Stealing the Show

by Christina Jones

  ‘Nell!’

  She slammed on the brakes and squinted into the driving mirror. Sam was hurrying along the side of her living wagon. He was five years younger than Danny, and the Bradley tawny hair was their only common feature. Taller and leaner, Sam worked harder than any of them, treated everyone as a friend, and as a result was universally liked. Nell put it down to his being born during the second summer of love. Much of the love and peace mentality had rubbed off on Sam.

  ‘Aren’t the taillights working on the trailer?’ Nell slid the window down. ‘Or have I left Grandma Bradley’s prized Minton sitting by the rubbish sacks?’

  Sam brushed his hair from his eyes and waved his phone under her nose. ‘You’ve got your mobile switched off. It’s Ross.’

  Ross Percival. Every girl’s dream. Nell’s nightmare.

  ‘Oh, sod it! I really don’t want to talk to him at the moment. Tell him I’ve already gone. Tell him I’ll call him from Broadridge Green. Tell him I was abducted by aliens last night –’

  ‘I said you were still here. Sorry.’

  Nell took the phone from her brother. ‘When the hell will you learn to lie through your teeth like the rest of us? Hello, Ross. You’re early … What? Oh, right. Yes. OK. Look we’re just pulling out and I’ve got to go. I’ll call you later. Bye.’ She handed the phone back to Sam. ‘Thanks a bunch. He’s going to come over to Broadridge Green this evening.’

  ‘That’s not so bad, is it? I mean, everyone expects you to be announcing your engagement before long anyway. Mum and Dad said –’

  ‘Sam, shut up.’

  He grinned. ‘Right. But you’ll have to sort it out, Nell. Especially if Ross is going to become part of our set-up.’

  ‘Over my dead body.’ Nell glared at her brother and stamped on the Volvo’s accelerator. ‘Or at least only after a lot of persuasion and with the aid of a general anaesthetic. If we let Ross into the business we might as well forget Bradleys altogether. We’ll be sucked into the Percival empire and everything that it stands for.’

  She didn’t add that it also meant kissing goodbye to her dream of re-creating a traditional fair.

  ‘Spare me the feminist dirges,’ Sam groaned. ‘And the preservation of the atavistic traveller spiel as well. It’s far too early in the morning. Anyway, you’ll probably have to marry him – after all, he’s the only eligible showman around who’s taller than you are.’

  ‘I might take up starvation diets, recreational drugs, and chain-smoking and become a supermodel,’ Nell said haughtily. ‘Tall and slim is still desirable, you know.’

  ‘Tall and slim maybe – gangly, ginger, and covered in freckles is hardly likely to have Naomi and Co. quaking in their shoes.’ Sam blew her a brotherly kiss. ‘Nah, I reckon Ross Percival is your last resort. Have a safe journey.’

  ‘You too, you hippie pig.’

  With a series of rude gestures, Nell steered the Volvo and trailer out through the gap in the Cotswold stone wall and indicated left for Broadridge Green and whatever it might hold. She slotted a Brubeck CD into the player and drummed her accompaniment on the steering wheel. Petronella Bradley was on the road again.

  Chapter Two

  ‘Turn your pedals! Press your steering wheels!’ Nell clapped her hand over the microphone, then raising her voice above an early Oasis hit, tried again. ‘Press your pedals! Turn your steering wheels! All ready for the next ride!’

  With a screech of metal on metal and a Grand Prix roar, the dodgem cars spurted into noisy, colourful life. Within seconds three of them were jammed nose-first into the side of the track, rumbling angrily like impotent bees against a shut window. Nell leaned closer to the microphone. ‘Terry! Sort them out!’

  Terry, who was riding on the back of a car on the far side of the track, explaining the steering to a very pretty girl in a very short skirt, looked up, grinned, and darted between the hurtling dodgems.

  Nell leaned back on her seat in the pay-box. Twilight was seeping over Broadridge Green, and the fair, as always on the first night, was packed. The steady thud of the generators made a background bass for the screams and yells of the customers and the splintered rendition of half-a-dozen different pop songs. The hundreds of multi-coloured lights had transformed the harshness of the primary paintwork into a kaleidoscopic rainbow. She smiled. It never failed to please her, this ability to bring transient magic into people’s lives.

  ‘Sorted.’ Terry leapt from the back of a passing car and balanced beside the pay-box with ease. He was a quick learner. ‘Here’s the dosh.’

  Nell took the coins, flicked them expertly into piles, then held out her hand. ‘And the fiver.’

  ‘What?’ Terry blinked his long eyelashes across dark blue eyes. ‘Never had a fiver.’

  ‘The couple over there, the ones pootling cautiously round the outside, gave you a fiver. I saw them. Hand it over.’

  ‘Oh – that fiver.’ Terry fished the crumpled note out of his jeans. ‘You don’t miss a trick, do you?’

  ‘Can’t afford to.’ Nell frowned above the noise of several multiple pile-ups. ‘And don’t try cheating me or you’ll be on your bike. I know exactly how much money we ride with. Every time. I’ve been doing this all my life.’ She grinned at him. He was very good-looking. ‘If you want to palm the punters and can get away with it, then that’s down to you – but don’t expect me to come to your rescue if they suss what you’re doing and punch you on the nose.’

  ‘OK.’ Terry winked and leapt between the fast-moving cars. ‘Oh – an’ the sausage sandwiches were great.’

  Four fully-packed rides later, Sam swung himself up into the pay-box. ‘Go and grab a cuppa. I’ve got Mick and Alfie covering the paratrooper so I’ll take over for a bit.’

  Nell stood up and stretched in the cramped space. Things on the fair had changed quite a lot in the two years since Adele and Peter Bradley’s retirement, but no one had yet designed pay-boxes that allowed comfort for several people at the same time.

  Sam slid into the seat behind the state-of-the-art sound system which Nell had installed as soon as she’d inherited the dodgems. Adele and Peter had played a repetitive stack of Elvis 45s on a turntable. ‘Oh, and if you were thinking of making yourself alluring for Ross –’

  ‘Which I wasn’t.’

  ‘Well, if you were, I just thought I ought to warn you that you’re only second on his agenda for this evening.’

  ‘Oh?’ Nell paused on the top step.

  Sam switched on the microphone again. ‘Two more cars! Two more cars! Hurry along there!’ He turned back to Nell. ‘Apparently, Danny asked him to come over tonight. It’s definitely business – not pleasure.’

  Nell groaned. Danny? What the hell for? It was bad enough to think that Ross Percival wanted to travel with them. She hoped that Danny wasn’t going to try and coerce her into marrying Ross, yet again, just because he was Clem Percival’s son and Danny wanted the kudos of being linked to one of the largest fairs in the London Section of the Showmen’s Guild. She’d heard it all before. It made her feel like something mass-produced.

  Reading her thoughts, Sam laughed at her expression. ‘Are you sure you didn’t take Rampant Feminism A-level at that boarding school? Poor old Ross. I think you underestimate him. He doesn’t see you as part of the business, even if Danny does. I mean, he must have asked you to marry him three times and –’

  ‘Four,’ Nell said, jumping down the steps and treading carefully over the cables creeping from the generator. ‘And it might as well be four hundred. My answer will still be the same. Ross is OK. We’re good mates – but I don’t want to marry him – or anyone.’

  The air was fragrant with fried onions and hot diesel. Nell was always surprised that no one ever complained about the smell. The noise, yes, frequently, but never the smell which for ten days each spring obliterated the scent of the blossoms and freshly mown grass of Broadridge Green.

  It was a large village, one of the regular ports of call for the fair, and one w
hich the Bradleys considered an easy venue. People spent well and there was never any trouble. Families were out in force in the early evening, teenagers hung on until the bitter end, and everyone enjoyed themselves and disappeared peaceably by eleven o’clock. But Nell was aware that Danny found these places increasingly dull. Danny, she knew, longed to be running huge, gaudy, white-knuckle rides on massive fairgrounds that stayed open until the last terrified customer had staggered away. Rides and fairs, she thought as she dodged a knot of children clutching candy-floss, exactly like those of the Percivals.

  She sighed. Everyone expected her to marry Ross. That was the problem. She was blocking her brothers’ business expansion by her refusal to trip – in her case probably literally, given the length of her legs and her lack of familiarity with frocks that came past the knee – up the aisle.

  ‘Hey!’ Claudia called from the hoopla stall. ‘Why the thunder face? Are you going to castrate someone we know?’

  ‘Your husband if he’s going to do what I think he is.’

  ‘Oh, goody.’ Claudia opened her eyes wide. She’d added false eyelashes and another layer of scarlet lipstick. ‘Can I watch?’

  ‘Not a chance – but you can get the kettle on if you can find someone to take over in there.’

  ‘No sweat.’ Claudia dumped her armful of wooden hoops across the nearest small plinth which held a five-pound note, a plastic watch, and a poster of Madonna. Unfastening her money apron, she gesticulated towards the Mackenzie grandchildren who were doing no business now that the Broadridge Green babies had abandoned the swinging boats. ‘Here! Rio! Take over for a bit! Ta!’ And, swinging her legs in the briefest of denim miniskirts and thigh-high boots over the edge of the stall, she caught up with Nell.

  For work, Nell stuck to jeans and sweaters with the addition of her long, black coat on cold nights and her face-painting stopped at mascara and the inevitable gallon of concealer to hide her freckles. She looked at Claudia in admiration as they instinctively ducked under the paratrooper to avoid the swooping airborne seats and dozens of dangling feet. ‘You should be on the cover of a magazine.’

  ‘Vogue? Harper’s?’

  ‘More top shelf.’

  Laughing, they linked arms and headed for Danny and Claudia’s trailer. Claudia sighed. ‘It’s easy for you with those pussycat eyes and those cheekbones and that glorious colouring. You’re drop-dead gorgeous even when you’ve got your early-morning grouchy face on. I’m not. I have to hide behind the powder and paint to give me confidence.’

  ‘Rubbish.’ Nell had to yell as they passed the waltzer with its swirling, screaming, neon-bright cars. Danny ran the ride like a mobile disco with strobe lights and the latest music fads. It was always packed. ‘I’ve got gingery hair and freckles and legs that get in a tangle and I’m as tall as most men. I’ll swap you any day. And Danny thinks you’re the most beautiful woman in the world.’

  ‘Does he?’ Claudia shrugged, unlocking her door. ‘I wouldn’t know. He never tells me.’

  Nell sank into the deeply-cushioned William Morris sofa while Claudia made tea. Danny updated their living wagon every other year. This latest one was American and opulent in the extreme, and was furnished in the traditional showman’s manner with rosewood display cabinets for the porcelain and crystal, silk rugs on the polished floor, and velvet swags and tails complementing the Nottingham lace at the windows.

  Claudia handed Nell a china mug and curled up on the floor. ‘We’re slumming it. I get fed up with always having to use the best stuff and getting a thimbleful of tea in eggshell Wedgwood. So – what’s Danny done to upset you?’

  Nell sipped her tea and watched the crowds through the double-glazed windows. The fair was silent from inside except, of course, for the repetitive muffled thud of the generators. They never quite escaped that. Curious faces, taking a short cut from Broadridge Green’s only pub, were attempting to peer in through the windows of the semicircle of living wagons. Quite often, especially in summer, when she trustingly – and much to Danny’s fury – always left the top half of her front door open, Nell returned to find a little crowd of people on the top step leaning in. They always seemed riveted and Nell invariably asked them, very politely, if they could return the favour and let her stare into their homes some time.

  Once she’d interrupted an excited bunch of old ladies who seemed stunned to see cutlery on the table and had asked if Nell and the other gypsies actually slept in real beds as opposed to makeshift shelters beneath the stars.

  Nell had started to explain about gypsies, Romanies, tinkers, and other travellers being a different breed altogether, and that showpeople were simply itinerant businessmen, but it had fallen on deaf ears. She’d invited the elderly ladies in to view the decor, the fitted kitchen, the bathroom. They’d sniffed and run fingers along the surfaces and looked disappointed.

  ‘Not what we expected,’ one had complained. ‘You haven’t got no crystal balls.’

  ‘Nor a toilet.’ Another had perked up a bit, spotting this omission and being convinced that the operation must surely take place squatting beneath a hedgerow.

  Nell had told them that travellers always had their lavatories separate from their living quarters for reasons of hygiene. Either in a separate part of the living wagon or in a detached unit. Far more civilised, she’d added, than the house-dweller’s penchant for combined bathrooms, didn’t they agree? The old ladies had been most put out, and swarmed down the steps chuntering about folks who didn’t know their station.

  Wondering again at the fascination her way of life held for people outside it, she turned her attention to her sister-in-law. ‘What? Sorry – I was just watching the punters. They always seem so surprised at how we live.’

  ‘Still expect whittled hedgehogs and old crones in black shawls,’ Claudia said happily. ‘They soon get bored when you tell them we’ve got satellite telly, central heating, a mobile phone, and do our shopping at Tesco. And stop changing the subject or tea-break’ll be over, and tell me about Danny.’

  Nell didn’t particularly want to talk about Danny. At least, not at the moment. The rocky state of her brother’s marriage was something she’d deal with later. Just when it had all gone wrong she hadn’t noticed. It must have been a gradual decline. She was sure that he and Claudia had been in love when they married. Sadly, she was pretty sure that that love had died some time ago. She was also pretty sure that Danny’s sudden passion for acquiring new machines was to replace the lack of it in his marriage. ‘He’s invited Ross over. Tonight.’

  Claudia opened her saucer eyes. ‘Is it going to be a “Do the honest thing by my sister, you swine, after all you’ve been bonking her regularly for the last eight years“ speech?’

  Nell choked on her tea. ‘No, it bloody well isn’t. It’s to do with the business. Expansion. Buying new rides. Ross Percival joining forces with us.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. It’s all Danny talks about. And?’

  ‘And I’m happy with the way things are.’ She sighed. When her parents had retired they had left the fair to be run as it had always been run. Not to flog off the waltzer and the dodgems and the paratrooper and buy scary rides that worked on hydraulics and built up and pulled down at the touch of a button and would be obsolete within a year. And could she cope with Ross under her feet every second of the day?

  Claudia drained her mug, took Nell’s, and scrambled to her feet. ‘So? You and Sam own two-thirds of the rides between you. As long as you stick together, Danny can’t go over your heads.’

  ‘But Sam wouldn’t side with me. He agrees with Danny about modernisation. He’s pleased about the possibility of Ross buying a mega-machine and travelling with us.’

  Claudia stalked into the kitchen in her high-heeled boots. ‘Look, Nell, I honestly don’t care either way. I married into the Bradley set-up and I’m supposed to support Danny. I don’t have your sense of family tradition. Anyway, modern stuff would bring in more money and need less work, wouldn’t it?’

&n
bsp; Nell nodded. But she knew that if Ross Percival joined them they’d have to scrap their rides to finance the new ones and lose most of the lads because they would be surplus to requirements. The Mackenzies would definitely decamp because their little bits and pieces wouldn’t fit in with the ultra-modern image. And they’d stop visiting all the villagey gaffs that Nell loved – places like Broadridge Green and Haresfoot and Oakton where the fair’s arrival was eagerly awaited, marking an anniversary on the calendar as regular and exciting as Christmas.

  She stood up. ‘It would mean less work, yes – but I like these small places where we can entertain the whole family. There’d be no parents, grandparents, and toddlers queuing to get on the Inter-Galactic-Cyber-Hypno-Scramble-Your-Brains-For-A-Fiver, would there?’

  Claudia giggled as they jumped down the steps into the darkening evening. ‘No, but things change –’

  ‘I don’t want them to change. I don’t want to be sucked into Clem Percival’s “Let’s turn every traditional fair into a mobile Alton Towers” mentality. I want our fair to stay the same.’

  ‘And you don’t want to marry Ross Percival?’

  ‘Oh, God,’ Nell sighed as they reached the hoopla and Claudia swung herself back inside, ‘I really don’t know.’

  ‘It’s starting to tail off now,’ Sam said as he handed over the reins of the dodgems. ‘Just a few of the larger show-offs and of course the ladies.’

  All fairs attracted groupies. Pretty girls with tight jeans and corkscrew curls and Julia Roberts lips. The gaff lads held regular competitions over who could pull the most in a night. Terry seemed to be top of the league.

  Within an hour, Broadridge Green had spent up for the evening and was making its way home. Tarpaulins were pulled over the side stalls, lights were switched off, the generators were silenced. Nell, walking back from putting the takings in Sam’s trailer ready for his counting and bagging and night-safe depositing, stared up at the dark sky. There was no way on earth she’d give this up. No way that she’d lose sight of her values. The traditions were too deeply rooted. She’d fight her brothers every step.