Young May Moon

I
T WAS A
dew-damp morning, the sky still hazily grey, in late May, already warm, despite the early hour, when Young May Moon trundled into town. The nickname had been given her by her
grandfather
who’d played the tune on his fiddle at many a jig.

The high red wheels of the trap scraped against the walls of the narrow hump-backed stone bridge, over which she led the reluctant donkey, Smokey. She glanced over the parapet. The water below was hidden under a shifting mass of evil slime. On the opposite bank of the river were ramshackle wooden shacks, tarred black, with rank weeds growing round the foundations. These old smoking-huts appeared deserted, probably because of the decline in herring fishing.

May shivered involuntarily; fortunately, she thought, they would shortly leave this gloomy place behind, for now the smell of the sea was tantalizingly close.

May was almost sixteen, olive-skinned, dark-eyed, with a great knot of shining blue-black hair crammed under her father’s best straw boater. She was feeling somewhat apprehensive, for this
afternoon
, on the familiar West Wick sands, she’d be setting up her very first show.

May would keep the legend, in memory of her late father, Jim, the popular Punch and Judy man. ‘Professor’ was of course an honorary title, but traditional. Smokey plodded on, sensing journey’s end, after May climbed back into the driving seat. May and her younger sister Pomona had travelled almost twenty miles from their Aunt Min’s
home, on the outskirts of Kettle Row, a market town on the borders of Suffolk and Norfolk. Their grandfather had settled with his daughter when he gave up travelling with the show. To Min, who’d been widowed in the Boer War, the Jolleys were her family. Min was responsible for naming her younger niece after Pomona, the Roman goddess of orchards. This was fitting because Min made her living from the apple, pear and plum trees in the smallholding she’d
inherited
from her in-laws.

Jim and the children stayed on the farm during the winter, when Pomona attended the village school. May’s education had ended at fourteen, so she and Jim spent this time refurbishing the puppets, sewing new costumes, painting fresh backcloths, inventing new props.

Sadly, soon after their return from the last summer season, Jim succumbed to chronic congestion of the lungs. The condition had plagued him since he was gassed in the trenches during the Great War, the one it was said would end all wars. He had been invalided out of the Army in 1916. During his absence, Carmen, his wife, had left May with Min, while she toured with other dancers to entertain the troops. She’d not been best pleased when she was expected to return home to look after her sick husband, and then a new baby in 1917.

Jim’s last words to May were: ‘Will you girls carry on with the show?’ She’d promised him that they would.

May and Pomona were about to fulfill this pledge. Their mother, Carmen, a volatile Spanish flamenco dancer, who’d left most of the girls’ upbringing to their father, had flounced off four summers ago with an itinerant evangelist, after a huge row with Jim right in the middle of the rival entertainments, leaving both audiences gawping on the beach. ‘
That’s
the way to do it!’ Punch had cried, as the hymn singing faltered and faded. ‘
He
never liked her,’ Jim muttered to May.

Now, Pomona, a sturdy child, sandy-haired and freckled, eight years old, swayed perilously atop the wooden trunk which housed the precious puppets, hand-carved over a hundred years ago by the first Jas Jolley, their great-grandfather. Quivering, alert, on Pomona’s lap was Dog Toby – an elderly, but still agile female Toby, for they’d had
enough in the past of male Tobys following some irresistible scent, and neglecting their duties. This little dog had been abandoned by its original owner, and taken in by the Jolleys. In return, she had learned new tricks and was a great asset to the Punch and Judy.

‘Hold tight, Pom,’ May reminded her sister. ‘Why you have to sit up top I don’t know.’

‘Don’t want old Mr Punch bursting out and showing off for nothing,’ Pomona replied, perfectly reasonably. May smiled to herself, for at Pomona’s age, she too had imagined the puppets to have mysterious powers.

They passed the milestone, then the Saxon church. The donkey turned in to the forecourt of the Swan Inn, with its flint-napped walls, red pantiled roof, and small windows.

The proprietor’s wife, Jane Wren, known as Jenny, who at the turn of the century had been a popular artiste in the end-of-the pier shows, was also a theatrical landlady.

Smokey clopped straight toward the old stables, and poked his nose over the open half-door.

‘Smokey never forgets,’ May remarked to Pomona. ‘Hold on tight to Toby.’

Before May could jump down a hand was extended to fondle the donkey’s plushy nose. Smokey’s soft, expressive ears revealed his pleasure. Toby barked, to draw attention to herself.

‘A visitor!’ exclaimed an amused voice. ‘I’m afraid your stable is occupied.’

May looked in at a young fellow, tousle-haired as if roused from sleep. She spotted a makeshift bed of straw behind him and a
haversack
. Was he a vagrant? Then in the shadows she discerned a black motor car, where their trap was usually kept under cover. You didn’t see many motor vehicles in this part of Suffolk, she thought, or even electric trams or trolley buses. The horse or ox still drew wagons and ploughs; donkeys drew smaller conveyances. Not a tramp, then!

She was both cross and curious. ‘We always stay here, every Whit week, didn’t Jenny Wren tell you?’ she demanded of the youth, who leaned towards her, smiling. He was around her age, as dark as herself, with curling hair. But his eyes were blue.

‘Patrick O’Flaherty, they call me Paddy,’ he introduced himself.
‘Our family are appearing in a show on the pier. Mrs Wren did tell us that the Punch and Judy man and his family had first claim to the rooms. However, when she heard that he had …’ he hesitated, glancing at Pomona, who, with Toby under her arm, was descending by way of the wheel, ‘passed away, she thought the show wouldn’t come this summer.’

Toby launched herself from Pomona’s arms, and Paddy caught the little fox terrier in mid-air. The next thing the girls knew was that the warning growl had ceased, and Toby was ecstatically licking the boy’s face. Toby was usually wary of strangers, except when she was performing.

‘I have no objection, you know, to sharing my quarters, with the donkey and the dog,’ he said.

Hot tears pricked May’s eyes. She blinked them fiercely away. She had coped bravely with the loss of her beloved father a few months ago, for Pomona’s sake. He had done the same for them, after Carmen deserted the family. ‘We’re a team,’ he’d said. ‘Life goes on – better to be happy than sad.’

She thought now, I wish he hadn’t used that expression:
passed
away
. While we were travelling here, somehow I felt as if Dad was around still, encouraging us to carry on. That was comforting.

‘We must see what Jenny thinks about that,’ she said primly. She called to Pomona, ‘Run up to the house. I’ll follow in the trap.’

Jenny Wren was comfortably plump in her brightly patterned overall, with her fuzzy grey hair carelessly arranged in a top-knot, from which she shed the occasional crinkled hair pin. She saw them through the open kitchen window and let out a delighted shriek. ‘
Here
you are, after all! Young May Moon, you take Smokey out of the shafts and let him in to the little meadow. Percy’s in the milking parlour, he’ll feed and water him. Smokey can keep the cow and our old horse company in the barn at night. Monty’s retired, now Percy’s the proud owner of an Austin motor. I made him buy it, I told him: “It’s 1925 not 1905, we ought to move with the times…”’ She drew a breath. ‘Leave your bags by the door, for now. You’re in time for breakfast, we’ll catch up with the news then – do come in, Pom!’

Dodging the great ham dangling from the ceiling hook, Jenny welcomed Pomona with a hug, her face flushed with heat from the
stove. Pomona was soon sitting at the kitchen table, drinking a glass of milk, while Jenny scrambled a panful of eggs.

As she opened the back door May became aware that someone had come up behind her. She turned to see Paddy, still with bits of straw clinging to his hair, grinning at her.

‘Room at the inn, I reckon?’ he remarked.

‘I don’t know yet,’ she returned sharply. ‘Why are you following me?’

The blue eyes flashed at her. ‘I’m not! I’m here for my breakfast. I chose to sleep in the stable partly because I fancied it would be an adventure, rather like camping out, as we’ve done in the past when times were hard, but mainly because I didn’t want to share a room with Danny, my kid brother. He’s very annoying at times. Ten years old, and thinks he knows it all.’

May almost admitted, ‘I feel that way about my sister sometimes.’ However, she didn’t want to prolong the conversation.

She went into the kitchen and closed the door, while he continued along the passage to the dining room, from which emanated the cheerful voices of his family.

Jenny gave May a cuddle. ‘I thought we wouldn’t see you this summer. Your poor father, not unexpected, I suppose, with that weak chest.… No, I thought, our Young May Moon will be looking for a steady job. When the O’Flahertys enquired – you can guess their roots of course, with a name like that, their grandparents came over here in the last century, during the potato famine in Ireland – I explained matters to them.’ Jenny added: ‘There’s what used to be the snug, the room over the stairs – folks seem to prefer the bar now – would you mind sharing a bed? I would only charge five shillings a week for the two of you – though it’s not the quietest room in the house; you’ll hear me playing the piano below in the bar most nights.’

‘Oh, we don’t mind that!’ May assured her. Jenny was a virtuoso on the piano, she thought, accompanying many a temperamental songstress during her summer seasons on the pier. Jenny possessed a powerful singing voice herself. She didn’t need a microphone. She understood the idiosyncrasies of performers, being one herself.

‘Well, let’s join the troubadours. Will you help carry the trays?
They’re nice people, they’ve been here a week already. I’m not sure how long they’re staying. What about you?’

‘Oh, Whit week, of course,’ May told her. ‘Then Pom must return to school. But, if it goes well this week, we’ll be back for all of August, as usual.’

‘You can’t manage the rest of the summer, I gather, without dear Jim?’

May shook her head. ‘I’m not too sure how we’ll cope this week by ourselves … this afternoon will be a real test.’

‘Paddy’s at a loose end during the day, as they are in the evening show. He might like to help you out.’

Mmm … May thought, we’ve clashed already, so I imagine he
wouldn’t
!

Paddy’s father, Brendan, sprang to his feet and welcomed the girls with a firm handshake. ‘It’s good you decided to come!’ He had the same striking looks as his elder son.

‘I’m glad Jenny could find room for all of us,’ said Brigid O’Flaherty. ‘It will be nice for Danny to have a friend.’

‘Where’s your dog?’ Danny, a skinny boy with bright red hair, like his mother, asked Pomona, who was seated next to him. He spoke with his mouth full, spraying crumbs, but Brigid didn’t reprimand him.

Pomona eyed him with distaste. Aunt Min was insistent on good table manners. ‘In the kitchen,’ she said shortly.

Percy, a short, stocky man with a shining bald head, joined the company. Jenny poured the tea and passed the cups.

After the meal May asked Jenny: ‘May we go to our room? We must get on, we have the bills to hand out before the first
performance
this afternoon.’

‘You’ll want an early light lunch,’ Jenny said, familiar with their ways; knowing May couldn’t perform on a full stomach.

May sensed, with satisfaction, that Paddy had gone quietly away.

‘Oh look,’ Pomona said, when they opened the snug door, ‘Paddy’s fetched our bags up for us!’

He’d placed a copper jug of steaming water on the washstand, too. There was no bathroom in the inn. Water still came from the pump in the yard and was heated on the stove. The chamber pot was discreetly stowed away in the washstand cupboard.

May felt a guilty pang. He’d been kind without making a song and dance about it. Maybe, she thought, with a wry smile, this is a hint we need a good wash!