Love, Let Me Not Hunger by Paul Gallico Read Free Book Online Page A

rain the first three weeks we’re out. Mud, mud, mud! Up to your arse in mud. We’ll pull down in mud. Build up in mud. Cold food or no food. Little sleep or no sleep. Wet clothes, wet blankets. Get the show into the ring. Get the show on the road.” And he went on for a good deal more talking about king poles and sidewalls, one- and two-polers and Continental seating, and the hell it all could give one, and a lot of circus jargon about things that Rose did not understand at all. He finished with, “It’s a hard life and sometimes a rotten one. But when the sun shines and you get a packer of a house it ain’t so bad.” Then, looking heavily across at her, he asked, “Want to go along?”
    Rose watched him for a moment to see if he had any more to say or conditions to make, but he hadn’t. She replied, “Yes.”
    He said, “Okay. Come to bed then. We start early in the morning.”

C H A P T E R

4
    T he Walters family was scandalised by the advent of Williams and his girl and enjoyed every minute of it, Ma Walters and the girls in particular, since it was a continuing circumstance and therefore a perpetual affront to them.
    “Flaunting herself,” was the phrase Ma Walters used most frequently. “The dirty little gutter slut. Dirt, that’s what she is. Not good enough to spit on. And as for him, pushing his harlot in the face of respectable people! If Sam Marvel doesn’t have a word with him, then you ought to, Harry Walters.”
    Walters replied, “Oh, shut up, Ma. You don’t have to associate with her.” He agreed with her basically on the subject of Jackdaw Williams bringing his whore along to travel with them—whore was Harry Walters’ favourite word in the circumstances, and he had a way of saying it which sounded almost as though he savoured it—but he was also on the alert to defend himself against having to take any action. Ma was always at him “to be having a word” with someone.
    Harry Walters was a harsh and unequivocable tyrant to his own family, but he was a peaceable fellow and not too courageous where outsiders were concerned and a great avoider of trouble.
    “Associate with her!” Ma Walters shouted. “Don’t you ever let me hear you say anything like that again. Especially in front of the children!”
    The two girls were exhilarated by the situation, though for different reasons. Angela, the elder, was able to enjoy with greater intensity her virginity—technically, that is to say, since the strenuousness of her profession had long since destroyed the fact—her virtue and her social standing.
    Angela made up well in spangles and under the lights, and was an accomplished and exquisite rider, but out of the ring one saw that she had inherited some of her fathers thin angularity and bitterness of mouth, the corners of which were turned perpetually downwards. At twenty-two, no one had yet attempted to assail her virginity. She was good, pure, stainless, righteous, and the seal upon it was Rose wallowing in an unmarried bed with a dirty and lecherous old clown.
    Lilian, who was seventeen and had inherited her mothers looks—for Ma Walters had been a handsome woman before obesity overtook her—was enthralled by the wickedness of it all, but particularly by her nearness to it. The excitement consisted of having the horrible example right there before her eyes, and when the thrilling words “harlot,” “whore,” “slut,” “strumpet,” and “tart” were used, one only had to nip around the corner to where Jackdaw Williams’ living wagon was parked to take a snoop in through the open back door or the window to see what one was like.
    True, upon occasions when Lilian had been able to carry out such investigations without attracting the attention of her family, the fallen woman had been engaged apparently in exactly the same pursuits as she herself or sister or mother, namely sweeping out the van, or hanging up laundry to dry, or doing some kind of work about the quarters.