The Rose Carousel

  The Rose Carousel

  By June Gadsby

  Digital ISBNs

  EPUB 978-1-77362-959-9

  Kindle 978-1-77299-234-2

  Amazon Print ISBN 978-1-77299-235-9

  Copyright 2016 June Gadsby

  Cover Art by Michelle Lee

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  Chapter One

  “Can you do that standing on your hands?”

  Sally gulped and tried not to look down at the tiny boy who was tugging at her baggy pants around knee-level. She knew if she took her attention away from the three silver balls she was juggling in the air, she would lose control. And she had only just got the hang of it after hours of practice.

  “Go away!” she hissed out of the corner of her mouth, glad her smile was painted and fixed in place by artificial means, because her real smile was beginning to droop.

  “You’re not very funny,” the tousle-haired midget said in a loud voice as he fingered one of her bright yellow pompons. “Are you a real clown?”

  Sally hesitated just a fraction of a second and that was enough. Down came the balls, one of them hitting her between the eyes and making her see stars. She had to bluff it out and pretended that dropping the balls was all in the act, which sent the other children into hysterics. They all scattered, running after the balls and bringing them back to her in their sticky, eager little hands.

  “Urgh!” she exclaimed as something fruit-smelling and toffee-like transferred itself to her fingers. Thank goodness she was wearing white cotton gloves, she thought, though heaven knows they’d probably never come clean again.

  Oh, well, it couldn’t go on forever, this business of being a clown. Either Rob would recover from his sprained ankle soon or they would have to hire someone else from the local theatrical agency. It was hardly fitting for the owner of The Rose Carousel to be cavorting in the park dressed as Jojo the Clown.

  Sally did a few, clumsy dance steps, glad that Jojo was not known for being a latter day Fred Astaire, because she was certainly no Ginger Rogers. Dancing at discos was fine, and she could even manage some basic modern ballroom – but combining dancing to athletic tumbling was a little beyond her. Well, more than a little, actually.

  “Now then, children!” It was time to go into her last daily spiel, which she always looked forward to because it meant she was nearly finished and she could stop being JoJo and go back to being Sally Rose. “Do you know what JoJo has here in his bag?”

  “You’re not Jojo! You’re a girl!” The midget was back again, his pugnacious head thrust forward, eyes challenging.

  Sally growled a little under her breath, but patted his head gently anyway and turned her attention to the crowds gathering around her.

  Children and parents moved in close to watch her unearth the tiny miniature carousel that she placed on the palm of one hand. There was a buzz of oohs and ahs as she pointed to it and addressed them in as sing-song voice as she could manage. Rob was better at it. He literally sang the words to ‘The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze’. Even behind her clown disguise, Sally was too shy to sing in public.

  “The Rose Carousel,

  You all know it well.

  The music is magic,

  It casts a spell.

  Come follow me, follow me

  Quick as you can,

  I’m Jojo the clown,

  The Rose Carousel man.”

  Then, with a twist of the intricately worked canopy on the carousel, she started the music box playing. More sighs and exclamations from the crowd of onlookers. With the music still playing, Sally handed out advertising flyers as she walked as jauntily as her tired legs would carry her, back to the shop she had made a household name in Harrogate.

  She felt like the Pied Piper of Hamlyn as she looked briefly over her shoulder, happy to see the streams of children following her, tugging eagerly at their parents, impatient to get to the real thing.

  It was as she headed for the main park gates that she saw him. So, he had turned up again, she thought with a little lurch of her stomach. That made five days in a row now. She saw him first on Tuesday. Today was Saturday.

  As usual, he was keeping a low profile, trying to look casual and inconspicuous. That was a laugh, Sally thought. He was well over six feet tall and straight out of a Mills & Book romance with those rugged dark features. There was something slightly foreign about him, too. Italian, maybe. A little swarthy, but his features were classic with a touch of refinement.

  Sally shrugged, dismissing him from her mind. She led her entourage out of the park and carefully across the road to where her shop, The Rose Carousel nestled brightly between banks and solicitor’s chambers. The veritable rose between thorns.

  The Rose Carousel was more than just a toy shop. It was a family centre which had established itself in a very short period of time as a sort of mini-paradise for children and adults alike. It had done so remarkably well, Sally had this year introduced a small, cosy coffee-bar in one corner, and turned the back of the premises, which were quite extensive, into a crèche with a garden play area where children could be left safely while their mothers had a stress-free day shopping.

  With a small, but highly trained staff, The Rose Carousel often seemed to Sally like one big happy extended family. The idea made her feel good and warm inside. She had never really known her family. Certainly not her parents, who had been killed in a pile-up on the A1 when she was a baby.

  Sally had been raised by her great-aunt, but now she was dead and all that was left in the way of relatives was her second cousin, Bella, who was fat, forty and fun to be with. Despite the difference in age, Sally being only twenty-eight, the two women got along famously. There wasn’t anyone Sally would rather spend time with.

  Unless he looked like that mysterious stranger in the park, but not quite so sinister, she mused as she entered the shop to a loud jangle of bells. There were more joyous shouts from the accompanying children as they scrambled for places on the grand carousel that took pride of place in the centre of the sales floor.

  It wasn’t, of course, a real, antique carousel, but Sally had got together with some pals from Art College and they had tarted up an old fairground carousel she’d managed to buy for a song. They had painted it white and gold and piped plaster garlands of roses all around it.

  A pal of Rob’s who was clever with musical instruments, had fixed it up with a sort of hurdy-gurdy affair that played the old traditional American fairground music. That got feet tapping and hands clapping from time to time.

  “All right, you guys?” Jojo stood at the centre of the Carousel with finger poised over the starter button. “You ready?”

  “Ye-es!” came the deafening response.

  Jojo, alias Sally, pressed the button and jumped off as the carousel started on its first round accompanied by the crescendo of happy music.

  “Phew!” Sally joined Bella behind the main counter and the two women leaned on elbows, side by side, watching the new influx of special afternoon customers. “Well, that’s it. Thank goodness we don’t open on Sundays.”

  “You’re doing a great job, Sal,” Bella grunted with a nod of her round head and a wobble of her double chin. Her large breasts came down and rested on the counter as if she was suddenly weary of carrying them around before her. “It’s been quite a week, hasn’t it?”

  Sally nodded wearily. “Mm. I suppose we shouldn’t complain, but when bu
siness gets this good I sometimes wonder if I’m in the right job.”

  “Maybe you should take up clowning as a career.”

  “Very funny, ha! I shall be more than glad when Rob gets himself back on the job. He’s a natural, whereas I have to work at it and acting the fool in public is not what I was put on this earth for.”

  “Go on with you, Sal. You love it, really! I’ve watched you around the kids. You simply lap it up.”

  Sally shook her head and there was a slight sadness in her eyes that her smile did not disguise. “Not really, Bella. I love children, but I sometimes wonder if I’m rubbing salt into old wounds by doing all this – you know – why a toy shop?”

  Bella had noticed the catch in Sally’s voice. She reached out and squeezed her hand and Sally squeezed back. “It still hurts, love, I know. Maybe it’ll always hurt, but honest, you bloom when you’re with children. It’s your vocation.”

  “I could have become a teacher.”

  “You could have become lots of things, but you opted for The Rose Carousel. It’s your dream, and – come on – don’t kid old Bella – you love it.”

  “Except when I feel tired and menaced.”

  “Tired I can understand, but what’s this ‘menaced’ bit?”

  Sally turned and now leaned backward against the counter, pulling off her strawberry toffee stained gloves and removing her false red nose which was pinching as painfully as the outsized black patent shoes she had strapped to her feet.

  “He was there again today, Bella.”

  “What? Your mysterious stalker?” Bella had had a daily report of the tall, dark stranger who lurked in the park when Sally – or Jojo – was performing.

  Sally nodded. “Well, he’s not a stalker, exactly. He just stands there and watches me and his eyes travel over the children all the time. It’s weird.”

  “Maybe he’s just a fellow who likes children. There are some of them who do, you know.”

  Sally knew her cousin was getting in a subtle dig, thinking of the two men in Sally’s life so far. Sally thought of them too, quite often, and the thought depressed her.

  The first had been when she was still at Art College. He was a good bit older than she was, good looking, lots of charisma, and great with his students. He had been great with Sally too, on a more personal level. They even got engaged.

  Then she discovered that he didn’t like children, wouldn’t father one to save his life. That was a blow to the twenty-year old Sally whose dream, old-fashioned though it sounded these days, was to get married and have a house-full of children that would know the joys of childhood. Childhood that she knew existed, but had never experienced because her aunt had been so strict and straight-laced and thought that childhood was something, you had to get over like a case of measles.

  The second man had swept her off her feet, mainly because she was very vulnerable after her broken engagement. He was divorced, had children with whom he was great. When Sally married him and immediately fell pregnant, much to her delight, he was furious. He had had his fill of babies and dirty nappies, thank you very much, so what was she going to do about this ‘disaster’?”

  After she left him she miscarried. It was Bella – good old Bella – who had rallied round and picked up the pieces, fitting them together again until Sally was once more whole.

  So, with money left her by her aunt, she opened The Rose Carousel and never looked back. She might get lonely from time to time, but she never hungered after marriage. After her past experiences, how could she trust any man? The children who came regularly into her emporium were family enough.

  “Sal!” Bella was digging her surreptitiously in the ribs through her blue, yellow and red satin costume. “Don’t look now, but I think your ‘lurker’ has just come into the shop.”

  Sally gave a quick glance over her shoulder. He was just closing the door, so his head was turned from her, but she couldn’t mistake that build. It was him all right. There wasn’t another man in Harrogate who looked like that and wore expensive suits and Armani shirts.

  She gasped and slid swiftly down to the floor behind the counter.

  “What are you doing down there?” Belle whispered and gave a nervous giggle as Sally started to inch her way on her knees towards the staff restroom at the back of the shop. “Come back, you fool! Oh – er – good afternoon, sir! What can I do for you?”

  “I’m looking for a clown who came in here,” a deep, dark brown voice came to Sally’s ears. A pleasant sound. American accent. “I believe he’s called Jojo and he works for you.”

  Sally froze, not daring to move a muscle. As long as Bella stayed where she was there was a chance that he would not see her crouching there on all fours.

  She groaned inwardly. If only she had been quicker and made it to the restroom. She could have changed and he would never have known who she was. Not that he would know anyway, because she had no intention of meeting him, either as Sally or as Jojo. There was something about him that scared her. Something that didn’t bear thinking about.

  “Yes,” Bella was blustering, probably waving her plump arms in the air the way she did when she was excited or nervous. “Yes, I suppose you could say that the clown works for us – he – er – oh! Excuse me, sir!”

  Sally was aware of Belle moving sideways like a crab, could hear the swish of her tights as her thighs brushed together. She held her breath until she thought she would go blue in the face, then opened her eyes to see a pair of elegant, highly polished shoes planted inches away from her nose.

  “Jojo, I presume,” the voice said and her eyes started the climb up the tremendous length of male legs with muscular thighs bulging through the fine material of his trousers.

  “Nice shoes!” she said, blushing scarlet beneath her make-up. She scrambled to her feet with difficulty, then almost fell over because her own outsize Jojo shoes had come adrift. A pair of large, strong hands grabbed her, steadied her, and remained clamped on her upper arms.

  “Really, sir!” Bella was trying to insert herself between them, but wasn’t being very effective for one reason or another. “If it’s something in the toy line you’re looking for, I’m sure I can help. Jojo is just our advertising clown – a – a gimmic, you might say. He – um – he brings the customers in…”

  “So I’ve noticed.”

  Without her elevated shoes and sagging inside her clown suit, Sally felt like the incredible shrinking woman. She put her head back and looked up into the face that had haunted her every day for nearly a week.

  He was even better looking on close scrutiny. A little older, perhaps, than she had imagined, but the extra years only served to make him more interesting. And his eyes were like dark crystals, cold and fathomless. And dangerous, she decided as her stomach and her heart did a crazy loop-the-loop in tandem.

  “Whatever it is you want,” Sally said, trying to keep her voice steady, though she couldn’t for the life of her think why it should tremble so much. “Bella will be able to help you.”

  “You’re not the real Jojo,” he said, after a moment’s hesitation. “What happened to the original clown?”

  Sally blinked up at him, licking dry lips and realising that her ears were probably lighting up since he still had her arms clamped tightly to her side where the contact switch was. “He sprained his ankle. Fell off his monocycle when a child put a spoke in his wheel.”

  “Ah, I see.” His vice-like grip slackened and she pulled away as he turned back to Bella, who was frantically signalling by pointing at her own ear.

  Sally caught a glimpse of herself reflected in a mirrored pillar a few feet away. Somehow, the tall, dark American had set off a short in her electrical system. Her ears weren’t only lit up. They were flashing like neon signs.

  In one swift moment, Sally dragged the ears off with a painful wince and a squeak that she couldn’t restrain. She thought she saw the stranger’s mouth twitch at the corners. Had he almost smiled? She was curious to know what he looked like
without that serious scowl on his face.

  “My name’s Gavin Calder,” he said, taking out a rather official identity card that claimed he was Gavin Calder of Calder Security Enterprises, Inc., Chicago, U.S.A.

  Well, Sally thought, he certainly looked the part. If we were back in the thirties he would probably be wearing a sawn-off shot-gun and white spats.

  “What can we do for you, Mr. Calder?” she said, stuffing her oversized ears into her deep poacher’s pockets.

  “I’d like to speak to the owner of this establishment. That would be…?”

  He glanced from Bella to Sally.

  “That would be me, Mr. Calder,” Sally said, proffering her hand, which he took and squeezed so hard the bones crunched. “I’m Sally Rose.”

  “I hope you’re better at your real job than you are at being a clown, Miss Rose,” Gavin Calder said, then his forehead creased and he looked down at the hand she had just shaken with something of disgust in his expression.

  Sally couldn’t remember putting her gloves back on, but she must have done it because they were again on her hands and he was staring down in disbelief at a smear of pink toffee on his palm.

  “Show Mr. Calder where he can wash his hands, would you, Bella,” she said in her best employer voice kept for important clients. “I’ll see you in a few minutes, Mr. Calder. After I’ve got myself out of this clown outfit.”

  He nodded slowly, still frowning. Then Bella, with a meaningful rise of her fair, pencilled eyebrows, led him off to the customer toilets.

  Chapter Two

  “Sorry about that – er – Mr. Calder?”

  Sally was still drying her hands after a quick wash and change of clothes in the staff room when Bella brought the American in to her.

  “Don’t mention it. It’s not the first time I’ve had strawberry toffee to deal with.”

  And, at last, he smiled. It was sudden and fleeting, but the instant his teeth flashed white Sally felt something deep inside her melt. This was not how it was supposed to be. Not with entire strangers. Not with anybody.