Love, Let Me Not Hunger (3 page)

Fred Deeter was to triple, presenting the Liberty horses as Signor Alfredo, the mixed-cat act as the Great Marco, and an exhibition of whip cracking, lassoing, and rope spinning in cowboy costume as Buffalo Slim, as well as his trick horse, Marlene Dietrich, a palomino whose responses were almost human.

Marvel summoned Jackdaw Williams and the clowns, Bill Semple, Tom Drury, and Janos, the dwarf, and laid down the law on their turns. There was to be no more slacking and horsing around. Gogo and Panache were to present their musical entree and work out at least two or three new entrees in which all of them would take part.

“A lot of stuff with water,” Marvel ordered. “Kids like to see you get doused or fall on your arse in water. Or maybe one of them cars that busts up.” This was as far as Sam Marvel’s originality took him. He added, “And what’s more, all of you lend a hand setting up and pulling down. You, Drury! I understand you can spickety Spanish? Okay, you’re the interpreter.”

Janos, the dwarf clown, parked a half-eaten sandwich and pulled himself up by his finger tips to look over the edge of the desk at the circus proprietor. “What about my doks?” he asked.

“What about your dogs?”

“I do my oct with them?”

“Okay, okay. You can do your act. Second half. Micky the Midget Magyar and his Capering Canine Comics. But you bloody well feed ’em yourself.”

Janos released his hold from the desk and came down from his tiptoes, a satisfied smirk on his broad features.

“Hokay, hokay, I feed ’em.” For in spite of his malformation he was as vain as any of his fellow performers. Indeed in this environment his abnormality was covered up. Everyone in a circus is special—everyone shows himself—everyone in some manner changes his appearance. Under clown-white Janos became a member of a unique community and no longer stood out as grotesque, pitiful, and excluded. For affection he turned to the three dogs he had trained to do a comedy act with him and from whom he was inseparable. Two were hulking, lazy great Danes who got laughs by refusing to do anything he asked them to and superciliously turning their heads away at every command. The third was a small, lively, intelligent fox terrier who could turn back flips and walk balanced on his forefeet. With Janos his dogs came first. His second concern was his stomach.

Janos was a Hungarian with a Hungarian’s gusto for food. He ate voraciously and seemingly interminably since he was rarely seen when he was not chewing at something. Food in some way must have been a compensation to him. Most of his money he spent upon delicacies for himself and would often be seen in his corner of the clown wagon treating himself to a tin of pâté or smoked salmon.

Sam Marvel had a look at the chewed end of his Schimmelpenninck and then said to Jackdaw, “You do your specialty number with that lousy bird, but you come back in the last half billed as Marvo the Juggler. Why the hell don’t you stick to juggling or doing that musical act of yours? You’re a much better juggler than you are a joey.”

Jackdaw Williams, who was a big, powerful man with a bulbous nose and weary, heavy-lidded eyes which drooped at the corners like those of a bloodhound, said amiably, “Why don’t you mind your own bloody business, Sam? Say what you want and cut out the lectures.”

One of his specialties was to appear as a living scarecrow with Raffles, his jackdaw, perched on his shoulder. He had trained the bird to fly into various sections of the audience where it would filch eyeglasses, programmes, bags of sweets, women’s purses, or anything that was loose and bring them to him. When the bird had collected sufficient articles Williams would hold up each one and ask the owner to stand and identify it, and the jackdaw would then fly back with it, with Williams sometimes deliberately muddling articles, such as returning a woman’s hat to a man, which provided the laughs.

But Williams, who was of the circus from generations back, was also a skilled juggler in the old tradition and a competent acrobat. As well, he could perform on a dozen or so musical instruments and knew the dialogue and back-chat of more than fifty entrees and routines.

Marvel merely grunted, “Uh-huh,” and without rancour. And then, removing the stem of the Schimmelpenninck from between his teeth and using it to point at Williams, he asked, “Who’s the mussie?”

The lids of Williams’ eyes seemed to droop still further. He had a cigarette between his lips and the end of it glowed strongly before he replied, “Nobody.” The bird on his shoulder glared beadily at Marvel.

Marvel returned his own smoke to the corner of his mouth, leaned back in his rocker chair, hooked his thumbs once more into the armholes of his waistcoat, and inquired, “She your palone?”

Williams did not appear to be greatly interested. “You might say,” he replied.

“Josser, ain’t she,” Marvel said, not as a query but as a statement.

“Yup.”

Marvel’s reaction to the personal turn the conversation had taken had been to fall into circus slang seldom used any longer even though all of them there understood it.

The showman asked, “Can she do anything?”

Tom Drury, who was the white-faced clown Panache, a tall, thin man and actually the more droll of the two, said, “Hoo-hoo! Can she!” And with three movements of his body left no mistake in the minds of anyone what he held her good for.

Jackdaw Williams, without a word, took his cigarette from his mouth and held the burning end against Drury’s cheek. The clown let out a yell of pain and clapped his hand to his face. “Christ!” he shouted. “What the hell did you do that for?”

Williams gave him a smile that was almost sweet as he said, “You funny fellow.”

Drury had half drawn back a fist when Marvel interposed with, “Cut it out! Cut it out! Save that comedy for the ring.” Then to Williams, “What I want to know is, can she work? Has she got an act?”

Williams contemplated the end of his cigarette with his heavy gaze and merely replied, “Nunti.”

Marvel asked, “Ain’t there nothing she can do? Sing, dance, tumble?”

Williams was now regarding the showman levelly, and repeated, “Nunti.”

Marvel said flatly, “You’ll have to get rid of her. We don’t carry any dead weight on this trip.”

As flatly, but without anger, Williams said, “She stays or I don’t. Which way do you want it?”

There was a heavy silence in the little office during which Marvel took out the stem of his Schimmelpenninck, had a good look at it and returned it before he said, “O.K. It’s at your expense. You’d better get her a passport then. But put her to work.” He glanced up at the bird. “I suppose she can look after that.”

There was no ruffling the big Auguste’s equanimity. He said, “The bird hates her guts. He’s jealous.”

It was Marvel finally whose irritation showed. He said, “Well, I don’t care what she does, but she’s got to do something. Put her to work selling programmes or sweets or taking tickets, or maybe she could learn to dress up an act. She ain’t bad-looking.”

Williams made no reply, and Marvel said, “O.K., that’s all, boys.” And they filed out, with Williams the last one. Marvel called after him, “Hey, just a minute!” and he produced a pencil. “What’s her name?”

Half in the doorway, Williams turned and replied, “Rose.”

“Rose what?”

“I dunno. I never asked her.”

“Where’d you find her?”

“Picked her up. She was on her uppers.”

Marvel was still sore at having lost a battle and some face. He said, “Just a little tart, eh?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Williams remarked equably, turned, and went out.

The last one he sent for was the old man known as Albert, or rather Mr. Albert on the lot, and who came in looking nervous and a little foolish in the rusty, dusty, black frock coat, his eyes worried behind the lenses of steel-rimmed spectacles, and the colour drained from his otherwise pinkish countenance until it came close to matching the white of his moustache and his hair.

Marvel let him stand there for a considerable time while he leaned back in his chair, waggled a newly lit stem, and contemplated him silently.

Eventually the old man could bear it no longer and asked, “Am I going to get the sack?”

“I dunno,” replied Sam Marvel. Then he asked, “How old are you, Albert?” And then added with heavy sarcasm, “Oh, excuse me, M-i-s-t-e-r Albert.”

Mr. Albert answered, too quickly, “Only sixty-seven, sir.”

Marvel emitted a loud snort, the closest he ever permitted himself to a laugh. “Sixty-seven! That’s a good one! You’re seventy and well over, if you’re a day. Come on, old man, gimme the truth. Sam Marvel don’t stand for no lies. Spit it out!”

Mr. Albert blinked nervously and said, “Se-seventy-two,—at the most, seventy-three. I don’t just remember what day it was I was born.” And when Marvel did not reply to this other than to give a nod of his head, he went on, the words coming tumbling out, “But I get around good just as I ever did. I get my job done. The animals all—know me.” He had almost said love, but the word was too much out of place under the stare of those cold eyes.

Marvel said, “We’re streamlining them too. Getting rid of most of ’em. Chipperfields is taking the cats—we’re keeping three—Smarts took a lease on the elephants, the high school horses and the giraffe. We’re taking only Judy.”

The old man looked at Marvel miserably. “Then I’m for the boot?”

For the second time the showman said, “I dunno,” added, “that depends,” and then fell into another silence which was more for the purpose of terrifying the old man than reaching any conclusion. He was under no illusions as to the value of Mr. Albert to him and to his circus ever since the day when from a kind of hanger-on, scrounger, and odd man about the lot, he had revealed unsuspected talents for dealing with wild animals of every sort held in captivity. A beast man who could feed and groom his charges and keep them clean and healthy without getting them into an uproar or making them too nervous and irritable to be shown properly in the ring was a find and a rarity. The old-timers at this sort of thing were dying out and no new ones appearing. Marvel was merely setting the stage to see how much more he would be able to get out of the old man in addition to his task of looking after the trimmed-down zoo he planned to take with him to Spain.

Looking through the window of his office which opened inward into the arena, Marvel noted that the performers were losing no time in getting down to business. The Walters family had preempted the ring with two of their rosin-backs. Lilian, the younger girl, who was sixteen, was working one of them, but attached to the belt and rope of the riding machine to keep her safe until her sense of balance and rhythm was restored. Jacko, the eldest son, was on his knees on the broad back of the second horse as it galloped about the ring, warming up by jumping to his feet and falling to his knees again. Ma Walters was in the ring, a large woman, her ample buttocks stuffed into slacks and a cardigan she had not bothered to button down the front showing the great twin globes beneath a red brassiere. It was hard to remember that she had once been a beauty. But she knew her business, Marvel noted, as he watched her touch up the cantering steeds with the tip of her whip until their tempo exactly suited their riders. In the centre of the ring Toby, in black tights and white singlet, was limbering up, the lights glistening from his dark, glossy head as he put himself through a quick set of calisthenics.

Off to one side the Albanos, also in gymnasts’ tights, their wrists reinforced with white tape, were gingerly beginning the first of a set of simple hand-to-hand balances and low pyramids. And from the dressing rooms at the end of the building, the Yoshiwara-Fu Tong group came trooping, burdened with their colourful paraphernalia.

In his showman’s mind, Marvel visualised the acts dressed under lights and canvas and to the blare of music. All those props and the various equipment would have to be at the right place at the right time, and as yet he had no reliable head property man who would see to this.

He turned to the old fellow standing before him and said, “You think you’re still pretty spry, eh?”

“Yes sir, yes sir,” assented Mr. Albert, “I don’t feel no younger than I ever was—older, I mean—or the same like when I was younger.”

Marvel watched him flounder, his expression unchanging. He felt that at any moment the old man might go into knee-bends and biceps-flexing to prove how young he was, and to forestall it he said, “The props have got to be handled. We’re not taking any ring boys with us. Do you think you could manage? The tentmen will give you a hand with the heavy stuff, but somebody’s got to know where everything goes and when, look lively, and hop to it, and at the same time keep out from under the horses. Have you got enough legs left for that, old man?”

Colour had come back into Mr. Albert’s face. There was a chance, then! “Yes sir, yes sir, I can do it! I can do it all and more. I’m spry as anything, you’ll see! You mean I wouldn’t get the push if I could?”

Sam Marvel said, “Well, you try it out with the acts when they rehearse now and we’ll see how it goes. O.K., git out!”

Through the open door he watched Albert go gallumphing across the tanbark of the hall in that curious galloping run that was to mark his movement from then on to show how spry he was.

C H A P T E R
3

J
ackdaw Williams had denied that the girl he had brought with him as his companion was a tart. He had no particular reason for believing that she was not, except that she had never demanded a penny from him in payment for the free and unstinted use of herself.

Actually he was right, but if he chose to assert this it was probably because he felt that as a star turn he ought to be able to produce someone better than a prossy to share his living wagon. There were no doubts in the minds of the rest of the troupe as to what she was, and the coming of Rose with the Auguste and her sharing of his quarters was looked upon as a scandal and an abomination, particularly by those other aristocrats, the tightly knit Walters family.

Rose? Rose who? Rose nobody! She did not even have a last name that anybody could find out, wore no wedding ring. Furthermore, it was known that Williams had a wife who lived somewhere in Northumberland. Whatever his relationship with his absent spouse, good, bad, indifferent, or null and void, Williams was a married man and Miss Unknown Rose was a slut he had picked up with out of some slum. As far as they were concerned, she was a whore and an affront to them all.