THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH

The trip to the circus in December 1950 was announced by Aunt Maud and it had been organized by somebody at Dusseks where Uncle George was working at the time.  He was doing very well there too, my Aunt said, and was definitely well thought of and that was why he had what my cousin June described as First Dibs for tickets.   I didn’t really know what First Dibs actually meant but her general excitement and hopping around on one leg quickly conveyed the idea that it put us in a favourable position.   Aunt Mag was looking quite annoyed that it wasn’t her Harold in line for compliments but on this occasion it wasn’t and that was all there was to it. 

I very much wanted my mother to put our names down for tickets because I had recently read a number of books about circuses and to me that whole sphere of entertainment seemed like an exciting extravaganza to be involved in even if simply as spectators.   But she started off by saying she wasn’t made of money and didn’t really know if we could afford it, especially at such an expensive time of year, just before Christmas.   But the Aunts began to persuade her and at the time I wasn’t altogether sure why they were so persistent although years later I began to realise it was on account of my father being a womanizer.   Not that I knew what that entailed at the time but over time it became clear to me that he was incapable of passing by a pretty face, particularly so if the face belonged to a woman in uniform.  He especially favoured the clippies working out of the Bus Terminus in London Road but neither did he pass by nurses from the hospital in Bath Street if there was the slightest possibility of attracting their attention.  My mother said it was the War that did it to him and this weakness of his led to a great many arguments between them which always ended in my poor mother collapsing in floods of tears.   November 1950 had been particularly difficult for her on account of Dolly the clippie and a trainee nurse called Brenda.   The Aunts, quite sensibly, decided she needed a treat to take her mind off the problem.

 Once she was back on speaking terms with my father she suggested circus tickets not mentioning that her mind needed to be taken off his activities but just that it would be very nice for the children to have the opportunity, etc.   He looked guilty and of course he agreed and that’s how we found ourselves to be the first in our large and dysfunctional family to reserve tickets for Bertram Mills Circus and Menagerie at Olympia that year even though they were very dear.   My father said it wouldn’t be money wasted because the circus was a spectacle all children should experience at least once and he admitted that he’d always had a weakness for such shows since he was a boy.

 It turned out that most of the family would be going, well the women and children at least because the men didn’t seem quite as keen.   There would be Aunt Maud with June and Desmond, Aunt Mag with Margaret and Ann but not Leslie and Young Harold who were to all intents and purposes grown up and past all that really, Aunt Martha with her Pat, Old Nan with Little Violet and Freda but not Freda’s baby Susan because she was too young to appreciate it.  In the end three coaches that we called charabancs were to pick up the Dusseks’ workers and their families from The Jolly Farmers at 5.30 which was a little on the early side but would allow for traffic and Uncle George said that was sensible because the traffic into London could be chronic.

My mother took some cheese and pickle sandwiches and a lemonade bottle of cold tea and I took an Enid Blyton book from the library to read on the journey, The Circus of Adventure, which I had read before.   I had also recently re-read Mr. Galliano’s Circus and Hurrah for the Circus, also courtesy of Enid Blyton.  At this stage I did actually rather prefer Noel Streatfield’s The Circus is Coming because already her characters seemed to me to be just a little more realistic.  I didn’t voice this opinion too loudly, however, for fear of somehow or other being seen as disloyal to Enid Blyton.  Years later, as an adult, I fell upon a book entitled Circus Shoes, also by Noel Streatfield and was disappointed to find it to be simply The Circus Is Coming retitled.  Nevertheless, overall there is no doubt that the books of Noel Streatfield were rather better written than those of Enid Blyton no matter how in love I was with the latter for a number of years.  I sat on the long rear seat of the charabanc between a group of cousins and hugged the book to my chest and felt very, very excited.   Pat pointed out that bringing a book with me at all was stupid and playing I Spy was a much better idea but I ignored her because she thought she knew everything.  

Old Nan was already complaining that back in her day a proper charabanc would have an open top and be pulled by horses and Aunt Martha said well then we’d never get there would we so she for one was glad that the ones Dusseks had booked were modern and thoroughly up to date.  Little Violet said she was desperate to get to Olympia to see the dear little dogs that came from France and could do so many tricks because she’d seen them on Pathe Gazette at the Saturday morning pictures and could hardly believe how clever they were.  From my reading I was bursting with information regarding the exploits of clowns, acrobats, jugglers and trapeze artists so I began to tell her about them but she said if they weren’t animals then she wasn’t interested because it was particularly those dear little dogs she wanted to see.

My father had quite unexpectedly revealed after a pint at The Queen’s Head a day or two before that as a boy he had himself at one time hankered after a career in the circus.   Bertram Mills had built up quite a reputation he told me, and had been born in Paddington, London and was the son of an undertaker, Halford Mills.   The family owned land in Hertfordshire where the circus horses were sent to rest when they weren’t performing in the ring.   Just after the First World War they had financed circus visits each year for the orphan boys of the Medway Children’s Homes and he was able to attend on two occasions.  The first time he went the Royal Family had been there and everybody sang God Save The King and cheered.   On the second occasion the boys were given a special tour of the menagerie before the show by the Mills sons themselves, Bernard and Cyril and there had been a fish and chip supper before returning to Chatham.   That had been an outing hard to beat and had made a great impression upon him.  He had never forgotten getting up close to the horses, elephants and tigers.   If he wasn’t wrong those two lads now ran the business entirely alone because he had read somewhere that the great Bertram had died in 1938.    I asked him if he had wanted to be a trapeze artiste or perhaps a rider in the troupe of Liberty Horses but he shook his head vigorously and said he had not fancied being a performer at all but simply wanted to look after the elephants.   I said little but thought to myself that being a bareback rider on the horses would have appealed to me a great deal more, though if it was possible riding atop of an elephant would have been a dream come true too.

 When we got to Olympia we didn’t get a tour of the menagerie because our tickets did not include that which was disappointing.   Also no matter how much I pleaded my mother refused to buy a programme because half a crown was daylight robbery no matter which way you looked at it.  Aunt Maud also refused to make the purchase for her June and Desmond and Aunt Martha’s Pat said virtuously that she didn’t want one anyway because they cost an arm and a leg and were a complete waste of money.  Nobody believed that she really thought that of course.  Little Violet didn’t even ask because living with Old Nan for years had taught her to ask for very little.   Aunt Mag rather ostentatiously announced well daylight robbery or not she was going to get one for her girls because it wasn’t every day you went to a circus was it?   I looked enviously in Ann’s direction as she flicked through the pages and heard Old Nan observe to my mother that she was spoilt rotten that one and no mistake so I began to feel just a little better.  

The programme had a dramatic front cover featuring the elephants and their handlers and within listed all the acts we were about to see in the order we would see them with a lot more photographs and biographical details of the performers.    Ann kindly let me look through it for a few minutes until it was firmly removed from me by my aunt.  I began to feel quite depressed again until I realized that our group was to be almost the first  allowed into the Big Top and seated on the benches high up in the stadium before others.  We were able to observe as the seating below us gradually filled and while we waited for the show to begin two clowns entertained us with a variety of antics.   I was only vaguely amused by them, waiting impatiently for the entrance of the liberty horses which in the books I had read always opened the show.    I was almost bursting with excitement as the circus music began, refrains that I seemed to know so well yet didn’t know at all, heralding the entrance of the ringmaster with his whip, also a totally recognizable figure in red jacket, tall hat and blue and white striped jodhpurs.    I was still clutching the library book so tightly that the cover had become clammy so I decided to sit on it instead, nicely levering myself just a little higher.

The show began in earnest just after seven pm and over the next hour and three quarters all the performance items I had been reading about paraded before us in the ring below.   There were liberty horses with their daring riders, acrobats whose exploits were so amazing it was hard to believe they were human, jugglers and tightrope walkers, trapeze artists and unicyclists, a team of little white dogs wearing costumes which delighted Little Violet with their tricks.  There were terrifying fire eaters and lions jumping through hoops and described as the kings of the jungle.   But to me the performance that became ultimately of greatest interest were the elephants, swaying majestically around the ring, through the well trodden sawdust and looking like the real kings.   How I envied the young girls astride them in their sparkly costumes looking so glamourous and mysterious.  How I longed to be one of them.   I was almost in tears when the time came for the final parade because it had all been so exhilarating I was fearful that nothing in the future could ever live up to it.   It was hard to leave that magical place.

When I noticed that Ann had abandoned her programme that had cost an arm and a leg on the seating adjacent to The Circus of Adventure library book that was also very nearly left behind, I had no hesitation in picking it up and folding it to fit within the pages of the book.   Of course it didn’t quite fit right but I thought it was a chance worth taking because it was unlikely anyone would notice.   I knew I had no intention of returning it to my young cousin unless I had to.   On the return charabanc journey to The Jolly Farmers I pretended to be asleep whilst Aunt Mag berated Ann for her carelessness and said that would be the last time she would get a programme and not to expect one at the Pantomime in January.   My mother observed to Old Nan that it was easy come easy go with that child and no mistake and she was never going to learn the value of money if Mag had her way. 

I produced the programme at school a few days later  and the other children were interested because at that stage apart from me, only Peter Jackson had been to the circus and that one was called Chipperfields he told us.   However, when I told Jacqueline Haskell and Betty Haddon at playtime that one of my uncles owned the circus and just as soon as I was old enough I was going to leave home and work for him they simply didn’t believe me and threatened to tell Mr Clarke that I was a liar.   When I unwisely added that in fact one of the girls astride an elephant on the front cover of the programme was me because I was already in part time training they just laughed and I wished I hadn’t said it.    I kept the programme at home under my mattress for a long time because I quite intended to run away to join a circus just as soon as the opportunity presented itself.   It never did though.