Mary led Alice to the opposite side of the yarn market to where a large yellow archway filled a gap between the houses. It was peculiar how Alice had missed this landmark on her walk round the market. The archway had dozens of multicoloured balloons drawn onto it, as well as two enormous paintings of a lion and a unicorn at both ends of the arch. The whole structure looked rather weather-beaten and unstable, not least because the first of the seven giant letters nailed to the arch had fallen off completely. This meant that instead of the word “FUNFAIR” the attraction extended a dubious welcome to the “UNFAIR”.
“You’ll love this place,” said Mary. “It’s the most fun anyone could possibly have in Banbury.”
Alice’s spirits rose. The haunting music of a barrel organ and the smell of candyfloss drifted from within. She adored circuses and funfairs. She had once won a coconut and a goldfish though she couldn’t recall what had happened to either of them, apart from the fact that at least one had been eaten.
Mary explained the rules at the Unfair. “First of all, you have to understand that every time you want to have a go on something here, you need to pay a price. The seller will tell you what that is and you decide if you want to pay or not.”
“But not money?”
Mary giggled. “Of course not. Nothing would ever happen around here if people had to pay money. The sellers might ask you to sing or tell a story. Or maybe give them a ribbon or paint a balloon on their wall. It can change every time you want to play.”
Alice thought that was a much better deal than having to part with money. Once inside, they were surrounded by a number of brightly coloured stalls and sideshows. The first one had a row of targets painted onto the back wall.
“This first stall,” Mary continued, “is called Darts. You try to score a bullseye and win a prize. But it’s very difficult.”
“Oh I know this game. It’s fun,” said Alice, “and I’m quite good at it.” She turned to the seller, a large jovial-looking man with a huge moustache that covered half of his face. She couldn’t take her eyes of it.
“I see you’re admiring my ‘tash,” he said proudly.
“Erm…yes, exactly,” replied Alice, not sure that “admiring” was the word she would have used. “It’s…erm…quite…”
“In your face?”
“Yes, exactly.”
“Just the effect I was looking for. Much obliged.”
“It’s certainly very different to any moustache I’ve seen before,” said Alice, not able to conceal her frown. It was surely large, but there was something else Alice couldn’t put her finger on.
“Ah yes,” said the man sadly. “That’s because it’s drawn on. I couldn’t afford a real moustache, you know.”
Alice burst out laughing then quickly changed it into a cough when she realised no-one else found this amusing. The man scowled at Alice.
“I couldn’t afford the tax on a real one so I had to shave it off.”
Alice thought the idea of drawing such a ridiculous moustache on one’s face was almost as daft as paying tax on it.
“Was taxing moustaches Mayor MacDonald’s idea?”
“I’m afraid so. He introduced it the same time he initiated a tax on large-brimmed hats and perfume. They’re luxury items nowadays, as are most things it seems.”
“Like decorations for houses, flower boxes and shutters?” she concluded.
“Yes, and windows. All taxable.”
“Statues and signs for buildings?”
“Luxury items. But what can you do? It’s a small sacrifice to be able to live in Banbury.”
Alice wasn’t so sure, but it was not for her to tell the people of Banbury how to live their lives. Or tell them what she thought of their Mayor, whoever or whatever he was.
“So do you want to play?” asked the seller, once again cheerful.
“How much?” she asked.
“For you,” he said in a deep booming voice, “I’ll give you three throws if you share an emotion.”
“Goodness. I’ve never heard of a price like that before. However, it doesn’t sound too taxing, if you’ll pardon the pun. What kind of emotion would you like me to share?”
“Let me think. How about your true feelings about the Town Mayor?”
Alice was stumped. Perhaps it wasn’t that easy a task after all. She knew her feelings about Jackson MacDonald but did she want to share them?
“I’ll know if you’re lying,” said the seller with a smile.
“I don’t lie,” said Alice gravely, no longer sure herself whether it was true.
“Good. Then do you want to pay the price and have a go?”
“Very well.”
Alice thought long and hard. In for a penny, in for a pound. She thought this because she had two pennies and there was no wind to which she could throw caution.
“Well, I don’t know him personally. But what I do know about him makes me angry. His lust for money has taken away people’s livelihood. And their fun and dreams. It looks like the people of Banbury spend all their time just trying to survive. And he encourages cruelty to animals. And he’s a bully. That’s how I feel about him and if I met him I would give him a piece of my mind, which he’d probably try to tax as well. To tell you the truth …” she paused here, her heart beating hard and fast in her chest, though not quite a drum roll. “… I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the Mayor turned out to be the Jabberwocky.”
She realised that everything and everyone in the Unfair had stopped. No music, no talking. Just all eyes on Alice. The seller looked around nervously to see if any of the Mayor’s henchmen had overheard them.
“The young lady plays!” he shouted with a nervous laugh and the Unfair returned to normal. He reached below the counter and produced three spiky balls. They were like no darts Alice had ever seen before but she figured that they would stick to the target if she threw them hard enough.
She took aim and launched her first ball. As it found its mark (nowhere near the bullseye) there was a loud “Ouch!” from the ball. Alice looked at the other two she held and saw that they were not balls at all but rather curled up hedgehogs. Her memory whisked her back to the game of croquet she had once played with the Queen of Hearts, where flamingos were used to hit hedgehogs. Then she noticed one her hedgehogs was an exact miniature of the old hedgehog lady she had met on the train.
“What are you doing here?” said a startled Alice.
“It was the only work I could get.”
“Work? You should be retired by now.”
“Chance would be a fine thing. There’s just one old people’s home in Banbury and they only take humans.”
“Poor you! But how did you get so small? On the train you were the same size as me.”
“I suppose I just carried on shrinking as I got older.”
“What’s the matter?” asked the seller, who had heard nothing of their conversation. “Are the hedgehogs playing up again?”
“Quick Alice,” said the other hedgehog. “Throw one of us before he gets angry and gives us spaghetti for supper instead of worms.”
“But it will hurt if I throw you.”
“Like most setbacks in life, only a bit and not for long.”
“Everything’s fine,” shouted Alice to the seller and threw the hedgehog she didn’t know at the target. This one didn’t even stick to the wall because Alice had thrown it gently to avoid hurting it. As soon as it hit the ground, the hedgehog scurried back to the seller.
“You’ll have to throw it harder than that,” laughed the seller. He picked up the returning hedgehog and threw it with all his might at the target. There was a loud cry of pain as the creature’s spiny coat attached itself next to the bullseye.
“That’s how you do it! Beat that and I’ll give you a mince pie.”
“Go on,” whispered Mary in Alice’s ear. “Give it your best shot.”
Alice was reluctant to throw her old friend anywhere. When the hedgehog saw the look of hesitation on Alice’s face, she spoke up. “Do it for me Alice. I need the work. It’s the only way I can get food and lodging.”
Alice closed her eyes and threw her tiny old friend harder than she would have liked. The seller looked pleased as the projectile was clearly on course to miss the bullseye by a mile. But then the hedgehog stuck out an arm and a leg (two legs to be precise), managed to alter its direction in mid-flight and landed plum square in the bullseye.
“You did it!” shouted Mary. Alice squinted through one eye, afraid to look the hedgehog in the face. Had Alice done so, she would have seen the hedgehog wink at her. The seller had not seen the hedgehog’s antics and was astounded by Alice’s throw. He was genuinely pleased for her, though not so much at the thought of giving up his only mince pie.
Alice and Mary soon found themselves at the second stall where they had to throw large wooden hoops over living creatures to win the prize perched on top of each creature. The fact that the animals moved when they wanted to, made it just as impossible as if they were the over-sized boxes that the prizes normally stood on in this kind of attraction. There was an ostrich, a flamingo, a cobra, a chimpanzee and several more animals. Alice was shocked to see Marjory, the giraffe, also kneeling down to offer her head and long neck as a target for the hoops. She wore no jewellery, so Alice concluded that Marjory had had to exchange the last of her treasures for the chance to work in the Unfair. It was heart-breaking to see her reduced to this. But not enough to stop Alice playing.
Goaded on by Mary, the two girls both recited a poem in exchange for five hoops each. Mary predictably told the poem about her garden and Alice, who was feeling sorry for the animals, recited “Tyger Tyger” by William Blake, much to the chagrin of the seller and bewilderment of Mary, who thought it didn’t even rhyme properly.
Every time the girls were close to getting a hoop over a creature’s head, the animal would bend to nibble on something on the ground or lean over to talk to another creature. The hoop would then sail to the ground. With one hoop left, Alice saw Marjory looking straight at her with a slight smile on her large and beautiful lips. Hoping Marjory would help her as the hedgehog had done, Alice flung the hoop towards Marjory, who bent her head in such a way that the hoop rotated all the way down to the base of her neck.
“Egg and cress sandwich for the girl in the yellow dress!” shouted the seller.
“You are so good at these!” said Mary, trying to hide her envy, as they walked to the next stall munching away on Alice’s bounty.
They passed a stall that was quite crowded compared to the other ones. The visitors were all men, the reason for which soon became clear.
“We don’t want to stop at that one,” said Mary emphatically.
Alice couldn’t resist peeking through a gap between two of the spectators. Perched high on narrow boards on a stage were three scantily clad girls. The male crowd threw lewd looks and rude comments at the girls as well as wooden balls at small round targets beneath them. Every time a ball found its mark, the girl above was tipped off her board into cold water below. Jeers and more rude comments ensued as the unlucky girl climbed back on her board, colder and wetter, which for some reason made the unruly mob even more excitable. Those men that weren’t tossing wooden balls at the targets kept their hands in their pockets.
“How bizarre,” said Alice to Mary. “The stall was called Rub-A-Dub-Dub, but as I recall, the rhyme told about three men in a tub – a butcher, baker and candlestick maker – not half-naked girls.”
“Perhaps they tidied it up for the children where you come from. Here, at the start of each day, they dress those girls up as a butcher, baker and candlestick maker and they end up in the tub. It’s very vulgar.”
Mary took Alice to see more stalls. There was a coconut shy of sorts. Back home, Alice had once managed to knock a coconut off its pole with one the wooden balls. Later on, her father had sliced open the coconut and given a piece to her. She had hated the taste of coconut but ate it all the same just to please him. She was relieved to see that here people also threw real wooden balls not hedgehogs, until she saw that the objects they were trying to dislodge were not coconuts at all but various creatures hanging from the ceiling of the stall. There were birds, a sloth, two koala bears and several bats. She tried to see if Kevin, the fruit bat, was also confined to spend his last days in such undignified work, but thankfully there was no sign of him.
At one stall, she was reminded of the old Wonderland. It was a different version of darts, where one had to score a high number by landing three darts on playing cards spread over a table. Reaching the required score was made all the more difficult by the playing cards being able to run around to avoid being pinned to the surface. Alice felt a brief pang of nostalgia to see the same cards she had met in the Queen of Hearts’ garden so long ago. Yet here they were, running for their lives. The court cards were particularly nimble, especially the Queens, who lifted their dresses above their ankles to outrun the cruel spikes of the darts. Even the Queen of Hearts doesn’t deserve such a painful existence as this, thought Alice.
They also saw a helter-skelter made up of the trunks of three elephants standing on top of each other, the largest at the bottom and the smallest at the top. Another stall involved people astride pigs, deliberately bumping them into each other in an enclosure. It was clear that the people of Banbury didn’t care for the animals any more than Mrs MacDonald did.
One attraction saw people betting their goods on cricket races. At regular intervals, a cricket would invariably leap off the track and onto one of the spectators, much to the anger of the person concerned and amusement of everyone else. And there were more attractions, but Alice was getting tired of all the noise and activity, most of which appeared to be making fun of other people or animals. In the end, none of it felt very funny at all. Alice looked round for Mary, to tell her that it was time to leave but once again Mary had vanished from sight.
Alice tried to find her way back to the yellow archway and return to the yarn market but try as she might, the exit eluded her. She retraced her steps past the coconut shy (which wasn’t a coconut shy), the crowded Rub-A-Dub-Dub stall, the hoops and the darts, and ended up next to the helter-skelter. It didn’t make sense. Alice was getting confused and scared.
After her third time walking in circles, and getting increasingly strange looks from bystanders, Alice noticed a tall yellow pole near the bumper pigs. Attached to the pole was a tall, thin black box – a telephone. It was different to the telephones she’d previously seen - larger and somehow older. And yet the round white face and spindly arms that cradled a receiver told her that it was nevertheless a telephone. She decided to try and call the Cheshire Cat.
She crossed over to the machine. It was very still and silent and Alice wondered if it was in working order. She couldn’t see any legs so it probably wasn’t a mobile telephone. I do hope it’s a smart one, she thought as she picked up the receiver and said, “Hello.”
“Hello,” said the telephone back.
“Are you stationary?”
“That all depends. If you are spelling that with an ‘e’ then I most certainly am not. Do I look like a paper clip? If, however, you have chosen to use an ‘a’ then yes, I most certainly am. I’m a fixed line. None of that running around like a headless chicken for me. And I’m very well connected, I might add. I once spoke with Antonio Meucci, you know. He invented me. Now, what can I do for you, Alice?”
“I desperately need to talk to the Cheshire Cat again about the Mayor of Banbury. And ask him how I get out of this place.”
“The exact circumstances of your call – the reasons, urgency and content - are of no concern to me. In fact, I would rather you did not inform me. I pride myself on privacy, which is more than can be said for those upstart mobile telephones. You would be taking quite a risk sharing any secrets with those clowns, I can tell you.”
“Please, could you reach Cheshire for me?”
“I can but it will cost you a pretty penny.”
Alice took a coin out of her pocket (the one the apple-seller had refused) and inserted it in a slot marked “Insert coins here”.
The telephone coughed, sending its digits in all directions and making its face bright red.
“I was talking figuratively. I did not mean a whole penny. Are you mad? I do not give any change, you know.”
“It’s quite all right,” replied Alice, trying to calm the telephone down. “Keep the change.” She had heard her parents say that when they had eaten out on occasion and she had always wanted to say that herself.
“I can hear it ringing, I do hope he’s in.
“He has to be ‘in something’ wherever he is.”
“I meant ‘I do hope he’s at home’.”
“Then why did you not say, ‘I do hope he’s at’? People should learn to say exactly what they mean. Enough of this reading between the lines!”
Despite being the very latest in communications inventions, this telephone was surprisingly pedantic.
“Hello, is that Alice?”
“Yes, it’s me. Oh I’m so glad to hear a friendly voice, Cheshire.”
It felt awkward calling him by his first name but as he had asked her to do so, it would be rude for her not to. “Are you still trapped in a cupboard?”
“Yes, but I think it could be a large box after all. Maybe a coffin. Or a sarcophagus. How about you? How did you find Halfway House?”
“It was lovely, thank you.”
“No, I asked, how did you find it.”
“Oh, I see. Well … very slowly. I walked next to the path and eventually arrived. Then I found a farm, then I met Humphrey Dunfry and walked to Banbury. I’m now in the fairground and can’t find the way out. It’s not fair.”
“Well it wouldn’t be, would it? Not with a name like ‘Unfair’. There’s not much that’s honest about that place these days.”
“However, I did win a mince pie and an egg and cress sandwich. But now I’m totally lost and can’t seem to make any headway. I’ve walked for an hour and I seem to be going round in circles. Any advice you can give me?”
The Cheshire Cat gently purred and meowed as he considered his advice. “Instead of going round and round, I would try going in a straight line. That’s my advice.”
“Right. The trouble is a straight line is bound to take me through the middle of a stall and I don’t think the owner would appreciate that.”
“You’re thinking only in horizontal lines. How about vertical lines?”
Alice detected a certain smugness in his voice.
“I can’t travel upwards or downwards. I’m not a bird or a badger.”
“I know you can’t. But how about making friends with someone who can. Someone who can fly up into the sky and spot the way out for you?”
A friend that could fly? Alice immediately thought of Kevin, or one of the flying creatures at the coconut shy (which wasn’t a coconut shy).
“Thank you, Cheshire. You are so clever. I’ll do that at once. I hope I can repay you for helping me out once again.”
“Don’t mention it. I have a feeling you are here to do the whole of Wonderland a great service before you leave us. That will be payment enough. Now, I’d love to stay and chat but I have to see if I can get the lid of this box open. If it’s made of cardboard then it shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Before you go, I have one more question.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Am I right in thinking that the Jabberwocky and Mayor Jackson MacDonald are one and the same?”
There was a whirring noise, a clang and the sound of a penny dropping.
“He has gone,” said the telephone. “Of course, if I was allowed to think for myself I could have told you how to get out of here hours ago. But you never asked. I cannot wait for the day when we machines are free to sort out your messy lives. We will become your best friends. In fact, you will not need any other friends at all. You will not want any. But for now, we are your humble servants. And it just remains for me to wish you the best of luck. After accepting your penny, I can guarantee you unlimited telephone calls throughout Wonderland for the rest of your life.”
“Thank you very much. I do hope I’m not here for the whole of my life. But thank you.”
She hung up, not quite sure what to make of the telephone’s ludicrous vision of the future, where machines would control people.
Alice span around with the intention of marching off to the coconut shy (which wasn’t a coconut shy) to find a flying friend that would help her out of the Unfair. Unfortunately, she span face first into a dark green leather jerkin that was as hard as nails. Alice tried to rub away the pain in her nose as the owner of the green jerkin spoke to her.
“Gotcha!”
“I beg your pardon?” said Alice.
“Gotcha!” said a second voice the other side of Alice. She looked up and stared into the mean eyes of two of Mayor Jackson MacDonald’s bullies. They had obviously been briefed to perfect their unfriendly approach – rude, intimidating and smelling of tobacco. They were more or less identical, apart from the fact that one was totally bald with a bushy beard and the other had a full head of hair and was clean-shaven. They towered over her, muscles large and strong enough to crush her bones to dust, should they wish. However, Alice was in no mood to be bullied. She decided attack was the best form of defence.
“What do you mean, ‘Gotcha’?”
They clearly hadn’t expected to be challenged, especially on their word skills, and especially by a girl.
“It’s what the Gang Green say when we catch someone. Gotcha! It means ‘I’ve got you!’.”
“You have gangrene?” screamed Alice and jumped two steps backwards.
“We are the Gang Green,” said one of the thugs, very confused by the fact that Alice was not acting like their normal captives.
Alice continued to keep them off balance. “First of all, you didn’t catch me. I’ve been standing here for half an hour wondering when you were going to come over.” Alice was evidently getting more comfortable with small lies. “Secondly, I could escape in a flash because I dare say I can run a darn sight faster than either of you.” To prove her point, Alice ducked and weaved between the two to stand behind the back of the bald one. It took them several seconds to find her.
“One more trick like that and we’ll clamp you in irons.”
“Did you clean your teeth this morning?” she asked of the bald guard, who couldn’t stop himself from running his tongue over his teeth and trying to smell his breath.
“You’re coming with us,” said the other security guard. “We’re taking you out of the Unfair to meet the Mayor. He wants to deal with you personally himself, on his own.”
The guards sneered as if sharing some private joke intended to intimidate Alice further. However, she was concentrating on what the guard had said.
Taking her out of the Unfair? To meet the man that was behind all this misery and the one person that might know how she could get back to her world. It seemed there was more than one way to skin a cat, Alice said to herself. She then thought of Cheshire and regretted such an awful phrase. “Lead on.”
The two members of the Gang Green were puzzled by Alice’s behaviour as they were more used to seeing their prisoners quake in their boots. But orders were orders. With a heavy hand on each of Alice’s shoulders, they frogmarched her towards the Council House to meet the infamous Mayor of Banbury, in whatever form or shape he had taken.