by Brian Hughes
“Listen Missus, I’m really sorry ’bout w’at I done! But if I don’t get ’ome before eleven my old man’s gonna lock me out of the ’ouse.”
Nancy Skunk brought the rubber mallet down on the mechanical trinket between her boots. Then she lifted it gingerly and held it up beneath the fluttering wings of an old-fashioned gas lamp. The motor salivated.
Seeing as Nancy is currently absorbed perhaps now would be a good opportunity to study her. She’s wearing a gingham dress. With her pigtails bobbing up and down she wouldn’t appear out of place in ‘The Little House On The Prairie.’
“Bollox!”
It’s possible that her language, however, wouldn’t go down too well with the American Viewers Association.
“This is your fault, y’ gormless great bastard!”
She pointed an accusatory finger at Spike. He hunched his shoulders about his ears and blinked apathetically back.
“If you ’adn’t been messin’ around on the way through the door you wouldn’t ’ave knocked the damn thing off!” She dropped the machine onto the floor and in desperation brought her boot down on it. “Well, that’s great! Now we’re buggered! That’s the ‘Inter-dimensional Direction Stabiliser’ gone for a Burton!”
With her fists screwed up she snarled towards her hostage. It was the sort of snarl that would have frightened the Marquis De Sade. “You’re a moron, mate! What the ’Ell was the Dark Lord thinkin’ off when ’ee sent you?”
She scooped the bits off the floor, her knuckles turning white with aggression. Then she flung them against the bars. “Look at the state of it!”
“Honest to God, Missus. I ’aven’t got a clue what you’re talking about.” Spike swallowed, the bolus appearing to get stuck in his throat. “Nobody sent me.”
Nancy’s eyes narrowed and her pupils flicked back and forth reflectively. “’Ave you any idea what this thing does?”
“Not a sausage.” Spike gazed at her from beneath his Mohican. “Now if you’ll let me out I’ll be on me way. Sorry to ’ave bothered you an’ all that.”
Nancy snuffled and studied the cogwheels in her palm. “You really ’aven’t got a clue how much trouble we’re in, ’ave you?” She wrinkled her nostrils. “Buggerin’ Nora. That’s all I bloody need!”
Mario Wilberforce was a selfish, avaricious man. As I've already mentioned, his application for recognition as a gypsy had been refused. Gypsies have often proved themselves to be upstanding citizens in the past and are only too willing to take to the law concerning matters of slander. Therefore it’s my duty to point out their disassociation with the rotten, thieving, inbred miscreants that constituted Mario Wilberforce’s extended family.
There they are now, look. Gathered about the table in their father’s caravan, a cloth stained with the grime of meals past covering the greasy surface.
Pablo Wilberforce marked the passage of time by stabbing a flick knife into the tabletop between his out-stretched fingers. From his left ear hung an enormous ring that looked like a gold toilet seat. Across one cheek was a tattoo that read, ‘LANCSHIRE.’ The misspelling didn’t matter. Almost the entire clan was illiterate and those who weren’t were hardly likely to point it out to him anyhow.
Pablo turned to Maria, a wretchedly thin, dark skinned female whose hair was so lank that a garage mechanic wouldn’t have used it as a rag. A sneer ran up one side of his battle scarred features as he reached for his tankard.
“Wheresa Poppa got to?” His gravelled voice rattled around the half-empty vessel. “Our business is going down hill fast an’ Poppa’s out cavorting with the customers.”
“Poppa will come! Eeza discovered a way to save our fairground from financial ruin. Don’t worry, Pablo. You’ll still be able to claima de dole an’ run your ghost train when Poppa’s finished.”
Maria attempted to blow a curl from her forehead. It remained in position against the oily sheen of her skin. At that moment the door crashed open and the massive bulk of Mario Wilberforce forced itself through the opening with a grunt.
“Ah, ’ere’s a pig inna de poke!” A brown smile of rubber teeth tore across Pablo’s pockmarked face. Some of the smaller children backed into the corner in fear of a beating.
“Oy, Pablo! Shudda your mouth before I rip eet off and feed it to the kids.” Mario squeezed himself through the bulging door. “Now shuddup all of you! I ’ave an announcement to make!”
He hoisted his stomach onto the table. “Children, gather round your old Poppa.” Reluctantly the sable-coloured children acquiesced. Mario grinned.
“As you all know Wilberforce’s Fairground is ’aving some tiny financial difficulty. I was considering sellin’ off the leetle ones to vivisection to raisea de cash to pay off our debts.”
The tiniest tot, a feral child in a cardigan that was more of a collection of holes than anything else, burst into tears. A knuckle-duster of diamond rings patted her crown.
“However I have acquired something that’s gonna turn the whole situation on itsa head!”
Pablo wrinkled his eyes. “What is eet this time, Poppa? Not another bank note forging machine? You know what happened to Diablo?” He took off his beret and clutched it tightly against his chest in homage to the brother at Greyminster Scrubs. “We’re sick an’ tired of your pox-riddled schemes.”
“Not this time Pablo. Come, I have our fortune ’idden safely in the bushes outside.”
The camouflaging blanket of leaves rustled beneath the industrious brown fingers of the Wilberforce family. Even the smallest children lent a hand. The concealed object reaching up into the heavens was steadily disrobed.
There was a series of astonished gasps. Mario Wilberforce waddled the ripened pear of his body to the front of his family, hooking his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets and smiling broadly. With the demeanour of a showman he extended one arm towards the huge bars.
“See now Pablo! Our future is assured.” He patronisingly placed the outstretched hand on Maria’s head, instantly regretting it. Wiping the palm down one leg of his trousers he continued through gritted teeth. “Look a leetle closer children! With thisa new side-show we’re gonna makea millions.”
“What exactly is it, Poppa?” Pablo strained his drunken eyes against the wall of darkness. “Is it an helephant? Or a herd of giraffes?”
With a crash a massive gauntlet shot through the bars, pinning Pablo to the ground. He struggled to wrench himself free, his baggy-sleeved shirt shredding as the massive fingers closed.
The hand was enormous, a twelve-foot cube of solid metal that squealed as it bent its joints. The children screamed and several crows took flight. Moments later Pablo unfurled at his father’s feet. The crescent of teeth shone with a parsimonious fervour as Mario Wilberforce leant over his whimpering son.
“No, Pablo! This issa much better than an ’andful of tatty animals.” The gauntlet dug its fingers into the soil, rutting huge mounds of turf into trenches as it pulled them backwards. “This will makea our fairground de talk of de World.”
Chapter Five: Through the Tailgate of History
Spike stumbled through the door of the caravan only just cognisant enough to avoid falling down the steps. His normally athletic Mohican had lost its starched appearance overnight and now resembled a broom head with a personality crisis. Rubbing his eyes with his bony knuckles he removed the crustiest flakes of sleep from his mouth and looked at Devils Copse. Or at least, what he assumed was Devils Copse. The briars had altered subtly in the small hours. The moth-eaten shrubs appeared more verdant now. Eerie wails echoed all around him and filled him with a sense of dread.
“Morning, Gypsy!” Nancy’s grin entered the clearing, several armour-plated voles scurrying off at her approach. Across one shoulder a rope reached up into the treetops, disappearing from sight amongst the huge orange leaves. She pulled up short before the steps, the saucepans attached to her rucksack clanging noisily as she slung it onto the ground. “’Ave a good sleep, Gypsy?”
“I’
m not a gypsy, Missus!” Spike sat down with a weary wallop. “I only work for ’em! I mean ‘worked’,” he corrected himself. “I’m off Crookley’s Council Estate on the far side of Greyminster.”
“Well not t’ worry! You’re ugly enough to be a gypo.” Nancy wedged the tattered end of the rope beneath her heel. Something pulled it beyond the trees. She threw a faggot of sticks into a haphazard bundle on the grass. “It all amounts to much the same thing any’ow. Gypsies are only council estates on wheels. They just ’ave a few more pegs an’ a bit more money.”
“Not everyone ’oo lives on a council estate’s a git, y’ know?”
The criminal activities around Crookley’s Estate were well documented in Greyminster. Spike’s residence itself wasn’t exactly a tourist haven. However, he didn’t like being cast in the same mould as Wilberforce’s Fair.
He stifled a yawn with growing contempt. “I’ll ’ave you know that we’re the victims of crime round our neck of the woods, not the perpetrators.”
“Touchy little bastard aren’t y’?” Removing the comical ray gun from her apron Nancy aimed it at the twigs and squeezed the trigger. A handful of flames licked hungrily at the moist bark. “It’s all the same to me, Gypsy. I’m not one t’ stand in judgement on other cultures. Except for football fans. Can’t stand them!”
Nancy went down on one knee, rummaging in her rucksack for cooking utensils. “Bloody idiots football fans! Always tellin’ everyone else to get a life when all they do is watch a group of stupid blokes kickin’ a pig’s bladder about an oblong of grass.”
The sudden squawk of what sounded like a fifteen ton parrot made Spike bolt upright startled.
“’Ave we by any chance left Devils Copse overnight?”
“I wouldn’t ’ave thought so.” Nancy pressed her cheek against the ground, pursed her lips and blew on the lackadaisical blaze. “The Directional Stabiliser’s bust. You knocked it over prattin’ about in case you’d forgotten! The only place we’ve travelled is about sixty-five million years back through time.”
That was the sort of comment that Spike found easy to ignore. It had obviously been intended as sarcasm, although the punch line was so elusive as to be non-existent. “You’re not actually part of Wilberforce’s Fairground are y’, Missus?”
A sneer wrinkled Nancy’s snub nose. “I’ll ’ave t’ get up pretty early in the mornin’ to pull one over on you won’t I, Gypsy?”
She stoked the fire with the ray gun’s barrel. “To be perfectly honest I’m a Cryptozoologist.”
“A Cryptonzoophologic?” Spike attempted to mouth the word several times before raising the next obvious question. “What’s one of them then?”
“I collect an’ study mythological creatures.” Removing a slab of meat from a greaseproof parcel Nancy threw it into a frying pan and set it down. Seconds later the fat began to bubble and squeak. “Things that have been eradicated from history ’cos people won’t leave ’em alone?”
The meat was looking pretty damned extinct itself, miniature helixes of smoke twisting upwards.
“Eradicated from ’istory? What? You mean like the dodo?”
“Actually I’ve got a couple of dodos in the trailer. Managed t’ rescue the last pair. It was an ’ard job locating Mauritius with me bloody clapped-out guidance system.”
“Just supposin’…” Spike studied his boots. “Just supposing you ’adn’t ’ave rescued ’em. And they’d bred? Wouldn’t you be responsible for wipin’ the poor bleeders out?”
Nancy stopped prodding the shrivelled lump of graphite that was breakfast, shook the troubled thought from her head and picked up the discussion on a completely different track. “Trouble is you see Gypsy, the future’s not exactly a wonderful place. It’s all grimy an’ noxious. There’s hardly any wildlife left at all.”
She regained her feet, the steak firmly skewered to the end of the gun resembling one of those black cornflakes that crop up from time to time. Having taken a cautious bite she gave a tug on the rope. Somewhere behind her the treetops rustled disconcertingly.
“Wanna see what I got this mornin’?”
“Not really, no.”
The branches opened and a mud-brown muzzle appeared over the most recent shoots. A massive bookcase of amber teeth parted with a sonorous belch, a half-digested haystack clearly visible behind them. Two yellow eyeballs blinked supinely down, studying Spike with curiosity.
“What the bloody ’Ell’s that?”
“This, Gypsy, is probably the last diplodocus on Earth. Eighty odd foot of muscle.” Nancy gave the rope another gentle tug. The great head jolted. A spray of straw spluttered out in all directions. “I’ve got to introduce it to its mate. You can give us a hand. I’m buggered if I’ve got to get ’em copulating on me own.”
October the Third, 1999. Wilberforce’s Fair had folded away its dangerous rides and moved on with the usual accompaniment of deafening music. As the first cracks of sunlight broke through the fog, the skein of caravans had taken to the narrow streets. Now only the chewed-up turf of Devils Copse remained, a serpent of bracken snaking off towards town. Hedonism had thrown off its mantle and noisily vacated.
Between the drowsy morning terraces the lumbering caravans wound their route. At Potters Steps exhausts rang loudly on curbs.
“See, Maria? Nine Acre Farm!” A soiled finger punched at the map across the dashboard. “Issa on de outskirts of town. That should make a good spot, no?”
“But why, Poppa? What was wrong with where we were?” Maria swept her oleaginous tresses to one side. “It wassa cheap in Devils Copse an’ Farmer Barley charges a massive amount for this piece of infertile scrag.”
Mario Wilberforce removed the finger from the Ordinance Survey map and smacked it against one temple in a knowledgeable manner. “Sound business sense, Maria. My own Great Grand-Poppa, ’ee was de same. That’s how ’ee managed to build Wilberforce’s Fair in de first place.”
A tomato hit the windscreen and exploded. It was accompanied by an equally ripe insult from a pensioner hiding behind the pillar-box. Greyminster pensioners still carried an aeons-old racial hatred of outsiders. Especially those with dark skin and foreign accents. The lessons of two World Wars, both conducted to stamp out bigotry, had obviously been forgotten. Mario watched the grotesque smudge slide to the bottom of the screen beneath the weight of the wiper.
“Great Grand-Poppa knew what gullible pillocks these townsafolk were. Did I ever tell you ’ow ’ee started in business?” He couldn’t be bothered waiting for a reply. “’Ee got an old crate, painted it yellow, carved a slot in de top, an’ stuck it down Crookley’s Grove. An’ do you know what ’appened, Maria?”
“No Poppa, what?” Actually she did know. Her father had told her the same bloody story a thousand times since being knee-high to a goose. Back in those days Mario had been a slim romantic figure with menacing eyes instead the huge orang-utan currently slumped over the steering wheel. Nonetheless she listened attentively. It was always best to keep on the right side of somebody who bit the heads off gerbils for a hobby.
“De next day, when Great Grand-Poppa came to look, de crate was fulla de coins.” Mario frowned. “Unfortunately those thievin’ bastards off de council estate ’ad nicked ’em. Dat’s why we chain everything down, Maria.”
It was perhaps as well that the practice had been maintained until the present day. If the valuables hadn’t been chained securely then they would have been bouncing down Potters Steps by now.
“That’s all well and good, Poppa. But why are we moving to Nine Acres Farm?”
“Because Maria…” He gave his daughter a playful rap on the forehead. “Barley’s Farm issa much better prospect. People can reach eet from miles around. An’ they will come, Maria. From Lancaster, anna Morecambe. Not just bloody Greyminster.”
With his elbow escaping the window of the jeep, Mario leant his head out and bellowed at the startled rag-a-muffin children. “Getta those posters down fast, y’ leetle bastards!
An putta de new ones up!”
Here is the rear of the entourage crossing Greyminster Market. At the back the labouring Range-Rover tows Wilberforce’s latest acquisition. The enormous crate sways round the terrace, the vehicle wheezing. The gigantic shadow creeps up the town hall, foreboding and cold. An inauspicious portent of things to come.
The townsfolk stop as the mammoth holding pen rumbles past. The cadaverous children, whose counterparts at the front of the procession dance like fire-imps, are dull and lifeless here, treading the cobbles with a miserable air. The posters slung across their arms hang limp, the occasional one being plastered to a doorpost. As the cage rumbles on around the corner several sets of eyes turn to stare at one such advertisement. It reads quite simply:
Wilberforce’s Fairground in coneckshon with Nine Acors Farm
Proudly presents Its latest atrackshon
Bigger than King Cong More dedly than the Terminaitor More fritening than Saitan
THE MIGHTY GOLIATH.
Cum and see it if yoo dare!!
Chapter Six: An Exploration of Our Timeworn Baggage
Here is a shabby trunk. Its contents make up our chronological evidence. What’s this? A roll of yellow papers? This is Grandma Jo’s collection of unpatented blueprints. Time out now from our unfolding story. Let’s unfurl these intricate diagrams and have a look.
The Painless Chicken Plucker: An odd contraption that resembles a Sainsburies’ box with levers and pulleys. At the end of one pivoting arm, a metal claw holds down a worried bantam. Two further automated limbs remove the feathers using hot wax.
This first diagram bears the caption, ‘i. Before.’
The following illustration, ‘ii. After.’ shows a scraggy piebald chicken covering its private parts with threadbare wings.
The Clockwork Hamster Exerciser: Dennis’ sister Ruth owned an extremely lethargic and bulbous hamster who for reasons never explained was called ‘Andrew.’ Grandma Jo had obviously spent some time on this invention. A complex motor was connected up to the hamster wheel.