All is Fair

by All is Fair (retail) (epub)

  She had found time for friends, though. Since Dicky’s death, she had grown particularly close to Jenny and Ren, and the three of them made a point of getting together as often as they could, even if it was just for a few minutes’ catch-up. But the two women weren’t the only ones Julie had grown close to. Speedy had been especially supportive after Dicky’s death, playing a major part in getting the rest of the riding team to give her a fair chance of proving herself to them, and when he sensed she was floundering, never failing to do what he could to buck her up.

  Speedy was as different in both looks and personality from Dicky as it was possible to be. He was fair against Dicky’s darkness, five foot ten to his six foot one, slim-built where Dicky had been broad and muscular. Speedy was not at all aggressive or egotistical, but very easy-going and good-natured. When he had shyly asked Julie to accompany him for a drink at a local nightclub a few nights ago, she had found herself agreeing, despite worrying that it wouldn’t look right her going out with a man so soon after her husband’s death. She was far from ready for another relationship, but it was such a revelation being out with a man who was concerned only for her that she had thoroughly enjoyed herself. She knew how fond Speedy was of her, as he’d never kept that secret, and she knew that in time she could grow very fond of him.

  It was around eleven o’clock in the morning and Julie was practising in the Wall of Death with a couple of lads from the team. She was sitting astride her practice bike when she noticed that the handlebars seemed a little stiff and needed attention. She told the others she was off to the maintenance van to deal with it, then she got off the bike and wheeled it outside and across the grass to where the large brown van was parked. She could see Speedy inside, standing with his hands on his hips, surveying a bike that was propped on a stand. Leaning her own bike against one of the open van doors, she walked up the ramp and went inside.

  The van had been kitted out like a workshop on wheels. Down one side were shelves and drawers filled with all manner of tools, a number of spare parts and other paraphernalia required to keep the practice and performing bikes in peak condition. Along the other side was a workbench. Underneath it were brushes, cans of oil and tins of paint, while above it were shelves also filled with tools and equipment. Speedy was standing at the far end, by the wooden partition that separated the workshop from the driving cab. As always when working in the van, he was wearing oil-stained brown overalls.

  Usually on seeing Julie his face would crease into a broad grin of pleasure but, to her surprise, on this occasion he didn’t appear at all pleased to see her.

  She frowned at him. ‘You all right, Speedy?’

  ‘Eh? Oh… er, yes… yes… I just wasn’t expecting you. I thought you were practising in the wall with Jake and Ray.’

  She laughed. ‘Do we need to make an appointment to visit the van to make sure you’re expecting us?’

  He smiled at her quip. ‘What can I do for you?’

  She glanced at the bike on the stand and her face paled. ‘Is that… is that the bike Dicky was riding when he…’

  He put his hand on her arm and nodded. ‘I haven’t had a chance to look at it since the police returned it after their investigation. I was just seeing if it was repairable, or if not, what parts could be salvaged. Look, if you prefer, I’ll just scrap it…’

  Julie was looking at the bike, bemused. ‘But that’s not the one Dicky had his accident on.’

  Speedy looked taken aback. ‘Of course it is, Julie.’ He tried to steer her away from the bike, saying, ‘Come on, I’ll take you back to your van and make you a cuppa. This is bound to be distressing for you.’

  She agitatedly shook herself free and snapped, ‘But that isn’t the bike, Speedy. Something about it isn’t right. I wish I could remember…’

  ‘It is the bike, Julie,’ he assured her. ‘It’s the same one the police took away and brought back. Maybe they did something to it during their investigation that makes it appear different; after all they would have had it apart looking for anything that could have caused the accident before they reassembled it.’

  She stared again at the bike for several long moments before she conceded, ‘Yes, that must be it. I’m sorry, Speedy. Seeing it has shaken me up a little. I think I will go back to my van for a cup of tea. Meantime, could you have a look at the handlebar on the bike I’ve left outside. It seems a bit stiff; might need a squirt of oil or something.’

  ‘I’ll have it done by the time you get back.’

  A few minutes later, she was sitting at her small kitchen table, nursing a mug of sweet tea between her hands. She wished she could shake off the feeling that the bike in the maintenance van wasn’t the same one that Dicky had had his fatal accident on, but she just couldn’t, and neither could she pinpoint why she suspected that. By the time she finally gave up and admitted to herself that she was wrong and it was the same bike and in fact couldn’t be any other, her tea had grown cold.

  If she wanted to get some practice in this morning, she had no time to make and drink another cup. And Speedy would have resolved the problem with her handlebars by now. As she thought of that, something twigged in her brain. That was it. That was the difference between the bike in the maintenance van and the one that Dicky had been riding when his accident had happened.

  After the bike had stalled then plummeted to the ground, taking her husband with it, the shock had frozen her rigid and she had stood staring stupefied at his crumpled figure only feet away from her. The fall hadn’t actually thrown him clear, and he was lying sideways on the wooden floor still astride the bike, hands gripping the handlebars. The one nearest the floor had bent on impact, and she could distinctly remember thinking that if the bent bar had damaged Dicky’s hand, it could affect his grip, which would end his career as a stunt rider. That had all shot through her mind in the split second before her faculties had returned and the seriousness of what had just transpired had fully sunk in. She had dashed over then to aid Dicky, though by that time Speedy was pulling the bike off him to check for any vital signs whilst commanding her to go and call for an ambulance.

  Both handlebars on the bike in the maintenance van were straight.

  How could this be? The police wouldn’t have straightened the bent handlebar; all they’d been interested in doing was examining the bike for faults that could have caused the accident. Speedy had only been surveying the bike to ascertain whether it was in a repairable state but he hadn’t started work on it, so he hadn’t straightened the handlebar either.

  Julie frowned, perplexed. Whichever way she looked at it, the bike in the maintenance van was not the one Dicky had had his accident on. Then her thoughts began to churn. The only explanation she could come up with for this state of affairs was that the bike Dicky had had his accident on must have been swapped with an identical one that had also been damaged in a similar accident. But all the other practice bikes were accounted for. So where had this bike come from?

  The two bikes could only have been swapped while she was away calling for an ambulance. When she had arrived back, word that a serious accident had happened inside the wall was only just getting around the rest of the community, and Speedy was still on his own with Dicky. So, the only person who could have swapped the bikes over was Speedy! Why would he do such a thing? He had obviously lied to her when she had first mentioned her doubts to him and then made a great effort to persuade her she was wrong. Her frown deepened. Speedy was such a nice man, honest and trustworthy, and would surely have a simple explanation for why he had swapped the bikes over then made her believe she was mistaken. She would go and see him, get this matter cleared up so she could put it to rest.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Jenny was jauntily making her way back to the living area to help her mother with the family midday meal. She had been up to her elbows in soap and water all morning, washing the seats on the sky planes, and after scrubbing off all the grime that had accumulated since they had last been cleaned just a we
ek ago and scraping off globs of hardened chewing gum that people had stuck under their seats, she felt in need of a good wash herself before the fair opened at two. The dirty job of the morning, though, had not done anything to dampen the happy mood she was in. After work finished tonight, some of the younger community were getting together and she was going with Tom. They had enjoyed time with each other on several occasions now, and each time she had found her feelings for him growing. Although he hadn’t said as much, she suspected just by the way he was with her that he felt likewise, or else he was a good actor. The terrible wrench that she knew was coming when the season ended was rapidly approaching, but she decided not to think that far ahead and instead just enjoy the time she spent with him. She would deal with the consequences when it happened, same as many women in the community had to do when they fell for a seasonal worker.

  She was just passing the second-hand and bric-a-brac stall when a small porcelain bowl with colourful flowers inside it caught her eye. It was such a pretty little ornament and her immediate thought was whether Julie would like it as a present to sit on her otherwise bare mantel. She picked it up and examined it. There was a tiny chip in one of the flowers, hardly noticeable unless you closely examined it, but the bowl also had a hairline crack running from the rim down one side to the base. The fair wasn’t due to open for another hour and a half, but the couple that had owned the stall for the last fifty or so years were sitting behind it. Although they knew her, both were eyeing her suspiciously, as they did anyone who approached their stall, having over the years had their fair share of thefts.

  Jabez Cobbler looked to be in his eighties, his gnarled face wizened, his eyes sunk into their sockets and his skin a dirty grey. Long grey hairs grew out of his ears and nose. His hands, crippled with arthritis, resembled claws, and one of them was resting on top of a wooden walking stick that he had a reputation for using as a weapon on anyone who tried to pocket an item without paying for it. He was dressed in a shabby 1930s-style pinstriped three-piece suit, a thick gold chain across its middle, a large pocket watch clipped at the end tucked into one of the pockets. A worn bowler hat perched on top of his grizzled grey hair and he had a clay pipe clamped between toothless gums.

  Beside him, sitting legs wide apart, her skirt filling the gap between, was his wife of over fifty years, dressed in a worn black full-length woollen dress edged around the neck and long sleeves with white lace, thick knitted stocking on her varicose-veined legs. She had a long black coat on top. Her white hair was scraped up into a bun on the top of her head, over with she wore a black felt hat with a bunch of plastic cherries pinned on one side. She too had a clay pipe clamped between her lips. Jenny always had trouble not laughing whenever she saw the couple, as they reminded her of caricatures of Dickens characters, or a joke salt-and-pepper set bought from the seaside as a cheap souvenir for a relative you didn’t like.

  The items on their stall were mostly bought for a pittance from local musty-smelling junk shops, lying discarded and forgotten for decades on shelves right at the back. Jabez Cobbler would bring them back to his van and fix them up, then place them for sale on his stall at a price far higher than he’d paid for them. The couple’s two sons went out every day to prey on the poor or elderly of the town the fair was playing in, giving them a few pennies for items worth much more that then appeared on the stall for their real value.

  Jenny wouldn’t insult Julie by giving her an ornament that was so badly damaged, and replaced the bowl where she had found it. The Cobblers also did a trade in carnival glass, which Gem had a penchant for, owning quite a few cherished pieces, some gifted to her at Christmas and birthdays and some passed down from her mother-in-law, and it was a piece of carnival glass that now caught Jenny’s eye. It was a large dessert bowl, in a marigold colour, with a fluted edge and engraved with grapevines and six smaller matching dishes. Jenny hated it on sight – she had no love for carnival glass – but knew her mother would be beside herself to own it. If it was affordable, she would buy it for Gem’s birthday in a couple of months’ time.

  She pretended not to appear too keen when she asked Jabez, ‘How much for the dessert set?’

  He eyed her as though she was stupid and spoke through his pipe. ‘Price is on the ticket.’

  She hadn’t seen that. Having a quick scan for it, she found it stuck underneath. The price was twenty-five shilling and ten pence. She thought that a bit pricey, so decided to haggle. ‘How much will you take for it?’

  ‘The price it says on the ticket.’

  She pulled a face. ‘It’s a bit steep. It’s not like it’s Crown Derby; just an old piece of carnival glass. I’ll give you seventeen bob for it,’ she braved.

  In his cracked voice he growled, ‘Is that the price it says on the ticket?’

  ‘No. It says twenty-five shillings and ten pence.’

  ‘Then that’s the price I’ll tek for it.’

  If she hadn’t bought a new dress the other day to wear for the party tonight, she could just about have scraped the money together, but she didn’t quite have enough. She really wanted the dessert set though, so she tried again. ‘It’s a present for my mum’s birthday. Surely you’ll take something off as I work here.’ Her parents were both against any of the family using their status as the owners of the fair to gain favours for themselves from the rest of the community, so she didn’t try that tack.

  ‘Price is the price whoever you are.’

  Miserly old bugger, she thought. She sighed in resignation. Seemed she was going to have to save up, and hopefully they wouldn’t sell the set in the meantime.

  She was about to continue her journey when a voice reached her ears. ‘Hello, Jenny.’

  She spun round and stared in surprise. ‘Nurse Robertson. How good to see you. But… but what are you doing here?’

  Gwendoline Robertson was 34 years old, plump, a mop of dark curly hair framing a homely-looking face. She wore a flower-patterned belted dress, a short box jacket in cream over the top and cream kid gloves on her hands. Her handbag was cream too. She was the district nurse who had visited daily during the last couple of months of Jenny’s adoptive mother’s life. Jenny would never have got through that terrible time without Gwen’s support, and after her mother’s death she had given her a brooch by way of a thank you – only costume jewellery, but her mother had treasured it as it has been bought for her by her husband on her twenty-fifth birthday. Gwen had been very touched by the gesture. Jenny hadn’t seen her since the funeral, and here in the fairground, many miles from her home town, was the last place she expected to.

  ‘I was looking for you,’ Gwen told her. ‘I found out from your old neighbour that you’d found your birth family and were now travelling with them. Took me a while to discover where the fair was, but anyway… here I am.’

  Jenny smiled warmly at her. ‘It’s lovely to see you, Gwen. But why would you go to all that trouble to find me?’

  ‘I need to talk to you. Not here, though, somewhere private. You never know who’s earwigging, do you, and I don’t think you’ll want anyone overhearing what I have to say to you.’

  She frowned, puzzled, wondering what on earth Gwen could possibly have to say to her that she wouldn’t want anyone else to hear. ‘Er… well… we could go to my van.’

  Inside the van, she offered her visitor a seat on the sofa and sat down opposite in the armchair. Desperate now to discover why Gwen was here, she said, ‘I’ll make you a cuppa, but first can you just tell me what it is you’ve come to see me about?’

  Gwen was looking around. ‘You’ve got it nice in here. It’s bigger than I thought it was from the outside. It’s still small, though. Don’t you find it claustrophobic?’

  ‘It was hard to adjust when I first came here, but I’m used to it now. I find it very cosy and couldn’t imagine living in a house or flat again and being stuck in one place. It’s fun travelling around to different towns I’d otherwise never get to visit. Anyway, you were going to tell me what
you want to see me about?’

  ‘I’m emigrating to Australia on the Ten Pound Pom government scheme. I go at the end of August. They need qualified nurses. I’ve a sister that went out there five years ago, so I have family there to help me get settled.’

  Why Gwen had gone to all the trouble to tell her that, Jenny couldn’t fathom. They had become friends during her mother’s illness, but not friendly enough to warrant her doing this. ‘I’m really pleased for you. Sounds very exciting. I’m sure it will all go well.’

  ‘Yes, well it might only cost ten quid to travel, but I still need other things, like a few new clothes, and of course money to put down on a place to live. I draw the line at living in a nurses’ home and possibly sharing a room with another nurse at my age. Since my own parents died when I was twenty, I’ve been fending for myself, and a nurse’s wage doesn’t go that far, so saving hasn’t been possible.’

  Jenny was beginning to twig the reason for her visit. ‘Oh, you’ve come to ask me for a loan?’

  Gwen smiled. ‘Not a loan, Jenny. A couple of grand would do nicely.’

  Jenny’s jaw dropped. ‘Give you two thousand pounds! Well apart from the fact that I’d have a job to raise two pounds at the moment, why on earth would I give you two grand?’

  Gwen looked at her for several long moments before she said quietly, ‘I know what you did, and if you don’t pay me to keep quiet, then I’ll go to the authorities about it.’

  Jenny frowned. ‘What I did? What do you mean?’

  ‘I know that you killed your mother.’

  She gawped, stupefied. ‘I did no such thing!’

  ‘Oh, you might not have put your hands around her neck, but what you did was tantamount to the same thing. Did you know that your mother asked me to help her die? It was about a month before the end. She was in so much pain, unbearable most of the time by then, and it was only going to get worse. As much as I sympathised with her, I’d taken an oath to nurse people, not help them die. She said she understood and never broached the subject with me again; just told me how extremely sorry she was to have put me in that position. I’d nursed quite a few patients in the latter days of the sort of terminal cancer your mother had, and I did really feel for her, as I knew she had a few weeks still to go before the end would finally come.