The Lily Hand and Other Stories (26 page)

Round the west coast the storms were frantic; but we had an iron, a dread stillness. In the late evenings she opened our window upon the stars, shivering and intent.

‘Listen!'

I asked her: ‘What can you hear?' but when she turned to look at me it was with a look of veiled and aching love, and she said: ‘Nothing! Did I speak? There's nothing to hear but the silence.'

But in the morning, when I went down into the town, I heard with my own ears the sound for which she had been waiting. All about the frozen river and the bridge there was a wheeling and crying of birds; at first I could hardly believe in it, so alien was it to our town. The storms had driven the sea birds inland, the open stretches of water were thronged with black-headed gulls, screaming with hunger and uneasiness. At the sight and the sound of them I was filled with the old, the unassuageable terror, and I forgot the errands on which I had gone out, and turned to rush back to Lucy. For I knew then that because we had fled the sea, the sea had reached out after us, sending its messengers to fetch her home.

Our house was on a curve of the hillside, just above a narrow alley walk; and always, when I came in sight of the windows, I would lift up my head towards the house to look for a sign of her.

Now I saw her at the upper window, and it was open, and she leaned out into the glittering day, for this was no longer an act nor an affection of the darkness. She was not looking down at me, but outward at the white river and the arching bridge, where the gulls complained; and a cloud of them had left the water and were threshing about the window, back and forth, hovering and tumbling, strident and vehement, their wings turning like blown leaves before her glimmering face. Her black hair glistened, her head turned with the brilliant, restless exultation of a bird wheeling, her shoulders arched towards the frosty air.

I cried out to her, but she did not seem to hear. I began to run, into the house and up the stairs, calling her still. The room was empty, the window swinging, the cloud of gulls winging away with wonderful, challenging cries towards the river, flashing and glittering in the wintry sun. On the carpet at my feet the little green ribbon from Lucy's hair lay forlornly, all I had of her to snatch back from flight and hug to my heart.

I shouted her name from the window, but she did not come back to me; and when in my despair I ran out of the house and down to the paved path which edged the water, one of the flying gulls came curling gently about my head, crying sadly. The chilly wind of her wings brushed my cheek, her sleek little black head gleamed for an instant in the white noon light; then she soared with a scream of joy after the drifting throng of her sisters, and mingled with them, and was lost to sight.

Carnival Night

You could tell as soon as this thing came round the corner off the estate, and the folks down there got their first look at it, that it was going to be the kingpin. You could hear the yell of joy the kids let out right up to the top of the street, where I was sitting on the wall of Bray's yard alongside Joe, with his bull terrier up between us.

That dog always had to be in whatever was going on, talk about inquisitive! He couldn't wait for the wagon to come up the street, he started to whine for it as soon as he heard the squealing and laughing down the bottom end. It was like playtime at the primary school. The women were going, ‘Oooooohh!' and ‘Eeeeeeh!' up the scale till it would have split your eardrums, like they do for the off-colour jokes at a seaside show, and the kids were shouting and screaming fit to bust.

Joe says, ‘Sounds as if they've got a real good 'un this time.'

Everybody started craning to see before the lorry was anywhere near. Nobody was giving a glance to the Mothers' Union's mock-up of The Archers, and it was a pity, really, because you could have cracked a few ribs on that lot. Nor to the English Rose dance troupe nipping it up in their little pink flatties and flapping their little pink nylon paws like mad. Nor to the Boys' Brigade band sharpening up their march tempo into a KSLI canter to get closer to the girls.

Paddy Ross had his old lorry out as usual, with the pirate ship that's been going the rounds of all the local carnivals for years, but that wasn't what was raising the riot; and the Miners' Arms customers had done a lovely job of a comic pit-head baths on the big NCB haulage wagon, but that wasn't the one either.

It was a smaller lorry coming up behind that was getting 'em. The noise ran alongside it all up the street, and noise was what we got first from the gadget itself, a lovely low-pitched whining purr like a happy tiger, but punctuated here and there by a few other noises too, a hissing and a crackling, a dotted peep, like a marker buoy on a shoal.

The first we actually saw of it, head on before it came alongside, you couldn't tell it was an ordinary lorry at all, they had it so well camouflaged. There was what you might call a cab, all right, but it looked like a sort of fancy cockpit, and all the bonnet was shelled in with aluminium plating or something made to look like it, nicely shaved off for streamlining; and the streamed plating came down so low it nearly touched the ground, hiding the wheels altogether.

When it came nearly abreast of us we could see a sort of comet-shaped body that curved off from the cockpit and tapered away to a finned tail, and a lot of odd valves and vents that went along its sides like scales, and a kind of gauge amidships that ran a thread of metallic green liquid up a graded tube like mercury in a thermometer. There was a thin antenna shaking like a live thing on top of the cab, and a plastic globe some way back, and a few other mysterious whatnots that you couldn't call anything in particular because there was nothing they really looked like except themselves. Oh, it was a masterpiece, no question.

There were two fellows in the cab, you could just see their heads and shoulders. They were got up something weird, with horned helmets, and blue plastic over their faces, and antennae on the horns of the helmets, too, and close-fitting black overalls, one-piecers got up to look like spacesuits.

Then there was a third lad who kept popping up in the globe behind them and doing things with little instruments there, and every time he touched something the oddest things happened. One time it would be a jet of steam that shot out of one of the valves, another time there'd be a bang like a gun going off, or a red light would come on at the tip of the tail-fin, or a shower of sparks would shoot out of the end of the antenna. You never knew what was going to happen next. He was doing his tricks nineteen to the dozen, and every time he let off another fizzer the women would yodel and the kids would shriek and dance up and down and near kill themselves laughing.

Joe's dog got an eyeful of this lark, and started to bark like mad, and fell off the wall; he always tended to propel himself backwards when he let fly, and when excited he was liable to forget he wasn't on the ground. He near bust something in his hurry to scramble up again before the thing got past.

But the best of all was the way those three blokes were playing it up, dead serious and businesslike with the machine, but pleased and excited at the reception the crowd was giving them. They'd look at their gauges and switches and valves with such loving care, and then when they had a minute to spare they'd lean out and grin and wave back at the kids, and carry on as pleased as Punch. And when the folks howled with delight at one of the bangs the young chap at the back would give 'em a stream of green sparks as an encore.

Laugh, I thought Joe would have done himself an injury, and the women were wiping the tears away. I tell you, that was the best tableau we ever had at our carnival and we've had some champions in our time.

‘Who on earth cooked up that contraption?' Joe says when he got his breath back.

‘Dunno,' I said, ‘but whoever it is, they're not competing, there's no name or number on it, or anything.'

‘Competing?' says Joe. ‘They wouldn't spoil a thing like that by sticking a comic name on it, man; they're artists, that's what they are. What's a prize to men of that calibre? They know their worth.'

And he lets out a yell as a blue flash shot out of one of the vents, and after a minute struck speechless with laughing he says, ‘It'll be the REME lads from the ordnance depot, I bet you. Who else has the means and the know-how to concoct a whizzer like that? Those boys'll do anything and go anywhere for laughs. Shut up!' he says to the bull terrier, who was getting shriller than the women. ‘I can't hear the bangers for your blating.'

We slid off the wall as soon as it was past, and joined on with the rest of the folks following the procession out to the carnival fields. We could hear the fair organ going before we were past the crossroads. The contraption ambled along gaily, spitting and flashing and shooting away like a royal salute and a firework display all in one, and the three merry men were getting gayer and gayer, and showing off their Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineering skill like nobody's business; and by that time they had so many kids trotting after them they looked like a new sort of Pied Piper into the bargain.

Well, when the procession reached the field, and all the tableaux and the groups and the jazz bands and the dance troupes were drawn up for the judges, I saw Councillor Biggs, who's chairman of the carnival committee, conferring with the judges and grinning to himself, and shaking his head over the contraption as if he still couldn't believe it. Then he comes over to the lads who'd brought it. They were out on the grass by that time, stretching their legs; one was maybe fortyish, short and brown and bandy, and the other two were big lads with cropped fair hair and healthy grins on them.

You couldn't see 'em for kids from the waist down. The little 'uns wanted to see what the helmets were like, with all that fancy stuff on them. One of the fellows obligingly took his off and put it on one of the nippers, and then he somehow made one little spark hop out of the left antenna, and the kid nearly took off for outer space on the spot, he was so overcome with excitement. They were talking, too, but some lovely gibberish they made up as they went along; the kids' jaws were hanging and their eyebrows were in their hair, they were so fascinated.

Oh, they were a treat, those chaps! You couldn't fault 'em on a single detail, and you couldn't catch 'em out. When they put on a show it really was a show, down to the last button.

Well then, old Biggs goes up to 'em and he says, ‘Boys, you know you really should have entered that interstellar flitoscope of yours in one of the main classes, you'd have walked off with the first prize easy.'

They all three looked at him, grinning but mystified, and the oldest one comes out with a lovely line in gibberish, very polite and friendly, sure-you-mean-it-kindly-what-ever-it-is-but-no-savvy, you know. His smile was an open book in any language you care to name.

I thought old Biggs would have split his ribs, laughing. He bangs the nearest young fellow on the back, and the plastic stuff he was wearing makes a sort of musical noise like twanging an elastic.

‘You're a masterpiece, lads, that's what you are,' says Biggs, wheezing away like a grampus. ‘You kill me! I tell you what I'm going to do, I'm going to award you a special prize off my own bat. I like a bit of enterprise, and I'm all for thoroughness. Here, boys, you spend that round the fair, and enjoy yourselves.'

And blow me, he outs with a five-pound note and plonks it into the older chap's hand, and staggers away mopping his eyes and still quaking.

I watched to see how they'd deal with this one, and I wasn't the only one watching, but they weren't foxed, not for a minute. They all three stood turning the note in their hands and looking at it back and front, as curious as monkeys, as though they'd never seen one before. So some of us thought we'd give as good entertainment as we were getting, and we moved in and made signs to them to come along with us into the fun fair.

We took them gently up to old Gertie in the paybox of the dodgems, and got her to change the note for them, and then we took them round the sideshows, having a bash at this and a ride on that all the afternoon.

I've never had so much fun at a fair since I was a kid, and all the sideshows were real space fiction to me. I did things I haven't done for years, just to see those boys acting up as though they were riding on the Mont Blanc for the first time, and taking their first crack at coconuts. They should have been on the stage, and that's a fact. You ought to have seen their innocent wonder at the rum things that went on in the Noah's Ark, and their excitement and delight when they once got the hang of all this lovely nonsense. Once they had it there was no holding them.

They didn't miss a thing on that field, not even the candyfloss; and to my knowledge they went on the dodgems five times, and on the caterpillar three times. But even when they were bashed across the floor backwards by young Bill Brady, who drives on the dodgems like he does on the road, they didn't forget themselves and yell in English, not they. I hung around with them all day and they never put a foot wrong. Everybody had a go at them, it got to be a game trying to catch them out, but nothing doing. You'd have had to get up early in the morning to get a rise out of those three types, I'm telling you.

Any other carnival night I should have gone home pretty early and called it a day, but this one was a day and a half.

Three or four of us took them along at opening time to the Black Boar, solemn as judges, and set up the drinks and got some cheese sandwiches out of Jenny. Would you believe it, those boys still kept it up, letting on they were tasting beer for the first time, on top of everything else. For beginners, they took to it like ducks to water. You should have seen their eyes sparkle when they poured down that first pint of draught.

And darts – what were those? They'd never set eyes on a board in their lives, but they didn't half pick it up quick. One hour and three beers after they started, the little bandy fellow was playing Sam Braddick round the clock so fast and accurate you'd have thought that was how he spent all his evenings.