As though to confirm Daisy’s view, the door swung open at that moment and a figure, glassily pale, half fell out into the street beside us. Just then, thankfully, the crowds ahead of us cleared and we moved off again, so were not forced to witness whatever the sudden fresh air would add to his plight.
This time we managed to get as far as the bank before the density of the crowd and the numbers of little children whizzing around like clockwork mice all over the road persuaded us to give up and get out.
‘Two minutes to six, you see,’ said Cadwallader. ‘We’ll just catch a last glimpse of the Burry Man if we hurry.’
‘Whoopee!’ said Daisy sarcastically under her breath, but I was eager. Pruriently, I wanted to see for myself if he was still standing so I caught her elbow and dragged her along to the Rosebery Hall.
‘Hip, hip, hooray!
Hip, hip, hooray!
Hip, hip, hooray,
It’s the Burry Man’s day!’
The chanting, rather ragged now, could be heard clearly ahead of us and there he was.
‘As six strikes he goes back inside – like a cuckoo,’ said Buttercup. ‘And once he’s gone the Fair begins.’
Naturally, the protagonist himself appeared quite unchanged – stiff, green, beflowered and terrifying – but the alteration in his two attendants was extreme. They were clearly very hot, sleeves rolled up despite the scratches they gathered on their forearms as a consequence, and they looked absolutely done to death. I had not taken to either fellow during the mean little trick on Miss Brown but now one felt some sympathy, as one always does for those native guides who followed intrepid Victorian botanists and whatnot, carrying all the gear and getting none of the praise.
The crowd was cheering the painfully slow progress of the three, clapping in time with each step up towards the door, and I was reminded, blasphemously I suppose, of the road to Calvary; there was something moving about witnessing the end of this long day, although it was too ludicrous to be noble exactly. Then, even as I thought this, it changed. All of a sudden, the Burry Man shook off his helpers, not brutally but very firmly, and broke into a stiff trot, mounting the last of the stairs alone and disappearing into the open doorway like a terrier into a rabbit hole. The two men, exhausted and seemingly astonished, looked at each other and shrugged, then they trailed after him wiping their heads with handkerchiefs and flexing their tired arms. The crowd divided itself between laughing applause and wondering whispers.
‘Does he always do that?’ I inquired of my neighbours at large. ‘It must be agony.’
‘He’s nivver done before,’ said a man beside me.
‘Och well,’ said another. ‘He must have been bursting for a – I mean, he can’t have been comfy.’
There was general laughter at this, and then came the sound of a handbell and the voice of the crier demanding the under-tens for the fancy dress and announcing that the greasy pole would commence at half past six sharp. The Fair had begun.
The stalls were set up around the Bellstane, the little square at the bottom of the steep hill along from the Rosebery Hall, and although they boasted only the very ordinary staples such as coconut shies, ices and pop-gun galleries there was something rather more exciting about all of these in the evening, in a street with windows thrown up all around and people hanging over the sills cat-calling to friends below. It was a long way from the vicarage lawns of my youth and, although there was nothing to put one’s finger on, it was faintly bawdy somehow.
I took a desultory look around the sideshows, then stood for a while on the terrace east of the Rosebery Hall to watch Daisy, with enormous satisfaction and a sweet smile for Mrs Turnbull, give first prize to a tot got up as Charlie Chaplin and second prize to a five-year-old Theda Bara style Cleopatra, who was practically naked. The local picture house clearly had a lot to answer for.
Presently, I began to sense another locus of noise and bustle somewhere behind me. People were funnelling into the mouth of a narrow lane giving on to the terrace and, making my way to the corner, I could see a steady trickle of others disappearing along one of the small side-streets which peeled off the steep street leading up the hill; clearly they were converging somewhere in the back lanes. Spying my expectorating chum of the morning as he passed I caught at his coat sleeve.
‘It’s yersel’,’ he cried in polite greeting and I was sure he had had a nip or two, for his old eyes were swimmier than they had been on our first meeting and his toothless grin was rather wet and shiny.
‘What’s going on up there?’ I asked him, pointing to the crowd, growing from a trickle to a flood now.
‘It’s the greasy pole,’ he said. ‘Come on with you, you’ll no want to miss that.’
‘No indeed.’ I had never seen a greasy pole competition before although I had often heard them described and I was sure neither Cad nor Buttercup would have seen enough to have tired of them, but I could not find either golden head amongst the crowd and since Daisy was busy on the town hall steps, trying to decide between three little pharaohs, and I was loath to miss my chance of a ringside seat, I hurried on alone.
The venue for the greasy pole seemed odd at first. Hill Square was a mean little opening between two closes with tenements all around, but it had the one redeeming feature of soft earth underfoot and, as I squinted up at the pole, I could see the point of that. It looked thirty feet high at least, a ship’s mast possibly, borrowed for the occasion, for it was polished quite smooth. Slippery enough at the best of times, I should have thought, even without the liberal coating of grease I could see glinting on its surface. At its summit two bulging lumps dangled and I asked someone standing beside me what they were.
‘A ham and a bag of flour, madam,’ I was told, and had it not been for that ‘madam’ I should have suspected the man of cheek. My face must have shown my puzzlement, for he chuckled.
‘The ham’s the prize,’ he said, ‘and the flour’s… you’ll see.’
Little boys were hurling themselves up a few feet and slithering back down again, chided by the grownups: ‘Come away now, the mess of you!’ but presently the first serious contender presented himself to clapping and jeers. He was a wiry youth dressed in very stout twill trousers, and made good progress to about halfway up before, for no obvious reason, he suddenly shot straight back to earth again and landed on his bottom grinning sheepishly to the roars of laughter from all around.
The next hopeful looked even less likely; he had huge hands to be sure but also a very round stomach and short little legs. The crowd began to laugh as soon as they saw him and sure enough he was hardly his own height from the ground when he let go. While yet another tried his luck, I drifted off into a daydream as I always do on these occasions. This daydream was of me, striding forward and launching myself at the pole. I tossed my head and laughed at those who would stop me, before hoisting myself effortlessly to the top and waving my hat in the air. Is it only me, I wonder, or does everyone do it? I know I have plunged (in my mind) into every circus, yacht race, steeplechase and opera I have ever seen, but imagine the shame if one ever admitted as much to a friend and got only cold uncomprehending stares in return. Besides, it was hard to decide what exactly the substance was which turned the pole greasy, but from the calls of ‘yeugh’ in the crowd, it seemed unlikely to be cold cream, and I shook the daydream away with a shudder.
Now there began some kind of wrangle between the officials and a wily-looking man who had fashioned a contrivance like cowboy’s chaps out of sacking and attached these on top of his trousers. The head-shaking and muttering went on and on, and the crowd was beginning to grow restive, when a smart clip-clopping drew my attention to the mouth of the close, and I saw a tiny cart pulled by an equally tiny pony draw up. One is used to various makeshift equipages but this really was the sweetest and oddest-looking little outfit I had come across, a sort of cross between a bath-tub and a perambulator with one seat for a driver in front and two back-to-back, facing out to each side, for a pair of passengers behind. I was so diverted by it that I did not trouble to wonder who was climbing down from the driving seat until a voice shouted from the crowd.