Walking in Pimlico (29 page)

We had walked ourselves into a street close by the railway station and the public squares, a street full of shops of every kind (what street in Brummagem isn’t!). Some had uniforms hanging outside, pressed and clean, or stained and drab, all the buttons gone west with the braid. Some showed tins and pans, crate-loads of forks and spoons, pots sitting up in wobbly towers, and strewn about with straw. Great baskets of cups and saucers, stew pots and jars, alongside
candles and lamps. And in between these busy places, the black hole of an empty shop, the plate windows covered up with white paint and a square for a peep-hole cut in, and outside a drum and an Irishman got up in a skirt, shouting to all comers, ‘Here it is! About to start! Listen here now! The show’s about to start!’

But that was not all, and Joe too had stopped, mid-track, as it were, and laid his black hand upon my arm. We were not mistaken, for it was indeed a pile of tripes and guts laying in the middle of the pavement, buzzing with flies and starting to dull off in the sun. Being in the performing line, we were naturally brought up to wonder at this and with Joe still hanging on to my coat sleeve – though he didn’t need to stop me – we waited outside the blacked-out shop in company with the Irishman and the drum and a gang of Brummagems of all ages to see what wonder might emerge from the doorway.

We were not disappointed! As a youth with a wasted arm laboured away on the drum, a fellow in a tidy suit and shiny hat strides out of the shop and, seeing us, stopped in his tracks. I say ‘seeing us’, but only after he had seen every single body in the street, every likely bearer of a penny, even down to a little girl without teeth and a milk-can in her hand, and a drayman watering his horse. He was a real showman, eyes everywhere, taking in the opportunities, weighing them up, throwing out the halt and the lame, and calculating profit and loss while he picked his teeth and kicked the pot-boy. He circled the tripes, being careful not to step in the puddle of blood and muck that was creeping out from underneath them, and looked up and down the street again, all the whiles, so it seemed, looking at us.

I had seen his kind before (though never at such close quarters), so that when he met my eye, it seemed to me we were brothers somewhat.

‘Just about to begin, gentlemen,’ he said in a southern tongue.
‘Step inside, why don’t you!’ and I liked the way he licked his lips, and ran the edge of his finger along his moustache, to neaten it up I thought. There was a cockiness about him, like he owned that bit of Brummagem street and God-help-anyone-who-tried-to-take-it-off-him!

I was all for seeing what was inside the shop, for it seemed to me there was a-roaring and a-yelling in there that wanted investigating, but Joe held back, murmuring that we needed to be on our errand. Besides which, a crowd was gathering, and it became noticeable, to us and the showman, that some were looking at his show, and some were looking at Joe. I should say (for I believe I have omitted this in my haste) that Joe was unusual in his own way, being small of stature, though perfectly formed, he assured me, in every other way. Now I am no longshanks, but Joe looked my belly-button fully in the eye, and no higher. So we made a curious pair, with my carroty hair and his short legs, and folks might have thought we were part of the show. Indeed, before we had decided to move on, the showman had made certain of it and we was standing square to the tripes and guts whiles he was talking up a crowd.

‘Now, my dear friends, you see before you a mere taste of the delights within. Look here upon Little Snowball, the smallest Negro you will ever see. Arrived only today from deepest Mississippia, and come straight here. His mother was the most beautiful woman, and she went with the missionaries, taking the Bible to the deepest jungles and the most ignorant of natives. People who never covered themselves, nor washed, nor had never heard of our Queen Victoria nor good Bass ale. And it was while she was about this good work that she was captured by these natives, and taken roughly in a boat down the river to their village. And the chief of all of them, when he saw her, found that she was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen . . .’

Me, Joe, the crowd, we were all open-mouthed, hanging upon every word he said. Even the boy on the drum stopped his beating and
leaned upon it, like there was nowhere more comfortable in the whole place. And even though the flies were settling and rising up, and that pile of tripes and guts was starting to make itself known in another way, the crowd grew by the moment, people pressing and elbowing and telling each other to quiet up, so they could hear the story.

‘. . . her hair a-falling down her back like a stream of gold. And this native chief, he has never before seen such a thing, for all
his
native women have black hair, which is as rough as a donkey’s back. So he decides he will have her for his thirty-second wife.’

Gasps all round!

‘She declines!’ cried the showman, who has warmed up so much that he has taken off his shiny hat, revealing his own golden hair underneath. ‘She refuses, ladies and gentlemen! “As I am a Christian woman,” she exclaims, “I cannot agree, though you torture me!”’

Another gasp from the crowd, and the young lad drops his drumstick.

‘“Ah,” says the chief, “I will not torture
you
. But, for every day you refuse to marry me, I will kill one of your people.” For he had captured the missionaries as well. And there and then he brought out one of them, and laid his head on a block of wood and prepared to smash it with a rock! The very block of wood, the very rock are displayed within for your enlightenment, ladies and gentlemen!’

Some of the women screamed in horror, and that sent a cloud of flies buzzing up again. But no one shifted, not an inch. In fact, everyone appeared more determined to hear the end of the story. When they had settled down – and not until – the showman commenced his story again.

“‘Stop!” demanded the golden-haired angel. “I will not sacrifice one of these good people for my honour. I am only a poor Christian woman bringing the Bible to the ignorant savage, and I cannot let these people die. Marry me if you will!” And so he did, that very day. And there was a great feast, and crocodiles were hunted down and
roasted, for they were a great delicacy. And the skins of these very creatures can be seen within on payment of one penny. Now Little Snowball’s mother was a good woman . . .’

Everyone turned to look at Joe who, if he had been able to, would have blushed.

‘. . . and she made the chief promise to let all the missionaries go, so as they could do their good work somewhere else along the river, while she stayed behind. So they went and left her behind, among the savages, where her clothes soon ran to rags and her shoes fell to pieces in the jungle heat. The chief was good to her, but the other thirty-one wives were jealous, and had a tendency to pick on her and make her miserable. Because she was such a new wife, she was given the worst of tasks, which meant she had to tend the heads cut from the enemies of the chief.’ (More shrieks.) ‘These heads were boiled in great pots of herbs and magic roots upon a fire in the middle of the village. Heads that bobbed around in the great stew pots, so that they grew smaller and smaller, to the size of taters, yet all the features remained, and were then hung up all round the village to frighten off any intruders. She had to tend them. To make sure that the pots never boiled dry. And when they were cooked, she had to pick ’em out and hang ’em up to dry! These can be seen within. The very heads, with hair and teeth, ladies and gentlemen, what she picked out of the pots!’

The crowd buzzed as loud as the flies, and the showman took a pause and looked hard at me and Joe, as if to say, ‘Don’t you move!’ But we weren’t thinking of moving. We wanted to know what happened to Joe’s ma!

He began again and the crowd fell silent.

‘So one night, thinking that she could bear no longer the attentions of the village chief and the boiling and hanging up of the heads, she escaped, stealing out of the village and taking one of the boats, which she was skilful enough to manage. She sailed up the river, all the time expecting to see the chief coming after her.
For she knew that if he caught her, she too would end up in one of the pots, with all her golden hair a-streaming out!’

The crowd was enormous now, spilling out into the road, and pressing harder and harder towards the shop, so that the only space was around the tripes and around us.

‘When she reached civilization, ladies and gentlemen, she found a good English family what took her in and looked after her, gave her clothes and shoes, and fed her on good English tea and white bread and butter.’ (Murmurs of approval.) ‘And soon after she produced Little Snowball, here,’ gesturing at Joe, who looked surprised and then uncomfortable. ‘But imagine her horror when she realized that her child had taken on some of the characteristics of that terrible task she was forced to endure by her savage master! That his poor body had shrunk like the heads she had watched, bobbing in those pots every day! Is it any wonder, though? Breathing in those foul fumes? Being splashed by the poisonous stew?’

Everyone in the crowd stared hard at Joe, and I swear all you could hear was the buzzing of the flies. And the showman let them look a good long time, while Joe, if he could have shrunk any more, would have done so to escape their attentions.

‘But poor Little Snowball’s mother died.’ (Gasp.) ‘The agonies she endured I cannot describe, and even the attentions of an English doctor brought from London by the good English family could not save her. She died in a foreign land, and is buried there, in a corner of the graveyard under a good English oak tree. Little Snowball was happy for a time, but then the good English family left, and he was given to be cared for by a family who sold him into slavery. A little child! Friendless! Abandoned! But that is another story, ladies and gentlemen! Now, now is the time to enter Soloman’s Great Eastern Emporium and see for yourself the shrunk-up heads, the crocodiles, the execution block and the bloody stone! Only a penny to enter! Commencing now!’

With that, the showman gave the boy and his drum an urgent look, though it took the boy some moments before he could drag himself out of the jungle and apply himself to beating. And in fact he was hardly needed. Everyone in the crowd, it seemed, wanted to step around and about the pile of tripes and guts and pay their penny to see the crocodiles, and the heads, and the wooden block and bloody stone as promised. They had another good long look at Joe as they queued to go in, and Joe, though he was acting like his britches was full of fleas, let them have a last eyeful. Of course, they had an eyeful for nothing, and we knew it, and wondered what the showman would do, for I could see by the look of him that he had something in mind. Moving us along the shop – but not away from it – he produced some coins which he pressed into Joe’s hand.

‘That’s to show to you that I’m an honest man and I pay what’s fair and deserving,’ he said.

He was right too. We could have legged it, off down the street, and then there would have been no Little Snowball and no crocodiles. (Though I’ve often wondered since how he could have known we would come along. We were a stroke of luck and no mistake!)

Joe took the coins and nodded, but all the while eager to get away.

The showman turned to me. ‘Your friend has been a booster to my business. Where do you live?
How
do you live?’

I
wanted to ask the questions, and know how he came to be able to string out a tale like he did! And were there really crocodiles within, for I had a powerful fancy for them! But I kept it short.

‘We’re circus men,’ I said eventually. ‘With Chittick.’

The showman nodded. ‘I know Chittick. A hard man.
All
circus men are hard. It’s the way of the business.’

‘The money’s on the drum each Friday,’ I replied, though I didn’t disagree with him. ‘He’s sure.’

I couldn’t help myself, I had to ask him about Joe – and Snowball
– and the heads; and the bloody rock. Where did he find them? And the heads? Had he got all of them? So many questions. The showman’s face was as serious as my questions, and he rubbed his moustache thoughtfully.

‘True to you,’ he said in a low voice, ‘people mostly want to believe what you tell ’em. But you must give ’em a reason. Stand this young man’ – and he put his hand upon Joe’s shoulder – ‘in a church or a chapel, tell the congregation that his mother was a missionary and died at the hands of the heathen, and they will cry ‘Hallelujah’ and shake his hand and
perhaps
put their coppers in the collecting plate. But round them up with plenty of noise, show them a nobby flash and a smart individual’ – I believe he was referring to himself – ‘give them the smell of the jungle, tell them they will see a bloody stone and shrunken heads, and as many marvels as you want to create in their heads, and I tell you they will pay their pennies over and over for that privilege.’

It sounded flash, but I was not convinced, and must have betrayed myself by the look upon my face, for the showman pointed to the boy with the wasted arm, who had given up on the drum, and was now staring down a gang of street kids who were trying to sneak into the shop for free.

‘That’s Freddy McHenry. His mother, while he was still in the womb, witnessed a terrible accident in which a boy lost his arm to a steam-threshing engine on a farm in Devon. All was well until he reached the age of eight years, but from that age onward Freddy McHenry’s arm was liable, at any moment, to shrink and shrivel up so that only his fingers could be seen, and those half the size they should be. When I first came across him, the shrivelling and the shrinking was so severe that it had almost reached his shoulder, and had I not treated him there and then, I very much fear that his arm would have disappeared altogether.’

He shook his head and looked me straight in the eye.

‘Even now, Mr Merryman, even now, that arm begins to reduce if exposed to excessive sunlight. Or the noise of a steam-thresher.’

I gazed in wonder at the youth who had no idea that he was being talked of, and was getting himself ready to charge the kids and lay about them with his drumstick. The showman also gave him a long eyeballing.