by Bernard Ross
Chapter 20
The Bleak MidWinter
As the season drew to a close I was once again in need of a roof and an income for the bleak, cold months until Easter. I was determined to avoid being caught out by it again in my second year. Ernie had died of lung cancer in the summer which closed off an avenue of opportunity and so I was hawking myself about amongst all the other showmen trying to find somewhere to go.
I failed to find work on a regular basis but Mal Bede was taking a yard in Willesden to do coal deliveries and, though he was fully staffed already with the three lads who fought for him regularly, he said that he had space for a couple of people to stay. Consequently after we had pulled down the last show of the year I found myself in the back of one of Mal’s trucks heading into London.
Tommy, one of the other lads at a similar loose end, and I shared the back of a scenery truck for the winter. We kipped on top of the flats, covered up with the old horse blankets that Mal used to stop the scenery from getting damaged in transit. We had no washing facilities except a water butt and no heating at all. There was very little space in the truck, but since between us we had virtually bugger all by way of material possessions this wasn’t exactly a drawback. In some respects the lack of space was an advantage; two of us in the truck built up enough of a fug to take the frost off the inside of the truck walls some nights. We struggled through the weeks finding scraps of work labouring on building sites, unloading barges and chopping logs. Some jobs would last a day, some a week and some were piece work. We barely survived, sometimes having nothing but a couple of cups of tea in a day.
Suddenly, out of the blue, my father appeared one day. How he found me I don’t know; I didn’t ask and he didn’t offer any explanation. Why he found me was soon clear; he was getting married to a girl 20 years his junior and for some reason thought that I should know. There was no benefit in it to me; they were going to be living in Chester and had no intention whatsoever of taking me in. Neither had I ever expected to receive any inheritance from him since as far as I knew he gambled away his income as quickly as he earned it. He saw the appalling conditions in which I was scraping an existence, but it didn’t move him to offer any assistance either practical or financial. He had no news of my mother and, with nothing really to talk about our couple of hours together were stilted and frankly embarrassing. He stood me a cup of tea in a nearby café, and then he left.
My situation hadn’t changed from the state I had woken up in that morning but somehow I felt even more like a wretched orphan after he had left. I really wish that he hadn’t bothered.
Roll on Easter, I won’t get any Easter Eggs but I’d at least be back to a more regular income.
Chapter 21
The Venerable Bede
My ‘host’ during this period was Mal Bede. Mal was not born a showman but had married a showman’s daughter. He had worked for his father-in-law, then with his father-in-law and finally he had taken over from his father-in-law. Such was his skill and enthusiasm that the Guild had conferred their blessing and membership of the Guild and now Mal was a showman through and through. He had, however, one small problem; a showman’s membership of the Guild passed from father to son and Mal only had daughters. These girls were the apple of his eye and they both showed an intention to stay with the show as a way of life, but the hurley burley of the show, and Mal’s particular specialization therein were perceived as requiring a man. A real ‘man’, not just a male.
Mal himself was a former fighter in the show ring. For many years he had masked up and appeared as “The Baron of Bow”. Now he held sway with the audience as the Master of Ceremonies, I’d frequently watched him, decked out in a dapper dinner jacket, as he worked the crowd. He was a past master at whipping the older ladies into a frenzy of righteous indignation over some suggested misdemeanor. The more they clamoured for blood the more people would come to see the fights, drawn by the noise, which, though it had to compete with the discordant music from the rides and the roar of the generators, had a totally animal quality to it some nights.
Mal took a great deal of pride over his fighting team, this wasn’t to say that he was soft on them, far from it; he worked them damn hard with the fights. The ‘show booth’ was a slick and well oiled affair that had little by way of heavy machinery and Mal and his gaff lads could have the whole shebang erected and ready in less than half the time that the Waltzer or the Ark took to get in a show ready state. Mal’s team therefore were usually in the pub and half cut by the time the rest of the fair people struggled into the bar. Mal’s lads still had to doss down wherever they could find themselves a billet, but he spent time with them, joshed with them and generally treated them a bit like the sons he didn’t have. Occasionally people assumed that he was hunting for future show husbands for his girls. Any ‘undue interest’ shown to the girls however was quickly brought into check by Mal who was fiercely protective of their honour and status.
As Easter approached, Mal started to put his fight team more and more onto preparation work for the new season. This meant that Tommy and I picked up more regular work for Mal on the coal deliveries. One afternoon, returning to the yard we saw Reggie, one of Mal’s older fighters walking swiftly along the road with his old kitbag on his shoulder. He was heading away from the yard and towards the railway station. For the short period that he was in sight we saw him look three times over his shoulder back towards Mal’s yard, he looked as if he were wary for a tail.
We got into the yard to find a strange atmosphere; Mal’s usually handsome and serene face wore an expression like a bulldog chewing a wasp, all the fighters were working rapidly and silently on their repainting and repair tasks. No one was singing or whistling, no one was even making eye contact with anyone else.
Slowly the story came out. Mal had caught Reggie paying a little too much attention to his eldest girl, Josie, and incandescent with rage, had given him his marching orders.
For the next two days we were all walking on eggshells; there was very little banter, Josie looked (on the very rare occasions that she appeared) as if she were crying for England and Mal just scowled and pointed when he wanted to get a message across. Tommy and I found ourselves being given the painting and repair jobs as the some of the fighter team chose to get out of Mal’s way.
On the third day Mal approached me and Tommy as we finished replacing some of the lighting wires on the boards that formed the entrance to the fight booth.
I was sitting on the floor putting in the last staple when Mal appeared, he extended his right hand down to me and said, “I want a word with you, if you please, young Bernie” I took the proffered hand and he hauled me to my feet. Then, to my surprise he simply kept hauling, very fast and in a sideways direction, swiveling his hips and planting his foot below his right shoulder, my shins hit his calf and I started to overbalance towards the floor. He released his right hand grip and with his left hand he added to my forward momentum. Some sixth sense kicked in and instead of sprawling on the floor face down I tucked my right arm in, rolled my shoulder forward and did a neat forward roll, I came up quickly albeit facing away from Mal, and spun round to face him. I had no idea what was going on but I sure as hell didn’t want to turn my back to a guy who had been in a foul temper for the past three days and who had just assaulted me with no provocation.
I looked straight at him and the bastard was grinning a big grin all over his neatly shaved and handsome little face.
“Yes, Bernie, I think you’ve got the makings of the good little show fighter, do you fancy taking Reggie’s place in the ring?”
For the second time in my short life I was in the situation of being offered a job that may well have strings attached. On the upside the fighters usually seemed to have a pretty quick build-up and pull-down, and each fighter worked for about an hour a night whereas I’d been putting in five hours. I had no idea about the payment side of the fight show but
Mal’s boys never seemed short and, after all, this guy had bailed me out over this winter and so I found myself saying, “Yeah, alright, why not”
“Good fellow” said Mal, he turned and yelled
“Oi, Brady, come here, will you?”
Turning back to me he offered a handshake and to prove it wasn’t another potential throw he mocked spitting in his palm,
“Welcome aboard, son”
As Brady appeared Mal said to him,
“Hello Bray, Bernie here is joining the team, show him the ropes and make sure he knows enough to not let himself get hurt...too badly”
And with that he turned on his heel and walked back to his caravan with a jaunty step and a light tune whistling through his lips.
Chapter 22
Back to school; the ‘School of Hard Knocks’
Brady was an underweight and wiry little thirty-something-year-old former miner from the Black Country with an almost impenetrable accent and a slow deliberate speech. The slowness had fooled many people into thinking Brady rather dense but, despite the cauliflower ears and the scarred forehead, he was an avid reader, a self-taught homespun philosopher and a shrewd judge of character. He was Mal’s right hand man in the show, but with his accent and slow delivery could never take over from Mal at the microphone.
Brady took me under his wing for the last couple of weeks of enforced yard life. He taught me how to fall and how to roll, he taught me how to look surprised when a planned move came. He taught me the etiquette of the selection of the fighters and how to catch Mal’s eye in a crowd without anyone else noticing. He taught me the entire deal of the wrestling show.
This was the way it worked;
The whole thing was centred around an AEC Mammoth Major eight-wheeled truck. After it was parked up and leveled, the sides of the back came off creating and open sided box with a flat floor. Two sets of steps were erected along each side of this flat floor creating the initial ‘stage’ from whence Mal would enchant the punters into coming into the show. To see the show the crowd would climb up the set of steps on the offside of the truck, walk through the truck body, and down into the long ‘marquee’ which we erected fixed to the nearside of the body. This latter structure had solid shutters for walls and a long ridge pole that extended from the side of the truck for some sixty feet. A canvas tilt was stretched along the ridgepole and tied down to the tops of the shutters forming a tent some sixty feet long by thirty feet wide. The only way in or out was through the truck, where the entrance fee was paid.
In the middle of this tent we erected a wrestling ring, leveled slightly above the ground, with a board floor covered in white canvas. There were no chairs for the punters; they stood, which meant that more of them could get in and the atmosphere was always kept lively.
Suspended from the ceiling of the truck were two ‘speed-balls’; punch balls suspended from springs which boxers use to practice rapid repeated punching with both their left and right hands.
The “personnel” of the show consisted of Mal as the Master of Ceremonies and lynchpin of the whole thing. There were then four “top men”; these were wrestlers who fought masked and were the “house” fighters. Each had a name under which he fought, such as Mal’s former fighting name of the “Baron of Bow”. Then there was a gaggle of, generally, younger lads who would pose as members of the public to wrestle the top men.
Two masked fighters would come out onto the stage, and taking a speed-ball each would begin to dance around them, their arms moving as fast as the eye could see, darting back and forth, hitting the rebounding balls in a blur of rapid movement. They would sometime synchronise their movements both in the striking and the movement around the balls, and sometimes they moved independently. Whichever they did it would rapidly draw a crowd. Mal would switch on the PA system so the microphone picked up the thudding of the fighters’ footwork and the slapping of their bare knuckles against the old, smooth and stretched leather of the balls. The crowd would grow and Mal would then come onto the stage dressed in his smart dinner jacket and bow tie and would take the microphone.
The fighters continued but now they made their display as quiet as possible whilst keeping up the flickering movement.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, each of these gentlemen would like to lay down a challenge to any man, Army, Navy or civilian, amateur or professional, who will enter the ring to wrestle. The challenger may choose a three or a four round bout and, if he simply stays the course, completing the full number of rounds, he will receive a cash prize: of one pound for a three round bout or one pound and ten shillings for the four round bout. However, if he fails to make it to the final bell, no money will come his way.”
Mal would then bring forward the first of the fighters and call for challengers. At this point there would be a number of genuine punters volunteering as well as a couple of Mal’s lads. Mal would sometimes select the first hand that went up, as long as it was one of his lads, but he would often make a bit of a show of the selection, eventually deciding based on some logical sounding, but spurious, rationale of comparative size or weight or build.
The successful challenger was then asked to select a three or four round bout, and again Mal sometimes made this into a bit of audience participation, as he either recommended that only three rounds gave the ‘punter’ the better chance of winning his prize or goading the ‘punter’ into going for the longer fight on the grounds of giving the public a decent spectacle.
This process then repeated for the second of Mal’s masked fighters.
Once the selection process was completed the challengers were taken away to change into trunks and boots and the crowd were invited to cross the stage into the fighting tent, being relieved of their half-crowns as they streamed in.
The fights were fixed but only usually in the broadest sense; Brady might have arranged for me to floor him in the second and he’d throw me out of the ring in the fourth, but everything else was ad-libbed to keep the fight looking as realistic as possible.
The four round bout would always go first, but would usually only last two or three rounds before the challenger was defeated.
At the end of the fight Mal would declare that as the challenger had failed to go the distance no prize was due but he would ask the crowd to make a donation for the loser, these were collected up in the fighter’s towel carried by the four corners, so it hung like a sling. They were referred to in our parleyaree slang as the “nobbings”, and in actual fact they were always split evenly between everyone who had taken part that evening; the “top men” and the challengers.
The three round bout would follow. The challenger would often seem to be getting the upper hand in the last half of the final round. When the bell rang, the challenger would be declared to have earned his prize for staying the distance. However, a regular stunt was for the challenger to demand the right to one more round so as to actually beat his professional opponent. Mal would refuse a single round and a heated argument would follow, Mal and the challenger both calling on the crowd to support their position. Eventually, Mal would offer the challenger the full four round bout in the next set of fights. This was in return for not receiving his prize for lasting the distance. Often the challenger would accept. The audience would leave and some would immediately return to see the plucky challenger try to beat the hardened pro.
Brady schooled me in the art of speed-balling; the trick was to keep your eye exclusively on the ball and not take it off for a second, if you did you inevitably hit it askew and either got a smack in the face for your trouble or simply lost rhythm and looked amateurish. Once I could beat out a merry tattoo on the speed ball, I learnt to do the fancy footwork that gave the action a wider audience and added to the appearance of professionalism. Having mastered that, I went on to learn the throws and the falls; the elements that made the fight itself look realistic but also meant that I’d be able to go into t
he ring night after night without too much pain or any permanent disabilities.
Chapter 23
A Policeman’s Lot Is Not A Happy One
We set off from Willesden in the pouring rain to head down to Canterbury for the Easter Bank Holiday Fair; the beginning of the new season.
Mal was driving the Mammoth with me in the cab with him as brakeman, behind us we towed a trailer with the equipment for the tilt, side panels and the ring and behind that was the rest of our little convoy; a Luton van and Mal’s living wagon driven by Brady with Mal’s wife and the girls on board.
It was a Sunday and given that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, Mal led the way straight through central London. It was late morning and we had been on the road for a couple of hours when we approached Tower Bridge. Mal was clearly bored.
We drove onto the first span of the bridge, between the northern bank and the first tower and ahead of us the two bascules of the centre section were just sinking back into place after being raised to allow a tall-ship to pass. Standing under the arch of the northern tower, in the middle of the road ahead of us, was a traffic policeman. From the high cab, his tall black helmet and long black greatcoat merged into the tarmac, but his white face and striped white cuff-bands stood out clearly. He looked at us and held his right hand up gesturing us to stop. Almost as he completed this movement he curled his hand away in a swirley and rather camp looking closing move and spun on his heel to face the other way. We were still moving towards him and I noticed a rather wicked smile cross Mal’s face as he put in the clutch. We slowly coasted towards the copper’s back and finally Mal eased up on the clutch to get some more power or we would have come to a halt. “Just watch this” muttered Mal out of the side of his mouth as we slowly chugged closer and closer to the copper’s back. The front-end of the Mammoth is as flat as a pancake and the windscreen is only a couple of inches back from the radiator grill. Mal kept going slowly and smoothly forward with a control that would have put an Advanced Driving Instructor to shame. The two silver buttons on the half belt on the back of the bobby’s greatcoat slipped from view we were so close and when Mal got to the point where the brim of the copper’s helmet was half an inch from the radiator cap, I could imagine Mal being hauled off to jail. At the very second that the radiator touched the heavy serge of the policeman’s shoulder, and I could read the number on his epaulettes, Mal applied the brakes. The truck rocked forwards on the suspension and the radiator cap tipped the brim of the helmet forward by a fraction of an inch.
