The Best of Gerald Kersh

by Gerald Kersh

  Under the Flower Show, which was scheduled for 14 August, was pinned a wretched little bill advertising, for the same date, a ‘Grand Carnival’ in Wagnall’s Barn on Long Meadow, Wettendene. Everything was covered with dust.

  It is a wonderful place for dust. It is necessary, in The Mucky Duck cellar, to take your drink fast or clasp your hand over the top of the glass before it accumulates a grey scum or even a dead spider: the nobility and gentry like it that way. The gnarled old four-ale drinkers go to The Green Man: they have no taste for quaintness.

  I knew nobody in Wettendene, and am shy of making new acquaintances. The ‘Grand Carnival’ was to begin at seven o’clock; entrance fee sixpence, children half price. It could not be much of a show, I reflected, at that price and in that place: a showman must be hard up, indeed, to hire a barn for his show in such a place. But I like carnivals and am interested in the people that follow them; so I set off at five o’clock.

  Long Meadow is not hard to find: you go to the end of Wettendene High Street, turn sharp right at Scott’s Corner where the village ends, and take the winding lane, Wettendene Way. This will lead you, through a green tunnel, to Long Meadow, where the big Wagnall’s Barn is.

  Long Meadow was rich grazing land in better times, but now it is good for nothing but a pitiful handful of sheep that nibble the coarse grass. There has been no use for the barn these last two generations. It was built to last hundreds of years; but the land died first. This had something to do with water – either a lack or an excess of it. Long Meadow is good for nothing much, at present, but the Barn stands firm and four-square to the capricious rains and insidious fogs of Wettendene Marsh. (If it were not for the engineers who dammed the river, the whole area would, by now, be under water.) However, the place is dry, in dry weather.

  Still, Long Meadow has the peculiarly dreary atmosphere of a swamp and Wagnall’s Barn is incongruously sturdy in that wasteland. It is a long time since any produce was stocked in Wagnall’s Barn. Mr Etheridge, who owns it, rents it for dances, amateur theatrical shows, and what not.

  That playbill aroused my curiosity. It was boldly printed in red, as follows:

  !!! JOLLY JUMBO’S CARNIVAL !!!

  !! THE ONE AND ONLY !!

  COME AND SEE

  !! GORGON, The Man Who Eats Bricks & Swallows Glass !!

  !! THE HUMAN SKELETON !!

  !! THE INDIA RUBBER BEAUTY –

  She Can Put Her Legs Around Her Neck & Walk On Her Hands !!

  !! A LIVE MERMAID !!

  !! ALPHA, BETA, AND DOT. The World-Famous Tumblers

  With The Educated Dog !!

  ! JOLLY JUMBO !

  !! JOLLY JUMBO !!

  I left early, because I like to look behind the scenes, and have a chat with a wandering freak or two. I remembered a good friend of mine who had been a Human Skeleton – six foot six and weighed a hundred pounds – ate five meals a day, and was as strong as a bull. He told good stories in that coffee-bar that is set up where the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Combined Circuses rest in Florida for the winter. I ‘tasted sawdust’, as the saying goes, and had a yearning to sit on the ground and hear strange stories. Not that I expected much of Wettendene. All the same the strangest people turn up at the unlikeliest places….

  Then the rain came down, as it does in an English summer. The sky sagged, rumbled a borborygmic threat of thunderstorms, which seemed to tear open clouds like bags of water.

  Knowing our English summer, I had come prepared with a mackintosh, which I put on as I ran for the shelter of the barn.

  I was surprised to find it empty. The thunder was loud, now, and there were zigzags of lightning in the east; what time the pelting rain sounded on the meadow like a maracca. I took off my raincoat and lit a cigarette – and then, in the light of the match flame, I caught a glimpse of two red-and-green eyes watching me, in a far corner, about a foot away from the floor.

  It was not yet night, but I felt in that moment such a pang of horror as comes only in the dark; but I am so constituted that, when frightened, I run forward. There was something unholy about Wagnall’s Barn, but I should have been ashamed not to face it, whatever it might be. So I advanced, with my walking-stick; but then there came a most melancholy whimper, and I knew that the eyes belonged to a dog.

  I made a caressing noise and said: ‘Good dog, good doggie! Come on, doggo!’ – feeling grateful for his company. By the light of another match, I saw a grey poodle, neatly clipped in the French style. When he saw me, he stood up on his hindlegs and danced.

  In the light of that same match I saw, also, a man squatting on his haunches with his head in his hands. He was dressed only in trousers and a tattered shirt. Beside him lay a girl. He had made a bed for her of his clothes and, the rain falling softer, I could hear her breathing, harsh and laborious. The clouds lifted. A little light came into the barn. The dog danced, barking, and the crouching man awoke, raising a haggard face.

  ‘Thank God you’ve come,’ he said. ‘She can’t breathe. She’s got an awful pain in the chest, and a cough. She can’t catch her breath, and she’s burning. Help her, Doctor – Jolly Jumbo has left us high and dry.’

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘Went on and left you here, all alone?’

  ‘Quite right, Doctor.’

  I said: ‘I’m not a doctor.’

  ‘Jumbo promised to send a doctor from the village,’ the man said, with a laugh more unhappy than tears. ‘Jolly Jumbo promised! I might have known. I did know. Jolly Jumbo never kept his word. Jumbo lives for hisself. But he didn’t ought to leave us here in the rain, and Dolores in a bad fever. No, nobody’s got the right. No!’

  I said: ‘You might have run down to Wettendene yourself, and got the doctor.’

  ‘“Might” is a long word, mister. I’ve broke my ankle and my left wrist. Look at the mud on me, and see if I haven’t tried…. Third time, working my way on my elbows – and I am an agile man – I fainted with the pain, and half drowned in the mud…. But Jumbo swore his Bible oath to send a physician for Dolores. Oh, dear me!’

  At this the woman between short, agonised coughs, gasped: ‘Alma de mi corazan – heart of my soul – not leave? So cold, so hot, so cold. Please, not go?’

  ‘I’ll see myself damned first,’ the man said, ‘and so will Dot. Eh, Dot?’

  At this the poodle barked and stood on its hindlegs, dancing.

  The man said, drearily: ‘She’s a woman, do you see, sir. But one of the faithful kind. She come out of Mexico. That alma de mi corazan – she means it. Actually, it means “soul of my heart”. There’s nothing much more you can say to somebody you love, if you mean it…. So you’re not a doctor? More’s the pity! I’d hoped you was. But oh, sir, for the sake of Christian charity, perhaps you’ll give us a hand.

  ‘She and me, we’re not one of that rabble of layabouts, and gyppos, and what not. Believe me, sir, we’re artists of our kind. I know that a gentleman like you doesn’t regard us, because we live rough. But it would be an act of kindness for you to get a doctor up from Wettendene, because my wife is burning and coughing, and I’m helpless.

  ‘I’ll tell you something, guv’nor – poor little Dot, who understands more than the so-called Christians in these parts, she knew, she knew! She ran away. I called her: “Dot – Dot – Dot!” – but she run on. I’ll swear she went for a doctor, or something.

  ‘And in the meantime Jolly Jumbo has gone and left us high and dry. Low and wet is the better word, sir, and we haven’t eaten this last two days.’

  The girl, gripping his wrist, sighed: ‘Please, not to go, not to leave?’

  ‘Set your heart at ease, sweetheart,’ the man said. ‘Me and Dot, we are with you. And here’s a gentleman who’ll get us a physician. Because, to deal plainly with you, my one-and-only, I’ve got a bad leg now and a bad arm, and I can’t make it through the mud to Wettendene. The dog tried and she come back with a bloody mouth where somebody kicked her …’

  I said: ‘Come on, my friend
s, don’t lose heart. I’ll run down to Wettendene and get an ambulance, or at least a doctor. Meanwhile,’ I said, taking off my jacket, ‘peel off some of those damp clothes. Put this on her. At least it’s dry. Then I’ll run down and get you some help.’

  He said: ‘All alone? It’s a dretful thing, to be all alone. Dot’ll go with you, if you will, God love you! But it’s no use, I’m afraid.’

  He said this in a whisper, but the girl heard him, and said, quite clearly: ‘No use. Let him not go. Kind voice. Talk’ – this between rattling gasps.

  He said: ‘All right, my sweet, he’ll go in a minute.’

  The girl said: ‘Only a minute. Cold. Lonely ——’

  ‘What, Dolores, lonely with me and Dot?’

  ‘Lonely, lonely, lonely.’

  So the man forced himself to talk. God grant that no circumstances may compel any of you who read this to talk in such a voice. He was trying to speak evenly; but from time to time, when some word touched his heart, his voice broke like a boy’s, and he tried to cover the break with a laugh that went inward, a sobbing laugh.

  Holding the girl’s hand and talking for her comfort, interrupted from time to time by the whimpering of the poodle Dot, he went on:

  *

  They call me Alpha, you see, because my girl’s name is Beta. That is her real name – short for Beatrice Dolores. But my real name is Alfred, and I come from Hampshire.

  They call us ‘tumblers’, sir, but Dolores is an artist. I can do the forward rolls and the triple back-somersaults; but Dolores is the genius. Dolores, and that dog, Dot, do you see?

  It’s a hard life, sir, and it’s a rough life. I used to be a Joey – a kind of a clown – until I met Dolores in Southampton, where she’d been abandoned by a dago that ran a puppet show, with side-shows, as went broke and left Dolores high and dry. All our lives, from Durham to Land’s End, Carlisle to Brighton, north, south, east, west, I’ve been left high and dry when the rain came down and the money run out. Not an easy life, sir. A hard life, as a matter of fact. You earn your bit of bread, in this game.

  Ever since Dolores and me joined Jolly Jumbo’s Carnival, there was a run of bad luck. At Immersham, there was a cloudburst; Jumbo had took Grote’s Meadow – we was two foot under water. The weather cleared at Athelboro’ and they all came to see Pollux, the Strong Man, because, do you see, the blacksmith at Athelboro’ could lift an anvil over his head, and there was a fi’-pun prize for anybody who could out-lift Pollux (his name was really Michaels).

  Well, as luck would have it, at Athelboro’ Pollux sprained his wrist. The blacksmith out-lifted him, and Jolly Jumbo told him to come back next morning for his fiver. We pulled out about midnight: Jumbo will never go to Athelboro’ again. Then, in Pettydene, something happened to Gorgon, the man that eats bricks and swallows glass. His act was to bite lumps out of a brick, chew them up, wash them down with a glass of water, and crunch up and swallow the glass. We took the Drill Hall at Pettydene, and had a good house. And what happens, but Gorgon breaks a tooth!

  I tell you, sir, we had no luck. After that, at Firestone, something went wrong with the Mermaid. She was my property, you know – an animal they call a manatee – I bought her for a round sum from a man who caught her in South America. A kind of seal, but with breasts like a woman, and almost a human voice. She got a cough, and passed away.

  There never was such a round. Worst of all, just here, Dolores caught a cold.

  I dare say you’ve heard of my act, Alpha, Beta and Dot? … Oh, a stranger here; are you, sir? I wish you could have seen it. Dolores is the genius – her and Dot. I’m only the under-stander. I would come rolling and somersaulting in, and stand. Then Dolores’d come dancing in and take what looked like a standing jump – I gave her a hand-up – on to my shoulders, so we stood balanced. Then, in comes poor little Dot, and jumps; first on to my shoulder, then on to Dolores’ shoulder from mine, and so on to Dolores’ head where Dot stands on her hind legs and dances….

  The rain comes down, sir. Dolores has got a cold in the chest. I beg her: ‘Don’t go on, Dolores – don’t do it!’ But nothing will satisfy her, bless her heart: the show must go on. And when we come on, she was burning like a fire. Couldn’t do the jump. I twist sidewise to take the weight, but her weight is kind of a deadweight, poor girl! My ankle snaps, and we tumbles.

  Tried to make it part of the act – making funny business, carrying the girl in my arms, hopping on one foot, with good old Dot dancing after us.

  That was the end of us in Wettendene. Jolly Jumbo says to us: ‘Never was such luck. The brick-eater’s bust a tooth. The mermaid’s good and dead. The strong-man has strained hisself … and I’m not sure but that blacksmith won’t be on my trail, with a few pals, for that fi’-pun note. I’ve got to leave you to it, Alph, old feller. I’m off to Portsmouth.’

  I said: ‘And what about my girl? I’ve only got one hand and one foot, and she’s got a fever.’

  He said: ‘Wait a bit, Alph, just wait a bit. My word of honour, and my Bible oath, I’ll send a sawbones up from Wettendene.’

  ‘And what about our pay?’ I ask.

  Jolly Jumbo says: ‘I swear on my mother’s grave, Alph, I haven’t got it. But I’ll have it in Portsmouth, on my Bible oath. You know me. Sacred word of honour! I’ll be at The Hope and Anchor for a matter of weeks, and you’ll be paid in full. And I’ll send you a doctor, by my father’s life I will. Honour bright! In the meantime, Alph, I’ll look after Dot for you.’

  And so he picked up the dog – I hadn’t the strength to prevent him – and went out, and I heard the whips cracking and the vans squelching in the mud.

  But little Dot got away and come back….

  I’ve been talking too much, sir. I thought you was the doctor. Get one for the girl, if you’ve a heart in you – and a bit of meat for the dog. I’ve got a few shillings on me.

  *

  I said: ‘Keep still. I’ll be right back.’ And I ran in the rain, closely followed by the dog Dot, down through that dripping green tunnel into Wettendene, and rang long and loud at a black door to which was affixed the brass plate, well worn, of one Dr MacVitie, M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P.

  The old doctor came out, brushing crumbs from his waistcoat. There was an air of decrepitude about him. He led me into his surgery. I saw a dusty old copy of Gray’s Anatomy, two fishing rods, four volumes of the Badminton Library – all unused these past twenty years. There were also some glass-stoppered bottles that seemed to contain nothing but sediment; a spirit lamp without spirit; some cracked test-tubes; and an ancient case-book into the cover of which was stuck a rusty scalpel.

  He was one of the cantankerous old Scotch school of doctors that seem incapable of graciousness, and grudging even of a civil word. He growled: ‘I’m in luck this evening. It’s six months since I sat down to my bit of dinner without the bell going before I had the first spoonful of soup half-way to my mouth. Well, you’ve let me finish my evening meal. Thank ye.’

  He was ponderously ironic, this side offensiveness. ‘Well, out with it. What ails ye? Nothing, I’ll wager. Nothing ever ails ’em hereabout that a dose of castor oil or an aspirin tablet will not cure – excepting always rheumatism. Speak up, man!’

  I said: ‘There’s nothing wrong with me at all. I’ve come to fetch you to treat two other people up at Wagnall’s Barn. There’s a man with a broken ankle and a girl with a congestion of the lungs. So get your bag and come along.’

  He snapped at me like a turtle, and said: ‘And since when, may I ask, were you a diagnostician? And who are you to be giving a name to symptoms? In any case, young fellow, I’m not practising. I’m retired. My son runs the practice, and he’s out on a child-bed case…. Damn that dog – he’s barking again!’

  The poodle, Dot, was indeed barking hysterically and scratching at the front door.

  I said: ‘Doctor, these poor people are in desperate straits.’

  ‘Aye, poor people always are. And who’s to pay the bill?’

&nb
sp; ‘I’ll pay,’ I said, taking out my wallet.

  ‘Put it up, man, put it up! Put your hand in your pocket for all the riffraff that lie about in barns and ye’ll end in the workhouse.’

  He got up laboriously, sighing: ‘Alex is over Iddlesworth way with the car. God give us strength to bear it. I swore my oath and so I’m bound to come, Lord preserve us!’

  ‘If—’ I said, ‘if you happen to have a bit of meat in the house for the dog, I’d be glad to pay for it——’

  ‘– And what do you take this surgery for? A butcher’s shop?’ Then he paused. ‘What sort of a dog, as a matter of curiosity would ye say it was?’

  ‘A little grey French poodle.’

  ‘Oh, aye? Very odd. Ah well, there’s a bit of meat on the chop bones, so I’ll put ’em in my pocket for the dog, if you like … Wagnall’s Barn, did ye say? A man and a girl, is that it? They’ll be some kind of vagrant romanies, or gyppos, no doubt?’

  I said: ‘I believe they are some kind of travelling performers. They are desperately in need of help. Please hurry, Doctor.’

  His face was sour and his voice harsh, but his eyes were bewildered, as he said: ‘Aye, no doubt. I dare say, very likely. A congestion of the lungs, ye said? And a fractured ankle, is that it? Very well.’ He was throwing drugs and bandages into his disreputable-looking black bag. I helped him into his immense black mackintosh.

  He said: ‘As for hurrying, young man, I’m seventy-seven years old, my arteries are hard, and I could not hurry myself for the crack of doom. Here, carry the bag. Hand me my hat and my stick, and we’ll walk up to Wagnall’s Barn on this fool’s errand of yours. Because a fool’s errand it is, I fancy. Come on.’

  The little dog, Dot, looking like a bit of the mud made animate, only half distinguishable in the half dark, barked with joy, running a little way backwards and a long way forwards, leading us back to the Barn through that darkened green tunnel.

  The doctor had a flash-lamp. We made our way to the barn, he grumbling and panting and cursing the weather. We went in. He swung the beam of his lamp from corner to corner, until it came to rest on my jacket. It lay as I had wrapped it over poor Dolores, but it was empty.