All is Fair Read online

  Solly felt extremely annoyed and embarrassed with himself that due to his period of self-pity, the stallholders either side of the Packers had had to endure their shenanigans, when in truth he should have dealt with it when he’d first been told.

  By the time he went off to his next port of call, the Packer family were left in no doubt that their devious practices were not acceptable at Grundy’s, and should they fail to put a stop to them, they would be loading up to leave. Solly was also aware that this situation had served as a warning to other fair folk that if they believed he wasn’t in control in the way his father had been, they were badly mistaken.

  As he walked through the fair, he did notice something that in his depressed state of mind these last couple of weeks he hadn’t. There was an air of disillusionment about the fair folk, and he didn’t have to think about it to know why. They had lost a leader they had looked up to and respected, and how could they have the same faith in his replacement when he had been acting as anything but a leader? Well, that was going to change.

  He arrived where the vehicles were parked just as the car bonnet was being closed by a man he didn’t recognise. The engine was running, so whatever the problem was had obviously been rectified. Rosa was already in the car, along with the lad Solly had commandeered to drive them, and Nita was just about to get in. On seeing her uncle approaching she called over, ‘It’s all right, Uncle Solly, we don’t need you now. Tom managed to fix the car – something to do with the starting motor.’

  Looking awkwardly at Solly, the man said apologetically, ‘I hope I wasn’t doing anything untoward by taking a look at the car, sir. Maybe I should have asked your permission first.’

  ‘No, no, grateful you did, lad, saved me the trouble.’ Then it struck him that he had seen this young man before. ‘Oh, you’re the chap that Owen brought to me after dinner at the entrance. He said you were looking for a job. Er… sorry I was too busy to talk to you about it then.’ He was momentarily surprised that this eloquent man was seeking casual work in a fairground. But then he wasn’t the first well-educated type who had fallen on hard times.

  ‘Mind if we get off, Uncle Solly, only the printers will be shut by the time we get there?’ said Nita.

  Keeping his face straight, Solly replied, ‘Don’t you mean the market? I’m not that daft I don’t know why you’re so keen to go to Huddersfield and hand out leaflets. Go on, be off with you.’ He turned to the driver. ‘Remember, Kev, you’re not driving a racing car. Make sure you bring my nieces back safe and sound.’

  Nita went to get into the car, but stopped and said to Tom, ‘You still want a lift to Huddersfield, only you’d better get in if you do?’

  Solly’s brain whipped into action. Two men he’d let go recently needed to be replaced. This man had shown he knew his way around an engine, which would prove useful considering how much machinery there was to be taken care of. Solly wanted to know more about him before he disappeared off.

  ‘Just a minute,’ he said to Nita before turning to Tom. ‘Apart from knowing about engines, is there anything else you can turn your hand to?’

  ‘I’m reasonably good with a hammer and nails and I have a little knowledge of electrics. I don’t have any problem with getting my hands dirty. I’m happy to help where I’m needed.’

  Solly looked impressed. ‘Then I could use a man like you if you still want a job.’

  Tom smiled over at Nita. ‘Thank you, but I won’t need that lift after all.’

  * * *

  After the fair had closed, Solly went home that night in a much better frame of mind. Thanks to Velda, he now realised that he was more than capable of carrying out his father’s wishes. He would use the knowledge he had learned from Big Sam but would also do things his own way to keep the fair providing for all the Grundy community and take it into the future.

  Chapter Five

  Jenny Grundy was a very pretty, slim woman of 22, her dark brunette hair cut in an urchin style. She kicked off her flat black pumps and relaxed back in the comfortable fireside chair, cradling a cup of Horlicks between her slender hands and stretching out her shapely legs to cross her bare feet on the brass fender that edged the small stove in the living area of the one-bedroom bow-topped caravan. She had opted to return straight to her own van tonight instead of joining her parents and two brothers for supper, excusing herself by saying that she was tired and an early night beckoned.

  The truth was that she had wanted to be on her own to remember a woman she had loved whose birthday it would have been today.

  Jenny had been born a Grundy but hadn’t been known by that surname until a few months ago, when she had changed it after her discovery that the parents she had always believed to be her natural ones had in fact adopted her. The shock of this revelation, only days before her adoptive mother had died, had mentally sent her spiralling down a huge dark hole but, purely out of love and respect for the wonderful woman who had raised her, she managed to keep her true feelings on the matter to herself in order to make her passing into the hereafter as peaceful and happy as possible. It wasn’t until after the last mourners had left the wake and she was on her own that she allowed herself to think about it all.

  Unable to understand how any mother could throw her baby away like a bag of rubbish, she concluded that hers was indeed a monster, and vowed to track down this despicable creature and tell her in person how she felt about her. However, the life-changing shock of finding out that she was adopted was then duplicated when she discovered that her natural mother believed her to have died at birth, and in fact it was her grandmother who had given her away. She also learned that her natural father and mother were married and she had two younger brothers.

  Her parents were overjoyed to find their firstborn was very much alive, although beside themselves with anger and regret at being denied the right to raise her themselves. They wanted nothing more than to cocoon her in the bosom of the family and try and make up for all the time they had lost but, unable to comprehend these revelations, Jenny had told them she needed time on her own to digest it all and decide where her future lay. Before they could persuade her otherwise, she had disappeared off.

  Back in her home town, she mulled over her situation, going through every emotion in trying to come to terms with what had transpired. She had several close friends she could have confided in, but decided that she had to deal with this monumental situation alone. Weeks passed, and although she was aware that her natural family must be anxiously waiting for news from her, she was still having difficulty deciding how she felt about the whole situation. She was angry with her birth mother for allowing her own mother to dupe her into believing her baby was dead, and with her adoptive mother for not telling her the truth of her origins until she was on her deathbed.

  It took the act of a stranger to make her decision for her.

  It was late October and the night a cold one. She was on her way home from work, heading through town towards the bus station, when she passed a run-down public house. Huddled shivering together in the doorway were two little boys hardly more than six or seven years old. What clothes they wore were threadbare, with disintegrating plimsolls on their feet. Neither had been near soap and water for a very long time, and it was a safe bet that their matted hair was riddled with nits.

  Jenny’s compassion for the two little mites came to the fore, and as she approached them, she rifled around in her handbag for her purse to give them whatever she could spare; at least enough to get them some food from a nearby shop. But just before she reached them, a thirty-something woman wearing a shabby fur coat and scuffed court shoes, her face plastered in make-up, burst out of the pub in a state of intoxication. She threw two packets of crisps at the boys, slurring, ‘Get yer chops around those. I’m just having a natter with Renee. Stay where yer are and don’t move or I’ll skin yer alive when we get ’ome.’

  Without a word, the boys leapt up and scrambled for the packets of crisps as their selfish mother disappeared b
ack inside the pub.

  As she stood staring at the two youngsters ramming the crisps into their mouths as though they hadn’t eaten for weeks, a realisation struck Jenny. For some children the world could be an extremely cruel one, as it was for these two young boys, all because they had been unlucky enough to be born to people who were unfit to be parents. She herself was extremely lucky to have had not just one set of parents who had chosen to look after her and treated her like she was the most precious gift, but also another set, her birth parents, who had left her in no doubt that they would love and treasure her just as much as her adoptive parents had done.

  She had no doubt that those two little boys hunched in the doorway, shivering with cold, would have given anything to have the opportunity to be raised by parents who loved and nurtured them as part of a happy family, and so would many others in similar situations. If she really searched her soul, she could understand why her adoptive parents had procrastinated about telling her the truth of her background. She was happy and settled, so why disrupt that state of affairs? And in respect of her natural parents, her anger should be vented against her grandmother, the woman responsible for her coming to be with her adoptive parents in the first place.

  Within a week, she had left her old life behind to begin her future in the bosom of her natural family. She would never forget the two wonderful people who had raised her, and knowing them as well as she did, she was sure they would be happy that she was now where she truly belonged. It only took a week or so for her to be calling Gem and Solly Mum and Dad, and bantering and bickering with her brothers as all siblings did.

  Gem and Solly would dearly have loved her to live with them, but the van was simply not big enough, so Solly immediately offered her the use of his brother Sonny’s van. Her uncle, she was later to find out, had absconded after betraying his family, and it was very unlikely he would be back to claim the van. She and Gem had cleared it out, acquiring furniture, soft furnishings and knick-knacks, and Jenny felt very much at home in it. She was immediately welcomed into the fold by the rest of the Grundy’s community and quickly made a number of good friends, including Julie Otterman and Renata Shawditch, the three women all being of a similar age and sharing many qualities, likes and dislikes, and most importantly, a sense of humour.

  After taking a sip of her Horlicks, she reached over to the mantel and picked up a silver-framed photograph, looking at it with deep affection. In her mind she said, Happy birthday, Mum. I hope you’re celebrating with Dad…

  Before she could get any further, there was a tap on the door. Wondering who it could be at this time of night, she went to answer it.

  She found Gem on the doorstep. ‘Anything wrong?’ she asked as she ushered her inside.

  ‘No, nothing, love,’ Gem assured her. ‘I just wanted to see you.’ She looked awkwardly at her daughter for a moment before she went on. ‘I owe you an apology. It wasn’t until you said you weren’t going to have supper with us as usual as you were tired that I remembered what day it is today and realised why you wanted to come back to your own van. I don’t wish to intrude, so just say if you prefer to be left on your own, but if you’d like someone to share your memories of your… other mother with, then I’d really like that person to be me. I do owe her such a debt of gratitude for raising you to be the wonderful person that you are.’

  Jenny’s heart swelled with love. She was aware that many other women would never have been so generous towards someone who had done a job that should by rights have been theirs. She also knew that Gem was tired after her hard day’s work and would like nothing more than to go to bed, yet she was only too willing to shove this aside to support her daughter through what she knew was an emotional time for her. She threw her arms around Gem and hugged her tightly. ‘I’d really love your company, Mum. Sit down and I’ll put the kettle on.’

  Mother and daughter spent a very pleasant hour or so looking through photographs from Jenny’s previous life and reminiscing over the two special people that had shared it with her.

  As Gem left, she felt glad that she had taken it upon herself to approach Jenny with her offer. Her days were always so busy, it left her little time to spend with her daughter. Tonight’s precious hour with no interruptions had helped to bring them closer together.

  As she waved Gem off, Jenny felt likewise. Coming to love and respect her natural mother, as well as her father and brothers, had been easy as they were all so likeable in their own ways, and the more she got to know them, the more her feelings for them deepened. It was also of paramount importance to her that they felt about her the same way she did about them. From the way they treated her, it appeared they did; as if she’d been part of the family forever instead of for only a few months. But she was well aware that that would not be the case should they discover what she had done. As the honourable people they were, they would despise her for it, want nothing to do with her, want to see her pay the price. She wouldn’t blame them either. What she had done was the very worst thing that one person could do to another. To lose the love and respect of her wonderful family would be the end of the world for her, and so she vehemently prayed that they never found out.

  Chapter Six

  Lounging on a narrow bed, 39-year-old Samuel Grundy, a swarthy, good-looking, snake-hipped man with thick black hair, took a long swallow from a bottle of Newcastle Brown ale and looked disparagingly around the miserable damp interior of the four-berth caravan. He was angry and unhappy, and his surroundings were doing nothing whatsoever to lighten his mood.

  Wind whistled through cracks in the rain-spattered windows that only a miracle was keeping in place, and Sonny felt sure that the brown damp patches on the walls were growing larger before his eyes. The whole van stank of sour body odour courtesy of the four men who shared the cramped accommodation, none of them that particular about personal hygiene, along with stale cigarette smoke, beer and chips, their staple diet due to the paltry wages they were paid for their long hours of labour. The accommodation Grundy’s provided for their lowest employees could not be compared to the comfortable vans the family lived in themselves, but they would have condemned these as unfit for human habitation a long time ago.

  A vision of his caravan back at Grundy’s rose up like it was mocking him. His parents had bought him the warm, comfortable and cosy traditional bow-topped van when he’d announced that it was time he lived on his own. And he hadn’t needed to lock the door when he had gone out, for no one in the Grundy community would ever have considered robbing him, unlike the untrustworthy types he worked amongst now. He hadn’t appreciated his van; it was just somewhere for him to carry on the way he wanted without his family observing him, so he could accumulate the illicit gains that would allow him to live the life he aspired to, one far removed from the travelling funfair existence, with a woman he had loved so completely he would without hesitation have laid down and died for her.

  But those dreams for his future had been shattered into smithereens. His woman had laughed in his face at his proposal, insulted that a filthy gypsy, as she termed him, would expect her to reduce herself to his primitive way of life and suffer the stigma from her own community that would be hurled her way for marrying into the dregs of society. On top of that, he had made a bad decision and fallen foul of the type of people who would skin their own grandmother alive if they could make money from it. He felt no remorse whatsoever for leaving his brother to face the consequences of his absconding; why should he have any consideration for him when Solly had managed to do the one thing Sonny himself coveted above all else: to marry the woman he loved? To add insult to injury, their father had chosen Solly as his heir, and now his brother was reaping the benefits of a business that was rightfully his.

  When he had first made his escape, he’d been comforted by the fact that the money he had accumulated, along with his quality wardrobe of clothes and expensive personal items, would enable him to carry on his previous way of life and eventually resurrect his dream for h
is prosperous future. But then, as if bad luck hadn’t visited him enough for one lifetime, it had yet another laugh at his expense when, on his way south, he left the Grundy’s lorry he had purloined to have a meal in a transport café and returned an hour later to find no sign of the vehicle or his belongings, including the wad of banknotes secreted in the glove box. He was left in the dark, cold lorry park cursing to damnation the person responsible, with only the clothes he stood up in and the loose change in his pocket.

  Sonny’s means of earning his illicit gains had been dependent on what had been in that lorry. Posing as a successful businessman, he would visit venues frequented by moneyed folk and ingratiate himself with them in order to get invited into their homes, where he was at liberty to help himself to their cash and valuables. As an expert card player, he would also wheedle himself a chair at lucrative games and often walked away with the pot.

  But now, having lost the props of his trade, the only way left open to him to keep a roof over his head was to seek work with a fair. However, the Grundys were well known in the fairground community, and word would have got around by now that Sonny was a wanted man. Not all fair folk were loyal to their own if a reward was on offer. This meant he would have to seek work under another name at a third-rate fair owned by the type of boss Sam Grundy wouldn’t have associated himself with; hence the reason he was now working for Dobson’s Funfair under the name of Steve Smith.