Stealing the Show

by Christina Jones

  ‘About five days, I think. We put the gaff lads through because Mum and Dad always had. I mean, in our game, the more people who can drive a lorry, the better. But – would you? I mean, Fiona wouldn’t mind you taking time out?’

  ‘Not at all.’ He put his bottle on the floor beside hers. ‘The only problem I’ve got at the moment is ready cash. No doubt it would be expensive and –’

  ‘I’d pay. It’s the least the Brain-Scrambler can do.’ She looked at him in delight. ‘I’ll ring Big Wheelers when I get back to Monkton Regis and book you in. It’s going to be fantastic, isn’t it?’

  He nodded. ‘As long as you let me pay you back. I’m still unemployed and impoverished at the moment. But I will pay you back, I promise.’

  ‘OK. Five pence a week.’

  They grinned at each other. The dream was growing again. Spiralling.

  Jack stretched and stood up. ‘I suppose we ought to go and show our faces. After all, this is supposed to be a co-operative.’ He reached out to help her. ‘Do you, need any assistance in untangling your legs?’

  She shook her head and, ignoring his hand, scrambled to her feet.

  Jack laughed at her as she tried to pull the shorts into some semblance of modesty. ‘Waste of time, I’ve told you. So – what made Percival the Elder have this massive change of heart? What part of your soul did you sell to secure us gaffs and wagons?’

  ‘It wasn’t my soul.’ She didn’t look at him. ‘It was my body. Oh, no – not like that. I wouldn’t go to bed with Clem Percival even for the gallopers! It’s my wedding present. I – um – agreed to marry Ross – at last.’ She was walking ahead of him. ‘Still, it was always on the cards, and at least this way we get everything we need to get the show on the road. You don’t think it was wrong of me, do you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh, great. Only I did have a few pangs of conscience about it. Not that I needed to. Ross is a businessman – and showmen always see their offspring all right with either cheques or machines as wedding presents. It’s traditional.’ They’d almost reached the doors. The sunlight was spilling over the floor. ‘I think Clem was just a bit surprised at what I needed the wagons for, but Ross thinks a three-way split with the fair is a great idea.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose he would.’

  ‘So, I’ll be teetering up the aisle just after you. You’ll be able to give me some tips. Unless, of course, it’s when the baby arrives and then–’ She looked over her shoulder. ‘God Almighty, Jack. What’s wrong?’

  Nell, embarrassed at having been so garrulous, embarrassed at not sensing his unease, stared at him in horror. Why hadn’t she noticed how thin he’d become? Why hadn’t she noticed the dark shadows bruising his eyes?

  ‘Jack? Oh, shit. Do you feel ill? Why didn’t you tell me to shut up? What is it?’

  ‘There isn’t going to be a baby any more.’

  ‘Oh … oh, poor Fiona. Poor you. Miscarriages must be devastating.’

  ‘She had an abortion.’

  Nell closed her eyes. Strongly pro-choice, she’d never given much thought to the practicalities. She’d never really considered how it affected the man. Like everything, it was so easy to hold an opinion that you’d hopefully never have to put into practice.

  ‘Why?’

  He told her, quietly. All of it. ‘I think she made the right decision, to be honest. It was just that I was beginning to quite like the idea of fatherhood. It was a hell of a shock.’

  ‘It must have been. I’m so sorry.’ She moved towards him, instinctively, wanting to offer comfort and not knowing how. ‘Maybe later, when the time is right, there’ll be another baby. When she’s more settled in her new position –’

  ‘Not for me and Fiona, there won’t. I’ve left her. And before you say it – not just because of the termination. I would have left her anyway. I’ve made a clean break with my old life.’

  The fridge … the bed … the clothes … ‘You’re living here?’

  ‘For the time being. You don’t mind?’

  She shook her head. Of course she didn’t mind. How else was he going to find the solitude he needed to grieve for his child? She touched his arm. ‘Jack, I really am sorry.’

  He looked down at her fingers and then up into her eyes. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘C’mon you two!’ Percy shouted from his perch at the top of the ladder. ‘Stop slacking and get some work done. It’s taken us an hour and thirty-seven minutes so far! We’re beating Carter’s lot by three minutes!’

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Turning the packets of pills over and over in her hands, Claudia knew what she had to do. This was it. She had to make the decision. She loved Sam, really loved him, but there was no question of them ever having a future. Her future was with Danny – and if they were to have this future, then she’d have to have a baby. She could work at it, she guessed. She’d loved him once. It surely wouldn’t be hard to do it again. If only he didn’t frighten her so much.

  She looked out of the bedroom window. The fair was just easing itself into its first night at Monkton Regis, the punters were the usual early-evening families and young teenagers, the lights were dimmed by the evening sun, and the music was its customary tinny cacophony of a dozen different tunes.

  Everything was the same. Only after tonight, everything would be different. After tonight she’d be a proper wife. She repressed the shudder of revulsion. Danny would have to calm down. She couldn’t go through that again. Still, she’d face that hurdle later. It was best not to think about it now.

  ‘Claudia! Are you in there?’ Nell yelled from the living room, sounding fairly frantic. ‘Are you decent?’

  ‘No, never.’ Claudia said cheerfully, thrusting the four-month supply of pills back into her bedside cabinet. She’d flush them down the loo later. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Everything.’ Nell, who was wearing the green shorts suit and had been away from the fairground for hours again, looked pretty distraught. ‘Absolutely bloody everything.’

  She hurled herself down on the white-and-gold flounced counterpane and pushed her hair away from her face. The bank manager, Claudia decided. Obviously married. His wife had found out …

  ‘It can’t be that bad.’ Claudia was faintly disappointed with Nell. The story about the gallopers and the Gavioli had been true, for God’s sake. All that intrigue and subterfuge over a prehistoric ride. She’d heard Ross and Danny discussing its financial possibilities. It all sounded pretty boring to her. Claudia had been far happier when she’d imagined that Nell was harbouring a secret of mammoth sexual proportions. She wasn’t even sure if the bank manager existed any more. ‘Is it – um – Ross?’

  ‘No – well, yes. Sort of.’

  Claudia tugged off her kimono and pulled on the baggy grey sweat pants and huge black T-shirt behind the wardrobe door. She didn’t want Nell to start screaming about the bruises again. Mind, looking at Nell, she probably wouldn’t have noticed if Claudia’s limbs had been hanging off by bloodied threads.

  She emerged fully covered and tried a different approach. ‘Have you been playing with the gallopers this afternoon?’

  Nell still stared at the deep-piled white carpet. ‘Why?’

  ‘Just wondered. Danny was saying earlier that he and Ross ought to go and check them out. He asked me if I knew where they were kept. He’s going to ask you –’

  ‘And I won’t be telling him.’ Nell sounded as though she was going to cry. ‘They’re nothing to do with him. Oh, shit. Have you ever felt that you have completely and irrevocably screwed up your life?’

  ‘Frequently.’

  Claudia wondered if Nell was going to say anything at all that made sense. She really should be getting changed into something more suitable and hauling herself into the dodgems’ pay-box. Surely a set of gallopers – especially now that everyone knew about them and approved – couldn’t cause this sort of despair? She drew kohl lines round her eyes and added mascara. Maybe, she thought, she’d be a
ble to go back to false eyelashes and that brilliant stay-forever purple lipstick once she’d sorted things out with Danny. Maybe she could even wear the PVC shorts and the Wonderbra leather top. On second thoughts, things would never be that good.

  ‘Nell, sweetie – are you going to tell me or not? Because if you’re not, then you really ought to be shifting your bum and going to work. We don’t just have Danny screaming these days, remember? We also have your future husband – holy shit! Now what have I said?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Nell clambered from the flounces and headed towards the door again. ‘You wouldn’t understand. No one would understand …’

  Bloody hell, Claudia thought, running styling wax through the short spiky layers of her hair, and I thought I was over-emotional.

  The evening blossomed into one of those rare fragrant-after-the-rain ones, and as usual since the arrival of the Crash’n’Dash, the fair was filled with excited crowds. Ross was in the Brain-Scrambler’s pay-box tonight, which meant Danny had the waltzer and she’d been demoted once more to the side stuff. Claudia was glad. She enjoyed running the hoopla on first nights; it gave her the chance to stare at the crowds, to look beyond them at new scenery, to dream.

  So, everything was working out nicely. Well, fairly OK, then. Nell was marrying Ross, the Crash’n’Dash was making them a fortune, and Danny had ordered a Moon Mission, Nell’s gallopers would be able to go to country-park dos and stately homes and places where they couldn’t, and Sam … Claudia looked across to the paratrooper. Sam was loading and unloading the cars. She did love him so very much. She loved his kindness and his friendship. She loved the way he looked and the way he kissed her. And after tonight she would have to forget him.

  She sold hoops and dished out the occasional prize as darkness fell. She wanted the evening to last for ever. She didn’t want to have to go to bed with Danny and try to get pregnant.

  ‘I’ll take over,’ Mercedes Mackenzie yelled across from her own stall, ‘if you want a break. I’m not doing much here, and Nyree-Dawn and Rio can cope.’

  ‘Cheers.’ Claudia vaulted across the side. ‘I’ll go and grab a drink.’

  Mercedes, who was wearing the ubiquitous white cut-offs and a midriff-baring orange top, swung her legs into the hoopla and reached for the money apron. ‘Things going OK with you and Danny now?’

  ‘What?’ Claudia blinked. ‘How do you mean?’

  Mercedes shrugged her well-oiled shoulders. ‘Come off it. Everyone knows. We’re not deaf – or blind. You’ve been having some purlers. You shouldn’t wind him up so much –’

  ‘And you should mind your own bloody business! Who the hell do you think you are? You wait until you’re married – it isn’t all hearts and flowers, you know.’

  Mercedes tossed the corkscrew curls. ‘I’m sure it isn’t. Trouble with you – and Nell too, when she marries Ross – is that you’re too set in your ways. You don’t like changes. Danny and Ross want to move forward. And you and Nell – well, God, you’re nearly thirty. Nell’s playing at being an old codger with a set of bloody gallopers, and you –’

  ‘Yes?’ Claudia laid her palms on the hoopla’s counter. ‘And I’m what exactly ?’

  ‘God, Claudia, we’re mates, but you’ve got to admit you don’t have a clue how to handle Danny. If he was my husband –’

  ‘Yeah?’ Claudia drummed her nails on the flaking paintwork. ‘If he was your husband you’d what?’

  ‘Keep hold of him.’ Mercedes shrugged. ‘Especially now he’s going to be loaded. He’s wicked.’

  ‘Wicked? Too right he’s wicked. He’s downright bloody evil at times. That’s not what you mean though, is it? You mean –’

  But Mercedes was wiggling away towards a bunch of punters. ‘Ten rings, sir? Of course. Would you like me to show you how to do it?’

  Tart! Claudia fumed, turning away. Is that what everyone was saying? Well, the Mackenzie girls, anyway? That she and Nell were dinosaurs? That they didn’t know how to handle the men in their lives? What the hell did Mercedes and Nyree-Dawn know about it? They were only kids, after all.

  Nell might well have notions about old-fashioned rides, but she was pretty sparky in all other areas. And what had Mercedes been hinting at about her? She was twenty-seven – not ninety-seven! Life hadn’t even started yet! Oh, God – yes, it had, she thought, side-winding to avoid a bunch of teenagers carrying toffee apples and candyfloss. And tonight it would probably end.

  ‘Looking for me?’ Sam yelled over a blast of Nirvana as she passed the paratrooper.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Thanks. That’s what I like. A woman who knows her mind. Where are you going?’

  ‘Mad. Coming?’

  ‘Went ages ago.’ He grinned suddenly. ‘Didn’t like it much so I came back.’ He jerked his head towards Alfie to take over and shoved his way through the crowds beside her. ‘Has Danny upset you again?’

  ‘Mercedes Mackenzie thinks I’m past it. And don’t laugh. She thinks Nell and I are in our bloody dotage!’

  ‘The Mackenzie girls are teenagers.’ Sam ducked beneath the bobbing onslaught of a black girl selling helium balloons. ‘They think everyone over twenty is geriatric.’

  ‘She also thinks Danny is wicked – as in superlatively OK, you know? Silly cow. She doesn’t think I handle him right. And she said that Nell wasn’t right for Ross! Jesus!’

  Sam, shoving between the crowds of punters, grinned. ‘The Mackenzie girls have just had the advantage of A-level psychology. They probably studied marriage as part of their coursework. You and Danny probably featured in their final theses, which must have given the examiner heart failure. Am I being invited in for coffee?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Great. I’ll have mine black with two sugars – just in case you’d forgotten.’ He stopped at the bottom of the living-wagon steps. ‘I want to talk to you anyway, but not in here. I don’t want Danny bursting in.’

  Neither did she. And they needed to talk. If she was going to dump the pills, stay with Danny, have a baby – then she owed it to Sam to tell him.

  ‘OK. Your place, then. But you make the coffee – and don’t mention bloody Mercedes.’

  He didn’t. He made coffee, while Claudia sat on the scarlet-cushioned window seat and watched the lights. The generators thumped their continual life-beat as a bass line to the music. The screams from the Crash’n’Dash’s victims were mercifully muffled by the double-glazing. Claudia gazed at it all and thought about motherhood. Showmen’s babies slept through all this, she thought. Showmen’s babies, born and raised into this noisy, nomadic existence, thrived and prospered.

  She could have a baby. Women had babies all the time. Pregnancy couldn’t be that bad, otherwise people wouldn’t keep on doing it. Giving birth must be fairly forgettable too – at least after a while – otherwise there’d be far more only children. All she needed to do now was convince herself that the conception part would be a magical experience too, and she’d have performed the greatest bit of self-brainwashing since Houdini promised to return from the grave.

  Taking the red-and-gold mug as Sam sat beside her, she sighed. ‘Do you want to talk first, or shall I get my bit over?’

  ‘Ladies first.’

  Sam’s arm was along the back of the window seat and she leaned against it without thinking. ‘I’m not going to leave him. I’m going to make a go of it. I do love you. No, please don’t say anything. Not yet. Let me tell you what I’m doing and why I’m doing it.’

  Sam listened. She wasn’t watching him but she knew that he heard every word. The muscles in his arm tightened every so often, and his breathing pattern changed, but he didn’t interrupt her.

  When she’d finished, he didn’t speak for ages. ‘So you think that having a baby will solve all the problems, do you?’

  ‘No. But it’s what Danny wants more than anything. I’m married to him, for God’s sake. For ever.’

  ‘And do you want a baby?’

  She shook her head. She
didn’t. She never had.

  ‘And what makes you think that you’ll be able to produce this child for Danny now? After all, you’ve been married for ten years.’

  ‘I’ve been on the pill for ten years.’

  ‘Bloody hell!’ Sam grinned. ‘And he didn’t, know? Didn’t suspect? All those tests? All that money on infertility treatment. God, Claudia, you are amazing. Bloody incredible. You devious little –’

  ‘Not devious.’ She put her empty mug on the window-sill. ‘Simply a case of self-preservation. Look, Nell’s made compromises, hasn’t she? She’s going to marry Ross and we both know that she doesn’t love him. But she’s going to do it all the same. I’m sure that Danny and I can –’

  ‘Nell and Ross are completely different. He’s hardly likely to scream and threaten and scare her half out of her wits, is he? Anyway, I’m not sure –’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing. It doesn’t matter. We’re not talking about them. So, you’re prepared to sleep with Danny, live with him, love him –’

  ‘Not love.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t. He knows I don’t. I love you.’

  Sam’s fingers stroked the back of her neck. ‘Can I talk now? I’m not going to state the obvious – you know I want you to leave him. To live with me. I’d leave all this for you.’

  Claudia laughed. ‘You’d have to. We’d never be accepted as a couple here, would we? We’d be bloody outcasts. Drifting from crust to crust. Starving, penniless …’

  ‘Hardly. We’d have the paratrooper and the hoopla. We could travel with other showmen. Marriages do break up, Claudia. Other travellers make the best of it. Move on with new partners.’

  ‘Not with their brothers-in-law, though.’

  Sam sighed and continued the stroking. It was lovely – sensuous without being invasive – not threatening. Gentle. If only love could be like this. If only sex didn’t have to equate with pain and humiliation and fear. Claudia moved her head against his hand. ‘Anything else you want to say – apart from don’t do it?’