Nevertheless it was work, and if it had not been that she knew the Stray could not read properly, Miss Phipps would have sent her a letter to put her in her place. She was losing pounds daily as she toiled over an enormous furnace of a range, but she did not care. She was away from the dreadful people on the track. She had a roof over her head. She might not have had it long, had the hotel not been extra busy while the picnic races were in full swing. But the licensee and his wife put up with Miss Phipps because she had had such a terrible time travelling the roads and had kept herself pure and unspotted through it all. A real lady too! Even the kitchen-maids, until they found her out, cleaned up their language in her presence.
13
As the busker beheld the country whizzing past him at fifty miles an hour, he heaved a sigh of enormous relief. He was done with the slow crawling of vans and sulkies that had chafed his free spirit ever since he joined Snow’s party. He had always travelled fast, and it irked him more than the others could imagine to see cars going by in a cloud of dust, trains that an active man might ‘jump’ steaming off without him. To hell with the Horse! This was the age of speed, and he was part of it. He did not intend to end his life as the personal attendant of any horse, particularly the Horehound. The only use he would have for a horse henceforth would be as a race result. But some worm of conscience intermittently gnawed the fair flower of his content. It was leaving Snow that bothered him; he had no qualms about deserting the Stray.
After all, she had meant nothing in his life. He might have attempted a mild philandering, if she had been better-looking and not quite so absorbed in the impervious Snow. But then, again, if he had attempted anything, the busker reflected prudently, it might have spoilt the tone of the camp. Dancy was one of those girls a man could never trust. She would as likely as not express her dissatisfaction, if a man so much as made a pass at her, by cracking his skull with an empty bottle. He had seen her whip off her shoe and aim a blow at an unfortunate bagman who had been over-demonstrative, that, had it landed, would have laid him unconscious. The way she used her fists had more than once precipitated an ugly situation into which he or Snow might have been drawn. No, the busker reflected virtuously, although she had her good points, he was pleased to see the last of Dancy.
He had told Phippsy terrible stories of the show-people to deter her from accompanying him and spoiling his freedom. Nothing, not the finest voice in the world, would persuade him to endure Miss Phipps’s company again. She was the nearest thing to a vacuum he had ever met; and the busker, like nature, abhorred a vacuum. She drew everything into herself and gave nothing in return. She sucked all the good out of life, and her absence was a positive joy.
But he felt mean when he thought of Snow lying in hospital, thinking the busker had the turnouts in his care. He had let Snow down. But, oh hell, life wasn’t long enough to be always shouldering your fair share of responsibility. Everything would turn out for the best. With this metaphysical boot-sole the busker sought to crush that ever-gnawing worm of conscience.
By the time the houses began to thicken into streets and the mile-long main thoroughfare of the great city of Walfra opened before him, he had no thought but of the show, of returning to his own people, the show-people. He scented from afar the strange atmosphere of mingled sawdust, chewing-gum, hot fairy-floss and perspiring crowds that was the breath of life to him. He tugged at the lapels of his best suit as a horse might tug at its reins. He fidgeted. He almost neighed with eagerness. When the lorry-driver set him down in the main street, he even refused a free beer, so eager was he to hurry off towards the show-ground. His ardour was somewhat damped by a young policeman who had seen him alight and came strolling over with a glint in his eye.
‘We don’t want any travellers in this town,’ the law announced without preamble. ‘You’d better get out as quick as you came in, unless you want to see the inside of our new gaol.’
The busker made no direct answer. He felt that both dignity and safety counselled silence. This specimen of the genus police was a very large, very well-developed specimen. He towered over the busker in a way that youth did not like. The busker mumbled something and started to walk away, but the policeman showed signs of accompanying him.
‘You got it all wrong,’ the busker explained. ‘I’ve come here for the show.’
‘So’ve seven thousand other bagmen,’ the policeman observed, not without a trace of bitterness. ‘The population of this town is usually eighteen thousand. And now, show-time, there’s twenty-five thousand, and most of them,’ his tone was severe, ‘crooks or bagmen, or both.’
‘You have a bit of faith and trust,’ the busker advised. ‘Come round to the show tonight, and maybe I’ll get you in free.’
The policeman eyed him coldly, but let him go, while he slowly pondered whether he should tell this flip young man that policemen got in free anyway, or whether he should keep that knowledge to himself.
Over the Main Street of Walfra, pendent between the roof of the garage and the hotel verandah on the opposite side of the road, was a calico sign which announced in large letters of black and red: ‘Welcome to Walfra. The City with the Civic Spirit.’ When this banner became old and tattered, the townspeople would have grown so used to it that they would not even notice when it fell to the ground like some overripe fruit of civic progress. At present it made the townspeople feel important just to look at that sign, for Walfra was still in the self-conscious stage of cityhood. After all, is a city a city when you can stand on one side and see right through it and out the other? Such doubts were loyally suppressed by all except unpleasant and discourteous visitors.
Like most other inland ‘cities,’ Walfra had started as the ford of the river, and worked its way up as the marketing centre for a rich wool and wheat-growing district. There were any number of farmers, their lambing over, and shearing not yet begun, who would come riotously into Walfra and treat their children to a ride on the merry-go-round and their wives to shilling seats at the tent show. If any of their sheep won a trophy, they might even go so far as to buy the wives new saucepans.
On the outskirts of country towns there are always mysterious bald patches, sometimes with a fence, sometimes without. They can be either a racecourse, a cricket-pitch, or, when they are not bogged, an aerodrome. They also serve as a sports-ground, and, when a grandstand and sheds are erected, a show-ground. On Walfra’s bald patch, tents were being erected in a negligent way, as though it did not really matter if they went up this week or the next. Chiefest of these was a big marquee in which the main show would be housed, a marquee branded and stamped all over as the property of W. Jasprey. A large, yellow motor-van was also so labelled, proclaiming itself as belonging to Jasprey’s Giant Show.
The busker had timed his arrival well. The show would start on the morrow, so a seedy-looking man who was tugging on a guy-rope informed him. There was very little indication that anything unusual was toward. The show-ground was the usual bare, scraped patch in the box-tree scrub, with the usual group of tin sheds for ‘exhibits’ and the usual tiny grandstand. It might have been Logan all over again, except that Walfra was bigger.
The busker’s high spirits drooped a little. He did not know anybody. These were strangers, but he still felt fairly confident that he would find his niche. He could always return to street-singing as a last resort. He was wise enough to know that the show-ground or the camps beside it were the last place he would find the ‘big bugs’ of the tent shows. They would be in the bars of the hotels. He regretted now that he had turned down that free beer the lorry-driver had offered. But the man might have expected him to shout back, and the busker had only a shilling in the world.
He strolled back down the Main Street, deciding which of the boarding-houses looked the best for free board and lodging. They would probably all be crowded, but his appearance in his best maroon suiting with the green hat would stand him in good stead. He looked prosperous — in fact he had been startled that the policeman had s
poken to him. Probably had not the policeman seen him descend from the lorry, he would not have picked him for a traveller. His musings were interrupted by a raucous hail ‘Hiyah, Dooksey!’ and the next minute he was pumping the hand of his erstwhile mate, the jockey George Walton, and George was leading him by the arm towards the bar, talking as he went, all as though there had never been any regrettable rift between them or black eyes or bruises exchanged. George also looked prosperous. He was wearing brown trousers, a vivid yellow knitted sweater and a new blue tweed sports coat. His brown hat sported a little blue feather. For all his affluence, he seemed more than pleased to see the busker.
‘Where you been?’ George asked, when they were standing with a couple of mugs at their elbows. ‘I expected you to show up days ago. I been putting in a good word with Jasprey — just digging round his roots — so’s when you came he’d give you a break.’
‘What a pal!’ the busker exclaimed fervently. Forgotten was that large bruise on the cheek-bone that had been George’s parting gift.
‘I figured it out,’ George said importantly, ‘that with your voice and my brains, we could knock ’em cold.’
The words seemed somehow familiar to the busker, but he felt it would be impolitic to enquire: ‘What brains?’ as he was tempted to do.
‘What’s Jasprey got on his board for a line-up?’ he asked instead.
‘He’ll fix you in all right,’ his friend assured him. ‘Surest thing you know. I’m geeing for him, and I’ll fix it.’
The busker’s spirits fell again. In the show world a ‘gee-man’ or ‘micky finn’ was socially on the level of a duck’s feet. He is the man who goes out in the crowd and touts for custom with such inspiring cries as: ‘Come along now. Come and have your fortune told. Madame Sara! All the way from Egypt! Stay on Rocky Ned for five seconds and ten shillings. Try your luck on Loop-the-Loop. Roll up and see the Bearded Woman!’ That is a gee-man. He hastens the slow pace of the bucolic population which would otherwise never get within spending distance of its money.
‘There’s Jasprey now,’ George whispered. ‘Come on. Let’s put the hard word on him.’
He edged up to a stout man with a cigar, a circle of listeners, a very quick, unpleasant way of speaking, and a yellow face cut into deep wrinkles.
‘He comes over here, see?’ Mr Jasprey was saying, illustrating with the cigar, ‘and I ask him what the bloody hell he’s up to. “You Jasprey,” he says, “Mr Walt Jasprey?” “Yes,” I says, “and what the bloody hell …” ’
‘’Scuse me, Mr Jasprey.’ George had wriggled within interrupting distance. ‘Could I see you a minute?’
‘Get to hell, what’s-your-name,’ Mr Jasprey responded without change of tone. ‘Later. See you later. Busy as hell.’
‘I got that friend of mine I was telling you about. The yodelling drover. Listen, Mr Jasprey; he’s just over here, if you could spare a minute …’
Mr Jasprey shot a shrewd glance in the direction of the busker. ‘Nothing doing. Got a yodeller. Tell him to get back to his bullock-punching.’
But the busker had joined the fray. Without waiting for the outcome of the interview, he had produced his guitar and unleashed his voice in a torrent of sound that even a Swiss cataract would have envied, if it had the privilege of rivalling that incomparable yodel on some mountain peak. To the ear of a music critic the busker’s voice would have sounded as though all the cats in creation suddenly yearned their passion aloud, but Mr Jasprey, being a showman, knew the power of the yodel, the spell it binds over the farming populace. He listened almost respectfully for fully five bars. Then his normal impatience reasserted itself.
‘Skip it,’ he shouted. ‘Come up to the truck in about an hour and I’ll see what you got. Lemme alone now. Busy as hell …’
But the busker went on squalling of his love for some girl in the west who had been foolish enough to entrust her heart to his keeping. Mr Jasprey, with a weary muttering, snatched up his beer, his circle of listeners and his cigar, and wafted them into a private sitting-room. Even there he could hear the plaudits of the audience in the bar, where the publican was standing the busker beer. The busker knew he was as good as engaged.
‘There you are,’ his friend George said, thumping him on the back. ‘I fixed it for you, didn’t I?’
When the busker interviewed Mr Jasprey he certainly found himself hired. He would get four pounds for the week the show was in Walfra, and as the busker had not touched four pound notes for a long time, although he had a lurking feeling he was being underpaid, he did not take long to accept the offer. He spent a considerable effort afterwards endeavouring to convince Mr Jasprey that he was worth more. Mr Jasprey, who had been congratulating himself aloud on his own generosity, turned a cold eye on his new hireling, and wanted to know if the busker were sick or out of his mind. He added that the busker would be expected to take his place in the line-up outside the tent before the show began and also to help with such chores as grooming the bucking mule, holding the tightrope tight while the Human Fly walked along it, dressing up in a coating of black cork as the assistant of Aladdin the Wonder-Worker, and helping to eject anyone who wanted his money back. The busker removed himself before Mr Jasprey could think of more odd jobs. His new employer had a fertile mind when it came to finding work for other people.
Having thus hired himself to the tent show, the busker made a tour of the sideshows to see what pickings he could find. He chummed up with the guardian of the merry-go-round, who introduced him to a lean, melancholy person who was running Fosdick’s Ten-in-One-Show. The Ten-in-One consisted of a long-tailed pheasant from Japan, a stuffed orang-outang, a crocodile in the same condition, the handcuffs with which Legs Diamond was apprehended, the original bloodstains and revolver of the Bloodbath Murder, some very sleepy and disinterested carpet snakes and other ‘Horrors.’
The busker pricked up his ears when he heard the merry-go-round owner ‘ribbing’ Fosdick on the number of lodgers he was taking in nightly; bagmen who, for a few shillings now and then, helped with the show, bringing water and wood and erecting tents. The night before a carpet snake had curled up on one of the lodgers as he was sleeping peacefully in the tent; and now Fosdick complained that ‘just for a little thing like that,’ the sleeper had vacated his claim for accommodation. The busker, always ready to save money, and realising from several ‘knock-backs’ that he had little hope of lodging in the town, immediately pre-empted the vacant sleeping-place. Mr Fosdick was agreeable, provided the busker would ‘ampster’ for him. The busker, since his own show did not coincide with the Ten-in-One, saw no reason to refuse.
The ampster’s is an easy job. He stands in the front row of the listening crowd registering intense interest and enthusiasm while the showman ‘spruiks.’ Meanwhile other members of the troupe collect a crowd. This they do by taking up their place on ‘the board,’ a platform by the entrance of the tent, and raising a great commotion over the fact that: ‘In one minute Daredevil Phil will shoot the apple off the lady’s head’ (not that he ever does), or that ‘The Wonder Worker from Ceylon will now cut this beautiful girl in halves. Roll up! Roll up!’ The crowd duly rolls up because it thinks that something free is about to happen, and the lure of a free show is always potent. As soon as the showman begins to shout: ‘All right, the show is commencing. Roll up! Roll up! They’re starting right away. No waiting. No delay,’ there is a whispered order given: ‘Ampsters to the fore,’ and the ampster rushes eagerly up to the ticket-window and says: ‘Right-o, mister, I’ll have a ticket.’ He pretends to pass his money over, and is handed a ticket. His brother-ampsters form into an impatient queue behind him and file into the tent at the head of the multitude, who, like sheep, will follow the leader, but will not be the first to pay their money. If it were not for the ampsters, there would be no audience. Having seen as much of the show as they feel they can stand, the ampsters slip out, to reappear just as the next performance commences and repeat their necessary part.
; His future thus settled, the busker began to look about him for distractions other than the traditional showman’s holiday of ‘going down town, getting drunk, and getting pinched.’ He first enquired anxiously if anyone had been killed on the Northern Run that year, for the show-people are superstitious. His mind was set at rest by the reply that a bagman who was ‘geeing’ for Jasprey had fallen off the bumper bars of a train and had his body cut in two. Reassured that the showmen’s year would be a successful one after this propitiatory sacrifice, the busker decided that what his soul required was feminine society. He cast a roving glance over what was offered; but the fortuneteller was a stout, elderly lady with a moustache, and the woman wrestler had her husband travelling with her, and he was nearly as big as she was. Several of the wives and daughters of the showmen looked possible; but it was George Walton who told the busker of the really alluring daughter of the milk-bar proprietor whose refreshment tent was just near the gate of the show-ground.
The busker cruised in the direction of this milk-bar; he even sampled the beverage, which struck his refined palate as very much like the water a milky glass had been washed in. The daughter, however, was incomparable. She was as sweet as the milk-bar proprietor was sour. She could not have been more than sixteen, but she was a flowery blonde with a skin of peaches and cream, the brains of a guinea-pig, and a most entrancing giggle.
The busker had not been among those present for ten minutes when he decided that, not only had he a job and a place to sleep, but he was already a leap and a half ahead of all the other he-persons on the show-ground, and in process of acquiring a girl as well. Every able-bodied male had been in to sample the curious fluid that tasted a little like milk and to try their luck with the proprietor’s daughter; but it was obvious that the busker was out in the lead. He was, as he said himself, a good mixer; and when it came to telling lies, particularly of his own deeds of daring and skill, he shone.
The Battlers Page 19