The Burry Man's Day by Catriona McPherson Page A

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