Tom Poes’ World Famous Travelling Haphazard Bazaar.
In Stockett they say that perhaps the highlight of the Gypsy Fair is Tom Poes and his peculiar travelling shop, the Haphazard Bazaar. Of course, there is not one Tom Poes but many, and his bazaar is not really a bazaar but a performance on the subject of shopping at bazaars. And though his sign says
TOM POES’ WORLD FAMOUS TRAVELLING HAPHAZARD BAZAAR
…it is not really world famous, because Tom Poes is a notorious and gifted liar. He steals silently into the village at an hour past midnight and by the time the sun is up and the villagers are come to the Millennium Field to sample the many and curious delights of the Gypsy Fair, Tom Poes has set up his stall, and hung out his various signs. If you do not get there early you will find an eager queue waiting to be served by one of the several Tom Poes who work the tent. At any time there seem to be two Tom Poes at work – one in the tent and one around and about, marshalling the fair-goers with his bicycle horn and dubious promises of the value, rare and in all ways pleasing products that are to be had at the bazaar. “The cheapest and the strongest in all England!” he cries, though he will not be drawn on what exactly is so strong or cheap. To find that out, you have to queue. “Fresh in from the Netherlands just this week!” he says. He is wearing a brown workman’s smock, with pin that says: Tom Poes’ Haphazard Bazaar; and a name badge that says: Hello, my name is Tom Poes. He wears a brown bowler hat that marks him out as a working man. Tom in the tent is similarly attired. All the Tom Poes I ever recall seeing were rotund fellows with pale faces, dark eyes and short black beards. They were blunt speakers in the manner of the Dutch, though they had no discernible accents.
Tom Poes’ market stall was an adaptation of a Punch & Judy rig, a small one-man tent with a little shelf at the base of the main aperture. Hanging by a rusty nail to this shelf was another sign, which read:
JUST LOOKING? THEN GO TO A MUSEUM.
Tom Poes would be waiting there for you to purchase something from his bazaar. He would ask you if you had read the ‘articles and contractuals of vending’ which were painted on another sign free standing next to the tent, and if you hadn’t, he would recite them for you:
ARTICLES AND
CONTRACTUALS
OF VENDING.
GOODS ARE NOT
TO BE PERUSED
BUT PURCHASED
UNSEEN AND
WITHOUT ANY
GUARANTEE OR
WARRANTY OF
THE VENDOR,
WHO DECIDES
THE PRICE AND
THE GOODS TO
BE SUPPLIED.
NO RETURNS.
NO REFUNDS.
NO COMPLAINING.
BY FURNISHING
SHILLINGS ETC.
THE VENDEE
AGREES TO SAID
ARTICLES WITH~
OUT PREJUDICE.
BY ORDER, THE
PROPRIETOR.
(It is a tall, thin sign as high as a man’s breast and painted most fancy). Once you have got to the front of the queue Tom Poes, who has his hands crossed on the little shelf, will look down at you (for he must be on a platform inside the tall tent) and ask you not what you want, but how much you are prepared to pay. Be it fifty pence, a pound, five pounds or just sixpence he will have something to that value which he deems suitable for your needs. I have heard them say in the Local Tap that he takes great offence if you go beneath his bottom limit, though he does not advertise what that may be. Should such an insult be given, they say he reaches up and draws curtains across his window, until you are gone. They also say that if you watch carefully hands draw the curtains before he moves his hands from the shelf, and many suspect he has several sets of wax hands in different poses which he lays out on the shelf while keeping his real arms available for closing the tiny stage curtains, although children and the dim believe he has eight arms, and comes not from the Netherlands but from the East Indies.
When you have agreed a price, a small slot opens below the shelf and a tray comes out, on which you put your money, and when this is gone into the depths of the tent, Tom Poes disappears down into that small structure, and there is the sound of rummaging through boxes of things, and of other things not so easily explained, like wind in the trees and the sounds of sirens or passing jets, and clicks and chimes and bongs, the sounds of winding mechanisms and springs and hammers, of animals in the distance, recordings from televisions, and people talking indistinctly. Finally, another slot opens. Though it has glass in front of it so you cannot reach through, but can only look as a pair of hands takes a little aluminium tin, and with hammer and iron stamps a number into the bottom of the tin. Then the slot closes again, and Tom Poes appears back at the top, with your little numbered tin. On the top is a label,
TOM POES’ LEG PUZZLE
… in tiny writing. No-one quite knows what it means, but regardless of what you get given, every tin has this label on it. Tom hands you the tin and points at the sign, as if to remind you – no returns, no refunds, no complaining.
At the last Gypsy Fair, I gave Tom Poes one pound sterling, and in my tin, numbered 2323, was a thing most wondrous sat on a green baize lining. I will always remember, to the end of my days, the thrill in that moment. I gasped. I looked up to say something but that other Tom Poes who walks out and about came up to me then and took me gently by the arm, shepherding me away. “Mustn’t hold up the custom,” he says.
