Candyfloss

Short Story Sunday

No. 9

“Candyfloss”

The funeral was colourful, everyone wore their brightest dresses and most garish jackets, their biggest hats, and the church was stuffed to bursting with all of Madge’s favourite flowers: pink roses and red peonies and yellow tulips. Albert made sure it was just the way she had wanted it. No hymns. They played Madge’s favourite pop songs instead, and people stood up to talk about her bravery and kindness. To tell stories about how she always brought cake into the office on Fridays and funny things she’d said. Madge never wanted anyone to be sad even for a moment, she would always try to cheer them up with a joke or a cup of tea. She didn’t even want her death to be sad.

“Don’t be a sissy, ok? No tears.” She said to him in the hospital, “You go on and live your life. Visit all the places we said we would go. Visit them for both of us. I’ll be with you in spirit. Death is just the next great adventure, remember. So, no tears.”

Albert couldn’t help it, though. As her coffin was lowered into the ground, he sobbed into the tissues pressed into his hand by the vicar. What was he going to do without her? Madge had been his whole life. They’d always done everything together.

After the funeral, when everyone had gone home and the caterers were packed up, he sat in his chair by the fire and stared at the space where she used to be. For the first time in his life, he felt truly old. What on earth was he supposed to do now?

For the first few weeks and months, Albert followed the same pattern to his days that he and Madge had always followed. He got up and ate cereal for breakfast. Madge had always made the bed, but now he did it. Then, he read the newspaper and took a walk to the shops. Sometimes he walked through the park or out to the pier. Everyone was very kind. Neighbours stopped by to make sure he was eating. The butcher added an extra pound of sausages to his order and refused to charge him. In the evenings, he watched the same TV shows they had always watched together and tried to imagine Madge laughing along with him. It just felt hollow and lonely without her.

In June, the fair came to town. Madge and Albert had always loved the fair. In fact, after they retired, and before Madge got ill, they spent a happy few years chasing down the biggest and best fairs to visit all over the country. Perhaps they both loved them so much because they had had their first date at a fair. Just a little County one. Nothing special. But Albert won Madge a bear on the coconut shy and she looked up at him like he was ten feet tall, which made him puff with pride, and they had their first kiss under the Ferris wheel. Or perhaps it was just something about the burnt sugar smell and the colourful lights, the atmosphere of charged excitement. Albert looked at the flyer for a long time.

Mr Fox’s Fairground and Attractions

The flyer had a drawing of a big wheel and striped tents. He hadn’t been to this particular fair. Should he go? Or would it just make him miss Madge even more? He didn’t know. In the end, he decided not to risk it. He packed a bag that weekend and went to his sisters’ instead. He couldn’t stop thinking about it, though. On a whim, he made toffee apples one night instead of dinner. He found himself searching for fairs on the Internet in the evenings, like he used to do with Madge. And it was during one of his late-night searches that he came across Fairly Magical Used Fairground Supplies.

A bell chimed when you entered their website, just like a bell over the door of a shop. Purple and gold letters across the top of the page advertised, “tents and big tops, stalls and stands”. Albert spent a happy hour scrolling through the listings and imagining what kind of a fair they might have belonged in. Some of them were antique, beautifully painted signs and wooden games, and some of them more modern with lights and electronics. It kept him amused for quite some time. He actually found himself smiling at one point. How long had it been since he smiled? It was just a bit of fun, he told himself. No harm in looking. He was about to turn the computer off when he saw the candyfloss stall.

A small metal cart on wheels with a pink and yellow painted front and a big arch over the top with pink, neon letters that spelled out “Candyfloss”, it had a full-size wheel with a pedal to spin the sugar and hooks for the little bags. He’d never seen anything like it. Just looking at it, he could almost smell the hot, fluffy strands of sugar caramelising. His mouth watered just thinking about it. And, before he knew what he’d done, he’d clicked “buy it now”.

The next morning, it seemed like a dream. Albert could hardly believe he had done such an irresponsible thing. He berated himself about it all morning. In the end, though, he decided least said, soonest mended, and tried to forget about it. Perhaps it was a dream, after all? But three days later, a very large box arrived on a truck with a rather harassed looking delivery driver.

“Yours mate? Sign here.”

And then, almost before Albert knew what had happened, the truck was driving off, and the candyfloss cart was in his garage.

“Oh no, oh no,” he said out loud in dismay and shut the door quickly before the neighbours could see. What on earth would they think? They’d think he’d gone mad. What was he going to do with it?

“I’ll return it, yes, that’s what I’ll do. I don’t need a candyfloss cart,” he said to himself. But he couldn’t stop himself from running his fingers across the smooth steel bowl where the candyfloss was made or from admiring the worn paint on the front with its circus design. His fingers, as if of their own accord, flipped the switch to see whether the lights worked. He almost whooped with laughter, clapping his hands to his mouth in shock, when they did. The warm glow of pink neon lit up the garage and he sighed with happiness. It needed a bit of TLC, he thought. A good clean. The paintwork touching up. Wouldn’t be much work.

“No, no. What am I thinking! It’s going back. It’s going back first thing tomorrow,” he said crossly, turning off the lights and returning reluctantly to the house.

He couldn’t sleep that night for thinking about it. The smell of sugar crept into his bedroom. All his jumpers smelled like caramel when he got dressed in the morning. Even his cup of tea tasted sweet. He started to wonder whether buying the cart had been a moment of madness or if he was actually going mad.

“No, absolutely not,” he said to himself firmly in the end, snapping the newspaper shut, “Enough is enough.”

He turned on the computer and typed in the name of the website.

Page Not Found.

Albert groaned. It was gone. Had it ever been there in the first place? It must have been. A breeze stirred the curtains, bringing with it the carnival scent of sugar and apples and something else, an almost ineffable excitement that reminded him of the fairs of his youth. Perhaps, after all, it wouldn’t hurt to just try it out.

A week later and Albert had mastered the art of spinning sugar. His garage was filled with pink and blue fluffy clouds in little bags. The neighbours had begun to notice and comment on the smell, and, in the end, he thought to hell with it and just threw up the door. They came by in dribs and drabs at first, exclaiming with surprise. Later, they came back to marvel. They told him how wonderful his candyfloss was, how they suddenly felt younger and happier after eating it, and sweet memories, long forgotten, stirred back to life. They told him about the marvellous carnival dreams they had, where the smell of sugar seemed to draw them into strange new worlds. Albert just smiled. He knew. He’d also been having those dreams.

It was on one of his regular walks along Great Grimsby pier that Albert first had the idea to open for business. It would have seemed impossible before. It should have done. The old Albert would never even have considered it. But, after a week or so of filling his garage with sugar, it seemed inevitable.

It took a while to get the permits. After all, Great Grimsby Pier, a grey and windswept stone finger sticking out into the cold North Sea, isn’t the kind of place to have a candyfloss stall. The council were understandably dubious. Still, they thought, let the old boy try. What harm can it do? And so, in the end, Albert got his permits and one sunny Saturday afternoon, with the help of his neighbours, rolled his metal cart proudly right down to the end of the pier and switched on the pink, neon lights.

If business was a little slow at first, Albert didn’t mind. He could almost hear Madge cheering him on. He just knew she would have loved all this, the madness of it, the way it brought people joy.

“Magic,” she would have whispered.

Madge saw magic in everything. That was what he missed the most about her. Albert spun his sugar into fluffy clouds and tied them into little plastic bags and hung them from the hooks under his sign, where they snapped cheerfully in the wind. His neighbours came by first, then a few curious passersby, and then a few more. Albert served everyone with a smile and a kind word. He nodded understandingly when they whispered to him about their strange dreams or a much-loved memory that they’d just remembered. Soon, people were talking, and Albert had a line.

And, though Albert didn’t know it yet, there, in that very line, with her button-bright eyes and a wide smile, was Elsie. But that’s a story for another day.