Meridon twt-3 Read online

  He was as good as his word and I heard from David and from Dandy that the workhouse girl started the next day. She was chosen because she had been a farm worker in wheat country – a lifetime of heaving stooks had given her hard muscles in her belly and arms. David also told me (though Dandy, notably, did not) that she looked ravishing up high on the pedestal. She had long blonde hair which she let fly free behind her. She had no fear of heights and no nerves, and though she started a whole month behind the other two she was swinging from the high trapeze and doing the simplest of tricks into the net within a few weeks.

  The surgeon had ordered me to rest and I was glad to lie still. My face was awful. I had two black eyes which closed so tight that for the first three or four days I was fully stone blind. I had broken my nose when my knees cracked up into my face, and for the rest of my life it would be slightly skewed.

  It was many days before I was able to walk down across the field to see them working. I passed the horses on the way and saw Sea in the far corner of the field, his coat a deep grey shimmer. Robert had promised me that no one would touch him while I was ill. He might grow a little wilder, but he would have no fresh memories of rough handling. He was fed with the other horses, and brought indoors when nights were cold. But while Robert trained them and taught them their new tricks, Sea was left out in the field.

  There was a hard frost on the ground, it looked as if it might snow for Christmas. I cared little either way. Da and Zima had never celebrated Christmas in our dirty little caravan and my only memory of the festival was that it was a good time for Dandy to pick pockets while the mummers went around, and a good time for selling horses for spoilt children. Our birthday fell some time after Christmas. This year we would be sixteen. We never paid no mind to either Christmas nor our birthday – whenever it was.

  ‘Cold,’ Robert said. He was walking with me, his hand under my elbow to help me over the frozen molehills and hard tussocks of grass.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Will you bring the horses in all day if it snows?’

  ‘Nay,’ he said. ‘I can’t afford to make them soft. The time will come when we do shows all the year round. I’ve already turned down work at a Goose fair outside Bath over the Christmas holidays. If you’d been well I’d have taken at least you and Jack to work the fair. I’ll let it go this year, but next year we’ll lay off in October, work for December and the Twelfth Night fairs, and then lay off again until Shrove Tuesday.’

  He looked at the barn as if he were staring into the future.

  ‘I’ll take a complete show out on the road. The horses will open the show and do the first half, and then during the interval we’ll rig up the net and the frames. When I can get a barn we’ll take it and do evening shows by lamplight as well.’ He looked beyond the barn, to where the afternoon sun was red on the horizon. ‘There’s more and more places which stay open all year round,’ he said longingly. ‘Where they’ve built a hall with the ring in the middle, aye, and a stage behind for singing and dancing. A few good years on the road, and maybe I could build my own place with the rigging up high and the ring underneath, and we would not need to travel from fair to villages – the audience would come to us.’

  I nodded. ‘You could do that,’ I said with a little smile, looking at his rapt face. ‘It might work. A big enough town, with lots of people travelling through, and wealthy people who would come again and again. It might work.’

  He glanced down at me. ‘You believe in me,’ he said.

  ‘Aye,’ I said simply. ‘I always have.’

  There was a little silence then, between us.

  ‘Now,’ he said. ‘You see how your sister is doing!’

  He flung open the door to the barn and we went in. They were losing the light inside and were doing the last tricks of the day before stopping work. The poorhouse girl, Katie, was on the ladder. Dandy was on the pedestal. Jack was standing astride on the catcher’s frame.

  I felt my throat grow dry and I swallowed at the sight of Dandy looking so small and up so high.

  ‘Right!’ David called. He was on the ground below the flyers’ ladder. ‘Last trick of the day, and we have an audience so let’s show what we can do! Dandy! Let’s have that trick again.’

  Dandy climbed two paces up an extra ladder above the pedestal to give herself more height and took the trapeze in both hands. Jack checked the buckles which held the thick leather belt at his waist, and rubbed his hands together, scowling and looking upwards. I hardly saw him. I was watching Dandy like a fieldmouse watches a circling hawk far above him. I saw her smile. She was happy enough.

  I looked back to Jack. He was watching Dandy’s swing build up until she came so close that if he reached out he could tap her on the feet. He shifted a little, as if to ready himself and then he called, ‘Pret!’ in the way David had taught him. Dandy beat with her legs and swung a little harder, then Jack shouted, ‘Hup!’ and Dandy stretched her feet out towards him as far as she could.

  For a moment she seemed to hang in space, quite motionless. Then Jack reached out and we heard the firm slap of his hands on her ankles. At that moment Dandy let go the trapeze and swung, head down, arms trailing, through Jack’s legs, through the A-frame, while Jack bent low to swing her.

  She crested the swing on the other side and Jack let her swing back underneath him just as the trapeze swung back towards them. Then, with a scowl of concentration, Jack twisted his arms and Dandy half turned so she slewed around, still travelling in the air to face the trapeze as it came towards her, reached out her hands to it and took a firm grip as Jack released her feet. Dandy swooped upwards, clinging to her trapeze, and then back to the pedestal. Katie at the top reached out and caught her round the waist and helped her up. Dandy turned around and shrieked, ‘Bravo!’ to herself, Robert, and me, and we burst into spontaneous clapping.

  ‘Well done!’ Robert called up. ‘That is wonderful, Dandy! Well done Jack and well done David! That’s grand! Is there any more?’

  Again they readied themselves. Dandy built up the swing and then put her legs back and looped them around the bar of the trapeze. Jack watched her, called, ‘Pret!’ to Dandy to warn her he was ready for her on the next swing. Then we heard him shout, ‘Hup!’ This time she had further to reach and there was almost a second when she released the safe lock of her legs on the trapeze before we heard the slap of his hands on her wrists. He swung her forwards and then back and Dandy flew from his hands, turning a languid elegant somersault before bouncing safely into the net.

  I was sorry that I was such a fool with the ladder and the height that I could not be up there beside her. I should have liked to have been close to Dandy when she was swinging. I should have liked it to have been me who grabbed her around her slim waist and hauled her in. I would have liked to have helped her back on to the pedestal from the sickening drop beneath her.

  ‘What can Katie do?’ Robert called to David.

  ‘She’s not being caught yet,’ David called back. ‘The idea is that she does the trick and she and Jack just touch – so that they learn where each other is. She’s not ready to finish the trick yet.’

  Robert nodded and we watched as Katie swooped across, and Jack slapped her ankles with a sound which echoed around the frosty air and she dropped into the net, turning up her feet and falling on her back.

  ‘Good work,’ Robert said. He took David by the shoulder and led him out of the barn, pausing only to damp down the stove.

  Katie climbed out of the net and smiled at me. We had already met – Dandy had brought her up to the spare bedroom to meet me when she started work for Robert – but we had hardly spoken.

  ‘Well done!’ I said. ‘You are far ahead of me, and I had a month’s full practice.’

  ‘I had a good teacher,’ she said with a sly little smile. I thought for a moment that she had meant David, but then I saw that she was looking towards Jack as he came down the ladder hand over hand, his legs and feet held clear to one side.

  K