‘You’re right, you know,’ Danny says at last.
‘About what?’
‘Itwasthe fairground that made me a good shot. My aunt Tilly runs a rifle gallery and I’ve been showing the punters how to shoot since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. Which, I suppose, I still am.’
He grins and I laugh. It’s a rusty sort of sound; I can’t remember the last time I laughed. ‘You’re notthatshort, Private McCormick,’ I tell him. ‘But seriously, I’m fascinated: you actually grew up on a fairground? Did you travel with it? There was a fair that always came to our village green during the Lent term. Our housemaster used to let us skip one night’s prep so that we could go. My friend Michael and I...’
The words dry up in my throat. Suddenly the gulls have quieted and the tide becomes distant. In my mind, it’s a cool spring night, the stars dim against the fairground’s sputtering lamps. I can hear the creak of swing-boats, the chimes of the carousel’s calliope, the call of the barker announcing his sideshows:Step right up, step right up, sights to stagger and astound!I can feel the tug of a hand on my sleeve, Michael’s face alight with excitement, dragging me from a knife-throwing act to a boxing exhibition, from a hall of mirrors to a chamber of horrors. Models of famous murderers provoking nervous giggles. Then out again, into air spiced with the hot, sweet aroma of toffee apples. I can see their syrup running tacky and red as they’re pulled from a steaming pot and twisted onto their sticks...
Tacky and red. I look down now, as the shriek of the gulls returns, to find my hands shaking. As tacky and as red as the blood of my platoon. It had been on my hands. On my face. On my skin. All over me.
‘Lieutenant? Hey, Lieutenant Wraxall, are you all right?’
I cough and wipe my palms against my trousers. ‘I’m fine.’
My voice sounds horribly dry. Danny produces his water canteen and passes it to me. After a few deep swallows, I can feel my heart beginning to steady. I screw on the lid and hand it back to him. ‘Thank you.’
‘S’no trouble,’ he nods, eyeing me for a moment before clipping the canteen onto his belt. ‘So that fair you were talking about, the one you went to with your friend, Michael? Where was that?’
‘Our school was in a town called Lark Meadow,’ I tell him. ‘Right on the outskirts of Manchester.’
‘Ah, you’re a northerner! Would never have guessed it from your accent, but then I suppose all public schoolboys are taught to speak posh. No offence, sir.’
‘None taken,’ I say.
‘Being London-based, we don’t cross paths too often with the northern showpeople,’ Danny goes on. ‘But my guess would be that the fair you went to was run by the Giffords, or maybe the Crummels family.’
‘Crummels! That’s it! I remember the name painted on a hoarding. But how did you get into that line of work?’ I ask. ‘Were you born a showman?’
He shakes his head. ‘I suppose you could say I was adopted by them. Tilly Marshall, she’s an old-timer now, but she was a good friend of my mum’s back in the day.’ His smile falters for perhaps the first time. ‘Mum was a singer, a lyric soprano. She mainly worked at the old Foresters Music Hall in the East End. There’s a bit of crossover, you see, between fairgrounds and the music hall. Performers often travel with a fair when it’s hard to get stage bookings, especially novelty acts like knife-throwers, contortionists, ventriloquists, that sort of thing. That’s how she knew Tilly. Back then, Mum knew everyone worth knowing – all the big stars, like Marie Lloyd and Dan Leno.’
‘I’ve heard of them!’ I tell him.
‘Who hasn’t?’ he grins. ‘It was actually Dan who got Mum her first big gigs at the Alhambra, up west. She never looked back after that.’ His face lights up again, lost in a cherished memory. ‘She used to sing these sentimental old ballads: ‘You Made Me Love You’, ‘I Hear You Calling Me’, ‘The Boy I Love is Up in the Gallery’.Soppy stuff, but the way she sang them? I used to watch her from the back of the theatre, some of them rough old joints, mind. Men and women throwing neat gin down their throats and then fighting in the aisles while the acts were performing, sometimes even ripping up the furniture and chucking it at the stage if they didn’t care for the show. None of that happened when Mum was on. You could hear a pin drop, sir, I swear it. Somehow, she made those sappy lyrics mean something. I’ve seen dockhands and soldiers weeping like little kids.’
‘She sounds wonderful.’ Then I ask gently, ‘What happened to her?’
It isn’t an idle question. A good officer should know something about his soldier-servant, the life he’s lived, the family he’s come from. In any case, I am genuinely intrigued by this boy and the unusual existence he has left behind.
Danny runs a hand through his hair and looks away. I see his jaw tighten. ‘Life. Life happened to her, I suppose. I don’t really like to think about it. Anyway, after she passed, I was left pretty much on my own. I was only a kid, no family to speak of. I’d been born somewhere in Ireland, over on the west coast. I’ve still got hazy memories of us living in a knackered old farmhouse in the middle of the countryside. Scraggy sheep and half-starved cows. There were always a lot of men around. My grandfather, Mum’s brothers, everyone shouting and swearing and angry at the pair of us. Because Mum wouldn’t do what they asked and give me away.’
‘Why would they want her to?’ I ask.
‘My dad was some kind of hawker who went door-to-door,’ Danny says, his eyes locking with mine, his gaze almost defiant. ‘He’d romanced my mum one summer and then ran for the hills as soon as she started to show. I was the “wee bastard” that brought shame on the family. But Mum wouldn’t give me up. And her family punished her for it. Bruises, black eyes. And she...’ His hands curl into fists. ‘One night she woke me and told me to stay very quiet. All we had was this tiny suitcase and the clothes on our backs, but we crept out of that cottage and never looked back.
‘Mum could always hold a tune and so when we got to London, she started auditioning at the halls. Everyone loved her, almost as much as I loved her. The punters, the backstage boys, the other performers. And because they loved her, they loved me too. I was passed between them whenever she was on stage or out at rehearsals – singers and comics, jugglers and acrobats, mind-readers and mesmerists – they all looked after me at one point or another.’
‘And you learned a little from each,’ I nod. ‘So what happened after your mum passed away?’
‘Her friends did their best for me,’ he says quietly. ‘But music hall acts aren’t rolling in dough. Most were barely getting by themselves and couldn’t afford another mouth to feed. After I was chucked out of our digs in Stepney, one of the music hall managers let me sleep in the boiler room at the theatre, even gave me a few pennies for sweeping out the stalls. But I knew that couldn’t last long. And then Aunt Tilly showed up. She’d been away travelling and had only just heard about Mum. Well, that afternoon I was packed into a hansom cab and driven straight to Hampstead Heath where Tilly’s shooting gallery was all set up.’
‘And your life as a showman began.’
Such a different life too. I mentally compare it to my own childhood: books, toys, a comfortable bed, never a question as to where my next meal might be coming from. My work had been with pen and ink, words and numbers, not a rag and a broom. I’d had time to play with friends and idle hours in which to pick up a pencil and teach myself to draw. A rich childhood, you might say. Except I’d never had a parent who loved me the way Danny’s mother had clearly loved him. A fearless love that would defy any challenge, any authority, any commandment.
‘My life as a showman,’ Danny echoes. ‘Yes, and it’s been a good life, for the most part. I hope I can go back to it one day.’
I nod. Do I want to go back to Lark Meadow? To the school gates where Michael’s ghost will greet me every morning? To the suffocating shadows of the vicarage and my damp-eyed mother haunting the parlour? To a father carved from Old Testament stone? No, I don’t want to return to that, but perhaps I don’t want to die here either.
