A Winter Love Song Read online

  He narrowed the blue eyes his daughter had inherited. The world was a hard place right enough, it gave no quarter to the weak. He’d survived his early years in Sunderland’s East End Orphan Asylum by his determination not to be crushed by the system, and he’d used that same resolve to persuade his Louisa to hold firm against her mother’s objections and marry him. Best thing he’d ever done. And it was the same with the gaming. He knew in his bones that he just had to apply himself and one day he’d hit that running streak and make his fortune. There had been times in the past he’d been so close he could taste it.

  He knew he had the gambling bug, as Louisa had called it. Even as a child in the orphanage he’d taken on the other lads for the coloured pebbles they’d played with in lieu of marbles, or the monkey nuts they were given on a Sunday afternoon. He supposed it was his way of fighting back against the Spartan discipline of the place where even names were replaced by numbers. They’d had no life of their own, ruled by regulations to the point where no one had dared to speak outside the designated times. Meals were taken in silence and woe betide a boy who dared to ask anyone to pass the salt. Then of course the orphanage uniform picked them out from other children at school and the bullies had had a field day with them.

  But not with him. John’s muscled chest swelled under his shirt as he drew in a large breath. No, not with him. He’d used his fists and his feet on the bullies no matter whether they were twice his size, even though he’d known he’d be knocked into next weekend on his return to the orphanage if it was reported. But it had worked. It hadn’t taken long for the other lads to learn that he wasn’t to be messed with. He never started a fight but by gum, he ended them.

  He had told Louisa about some of the things that had cut deep in his boyhood, not least the stigma of having the word ‘Asylum’ emblazoned on his cap, and the indignity of being referred to as a number rather than a name. Afterwards he wished he hadn’t because she had become upset. She had been curled up in his arms in their bed in the living wagon he had saved up for months to buy from another traveller who was having a bigger, custom-built one constructed to accommodate the needs of his growing family. He hadn’t realized she was crying, not until he had felt her teardrops on his bare chest, and when he’d told her those days were in the past and he was the happiest man alive now, she’d sobbed that she was crying for the little boy he had been. He hadn’t really understood that at the time, but once Bonnie had been born and his father’s heart had kicked in, he’d known what Louisa had meant. The thought of his beautiful Bonnie being placed in some grim Victorian institution was insupportable.

  Giving himself a mental shake, he muttered, ‘Stop your daydreaming, man.’ There was work to be done and Ferdinand was waiting for him. He liked Ferdinand, one of Louisa’s uncles; he liked most of the fair community and he knew they liked him, despite Margarita’s attitude. If it weren’t for his mother-in-law, life would be pleasant enough for him and Bonnie. Maybe if Margarita had had more than one child she wouldn’t have been so dominating with Louisa? He knew she was bitter about the fact that more babies hadn’t come along, but then Margarita was bitter about so many things. And to marry a man like Franco after her first husband had died had been asking for trouble. More than ten years her junior and convinced he was God’s gift to women – what had she been thinking of? You could hear the pair of them going at each other hammer and tongs some days, and ten to one it was over some lass or other.

  John reached Ferdinand as the man was struggling to lift part of the roundabout into position, swearing and cursing with the effort. John grinned. ‘Don’t let them drum-banging hallelujahs hear you – they already think we’re in league with old Nick as it is.’ In Boldon, the Salvation Army had stationed themselves at the entrance to the fair, and men and women preachers had warned folk of the dangers therein, calling it a den of iniquity rife with immorality and drunkenness. Not that it had deterred the crowds one jot. The shooting galleries, coconut shies, gingerbread and toy stalls, china emporia, penny-trumpet booths and fried-fish vendors had worked their usual attraction, along with the rides and the entertainments in the various tents. The rides kept going from midday to midnight to the accompaniment of ear-piercing music, which was one reason Ferdinand was anxious to mend his steam roundabout before the afternoon was on them. No ride, no income.

  Ferdinand snorted. Like most of the fair folk he had learned that it was better to work with the establishment than to antagonize it, but the Salvation Army got on his nerves in Boldon. He had nearly come to blows with one young zealot who made the mistake of referring to the showmen as Gypsies. Hereditary showmen were a race apart, different from Romanies and a cut above all other travellers on the road – at least, according to Ferdinand’s proud reckoning. And the rest of the fair folk were in agreement.

  Louisa had told John in the early days of their meeting that she, along with many others, could trace their respective families back more than a couple of hundred years, boasting of generations who had made their living at fairs, first in their homeland of Spain and then in Britain. He’d understood Louisa’s pride in her heritage, and that of Ferdinand and the rest of them, but Margarita taking this pretension a step further and declaring that her daughter was ruining the pure bloodline by marrying him had sorely tried his tolerance.

  He had confronted Margarita one day shortly before he and Louisa got wed. She had been turning wood shavings into artificial chrysanthemums which she then dyed and arranged in vases to sell on her stall, and she had looked down her aquiline nose at his approach. He had cast aside his hitherto softly-softly approach with Louisa’s mother that day, fed up to the back teeth with the poisonous trickle of venom about him fed to her daughter at every opportunity, the latest being that any bairns of a union between them would be tainted. It had been a bitter and fierce encounter on both sides, but at the end of it Margarita had known she’d met her match. It had done nothing to improve relations between them but he had managed to convince her that if she didn’t sheath her claws, once he and Louisa were wed he would see to it that they left the fair and set up home in a town. He had known he wouldn’t do that – Louisa was a traveller to the core and every inch a product of her heritage – but fortunately Margarita had believed him, and hadn’t wanted to lose her only child.

  Once the roundabout was up and working again, the two men went their separate ways, but the incident with Bonnie and her grandmother, and his subsequent train of thought, had unsettled John. When Louisa had died he had been too grief-stricken for a long while to think about the future or what was best for their daughter. It had been enough to get through each day, and yes, he acknowledged now, he had been grateful to the fair folk for rallying round and helping him. There had always been someone willing to take care of the child when he was working. Let’s face it, he thought ruefully, Bonnie was related to half of the fair community on Louisa’s side in one way or other. And so he had stayed, telling himself the bairn needed her extended family especially now her mam was gone, but that one day, when she was older, he would make a life for the two of them somewhere else. But the years had gone by and he never had.

  He walked over to his tent. He had made the boxing ring himself in sections so that it was easy to dismantle and reassemble when they moved. He was a good boxer, more than good. If he hadn’t fallen in love with Louisa he knew he would have made a name for himself in boxing circles and likely earned a good living out of it. He was too long in the tooth now, but once he could have done it. He nodded at the thought. But a life on the road had been in Louisa’s blood; he would never have asked her to give it up, whatever he had threatened to her mother.

  John tied the entrance flap to one side before standing and looking at the ring; but he didn’t really see it. There had to be better than a travelling life for his Bonnie. He would never have voiced the sentiment to a living soul – the fair folk would be mortally insulted, he knew that – but his bairn was as bright as a button with a mind that was razor sharp, w
hereas most of the travellers couldn’t read or write. He had taught Bonnie her letters and the child had been reading at five years old. He had bought her children’s adventure stories and the like at first, but then he had added history, geography and science books into the mix and she had devoured them all.

  John frowned; he was between a rock and a hard place, as he put it. His bairn could go far, perhaps even become a teacher or work in an office when she was older, but to do anything like that she needed a better education than he could provide and that would take money, more than he could earn as a travelling boxer. And Bonnie herself worried him with this desire she had to sing and dance in the big tent. Her voice was beautiful, there was no doubt about that, and the bairn was in her element when she was performing, but he wanted more than a travelling life for her. It was grindingly exhausting for the women, and all she could expect was to marry within the community and drop one bairn after another until she was worn out before her time.

  He flexed his great shoulders and hitched his moleskin trousers further up his waist. Gaming was the answer all right – if he could just get a big win all his troubles would be over. Bonnie was still young enough to adapt to a different way of going on but old enough that he could leave her by herself for a few hours if the need arose. He could see it all in his mind’s eye – the two of them settled in a nice little house somewhere, but in a good area, safe and respectable where his lass could make nice friends and go to school regularly. He wouldn’t tell a soul about it until it was done, and then Margarita and her venomous tongue could go and take a running jump.

  But first he had to get Lady Luck to smile on him . . .

  Chapter Two

  The day had dragged for Bonnie, anchored as she was to her grandmother’s side. Once the fair had opened at twelve o’clock Margarita had insisted her granddaughter remain with her on her stall. She knew from experience that she always sold more of her baskets and other wares when the child was with her. Mothers with children always smiled and talked to Bonnie, and invariably bought their offspring one of the little children’s baskets filled with fresh flowers gathered from the fields and hedgerows when Bonnie said she had made them. Much as Margarita hated to admit it to herself, her granddaughter had a way with folk.

  But now it was twilight, and the shows and booths and stalls that sprang into life at noon when the showmen unfurled their pictures and opened their tents always looked their best once darkness fell. Lamps flared and candles flickered on the fronts of shows, and smaller lights sparkled and twinkled along the rows of toy and gingerbread and sweet stalls, glimmering round the hot-potato and toffee-apple stands. Various booths were illuminated with hundreds of tiny lamps – sapphire and amber, emerald and ruby – arranged in the form of crowns, stars and feathers. These were Bonnie’s favourites, and her grandmother had told her it was the way the booths were presented at fairs in the old country, as Margarita always referred to Spain in spite of having been born in the north-east of England and never having left its shores. The Spanish way of doing things was far superior to the English, Margarita said, and the showmen in ‘her country’ were artistes first and foremost.

  Bonnie didn’t know about that, but the fair at night thrilled her with its theatrical brilliance and she felt at those times it was the best place on earth. Pleasure-seekers who had been at work during the day flocked in and there was a different atmosphere once darkness bathed the scene. Any horse trading was done long before sunset, and the night was given over to locals who merely wanted to be taken out of their normally humdrum existence for a while.

  Having been dismissed half an hour earlier by her grandma with the order, ‘Get yourself off to bed and no dawdling, mind,’ Bonnie had done exactly the opposite. She had worked hard for hours, first making the baskets and filling them with the flowers she’d gathered, and then helping mind the stall. Now it was her favourite part of the day when she was free to wander about the fair for a while as long as her grandma didn’t see. Bonnie knew that most of the fair folk were in cahoots with her and didn’t agree with how her grandma treated her; not that anyone would ever voice this – it was an unwritten rule among the community that no one interfered in anyone else’s family by word or deed – but she knew nevertheless. Folk were always kinder to her somehow, as though to make up for how her grandma was. Like now, for instance.

  Bonnie looked up into the smiling face of Pedro, the hurdy-gurdy man who had just thrust a couple of pennies into her hand and told her to buy herself a hot potato for her supper. She grinned her thanks, and then giggled as Mimi, his monkey, jumped on her shoulder and jabbered away in her ear. Mimi was dressed in a little flowered frock with matching pants; she had a wardrobe of such outfits, all made by Pedro’s wife who was a dab hand with her needle and also a first-class crocheter. Her da had told her that folk came from miles around when they knew their fair was in town to buy the curtains, doilies, tray-cloths, table covers, bedspreads and other items Mrs Carlini produced. She’d make her wares to order when folk requested something specific, never working from patterns but from pictures people would give her. Such was her honest reputation, eager housewives were more than happy to pay in advance, knowing their order would be waiting for them to collect the next time the fair came. The bedspreads took 135 balls of mercerized cotton to make, and her da had said there were lots of shops who wanted Mrs Carlini’s merchandise but she liked to deal direct with her customers. Pedro’s wife’s stall was beautiful to see, and housewives had been known to nearly come to blows when two women had wanted the same item.

  After leaving Pedro, Bonnie bought her potato and wandered into the big tent to eat it. Miss Nelly and her performing dogs were in the middle of their act, and Bonnie was relieved to see that the dog her grandma had kicked seemed none the worse for his fright.

  Miss Nelly was so lovely with animals, Bonnie thought, licking the last of the butter from her fingers as she finished her supper. She was her favourite person in the whole wide world after her da. Her thick, sandy gold hair that she wrapped round her head in twisted coils was always shining, and she had the greenest of eyes with lashes so long they didn’t seem real. When Miss Nelly was all dressed up in the clothes she wore to perform she could have been one of the good fairies from the story books her da had bought her – all floaty and sparkling and magical.

  Bonnie half closed her eyes so that Miss Nelly’s figure had a misty outline. It was better to wish for something when the real world was shut out a bit, she’d always found. She could give her whole attention to it then. Not that this wish had worked in the past, but she had to keep on trying. ‘Let my da fall in love with Miss Nelly so he wants to marry her and she can be my mam,’ she whispered, ‘and I promise I’ll never cheek me grandma again.’

  She didn’t ask for Miss Nelly to love her da; she had seen the way Miss Nelly looked at him and it was different from how she looked at anyone else. Her big green eyes were soft and starry then, and her cheeks always took on a pink tinge. No, if her da would just look the side Miss Nelly was on, that would be all that was needed. She didn’t dwell on the time her impatience had prompted her to help things along a little by pointing out to her da that Miss Nelly was sweet on him. Her da hadn’t exactly shouted when he’d told her never to repeat such a thing again, but the tenor of his voice and the grimness in his face had brought tears to her eyes. He had taken her into his arms then, holding her close as he had muttered, ‘All right, all right, don’t take on. I know you don’t mean nowt but it doesn’t take much to set tongues wagging, lass.’

  ‘I just meant . . .’ Her voice had trailed away in a sob.

  ‘I know, I know. You’re fond of Miss Nelly, aren’t you, but there are some things you’re too young to understand, hinny. The way I felt about your mam . . .’ He shook his head. ‘Miss Nelly is a fine woman and a good friend to both of us, now isn’t she? That’s good enough, isn’t it?’

  It wasn’t, but as she drew back and looked into her da’s eyes she knew what he
wanted her to say and her love for him, which was bigger than the desire for a mother, enabled her to lie with a sincerity that flowed with the smoothness of truth. They hadn’t spoken of the matter again from that day to this, but that didn’t mean she had given up on the dream. Her da was always saying it was good to have a pocketful of dreams; he had told her that from the time she was a toddler, saying how else were dreams going to come true if you didn’t keep them safe? And she felt no qualms about holding on to this one.

  Bonnie smoothed down the white pinafore she wore over her thick linen dress and left the tent, and as she did so Miss Nelly smiled at her to let her know she’d been aware of her presence. Once outside she stood for a few moments watching Ham Bastien’s gallopers. No one within the fair community ever made the mistake of calling the gallopers a roundabout; it would have been more than their life was worth if Ham had heard them. Eighteen horses and eighteen magnificently painted ostriches made up the gallopers, and with the ornate carved heads of kings picked out in gold leaf on the rounding boards, the gleaming brass spiralled rods and the mighty beasts themselves, it was a majestic sight. Ham himself added to the grandeur, resplendent in a long red velvet frock coat, frilled shirt and black trousers with a top hat sitting on his curly black hair.

  Her father had told her that the general Depression in the country, bringing as it did massive unemployment and a high cost of living, had hit some fairs hard. Folk didn’t have much money in their pockets to spend on pleasure, but their fair, with rides like Ham’s, stalls like Mrs Carlini’s and the varied shows that went on in the big tent, hadn’t really been affected. You only needed two or three outstanding rides and stalls and it drew the customers in, and then the lesser rides like Ferdinand’s and the ordinary stalls and booths reaped the benefit from the crowds, he had explained. They were fortunate to be in the St Ignatius Fair in what were hard times for many travellers. Ham had also replaced his old organ with a new 89 Key Gaudin organ the year before. It had two extra keys that played a violin baritone but as it was bigger than the old one, Ham had been forced to cut the Gaudin down on either side to fit into the centre of the gallopers. Her da had helped Ham do the job and now Ham gave her free rides when the gallopers opened up each afternoon – when she could slip away from her grandma, that was.