A Postillion Struck by Lightning (3 page)

My sister was wearing her shorts, and whistling like a boy, which she hoped everyone would think she was, and jingling her one and fourpence in the pockets.

“What are you going to try for?” she called above the jingle-jongle of the roundabout. “Bet it's a canary-bird. Well, I'm going to try for one of those camels … a blue or a red, I don't care which, so long as it's a camel.” She hadn't bothered to wait for my answer. Naturally.

The camels, which she had envied ever since she saw them here last year, were ghastly things, covered in spangly silver paint, and with baskets on their backs to put flowers in. You had to roll pennies for them too, only the top number was eighteen.

Lally was sucking a Snofruit and in between licks singing to the music on the roundabout… “I'm Happy When I'm Hiking.” And Mrs Jane was picking her way carefully through the tumbling, rushing, laughing people, very tall and black, and holding her umbrella like a diviner's rod before her. I think she was enjoying herself, but you couldn't really tell with her; she seldom smiled unless it was over some rather old and boring story of when Lally and Brother Harold were children.

The canary stall was some way off from the roundabout, and quite near the lych gate of the church. People were sitting about on the gravestones in the flickering light from the fair petting and giggling, and putting paper flowers in their hair. Mrs Jane was a bit put off by all this.

“Fancy!” she said. “No respect for the dead at all. I'm very glad it's not me or your father as is under there on an evening like this.”

“You wouldn't know, Mother,” said Lally. She enjoyed a fair. “And what you don't know you wouldn't care about.”

“I'd know. And your father would know for all he's deaf,” said Mrs Jane.

“Would you be a ghost by then?” my sister asked in a soppy way.

“I'm not saying what I'd be,” said Mrs Jane, pushing a large collie dog out of her way. “But sure as there's going to be thunder tonight, I'd
know
.”

We had got to the stall, the lights and the little cages all bobbing and jingling about, and people all round the barrier shoving and counting change, and rolling pennies down the little slotted bits of wood. In the middle was a large woman with a black and white apron with a big satchel bag round her neck, and every time a coin landed on an unnumbered square she shovelled it into the bag without looking and went on calling out, “Eight to score Thirty for a Dicky.” And all the while her eyes were scanning about the fairground as if she was looking for somewhere to go.

I rolled my first three pennies, my arms rigid with fright, my eyes concentrating on the square with “C” marked on it. But the pennies rolled down the slotted thing and just wobbled like old bicycle wheels on to the black or white squares and the woman in the middle shovelled them up without a look. The fourth penny tumbled on to number three and my sister smirked and said, “Ten times that and you'd have won.” And I pushed her so that she fell over a lady with a pushcart and started to whine.

“Behave yourself!” said Mrs Jane.

“You'll get a thick ear if you don't,” said Lally and gave Mrs Jane her Snofruit to hold while she helped my sister to her feet.

The fifth and sixth pennies rolled down on to a black and a white and now I only had two shillings left.

Why don't you have a go on something else, then?” said Lally. “You won't have anything left for the roundabouts.”

“I'll just have a few more tries,” I said, and moved round the stall to another place to bring me luck. Just in front of me my sister stood, hair across her eyes, tongue sticking out, stiff with concentration trying for her camel. Mrs Jane stood behind her like a black witch, her glasses glittering in the electric lights, and the pink pin in her hat winking and bobbing as she craned to watch.

I got a five, a three, a black, and a six. Fourteen, another black, and then my last penny wobbled across the board, teetered about for a second that seemed an hour, and finally settled just into the magic square C. But it lay cruelly exposed to all and sundry with its edge just over the line. “Doesn't count,” cried the lady in the middle, her fat greasy hand poised over the offending coin. “Got to be right in the centre. Jam bang in the centre!” she cried triumphantly, scooping up my coin and hurling it into her bag. “But you got a fishing set,' she said and slung the rotten little matchbox across the squares towards me. Glumly I shoved it into my pocket
and pushed my way through the people. Lally called after me, something about don't get lost and they'd be coming, but I was heavy hearted, and didn't really listen. Above the glaring lights of the fairground the swifts swung and screamed, swooping in and out of the flags and banners. The Downs were hard and blue against a copper sky, big clouds crept up, like smoke from a great fire miles away, and a little cool breeze came whiffling along, making all the lights swing and dangle, and sending paper bags and chocolate wrappings scampering and eddying about the trodden grass. People ran past laughing, with red happy faces; girls with bows in their hair and braying boys wearing paper hats. The roundabout clonked up and down and round and round, the brass angels in the middle banging their cymbals together every few moments and turning their heads slowly from left to right with wide brass eyes gleaming at no-one, while the white and yellow horses, the pink pigs, and the racing, startled ostriches swung round and round petrified in enamel. Around the canopy went the words “BROWNRIGGS PLEASURE RIDE FOR FAMILIES” blurring into a ribbon of red and gold and yellow, and I went over to the stall where you threw balls into glass jars, had three go's and won a stick of rock with Ilfracombe written through it.

Down by the dodgem cars there was a rather nasty girl with red hair and glasses. Her name was Alice McWhirter and she was new to the village. Her father was some sort of artist, and they had taken old Mrs Maiden's house up at Elder Lane, and, as far as we were concerned, they were foreigners. She had come and talked to my sister and me when we were fishing once, and, although we were as rude as possible, she wouldn't go, so we'd brought her home for tea, given her a jam sandwich, made her walk along the top of a wall by the pigsty, pushed her in the nettles and sent her home alone. But she still came back for more. Lally said she was lonely and “an only child” and that her father was an artist and what could you expect with no mother, and we were to be better behaved to her because we had each other, our father was a journalist and we had a mother. She was awfully soft at times. And so we sort of got to know her a bit, and once she asked us to her house which was very small and untidy, and smelled of linseed oil and cooking. Her father was very tall, had a red beard and bare feet and swore at us, which was the only time he ever spoke while we were there. After we'd looked at their privy,
her collection of moths, all lumped up together, dead in a jam jar, and a photograph of her mother, fat and laughing with glasses, and a pom-pom hat, who was also dead, she asked us if we'd like some orangeade. We said “yes” and followed her up a rather rickety stairway to the bedrooms. Although it was about tea-time the beds were still unmade, and there were clothes and old shoes all over the place. One room was very small, where she slept, and the other quite large and full of paintings and leather suitcases and a dreadful old camp bed in a corner covered in dirty sheets where her father slept. On a marble-topped table there was a big white china mug which she brought over to us very carefully. “Here you are,” she said, “Kia Ora.” And handed me the mug. It was full and heavy. And orange. I was just about to take a sip when she suddenly threw her skirts over her head and screamed, “Don't! It's not Kia Ora at all, it's pee!” and fell on the camp bed laughing and laughing, with her legs going all sorts of ways.

I put down the heavy white mug, and we just stood there staring at her for a bit. Suddenly my sister said, “I'm going home” and started off down the rickety stairs with me behind her and the awful girl still laughing on her father's bed.

After that we kept out of her way and never spoke to her again, but she made friends with Reg Fluke and we sometimes met them birdnesting or down in the meadow looking for slowworms.

I stood looking at the dodgem cars clonking and bumping into each other, and the people screaming and laughing and I felt Alice McWhirter moving along towards me. She was wearing a sort of velvet dress, and her legs were bare and scratched, and her glasses shone in the lights and all the dodgem cars were reflected in them as she peered up at me. She really was frightfully ugly.

“Hello,” she said, and smiled.

“Hello,” I said politely, but coldly to show her I had not forgotten the orangeade part.

“Reg is on number four,” she said, indicating the car with a nod of her head. “I wouldn't go on, I'm too scared.”

I didn't say anything.

“I've got sevenpence and I'm saving it for one go on the swings and one go on the horses, only I want a cockerel,” she said, edging closer.

“I've got two shillings,” I said in a pompous voice, “and I'm going to spend it all on rolling pennies.”

She looked amazed. “TWO shillings! What do you want to win?” she asked, her nasty little claw-like hand clutching the dodgem rail.

“That's my affair, I wouldn't tell you,” I said, and I was just moving away when she grabbed my arm with her horrible little hand and cried: “Look what Reg won at the rolling.” And there, in her right hand, which had been hidden behind her velvet skirt, hanging in the air between us, was a little wooden cage with a canary fluttering and beating against the wires. “Isn't he beautiful!” she cried. “Reg got it for four rolls!”

My heart was thudding, my mouth dry, the little cage bobbed and wobbled in her outstretched hand between us. The thing I had most longed for was in the grasp of ghastly Alice McWhirter, and Reg Fluke had got it in four rolls.

“It's very pretty,” I said. “But the cage is too small.”

Alice McWhirter laughed a scornful laugh. “We're going to make it a bigger one, in our garden, out of an old orange box. I know where the wire is, and we'll put in twigs and grass and things. This,” she laughed, swinging it disdainfully above her head and frightening the bird out of its wits, “is only for fairs and travelling and that. You couldn't put them all in orange boxes!”

And then Reg Fluke was clambering over the rail, his face smiling and country-looking, and red and shiny.

“Showing you my sparrer, is she?” he asked, pulling out a dirty handkerchief and wiping his forehead. “Cost me four rolls, that did… and this,” he indicated the dodgems with a jab of his head backward, “cost me sixpence and that's me skint.”

Alice McWhirter wagged the cage about in front of my stiff face. “I've got sevenpence you can share,” she said.

“Coconuts is sixpence for four balls,” said Reg. “What'll you do with a penny? Save it for a pee?” He roared with laughter, and Alice McWhirter smirked away. Funny how pee kept coming up with her.

“I'll give you one shilling in coppers for it,” I said, blurting it all out. The music was very loud, the cars banging and crashing into each other. Reg's jaw was stuck open with surprise. “How much?”

“One shilling,” I said very loudly indeed, “in coppers.”

“For a sparrer?”

Reg took the cage from the clutching hand of Alice McWhirter
and peered into it. The canary skittered about again, and a feather fell out.

He handed it solemnly over to me. “Where's the bob, then?” He crammed the pennies into both his pockets, and with a wink to Alice McWhirter he pulled her off into the crowds.

My heart bursting, my face red, the cage pressed close to my chest, I shoved and pushed through the people until I caught sight, over the heads in front of me, of Mrs Jane's black hat.

“Great Heavens!” she cried, seeing me. “You got one! Well I declare. Lally…” she turned and cried above the music… “the boy's got his canary!”

They stood round me in a circle, the three of them, staring at my prize. My sister clasped her hands with joy, and a glimmer of liking flickered in me for her, until she said: “It'll just wash off in the rain, all that yellow, and be an ordinary sparrow you could have got for nothing.” And hate glowed deep in the coals of my heart. Lally cuffed her head lightly and said, “Well I daresay you've spent all your money, and Miss Know All here's got her camel, so we'd better hop, skip and jump it home.” We turned and threaded our way through the thronging fairground. The roundabout was playing “The More We Are Together” and the little wind flapped at the legs of my shorts, and jiggled the black ribbon on Mrs Jane's hat. My heart was full, thumping with happiness. My brain reeled with all the plans for my canary—a cage next, a large cage with perches, and a jam jar full of seeding grasses; a tin tray for sand and a bowl for bathing in; and maybe, later, a mate; and nests, and babies. Oh! Lord! What joy.

Lally looked up into the dark blue of the night, and sniffed. “Mother?” she said. “You said there'd be thunder, and I reckon you're about right. Shouldn't wonder if we have a storm before we reached home. Good job you got your brolly.”

“Always bring my brolly everywhere,” said Mrs Jane. “Ever since I got wetted at your Aunt Gert's Silver up at Shepperton that year. Blue crepe it was, and I got so wet you could see my stays right through. I thought your father would do himself a hurt he laughed so much.”

We had got to the path which led to the white wood bridge across the river. Behind us the glare of the fair was like a big bonfire, the twinkling lights like embers, and the smoke from the roundabout drifting up into the night. Ahead all was dark and still, and the trees and hedge blurry shapes. The white planks of the bridge were like whale bones. It was very still again: the little wind had stopped.