Chapter 2

The Hasebury Road

For the buzzard scouting the air currents over the Radway ridge, the sight below on the Hasebury Road was something not seen before. A convoy of four steam traction engines, belching smoke with their efforts to climb the hill, was being driven along the road towards Hasebury. Caravans and trucks were coupled behind each engine. The whole road train, over 100 yards long, moved forward slowly at little more than walking pace but relentlessly.

The convoy breasted the top of the hill. The hard-working beat of the steam engines eased. In the van towed by the third engine, James Hinter, leant forward as far as the chain from his collar to the back of his cage would allow. By peering out through the vents in the side of the van, he could just see the Warwickshire Plain stretched out before him; a patchwork of fields and woodlands, criss-crossed by winding lanes. Apart from the ruler-straight scar of the London to Birmingham Railway testifying to the modern era of steam locomotion it was a scene that Anne Shakespeare might have used as a backdrop to one of her plays. As the sound of the engines eased, James heard alarm cries from birds as the vehicles passed by, disturbing their roosting, and then a curious clattering noise which he finally realised was the sound of a hill-top semaphore messaging tower.

The traction engines had pulled steadily up the slope. Now the convoy’s destination could be seen under the combination of a pall of smoke from the nearby towns and factories and the lowering clouds of a threatening thunderstorm. James, sensing that the journey, and his confinement, was coming to its end, sat back on the floor of his cage.

The sun glinted off the words “Morgan le Fay” on the polished brass of the nameplate of the first engine. In the driving cab, Jane Corby pushed the goggles she wore to guard against sparks from the engine up from her eyes. She pointed towards a church spire not far ahead. “That’s our stop tonight - Hasebury Under Whittonbank,” she announced to Allison, her stoker and co-driver.

“I’ll tell them,” Allison said and stepped out of the cab, edging her way back around the traction engine’s coal bunker, swinging from one of the barley-sugar twist brass pillars that held up the engine’s canopy. Jane watched her go – she was as impressed by her agility as by her strength with the shovel. Allison sprang across the coupling to the van that their engine was pulling, stood on the van’s balcony and tapped on the engraved glass window of the caravan. The smiling face of a middle-aged woman appeared from behind velvet drapes. She wore a Chinese silk dressing gown and her hair was piled up on her head and wrapped in a turban. “Hasebury is in sight, Miss Adelaide,” she announced.

“Thank you, Allison,” the woman responded with a smile. Adelaide was pleased. All was going to time. They would be able to give the gimps a chance to get out of their cages soon. She returned to the desk that was set up at one end of her caravan and opened a green leather bound ledger. She looked down the list of names and across at the list of exercises that the Gimps had demonstrated their capabilities in. She was pleased with the current troupe. Their dedication to their art and the skills they could show were a credit to their caste.

The engine began to follow the downward slope from the Radway ridge. The Morgan Le Fay and its caravan was followed by the rest of the convoy. The journey down was almost as slow as the ascent; the engines braking to avoid running away and with drag brakes dropped from the vans so that they would not try to overtake the engines. In his cage, James felt every bump and rut in the poorly made-up road.

Eventually the convoy came to halt on the edge of a small green between Hasebury church, the village hall and the local public house. Jane pointed to the poster on the old oak tree at one corner of the green. “At least we’re expected!

“For Two Nights Only,” the poster announced in large colourful lettering with the following two days’ dates, “On Hasebury Green by kind permission of the Village Council and Lady Henderby: Mistress Adelaide’s Travelling Gimp Circus.”

The circus was well known. Travelling shows of all kinds were a great tradition in the countryside but this had its own, very specific reputation. Without animal acts or clowns (Adelaide secretly felt that they were disturbing and unnatural); without a freak show or other side shows, without high wire or trapeze acts; the Circus existed purely to display the skills and capabilities of the Gimps.

With a practised routine, the drivers positioned their trailers. Miss Adelaide’s van was parked to one side. The second trailer and its accompanying caravan, less ornate than Miss Adelaide’s, was manoeuvred into the middle of the green and the third and fourth parked alongside. The four engines, “Morgan Le Fay”, “Lady Macbeth”, “Clytemnestra” and “Lizzie Borden” were lined up next to each other. The green became a small village within the village.

The arrival of the convoy was as much an event for the local people as the circus itself. It was a farming community with little for the way of entertainment save the village cricket and soccer teams and a social life that centred around the pub. The men of the village were still hard at work on the farms but within minutes a small crowd of women was gathering, watching as the locomotive drivers opened the doors on the side of the third trailer. As the doors were folded back, the watching crowd caught their first glimpse of Mistress Adelaide’s performing Gimps, peering out of their small cages, blinking in the late afternoon light.

From the second caravan, a woman clad in a long black riding habit, with a black top hat and veil, climbed down. She strode purposefully across to the Gimp cages and freed four of the occupants, waving them across to the second trailer, under the threat of a long riding whip.

Jane Corby and Allison leaned back against their engine, resting after their day’s efforts. They were joined by the crew of the other traction engines; all eight girls in their blue overalls, sweat-streaked and coal-dirty from their journey. Allison took a colourful, decorated enamel jug from a shelf in the cab of her locomotive and filled it with boiling water from a brightly polished brass tap on the side of the locomotive’s boiler. “Tea?” she suggested. Each of the girls gratefully filled a mug with the refreshing brew, keen to take the taste of coal dust from their throats.