The Maypole

Even during that endless, easily forgotten, European war, there were mayfairs. A Pole to be neatly ribboned by flower-girls, a merry-go-round, a clown on teetering stilts, a tiny tots fancy-dress parade and a series of odd side-shows - with the Fat lady’s flanks laid bare inside the freak tent. In fact, all the tents were pretty freakish, as if those who’d erected them were drunk out of their beer-bellies or, perhaps, simply crooked loafers with tilted tummies.

The Outsiders visiting the fair were having a wonderful time. Paying their tuppences. Lobbing their balls. Laughing their heads off. And so forth. But the Pole was like Pisa’s Tower at the drag end of a diet; the girls found it hard to ravel and unravel the coloured ribbons, jigging around to the clacking of Morris Dancers and the jingle-toes of the Jester (who doubled as the clown on stilts). One particular girl, the joker in the pack, was young for her age, if you went by appearances rather than actions. A fair child, if a loose cannon. The Jester’s daughter in real life.

“But what is this if it isn’t real life?” thought Maisie as she twirled round the Pole twisting the long yellow ribbon in her usual skewball fashion. The other children laughed at the tangle she’d got them all in, skewing further the Pole’s leanage - which, in turn, made the whole event rather out of kilter, by association, if not comparison. A sandwich short of a picnic. Too few tent-pegs and too many loose guy-ropes ......

Maisie giggled at the Pole’s predicament, laying the blame, as was her wont, upon the object involved, rather than upon anything in external control such as herself.

After the fair was shut, the Outsiders were consigned to where they belonged - which was nowhere at all, Maisie thought, judging by their name which meant they were always outside of something they wanted to be inside of. The Fat Lady would later waddle from her bulging tent and smack Maisie for muddling the Pole. A case of mistaken identity, Maisie would plead, without much hope. But, until then, she’d make hay while the sun had its chimney-hat off, because future punishment, however hard, was never hard during the present moment.

Maisie watched her father frolic off. He’d lost his red nose in the fair’s last stop-over far-away across the other side of the hills, further away than even the future was, because the fair folk were never going back there. Too tinny recriminations. Indeed, Maisie remembered taunting an Outsider there, by asking him for a bit of interference. And the smack she received from the Fat Lady that night was a smack to end all smacks. A smack that made each past smack out of true: unworthy of the word smack. The smarting on her backside was more a lesson in East European geography than a red stain.

The Pole, with the multi-coloured ravellings abruptly turned baggy, had, indeed, finally flopped right over, while the Morris Dancers clacked each other to death, using bones instead of batons. And the girls jeered before they scuttled off to harrass the merry-go-rounders.

Maisie tried to avoid the Fat Lady for the rest of the day, simply by looking at her, since Maisie knew whatever she tried to do frequently failed. But she knew also that Fate in theshape of Fatness would inevitably catch up with her - but that didn’t spoil things at the precise moment when things were not being spoiled. Stood to reason.

She smiled. The refugees from Outside might be able to stay straighter for longer while they were being bandaged, she suddenly realised, if the girls were allowed to wear shorter skirts. And she kicked up her legs with sweetly innocent delight.

 

(published 'Ocular' 1994)