‘Sharpshit,’ he said. ‘I’ll throw you to the lions next if you aren’t careful, yo’ see’f I wain’t.’
Sanity was out of reach: they were caught up in balloons of light and pleasure that would not let them go. The four-acre fair became a whole world, with tents and caravans, stalls and roundabouts, booths and towers, swingboats and engines and big wheels, and a crowd that had lost all idea of time and place locked in the belly of its infernal noise.
Winnie clamoured for the Ghost Train, and Arthur felt like a father with two children, fulfilling a promise made at the anticlimax of Christmas. They waited for an empty carriage and, once pushed into the ghost-ride, were assailed by black darkness and horrible screams from Hell, that Arthur decided came from the train in front. He stood up to fight the mock-death whose horrors had been written in large letters across the facade outside.
‘Sit down,’ Brenda warned him.
‘Or a bogey-man will get you,’ Winnie said, the most frightened though she had suggested the ride. Nothing more than darkness and phantoms conjured up from your own mind were supposed to make you afraid in the first stage, and Arthur, unattacked, swore black-and-blue that it was too dark to see anything, shouting that he wanted his money back. Girls in the train before them began laughing at his complaint, shaken from the legitimate sense of terror for which they had paid a shilling.
He stepped out and ran a few yards in front, until he came level with them, determined that they should not be disappointed in the Ghost Train. His hands roamed, and they cried out in fear. The noise of a horse about to stampede whinnied through the dark tunnel, the death-rattle of a crushed man croaked around them, and finally he gave a wild scream as if suddenly put out of his misery by a rifle bullet. He left their train and, when he gauged that Brenda and Winnie had drawn level with him, climbed in.
‘Who just got in our train, Alf?’ asked a female voice that he could not recognize. He stood still, hardly breathing.
‘I don’t know,’ the man said. ‘Did anybody get in?’ Arthur heard him patting her thigh, trying to comfort her. ‘Don’t worry, Lil, duck.’
‘But somebody got in, I tell you,’ she whimpered. ‘Look, he’s standing there.’
The man stretched out his hand. It touched Arthur’s leg, and drew back as if he had been a piece of live-wire. ‘Who are you?’ he asked.
‘Boris Karloff,’ Arthur said in a sombre voice.
The woman cried plaintively. ‘I told you we shouldn’t have come in here. It was your idea, with your dirty tricks.’
‘It’s nothing,’ the man said, a little less comforting. ‘He’s only one of the mechanics. But it’s going a bit too far, if you ask me, spoiling our ride like this.’
‘I want a drink o’ blood,’ Arthur said. ‘On’y a cupful, for supper.’
‘Tell him to get out,’ the woman moaned. ‘Tell him to ride in somebody else’s train.’
‘Brenda!’ Arthur roared. ‘Winnie! Where are you?’ Then he laughed. He wasn’t going to walk back, so might as well finish his ride in this train. They came to a turning, and the luminous bones of a hanging skeleton dangled before them, a sight that filled the tunnel with echoing screams.
‘Tell him to get out,’ the woman kept saying. ‘You don’t know who he might be,’ she chafed.
‘I’m Jack the Ripper,’ Arthur said, ‘but I’m not ripping tonight.’
‘Oh what horrible things he’s saying,’ she wept.
‘Now then, Lil, keep calm,’ Alf said. ‘You’ll be all right. We’re only in the Ghost Train. We’ll be out soon.’
‘I’m frightened,’ she whined. ‘He’s got such a terrible laugh. He might have come out of an asylum for all we know.’
Arthur stood up taller as the train drew close to the skeleton. ‘Look, missis, I’ll do you a favour: if you let me ride in your train, I’ll smack it on the snout.’
‘Get out,’ she cried, hiding her face, ‘I don’t want to see it.’
‘Now, now,’ the man said. ‘Don’t cry. I’ll see the management about this.’
Arthur hit the skeleton, a huge piece of cloth, caught it with his hands and was trapped in it. He struggled to free himself, but it fell from diverse hooks and hung on as if it were alive, folding over him and fighting back. He was buried, he was six feet under in a sackcloth coffin with train-wheels jolting his feet, aware of the woman’s screaming, feeling her boy-friend trying to thump him, hearing people running from train to train, when he shouted through the hole in the cloth: ‘Fire! Fire! Run for your lives!’ — with all the power in his lungs. He battled with the darkness, breaking his laughter to call on Winnie and Brenda, kicking and pummelling until his arms emerged from the heavy black cover, glistening skeleton-bones looking like tiger-streaks over his back, head, and shoulders.
‘I’ve won!’ he screamed out to everyone. ‘I beat that bloody skeleton!’
The train burst into the open air, into flashing lights and music, swirling roundabouts and the thud-thud-thud of engines — and a spanner-brandishing mechanic rushing towards him through the uproar.
Arthur gathered the cloth quickly and hurled it over the man and, while he was struggling and cursing to break free, took Winnie and Brenda by the wrists and dragged them towards the high-speed circling magnet of the next roundabout.
At the edge of the fair they stood by a stall drinking tea. Paper hats had changed heads, Brenda’s now saying: ‘Kiss me quick’ and Winnie’s: ‘You’ve had it’, and Arthur took a kiss from each woman where the crowd was thickest and when one had her back turned. It was at one of these pleasurable moments — when they were making again for the Bobby Horses — that Doreen’s face suddenly appeared through the crowd. On lifting his eyes from Winnie, with the light of ecstasy still in them, he saw Doreen looking at him from between two trilby-covered heads turned the other way. The light of ecstasy left them, to be replaced by a broad smile, and a slight acknowledgement of her presence by an attempted wave of his arm.
‘Who’s that?’ Brenda wanted to know, turning around.
‘A gel who lives in our yard.’
Brenda pushed her way towards the Bobby Horses, and Arthur looked again for Doreen, but she had been swept away into a sea of swaying heads and paper hats.
Each with an ice-cream cornet they stepped on to the Cake Walk, shuffling, jogging, laughing along the shaking rattle of moving machinery, Brenda in front, Winnie behind holding her waist, and Arthur last of all holding whatever his hand found. From the Cake Walk he suggested the Helter Skelter, a tall wooden tower with an outside flyway, smooth enough for a swift ride down, sufficiently boxed-in to stop people speeding like birds over tents and stall tops and breaking their necks. Collecting mats they entered the tower, feeling a way up narrow wooden stairs, hearing the dull sliding of passengers descending on the outside.
They emerged from a doorless opening at the top, and Arthur sent Winnie down first. ‘Don’t push,’ she screamed. ‘I don’t want to go too fast’ — and disappeared from view, followed by Brenda. Arthur sat on his mat, waiting for the next person to come up and give him a flying push. He looked over the lights and tent tops and people bellowing out a rough voice to the sky, at the three-day-ritual bout of forty thousand voices. He felt like a king up there with so much power spreading on all sides below him, and until two hands stabbed into his back and pushed him into oblivion he was wondering how many columns of soldiers could be gathered from these crowds for use in a rebellion.
He sped along the smooth curving chuteway, round and slowly down, drawing nearer every second to an ocean of which he would soon form another drop of water. Winnie and Brenda would be waiting for him in that unclean turbulent ocean, so the prospect of splashing into it became less terrifying. He tried to create more speed by pushing himself against the walls of the chute, then straightened his back to look over the side, at the mass of tents and lights and noise into which he was descending, and as his speed increased the noise grew to a scream. His minute-long journey seemed
like a life-time, and so many thoughts were trying to enter his mind that it was the least pleasurable of all his rides. He was near the earth once more, close to the chute-end, ready to slide out safely on to a pile of mats. He felt relaxed now that it was nearly over. There was nothing else to do but wait, a voice said to him. But wait for what? He turned the last bend at the height of his speed, emptied of thought, supremely purified, until he hit the pile of mats at the bottom.
Winnie and Brenda stood in front of the crowd. Jack, wearing overalls, his face expressing surprise at seeing Arthur, held Winnie’s arm; to the right stood the big swaddie and his friend still in their khaki, Bill’s face swelling with rage and thoughts of vengeance as he leapt out of the crowd with the clear and definite intention of strangling Arthur as soon as he could get hold of him. Before he moved, Arthur saw the danger, was on his feet, and when the swaddie came in range of his boot, kicked him and dived into the crowd, his last sight being that of Brenda and Winnie with contrite faces, his last feeling being that of the swaddie’s hand sliding away from his arm near the elbow as he lowered his head and lost himself among the people.
12
Walking the streets on winter nights kept him warm, despite the cold nocturnal passions of uprising winds. His footsteps led between trade-marked houses, two up and two down, with digital chimneys like pigs’ tits on the rooftops sending up heat and smoke into the cold trough of a windy sky. Stars hit like snipers, taking aim now and again when clouds gave them a loophole. Winter was an easy time for him to hide his secrets, for each dark street patted his shoulder and became a friend, and the gaseous eye of each lamp glowed unwinking as he passed. Houses lay in rows and ranks, a measure of safety in such numbers, and those within were snug and grateful fugitives from the broad track of bleak winds that brought rain from the Derbyshire mountains and snow from the Lincolnshire Wolds. Grey rain splashed down drain-pipes and ran across pavements into gutters, a sweet song whether you heard it sitting by a coal fire, or whether you trod through it while on your way to pub, cinema or the clandestine bed of an uncontrite and married woman. Arthur held his cigarette down in the darkness, caught in a game of fang-and-claw with a dangerous hand of aces, feeling, after each successful foray between Brenda’s or Winnie’s sheets, that one pitch night the royal flush would stay at the bottom of the pack.
When he met Doreen after the Goose Fair — remembering that she had seen him with two women at a time when he should have been in Worksop — he put on a righteous expression and demanded to know why, instead of answering his greeting, she had lost herself so readily in the crowd. ‘I wanted you to meet my two cousins,’ he said, ‘and all you could do was go off like that as if you didn’t want to meet me in public’ She retorted that, even if the two women were his cousins — which she didn’t believe — then why had he said he was going to Worksop on his mate’s motor-bike? ‘I know I said that,’ he answered, still with a hurt tone, ‘and it was true. But my mate’s motor-bike conked out before we got half a mile, so we couldn’t go. We tried to get a bus there, but they were full up. Then as I was walking home from his house — he lives on Mansfield Road — I bumped into Jenny and Lil, and they asked me to go with them to Goose Fair. So I couldn’t refuse, could I, duck?’ She believed him, telling herself that, after all, perhaps she shouldn’t have run off like that when she saw him on the fair, for Arthur, she said to herself, was honest and straight, and it wasn’t right to snub him.
With a full wage-packet safely installed in his overall pocket, he began to clean his lathe. He stood up from wiping the chucks clean, to see Jack standing by his side.
‘Good afternoon, Arthur,’ he said calmly. Arthur wondered why he was all dressed up, and replied by making a joke about his promotion. For Jack was chargehand now, supervised part of the bicycle assembly process, and was dressed in a clean brown overall buttoned neatly down the front.
‘How’s life?’ Arthur said.
‘I can’t grumble,’ came Jack’s answer, ‘these days.’
‘It’s a long time since I saw you,’ Arthur said, hiding a smile. ‘On Goose Fair, worn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ Jack replied. ‘And we didn’t have time to say much, did we? I wanted to ask you a thing or two, but you seemed to be in a hurry.’
‘I know,’ Arthur explained. ‘I couldn’t stay. That swaddie had it in for me. I don’t know what for, mind you, but you saw how he went for me. If it ‘ad summat to do wi’ me bein’ wi’ Winnie at the fair, it didn’t mean owt, you know. I’d just met Winnie and Brenda a few minutes before, and I asked them to come on the Helter Skelter with me. I can’t see owt wrong in that, can you? Who was that swaddie, anyway?’
Jack’s eyes looked fixedly at the lathe. ‘Bill, Winnie’s husband. His unit’s in England now.’
‘Well, he didn’t need to get so ratty,’ Arthur complained, ‘did he?’
‘He said you’d been carrying on with Winnie,’ Jack replied.
Arthur picked up a spanner and tapped it on the palm of his open hand. ‘It was uncalled for, then. If you see that swaddie again tell him from me that he wants to watch his step. I don’t like being accused of things like that. People shouldn’t have such dirty minds.’
There was a pause, then from Jack suddenly: ‘Why don’t you get wise, Arthur? Why don’t you meet a nice girl and settle down? It’ll do you the world of good.’
He ignored the first question. ‘I’ve got a nice girl, if you want to know. But I’s’ll ‘ave ter think twice before settling down. I don’t feel up to it yet.’
‘You’ll like it when you do,’ Jack said, ‘you take my tip.’
‘Maybe I will,’ Arthur smiled, ‘but I don’t feel like spending all my spare time with a woman. On Friday night I’d have to run home with my wages, drop ‘em in her lap, and get nagged for not droppin’ enough, but now I can go home, change and tek mysen off to the White Horse for a pint or two.’
Jack thought for a moment, a look of nervousness and distaste on his face, as if caught in the grip of having to make up his mind. ‘I never reckoned much to the ale in the White Horse,’ he remarked.
Arthur felt that the conversation was becoming more sociable. ‘I don’t know much about that, but on nights like these when it’s either freezin’ cowd or pissin’ down wi’ rain, the White Horse is a good place because it’s on’y a gnat’s nip away from our house. Anyway, the ale ain’t all that bad. I’m going there tonight for a sup, I do know that.’
Jack had made his decision. ‘Well,’ he said, almost gaily, ‘I never was one for a lot of booze, you know that. Ain’t the White Horse full on a Friday night?’
‘Not as yer’d notice,’ Arthur said, ‘but yer’ve got to drink summat after standin’ at a lathe all day.’
Jack made a move to leave. ‘Maybe you’re right.’
‘You didn’t want to see me for owt special?’ Arthur asked.
Jack frowned, took his hands from his pockets. ‘No, I only wondered how you were going on.’ It was ten minutes to knocking-off time. He said: ‘Cheerio then, Arthur,’ and walked up the gangway. Arthur felt in his pocket for a cigarette, and struck a match against the carborundum wheel on the opposite bench, wondering what was wrong with Jack, having never seen him look so shifty and embarrassed. Jack had hardly dare look at him all the time he stood there, and had cleared off as suddenly as if he had wanted to stab him in the back but had thought better of it. He took down the time-sheet to tot up his week’s work.
After a tea of sausages and tinned tomatoes he sat by the fire smoking a cigarette. Everyone was out at the pictures. He stripped off his shirt and washed in the scullery, emerging to scrub himself dry with a rough towel before the fire. Up in his bedroom he surveyed his row of suits, trousers, sports jackets, shirts, all suspended in colourful drapes and designs, good-quality tailor-mades, a couple of hundred quids’ worth, a fabulous wardrobe of which he was proud because it had cost him so much labour. For some reason he selected the finest suit of black and changed into it, f
astening the pearl buttons of a white silk shirt and pulling on the trousers. He picked up his wallet then slipped lighter and cigarette case into an outside pocket. The final item of Friday night ritual was to stand before the downstairs mirror and adjust his tie, comb his thick fair hair neatly back, and search out a clean handkerchief from the dresser drawer. Square-toed black shoes reflected a pink face when he bent down to see that no speck of dust was on them. Over his jacket he wore his twenty-guinea triumph, a thick three-quarter overcoat of Donegal tweed.
On cold and deserted Eddison Road the air was damp because it bordered the Leen, a stream that meandered down through fields and collieries from Newstead, Papplewick and Bulwell. Behind throbbed veins of machinery, and from the gasworks a generator sounded like a whining cat, a ghostly noise increasing until he passed the grey office at the gate.
In the White Horse he asked for a black-and-tan, unbuttoned his coat, and took a seat beneath the window, feeling the wall vibrate whenever a trolley bus went by outside. In a half-filled pub he felt strangely isolated from the rest of his familiar world. He did not want to go alone, and had expected to find some of his friends at the bar. To be alone seemed a continuation of his drugged life at the lathe. He wanted noise, to drink and make love. Sitting at an empty table made him feel sorry for himself, and he debated riding on a trolley-bus to Slab Square in search of noise, but rejected the idea because he couldn’t be bothered. Friday was a bad time for seeing Winnie or Brenda, for they went out visiting relations — so he had been led to believe — and to seek out Doreen would, he felt, land him in no more lively a situation than the one he was in now. He thought back to more than twelve months ago, when he came here with Brenda and had rolled down the stairs like a snowball after drinking seven gins and eleven pints, a fantastic night whose memory lay near his heart’s core. And since then, he had juggled Brenda, Winnie and Doreen crazily, like a man on the stage, throwing himself up into the air as well each time and always landing safely in one soft bed or another. A dangerous life, he reflected.
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning Page 18
