All the Fun of the Fair Read online

  All the Fun of the Fair

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Copyright

  All the Fun of the Fair

  Lynda Page

  Chapter One

  Late March, 1955. On a large slum-clearance site surrounded by a maze of dilapidated back-to-back terraced houses, factories and other industrial buildings, in a rundown area of a south Yorkshire market town, colourful flashing lights lit the dark evening sky and thumping rock and roll music blasted the air. Grundy’s travelling fair had arrived.

  Inside the surrounding crumbling dwellings and in a progression of more prosperous streets stretching way beyond, a frenzy of activity was underway. Evening meals were being gobbled down, then a rush to wash and change out of school and work clothes for best. Tonight was not one to linger, all occupants desperate to be ready for the off. Every second of the next few hours was to be spent enjoying the thrills and excitement with money saved, stolen, begged or borrowed.

  Leaning against a lamp post at the edge of the site, drawing deeply on a rolled-up cigarette, was thirty-seven-year-old Solomon Grundy, a ruggedly handsome, muscular man of five foot ten. He was dressed in a pair of black trousers, the sleeves of a white shirt worn under a black waistcoat rolled up to his elbows, and a black pork-pie-style hat that covered short dark hair beginning to grey at his temples gave him a distinguished look, he felt. His wife teased him that it was a sign he was just getting old. He smiled, gratified to see the never-ending stream of excited-looking people being drawn, Pied-Piper-like, towards the entrance. The evening was the sort you’d usually find people behind closed doors, huddled around a blazing fire, but the hordes of animated punters streaming out of side streets and hurrying over the waste ground didn’t seem to notice, the lure of the good time to come all they could think about.

  It was never possible to predict how lucrative any session was going to be but, judging by the number of people already arriving this early in the evening, it looked set to be profitable.

  Solly took a last draw from his cigarette before throwing it down, grinding it out with the heel of his shoe and joining the snaking crowd. He might have been on the go since five this morning doing his share readying the fair for opening tonight, the same as everyone else connected with Grundy’s, but along with a couple of gaff lads, he was also in charge of the dodgems tonight. As an expert in all the tricks of the trade, he knew he had already left the youths for far longer than he should, leaving them at liberty to supplement their meagre pay by wrong-changing or tapping, as they called it, the general public. Although it was known this practice went on behind the owner’s back it was not condoned and, if the culprits were caught red-handed, it was an instantly sackable offence.

  Using centuries-old tricks of the trade to make a living was one thing but, as in all walks of life, there were those that were out for themselves who felt no shame in doing whatever it took to feather their own nest, illicitly or not. The Grundy family, same as all the other fairground operators up and down the country – from the huge outfits to the very small – always had to be on the alert for those blatantly thieving sorts that had infiltrated their fair for fear of tarnishing their reputation. But regardless, deep down, Solly couldn’t blame the gaff lads for lining their pockets by short-changing the odd threepence or sixpence as the pay they received for their hard labours hardly kept them in the basics of food, rolling tobacco and drink. After all, a fairground job was seen as a last resort for those unable to secure themselves anything better through varying reasons; mainly because they had no fixed abode or were ex-prisoners. It was far better than living rough. The job did have its perks for the gaff lads though, as a certain type of female was dazzled by any man connected to the fair, seeing them in the same light as a knight in shining armour and praying to land one and be whisked into what they believed was a glamorous, thrill-a-minute life, far removed from their mundane one, governed by their parents’ rules and regulations. They didn’t realise that, apart from an isolated occasion when a fairground employee did lose his heart to one of these girls, their only interest in them was for sex.

  All the main rides were in the middle of the fair area, several circular stalls such as hook-a-duck and hoopla dotted between them, the rest forming a horseshoe shape around the boundary edge, the entrance being the gap in the middle. The living caravans were sited a few yards behind the stalls and rides before a tangle of dense undergrowth that edged a rundown part of a canal. The dodgems where Solly was heading were towards the back of the rides area and, to avoid having to fight his way through the crowds at the entrance, he skirted the back of the stalls and was just about to sidle through a narrow gap when above the noise coming from the fair itself, the sound of an angry voice along with someone else yelping in pain reached his ears. It was coming from the edge of the waste ground several yards away where a high wire fence separated it from a building site where the council was building new houses to replace slums. The lights from the fairground didn’t reach that far so Solly couldn’t see what was going on, but it seemed to him that someone was getting a savage beating.

  He groaned inwardly. He really needed to be supervising the two gaff lads on the dodgems, the most popular ride at the moment; certainly Grundy’s most profitable one. He not only needed to be on hand to keep a watchful eye on the lads, but also to manage troublesome sorts who didn’t like waiting their turn and started making a nuisance of themselves. But apart from the fact that his morals would not allow him to walk away from someone who was in trouble, whether they deserved it or not, should a member of the public happen upon this and call the police, it would be enough excuse for them to close the fair down for the night. Off duty, the police enjoyed a visit to the fair with their families as much as anyone else did but, on duty, some of them regarded being called to deal with incidents at the fair as an extra burden they could do without on top of all the other everyday crimes and would therefore treat fair-related matters far more harshly. Without further ado, Solly spun on his heels and hurried over the uneven ground in the direction the commotion was coming from.

  His guess that someone was being thrashed was a correct one. Due to the darkness and the lack of any man-made light in this part of the ground, Solly was on top of the scene before he could actually make out what was going on. A middle-aged, thick-set, shabbily dressed man was beating someone with a sturdy walking stick. They were scruffily dressed too, curled up in a foetal position on the ground, hysterically screaming for the attacker to stop. Solly noticed a large tear in the sleeve of his thin brown jacket.

  The man had his arm raised, ready to deliver the stick down again on his victim, but, without further ado, Solly grabbed his wrist in a vice-like grip, demanding, ‘That’s enough of that now, unless you want to land in prison for murder.’

  The attacker was stunned by Solly’s intervention and stood staring at him for several moments before he gathered his wits and tried frantically to free his wrist from Sol
ly’s hold. ‘Get the fuck off of me! I’m only giving me son what he deserves. Now get off me, I said.’

  This incensed Solly. Grown men beating each other was one thing but an older man beating a child, and his son at that, was not right to Solly. As a father of two strapping sons himself he knew only too well that at times during their adolescence they had tested his patience to its very limits, but to beat them half to death by way of punishment, to use manly strength on a juvenile, was totally despicable behaviour to him. He abhorred any man that did this. He hissed, ‘I’m sure whatever your lad’s done doesn’t warrant being beaten to death. I’ll not let you free until you calm down.’

  The man responded, ‘I’ll bloody calm down when me son promises to do as he’s told. He knows the score should he disobey me.’ He again desperately tried to free his wrist and kicked out a shoddy workman’s booted foot, aiming for Solly’s shin, but Solly pre-empted what he intended and, whilst still gripping the man’s wrists, jumped out of the way. At his failure to free himself, with his free hand the man then aimed a punch at Solly’s chin. Solly wasn’t quite quick enough this time and the fist caught him square on the side of his face. Regardless of the pain from the blow, he was going to be sporting a good bruise shortly, Solly still managed to keep a grip on the man’s wrist but he was angry now that the man had turned his wrath on him and told him, ‘Hit me again and you’ll regret it, man. It’ll be you I’ll be calling an ambulance for, not your son. Now, either drop that stick and calm down or I’ll drag you with me to find a bobby… I’m sure you know there’s never a copper far from a fairground… and I’ll have you charged with assaulting me as well as your son. Now, what’s it to be?’

  Solly was having to control such a deep urge to give this bully of a man a taste of his own medicine. He saw the wisdom in dropping the stick, which clattered down on the ground between his and Solly’s feet, and he snarled, ‘I did what you asked so now get yer hand off me.’

  Solly released his grip, then immediately bent down to snatch up the stick and throw it javelin-like across the high fence into the builders’ yard the other side. ‘Judging the kick you tried to aim at me, I doubt you need that to actually walk with.’ He looked hard at the man for a moment, then added, ‘Bit of advice, mate. You need to think long and hard on the fact that sons grow into adults. If you continue thrashing him like I saw you doing every time he does something you don’t agree with, then he’ll more than likely grow up to hate you, that’s if he doesn’t already, and before you know it it’ll be him beating you.’

  The man snarled, ‘How I raise my son is none of your business.’ He looked down to the figure on the floor. ‘Get up, you little runt. I’ll deal with you when…’ His voice trailed off when he realised he was talking to an empty space. Whilst his attacker had been otherwise occupied he had seized the chance to make his getaway. He looked furious for a moment before he smirked nastily. ‘Ah well, he’ll have to come home sooner or later and I’ll be waiting for him. You won’t be there to save him from the thrashing he’s gonna get then.’

  With narrowed, icy eyes, Solly watched as the man hurried off, very quickly, to disappear into the darkness. Solly had been right; the man didn’t need the stick to aid his walking. As he turned and made his way back to the fair to resume his duties, he was deeply worried that instead of stopping the lad’s beating by his father it was only going to resume at a later time and, riled by Solly’s bettering of him in front of his son, the thrashing the lad was going to get then was going to be far worse for him. He wondered just what it was that the young lad had refused to do that had fuelled such fury in his father but, as matters stood, he would never know.

  As soon as Solly entered the actual fairground encirclement, the encounter with the brute and repercussions for his son left him as the charged atmosphere created by the punters’ high spirits, their determination to have themselves a good time, enveloped him, cloak-like. Hurrying his pace, he made his way over to the dodgems to do his bit to help make sure that happened.

  Solly’s family connection to travelling fairs stretched centuries back to the days when street performers, jugglers, musicians playing hurdy-gurdies and fiddles, fire-eaters, puppeteers, actors, game tricksters and suchlike entertained the crowds and used their tricks to get the public to part with their money at yearly town and village annual gatherings. In the early 1900s, Solly’s grandfather Samson Grundy, fed up with the paltry living he was making from his two side stalls, made the monumental decision ­– much to the horror of his wife and children ­– to sell the two stalls in order to buy his first ride, a set of dilapidated gallopers needing a vast amount of mechanical and cosmetic repair. Thankfully his decision turned out to be a sound one as, once repaired and repainted in its original bright colourful traditional style, the popular ride brought in far more profits than both his stalls had between them. Over the next few years Samson bought more rides and eventually became his own ringmaster. His fair quickly became the main attraction at numerous towns and villages annual festivals from the Midlands and up and around the north.

  Grundy’s fair was considered a medium affair compared to the likes of the giants; amongst them Collins, Harris or Codona. Grundy’s fair did not afford a luxury lifestyle as it did the bigger outfits, enabling them to live in their modern caravans with every amenity available, drive fancy vehicles and send their children to private schools, but the business kept his family housed, clothed and fed, along with a number of other families and casuals who worked for him too. He was content with that.

  Since the late 1800s, fairs were run on a strict set of rules and regulations put in place by a group of showmen calling themselves The Van Dwellers Association, later changing the name to The Showmen’s Guild, which had been formed to protect the rights and safety of all travelling showmen. Any grievances between individual showmen that couldn’t be resolved between themselves would be put to the guild for them to adjudicate. The same went for problems showmen faced with council officials and the general public. Individual fair owners, though, were still at liberty to run their businesses in their own particular way. It was the same as in all other walks of life; there were good fair owners to work for and the not-so-good. As the owner of his stalls, hard-working family man Sam Grundy had worked for some very amenable bosses but had also been at the mercy of the bullish, controlling type, having no choice at the time but to pay the extortionate rent they charged for a space for his stalls, even though guild rules prohibited such a practice. Sometimes he had no choice where he was sited and would be treated like the dregs of the earth; should he dare speak out about his treatment that particular ringmaster’s attitude would be that if you didn’t like it then leave, plenty more where you came from. In consequence, when Sam found himself faced with the upper hand as ringmaster himself, he operated in a firm but fair manner and, as a result, established himself a reputation as being a decent type to work for so was never short of stall holders wanting to rent pitches or casuals applying for jobs as ride operators or labourers.

  Life as a fair owner or for those associated with it in any capacity was not the glamorous existence most outsiders, or ‘flatties’ as the show people called them, believed it to be. Providing the public with their few hours of thrills and excitement required long hours of back-breaking labour dismantling the rides and stalls at the end of one session, packing up living accommodation, transporting it all to the next event on their calendar, then reconstructing it. And all to strict timescales, often battling atrocious weather conditions and at times obnoxious or even corrupt council officials and locals, who believed that fairs were dens of iniquity, operated by dishonest sorts who drew even more unsavoury types to their towns and villages.

  Living conditions for the casual fairground workers, or gaff lads as they were known as, was far from luxurious; several bunking in together in old caravans with no electric or water facilities, heating obtained from smelly paraffin heaters or oil lamps, sometimes no heating at all. Stallholders and ri
de operators’ accommodation was marginally better, usually with generators and wood-burning stoves. The caravans themselves came in varying states of repair depending the owners’ financial situation.

  Sam and his two sons, Samson junior known as Sonny and his younger brother Solomon, Solly, each lived in large, old-style curved-top wagons, all passed down several generations and kept well repaired with funds allowing modernisation where possible. The walls of the living area, kitchen and number of bedrooms, ranging from one to three, were partitioned off by curtains. Much of the interior was lined in highly polished oak or mahogany and were a devil for the womenfolk to clean. The cast-iron stove in the kitchen was heated by wood and, although small, was adequate enough to cook meals on for a large number of people. There were plenty of cupboards and spaces under beds and seating for storage and also outside, running along the undersides of the van too. Solly’s wagon even had a rudimentary bathroom. The wagons were made homely with knitted throws, cushions and shelves and lead-paned window ledges were filled with fairground glass, ornaments and trinkets, all keepsakes collected by past and present occupants. The wagons were no longer pulled along by horses but by motor power – old Land Rovers or lorries – so transporting them from place to place now only took hours, not days. These were much larger inside than the more modern types and also, in winter, extremely warm and comfortable. This was why, along with nostalgia, the Grundy family still opted to live in them.

  Fairfolks’ lives were hard as they battled to make themselves a living but they did it because it was the only way of life they knew; the same as their ancestors had done for hundreds of years before them.

  Chapter Two

  Over the other side of the fair, having gotten her helper of the night to man the fort while she nipped back to the living vans to use the makeshift toilet facilities, Solly’s wife of twenty years, thirty-six-year-old Gemma Grundy, was making her way through the crowds to retake her position in the pay booth of the House of Fun. Suddenly she stopped short, staring in disbelief at the scene she had happened upon.