The Nonesuch and Others Read Online Free PDF Page A

oh-what-the-hell sort of sigh. What was it Barmy Bill had called me that weird night in Barrows Hill? A “daft young sod?” He wasn’t so Barmy, poor Bill…
    After that…well, things just got sillier by the minute. I don’t know why I let it happen; maybe I believed in that old saw about girls getting more desirable the more drunk you get; which where this Gloria was concerned was going to take a whole lot of booze, believe me! But before I knew it, it was my round, then George’s, then mine again, and so on. Stupid, really. And Gloria didn’t get any prettier.
    Diary, I’m not going to describe George, Gladys, or Gloria, (let’s just call them the Three “G”s) because that’s not what I want to write about—they were simply the reason why I visited the fairground that night—so excuse me if they get left in a remote part of what has since become my rather blurry memories, and instead of trying to fill in all the blanks I’ll simply cut to the chase, okay?
    The fairground:
    Now this year it was really big, and probably bigger in my slightly altered perceptions. Only slightly altered, yes. See, Diary, when I’ve got drink in me I don’t start raving—I just don’t think very well, that’s all. I can still walk a straight line…approximately. And I can still speak properly…well, more or less; so that folks who don’t know me too well probably wouldn’t know the difference. But I know it: that dull-numb-stupid feeling inside my head, that sure knowledge that I’m no longer in control, and that I don’t care. And I also know that if I go on not caring, then sooner or later I’ll do something, or something will be done to me, that will land me in a whole lot of trouble. It’s the reason I don’t drive a car. Though I intend to, one day, when I’m sure…
    And then there’s the other side of it: the fact that once you’ve fallen off the wagon, it’s no easy job to climb back on again. Which in me leads to anger, because I like to think I’m stronger than that. And I am, I bloody well am ! It’s just that everything seems to go wrong, seems to work against you, until you’ve put it all back to rights again.
    So that, too: I was angry. Not so much with the Three “G”s as with myself. And there I was “suddenly” in this fairground, my head spinning just a little—and pissed with myself, with that weak area in my psyche which had failed to stop me at the first pungent whiff of a good brew—and the whirling lights, hurtling machines, clinking slots and jostling crowd not doing me a hell of a lot of good either. I think I remember thinking to myself, “Thank God it isn’t raining!”
    The Three “G”s tried to lure me onto a gut-wrenching, whirling dervish of a ride. I knew that I’d throw up, and then that I’d feel wretched; so when they went aboard I made off, breathing as deeply as I could of the smoky, trembling air.
    I remember burning my mouth and fingers on a plastic cup of coffee at a hot dog stand. And shortly after that—
    —There it was in front of me: the Freak Show tent.
    The freaks (they weren’t freaks really, just poor misshapen or peculiarly strange and ugly people—which on afterthought pretty much qualifies them as freaks, right? Oh, well!) weren’t drawing very much of an audience, so a handful of them had come out to parade in the night air and chat up the crowd. There was a Fat Lady who truly deserved the title; she was several inches wider than she was tall, which was around four feet six. Swaddled in diapers that were once tablecloths, under a frilly tutu of a dress, the wobbling slabs of flesh that depended from her thighs and buttocks hung almost to the ground. I could see she was feeling peckish, because her shining, vastly pouting Cupid lips were sucking on a whole stick of butter dipped in sugar.
    There was no Thin Man—I was glad to note—but there was a Strong Man. His arms bulged massively on a frame reminiscent of a Challenger tank. But on the