Gerald Kersh - The Best of Gerald Kersh

When he went to town, Lagg always came back with artificial spiders and beetles on springy wires, to hang from the low ceiling; also, old leather jacks, stuffed crocodiles and spiky rays from the Caribbean gulfs, and even a dried human head from the Amazon. Meanwhile, the cards accumulated, and so did the bills advertising local attractions – cattle shows, flower shows, theatricals, and what not.

And the despisers of what they called the ‘great Unwashed’ congregated there – the flickers-away of specks of dust – the ladies and gentlemen who could see a thumb print on a plate. Why? Homesickness for the gutter, perhaps – it is an occupational disease of people who like strong perfumes.

I visited The White Swan, in passing, on holiday. The people in Wettendene called it – not without affection – The Mucky Duck. There was the usual vociferous gathering of long-toothed women in tight-cut tweeds, and ruddy men with two slits to their jackets howling confidences, while old Lagg, looking like a half-peeled beetroot, brooded under the cobwebs.

He took notice of me when I offered him something to drink, and said: ‘Stopping in Wettendene, sir?’

‘Overnight,’ I said. ‘Anything doing?’

He did not care. ‘There’s the flower show,’ he said, flapping about with a loose hand. ‘There’s the Christian Boys’ Sports. All pinned up. Have a dekko. See for yourself.’

So I looked about me.

That gentleman from New Orleans, who had pinned up the first card on the lowest beam, had started a kind of chain reaction. On the beams, the ceiling, and the very barrels, card jostled card, and advertisement advertisement. I saw the card of the Duke of Chelsea overlapped by the large, red-printed trade card of one George Grape, Rat-Catcher; a potato-crisp salesman’s card half overlaid by that of the Hon. Iris Greene. The belly of a stuffed trout was covered with cards as an autumn valley with leaves.

But the great hogshead, it seemed, was set aside for the bills advertising local attractions. Many of these were out of date – for example, an advertisement of a Baby Show in 1932, another of a Cricket Match in 1934, and yet another for ‘Sports’ in 1923. As Mr Lagg had informed me, there were the printed announcements of the Christian Boys’ affair and the Flower Show.

Under the Flower Show, which was scheduled for 14 August, was pinned a wretched little bill advertising, for the same date, a ‘Grand Carnival’ in Wagnall’s Barn on Long Meadow, Wettendene. Everything was covered with dust.

It is a wonderful place for dust. It is necessary, in The Mucky Duck cellar, to take your drink fast or clasp your hand over the top of the glass before it accumulates a grey scum or even a dead spider: the nobility and gentry like it that way. The gnarled old four-ale drinkers go to The Green Man: they have no taste for quaintness.

I knew nobody in Wettendene, and am shy of making new acquaintances. The ‘Grand Carnival’ was to begin at seven o’clock; entrance fee sixpence, children half price. It could not be much of a show, I reflected, at that price and in that place: a showman must be hard up, indeed, to hire a barn for his show in such a place. But I like carnivals and am interested in the people that follow them; so I set off at five o’clock.

Long Meadow is not hard to find: you go to the end of Wettendene High Street, turn sharp right at Scott’s Corner where the village ends, and take the winding lane, Wettendene Way. This will lead you, through a green tunnel, to Long Meadow, where the big Wagnall’s Barn is.

Long Meadow was rich grazing land in better times, but now it is good for nothing but a pitiful handful of sheep that nibble the coarse grass. There has been no use for the barn these last two generations. It was built to last hundreds of years; but the land died first. This had something to do with water – either a lack or an excess of it. Long Meadow is good for nothing much, at present, but the Barn stands firm and four-square to the capricious rains and insidious fogs of Wettendene Marsh. (If it were not for the engineers who dammed the river, the whole area would, by now, be under water.) However, the place is dry, in dry weather.

Still, Long Meadow has the peculiarly dreary atmosphere of a swamp and Wagnall’s Barn is incongruously sturdy in that wasteland. It is a long time since any produce was stocked in Wagnall’s Barn. Mr Etheridge, who owns it, rents it for dances, amateur theatrical shows, and what not.

That playbill aroused my curiosity. It was boldly printed in red, as follows:

!!! JOLLY JUMBO’S CARNIVAL !!!

!! THE ONE AND ONLY !!

COME AND SEE

!! GORGON, The Man Who Eats Bricks & Swallows Glass !!

!! THE HUMAN SKELETON !!

!! THE INDIA RUBBER BEAUTY –

She Can Put Her Legs Around Her Neck & Walk On Her Hands !!

!! A LIVE MERMAID !!

!! ALPHA, BETA, AND DOT. The World-Famous Tumblers

With The Educated Dog !!

! JOLLY JUMBO !

!! JOLLY JUMBO !!

I left early, because I like to look behind the scenes, and have a chat with a wandering freak or two. I remembered a good friend of mine who had been a Human Skeleton – six foot six and weighed a hundred pounds – ate five meals a day, and was as strong as a bull. He told good stories in that coffee-bar that is set up where the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Combined Circuses rest in Florida for the winter. I ‘tasted sawdust’, as the saying goes, and had a yearning to sit on the ground and hear strange stories. Not that I expected much of Wettendene. All the same the strangest people turn up at the unlikeliest places….

Then the rain came down, as it does in an English summer. The sky sagged, rumbled a borborygmic threat of thunderstorms, which seemed to tear open clouds like bags of water.

Knowing our English summer, I had come prepared with a mackintosh, which I put on as I ran for the shelter of the barn.

I was surprised to find it empty. The thunder was loud, now, and there were zigzags of lightning in the east; what time the pelting rain sounded on the meadow like a maracca. I took off my raincoat and lit a cigarette – and then, in the light of the match flame, I caught a glimpse of two red-and-green eyes watching me, in a far corner, about a foot away from the floor.

It was not yet night, but I felt in that moment such a pang of horror as comes only in the dark; but I am so constituted that, when frightened, I run forward. There was something unholy about Wagnall’s Barn, but I should have been ashamed not to face it, whatever it might be. So I advanced, with my walking-stick; but then there came a most melancholy whimper, and I knew that the eyes belonged to a dog.

I made a caressing noise and said: ‘Good dog, good doggie! Come on, doggo!’ – feeling grateful for his company. By the light of another match, I saw a grey poodle, neatly clipped in the French style. When he saw me, he stood up on his hindlegs and danced.

In the light of that same match I saw, also, a man squatting on his haunches with his head in his hands. He was dressed only in trousers and a tattered shirt. Beside him lay a girl. He had made a bed for her of his clothes and, the rain falling softer, I could hear her breathing, harsh and laborious. The clouds lifted. A little light came into the barn. The dog danced, barking, and the crouching man awoke, raising a haggard face.

‘Thank God you’ve come,’ he said. ‘She can’t breathe. She’s got an awful pain in the chest, and a cough. She can’t catch her breath, and she’s burning. Help her, Doctor – Jolly Jumbo has left us high and dry.’

‘What?’ I said. ‘Went on and left you here, all alone?’

‘Quite right, Doctor.’

I said: ‘I’m not a doctor.’

‘Jumbo promised to send a doctor from the village,’ the man said, with a laugh more unhappy than tears. ‘Jolly Jumbo promised! I might have known. I did know. Jolly Jumbo never kept his word. Jumbo lives for hisself. But he didn’t ought to leave us here in the rain, and Dolores in a bad fever. No, nobody’s got the right. No!’