help I was quickly over any pangs of inadequacies which might once have retarded further development. You really can’t believe how easy it was. Knocking off birds was like rolling a ball down a bowling alley and watching the skittles fall. Of course you had to be careful. One was aware of one’s social responsibilities, but the fairy gossamer and the London Rubber Company took care of that.
To me discovering that women not only liked, but wanted sex, was like being liberated after years behind bars of celibacy, and I soon overtook Mike in the chalet shenanigans. To take an analogy he was a good steady worker, who never stopped looking for it, but wasn’t always as successful at getting it as he might have been: while I went at full gallop down the straight, and into the narrow. I had to make up for lost time. And I did. I was so pleased with my progress, in fact, that I wrote a little poem and stuck it on the wall over my bed to commemorate my libidinal graduation.
When I first got my end away
I wasn’t much good, I’m ashamed to say
But night after night I worked at my art
As often as not with a different tart.
Practice may not make perfect
But it’s practically perfect fun.
Girls were to be picked up (and put down) in every conceivable corner of the holiday camp, but the Blue Grotto remained the best place for tying the final knots. And most nights would see me letting it be known to whoever was available that tonight was to be her night. Even when we were mad-busy serving I managed to pull with the odd phrase, and nod, and ‘see you later then!’ It never failed.
The only trouble with the Blue Grotto was, in fact, the band. They made a terrible noise, trying to sound American, but never making it. In my mind nothing was as good as the original American rock and roll records and Stormy Tempest was probably the most unoriginal singer I’d ever heard. All the same I was attracted by the idea of a band, and in the afternoons would find myself hanging round them on the few days they bothered to rehearse, which was usually the day of the jive contest. Mostly I was stuck for words, but once I did manage to break into a little conversation with the drummer. I suppose in a way, although I despised them because of all the crummy Cliff Richard things they played, I couldn’t help feeling they were stars on their own level. There was a certain glamour about being on a stage, in the spotlight, and smirking down at the rest of us.
The drummer was the bloke with the Mohican haircut and he attacked his kit sometimes as though he were deranged. His stage name was J.D. Clover. In those days all the musicians in Nashville seemed to only use initials (like D.J. Fontana who played with Elvis), and I suppose he thought it was a hip-sounding name. It was certainly better than Arthur Twigg, which was supposed to be his real name.
One afternoon I was hanging around the Blue Grotto, leaning on a stalactite while J.D. was trying to move the amplifiers around. They were getting a lot of feed-back, Stormy said, and an artist of his stature couldn’t be expected to work in those conditions. Bollocks, said J.D., but he was moving them anyway. I went to give him a hand, and finding myself by the drums began to pick out what I thought was a raunchy little tom-tom rhythm with the tips of my fingers.
‘You don’t play the drums do you?’ Stormy, looking lovely as ever, had moved up behind me smelling strongly of Old Spice after-shave.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Mouth organ … well, I mean, harmonica. Why?’ That’s blown it, I thought. How uncool can you be to talk about mouth organs? Little boys played mouth organs, not rock and roll bands.
‘Oh nothing,’ said Stormy, looking bored. At this point J.D. began clouting his drums like a man berserk. We all waited until he’d finished.
‘I think what Mr Tempest is trying to say is that he’d like to replace me,’ he said. ‘But you can’t … can you, Stormy, dear?’
Again J.D. began to attack his drums, this time showing no signs of ever stopping. He started to froth at the mouth and I wondered at that moment whether it was true about drummers being under their own voodoo spell. J.D. certainly looked mad. But just as I was beginning to wonder about the possibility of sending for a strait-jacket, Stormy left us and immediately J.D. put down his sticks and lit a cigarette. I would have left, too, but I wondered whether J.D. was quite recovered from his fit, so I tried to make conversation.
‘Ever think about writing your own songs?’
‘What?’ J.D. looked at me as though he’d just woken up.
‘I mean … why don’t you write your own songs instead of always doing those Cliff Richard and Chuck Berry things?’
J.D. looked enigmatic, and scratched his scalp with one stick, narrowing his eyelids: ‘To be quite honest,’ he said, slowly, as though pronouncing some gems of great wisdom … ‘to be perfectly honest, I never really thought of it. And anyway I can’t write. Can you?’
And then without waiting for an answer he laughed and began shouting out ‘Howling Wolf loves the Pope’ over and over again, beating on his big bass drum with his foot-pedal.
That was the first experience I’d had with musicians. They’re a funny crowd.
Mike caught me in bed a few nights later: in bed with a lady. Her name was Judy, or Jill, or something like that. Anyway, she was lovely. A laughing giggly, blonde girl, of about twenty one, who’d given me the best night I’d ever had. I must have lost track of time because I’d arranged with Mike that she’d be out by one, but when he came through the door we were still there.
A few weeks earlier I’d have died of shame and embarrassment if I’d been caught under the sheets with a lady, but the price of my embarrassment had recently suffered a base and sudden devaluation. The girl didn’t give a damn, anyway.
‘Hello, Casanova, still at it then?’ said Mike coming through the door, and probably wondering whether he was going to get told to bugger off for a bit.
‘Michael. The lady and I were just discussing the state of the world, and the part that Super
Mac can play in encouraging the developing nations.’
The girl giggled. I’d been writing on her back with her lipstick, and she was trying to see what I’d written, allowing one breast to hang over the outside of the sheet so that Mike’s attention was temporarily distracted.
‘You seem to be developing very nicely, don’t you?’ he said at last, sitting on the edge of his bed and watching us.
The girl looked at him: ‘Jim’s been writing on my back,’ she said. ‘It’s a love letter,’ I said.
Mike got up and came across to us: ‘Let’s have a look then?’
The girl giggled and turned over to face me, baring her back to Mike. Mike started to laugh.
‘She’s a lovely girl, isn’t she?’ I said, giving her a quick friendly grope under the sheets, just in case she was afraid we might think she was a bit of a slag.
‘What’s he written?’ asked the girl.
‘Well,’ said Mike. ‘It says here: “Number 15. Jim Maclaine was here. September 11, 1959”.’
‘What does it mean?’ asked the girl.
‘I think he thinks you’re some kind of scoreboard, love,’ said Mike.
‘Oh Jim,’ said Judy or Jill or whatever her name was. ‘You are lovely.’
‘Oh Jim,’ said Mike. ‘You are a swine.’
‘What d’you mean calling me a swine?’ I asked Mike after my lady had said her good nights and collected her clothes.
Mike was already in bed: ‘No offence, Jimmy boy. I just think that they should have told me when I came here that they were putting me in with a sex maniac. You haven’t been able to keep it still for a minute. I thought I was a bastard. But I’ve never met anyone like you before. You’re unbelievable.’ I thought this was a bit rich coming from Mike, who’d started me on the slippery slope, so I tried to change the subject.
‘This fair you go to … what’s it like?’ He always liked talking about the fair. I suspected that he was homesick for it.
‘I’m off next week. I’m pissed off with being shut in here all the time.’
‘Would there be a job for me there?’
‘Best place for you my lad would be a stud farm.’
‘No, seriously,’ I said.
‘Yes seriously,’ he emphasised. And then laughed. ‘Any more for the merry-go-rounds.’
Chapter 9
We joined the fair down in Exeter. I’d always imagined that fairground people were gypsies, but the people I met seemed just like any other cross-section of the working class. I think most people there had a soft spot for Mike, because they welcomed him back like the prodigal son, and it was decided without question almost that there would be a job for me as his assistant in running the dodgems. They were a hard crowd, but it was difficult not to like them. Mike had told me he didn’t have any parents and had been with them on and off since he was fifteen, and they treated him as though he belonged there: as though they were his family. There may have been rivalries and factions inside the crew, but to Mike everyone was a friend.
The manager was a bloke called Jack – a big, burly man, who looked as though he could handle himself, but who treated Mike as though he were a little boy. One day shortly after I arrived Jack caught us loafing about on the dodgems when we should have been helping with the erecting. The fair wasn’t yet open, and we were playing tag with a couple of dodgems, racing round and round the empty arena. Suddenly the power went off and our cars died under us.
‘When you two little lads have finished playing bumps-a-daisy …’
‘Just trying out the cars, Jack. We don’t want any nasty accidents, do we?’ Mike was smiling at him. He had the sort of face you couldn’t stay cross with for long.
‘Just take your pal and go and help Doreen on the Coconuts, Mike.’
‘Good idea,’ said Mike and vaulted over the side railings. I followed him. As soon as we were out of sight he turned to me: ‘Watch him, Jim. He tries to act like a bit of a twat sometimes … and he is sometimes. We were in London once, and some big spade who was pissed wouldn’t come off the kiddies’ hobby horses, so in the end they had to drag him off … and the next thing you know was that Sambo had a knife in his arse.’
‘Jack knifed somebody?’
‘Well some bugger did.’
‘What happened?’
‘What d’you mean? I’ve just bloody told you what happened.’
‘No. I mean, did the police come?’
‘No. The police hardly ever come round here. Someone dropped the spade off outside a hospital. You have to watch out for yourself. If you get into trouble on a fair you’re on your own.’
That was advice worth remembering I thought. Ostensibly the fair offered the security blanket of the family, but I wondered how far that security would go if I were to ever get in the way.
‘Three down and a quick nibble round the back of the tent, all right Doreen?’ We’d reached Doreen’s coconut shy, and Mike was up to his usual vulgar banter. Doreen, a hard-looking matronly figure, didn’t even bother to look at him.
‘Go and nibble yourself.’
Mike pretended shock and dismay: ‘Common as muck, I’m afraid. But she’s got a heart of gold. Ask any of the lads.’
This time Doreen turned towards us: ‘Piss off the pair of you.’
‘Okay, if you don’t want our help …’ said Mike, pretending to be hurt, and led me away towards our caravan.
It wasn’t the best caravan in the world. In fact it was a slum on wheels, and pretty unsteady wheels at that, but it was home for Mike, and now for me. We slept in facing bunks, and we had a wall each for our decorations. Mike’s side was plastered with cut-outs from sexy magazines, mine was a mixture of my own nude drawings and a few poems. These days they seemed to be getting more and more surreal.
What is essential is invisible to the eye,
Said the spy with the fly on his coconut shy.
What is invisible is essential to the lie,
Said the cook with the pie in his bread pudding sky
They were both daft.
During the first few days on the fair Mike filled me in on how to behave, and how to make a few bob on the side. During working hours we didn’t get much time for talking, but afterwards as we lay in the caravan he went over and over the routine for me.
‘All we’re here for,’ he would say, ‘is to work and sweat and work and fiddle. That’s the game, and everyone knows it so don’t go and cock it up by being honest. It’s a shilling for them and a shilling for you. Wear your pants with the biggest pockets … but don’t get caught. Jack knows the fiddling goes on, but so long as you don’t make it bloody obvious no-one will say anything. They turn a blind eye, see, so they can pay us fuck-all, and get us to work all hours that God sends.’
His knowledge of the intricacies of conning the customer were startling in their simplicity, and I began to wonder how often I’d been fiddled on the fair. ‘The easiest way to work it,’ he said, ‘is to let on that you never have the right change, and have to go back to the kiosk to get it. The cars have always started before you’ve taken their money anyway, so that when you do get around to giving them their change you have to jump on the back of the car and stuff it in their hand while they’re busy looking where they’re going. Always keep moving, and if you get some silly sod who wants to stay on all night don’t take him too often because he might notice.
‘And whatever you do, for Christ’s sake don’t pick on anyone in a gang and get caught or else you’ve had it. You’ll be completely on your own. And don’t forget to keep slipping the odd shilling in your pocket – one for them, one for you – one for them, one for you – one for them, one for you …’
‘What happens if someone notices that they haven’t got the right change?’ I asked.
‘Well … if you do get challenged you’ve got to weigh up whether you think you can get away with it or not. If it’s half a sheet you usually can. A pound note and it can get tricky.
‘It depends on the customer
. If he’s left it too long you can always say you’ve never seen him before … and I’ll back you up. Then it looks as though he’s trying to do you. It’s all a matter of style.’
And that’s exactly what it was. We set about fiddling the poor people of the West Country and it was really so easy. No tax or National Insurance to pay either. Now and again one of us was challenged, but we usually got away with it, and although Jack knew what we were up to he never mentioned it. We were good operators and we didn’t take him too often.
Very quickly I found myself settling into the routine of fairground life. The work was long and hard, but the money was good, and the birds were there every night, hanging around, listening to the records and watching the cars. There was never any problem. Mike had been right about the ease with which they could be picked up on the dodgems, too. It really was a matter of a quick tickle and then round the back for a few press-ups.
Together Mike and I made a great partnership but one night I think I went even too far for him. We were in Bath and all evening this young girl had been making eyes at me. It was obvious she was after a bit, I thought, so at ten o’clock I left Mike on his own and took her down the field out of sight.
She was a nice little thing, nice creamy cheeks and dark, straight hair, and she wasn’t against a bit of kissing and cuddling either. It was when I started to go a bit further that she began to complain. The thing was, she didn’t complain enough, and once my hand was on it she soon gave up the fight. It occurred to me afterwards that in a way I’d forced her, since I’m sure she wasn’t looking for it when she kept catching my eye earlier. But I didn’t use any physical force. Just friendly persuasion. That’s all it took. When it was over she cried, and said ‘Please don’t tell anyone,’ and it was then that I began to wonder about myself. Still, she was my first virgin, so that was something to be considered. All the other girls had been right slags.
When I got back the fair had already closed for the night, and Mike was lying in his bunk reading a comic. He never stopped reading bloody comics. As I opened the door his eyes caught the damp patches on the knees of my jeans.