“Can we go? Can we go tomorrow?”
Jeremy drew on his pipe and said thoughtfully: “I’ve got instructions you’re not supposed to go to the movies.”
“Movies!” cried Ronny. “Who’s talking about movies?”
“Well, I guess the idea was it’s not good for you to get excited.”
“A fair’s not the movies,” said Ronny as though stating a profound truth. He plucked at Jeremy’s sleeve just as he was taking his pipe from his mouth and a scattering of sparks flew from it into the dusk. Jeremy, feeling that flutter at his elbow and looking at the bright sparks, almost wished that Ronny were his own little boy, that from his whole life and married years he had had the faith to erect one barrier against the night, against the terrible seas, the waters of oblivion. He shrugged. “I got my orders,” he said.
“Who gave you the orders—Mr. Walsh or my mother?”
“I was never in touch with your mother. Mr. Walsh wrote me and told me what to do.”
“Doesn’t Mr. Walsh ever come here himself?” asked Ronny.
“Well, he used to,” explained Jeremy. “Seven years ago a weekend hardly passed that there weren’t a dozen people in the house. Champagne and whisky like water. Ronny, you should have seen those blonds. One just like the next, so you could hardly tell when one left off and the other started.”
“My mother’s a blond,” said Ronny.
Mary came into the doorway, drying her hands on her apron. “I don’t think blonds are a nice thing to talk about in front of a child,” she said, tartly for her.
“His mother’s a blond,” said Jeremy.
“Yes, my mother’s very pretty, but I think I like Mary better.”
“You mustn’t say that,” said Mary, tears of pleasure coming into her eyes.
“Anyway,” continued Ronny, “do we get to see that fair?”
Three days later they went: Jeremy, Mary, Ronny and June. June had walked down early to the boathouse so that they could eat together first. She was wearing a silk print dress of the kind mothers buy with a view to all occasions. But it had been bought before June’s illness and fitted her no longer. The V neck was unbecomingly high, and beneath, her nascent breasts fought with the tight, childish bodice. The skirt was uneven, drawn up here and there by the new fullness of her hips, while her brown legs were thrust out beneath with a sort of indecent innocence. Ronny, who had never seen her before in a ‘good’ dress, thought she looked beautiful and took her arm proudly when they got out at the fairgrounds.
“You are really like ‘you know what’ tonight,” he said. He meant ‘damsel,’ but did not want to say it openly in front of Jeremy.
“Oh I hate this old dress!” cried June.
Ronny and June had a little over three dollars between them and for this could take their pick of the amusements. They chose the mechanical rides first, as though to exhaust the obvious possibilities of the fair and so pierce beneath its surface to its less apparent mysteries. Jeremy and Mary meanwhile strolled around and talked to the villagers. They did not come to town often any more, but Mary had been born in Star Harbour and Jeremy on a farm nearby, so they knew almost everyone. The fairground was noisy and bright beneath the warm summer evening sky. Occasionally a shoot of lightning crossed the horizon as though the earth were thrusting out a burning tongue. Everybody’s face was glistening. The women’s dresses clung to their bodies and the men’s shirts showed dark patches of sweat.
At the far end of the fair the marsh with its reeking mud took over and lent a different quality to the entertainment, less mechanical. Humbler perhaps, but more free. The refuse of Star Harbour had been thrown into the water here for years, to build out and solidify the shore, but the mud refused to become real land. The water breathed against it, choking and sighing, a rank vegetation grew underfoot. Here the real being of the fair existed still, however humbly; the charlatan and fertile monster; the root, whose branches were theatre and church, circus and screen; a few poor wanderers tied together by uncertain crafts and bodily defects. All the benefits of modern life conspired to crush them. Mechanics had dried the sap of their imaginations; electricity had sterilized their hearts; social leveling had left them timid and ashamed—the sword eater, the snake charmer, the strong man and the freak. Their caravans were parked on the mud banks, just a handful of them, with platforms out in front.
June and Ronny, gravitating in this direction, saw on one of the platforms a bearded lady with a complacent, motherly expression. Beside her stood a woman with a doll coming out of her chest, feet first, as far as its waist. The woman pretended the doll was her twin sister and the rag legs moved and swung about as she turned from side to side.
“I call her Irene,” she was saying. She used a tone and choice of words which she thought refined and pinched her mouth daintily as she spoke. “Irene is a great trial to me,” she continued, “but I cannot help loving her as you do your little sister—or little brother,” she added, turning to June.
“How can you love someone who’s got no head?” demanded a scornful young man.
“Oh, but Irene has a head,” said the woman very seriously and not at all angry. “Irene has a head and shoulders and arms, only they’re all inside my chest. They just never emerged. She can think too, and she’s very smart because I feel her thoughts right along with my own.”
The young man said: “Oh go on!” and his squirming girl friend gave an artificial cry of repulsion.
Ronny piped up in his fluty voice: “Anyway Irene’s just a rag doll.”
The bearded lady who had been sitting quietly in her chair now smiled. She stroked her fingers through the soft, dark growth of hair which sprang more from her neck than from her cheeks. “I am a real freak,” this gesture seemed to say, and she looked approvingly at Ronny.
After this they tried looking at the sword swallower who was lifting weights with a hook through his tongue. His open mouth was drawn down and there were tears in his eyes, so they did not stay. They walked to where, in a small, sawdust ring, a donkey shuffled stubbornly and slowly, carrying a young woman on his back. During the daytime it was children, but now he was playing an unwilling cupid. The girl on his back swayed continually towards the waiting arms of her companion, squealing and giggling, while behind them the adolescent donkey-boy strode along indifferently.
“Poor donkey,” said Ronny. “How he must long to be a glorious horse. Then this never would have happened to him.”
“Sad things happen to horses too,” said June.
A hand on both their shoulders thrust them apart. A voice said: “Well, if it isn’t my friends from the woods. Still together, I see.” Eddie with his thick figure and cocked head now walked between them.
“This fair is not much fun,” said Ronny.
“Why don’t you come for a ride on the ‘Arabella’? She’s been out twice already this evening. Flo’s doing the barking and you’d be surprised how good he is.”
Craning their necks, they could see the dock and the “Arabella” moored in a respectable place with a runway leading down to her deck. Flo was there, wearing a bowler in the brim of which were spread the boat tickets. On approaching they heard his nasal voice strained almost to a falsetto:
“Step right up folks and take a boat ride. Enjoy the moonlight with the one you love. Come on folks, last trip of the evening only fifty cents reduced!”
“Do you think we should tell Jeremy?” asked June, who found she did not much want to go. The village couples disgusted her as they struggled down the gangplank two by two. The women clawed at the rail as their heels slipped and twisted. The men supported them arrogantly, holding them beneath their arms and around their helpless bosoms.
But Ronny was thrilled. “Oh they won’t want to go home for another hour and we’ll be back by then, won’t we, Eddie?”
“Sure we will,” said Eddie, turning his head towards June and giving her shoulder a little push.
In turn they scrambled onto the deck. Flo and another man cast loose and the engine turned over. The exhaust streamed out into the air with explosions that followed one another more and more swiftly until they merged into a steady noise. Beneath the “Arabella” an impure oil bit silently into the water.
The passengers sat amidships, prevented from going elsewhere by ropes. They did not want to move in any case. Some, leaning on the rail, looked at the heavens and were amazed by the number of the stars. Others threw themselves together in that frustrated embrace which forms the limits of virtue. Now and then these last would part exhausted, their faces swollen and almost featureless. Sometimes they, too, would catch a glimpse of the stars and be startled and look at each other as if to ask: “Who are we, after all?”
