Stealing the Show

by Christina Jones

  Adele shook her head, making her heavy gold earrings chink wildly. If Nell had wanted to marry Ross she’d have done it by now. Young marriages were still fashionable among travellers and Nell was galloping towards thirty. She was going to have to take her children in hand. She brightened. This would be her new campaign. Something to get her confused hormones into.

  ‘Fancy a gin and tonic?’ Peter yawned in the late spring sun. ‘Or a beer?’

  ‘Beer, please.’ Adele hadn’t become completely suburbanised. ‘And as you’re going into the kitchen, just cast an eye on the cooker. If anything is catching, just –’

  ‘Reach for Delia?’ Peter stood up. ‘Don’t fret, it’s only Nell. She’ll eat everything you put in front of her.’

  Adele watched him as he walked back to the house. She loved him with all her heart – but she hadn’t at first. At first she’d hardly known him. Their love had grown. She thought how frightened she’d been on her wedding day, how delighted her parents had been with the match, how welcoming Peter’s family had been as they whisked her off into their midst. Her own family, with their ancient archery and their coconut shy and a dilapidated ghost train, had been overwhelmed when the eighteen-year-old Peter Bradley – with his family’s three large rides and elevated station in the Showmen’s Guild – had come a-courting.

  Adele’s feelings had not really been a consideration. It was a good match, both families approved, and no sooner had her education finished than her marriage had begun. Pregnant at once and a mother at seventeen, Adele had knuckled down to her new life, her new family, and got to know her new husband.

  That’s how it was then. Not like now. Not like Nell who wanted to fall in love and share her life with a partner and friend as well as a lover. Nell’s secret dreams had not escaped Adele. Very little did. Somehow she and Peter had bred a true romantic. Danny was hard-headed and hard-hearted, much as Adele’s father had been; Sam was dreamy but still realistic, head in the clouds but feet on the ground, Adele always thought – a good mixture of both his parents; but Nell … If Nell didn’t face reality she was probably going to be hurt very badly indeed.

  She looked up and smiled as Peter returned with the beers. She hadn’t shared her doubts about Nell’s happiness with him. She didn’t want to worry him unduly. She’d move heaven and earth to solve her family’s problems without letting him know. She had almost lost him once and she wasn’t going to risk it again.

  Peter sat beside her and stretched his legs out towards the crazy-paved path. ‘You looked deep in thought. Something bothering you?’

  Adele took her glass of beer and nodded. ‘Yes. I think we should move those lupins into the centre of the perennial border.’

  Nell arrived shortly after one o’clock. Adele watched her daughter slide out of the Volvo with a sinking heart. She’d lost weight. The jeans and white silk shirt clung to her slender body and even from behind the dining-room nets, Adele could see the shadows beneath Nell’s eyes. Patting her black hair and straightening her pale pink lambswool sweater, she hurried to open Graceland’s front door.

  ‘Hello, love.’ They didn’t kiss. ‘I was getting worried.’

  ‘I came through the New Forest.’ Nell smiled at her mother. ‘It was really pretty – but very slow. Getting through Lyndhurst was a nightmare. How’s Dad?’

  ‘Much better. He’s joined the bowls club. You’d think he’d been a flatty all his life.’

  ‘Mum!’ Nell winced at the fairground slang. ‘You don’t tell people round here that’s what you call them, do you?’

  ‘’Course not.’ Adele was hurrying into the kitchen. ‘They’d probably think it was Romany, anyway. They’re pretty vague about travellers. Still, for flatties they’re not a bad bunch.’

  ‘And how are you? Started on the HRT yet?’

  ‘No need.’ Adele indicated the row of bottles. ‘I’m coping, love. Honest.’

  Nell peered over the pills and a small forest of herbs on the kitchen window-sill. ‘Is Dad out there?’

  ‘Doing as he’s told. Sitting. Having a beer and trying to stop his stomach rumbling.’

  ‘It smells wonderful. I wish I had time to cook a proper Sunday roast every week.’

  ‘You should do,’ Adele frowned. ‘What do you give the lads if you don’t cook?’

  ‘I do cook,’ Nell watched her mother, now perfectly at home in the sunny kitchen. ‘I just don’t always do a roast.’

  ‘You’ll have to when you get married.’ Adele started on the gravy, adding cornflour to the meat juices. Nell, who used granules, looked on in envy. Adele continued to stir vigorously. ‘I said, when you get married, you’ll have to start cooking properly. Not living out of the freezer and slamming everything in the micro.’

  ‘When I get married,’ Nell opened the drawer in the pine dresser that had come from a Ringwood farmhouse and gathered the cutlery, ‘my husband will make the gravy. In fact, he’ll probably cook the meals, clean the living wagon, take the washing to the launderette, bath the babies –’

  ‘Oh, good,’ Adele turned from her stirring, ‘there are going to be babies then. And is this paragon going to give birth to them as well?’

  ‘If I had my way, definitely.’ Nell dealt out three sets of knives, forks, and spoons, and lifted the familiar Gypsy Denbyware from its shelf. ‘And of course, he’ll be running the rides while I lounge around idly, sipping something dry and white and nibbling chocolate.’

  ‘Sounds bloody boring.’ Adele poured the gravy into the Denby boat. ‘Can’t see Ross settling for that.’

  ‘Ten out of ten, Mother.’ Nell stuck out her tongue. ‘You should be Jeremy Paxman.’

  ‘So? Has he asked you again? Have you said yes? Is that what this visit is about?’

  ‘Yes. No. Yes and no.’

  ‘Too clever by half.’ Adele frowned at her daughter. ‘I knew we shouldn’t have wasted all that money on your education. Go and shout for your father. Tell him I’m dishing up.’

  The meal over, the pink flowers of the Denbyware now merely showing scant traces of roast beef followed by apple sponge, and the conversation having flowed non-committally along with the Lambrusco, Adele suggested that Peter should have a nap while she and Nell toured the garden.

  Peter, who had spent the best part of his life working flat out for twenty hours of each day, still found naps fairly self-indulgent, and was only persuaded to retire to the bedroom by Adele’s exaggerated stage winks.

  ‘Totally unsubtle.’ Nell was helping her mother stack the dishwasher. ‘And stop trying to make the garden sound like Sissinghurst. Anyway, I wouldn’t have said anything too outrageous in front of Dad, you know that.’

  ‘Like there’s no way on God’s earth you’re going to marry Ross Percival?’

  ‘Not quite that stridently.’ Nell grinned. ‘But something along those lines, I suppose. I know that everyone else wants us to marry, including Ross, and even I can’t really see any reason why I shouldn’t – except that I don’t think I want to. And I’ve just refused to purchase his space-age machinery so he might as well forget the merger.’ The smile faded. ‘Danny and Sam are bursting a gut to be part of Percivals, and Ross says he can be with us at Haresfoot in July – and I don’t know what to do! Oh, hell, Mum …’

  Adele, who had been waiting for this moment, held out her arms. Nell folded herself against the lambswool bosom, just as she had from childhood, and gave a shuddering sigh.

  ‘There, there.’ Adele stroked her daughter’s hair. ‘It can’t be that bad.’

  It was though, Adele thought afterwards as Nell filled the kettle for the post-mortem cup of tea. Every bit as bad as she’d feared. Of course, the simple solution would be for Nell to forget all her silly notions and marry Ross – especially now he was offering them such a good deal. How Danny – and to a lesser extent, Sam – would love that. And how they would both loathe their sister for evermore if she prevented their opportunity for expansion.

  Just where Nell had got this
longing to preserve the old ways, Adele didn’t know. Both she and Peter would have loved to build up the fair, buy new rides, move into the big-time. It had never been within their scope. But now it was being handed to their children on a gold-leafed Royal Albert platter, and Nell didn’t want it. Adele watched her daughter setting the Gypsy cups and saucers on the tray. If Nell had been born a flatty, she thought with some disquiet, she’d be on protest marches, chaining herself to trees, and hurling stones at JCBs. Where on earth had they gone wrong?

  ‘Say something.’ Nell was twirling the silver sugar tongs wildly. ‘Tell me what you think.’

  ‘What I think,’ Adele said carefully, ‘will make no difference at all, Nell, and you know it. But for what it’s worth – your father and I have no qualms about Bradleys moving into the premier league. Danny’s right – the dodgems, paratrooper, and waltzer are pretty old hat these days. Oh, I know they give you a more than comfortable living, but you’re in business. Think what the new rides would mean. True, you’d probably lose some of the traditional village gaffs, but you must consider the future – the next generation of Bradleys.’

  ‘What?’ Nell wrinkled her nose. ‘Which new generation? If – and I mean if – I married Ross, our kids would be Percivals. Sam is still playing the field, and Danny and Claudia have been married for nearly ten years, for God’s sake!’

  Adele, cuddling Priscilla, bit her lip. ‘Haven’t they gone for any of this test-tube stuff? I’ve tried asking diplomatically, of course.’

  ‘Mum!’ Nell snorted with laughter. ‘You’re about as diplomatic as Saddam Hussein! I can imagine your diplomatic questions. “Not fallen yet? Is everything all right downstairs? Don’t you think you should get yourselves sorted before it’s too late?”‘

  ‘I’m not that bad.’ Adele had the grace to blush. ‘And you’re changing the subject. OK, maybe there aren’t children now, but there will be. And fairs are dying out. We’re in competition with every conceivable – if you’ll pardon the pun – other leisure organisation now. And housing and industrial estates are swamping traditional fair fields. Things have got to change, Nell, if our business is to survive. Ross Percival is offering you not only the security of marriage, but also the chance to prosper. I think you’d be a fool to turn him down.’

  Chapter Four

  It wasn’t until she was through Newbury and on the homeward stretch of the A34 that Nell realised that her mother hadn’t mentioned the state of Danny and Claudia’s marriage. The jungle drums of the Showmen’s Guild hadn’t reached Highcliffe yet, she thought with some relief. Anyway, she’d given Adele more than enough to chew over. And her own super-king-sized problems far outweighed those of Danny and Claudia.

  She’d really thought her parents would have backed her – or at least understood her reasons for not wanting to accept Ross’s suggestion. Now, she realised, as she slotted in and out of the two lanes of early-evening traffic, she was entirely on her own. Danny and Sam had leapt at Ross’s offer, and expected her to pool her financial resources with theirs to buy into the new ride. They thought Ross Percival and his wealth and his burning ambition – not to mention his hydraulically-operated machine – would be part of the Bradley set-up before the end of the season. ‘Which, of course, all makes good sense,’ she said to herself and the rear window of a twenty-mile-an-hour Robin Reliant. ‘And I suppose I’ll just have to toe the party line – whether I like it or not. It would be so much easier if I loathed and detested Ross – but I don’t. I can carry on refusing to sign the company cheques, and donate my entire savings to the Cats’ Protection League, but I’ve got a feeling Ross Percival will still find some way round it.’ She glanced into the driving mirror. The freckles glanced back. ‘Oh, sod it – I think you might just be looking at the next Mrs Percival.’

  The Robin Reliant seemed unimpressed with the magnitude of this statement.

  As they swept on to one of the downhills of the A34’s switchback the three-wheeler reached an unsteady thirty. Indicating to overtake, Nell had notched up a gear and accelerated when her mobile phone burst into a distant and tinny version of ‘The Ride of the Valkyries’ from the depths of her handbag.

  ‘Oh, brilliant.’ She rattled past the Reliant, which seemed to have at least six people inside. ‘Just hang on.’

  Much to the Reliant driver’s irritation she pulled in in front of him and then indicated to take the West Ilsley turn. The Robin Reliant flew past her with much light-flashing, horn-blaring, and two-fingered salutes.

  Nell pulled into a gateway, scrabbled through her bag, and lodged the phone under her chin. ‘This had better be good.’

  ‘My, my, we are grumpy,’ Claudia teased. ‘What’s happened to your body-clock? I thought you were always a sunny bunny by tea-time. Or did Mama Bradley give you a hard time?’

  ‘Claudia!’

  ‘What? Oh, right. Yeah – it’s important. Dead important, in fact. We’ve run out of milk.’

  Nell glowered into her mobile phone. ‘Please tell me that’s some sort of code for someone’s just nicked the dodgems?’

  ‘Nah. We’ve really run out of milk. All of us. And you know what Broadridge Green is like on a Sunday – nowhere open. And we’re pulling out tomorrow morning and without milk for the Coco-Pops there’ll be riots and –’

  ‘Claudia! Get the lads to go and find some. You go and find some. Borrow some from Mr and Mrs Mac. Steal some if you have to. God, the possibilities are endless!’

  ‘The lads are all down the pub, the Macs pulled out half an hour ago because they want to get to Oakton early to see some friends, and I’m,’ she sighed, ‘unfortunately otherwise engaged.’

  ‘What do you mean otherwise – oh,’ Nell blushed. ‘Right. So why ring me now?’

  ‘Because Danny phoned Highcliffe and your ma said you’d be nearly home and he thought you could pull into the services.’

  ‘OK.’ Nell wanted to end the conversation. If Claudia and Danny were indulging in a bit of afternoon delight – well, early-evening delight – then she wasn’t going to be the one to stop them. ‘I’ll find somewhere. Will six pints be enough?’

  But Claudia had already hung up.

  Nell sat for a moment, the constant swish of the traffic on the A34 behind her, and the peace and the tranquillity of the downland villages ahead. She hadn’t much choice. She started the car and headed off between vivid green and yellow fields just visible through frothy clouds of cow parsley.

  Not, she thought, as she edged the Volvo along a high-banked lane, that she was expecting to find a convenient Enid Blyton-type shop, still open on a Sunday evening, staffed by ruddy-cheeked farmers’ wives in gingham pinafores, and with the contents of a major Sainsbury’s stacked to the low-beamed ceiling. She knew she’d have to backtrack on to the main road eventually, but right now anything was preferable to returning to Broadridge Green, Claudia and Danny’s pulled curtains, and Sam looking like a kicked puppy because she didn’t want to put her savings into the Ice-Breaker.

  The villages with their duck-ponds and rustic benches, their chestnut trees and their thatched pubs, offered very little in the way of milk, but plenty in the way of pleasure. Humming along with something melodic on the radio, Nell began to relax. Therefore when the crossroads appeared with no warning from behind a clump of sycamores, she simply wasn’t prepared. Slamming on the brakes to avoid a meandering tractor, and peering in vain for a signpost, Nell realised she was seriously lost. Not that anyone would notice until tomorrow’s breakfast, when the lack of milk for the Coco-Pops would probably cause more concern than her absence.

  ‘Backwards, forwards, right or left?’ She offered the choice to the honey-voiced radio presenter who ignored her. ‘OK then. Straight ahead. Into the unknown.’

  Pretty soon it seemed like left or right or even backwards would have been a preferable option, as the Volvo bumped along a deeply rutted unmade road. Small cottages peeped through willows, and several cows swished lazy tails. Still, Nell thought, cows meant
farms, and farms meant people and someone might just be able to tell her where the hell she was.

  A crop of outbuildings in the middle of a distant field indicated that there might indeed be human life of some sort close at hand. Nell increased her speed to a reckless twenty, severely tested the Volvo’s suspension, and eventually braked to a rather dusty halt.

  On closer inspection, the outbuildings were ramshackle to say the least. “Condemned” was the word that sprang most readily to mind. But the cluster of vehicles parked haphazardly around them pointed to some sort of habitation. It wasn’t until she was actually about to haul at the door of the nearest and largest barn that niggling thoughts of ritual sacrifice, witch trials, cock-fighting, and other rural pastimes, surged to the surface. Maybe this wasn’t going to be the most brilliant idea she’d ever had. Hesitating for a fraction of a second, Nell opened the door.

  At least a dozen men, all with black-smeared faces and wearing gloves, turned to stare at her.

  Jesus, Nell thought, it’s the hide-out for today’s equivalent of the Great Train Robbers. It’s drug-running. It’s a terrorist cell. It’s –

  ‘Bugger off.’ The nearest man, who had a woolly hat pulled low over his eyes and a crowbar in his hand, greeted her in a far from genial fashion. ‘We’ve said all there is to say. Now clear off.’

  ‘Er, yes. Right.’ Nell fumbled backwards for the door, watching the crowbar. ‘Er – um, my mistake.’

  Nobody moved but they still continued to stare. The crowbar continued to swing from side to side. Nell continued to back off. Where the hell was the door-catch? Her eyes were becoming more accustomed to the dim light, and forgetting everything she’d seen on Crimewatch about getting a good look at ne’er-do-wells so that you’d recognise them later in the queue at Tesco, she peered past the men into the gloom of the massive barn.

  With a wave of relief her fingers closed round the rusty door-catch and she tugged it open behind her, allowing a shaft of dusty sunlight to spill across the towering interior. ‘So sorry to have disturbed you – I’m really sorry.’ She stared, then clapped her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, my God! It’s a Savage!’