Twice Upon a Time, page 11
‘It’s not important,’ said Ginny. ‘Let’s go.’
Mr Topper gave her a small grateful smile, but Ginny didn’t give one back. She just wanted to check out this fair or unfair or whatever it was called in case Pop had managed to find his way there.
They followed the girl in the polka dot sweatshirt down the street, across the intersection and down another couple of streets until they came to what looked to be a park surrounded by tall brick walls. From the footpath side of the wall Ginny could see a Ferris wheel, could make out the sea-monster humps of a roller-coaster and could hear the sound of a steam organ’s wheezing jaunty fairground-type music. However, there wasn’t much other noise that she could make out: no sounds of squealing, laughter or shouting, no crowd sounds at all.
There was no queue. There was not even a single pedestrian.
There was a big sign, though, in curly wrought iron above the gate:
‘Come on,’ said the girl in the polka dot sweatshirt, heading for the turnstile.
‘Aren’t we meant to pay or something?’ asked Ginny.
As she asked the question, she suddenly realised that if there was an entrance charge she didn’t have any money. That realisation reminded her that even if the Chips and Fish Shop had been a genuine fish and chip shop, they wouldn’t have been able to buy anything to eat anyway. Ginny face-palmed at her foolishness, feeling all at once both stupid and hungry.
‘Digger Dagger,’ she asked. ‘Have you any money on you?’
‘Money?’
‘You know, to buy things with like fish and chips or candy floss or …’
‘Lamingtons?’
‘Yep,’ Ginny nodded, ‘that sort of thing.’
Digger Dagger looked apologetically at her. ‘Sorry, I can’t remember when I last had money. Is that the stuff that sits heavy in your pocket and jingles when you jump up and down?’
‘Possibly,’ said Ginny. She turned to Mr Topper, but he shook his head.
‘Come on!’ said the girl in the polka dot sweatshirt.
‘But we haven’t any money,’ called Ginny.
‘Money?’ said the girl. ‘You don’t need money. It’s free.’
‘How can it be free?’ asked Ginny.
The girl shrugged. ‘Dunno,’ she said. ‘Courtesy of Aesop Sod, I suppose.’
They followed her through the turnstile and into the park.
However, once they were beyond the turnstile, Ginny stopped and grabbed at Digger Dagger’s arm.
‘What is this?’ she whispered. ‘Where is everybody?’ She turned to the girl, bewildered. ‘Are you sure the fair is open?’ she asked. ‘We seem to be the only people here.’
‘Oh, it’s open all right,’ said the girl. ‘Look!’
She pointed. The Ferris wheel was turning slowly, the empty seats swinging back and forth; the Orbiter was spinning around although its seats, which should have been filled with terrified, screaming fairgoers, were empty and silent; the circling horses in the carousel were rising and falling to the calliope music, but were riderless; and the roller-coaster, with its clattering wagons climbing up and soaring down, was totally without passengers.
‘But …’ repeated Ginny, ‘there’s nobody here, nobody at all!’
‘There’s us!’ said Mr Topper happily.
‘But why?’ asked Ginny.
‘I suppose Aesop Sod can’t be bothered. It’s a lot of bother to describe a fairground crowd,’ said the girl in the polka dot sweatshirt. ‘Anyway,’ she added, ‘why don’t you ask him yourself. Look!’
Ginny looked.
Sure enough, emerging from an alley of tents with a large paper cone of candy floss in his hand, was Mr Sod, looking a little overdressed for the funfair in his pinstriped suit. Ginny noticed that he was now sporting a buttonhole bouquet of tiny red roses for the occasion.
He strode towards them, swinging the candy floss like a bouquet of flowers and smiling in a most superior way.
To Ginny’s surprise, he greeted the girl in the polka dot sweatshirt first and in a familiar way.
‘Hello, Dotty,’ he said, raising the candy floss like a beacon. ‘So pleased to see you, and thank you so much for escorting our visitors to the unfair.’
‘Not a problem,’ said the girl.
‘Thank you, too, Topper, for keeping a weather eye on our new friends. A good job, well done!’
Mr Topper blushed at the praise.
Ginny and Digger Dagger exchanged glances, unsure what all of this friendliness meant. One thing was clear: the girl Dotty was as much in league with Aesop Sod as Mr Topper. And another thing was equally clear: they had been herded towards this unfair like sheep being mustered and brought to the shearing shed. Were they about to be shorn in some way?
Finally Aesop Sod turned to Ginny and Digger Dagger. ‘So nice to see you,’ he said, ‘and how are you getting along with the riddle?’
‘We’re working on it,’ said Digger Dagger stiffly.
‘Not far to go,’ said Ginny.
‘Wonderful, wonderful,’ said Aesop Sod, rubbing his hands together. ‘You know, I’m feeling so generous, that should you manage to solve this riddle, and of course the next, not only will I try to find this person you call Pop, I might almost be tempted to allow you out of the story altogether.’
‘Gee, thanks,’ said Ginny unable to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. ‘Not too many escape clauses there for you.’
‘Don’t be bitter, young lady,’ said Aesop Sod, smiling broadly. ‘Not everybody likes happy endings, you know. In fact, some of my best friends …’
‘I’m surprised you have any friends at all,’ said Digger Dagger under his breath. ‘That’s the real riddle.’
‘I know a riddle,’ said Mr Topper.
They turned to him with surprise. ‘Well?’ asked Ginny.
‘Why shouldn’t you hide in the vegetable patch?’ asked Mr Topper.
‘That’s my riddle!’ said Digger Dagger.
‘I bet you don’t know the answer!’ said Ginny.
Mr Topper’s face fell. ‘It was something about corn having eyes and potatoes having ears, but it all got sort of chopped up in my brain …’
‘Your what?’ asked Ginny.
‘My brain?’ said Mr Topper.
‘It’s potatoes have eyes, and corn has ears! All chopped up, indeed!’ said Digger Dagger.
‘Wait a bit,’ said Ginny excitedly. She turned to Aesop Sod, who was standing to one side with the grin still on his face, although, as his grin was now blotched with pink from the candy floss, his face rather resembled a smug Boston bun.
‘Well?’ he said.
‘Your stupid riddle,’ said Ginny. ‘I think I know the answer! Thank you, Topper,’ she added. ‘Thank you! You’ve been a wonderful help!’
In which Aesop Sod flosses, wriggles and twists
Ginny sounded so confident that Aesop Sod’s grin slowly vanished. He stiffened and stared at her, his dark eyes gleaming.
‘Are you sure?’
Ginny pulled out the scrap of paper and studied the riddle, and then she turned to Digger Dagger, her eyes shining. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘it works!’
There was the riddle:
Digger Dagger gave her a perplexed look. ‘But,’ he said, ‘you haven’t said what works yet!’
‘It was your joke,’ explained Ginny. ‘Potatoes have eyes, right?’
‘Sort of,’ said Digger Dagger, ‘but not real eyes, and corn doesn’t have real ears.’
‘So that’s why I didn’t get the joke,’ said Mr Topper.
‘But Mr Topper said,’ continued Ginny, ‘that the potatoes got all chopped up in his brain. Right?’
‘Sort of,’ agreed Digger Dagger.
‘So what happens when potatoes get all chopped up?’
Digger Dagger smiled. ‘Ah, I see,’ he said. ‘Chips!’
‘And if potatoes get all chopped up then they lose their eyes, so they’re …’
‘Blind!’ said Digger Dagger.
‘And,’ continued Ginny, ‘when we saw the axolotl we thought it was a fish with legs, and then we found that it wasn’t a fish with legs because fish didn’t have legs, and that meant that a legless one could be …’
‘A boa constrictor?’ suggested Mr Topper.
‘A fish!’ cried Digger Dagger.
‘So the answer to the riddle must be?’
‘Fish and chips!’ said Digger Dagger, grinning.
‘No,’ said Ginny. ‘Chips and fish – and it was staring at us all the time because it was written on the window of that shop!’ She turned to Aesop Sod. ‘Well?’
Aesop Sod scowled at her. ‘All right, but you did have help.’ He turned and scowled, this time at Mr Topper.
‘Who, me?’ asked Mr Topper.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Digger Dagger, ‘you didn’t mean to.’
Ginny turned to the still-scowling Aesop Sod. ‘I take it that your All right, along with that horrible scowl, mean that we have the riddle solved?’
Aesop Sod nodded brusquely.
‘And,’ continued Ginny, ‘you will hold to your promise to help us find Pop and help us get out of this story?’
‘It wasn’t really a promise,’ said Aesop Sod stiffly, ‘more a hint.’
‘A hint?’ said Digger Dagger.
‘Not even a hint, really,’ said Aesop Sod, ‘more like a hint of a possibility.’
‘Don’t be such a weasel!’ cried Ginny. ‘We all heard you!’
‘What you heard,’ said Aesop Sod, smiling, ‘was something like a hint of a possibility of a remote chance …’
‘You rotten cheat!’ cried Digger Dagger.
‘Or, more accurately what I said was something like a hint of a possibility of a remote chance of an unlikely likelihood …’
‘We trusted you!’ said Ginny.
‘You forget,’ said Aesop Sod, ‘that I am a very bad very good storyteller and thus am not to be trusted.’
‘If you want my honest opinion,’ said Ginny.
‘I don’t,’ said Aesop Sod, turning away.
‘To be quite honest,’ said Ginny, ignoring him, ‘I don’t think you’re a very good storyteller at all. In fact, I think you’re a rotten storyteller!’
‘Actually, I reckon Mr Nod’s a better storyteller than you,’ said Digger Dagger. ‘At least things happen in his stories.’
‘Things have happened in this story,’ said Aesop Sod defensively.
‘What’s happened in this story?’ demanded Digger Dagger. ‘All we’ve done is go round and round in circles.’
‘With no chance of finding Pop!’ cried Ginny.
‘Who’s Pop?’ asked Topper.
‘Well, you’ve clearly been looking in the wrong places,’ said Aesop Sod, ‘and if that’s your attitude, I don’t imagine you’ll be wanting to hear the third riddle?’
Digger Dagger looked anxiously at Ginny. ‘No,’ he said hurriedly. ‘We do want to hear the third riddle, don’t we Ginny?’
Ginny nodded, although she was still frowning.
‘Okay,’ began Aesop Sod.
‘On paper,’ said Ginny. ‘I don’t trust you.’
‘Oh, but you have no choice,’ said Aesop Sod. ‘However, in this case I’d prefer not to put it down on paper, thank you very much.’
‘But,’ said Ginny, ‘that’s not fair!’
‘Ginny,’ murmured Digger Dagger, ‘remember what the man said: we have no choice.’
‘Oh, all right then,’ said Ginny. ‘Shoot!’
‘Here it is,’ said Aesop Sod easily. ‘How can one and one make one?’
‘What?’ asked Ginny. ‘How …?’
‘Just a simple little sum,’ said Aesop Sod. ‘I’m sure you like mathematics. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I do have better things to do: a story to write with an excessively unhappy ending!’
He nodded at them with studied courtesy, and turned on his heel and left, pausing only to drop what was left of his candy floss into the nearest rubbish container. It was only as the very bad very good storyteller was passing through the turnstile that Badger felt brave enough to bark.
‘What a rat!’ exclaimed Ginny.
‘I think he’s a nice wee dog,’ said Topper.
Ginny glared at him. ‘I wasn’t talking about Badger, Mr Topper Big Spy,’ she retorted. ‘I was talking about Aesop Very Bad Storyteller Sod!’
‘He is a rat,’ said Dotty, nodding. ‘Take it from me.’
‘Are you any better?’ demanded Ginny. ‘After all, weren’t you doing just what he told you to do? Thanks so much for escorting our visitors to the fair?’
‘All I did,’ said Dotty, ‘was ask whether you wanted to go to the unfair. I didn’t exactly twist your arm, did I?’
‘What if we hadn’t wanted to go to the unfair?’
‘Well, ask yourself, what could I do? Pull out a gun and kidnap you?’
Dotty sounded cross, so cross Ginny felt she might have gone a little too far, that she was being unfair. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I guess that Sod sounding like he won’t keep his promise threw me a little. So what do we do now?’
‘Didn’t you want to see the unfair?’
‘I guess so,’ said Ginny, remembering how Pop had liked to go to the real fair.
‘Well, why don’t we, then?’
‘We’ll have it all to ourselves,’ said Digger Dagger. ‘Won’t be too many queues, anyway.’
‘By the way,’ said Dotty, grinning now. ‘I have a little present for you.’
‘For me?’ asked Ginny. ‘What is it?’
‘Here.’ Dotty handed Ginny a buttonhole bouquet of tiny red roses. ‘Aren’t they pretty?’
Mr Topper peered at the roses. ‘They are,’ he agreed. ‘And what a coincidence! They’re exactly like the buttonhole Mr Sod was wearing.’
‘Astonishing, isn’t it?’ grinned Dotty.
‘How did you do that?’ asked Ginny, taking the tiny bouquet and putting it to her nose. ‘We were here the whole time and I never saw a thing!’
‘I told you,’ explained Dotty. ‘I’m a pock picketer. It’s what I do.’
‘Amazing,’ said Digger Dagger. ‘It might be what you do, but I’ve no idea how you do it!’
‘Aesop Sod doesn’t know either,’ grinned Dotty. ‘I hope,’ she added.
‘Who knows?’ said Digger Dagger. ‘My worry is that he knows too much. But I guess we can’t do a lot about that.’ He looked at a signpost pointing to the attractions. ‘So now, what about sideshow alley?’
‘Why not,’ said Ginny. ‘You never know, Pop might just be there.’
‘This way, then,’ said Dotty.
They followed Dotty past the brightly coloured carousel. Its round and round and round motion seemed eerily more hypnotic than it would have if there had been laughing riders on the shiny horses’ backs. Beyond the carousel, the first attraction they came to was a hall of mirrors, the undulating surfaces of the mirrors changing them in turn from tall to squat, from rake-skinny to pumpkin-fat. Ginny stood before one mirror that narrowed her sides to the width of a pencil and stretched her height alarmingly. She was suddenly taken aback to find a tall skinny figure beside her. Only his dangling Wee Willie Winkie hat told her that this was Digger Dagger. When Mr Topper joined them his top hat stretched into an endless red drainpipe.
Ginny was troubled by these distorted reflections. She didn’t like seeing herself gross and misshapen (would this be how she might end up when she was a grown-up?), but the tall, rangy Digger Dagger was alarming in a different way, a way she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
They carried on and into the alley proper. Here were shooting galleries, coconut shies, and the row of clowns with the open mouths swinging from side to side waiting for the ping-pong balls.
‘Are these the clowns you remember?’ she asked Digger Dagger, when he came up to her.
Digger Dagger glanced at the shiny heads and torsos, their wide-open mouths moving left, right and left again, and nodded.
‘They don’t look very dangerous,’ said Ginny, smiling.
Digger Dagger shuddered. ‘Perhaps not,’ he agreed. ‘But they do look rather sinister, don’t you think?’
‘But dangerous?’
Digger Dagger shrugged. ‘Perhaps my mother had told me never to put a ping-pong ball in my mouth.’
Something else struck Ginny. ‘But you do remember them,’ she added.
Digger Dagger looked around. ‘Yes I do,’ he said, after a moment’s reflection. ‘Quite well, now … And over there …’ He pointed to a brightly coloured tent. There, above a platform before the rear wall, was a moving target, a procession of plastic rabbits. ‘I do remember shooting rabbits once and winning a kewpie doll.’
Ginny looked at him with surprise. This was the first time Digger Dagger had been able to recall anything so clearly.
‘When was this?’ she asked.
Digger Dagger shook his head. ‘That,’ he said sadly, ‘is lost in the mists of time.’
He and Ginny stood silently for some time and then, realising that Badger, Dotty and Mr Topper had gone on ahead, began walking after them once more.
‘Did you want another go?’ asked Ginny.
‘Another go?’
‘You know, at those rabbits. You might have been able to win me a doll or something.’
‘Not really,’ said Digger Dagger. ‘Besides, I didn’t see any rifles and I didn’t see any attendant. So how could I have?’
‘That’s right,’ said Ginny. She thought about that. Not only were there no other visitors to the unfair, there were no attendants, either; no roustabouts, no jugglers, no barkers or buskers, no showmen of any description. In fact, the only person they’d come across so far was Aesop Sod.
‘Why is all this here?’ she asked. ‘There’s no point to it. I mean, all the rides are going round and all the sideshows are open, kind of, but there aren’t any attendants, no ticket sellers. What if we wanted a ride or a go at the coconut shy?’
‘It is rather spooky,’ said Digger Dagger.
‘But,’ said Ginny, ‘hasn’t it all been like that? I mean, since we came here we haven’t met anybody who wasn’t either Mr Nod or Aesop Sod or somebody like Topper or Dotty, who may or may not have been created by Sod. Remember the sculpture garden.’
