Street Kid Fights On: She thought the nightmare was over. Judy Westwater
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go crazy about that kind of thing.
‘You better not fall asleep there, Judy,’ Speedy teased. ‘We don’t want to lose you!’
Actually, a couple of times it was a close thing.
‘I’ll be fine,’ I said. ‘You just worry about the driving.’
Most people at the fair had more than one act and it wasn’t long before I was asked to expand my repertoire. On top of the Australian Air Aces, Speedy was a knife thrower and shooter and Vicky was his target. She wore a green, spangly bikini with cowboy fringes on it. I agreed to fill in for her sometimes.
‘Don’t worry,’ she told me. ‘It’s only gone wrong once.’ She showed me a three-inch scar on her arm where Speedy’s aim had gone awry. ‘That was a while ago,’ she said. ‘He’s much more experienced now. The main thing is to stay absolutely still.’
I swallowed nervously and tried not to think too much.
Speedy set up the board he used as a backdrop and winked at me as I climbed onto the podium and took my place. As I stood there waiting for the first of the razor-sharp blades, all I could think was, ‘I hope he doesn’t miss!’
Speedy lined up and threw the first knife fast, with deadly accuracy. A bead of sweat trickled slowly down my forehead as every sense in my body came alive. I couldn’t see it but I heard the blade whizzing past me and embedding itself in the cork backdrop with a thump. My instincts were bristling. My father had thrown things at me all the time. Anything he could lay his hands on, in fact. I had learned to watch the path of the object as it whizzed towards me and move quickly out of the way. The difficulty here was to trust Speedy and stay absolutely still. I heard the second knife whoosh past and land deep in the cork on the other side of my head. Time seemed to stop. I realized that if I was going to hold the position I just had to block it out. The third knife landed in between my legs and I focused hard on my breathing.
‘Stay still,’ I willed myself. As far as I was concerned this was a test of my courage and I wasn’t going to chicken out now as, one after the other, I was circled by the blades.
‘You’re a cool one,’ Speedy said with a grin at the end.
‘Thanks.’ My skin was clammy with sweat and I could feel the adrenaline pumping round my body as I stepped away from the outline of knives behind me. I’d done it.
‘Fancy trying the revolver, then?’ he asked.
‘OK. Why not?’ I think in some ways I was always looking for challenges to stretch me a bit and test my own strength. If Speedy had asked me to walk on a tightrope over Niagara Falls, I’d have done it just to prove that I could.
Vicky helped me into a tunic that had balloons attached to it. I took up my position again and Speedy tied a blind-fold round his eyes and began to shoot at the balloons. The gun shots were very loud and came in quick succession. I did my best to stay calm. As the balloons burst one by one, my tunic fell to the ground, revealing me in a sequinned bikini. Though my heart was thumping I lifted up my hands and gestured triumphantly as I’d seen Vicky do. Then I took a bow to an imaginary audience and Speedy jumped up beside me and bowed too.
‘Well done, Judy,’ Speedy said. ‘It’s as though you were born to it.’
Little did he know.
The audience loved that act. Speedy was so reliable that I came to trust him completely. I loved the act and felt greatly honoured when asked to fill in for Vicky. Their belief in me gave me a real feeling of acceptance.
After the show Bobby often went out on dates with boys she’d met, but I stayed behind on the bus. I hadn’t a clue about romance. At the age of seventeen, most people know about physical attraction and dating but I was emotionally stunted by my early life. I guess the fact I was so young made them feel protective because Speedy and Vicky took me under their wing and kept an eye on me during those first idyllic weeks of my new job.
The easy happiness wasn’t to last, though. A new challenge was about to come into my life, one that I had absolutely no resources at all for dealing with. His name was Roger Lethbridge.
One day when we got back to Belle Vue after a week of touring, Speedy asked me if I’d be interested in another job.
‘You’d be working with the boys in a different act of mine,’ he explained. ‘It used to be called The Hell Drivers, but I renamed it. Now it’s The Globe of Death.’
‘What?’ I asked. ‘Like The Wall of Death?’
Speedy shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly. ‘Nah,’ he said, ‘The Wall of Death is easy. You just ride a bike up a wall. This is much more interesting. Come and have a look.’
The Globe was a spherical wire mesh cage, about sixteen feet in diameter, with an entrance on one side. Speedy explained that the boys drove a motorbike round the inside and I was incredulous at first. How was that possible?
‘Roger!’ he shouted. ‘Come and show Judy, would you?’
Roger emerged pushing a black motorbike. He was more or less my age, dressed in leather trousers and a jacket. He had still, blue eyes and seemed very confident. I thought he looked nice.
‘Hi,’ he smiled and he pulled on his helmet.
I nodded back.
Inside the Globe, Roger began to ride in low circles, then as he built up momentum he zoomed upside down over the top.
‘Wow!’ I was gobsmacked. This guy was an amazing rider.
‘It gets better,’ said Speedy, like a gleeful kid. ‘We got two bikes.’
The second rider, Noggi, had to go in the opposite direction from Roger. It was another split-second timing stunt as the bikes missed each other by a fraction of a second on each revolution. I watched as Noggi came out and Roger and he started the act again, this time together. In seconds they were zooming around the inside of the cage, running loops past each other, upside down. I could see the act was very, very dangerous.
‘So what do you want me to do, Speedy?’
‘You, love, are going to go-go dance right in the middle and let them ride round you.’ Speedy nodded to himself. ‘Crowd puller.’
It looked like a bit of fun. There wasn’t any skill in it, after all. I just had to stand there and keep my nerve. I was always up for that kind of challenge.
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘No problem.’
Noggi and Roger stopped in the base of the Globe and pulled off their motorcycle helmets. I climbed in and stood on the metal base plate in the centre. Speedy demonstrated what he wanted me to do, waving his thick arms in the air, then the boys put their helmets back on and began to ride around the base just as before. I could feel the wind whistling past me as they built up speed. I lifted my arms and began to dance on the spot, just ignoring the bikes as they flew by. Close up I realized exactly how fast they had to ride in order to circle upside down inside the cage. It was noisy in there and the air was full of petrol fumes that caught in my throat. I held my ground and danced on the marked spot. After a few minutes the boys made it back down to the bottom, one on either side of me, the engines still fired up.
‘Good one,’ Roger said and gave me a smile.
So I was in. During the days we rehearsed and carted the equipment to and from the garage shed while maintenance and repairs were done. Sometimes we had costume fittings to do. Vicky could whiz up stunning new costumes at the speed of light, and I let her make all the decisions for me because she knew what colours worked best under the lights. When she measured me, she sighed, jealous of my twenty-four-inch waist and skinny figure.
That summer the Globe really caught the public’s imagination and Speedy had a