Pastworld (3 page)

A man in the street was selling mince pies, they were lined up neat and warm and inviting, all steaming on a tray which hung from a strap around his neck.

‘How much?’ I asked.

‘A penny, miss,’ he said smiling back at me.

I handed him one of the bright pennies I had taken from the jar and I felt a twinge of guilt at the thought of Jack sleeping unaware in the parlour. I looked into all the shop windows while I feasted on my hot mince pie. A ragged man sat on the pavement propped up by the red posting box. He looked up at me as I passed with a sad expression on his face. I stopped then, only too aware of the warmth in my own hand from the little pie and the frosted look of his blue-white skinny fingers. I walked back a pace and handed him another coin, this time a whole silver sixpenny piece. I touched his hand and felt the sudden chill, his fingers were as cold as the icicles on our guttering. At first he smiled and nodded gratefully, and then a sudden change came over his face. A change that suggested he had recognised me, although as far as I knew we had never seen each other before.

‘It’s you,’ he said his eyes wide. ‘You’re the one,’ and he nodded.

‘I can’t think what you mean,’ I said smiling back at him and hurried off.

‘Come back,’ he called out, but I kept walking.

Some minutes later I saw that the cold beggar had managed to follow me. He was looking in the window of a baker’s shop. He could get a half loaf and a lardy cake at least with my sixpence, and even a bag of broken biscuits too. He turned and our eyes met. I looked away, a little disturbed by the way he stared at me, like a hungry wolf in a fairy tale. I set off down the street again, hurrying away from him between all the bustling shoppers.

I arrived at the market place. This is where I knew the circus would be. There were rows of big shops behind the busy crowds. A muffin man with a tray balanced on his head pushed and dodged his way through. A man in a long overcoat kept pace with me for a moment. His waist was wound about with sacking and across his shoulders he carried a pole strung with a row of dead rabbits all tied by their little hind feet. I turned away from those sad little dead creatures only to find myself face to face with with a pink pig’s head hanging on a hook along with a row of others in the window of a pork butcher’s. I could clearly see their pale eyelashes. A long row of pig carcasses hung from a rail below. A large crusted raised pork pie sat on a china platter below them. I hurried further into the crowd, away from the smell of blood and sawdust. In among the market stalls was the winter fair with street entertainers and a little circus of sorts.

Near to me there was the first of a group of brightly painted wagons with canvas covers. A tumbler in a bright harlequin costume stood in front of the nearest wagon, while another played a battered cornet. There was a banner stretched above them, with the words JAGO’S ACCLAIMED PANDEMONIUM SHOW lettered across it.

The performers had attracted quite a crowd of Gawkers who were watching them all in a jovial crush. Aware of the possibility that the beggar might still be following me, I went in deep among them.

‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘I am so sorry, excuse me, please,’ and I pushed my way forward as far away from blood and pig carcasses and ragged men as I could get. Most of the people I jostled and bumped past seemed jolly enough, all out to enjoy themselves on a bright, crisp morning, but there were some other, rougher-looking folk among them. Men and women with deeply hollowed eyes and sunken cheeks. They were starved-looking people with thin wrists and knobbly bones that seemed almost to poke out of their filthy clothes.

A covered wagon was stationed at each end of a small stage and a high tightrope was strung above the stage supported by two striped poles. A harlequin on the stage played a loud roll on a snare drum, and another stood holding on to one of the support ropes, shouting in a raucous voice, his face vivid white with make-up, his thin mouth painted a cheerful bright red.

‘Roll up, roll up,’ he cried. ‘See Jago walk the rope. All the way from the far Indies, to be here with us today in cold old London town, all that way, from the heat and dust of that far country, just to walk a high rope for you, fifteen feet in the air, and no safety net, roll up now, come on, roll up.’

The canvas opened at the back of one of the wagons and another harlequin stepped out on to the little stage to applause. He had a dark face in stark contrast to the other white-faced harlequins. As he stood balanced on the lower part of the rope. I noticed his soft shoes and the way he curled his toes around the rope. I supposed it was to grip. The Indian harlequin carried a parasol, covered in bright diamond patches of coloured cloth. He waved the parasol about as a counterbalance as he inched comically up the rope towards the top of the support pole. I pushed forward further, squeezing my way nearer to the front to get a better view. The drummer kept the snapping drum roll going all the while.

The Harlequin made to walk right across the rope but he seemed to lose his balance, he fell forwards almost tipping himself off over the crowd. First he leaned one way, and then the other, flailing his arms, with a frightened expression on his face. A silence fell over the section of the crowd near the stage. I gasped, along with several others. Then someone laughed and we all realised it was a trick. He was only pretending to fall. The crowd loved this and laughter rang out. There were oohs and aahs, and more nervous laughter. I had never seen anything so frightening or exciting in all of my poor, dull, closed-off life.

One of the harlequins came among us with a collecting box. I put in some coins from my coat pocket, without looking, not quite knowing exactly how generous I was really being. The harlequin smiled as I dropped them into the box, he had a kindly face under the stark white make-up, a friendly face.

The rope walker finished his act above the heads of the crowd. I couldn’t see how he did it, but by some clever trick the Indian harlequin seemed to fall to the stage in a kind of slowed-down motion. I joined in the wild applause; I felt safe, suddenly warm and happy, huddled close in the crowd watching these colourful entertainers.

The drummer put aside his drum, and pulled a small table to the front of the makeshift stage. The table was laid with a large fine cloth; the cloth was blue, the blue of the sky, the blue of infinity, the blue of serenity, and it was covered over in tiny silver stars. The Indian harlequin, the one I imagined was perhaps Jago himself, raised his hand, his long bony finger pointed upwards, to concentrate his audience’s attention, and he hissed ‘Sshh.’

The crowd quietened down, the cornet player switched to a violin, and started to play a sad little waltz tune. The harlequin Jago reached under the blue cloth, and then pulled out . . . nothing. He held his hands out to the audience, and showed them front and back – nothing. He pulled his ragged sleeves up a little to show that they also concealed nothing. He bent forward to the crowd and to me in particular. He put his hand behind my ear. I felt his fingers brush past me with a tickling sensation on my skin and he pulled as if from nowhere a single white egg. He held it up and showed it round, first to me and then to the audience. The egg shone out clear white against his skin.

There was scattered laughter and applause. ‘Just an egg, you will allow,’ he said. ‘An egg and nothing but an egg?’

‘Oh yes,’ I said eager to join in.

He raised his hand high above his head, and slowly brought it down, he tapped the egg lightly on the edge of the table, cupped his hands, and in an instant . . . a white dove emerged.

He released the dove, and it flew up and round in the cold air and finally settled on the top of one of the striped support poles. We all applauded wildly; I had never seen anything so amazing. The other harlequin continued to shake his collecting box. Another was starting to pack away their bright equipment into the wagons; it seemed that they were getting ready to leave. I felt a surge of disappointment. Soon they would all be gone. I determined that I must be part of them. I would follow them and I would watch them again and join in again, make myself useful, make myself indispensable.

Then I caught sight of something which alarmed me. It was the ragged man again, the one I had given sixpence to. He was staring at me and at the same time moving steadily in my direction through the crowd. I was gripped by fear. It was as if something were suddenly released inside me, as if an alarm had finally gone off. This feeling energised me further, heightened my reaction to everything. I just knew that the ragged man meant me great harm. It is typical somehow of my particular turn of mind that I could watch the harlequins preparing to leave with sweet regret, while at the same time closely watching someone that I somehow knew instinctively to be murderous, bearing down on me, with such strange and cruel intent on his face, but that is what it’s like to be seventeen and suddenly awakened and in love with life.

Jago pulled the blue cloth from the table; it unfurled like a flag. Meanwhile the table itself was hurled into the back of the wagon. It seemed that there would be one last trick. Jago shook the cloth out to its full size until it was a big square banner. He turned the cloth round front to back – nothing. The audience waited. In fear, I turned again and scanned the crowd. All the faces were looking, mesmerised, at the performer above them on the stage; all except one. It was the ragged man. He was looking directly at me as he pushed himself forward through the last few people in the crowd who separated us. I turned back to the platform. I looked up at the harlequin. He seemed to single me out with his dark eyes. It was then that I felt a strong bony hand grip my shoulder. I turned and looked into the dirt-streaked face of the ragged man. Close to, it was a frightening face. The beggar opened his mouth and showed his yellowed and crooked teeth.

‘Well, well, what have we here?’ he said. ‘I’ve found you, I know it, the pretty blue-eyed girl herself.’

The harlequin looked down at me from the top edge of the stage, and he raised one eyebrow like a question mark. I felt the hand of the beggar tighten further on my shoulder, and I looked up at the harlequin and I quietly said the words ‘Help me’.

With a sudden movement the Harlequin threw the blue cloth, and it fell over me like a waterfall. As I was enveloped by the cloth I felt a strong counter-grip on my waist. My shoulder was pulled from the beggar’s hand, and my feet lifted off the ground. I heard the ragged man give a surprised yell of ‘Oi’. His hands tried to grab at me wildly under the folds of the cloth, but I felt a rush of strength and movement, and the world suddenly turned upside down. There was a flash of the bright cold blue sky and then there was darkness, a rush, and a sudden soft landing. I found I was lying on a pile of dusty velvet behind the tailboard of the circus wagon. My eye was close to a peep hole. I was able to see everything from my sudden new position as the cloth fluttered and tangled up around the beggar, and then fell to the ground.

The harlequin picked up the cloth, and twirled it in front of the crowd, front to back, back to front, nothing, it was empty.

‘The lady vanishes,’ he called out.

It must have seemed to them that I had indeed simply vanished into thin air. The large crowd roared their approval. There was applause and laughter. Clearly for them my disappearance and the confusion of the ragged man all seemed to be part of the show.

The beggar looked round him and then shouted out in a fury, ‘All right, that’s enough. Show’s over, now you give her back to me.’

The harlequin cried, ‘Shh, the lady’s not for returning,’ pressed his finger to his lips and raised the blue cloth over his own head and held it there for a moment, then let it fall to cover himself completely.

There was silence.

The ragged man stared at the cloth, with a puzzled expression on his face. Then he reached forward and grabbed at the cloth, which spiralled to the ground, to reveal . . . again nothing, for the harlequin was gone too.

By now the wagons were on the move. I saw the other two harlequins running away back into the crowd and heard the crowd roar their approval again. I watched as the ragged man kicked at the folds of the fine blue cloth, and then he picked it up, and shook it as if perhaps expecting either myself or the harlequin to fall out on to the ground. Then he began a furious pursuit, pushing through the edge of the crowd, elbowing people aside. He shoved his way through, and suddenly the ragged man was within grabbing distance of the tailboard of the wagon where I lay hidden. It was then that the dove that had been born fully grown from the egg flew past the beggar and, as it did so, pulled the fine floating length of blue cloth from his hand, in its beak and flew with it under the canvas cover of the wagon. The beggar, with an amazed expression on his face, tripped and fell headlong across the cobbles, into a puddle of filthy snow melt, and then we rattled fast out of the busy square and turned into the traffic.

I was squashed down among deep piles of soft fabrics, folded costumes and rolls of velvet inside the wagon. I sat up as we turned the corner and sneezed in all the general dustiness, and the dark conjuring harlequin with the kind eyes popped his head through the canvas flap from the front of the wagon.

‘Are you all right? Sorry about grabbing you like that, only it looked to me like you needed it. Don’t worry – we’ll shake him off soon enough.’

I felt dizzy, both from the motion of the wagon, and also from the sudden lurch in my circumstances. I crawled forward to the front so as to hear him better. The wagon was full of entertainers’ paraphernalia; piles of costumes, striped poles and ropes, glass globes and silver stars, and a giant cut-out pasteboard moon with a smiling face.