SOMETHING WAKES
by Val Seddon
Brenda used to go with Wakes lads. Fairground boys, feral and febrile; they were what she wanted. And they wanted her.
My mother - who believed there was safety in numbers - said we had to stay together. "Make sure you stick close to Brenda," she would say. "No going off on your own." So I had to wait, outside darkened caravans and behind noisy traction engines, while Brenda did what she did with Wakes lads.
"You could go with his mate," Brenda told me, more than once.
I never wanted to. Whatever I thought about Wakes lads, strutting and preening with tight oily jeans and slack oily hair, their mates were always worse. Mates had fat sausage-fingers decorated with dirt or the dull, lumpy faces of the in-bred. Mates had red hair and boils, pale grey skin and bad teeth. Mates were what I was offered. It was never difficult to refuse.
Brenda said I didn't know how to enjoy myself, which wasn't really true. I enjoyed lots of things about Wakes weeks: garish lights against night sky; the course loudness of amplified music; the momentum of ancient rides that forced back your head and sent exploring fingers of cold wind thrusting up your skirt. Then there were the smells, deep essence of engine oil and frying onions with unmistakable top-notes of burnt sugar, all catching at the senses, competing for attention.
Girls competed for attention too, strung out along the multi-coloured railings of the Whip and the Waltzer, freezing in thin jackets and tight skirts, alternating smiles and stares for the benefit of Wakes lads who rode the air above the whirling rides, leaping easily from carriage to carriage. There were girls in the carriages too, girls who laughed loudly, begged to have their carriages spun then screamed off into the distance, submitting to the fear and pleasure granted to them by the masters of centrifugal force.
Brenda didn't scream, or smile. She was a starer, cool and deliberate, in marked contrast to her long yellow doll's hair and candy-coloured clothes.
"Brenda's a lovely girl," my mother used to say. "Always looks so nice."
So she should. She spent long enough at it, always painting her nails or her lips. No wonder parents thought she looked so lovely. They never saw what I saw, or knew what she did.
"I wonder who'll be there," she'd say, gazing into a mirror while she picked off split ends one by one with a pair of kitchen scissors. It didn't really matter. They were always the same. Perhaps literally the same, because some Wakes lads returned with the seasons. But she definitely went for a type. Dark and snake-hipped with slicked-back hair, sharp, ratty features and a couple of tattoos. I sometimes spotted one before she did, then waited, making bets with myself until Brenda's eyes locked on target and the long wait began.
That was effectively the moment when my night ended. We'd have to stand, endlessly, on the edge of whatever ride he was working, until she was noticed. Often I had to turn my back on the canopy of spinning lights and look away, towards the rest of the fair, so that Brenda alone could face the action.
"He's noticed," she'd hiss eventually. Then she'd ignore him a whole while longer, making him leap and dance and spin, on and off the revolving ride, trying to gain her attention. When she felt he'd done that for long enough, we'd get on the ride and there was never any doubt as to who would come to collect our money.
Then we're off. Whirling and dipping, zooming and flying, impassive with concentration, suppressing nausea. He disappears. Now he's back, riding on the edge of our carriage, leaping off to throw us into a terrifying tail-spin. Now he's in front, staring into Brenda's pale, empty face, leaning his narrow hips against the safety rail which we have thrown back to prove that we have our own ideas about safety and danger. The ride slows. He's still there. The ride stops.
"She's getting off," says Brenda, looking at me. "I'll stay on."
That's when the mate usually turned up, dragging its repulsive form from the shadows. I'd stand silent, arms folded across my chest willing the thing to return to its underworld where smoking machines generated the crude power that enabled Brenda to ride triumphant through a cosmos of coloured lights. Sometimes I'd look at her Wakes lad - all that whiplash grace and coarse confidence - and wonder why I didn't want one of my own. It was obvious why I wouldn't want his mate - but why not one of the wild riders? Perhaps it was their casual power, the fear that I might be ridden as easily and thoughtlessly as the whirling machinery. Perhaps it was just an echo of my mother's many warnings.
Don't play in the traffic.
Don't run along walls.
Don't go with Wakes lads.
More likely it was the dirt, deep in the skin and dark under the fingernails, the sharp smell of grease. I used to wonder how Brenda, so blonde and candy-clean, did what she did and never looked any different. You'd think they'd leave marks.
"Always take your top clothes off yourself," she advised. "You don't want your things getting dirty."
If that was how she felt, then why did she do what she did? That was something I never got to ask her. Though we called ourselves friends, the question was just too difficult. I wasn't sure I wanted to hear the answer. In fact, I didn't want to hear anything. I didn't want to go and I told her so. She was horrified.
"You've got to come with me. You've got to."
Every night since the Spring Wakes arrived, she'd gone to the same caravan with the same rat-faced Romeo, leaving me to stand at a distance between bright lights and shadows, scraping mud off my shoes onto the edge of the duck-boards, not having any fun.
"You'll just go off with him," I told her.
"My mum won't let me go without you. And I've got to see him," she pleaded. "You could go with his mate."
I told her, for the umpteenth time, I didn't want to go with anyone's mate.
"Well, go for a walk then," said Brenda. "Promise I won't be that long. I'll meet you at Betty's."
The black pea tent was always set up on the far side of the Wakes ground, near the penny games and the little kids' rides, a family place strung with bare white light-bulbs. It boasted no flashing colours or loud music, just Betty's Black Peas. A hot steaming mush the colour of mud, ladled out into cracked pot cups and eaten with wooden spoons. I never knew how it was made or why it was eaten. No-one ever cooked or served it anywhere else. It was simply part of the ritual, along with candyfloss and coconuts and goldfish dying in plastic bags before you'd even got them home.
A big green caravan at one end of the tent acted as kitchen and counter, its clouds of steam and smells presided over by Betty and her friend, Clarice. Most people thought Betty and Clarice were sisters, they were so nearly identical. Both were big women, negotiating bosoms like bolsters under white cotton aprons and overalls as they laboured among the pans. Above the steam-line, tortured confections of peroxide hair defied gravity. Everyone knew Betty and Clarice. They were part of the Wakes, them and their black peas, familiar, warm and comforting. While Brenda was doing what she did with Rat-Face, I had wandered along there every night and bought black peas, as much for the company and to warm my hands on the cup as anything. I didn't actually like the taste. Bare light bulbs and black peas; that was my night out. No sign of Brenda, even though she'd promised. Misery settled deeper as I dragged the rapidly cooling mire around the bottom of the cup.
The tent filled, emptied and filled again as the evening wore on. Children were swept away by bedtime curfews. Bigger, louder people came out to play. All in twos and threes, or whole crowds, apart from occasional solitary pensioners. And me. Most people took their empty cups back to the caravan counter, but not everyone did and from time to time Betty or Clarice sallied out in white overall and wellington boots to collect empties in a bucket. This particular night it was Clarice who came out for the empties and Clarice who found me crying.
"What's up, love?" she asked, plonking her bucket on the muddy grass and digging into her overall pocket for a little blue-and-white packet of Park Drive. She offered me one, but I didn't smoke then.
I told her my mate had gone off with a lad.
"One of ours?" she asked. "Wakes lad?
I nodded and she blew out her smoky truth like a friendly dragon.
"They're buggers," she said.
She still wanted to know why I was crying though. Did I fancy him? I told her no. I didn't fancy any Wakes lads. Clarice took the last deep drag off her small cigarette and ground its tip into the mud with one heel.
"That's nowt to cry about," she said. "Come and have some tea."
………
You can't get black peas on the Wakes any more. Tastes have moved on. I've moved on too. Brenda? Don't know where she is, or what she's doing, though I bet she's infested with rat-faced kids. I do think about her though, whenever I see a fairground with its music and coloured lights. I think about Betty and Clarice too.
They were like no other women I'd ever known, strong and solid within the shifting illusions of a travelling fair. Women without permission, they made their own plans and earned their own money. They put gin in their tea without making excuses and laughed freely at each other's jokes. They entertained themselves by setting each other's hair, tending their collection of sparkling crystal figurines and sharing the sort of wisdom which can be acquired by watching the world from a black pea tent. They were the first women I truly envied.
It wasn't that I wanted a caravan and I certainly didn't intend to spend my life cooking black peas. But Betty and Clarice gave me hope and inspiration.
They didn't fancy Wakes lads either.
© Val Seddon 1996