The residential caravans formed a semicircle around the fair proper. There, the big beasts of the fairground world roared and clanked and blared out ‘I Feel Good’ by James Brown. Every copper knows that the funfairs of Great Britain are run by the Showmen, a collection of interwoven families so clannish they officially constitute a separate ethnic group of their own. Their family names were painted on the generator trucks and blazoned across the tops of hoardings. I counted at least six different names on six different rides and half a dozen more as we walked through the fair. It seemed that each family had brought one ride to the spring fair at Trewsbury Mead.
Skinny young girls ran past, trailing laughter and streamers of red hair. Their older sisters paraded in white hot pants, bikini tops and high-heeled boots, checking out the older boys through Max Factor lashes and clouds of cigarette smoke. The boys tried to hide their awkwardness by playing butch or walking the moving rides with studied indifference. Their mums worked the booths painted with the rough murals of last decade’s film stars and festooned with banners and health and safety warnings. Nobody seemed to be paying for the rides or the candyfloss, which probably explained why the kids were so happy.
The fair proper formed another semicircle, and at its centre was a rough-hewn wooden corral like those you see in Westerns, and in the centre of that was the source of the mighty River Thames. Which looked to me like a small pond with ducks on it. And, standing at the fence rail, was the Old Man of the River himself.
There was once a statue of Father Thames at the Mead, now transported to the more reliably wet stretch of the river at Lechlade, which showed a muscular old man with a William Blake beard reclining on his plinth with a shovel over his shoulder, crates and bundles arranged at his feet – the fruits of industry and trade. Even I can spot a bit of Empire spin when I see it, so I didn’t really expect him to look like that but I think I was still hoping for something grander than the man at the fence.
He was short, with a pinched face dominated by a beaky nose and a heavy brow. He looked old, in his seventies at least, but there was a sinewy vigour in the way he moved, and his eyes were grey and bright. He wore an old-fashioned, double-breasted suit in dusty black, the jacket unbuttoned to show off a red velvet waistcoat, a brass fob watch and a folded pocket handkerchief the bright yellow of a spring daffodil. A battered homburg was jammed on his head, wisps of white hair escaping from underneath, and a cigarette dangled from his lip. He stood leaning on the fence, one foot on the lowest rail, talking out of the side of his mouth to a crony, one of several frighteningly spry old men who shared the fence with him, gesturing at the pond or taking a long pull on his cigarette.
He glanced up as we approached, frowning at the sight of Nightingale before turning his attention to me. I felt the force of his personality drag at me: beer and skittles it promised, the smell of horse manure and walking home from the pub by moonlight, a warm fireside and uncomplicated women. It was a good thing I’d had practice with Mama Thames and had mentally prepared on the walk up because otherwise I would have marched right up and offered him the contents of my wallet. He winked at me and turned his full attention on Nightingale.
He called out a greeting in a language which could have been Skelta or Welsh, or even authentic pre-Roman Gaelic for all I knew. Nightingale answered in the same language, and I wondered whether I was going to have to learn that one too. The cronies shuffled along to make a space at the fence – only wide enough for one, I noticed. Nightingale joined Father Thames and they shook hands. With his height and good suit, Nightingale should have looked like the lord of the manor mixing with the commoners but there was no deference in the way Father Thames sized him up.
Father Thames was doing most of the talking, emphasising his words with little twirls and flicks of his fingers. Nightingale leaned on the fence deliberately minimising the height difference and nodding and chuckling, I could tell, at all the right moments.
I was considering whether to edge forward so that I could understand what they saying more clearly when one of the younger men at the fence caught my eye. He was taller and thicker-set than Father Thames, but had the same long sinewy arms and narrow face.
‘You don’t want to be bothering with that,’ he said. ‘It’ll be a good half-hour before they get past the pleasantries.’ He reached out a large calloused hand to shake mine. ‘Oxley,’ he said.
‘Peter Grant,’ I said.
‘Come and meet the wife,’ he said.
The wife was a pretty woman with a rounded face and startling black eyes. She met us on the threshold of a modest 1960s caravan that was parked in its own little space to the left of the funfair.