The Burry Man’s Day

Chapter Two

It did indeed. One could not help thinking that the various reverends were wasting their time rather, pushing Temperance, in a town where most of the inhabitants who did not fish or farm or shop-keep worked for the whisky distiller who had an enormous bottling hall and bonded store a stone’s throw up the hill from the High Street. From what I understood, moreover, since the Ferry Fair day was a holiday, many of the workers would be quite a bit more sober this day than most others, it being their practice not to filch the whisky in bottles or flasks but simply to glug it down during their shift, then stagger home and sleep it off. As well as ‘the bottling’, of course, there was the usual, more than generous, quota of pubs. A town the size of South Queensferry in Wiltshire, say, would boast a coaching inn and perhaps a backstreet beer shop, but here there were upwards of a dozen separate establishments selling the demon drink, from the Hawes Inn at the top, drawing its respectability from History and Literature and its trade from the ferryboat trippers come to look at the bridge, all the way to the drinking shops such as ‘Broon’s Bar’ at the bottom. The even less salubrious-sounding ‘Hole i’ the Wa’’ had recently fallen down, suggesting that its name perhaps had referred to its architecture as much as its social standing.

Cadwallader regaled us with all of this as we motored into town the next morning, and seemed heartily in favour both of the distillery men topping themselves up as they worked and of the ratio of beer pumps to head of population.

‘Because when you’ve just been through what we’ve just been through…’ he said grimly.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Buttercup. ‘I thought Prohibition was rather fun. You didn’t have to worry too much at home so long as you chose your servants carefully, and the speakeasies were really quite jolly.’

Cadwallader shook his head at her as he stopped to let a crowd of tattered little children cross the road at Dalmeny village.

‘For God’s sake, Freddy, don’t start singing the praises of speakeasies in front of anyone today, will you?’ he said, waving and tooting at the children as we started up again. ‘Off to see the Burry Man?’ he called.

‘It’s hardly likely to come up in conversation,’ said Buttercup. ‘I must say, though, gangsters are much better value at a party than our new neighbours showed themselves to be last night, aren’t they, Cad?’

Cadwallader tried to laugh this off as ‘Freddy’s nonsense’ and although she protested – ‘Well, what would you call him, darling? He always brings a case of gin and one never sees him without those two boys who look like boxers!’ – Daisy and I thought it best to feign deafness.

Within minutes, we arrived at the parking yard of the garage by the Hawes and stepped down. It was a fine morning, a clear sky and just the merest flutter of a breeze from the river and Daisy, Buttercup and I debated together whether to take our little coats and our sun parasols, or both, or neither.

‘Only I do hate putting on a coat and crumpling my frock sleeves then taking it off later when it’s hot,’ said Daisy. ‘I’d rather feel cold until this afternoon and keep my pleats crisp.’

‘Come on, come on,’ said Cadwallader who was holding open the gate for us. ‘Good grief, think about poor Robert Dudgeon, stumping around covered in burrs all day. Stop fussing.’

‘Let’s leave the coats but take the -’ Buttercup began, but broke off at an ostentatious sigh from the gate. She blew a kiss at Cadwallader in passing.

There were a few knots of people already on their way along the road, and there was a definite sense of anticipation about their hurry as well as high spirits. Somewhere ahead of us a clock tower sounded a single note.

‘Quarter to,’ said an old woman, marching along with a giggling grandchild (I guessed) held firmly by the arm, and she quickened her step.

From the Hawes around the sweep of the river there is a shingly beach on one side, separated from the road by the tidewall, and a pleasant wooded bank opposite with just a few prosperous-looking villas. The road itself is broad and even, and I began to wonder why we could not have ridden on in the car, but then all of a sudden one turns an awkward corner and finds oneself right in the middle of a rather quaint little town, with higgledy-piggledy shops and houses jutting out into one’s path, as though the river had washed them up the shore a bit now and then over the years. Across the road, there were some ancient buildings, square and solid, and in between them the town had grown in the most ingenious way: above us, up smart sets of steps, broad walkways led to some really rather grand merchants’ houses, while below, little shops had been tucked in underneath. I had never cared for the vertical ordering of the social classes one sees in Edinburgh, where the rich sit up-top hogging the light and simply pour their potato water (and worse) down on the heads of the poor below, but South Queensferry’s terraces were as pleasing to the eye in their nattiness as collectors’ cabinets or dolls’ houses can be, and I daresay if the plumbing were all that one could wish for, one could live and work above or below in perfect comfort.

The crowds grew thicker as we made our way along beneath another terrace, past the bank and the butchers, towards the Rosebery Hall, where quite a hundred people were gathered laughing together and humming with interest. It was mostly women, old men and children – since all others were at work – and quite a few of the elders were bent double exhorting their young charges to bravery.

‘What are you to say, Isa?’ asked one young woman whose daughter was wiping her grubby face against her mother’s pinny and threatening to weep.

‘I don’t like it,’ said Isa, pushing out her lip

‘Och wheesht,’ her mother replied. ‘If you’re a good girl and say it I’ll give you a ha’penny to fling in his bucket and bring you luck.’

‘I don’t like it,’ said Isa again stoutly.

‘They’re always feart the first time,’ said an old man. He eased himself back against the wall between Isa’s mother and me and spat expressively then, taking a closer look at my party and regretting the spitting, I suppose, he made up for it by wiping his mouth politely on his sleeve and touching his cap brim.

Just then, the clock on the town hall tower struck nine and the door swung open. Two men emerged, coats and collars off, hats on the backs of their heads. They turned back to the dark doorway holding out their hands and slowly the Burry Man emerged. Little Isa screamed, I heard Cadwallader say ‘Good God!’ and a cry went up from the crowd:

‘Hip, hip, hooray!

Hip, hip, hooray!

Hip, hip, hooray,

It’s the Burry Man’s day!’

I do not know what I had been expecting, and I felt foolish for being surprised. After all, I had known that the Burry Man was a man covered in burrs and here was a man covered in burrs, but the effect was staggering. Perhaps I had not imagined it to be so utterly complete. Not only were his body, arms and legs encased, so that his limbs looked like prize-winning stalks of Brussels sprouts, but his whole face and head were covered too, with just the slightest shadows showing where one or two burrs had been missed to let him breathe and peer out. He must have had on some kind of very stout under-garment too, for, as Daisy had said, burdock seeds were torturous little things, and so his outline was bulbous, a huge lollipop head and the monstrously thick green body underneath, making one think of galls on tree trunks and lichen on barnacled rocks. Mouldy, encrusted, vegetative and obscene, when he walked it was the stuff of nightmares.

On the other hand, he wore a garland of flowers on his head over the burrs, and strange little nosegays sprouted from each shoulder and hip as though he were a prickly green teddy bear stuffed with flowers and they had burst out at the pressure points on his seams. Also, around his waist was a folded flag showing the head of the lion rampant, and more flowers poked out from the top of this.

His two chums guided him down the steps to the street, holding a hand each and steadying him with a grip under each arm as he swung his legs around stiffly and lumbered down, tread by tread. Isa continued to howl.

At last, arrived at street level and steadied between his helpers, he opened his hands – I saw with a shudder that his hands were bare and somehow this evidence that there really was a man in there was the chillingest of all – and into his grasp were thrust two huge bunches of flowers, staves of flowers really, like skiing poles. For a few minutes, as the crowd continued variously to chant or to snivel, he stood leaning on these staves waiting for his helpers to put their coats on and take up two buckets into which the gathered townspeople immediately began to throw pennies and sixpences. Then slowly, painfully slowly, the strange ensemble moved off, the Burry Man gripping the flower staves and swinging his stiff legs, the men holding him tight under one arm each and rattling the buckets in their other hands. Children broke free of their mothers and followed along, still chanting. Even Isa, brave now that she could no longer see him and not wanting to miss out on the fun, managed a tiny ‘Hup, hup, hooray’ and toddled off after them.

The grown-ups looked around smoothing their aprons and sniffing, seeming satisfied, as though an important task had been completed, then they began to chat to each other and drift away.

‘Where is he going?’ I asked the old man who had spat.

‘Right roond the toon,’ he said. ‘But they’re away to the Provost’s house for a nip first.’

‘Gosh, I’d have thought whisky was the last thing he’d want right at the start of the day,’ I said. The old man wheezed with laughter.

‘The start? He’ll have a nip in every pub in the toon and plenty more,’ he said. ‘It’s good luck and there’s many can spare a tot of something a gey sight easier than a ha’penny.’

‘Heavens,’ I said. ‘So he spends all day drinking whisky?’

‘Aye,’ said the old man and, winking at a couple of other worthies who were listening in, he added, ‘Goan then, ask me. I ken what you’re thinking.’

I flushed, for of course that was exactly what I was thinking. The old men roared with laughter and I joined in, helpless not to.

‘Aye, it takes stamina right enough, to be the Burry Man,’ said the one who stopped laughing first. ‘As for they twae holding him up…’

‘He could manage without them till dinnertime,’ said another, ‘But it’s well seen he’ll need them comin’ hame.’

I was quite happy chatting away to these new chums and might have followed them to a bench and shared a pipe with them, but Buttercup’s voice cut in.

‘Dandy! Dandy, darling, do come on. I must get the fancy dress prizes. What do you think – ribbons for the girls and marbles for the boys or a shilling for both?’

‘What about whisky?’ I said. And Buttercup frowned.

‘Please try to take it seriously, Dan. Her horrible Ladyship wouldn’t tell me what they had last year – cat! – and Mrs Meiklejohn the Provost’s wife can’t remember and I don’t want to ask someone else and look as though I don’t know what I’m doing, even though of course I don’t… come on, Dandy. We’ll see the Burry Man again later.’ For I was still gazing after him. ‘He’s simply all over the place all day.’

‘Do you know, Buttercup,’ I said, taking her arm as she made her way towards a draper’s shop across from the Rosebery Hall, ‘that poor man is plied with whisky all day long and he can’t go to the lavatory? It’s barbaric.’

‘The whole thing’s barbaric,’ said Daisy. ‘Much as one doesn’t want to agree with anything those mealy-mouthed ninnies said last night, it is too paganistic for words.’

‘Absolutely shivery-making,’ I said. ‘How they can laugh at the babies for screaming beats me. I nearly screamed myself.’

‘You’re not alone,’ said Buttercup. ‘Cad’s had to go off for a stiff drink. It gave him the absolute willies.’

‘I thought he was rather dashing,’ said Daisy.

‘If Frankenstein’s monster is dashing,’ I said.

‘Oh, but he is,’ said Daisy, quite serious. ‘The untamed beast and all that.’

‘For heaven’s sake, Daisy,’ said Buttercup. ‘Shut up about fancying an untamed beast, at least while we’re in the draper’s. My reputation won’t withstand it.’

We had a cosy time in the Co-operative choosing hair ribbons and bags of marbles, and the girl behind the desk was most obliging in the matter of letting us rootle through the contents of her till for the shiniest shillings and sixpences to hand out too. Then we turned down the lane to go to the harbour and look at the river, picking our way past several old women at the harbour head industriously gutting baskets of herring, slapping the fillets on to salt trays and flicking the noisome entrails back into the water for the gulls. As we passed, a woman in a sack apron emerged from the dark end of a lane with a bale of wet laundry done up in a sheet and began to hang it on ropes strung between poles along the harbour side. She said nothing but glared at the gulls and at the herring wives, who glared back and flicked with even less accuracy and attention than before. Between the smell, the flying innards and the flapping washing, then, the three of us decided against too long an interlude by the water’s edge and retreated in search of coffee.

‘I can understand her anguish,’ I said. ‘Gulls and laundry don’t mix at all, but really one has to give Friday to the fisher folk, doesn’t one? Monday’s the day for washing in all of Christendom. Even I know that.’

‘It’s the Ferry Fair,’ said Buttercup. ‘Mrs Meiklejohn was telling me yesterday that everyone washes their floors and windows and changes their linen for Ferry Fair day. They clean and tidy everything in sight…’

We were passing the police station now, and in front of it a constable was standing in his shirtsleeves at the noticeboard, with the glass front of it propped open, and was busily removing old notices and postcards.

‘Look,’ said Buttercup. ‘Even he’s tidying for the Fair.’

The constable caught her words and smiled at us, unoffended.

‘Got to, madam,’ he said. ‘There’ll be prize notices and winners’ announcements to go in tomorrow. Got to tidy out for the Fair.’ He returned to his task, murmuring to himself. ‘Lost property has to stay, opening hours has to stay…’ and Buttercup rolled her eyes.

‘They do it at New Year too, I believe,’ she said.

‘Oh yes,’ agreed Daisy, ‘they all do it at New Year. One can hardly hear the drunken revelry for the sound of scrubbing brushes at Hogmanay.’

‘And it’s a very good thing, when you consider it,’ I said. ‘Even the foulest sloven gives everything one good wash a year for luck – and two here in Queensferry, you say? I should think that’s a strong argument right there towards keeping the Fair going.’

With this we arrived at the tearooms. There were two side-by-side, which always amuses me. If a village has two establishments on different streets then each can pretend that the ladies choose the nearer, but when they sit nestled together as did Mitchell’s and Beveridge’s in Queensferry the workings of class structure and economics are laid bare. Mitchell’s had blue oilcloth table covers, a sweet counter and a handwritten card in the window saying ‘Cakes ½ price after four’. To Beveridge’s we turned, as a man.

‘Now the way I see it,’ said Buttercup, talking through a cigarette clamped between her scarlet lips, a habit I suppose she must have picked up in one of those speakeasies but which was drawing startled looks and rumblings from the other tables in Beveridge’s, ‘we can divide the events into the straightforward sporting contests where the winner is obvious and all we have to do is smile and hand over the loot – so that’s the races and the greasy pole, chiefly – and the much trickier judging competitions – the fancy dress and the bonny babies. Greasy pole and fancy dress are tonight – well, late this afternoon really, six until half past eight, such an awkward time.’

‘It’s after they’ve all had their teas,’ I said.

‘I suppose so,’ said Buttercup. ‘I must remember to tell Mrs Murdoch. Dinner at nine.’

‘We can fill up on toffee apples at the Fair,’ said Daisy.

‘If we can fit them in around our duties,’ said Buttercup. ‘I don’t want you trying to announce winners with your teeth glued together, Daisy darling.’

‘Ah yes, our duties,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ said Buttercup, all business. ‘Now, the way I see it, I’ve got to live here and you two don’t, so I’ll take care of the races and you two can pick your way through the diplomatic minefields and then hightail back to Perthshire and leave it all behind you. Agreed?’

‘Absolutely not -’ I began. But Daisy interrupted.

‘Done,’ she said. ‘Bags me the fancy dress.’

‘Now hold on -’ I said, beginning to splutter.

‘That’s that then,’ said Buttercup. ‘Dandy can do the bonny babies.’

‘But…’ I said, and gave up as Daisy and Buttercup melted into giggles.

‘Your face, Dan!’ said Daisy.

‘It’s easy,’ said Buttercup. ‘Just pick whichever one you think is prettiest.’

‘I’ve never seen a baby I thought was pretty,’ I said. ‘I won’t have to touch them, will I?’ But Daisy and Buttercup only laughed again.

‘Pick a nice big chubby one and you’ll be fine,’ said Buttercup. ‘Bonny is just a polite word for fat, I’ve always found.’

‘Well, all right,’ I said. ‘Bloated is possibly less revolting than wizened, I agree, but if we’re going down such an agricultural route, why not just weigh them?’

‘Think of me,’ said Daisy, ‘trying to choose between a pirate and a chimney sweep with doting mothers squaring up for a fight.’ She fell silent with a small clearing of her throat as a tidily dressed woman came towards our table.

‘Please excuse me interrupting,’ she said, speaking diffidently enough, but smiling with an air of confidence from out of her healthy, rather well-scrubbed face. ‘I couldn’t help overhearing you discussing the fancy dress.’

Quite. The Scots as a race, that is to say the working people and the bourgeoisie, whisper and mutter away to each other when out in public so that others speaking in perfectly normal voices seem to address the room.

Daisy was looking at the woman with a nicely judged mixture of surprise and disdain, just this side of rudeness, but Buttercup, all those years in America, I suppose, was smiling encouragingly at her, eyebrows raised in invitation to say more, and to be fair I daresay if the woman had indicated some interest or expertise in the bonny baby area I should have been drawing up another chair and ordering fresh coffee.

‘I’m Mrs Turnbull,’ she continued, then when that achieved nothing, she went on. ‘My husband is the new headmaster of the school.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Buttercup. ‘Well, how can we help you, Mrs Turnbull?’

‘Rather, how can I help you,’ the woman said, earnestly. ‘About the fancy dress, I wouldn’t have dreamt of it, if you hadn’t said yourself you were puzzled about how to decide.’ She turned her beaming smile on Daisy. ‘But since you did, I can venture to be bold… don’t you agree it’s best to reward the right spirit rather than anything else?’ Daisy looked blank. ‘From what my husband tells me, from what the children tell him, there will be a fair few ghosts and witches and monsters. And I don’t think… that is we don’t think, my husband and I… I mean to say I’m sure you agree that they shouldn’t be encouraged in such unwholesomeness. It was bad enough at Hallowe’en, but really in the middle of summer…’ She trailed off into silence, for Daisy was looking at her so coldly only the thickest-skinned could have continued.

‘Harmless fun,’ Daisy said.

‘Oh, but it isn’t,’ said Mrs Turnbull. ‘Far from it. You wouldn’t believe the stories they tell the teachers. Ghosts of soldiers, grey ladies, ghosts of miners, ghost ships in the Forth, headless horsemen…’

‘You’re right there, Mrs Turnbull,’ piped up a dainty-looking old lady at the next table, for of course the whole tearoom was in on it now. ‘Didn’t wee Mary Mott stay home from the Sunday school trip to Cramond for fear of the ghosts in the swamp.’

‘Swamp?’ said Mrs Turnbull, aghast to find out that the neighbourhood boasted such a thing.

‘Well, they call it a swamp,’ said the old lady, pink spots appearing in her cheeks. ‘The pond in the trees just past the Hawes pier.’

‘The pond where the babies were drowned?’ asked the waitress, pausing with a laden tray in the doorway on her way to the kitchen. ‘That is a swamp, or quicksand anyway, because Jessie Marshall’s old dog fell in and sank like a stone and he was a fine strong swimmer.’

‘Babies?’ mouthed Mrs Turnbull weakly and I too felt a little nonplussed at the way this had been dropped into the general chit-chat.

‘The gate-lodge keeper on the estate,’ said a willowy lady, wiping away cake crumbs and leaning forward to regale us, ‘or it might have been the ferryman, I forget, this was away way back, Jacobite times I think, but his wife used to drown her babies in the swamp. Nine or ten of them all told. And they rested peaceful as peaceful there until the bridge was built, but now when the night train goes over you can hear them crying and screaming and the woman’s voice going “ssh-ssh, ssh-ssh”.’

‘Ten little babies, just fancy,’ said the dainty old lady. ‘I’ve never heard about that before.’ She shook her head slowly, seeming to fix her gaze upon me as though my disparagement of infant bonniness put me in the same league as the ferryman’s wife.

We hurriedly settled our bill and reeled out into the street and the sunshine in relief, laughing almost.

‘One begins to see what they mean,’ I said.

‘Oh Dandy, really,’ said Daisy. ‘Such nonsense. The squeal of the tracks and the swish of the pistons, darling.’

‘Of course, of course,’ I said. ‘But the constant drip of morbidity does begin to press down.’

‘Well, here’s cheerfulness, then,’ said Buttercup, waving towards Cadwallader who was approaching us from across the street. ‘And listen!’ We listened. From the distance somewhere along the street came a faint ‘Hip, hip, hooray’.

‘Great!’ said Cadwallader, hearing it too. ‘It would be a shame not to see him again, since it’s only once a year, and I’m well buffered with Scotch now. Let’s go find him then head for home.’

We followed the sound of the cheers along the terraced High Street and finally caught a glimpse of the crowd of children in the distance almost where the buildings ran out and the sweep of shore began. The three principals – the Burry Man and his gentlemen-in-waiting – were just disappearing into a building and the little band of followers plumped down upon the kerbstones or hopped up on to windowsills to await their re-emergence. When we caught up, I just had time to read ‘Brown’s Bar’ above the door, before Cad swept it open and ushered us inside.

He seemed to think nothing of it and Buttercup, quite at home in the speakeasies of New York, could not be expected to demur, but Daisy and I caught each other’s eyes and mimed a little mild guilt, shocked at the sawdust under our feet and the air, sharp with whisky and fuggy with beer, as startling as smelling salts after the fresh breeze outside.

There were no customers in the bar as early as this on a working day and the two guides were nowhere to be seen either so the Burry Man, standing at the counter with his pale hands splayed on its surface, and the serving maid standing behind it, her head bowed, with a whisky bottle in one hand and a glass in the other, made a kind of tableau in the shaft of light from the open door. The effect lasted only a second before she looked up at us, slightly goggle-eyed.

‘Father!’ she shouted over her shoulder, in the querulous tone of one who has been shouting repeatedly and getting nowhere. ‘Customers!’

‘Not customers, really,’ said Cadwallader. ‘We only came in to hand over our coins and collect our luck.’ He dug in his pocket and drew out a handful of change. ‘Where are your buckets, Robert?’

The Burry Man said nothing and I saw a quick frown tug at the barmaid’s brow. Perhaps one was not supposed to address him or allude to his everyday identity like this. We all stood awkwardly for a moment, the girl not at all equal to the challenge of the three of us and the hulking green presence converging when she was holding the fort. She seemed to be looking anywhere but at the Burry Man.

‘The whisky’s for luck too,’ she said at last, in a trembling voice. ‘Only I’m waiting for my father.’ She stamped her foot hard on the floor and shouted even louder this time: ‘Father!’

Immediately there came a thumping and shuffling from below us somewhere. ‘Father’ was evidently in the cellar, and not alone. We heard the tread of footsteps ascending a creaking stairway behind the bar and then, like jacks in boxes, up popped the Burry Man’s helpers followed by a red-faced man in a chamois leather apron, with the same russet curls and round chin as the serving maid, only rougher and thirty years older.

‘Welcome, welcome, ladies and gents,’ said the publican. ‘Joey, have you not given the Burry Man his nip yet?’

‘I was waiting for you,’ said Joey, and she poured an enormous measure into the glass, added a drinking straw and set it on the counter while the two helpers picked up their buckets and stood smiling rather shiftily.

I lobbed in my half-crown and the others followed, Cadwallader’s shower of coins making a most impressive carillon. The Burry Man still stood with hands flat on the bar counter and made no move to pick up the glass before him. Although it was hard to tell, he seemed not even to be looking at it; his prickly green face with the shadows for eyes seemed pointed straight at Joey the serving maid.

‘Come on, come on,’ said the publican. ‘A nip for luck. Help him, Joey.’ Joey bit her lip and then nudged the glass towards the Burry Man’s hand, flinching as she brushed his fingers with her own.

‘Go on, girl, dinnae be soft,’ said the publican. ‘Help the man.’ He sounded amiable enough but there was something disquieting about his insistence in the face of the girl’s obvious reluctance, and the fidgety leering of the bucket carriers only made it worse. Joey gave her father a desperate glance then lifted the glass and guided the drinking straw towards the Burry Man’s mouth, finally looking at his face, into the gaps in the mask before his eyes. For a moment they were frozen there, a tableau once again, before her face blanched, she gave a tiny cry and the glass fell. Then she spun around and bolted through the door to the back while the three men watching let their laughter go at last, whooping.

‘She’s always been the same,’ her father said to us, chuckling and shaking his head in the direction Joey had fled. ‘Petrified of him.’

‘You’re a bad devil, Shinie,’ said one of the helpers.

‘Ach, it’s a bit of fun,’ said the other.

We could hear Joey’s voice from far away in the back: ‘Father, please. Please!’

The Burry Man, silent, pushed up and away from the bar, picked up his flower staves and gripped them tightly, the knuckles showing as white as clean bone, then he lumbered round to face the door again. Not wanting to get entangled and, on my part at any rate, rather sickened by the cruelty underlying the little joke, the four of us bumbled out ahead of him.

‘Hip, hip, hooray,’ sang the children outside, jumping to their feet as they saw him swaying in the doorway. He slowly got to his place at the head of the crowd and the children jostled into some kind of order behind him, then the whole caravan began to move again.

We watched for a minute or two and had just turned away to set off towards the parking yard when the door of the pub behind us swung open so violently it banged back off its hinges and Shinie the publican hurried out to speed after the procession, a brimming glass of whisky in his hand.

‘Ye’ve not had yer nip,’ he said, standing square in front of the Burry Man and barring his way. The Burry Man’s hands remained on his staves. Then the publican made as though to put the glass to the mouth space himself, but at that the Burry Man reared backwards away from it. For a long moment Shinie, breathing heavily, stood peering into the shadowy face, then he dashed the contents of the glass into the gutter with a contemptuous flick of his wrist and turned away.

‘How simply too torrid for words,’ said Buttercup once we were under way again.

‘Positively operatic,’ I agreed.

‘He’s an awkward customer, Dudgeon, isn’t he?’ said Cad. ‘I wouldn’t have dreamed it until last night and again just there… a very awkward customer indeed.’

‘Hmm,’ said Daisy. ‘Village feuds, village squabbles, you’ll learn to ignore it. And there are far more serious matters at hand.’ She faced Buttercup sternly. ‘You neglected to tell us, darling, that this shindig came in two parts. Races tonight and fancy dress tomorrow, and I for one have only one suitable hat with me.’

‘Gosh, me too,’ I said. ‘Heavens, I’ve only got one frock, I was going to wear lounging pyjamas tonight. What are we to do?’

Cadwallader tutted ostentatiously and strode ahead and we trailed after him plotting how to dole out Buttercup’s fox furs and sailor collars between the two of us to cover our shame.

Promptly at five minutes to six, we were once again puttering down the Hawes Brae, in convoy this time – Cad and Buttercup ahead, Daisy and I following in the Cowley – in case some of the party should tire before the others. I slowed to turn into Faichen’s parking yard, but Buttercup turned and kneeled on the seat of the car in front, waving and shouting over the sound of the engine.

‘Last chance,’ I heard her bellow. ‘Straight on.’ ‘What?’ shouted Daisy back at her, but Buttercup merely waggled her thumbs at us and plumped back down into her seat.

Obediently we kept going and at the Sealscraig corner, where we were forced by the crowds to stop for a moment, my high seat in the motor car afforded me a view over the cafe curtains of Brown’s Bar. I looked in, interested to see if Miss Brown had recovered her sangfroid. By now, capped heads two and three deep at the bar spoke to a busy afternoon’s trade, but behind the bar all was confusion. The shelves stood empty and the spirit bottles were crammed here and there around the till and the beer taps. Joey Brown was standing on a high stool in her stockinged feet, swabbing the painted mirror which backed the shelves, a bucket steaming at her elbow. I nudged Daisy.

‘More Ferry Fair cleaning,’ I said. ‘Hardly timely, with all those customers.’

‘Or perhaps since every last drop is going to be drunk, she might as well leave it at their elbows and get on with other things?’

As though to confirm Daisy’s view, the door swung open at that moment and a figure, glassily pale, half fell out into the street beside us. Just then, thankfully, the crowds ahead of us cleared and we moved off again, so were not forced to witness whatever the sudden fresh air would add to his plight.

This time we managed to get as far as the bank before the density of the crowd and the numbers of little children whizzing around like clockwork mice all over the road persuaded us to give up and get out.

‘Two minutes to six, you see,’ said Cadwallader. ‘We’ll just catch a last glimpse of the Burry Man if we hurry.’

‘Whoopee!’ said Daisy sarcastically under her breath, but I was eager. Pruriently, I wanted to see for myself if he was still standing so I caught her elbow and dragged her along to the Rosebery Hall.

‘Hip, hip, hooray!

Hip, hip, hooray!

Hip, hip, hooray,

It’s the Burry Man’s day!’

The chanting, rather ragged now, could be heard clearly ahead of us and there he was.

‘As six strikes he goes back inside – like a cuckoo,’ said Buttercup. ‘And once he’s gone the Fair begins.’

Naturally, the protagonist himself appeared quite unchanged – stiff, green, beflowered and terrifying – but the alteration in his two attendants was extreme. They were clearly very hot, sleeves rolled up despite the scratches they gathered on their forearms as a consequence, and they looked absolutely done to death. I had not taken to either fellow during the mean little trick on Miss Brown but now one felt some sympathy, as one always does for those native guides who followed intrepid Victorian botanists and whatnot, carrying all the gear and getting none of the praise.

The crowd was cheering the painfully slow progress of the three, clapping in time with each step up towards the door, and I was reminded, blasphemously I suppose, of the road to Calvary; there was something moving about witnessing the end of this long day, although it was too ludicrous to be noble exactly. Then, even as I thought this, it changed. All of a sudden, the Burry Man shook off his helpers, not brutally but very firmly, and broke into a stiff trot, mounting the last of the stairs alone and disappearing into the open doorway like a terrier into a rabbit hole. The two men, exhausted and seemingly astonished, looked at each other and shrugged, then they trailed after him wiping their heads with handkerchiefs and flexing their tired arms. The crowd divided itself between laughing applause and wondering whispers.

‘Does he always do that?’ I inquired of my neighbours at large. ‘It must be agony.’

‘He’s nivver done before,’ said a man beside me.

‘Och well,’ said another. ‘He must have been bursting for a – I mean, he can’t have been comfy.’

There was general laughter at this, and then came the sound of a handbell and the voice of the crier demanding the under-tens for the fancy dress and announcing that the greasy pole would commence at half past six sharp. The Fair had begun.

The stalls were set up around the Bellstane, the little square at the bottom of the steep hill along from the Rosebery Hall, and although they boasted only the very ordinary staples such as coconut shies, ices and pop-gun galleries there was something rather more exciting about all of these in the evening, in a street with windows thrown up all around and people hanging over the sills cat-calling to friends below. It was a long way from the vicarage lawns of my youth and, although there was nothing to put one’s finger on, it was faintly bawdy somehow.

I took a desultory look around the sideshows, then stood for a while on the terrace east of the Rosebery Hall to watch Daisy, with enormous satisfaction and a sweet smile for Mrs Turnbull, give first prize to a tot got up as Charlie Chaplin and second prize to a five-year-old Theda Bara style Cleopatra, who was practically naked. The local picture house clearly had a lot to answer for.

Presently, I began to sense another locus of noise and bustle somewhere behind me. People were funnelling into the mouth of a narrow lane giving on to the terrace and, making my way to the corner, I could see a steady trickle of others disappearing along one of the small side-streets which peeled off the steep street leading up the hill; clearly they were converging somewhere in the back lanes. Spying my expectorating chum of the morning as he passed I caught at his coat sleeve.

‘It’s yersel’,’ he cried in polite greeting and I was sure he had had a nip or two, for his old eyes were swimmier than they had been on our first meeting and his toothless grin was rather wet and shiny.

‘What’s going on up there?’ I asked him, pointing to the crowd, growing from a trickle to a flood now.

‘It’s the greasy pole,’ he said. ‘Come on with you, you’ll no want to miss that.’

‘No indeed.’ I had never seen a greasy pole competition before although I had often heard them described and I was sure neither Cad nor Buttercup would have seen enough to have tired of them, but I could not find either golden head amongst the crowd and since Daisy was busy on the town hall steps, trying to decide between three little pharaohs, and I was loath to miss my chance of a ringside seat, I hurried on alone.

The venue for the greasy pole seemed odd at first. Hill Square was a mean little opening between two closes with tenements all around, but it had the one redeeming feature of soft earth underfoot and, as I squinted up at the pole, I could see the point of that. It looked thirty feet high at least, a ship’s mast possibly, borrowed for the occasion, for it was polished quite smooth. Slippery enough at the best of times, I should have thought, even without the liberal coating of grease I could see glinting on its surface. At its summit two bulging lumps dangled and I asked someone standing beside me what they were.

‘A ham and a bag of flour, madam,’ I was told, and had it not been for that ‘madam’ I should have suspected the man of cheek. My face must have shown my puzzlement, for he chuckled.

‘The ham’s the prize,’ he said, ‘and the flour’s… you’ll see.’

Little boys were hurling themselves up a few feet and slithering back down again, chided by the grownups: ‘Come away now, the mess of you!’ but presently the first serious contender presented himself to clapping and jeers. He was a wiry youth dressed in very stout twill trousers, and made good progress to about halfway up before, for no obvious reason, he suddenly shot straight back to earth again and landed on his bottom grinning sheepishly to the roars of laughter from all around.

The next hopeful looked even less likely; he had huge hands to be sure but also a very round stomach and short little legs. The crowd began to laugh as soon as they saw him and sure enough he was hardly his own height from the ground when he let go. While yet another tried his luck, I drifted off into a daydream as I always do on these occasions. This daydream was of me, striding forward and launching myself at the pole. I tossed my head and laughed at those who would stop me, before hoisting myself effortlessly to the top and waving my hat in the air. Is it only me, I wonder, or does everyone do it? I know I have plunged (in my mind) into every circus, yacht race, steeplechase and opera I have ever seen, but imagine the shame if one ever admitted as much to a friend and got only cold uncomprehending stares in return. Besides, it was hard to decide what exactly the substance was which turned the pole greasy, but from the calls of ‘yeugh’ in the crowd, it seemed unlikely to be cold cream, and I shook the daydream away with a shudder.

Now there began some kind of wrangle between the officials and a wily-looking man who had fashioned a contrivance like cowboy’s chaps out of sacking and attached these on top of his trousers. The head-shaking and muttering went on and on, and the crowd was beginning to grow restive, when a smart clip-clopping drew my attention to the mouth of the close, and I saw a tiny cart pulled by an equally tiny pony draw up. One is used to various makeshift equipages but this really was the sweetest and oddest-looking little outfit I had come across, a sort of cross between a bath-tub and a perambulator with one seat for a driver in front and two back-to-back, facing out to each side, for a pair of passengers behind. I was so diverted by it that I did not trouble to wonder who was climbing down from the driving seat until a voice shouted from the crowd.

‘I thocht ye were away hame, Rubbert.’

Robert Dudgeon nodded vaguely, helping a woman I took to be his wife step down from the little cart and tying the pony’s rein to a gatepost.

‘There’s no telling him,’ called this Mrs Dudgeon. ‘You can try if you like, Greta, but there’s no telling him.’ She shook her head at her husband and seemed genuinely worried, although her words were light-hearted enough, or perhaps she was just cross with him. The woman standing at my elbow was certainly cross with her.

‘You wouldn’t believe the mess that bloomin’ pony left all over the green this afternoon, and would Chrissie Dudgeon shift herself away out of it? Would she not! She had to wait for Rubbert and take him straight home, she said, and yet here he is bold as brass at the greasy pole and the filthy beastie’ll be at it again.’

‘Ach, Myra, it’s good for yer rhubarb, you should be grateful.’

‘I’ll give ye rhubarb, ye wee so-and-so. The bairns have trekked it all up the stairs.’

‘It’s a very peculiar little cart, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘And such a minuscule pony. One can hardly believe it could pull them along.’

‘Made fae a shell hutch,’ said a man nearby, in an attempt at an explanation; an attempt which failed for me at least. ‘And they ponies are used wi’ lugging more than that in days gone by.’

‘And it’s on a fine rich diet,’ said Myra, still smarting. ‘You should see my stair runner. Ach, it’s worth it, though, I daresay, to see this.’

I was puzzled and frowned at her.

‘Rubbert has a right knack for the greasy pole,’ she explained. ‘Pit yer paper away, Tommy,’ she said to her husband. She was evidently one of those whose bad temper never quite dissolves but simply shifts to a different target as the mood takes her. ‘Would ye look at this man,’ she said, appealing to me. ‘He comes oot tae see a spectacle and stands readin’ the paper that he can see any nicht o’ the year.’

‘Wheesht yer moanin’,’ said Tommy. ‘A man can dream, can he no’?’ He nudged me and showed me the open page of his newspaper where there was a highly embellished advertising notice from a shipping line. ‘New Zealand,’ he said wistfully. ‘Steerage £18. Places still available.’ He sighed. ‘It leaves on Tuesday. I’ve got three days tae pack.’

I smiled at him while his wife scowled.

‘If ye’re waitin’ for me tae beg you tae stay,’ she said, ‘dinnae haud yer breath.’

‘Och, give it rest the pair of you,’ said a woman nearby, ‘and let’s enjoy this.’

Our friend with the cowboy chaps had been dismissed at last and Robert Dudgeon was walking forward. As he broke the front of the crowd a rustle of appreciative anticipation ran around the arena.

‘A man of many talents,’ I said, and when a small child beside me looked up and fixed me with one of those quelling stares that little children can, I explained: ‘That man is the Burry Man, you know, my dear.’

The child sniffed a superior sniff, and said: ‘No he’s not. The Burry Man’s all green. And he’s away on his ghostie pony back to his swamp till next year.’ The child’s mother gave her a clip on the neck for cheek, but the others – me included – smiled indulgently.

‘Wheesht, Molly.’

‘They should hold him back a wee bit and let some o’ they other clowns gie us a laugh first,’ someone said, watching Robert Dudgeon taking off his coat and handing it to his wife. ‘It’ll all be over too soon, else.’

‘I’m not so sure aboot that,’ said a voice behind me. ‘Rubbert doesn’t look himself tonight, and he must be fu’ after the day he’s had.’

‘Och but he’s fu’ every year when he climbs the pole,’ said the first woman. ‘I reckon it’s the drink that gives him his edge.’

If Robert Dudgeon was drunk, I thought, it was the drunkenness of one well used to the condition. His expression, granted, was rather owlish and his movements were slow and deliberate, but he did not sway or stumble as he handed his coat to his wife and turned his cap to the side. The crowd continued to clap and cheer, but he did not play up to them, neither smiling nor grimacing as he grasped the pole high above his head and heaved himself up. He clasped his legs around the pole and twisted his feet together neatly. Thus secured, he freed first one hand and then the other, wiped them on his shirt shoulders, leaving dark marks of oil there, and took a fresh hold.

‘Mair washin’ fur ye, Chrissie,’ shouted one of the onlookers and several people turned to smile at Mrs Dudgeon. She gave a small tight smile in return but did not take her eyes from her husband, now halfway to the top, still clamping his legs and wiping his hands, pulling himself steadily upwards. Her tense concentration seemed quite at odds with the laughs and jokes of the crowd and I wondered for a moment whence arose this trait I was beginning to recognize in Queensferry to find portents in the blameless and shadows in the sunshine. Then a louder than ever whoop from the crowd drew my attention back to Robert Dudgeon.

He was nearing the top now, and it was quite dizzy-making to look at him. One last clamp with his legs, one last heave with his arms and he was there. He tugged a string on the bag of flour and it burst out in a cloud, covering his greasy clothes and drifting down over the onlookers, who stopped their clapping to swat it away.

‘Fling down the ham, Rubbert,’ voices cried. ‘Fling it down and I’ll catch it.’

But Robert Dudgeon made no move to touch the other parcel. He clung to the pole motionless for a long half minute and then began slowly to slide.

‘Ye’ve forgot yer -’ a woman in the crowd called with a cackling laugh, but she broke off as Robert Dudgeon slithered down faster and faster. He hit the ground with a thump, fell backwards, arms spread out, legs still twined around the base of the pole, and lay quite still.

For a moment there was silence, then a few awkward giggles and then, all at once, action. People rushed forward, one of them calling for a doctor. Others began to shoo off the children, still others – women – gathered around Mrs Dudgeon and bore her away.

It was only when I found myself kneeling beside him that I realized I was one of the ones who had surged forward to help. His face was dark and perspiration still ran from his brow, mingling with smears of oil and caked-in patches of flour. I could still smell the fairground smell of his breath, the sweet toffee apples he had been eating. Heat still wafted from him. His feet were still loosening their grip on the pole, his boots creaking. His half-open eyes, though, and his wide open mouth told the same tale as his chest, still as a stone. He was dead.