Someone Special (29 page)

Hester gave a snort of laughter. It occurred to Nell, not for the first time, that her mother was looking fitter and happier than she had done for ages and ages. The repair operation had been a great success and, there was no doubt about it, Mum loved working with Phillips, cooking for the Allinghams when it was her turn,
sleeping out under the stars when the little tent got too stuffy to be borne. It wasn’t an ordinary job, not like keeping house had been, and though it involved quite a lot of hard physical work, Nell thought of it as one long holiday. She voiced the thought aloud to her mother and Hester nodded immediately.

‘I know what you mean, pet, but it isn’t a holiday, it’s a way of life, and a way of life we both enjoy. It won’t always be sunny meadows and pleasant folk though. When winter comes it’ll be tough, believe me.’

‘I don’t think I mind toughness, so long as we’re all together,’ Nell said. ‘Barbie seems like your sister, and Mr and Mrs Allingham are as nice to us as if they were family, aren’t they?’

Hester smiled again, more broadly this time. ‘I wish she was my sister, but I do know what you mean, pet. And the kids are all right with you, I can see that. As for you painting up, there isn’t much point for a little village like this. But when we’re nearer the coast, doing the little villages by the sea, then we’ll paint you up. The next gaff isn’t far from Norwich, so we may take a morning off, go and look at the sights. It’s the city where they hold the Christmas fair with the gaff on the cattle market. Now that’ll be worth taking a look at, or so they say.’

‘There’s a castle in Norwich, up above the cattle market,’ Nell observed, ignoring the remark about the other children and shoving the mugs along so that she could sit on the trailer step. ‘It’s got a museum in it with butterflies and birds’ eggs and a Red Indian in a canoe and ancient Egyptians … all sorts. It’s free, too.’

‘And there’s dungeons and torture instruments,’ Annie volunteered ghoulishly, panting up beside them and accepting the sandwich Hester was holding out. ‘Ma and the rest’ll be over in half a mo; ta, Hester, that smell wonderful.’

‘Even if she didn’t manage ole Phillips like a nat’ral,
we’d keep ole Hester anyway, for her cookin’,’ Mr Allingham observed, coming down the steps of the trailer with one hand extended to take his sandwich. ‘Why, if young John had tasted your rabbit pie afore he laid eyes on our Barbie, she wouldn’t ha’ stood a chance!’

Everyone laughed and Hester, pink-cheeked, scooped fried onions from the blackened pan and heaped them on top of the sausage balanced on the next round of bread.

‘You’re a lucky gel, Nellie, to have a Mum what can cook like that,’ remarked one of the chaps who helped to erect the joints, as the side-shows were called, ‘Cor, them dumplings we ’ad last week was better’n my old ma make ’em!’

Nell, basking in the compliments, added her own. ‘Everyone says Mum’s a good cook; even Mr Geraint,’ she remarked. ‘When we lived in Wales …’

Her words petered out as Hester tipped the pan sideways and flames shot head-high as the smoking fat hit the red-hot heart of the fire.

All fair folk are anxious about fire; too many of them have suffered from it. A cast-down cigarette and a small fortune in canvas can be destroyed, to say nothing of lives put at risk and important equipment ruined. There was a concerted roar, then separate voices made themselves heard as the flames died as quickly as they had sprung up.

‘Only a bit o’ fat – ’twon’t do any ’arm.’

‘That’ll larn you, my woman – never take your eye off a fry-pan, do you’ll see your breakfas’ go up in flames.’

‘Calm down, everyone, no harm done. Any more sausages, Hester m’dear?’

That last was Mrs Allingham, Mizallie to the fair folk. No one stood on ceremony here and Mr Allingham was called Al by everyone, though Hester tried to get Nell to be more respectful. Now, Mizallie stood at the top of the trailer steps smiling guilelessly, but Nell, gazing up at her,
had a shrewd suspicion that Mizallie knew that Hester’s ‘accident’ had been just about as much of an accident as Barbie’s broken wrist.

I should’ve kept my mouth shut about Wales, Nell thought guiltily. Mum never mentions anything about it – not Wales, nor Daddy, nor Mr Geraint.

‘Plenty of sausages,’ Hester said as though nothing had happened, turning to smile at Mizallie. ‘I put a pile on that plate … oh damn, that was the jukels’ grub I just shot into the fire. Still, there’s plenty of dripping, I’ll warm some more through. Fetch the yellow bowl over here, there’s a good girl, Nell.’

Hester hardly ever used fairground slang, but she’d called the dogs jukels without a thought. Nell, who stored up every precious new word because she wanted to talk just like her friends and her new adopted family, smiled to herself as she ran across to the trailer. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Kipsy, her favourite jukel, loping across the gaff towards them. He had been injured as a pup and now ran three-legged, but despite this disadvantage he usually managed to get to the food in time to receive his fair share. Nell hurried up the steps and into the trailer, snatched the yellow enamel bowl full of hard white fat, and ran back to where the fire was burning evenly once more and Hester waited with the stale loaf sliced and ready.

‘Here you are, Mum,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Can I give Kipsy his grub? He needs more than most ’cos he’s only got three legs to hunt with.’

‘They all get the same,’ Hester reminded her daughter, cutting a wedge of dripping and dropping it into the empty frying-pan. ‘You can feed them all if you like, and then you can go into the village and see if you can get a couple of rabbits or a chicken for Phillips. Only don’t be long, because I’ll need a hand with the jungle, after. Can’t expect the chaps to do everything.’

The ‘chaps’ covered all those casual workers who helped with the heavy manual work on the gaff: putting up the rides and side-shows and then pulling them down, leaping on and off the dodgem cars to take fares, evicting drunks and laying ‘roads’ in the wet over which the customers might walk. They were classed neither as fair folk nor flatties, but as something in between. Some of them were ‘steadies’, who stayed with the fair while it was travelling, then went home for over-wintering, returning to the gaff in time for the first fair of the season. Others were simply extra muscle, brought in each time the fair arrived at a gaff and paid off when they left. They ate with the showmen though, and some of the steady chaps were as near family as could be. Ruddy Fred and Black Fred, for example; both in their mid-to late-forties, wiry, tanned men who spoke little but ate and worked prodigiously, they were usually known as Ruddy and Black and were trusted members of the team. Ruddy had got his nickname from his high colour, but Nell had been mystified by Black until he told her his hair had been the same colour as hers when he’d been young.

‘That must have been a long time ago,’ Nell had said artlessly and Black had grinned and said aye, it were a good few years and wasn’t she a silver-tongued rakli, then?

‘What’s rakli?’ Nell asked eagerly, trying to help Black to set up the Wheel-em-in joint so that she could have a go at rolling the penny she would earn before the flatties came in. No one minded her helping the chaps, not even the other kids. It saved them having to do so.

‘What d’you think? What are you? It’s a silly young gel, acourse.’

‘Oh, I see. And what’s silver-tongued?’

But Black would only laugh and adjure her to hold her silver tongue for once while he concentrated on getting the canvas straight.

Right now, Nell took the fat-soaked bread and began
to hand it out to the eager dogs. They stood around her, taking their turn, not snatching or trying to get the biggest pieces. Al said his dogs were the best mannered in the business and he was right, for all that Sinda, a huge alsatian crossbred, had heaved a man out from under the gallopers a week last Saturday by one ankle, doing the ankle no good in the process. But that was why the fair kept them, to keep the flatties in their place, so no one dreamed of blaming Sinda.

‘More tea, anyone? Do that Nell, would you?’

Nell trotted around collecting the empty enamel mugs for refills, feeling the hot sun caressing her shoulders through her cotton frock, aware, from the top of her shining black head to the tip of her toes, that life was good and would be better if she could think of a way to become part of the children’s lives.

The morning’s sightseeing in Norwich had been a big success, but Hester and Nell had to hurry back because they were in the village of Blofield which was quite seven miles out of the city and had to set the show up betimes.

It was another hot day. They were on a recreation field with the church and its tree-shaded churchyard to their right, a wood at the bottom and someone’s orchard on their left. The pub was handy, just across the turnpike road which led to Great Yarmouth, and there were two village shops not more than three minutes’ walk away. Blofield was quite a sizeable village so they should have a good audience. Annie, Wally and Tod had been here often and had said, in front of Nell, that the local kids were fairgoers to a child.

‘There are kids at the big house too,’ Annie Gate-leg told little Tod, who was hanging on to her cotton skirt and demanding answers to a thousand questions. ‘Last year the boy let us fish for tiddlers in their pond. He brung us out ’ot scones an’ lemonade. It’s awright, round here.’

Nell knew better than to comment, because if she did the kids would all take off, leaving her alone. But she had confided in Hester at last, though not the real size of the problem, just saying that the kids weren’t all that keen on her.

‘Keep working hard and when school starts in the winter, they’ll be pleased enough to have your help with their lessons,’ Hester said shrewdly. ‘Until then, don’t worry about it or push it; you’ll be accepted in time.’

Right now Nell helped to set up the jungle, carting the plants across to the tent from the shelter of the ditch which surrounded the wood, where Hester had put them to keep cool, the pots in the trickle of water at the bottom. The sand was already scattered, the rails set up. Now, she wound the long strands of ivy carefully along them, then up the tent-pole. Hester was always full of bright ideas to keep the ivy and the tent-pole together, but they never quite worked out. The fair on the move was well organised by necessity and Al would have had small patience with anyone trotting around holding a huge pot of ivy beside one particular tent-pole.

‘I’m nearly ready, you can let them in when you’ve finished the ivy,’ Hester called from behind her screen. It was a small screen, but sufficient to change behind. Nell knew her mother would be taking off her faded cotton dress and her sandals and applying oil to give her skin a sheen; in winter she would have to use the bottle of wet-white which Barbie had left behind, but at this time of year Hester’s natural tan was considered sufficient, together with her loosened hair falling in waves down her back. Indeed, the first time the Allinghams had seen her in costume they told her delightedly that she looked just right.

‘Foreign an’ a trifle sultry,’ Al said, after a long, serious look, while his wife chimed in with, ‘But classy, my dear, very classy.’

The costume was not so much classy, as rude, Nell thought. It had been Barbie’s snake-wrestling costume, and consisted of an abbreviated Indian sari in brilliant colours which tied just above Hester’s breasts and fell to the top of her thighs, with a starry cloak to put over it before and after each performance. When Hester and the snake wrestled you could see Hester’s silk knickers, but Nell never said anything; she just held the cloak when Hester shed it, and handed it to her quickly as the music ground to a halt. Her mother, Nell realised, was unaware that the flatties could see her knickers; better let it stay that way.

‘Is there a crowd out there, yet? Phillips is still a bit sleepy. It’s the heat, but I won’t wake him until they’re in.’

Hester’s voice, hissing out from behind the screen, brought Nell back to the present with a jolt. It was her job, now that the jungle was in place, to tip the wink that they were ready to whoever was drumming up. She scuttled across the small stuffy enclosure to the door-flap and pulled it back. Outside, Ruddy was banging the flat of his hand on an upturned half beer barrel.

‘Walk up, walk up, ladies and gents! This way for ‘Ester the marvellous jungle gal who tamed the great poisonous snake, Venom, and brought ’im back to England for your pleasure! See ’ow she charms ’im with music, wrestles ’im for amoosement. Walk up, walk up!’

‘Ready, Ruddy,’ Nell hissed, then giggled and ran back into the yellow light of the tent, her grass skirt swishing round her knees. Her own knickers could occasionally be seen if she leaned over the rail but she took good care as a rule. Besides, no one looked at a little girl when Hester and Phillips were wrestling.

Behind her, the people began shuffling in, exclaiming at the heat, then at the jungle, or Nell thought that was what they were exclaiming over since there wasn’t much else
until Mum and Phillips emerged from behind the screen. There was a record on the gramophone, however, so she wound vigorously, set the needle on the black disc, and stood back.

Music flowed into the air just as Hester, right on cue, came out from behind the screen. She was wrapped in her starry cloak with her hair floating free and she held Phillips above her head, or at least she held his neck, the rest of him was looped carelessly across her shoulders, his tail fell down to her knees. The audience gasped, and someone said, ‘Ugh, ’ow can she touch the slimy thing? I’m gonna chuck me dinner all over this ’ere sand in a minute.’ It was a girl; Nell watched as she snuggled against her young man, giving huge theatrical shudders.

Stupid rakli, Nell thought scornfully, Phillips wasn’t slimy. Hester untied her cloak with one hand and held it out and Nell, skirt swishing, took it from her and stood to one side. Behind the rail, Hester made a fuss of Phillips, stroking him in the way he loved. He writhed pleasurably and the audience gasped again. All the women pretended to hate it and the men gaped – not always at the snake, Nell had noticed more than once. Then Hester began the pretend wrestle, which Phillips seemed to enjoy as much as having his throat stroked, or at least he joined in with what looked like enthusiasm.