Wet Magic

“Never mind,” they told each other – and turned to the sideshows. These were all of one character – the arrangement by which you throw something or roll something at something else, and if you hit the something you get a prize – the sort of prize that is sold in Houndsditch at ninepence a gross.

Most of these arrangements are so ordered that to get a prize is impossible. For instance, a peculiarly offensive row of masks with open mouths in which pipes are set up. In the golden days of long ago if you hit a pipe it broke – and you got a “prize” worth – I can’t do sums – put it briefly at the hundred and forty-fourth part of ninepence. But the children found that when their wooden ball struck the pipe it didn’t break. They wondered why! Then, looking more closely, they saw that the pipes were not of clay, but of painted wood. They could never be broken – and the whole thing was a cruel mockery of hope.

The coconut-shy was not what it used to be either. Once one threw sticks, three shies a penny. Now it is a penny a shy, with light wooden balls. You can win a coconut if you happen to hit one that is not glued onto its support. If you really wish to win one of these unkindly fruits it is well to stand and watch a little and not to aim at those coconuts which, when they are hit, fail to fall off the sticks. Are they glued on? One hopes not. But if they are, who can wonder or reprove? It is hard to get a living, anyhow.

There was one thing, though, that roused the children’s resentment – chiefly, I think, because its owners were clean and did not look half-starved, so there was no barrier of pity between them and dislike – a sort of round table sloping up to its center. On this small objects were arranged. For a penny you received two hoops. If you could throw a hoop over an object that object was yours. None of the rustic visitors to the fair could, it seemed, or cared to. It did not look difficult, however. Nor was it. At the first shot a tiny candlestick was encircled. Between pride and shame Mavis held out a hand.

“Hard luck,” said one of the two young women, too clean to be pitied. “Has to go flat on – see?”

Francis tried again. This time the ring encircled a matchbox, “flat on.”

“Hard luck,” said the lady again.

“What’s the matter now?” the children asked, baffled.

“Hoop has to be red side up,” said she. So she scored. Now they went to the other side and had another penn’orth of hoops from the other too clean young woman. And the same thing happened. Only on the second winning she said:

“Hard luck. Hoops have to be blue side up.”

It was Bernard’s blood that was up. He determined to clear the board.

“Blue side up, is it,” he said sternly, and took another penn’orth. This time he brought down a tin pin tray and a little box which, I hope, contained something. The girl hesitated and then handed over the prizes. “Another penn’orth of hoops,” said Bernard, warming to the work.

“Hard luck,” said she. “We don’t give more than two penn’orth to any one party.”

The prizes were not the kind of things you care to keep, even as trophies of victory – especially when you have before you the business of rescuing a Mermaid. The children gave their prizes to a small female bystander and went to the shooting gallery. That, at least, could have no nonsense about it. If you aimed at a bottle and hit it it would break. No sordid self-seeking custodian could rob you of the pleasant tinkling of the broken bottle. And even with a poor weapon it is not impossible to aim at a bottle and hit it. This is true – but at the shooting gallery the trouble was not to hit the bottles. There were so many of them and they were so near. The children got thirteen tinkling smashes for their fourteen shots. The bottles were hung fifteen feet away instead of thirty. Why? Space is not valuable at the fair – can it be that the people of Sussex are such poor shots that thirty feet is to them a prohibitive distance?

They did not throw for coconuts, nor did they ride on the little horses or pull themselves to dizzy heights in the swings. There was no heart left in them for such adventures – and besides everyone in the fair, saving themselves and the small female bystander and the hoop girls, was dirtier than you would believe possible. I suppose Beachfield has a water supply. But you would have doubted it if you had been at the fair. They heard no laughter, no gay talk, no hearty give-and-take of holiday jests. A dull heavy silence brooded over the place, and you could hear that silence under the shallow insincere gaiety of the steam roundabout.

Laughter and song, music and good-fellowship, dancing and innocent revelry, there were none of these at Beachfield Fair. For music there was the steam roundabout’s echoes of the sordid musical comedy of the year before the year before last – laughter there was not – nor revelry – only the dirty guardians of the machines for getting your pennies stood gloomily huddled, and a few groups of dejected girls and little boys shivered in the cold wind that had come up with the sunset. In that wind, too, danced the dust, the straw, the newspaper and the chocolate wrappers. The only dancing there was. The big tent that held the circus was at the top of the ground, and the people who were busy among the ropes and pegs and between the bright vans resting on their shafts seemed gayer and cleaner than the people who kept the little arrangements for people not to win prizes at. And now the circus at last was opened; the flap of the tent was pinned back, and a gypsy-looking woman, with oily black ringlets and eyes like bright black beads, came out at the side to take the money of those who wished to see the circus. People were now strolling toward it in twos and threes, and of these our four were the very first, and the gypsy woman took four warm sixpences from their four hands.

“Walk in, walk in, my little dears, and see the white elephant,” said a stout, black-mustached man in evening dress – greenish it was and shiny about the seams. He flourished a long whip as he spoke, and the children stopped, although they had paid their sixpences, to hear what they were to see when they did walk in. “The white elephant – tail, trunk, and tusks all complete, sixpence only. See the Back Try A or Camels, or Ships of the Arabs – heavy drinker when he gets the chance – total abstainer while crossing the desert. Walk up, walk up. See the Trained Wolves and Wolverines in their great National Dance with the flags of all countries. Walk up, walk up, walk up. See the Educated Seals and the Unique Lotus of the Heast in her famous bare-backed act, riding three horses at once, the wonder and envy of royalty. Walk up and see the very table Mermaid caught on your own coast only yesterday as ever was.”

“Thank you,” said Francis, “I think we will.” And the four went through the opened canvas into the pleasant yellow dusty twilight which was the inside of a squarish sort of tent, with an opening at the end, and through that opening you could see the sawdust-covered ring of the circus and benches all around it, and two men just finishing covering the front benches with red cotton strips.

“Where’s the Mermaid?” Mavis asked a little boy in tights and a spangled cap.

“In there,” he said, pointing to a little canvas door at the side of the squarish tent. “I don’t advise you to touch her, though. Spiteful, she is. Lashes out with her tail – splashed old Mother Lee all over water she did – an’ dangerous too: our Bill ’e got ’is bone set out in his wrist a-trying to hold on to her. An’ it’s thruppence extry to see her close.”

There are times, as we all know, when threepence extra is a baffling obstacle – a cruel barrier to desire, but this was not, fortunately, such a moment. The children had plenty of money, because Mother had given them two half-crowns between them to spend as they liked.

“Even then,” said Bernard, in allusion to the threepence extra, “we shall have two bob left.”

So Mavis, who was treasurer, paid over the extra threepences to a girl with hair as fair and lank as hemp, and a face as brown and round as a tea cake, who sat on a kitchen chair by the Mermaid door. Then one by one they went in through the narrow opening, and at last there they were alone in the little canvas room with a tank in it that held – well, there was a large label, evidently written in a hurry, for the letters were badly made and arranged quite crookedly, and this label declared:

REAL LIVE MERMAID

SAID TO BE FABULUS, BUT NOW TRUE

CAUGHT HERE

PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH

DANGEROUS

The little Spangled Boy had followed them in and pointed to the last word.

“What I tell you?” he asked proudly.

The children looked at each other. Nothing could be done with this witness at hand. At least…

“Perhaps if it’s going to be magic,” Mavis whispered to Francis, “outsiders wouldn’t notice. They don’t sometimes – I believe. Suppose you just said a bit of ‘Sabrina’ to start the magic.”

“Wouldn’t be safe,” Francis returned in the same low tones. “Suppose he wasn’t an outsider, and did notice.”

So there they stood helpless. What the label was hung on was a large zinc tank – the kind that they have at the tops of houses for the water supply – you must have seen one yourself often when the pipes burst in frosty weather, and your father goes up into the roof of the house with a candle and pail, and the water drips through the ceilings and the plumber is sent for, and comes when it suits him. The tank was full of water and at the bottom of it could be seen a mass of something dark that looked as if it were partly browny-green fish and partly greeny-brown seaweed.

“Sabrina fair,” Francis suddenly whispered, “send him away.”

And immediately a voice from outside called “Rube – Reuben – drat the boy, where’s he got to?” – and the little spangled intruder had to go.

“There, now,” said Mavis, “if that isn’t magic!” Perhaps it was, but still the dark fish-and-seaweed heap in the tank had not stirred. “Say it all through,” said Mavis.

“Yes, do,” said Bernard, “then we shall know for certain whether it’s a seal or not.”

So once again —

“‘Sabrina fair,
Listen where thou art sitting,
Under the glassie, cool, translucent wave,’”

He got no further. There was a heaving and stirring of the seaweed and fish tail, something gleamed white, through the brown something white parted the seaweed, two white hands parted it, and a face came to the surface of the rather dirty water and – there was no doubt about it – spoke.

“‘Translucent wave,’indeed!” was what the face said. “I wonder you’re not ashamed to speak the invocation over a miserable cistern like this. What do you want?”

Brown hair and seaweed still veiled most of the face, but all the children, who, after their first start back had pressed close to the tank again, could see that the face looked exceedingly cross.

“We want,” said Francis in a voice that would tremble though he told himself again and again that he was not a baby and wasn’t going to behave like one – “we want to help you.”