Far From Home (5 page)

Sally shook her head. ‘I'd be scared.'

‘Nothing to it,' Kate said airily.

‘Oh, just hark at her,' Susie said with a hoot of laughter. ‘Let me tell you, Sally, your sister was shaking like a leaf when she went on the escalator first.'

‘I was not!'

‘Yes, you were,' Susie said. ‘I well remember it. Come on, Sally,' she said, offering her arm for Sally to link, which she took gratefully. ‘Don't let Kate get one over on you. Show her how brave you are.'

‘Right, I will then,' Sally said, and stepped forward, boldly holding Susie's arm.

After the initial tingles of nervousness, Sally enjoyed the escalator, and went up and down quite a few times and on her own too before Kate and Susie could get her off it. ‘I've had such a lovely time already,' she said as they hurried along. ‘And now I have the Bull Ring to look forward to.'

By the time the three girls reached High Street and the top of the incline leading down to the Bull Ring, dusk had fallen. Sally gasped as she surveyed the market below them. ‘Oh,' she exclaimed, ‘it's just like you said, Kate. Fairyland.'

And it was, because every barrow in that large vibrant market was lit by gas flares, just as Kate had told her it would be. She smiled at her younger sister's enthusiasm, and Susie led the way down the incline. And when they reached the cobbled streets of the Bull Ring itself, Sally looked around in some amazement at the swelling throngs of people all around her. The chatter, laughter and general buzz of the whole place rose in the air, punctuated here and there by the banter of vendors still plying their trade.

‘The traders do good business on Saturday night,' Kate said. ‘You won't see the flower girls, though. They usually stand round Nelson's statue there,' she said pointing. ‘If there's lots, though, the others cluster around St Martin's, the church over there.'

‘And that's the Market Hall,' Susie told her, pointing
to the other side of the road where Sally saw stone steps leading up to an impressive-looking building, with arched windows to either side of the steps and supported with huge and ornate stone pillars. And if it's all the same to you, we'll make for there first, because I'm gasping for a cup of tea.'

‘Me too,' Kate said.

‘But won't they all have shut by now?' Sally asked.

‘Not the ones in the Market Hall,' Kate said. ‘Come on. By the time we have the tea drunk, all the entertainers will have started arriving.'

Everyone was in agreement with that, and so they made their way through the market. Sally saw that the traders were selling all manner of things and all their barrows were mixed together, so one might be selling various cheeses, another fruit and vegetables, and they might be next to one selling bedding or towels. There were crockery and saucepans in baskets on the ground and various smells rose in the air. Sally was quite surprised at what Kate called banter between the traders and the customers. ‘Come on, darling,' she heard one say as they passed a barrow selling greengrocery. ‘Christ, I'm giving the stuff away. Only a tanner for this big bag of tomatoes. Don't tell your old man, but I'm only letting you have them at this price 'cos I fancy you.'

Kate and Susie turned away smiling, but Sally was rather shocked. Market traders didn't do that in Donegal Town. ‘He don't mean it,' Susie said, seeing the look on the young girl's face. ‘He goes on like that to sell more of his stuff.'

‘And it works,' Kate said. ‘And you have got to watch him because the best tomatoes might be on the top but
the rest of the bag could be filled with bruised, squashed ones. We were taken in by that once or twice.'

‘We were,' agreed Susie. ‘But we're quick learners.'

‘Not half,' Kate said as she mounted the steps to the Market Hall and opened the carved wooden doors.

Sally stood on the threshold and looked about her. The Market Hall stalls had the same gas flares as those outside, and in the sputtering pools of light it looked a cavernous place with huge high ceilings. They were crisscrossed with beams, and long metal poles led down from the beams to help support the roof. High arched windows lined the walls. At a quick glance she saw that the goods for sale inside were similar to those sold in the open-air market; the smell was indescribable and so was the noise reverberating off the walls and ceiling.

And then a little tinkling sound was heard and the noise in the Market Hall abated a little. ‘They're waiting for the clock to strike,' Kate said in explanation, pointing to the wall. Till then Sally hadn't even noticed the clock, but now she saw that it was a magnificent structure made of wood. First a lady emerged and then three other figures that Kate told her were knights as the tune heralding the hour came to an end. Amid a breathless hush, the knights struck the bell six times. ‘Six o'clock,' Susie said when it was over. ‘No wonder I'm hungry.'

‘I'm hungry too,' Kate said. ‘What do you say to tea and teacakes all round?'

No one argued with that, and they made short work of them. ‘Those were delicious,' Sally said, licking at her sticky fingers. ‘I didn't realize how hungry I was.'

‘That's often the way until you start eating,' Kate said. ‘And you'll feel warmer with food inside you,
anyway. It will be cold enough out there now that it's fully dark.'

‘There's other stuff to eat as well if you feel peckish,' Susie said with an impish grin.

‘What sort of food?' Sally asked.

‘Oh, lovely stuff,' Susie said, ‘like jellied eels and whelks and that, but me and Kate never fancied anything like that.'

‘I don't even know what they are.'

‘Seafood,' Kate said. ‘Like that song, “Molly Malone”. You must know that one – she sold cockles and mussels and that sort of stuff.'

‘Yeah, I know the song all right,' Sally said. ‘Have even sung it a few times, but I never knew what any of the things she sang about were, or looked like.'

‘You can have a peep tonight,' Kate promised. ‘But if you don't fancy those, there's a man who bakes potatoes in a little oven and they are lovely with a bit of salt. If we are still hungry we can get one of those – honestly, they smell so delicious that you always feel hungry when you get the whiff in the air.'

‘That's true,' Susie said, jumping to her feet. ‘But right now we're wasting time. Come on, it's probably all happening in the streets.'

The first sight that greeted Sally as they went out of the door and down the steps were the men walking around – seemingly effortlessly – on high stilts that their long, long trousers hid from view. ‘How do they do that?' she asked in awe. ‘Specially on these uneven cobbles.'

Kate shrugged. ‘Search me,' she said. ‘And I've never seen any of them fall off.' She linked her arm around
Sally and said, ‘Come on, let's show you the boxing ring set up.'

At the boxing ring, a small man in a black top hat and red jacket was encouraging men standing in the crowd to try their luck at beating the champ for a prize of five pounds. The champ, a huge and glowering man, was broad and hefty-looking with arms like tree trunks and fists like giant hams. These could be seen plainly because he was naked to the waist, with tight trousers fastened around massive beefy legs, and he had a slight sneer on his face as he regarded them all. ‘Step this way, gentlemen,' wheedled the little man in the jacket. ‘Impress the ladies – after all, five pounds is five pounds.'

But though some of the men shifted uncomfortably on their feet, none stepped forward and Sally couldn't blame them one little bit. She found the man unnerving. ‘Has anyone beaten him?' she whispered as they walked away.

Susie and Kate both shook their heads. ‘Seen some nearly killed having a go though,' Kate added.

‘Well, no one seemed that keen on trying their luck this evening, anyway,' Sally said with slight satisfaction.

‘Too early, that's why,' Susie said sagely. ‘Give them a few hours in the Bell pub over there and many will think themselves the strongest men in Christendom and then they will take on the champ.'

‘Ugh,' Sally said. ‘Well, I think it's horrid and I don't see why anyone thinks it might impress us.'

‘Nor me,' said Kate. ‘Tell you the truth, I would have severe doubts about any man who was willing to allow himself to be punched into the middle of next week for five pounds.'

‘Me too,' Susie said. ‘Funny ideas about women some of these men have. Now, do you want to see the man tied up in chains or the one lying on a bed of nails first?'

Sally laughed. ‘As I have never come near seeing anything like either of those, it's all one and the same to me.'

‘Right then,' Susie said decisively. ‘Let's see Birmingham's answer to Houdini first.'

Sally hadn't been sure who Houdini was, but she was soon enlightened when she saw the man standing with coils of chains all around him: he was urging the audience gathering around him to test their strength. Kate and Susie dropped coins in the hat that was lying on the floor watched over by an assistant, and Kate whispered to her sister, ‘He will do nothing until there is a pound in the hat.'

‘Then what does he do?'

‘Well, his assistant ties him up with chains, pulls a curtain around him and he frees himself.'

‘How?'

‘I don't know,' Kate admitted. ‘And you can test those chains. Anyone can. Me and Susie have done and neither of us can see how it can be a swizz. He does the same thing every week.'

However, the money in the bucket rose only slowly and it was cold to stand in one place for long, so after a while the girls wandered away. The stilt walkers were still parading around, bowing to people and proffering their raised hats, and Sally heard the chink of coins as people showed their appreciation of such skill.

When she got her first glimpse of the seafood being
sold from a van, she thought that she had never seen anything so disgusting in her life. It didn't seem to her like any food a person should eat and the jellied eels looked positively slimy. ‘Fancy some?' Susie said, seeing the distaste on her face.

‘Not likely,' Sally said. ‘I'd say that I would have to be well hungry before I ate anything like that – near starving, in fact.'

‘I feel exactly the same,' Susie admitted as they wandered back to the man now being encircled by the chains. Sally watched with awe. The man was trussed up like a chicken and she didn't see how he was ever going to escape. The curtain was pulled and the assistant began a drum roll. The curtain billowed out in places as the man struggled inside it.

People watched, some as anxiously as Sally, but she was also enthralled by the excitement of it all. And then the drum roll reached a crescendo, there was one last billow of the curtain, and then the man was standing before them, unharmed and unfettered, as he rolled up the curtain and tossed it to his assistant while he took a bow.

Sally clapped as energetically as anyone and was still talking about it as they walked away. Kate remembered Susie taking her around the Bull Ring one Saturday night not long after she'd arrived in Birmingham and how amazed she had been by everything, so she knew just how Sally was feeling. ‘Another treat in store for you,' she said.

This time it was a man lying on a bed of nails. All he had on was a white sort of nappy and another white cloth on his head that Susie told her was called a turban.
In the light from the spluttering gas flares, Sally saw his brown body gleaming, as if he had oiled it. ‘Wouldn't you think that he'd be cold?' she said in a quiet voice to Kate.

‘Probably doesn't feel it,' Kate said. ‘I mean, let's face it, a man who can lie on a bed of nails as if it was a feather mattress is probably not concerned about little things like being a bit chilly.'

‘No, probably not,' Sally agreed. ‘Is that all he does, just lie there?'

‘No. Watch.'

A fair crowd had collected around the Indian lying on the nails and amongst them a group of about six girls. Those were the ones the assistant targeted. Eventually, coerced by the man, and urged on equally strongly by her friends, one of them stepped forward. ‘Up you go, darling,' the assistant said. ‘He promises not to look up your skirt. Ain't that right, Abdul?'

‘That's right,' said Abdul, though he still had a great grin on his face.

The girl removed her shoes and then, holding the assistant's hand for balance, stepped cautiously on to the  man's stomach. A sympathetic ‘Ooh' ran through many of the women watching because the nails could clearly be seen pressing into the Indian's skin, but he made no sign that he could feel it and even the expression on his face didn't change. To Sally it was almost unbelievable, and she watched avidly until the girl had got off Abdul and he had risen to his feet to take a bow. Then she gave a great sigh of relief. ‘Gosh, I thought when he stood up he would be all over holes,' she said to Susie and Kate as they began to walk away, ‘but he wasn't.'

‘I know,' Kate said. ‘We've seen him many times.'

‘But how does he do it?'

‘I haven't a clue.'

‘Come on,' Susie urged. ‘Stop worrying about him. It's time for a bit of jollification now because the fiddlers and accordion players are setting up in the corner there, see?'

‘Oh yes,' Sally said, following the direction of Susie's pointing finger. As they approached them, Susie said, ‘They will play songs and tunes from your homeland first. It used to make Kate feel really homesick sometimes, didn't it?'

‘It did. I'll not deny that,' Kate said. ‘But it was the people I missed rather than the place and now I think it's nice to hear the tunes I grew up with.'

Sally agreed with that, and even more as the music began and it made her feet tap. ‘A lot of this is really music to dance to,' she said.

‘I know,' said Kate. ‘But if you tried that here you might end up being locked up. They'd probably think you'd gone doolally tap.'

‘Yes, they might,' Sally said with a smile. ‘Don't worry, I won't do anything. I just wish I could.'

Seeing the two of them so engrossed in the music, Susie stole away to where she had seen the baked-potato man park up. She could smell the delicious aroma of the potatoes cooking as she approached, and a little later, Kate and Sally were delighted to be given one each, served in a poke of paper folded over into a triangle to protect their hands. ‘Aw, that was really nice of you. Thanks,' Sally said, tucking into the potato with relish.

‘That's all right,' Susie said. ‘Like Kate said, as soon as the smell wafted down, I felt hungry.'

‘Well, we did only have teacakes earlier,' Kate said. ‘They don't fill you up over much.'