Love, Let Me Not Hunger (20 page)

Sam Marvel was everywhere, urging the artistes, the grooms, and the tent staff into the bus. Now that their moment of liberation had come it seemed as though he could barely wait, and that if they didn’t hurry and get away, permission might be rescinded in the last moment. “Get in, get in!” he kept shouting. “What the hell are you waiting for? Do you want to stay here forever?” And he was one of the first inside himself.

Jackdaw Williams and Rose came together, as always the big, black, yellow-beaked bird perched on the shoulder of the clown.

One of the national policemen stopped in front of him and blocked his path and spoke to him severely in Spanish. Gogo, who was behind him, laughed and said, “He says nix on the bird, Jackdaw.”

Williams said, “Tell him to keep his hair on.” He gestured and the jackdaw flew away to the ridge pole of the horse tent. The policeman, satisfied, fell back.

“Come on, Rose, get on with it,” Williams said, for she was standing there now staring no longer at their wagon but at Toby. Then she joined him. They were the last. The door closed with a hissing of the automatic air system. The great motor roared, and the vehicle moved off, generating a cloud of dust behind it.

The crowd waved and cheered, but the four men who were remaining behind stood motionless. Down the road they could see a window being rolled down and an arm protrude in a “Come on!” gesture. The jackdaw rose lazily into the air, circled once to gain altitude, and flew easily after the bus.

The policeman who had warned Williams stepped forward angrily and pulled his pistol from his holster. But the roar of delighted laughter from the spectators, in which even the judge and
alcalde
joined, forced him to restore it, and besides, it was too late. The bus was diminishing in the distance and the jackdaw, a tiny black speck, was nearing the open window.

P A R T  I I
Famine

C H A P T E R
1 3

F
illed with gnawing and frustration, Sam Marvel sat in the shabby rexine armchair in the gloomy lobby of the Royal Arms Hotel in Birmingham, his eyes fixed upon the desk clock, the hands of which refused to move. They seemed to have been stalled at ten minutes to three for the last half hour. At three he had his appointment for the fifth time at the headquarters of the Granite National Insurance Company which had issued his policy on the circus. It was three weeks now since he had returned to England—a month since he had left Zalano.

On his first visit to the company they had put him to filling in forms which took him almost a day to understand and another to answer all the questions, for he weighed each one warily to be certain that his reply would not prejudice his interests. He had always thought to himself that under circumstances this would be an open and shut case. The forms were unexpected in the detail they demanded, and the assistant chief of the Claims Department, an individual named Mr. Pollen, who had been with the company for forty years and looked it—hoary, stooped, slow-moving, slow-speaking, a fixture like the ugly oak desks, the wall calendars, and the typewriters which were models of twenty years past—had been respectful and friendly enough but non-committal. He had advised Marvel that he would be notified at such time as there was news or a report upon his claim.

This had given Marvel his first moment of uneasiness.

“What do you mean, you’ll notify me?” he had demanded. “It’s an open and shut case, ain’t it? Open and shut.” He was not certain of the meaning of the phrase except that he felt it had something to do with a foregone conclusion.

Mr. Pollen, thumbing carefully through the documents, had said that the papers must go to their man in Madrid.

“Well then, get a move on and send ’em off!” Marvel replied. “I’ll be back.”

He had not checked in at Chippenham, his headquarters, where his wife lived with her sister while he was away. He had not checked in with anyone. He did not know whether the story of the disaster to his circus had reached England; he had not seen anything in the
World’s Fair,
the trade-joumal devoted to circuses, carnivals, and travelling show business. He had, as a matter of fact, no wish to encounter anyone connected with his calling, for he had thought to be cleverer than they, to steal a march upon them, outwitting them and the telly by going off to Spain, and his scheme had collapsed in failure.

Since then he had been back at intervals from three days to a week, growing angrier and more frustrated, even though Mr. Pollen had informed him stiffly upon one occasion, “Granite National never fails to honour its policies. Claims, however, have to be looked into and the formalities observed. Don’t worry, sir, your money will be paid to you.”

But each time there was some delay, some hitch, at the other end, some non-arrival or delay of documents, none of them serious, Mr. Pollen kept informing him; on the contrary, quite normal in the course of such an investigation—things were really going very well.

Teased by occasional encouragements that the end of the affair was just around the corner, Marvel remained at the Royal Arms in Birmingham, haunting the office of the insurance company or waiting to hear from them.

And at last perhaps something was about to happen, for his appointment at three o’clock that afternoon was the result of a summons on the engraved heavy bond of the company to say that they would be pleased if he would find it possible to call around and see their Mr. Pollen.

The clock dragged its fingers to five minutes to three. Marvel arose, lit a fresh Schimmelpenninck and went out. The offices of Granite National were only around the corner. As always, he passed the cinema that was a cinema no longer, even though the old vertical sign
ODEON-PALACE
had not been removed. For a year the marquee neon signs and the poster panels on either side of the entrance had announced
BOWLING
, and from within as he drew nearer he heard the muted rumble of the heavy balls rolling down the alleys and the hollow crashing of the tumbling ninepins.

Again he paused there for a moment, his hands in his pockets, regarding the converted building and the sign which only served to confirm his judgement. The flicks too! Yet another victim to those bloody telly boxes. Yes, and football and racing likewise. He had been right. The new medium was killing off every kind of visual entertainment.

But after he had been closeted with Mr. Pollen for five minutes and had ascertained the reason for his summons, Sam Marvel was red-faced and bristling, his bowler hat pushed to the back of his head, his thin cigar pointing straight at Mr. Pollen’s cold eye as he pounded the desk and shouted, “What’s this! A run-around? I tell you it’s an open and shut case. I’m paid up on my premiums. Why can’t I have my money? I don’t want to talk to you any more. You’re trying to give me the business. You get hold of your manager for me, or somebody bigger than you.”

The insurance man remained completely unperturbed in the face of this outburst. He was used to them. He dug into a wire basket and produced the documents which Marvel had completed and filed, but they had been added to now. They were thicker in volume and some of them that the adjustor leafed through bore rubber-stamp imprints in Spanish.

He said, “There was a man died in the fire. Why wasn’t that information included on your application?”

“What the hell’s that got to do with it?” Marvel demanded. “It wasn’t any of my business. He was hit by lightning. I’m covered for death in my policy, it says. When are you going to quit stalling and give me my money?”

The insurance man read the report from Madrid again. “Apparently that is not the view held by the police,” he said. “There seems to be some doubt about how he died. We shall have to wait the results of the findings.”

“You’re stalling!” Marvel shouted. “You’ve kept me waiting a month already. If you think you’re going to make me pack up by buggering me about—”

Mr. Pollen straightened out the papers. “I’d say about another week or ten days at the most,” he said soothingly. “Our Madrid man seems to feel it will be settled by then.” He glanced at another document. “You’re at the Royal Arms, I take it. You’d like us to notify you there?”

Marvel removed his cigarillo from his face, carefully spat upon the floor, and said, “You know what you can do with your notifications! I don’t know where I’ll be, but I’ll be back in ten days, and if you ain’t got my money lying on that there desk by then you’re for it, Mr. Stalling Pollen!” He arose, turned and walked out.

He went back to his hotel and sat down in the lobby again to collect himself, resorting to his copy of the
World’s Fair.
He read through the circus notes again of the current issue and was pleased to see that nowhere was there any news of the destruction of his show. At least for the time being, then, he would not have to listen to snide remarks of quasi-sympathy from associates in the business.

He found then that he was staring at a page without being aware of the words printed there. Other thoughts had obtruded; the four he had left behind in Zalano. He had given them money to feed the animals, he remembered, but he could not recall how much. His mind conveniently blocked out the sum. They probably still had some left, but if not it was up to them to find some way to manage. Let them take jobs if they had to. They were all lazy and good-for-nothing. He returned once more to his paper.

In the back of the thick sheet he glanced over advertisements for slot and fruit machines, football tables, roulette wheels, and novelties. His eyes fell upon a single column ad in black type:

WANT TO MAKE MONEY THE MODERN WAY? MAKE IT QUICK? KEEP IT ROLLING IN? FOR SALE. SACRIFICE! BOWLING ALLEY. SIX ALLEYS. HARDWOOD. FULLY EQUIPPED. OWNER MUST SELL. REASONS OF HEALTH. LATEST CRAZE HERE. SURE MONEY WINNER. STAFF AVAILABLE. WRITE OFFERS. J. GOODHUE, 4, BERRY STREET, NEWCASTLE.

He sat staring for some time at the notice, studying it for the hidden gimmicks in it. The come-on was all too fruity. But there was the line “Owner must sell for reasons of health.” If this were true—. The point was, he told himself, that he had nothing else to do. It was somewhere to go. And besides, there were several people he knew in Newcastle he could look up. A week or ten days and then he would surely have the money and could go back to Spain. But in the meantime, what would it hurt him or anyone else to enquire?

He went up to his room, packed his bag, paid his bill, and took a cab down to the railway station where he bought a ticket to Newcastle.

In the train, he thought about them once more before putting them out of his mind altogether. The Walters boy would not be fool enough to fail to notify his family if he were in trouble. The old man and the dwarf were half-wits, but Deeter was an old trouper and no idiot. If things weren’t under control he would somehow manage to let him know or something would have got into the papers, so there was nothing about which he need worry.

But in this Sam Marvel was wrong, for in Zalano, Toby Walters, Fred Deeter, Mr. Albert, and Janos and all of the animals, great and small, were on the verge of starvation. And Rose, too, for she had come back.

C H A P T E R
1 4

S
he came walking up the road from the town, the same dirt road rutted and pitted, now dry, down which the flash flood had roared which had nearly cost her her life. She was carrying her suitcase and blue cloth coat. Her beret was pushed to the back of her head, and her reddish hair was matted with sweat. Her face and clothes were dusty, and she looked drawn and tired. There was a leanness about her, too, as though she had not eaten regularly during days past.

She came onto the lot, past the ellipse of the burnt-out tent to which she gave no more than a glance, but paused for a moment before the unfamiliar set-up, put her suitcase down, and looked, an expression of apprehension passing momentarily over her features.

The men had repositioned the rolling stock so as to catch less of the hot sun and simplify the care, cleaning, and feeding of the beasts. They had built up a U-shaped enclosure on the vacant lot as far away as possible from the wreckage, stringing the living wagons end to end for one arm, the lorries and the remaining living wagons for the other, and the beast cages in between at the bottom facing to the north. Here, too, Judy had been staked out.

This was not the way she had left them, and for a moment it was like one of those evil, disturbing dreams where the well-known and familiar is turned into something strange and distorted. There was an instant, too, of fear when she thought that somehow the remnants of the Marvel Circus might have packed up and pulled out and another taken its place, one in which there would be only strangers.

Then her eyes took in the row of living wagons and found the one upon which she had worked so many long hours, scrubbing and cleaning, the one with the scratched and marred features of the Auguste with the bulbous nose, and the letters in golden curlicue writing:
JACKDAW WILLIAMS
. A smile of relief came to her mouth, and some of the fatigue seemed to drain away from her body. She picked up her suitcase and walked around to the open end of the “U.”

Janos was sitting in the sun on the steps of the clown wagon eating out of a tin with a spoon. His two great Danes went into a hysteria of barking. Janos looked up and began to shout. “Hoi, hoi, hoi! Hallo, hallo! You, Rosie! You come back! Hoi, hoi, everybody come to see! Rosie come back!”

At the shouting Fred Deeter and Toby ran from the horse tent where they had been engaged in curry-combing the Liberty horses, and Mr. Albert came jogging up from the bottom of the enclosure where he had been tending his animals.

A kind of pandemonium broke loose then. The lion and the tiger leaped from end to end of their cages roaring; the black leopard coughed with agitation; all of the articulate animals picked up the excitement and squealed, whined, barked, or chittered. Judy, the elephant, rattled her chains, flapped her great ears, and raising her trunk blew a trumpet blast. She had recognised her old enemy and her clever, knowing little eyes twinkled wickedly and harboured expectation.