The Winter Ground (9 page)

‘Finished?’ said Charlie, turning round again. ‘Right then, here’s what we’ll do. I’ll throw a hat up and catch it in the box, snap the lid shut. Then you’ll throw them all in, one to each side, in, snap, in, snap, until there’s three left and we catch those three on our heads.’

‘What about Jinxie?’ said Andrew.

‘Four then,’ said Charlie. ‘Jinx gets one too.’

‘Littl’un what fits or a big’un what hides him?’ asked Tiny.

‘Up to you,’ said Charlie. ‘What d’you think?’

‘Big one and he trails off wearing it,’ said Andrew.

‘Nah,’ said Charlie. ‘Ends on a downbeat that way.’

‘You’re the boss,’ said Andrew.

Charlie’s face split into a lopsided grin around his cigarette. ‘Now, see, you’re learning! We’ll make clowns out of you two jossers yet.’ With that, he strolled over to me and put one long shoe up on a section of the curved box which separated the seats from the ring. ‘Charlie Cooke,’ he said to me, holding out a hand. ‘You’re Ma’s pal, aren’t you? What is it – painting like the Tober-omey’s missus? Writing stories?’ He winked at me as he said this and I hesitated, partly because if this Mr Cooke – surely Tam Cooke’s brother – was not in Ma’s confidence then I should be circumspect with him too, partly because I could not interpret the wink, and partly because I was distracted by the way the hoop in his trousers waist allowed me to see right inside them, all the way down his long winter drawers to the tops of his boots.

Thankfully, he did not wait for an answer. ‘What’s your tuppenceworth, then?’ he asked, jerking his head back to the other two who were retying the parcel behind him. It was pretty obvious that his main concern was that he, Charlie Cooke, should be the centre of the act and I half wished I could have argued with him, but I had to be honest.

‘I think it’s wonderful,’ I said, ‘and I think your ending is best.’

‘There it is, lads,’ he said, turning round with his arms spread wide. ‘The customer is always right.’ Then he shucked off the flipper-like extensions to his boots and, leaving them in the sawdust, he sauntered off out of the tent, whistling. Akilina Prebrezhensky straightened up and scampered after him.

‘Sorry, chaps,’ I said once he was out of earshot.

‘See, Jinxie-boy,’ said Tiny. The dog looked up at him out of adoring liquid brown eyes. ‘Not everyone is a champion of the underdog and a friend of the little man.’

I could not help chuckling, although he was being impertinent, really.

‘If you want to know the truth …’ I said. Tiny came over to the side of the ring and hopped up to sit on the edge. ‘The truth is I think the whole act would be fine with just the two of you but since he’s in it it
would
be a poor show to have him just stand there for the grand finale.’ I looked over to see if the tall man, Andrew, would join us too but he scraped a bow and left by the curtained exit which led to behind the scenes.

‘He’s shy, not rude,’ said Tiny, ‘is our Andrew Merryman. Not me.’ He swung his short legs around until he was facing me and held out his hand to shake, sticking his arm straight out as if challenging me to grasp it. His hand was bigger than mine and his grip immensely strong; I am sure he could have pulled me off my seat if he had tried to.

‘Edward Truman,’ he said. ‘Tiny to me friends and me enemies too, more’s the pity. Big Bad Bill Wolf calls me Little Bad Ted Truman and for a time I was The Pocket Colossus, until Andrew there said it made me sound like an encyclopedia.’ He hugged himself and crowed with laughter.

‘Dandy Gilver,’ I said. ‘A neighbour. Of the Wilsons, I mean, and so of you for this winter too.’

‘It’s going to be a hard one,’ said Tiny. ‘All them girls was mumping on about the weather, mud getting inside t’wagons. Said we needed frost, cos it were cleaner.’ He rubbed his big hands up and down his little arms, shivering. ‘Way I see it, a bit of mud on your rug won’t freeze you in your bed before the morning comes.’

‘Mrs Cooke’s living wagon seemed rather cosy,’ I said.

‘Ma Cooke’s proper old circus,’ said Tiny. ‘Born in a wagon and lived there all her days. She keeps that stove going all night without waking. Gets up and feeds it sticks and her wagon’s as warm as pies in t’morning, but see a josser like me, I fall asleep at night and wake up next day with me teeth chattering in me ’ead.’

‘A josser,’ I repeated. ‘I’m only learning, but I believe a josser is a flatty who’s trying to mend his ways.’ Tiny clapped his hands, his whole body bouncing slightly with each slap of his palms. ‘You’re not from a circus family, then?’ I said.

‘Wouldn’t
that
have been handy?’ he replied with heavy irony. I flushed. ‘No, me father had a chandlery in Scarborough. His father were a merchant seaman and
his
father, they do say, were a pirate. Well, he were hanged in Jamaica for summat or t’other. So, I suppose you could say running away is in me blood, only I reckoned I’d have more luck running away to the circus than to sea. I hooked up with me first show when I were ten and I’ve been atching ever since.’

‘Atching?’

‘Summer tenting,’ said Tiny Truman. ‘Travelling round.’

‘Always with Cooke’s?’ I asked him.

‘Nay, that were me first season just gone,’ he answered. ‘Lorra changes at Cooke’s last spring. Before that, I were five year with a show, name of Gregson. Lovely little show, but …’ He stared down at his feet for a moment or two without speaking. His face with its heavy brow and flattened nose, deep lines bracketing his mouth, should have been grotesque, but there was such expression in his eyes and such humour in the wide grin that one very soon forgot to find him peculiar. He glanced up, breaking his reverie, and the grin widened. ‘Old Man Gregson got past doing two shows a day, that’s all. Then t’kangaroo died.’

‘A kangaroo?’ I could not hide my astonishment.

‘That’s what Gregson’s were known for,’ Tiny said. ‘Biff the Boxing Kangaroo. As long as old Biff were still going, we was on clover, but after he’d gone … Ma Gregson sent him off for stuffing, but before she got him back again, the show had folded.’

‘It’s terribly sad,’ I said, feeling the inadequacy of the words.

‘Well, it is and it ain’t,’ said Tiny. ‘Pa Cooke came to t’sale, since Cooke’s and Gregson’s was both in Aberdeen at the same time – and if there’s anywhere more like to make a kangaroo drop dead and a show fold, I’ve never seen it. He were looking for working ponies, but he saw me and it just so ’appened that all season Andrew Merryman had been pestering him for a job, so he looks at Andrew and he looks at me and he puts three and a half and a little half together. He’s a seeing man, Pa Cooke, knew from the off Andrew and me was made for each other.’

I nodded, thinking. In other words, both Truman and Merryman had every reason to be loyal to Cooke’s Circus. If this Ana was indeed stealing props and causing trouble they would want to help. And had Mrs Cooke not said that she thought ‘them clowns’ knew something?

‘You must,’ I said, carefully, ‘be wondering what I’m doing here.’

Tiny gave me a look as sharp as a little blue dagger, but before he could speak a loud dull clanging sounded from outside.

‘Dinnertime,’ said Tiny. He put his hands down by his sides and, lifting himself on to them, he swung his legs up behind him, clicked his heels and sprang back to land in the ring. ‘Or, begging your pardon, my lady, I should say: luncheon is served.’

I could see that luncheon – dinner, as the circus folk called it – was delightful in its way, if one found delight in thick stew and potatoes around a campfire in the open air. I have always preferred carved slices and thin gravy eaten off a table in a dining room with the potatoes cooked in a pot out of sight in the kitchen somewhere and not plucked out of the fire on a long fork and thrown around the assembled diners with a flick of the wrist. Still, one does not like to be above one’s company and so I sat down, laid my gloves in my lap and accepted a bowl of stew with gratitude, even managing to field my potato when it came.

There was a considerable crowd at the start, since the artistes and their families were joined by half a dozen others whom Mr Cooke nodded vaguely towards and identified as tent men and grooms. There was a strict order of precedence in play, however. These workers, once their plates had been filled, took themselves off to sit cross-legged on mats, at the far side of the fire, downwind of the smoke. Those remaining upwind and lording it on boxes were all Cookes, Wolfs and Prebrezhenskys as well as Tiny, Andrew and me and two equally pretty although otherwise very different young girls who I guessed were the Topsy of whom I had heard mention and Anastasia, who I only then realised must also be Ana, my prey.

There were no formal introductions and so I had to make a further guess that the diminutive little figure with the tumbling mass of golden curls falling around her shoulders and the chuckling, gurgling voice was Topsy Turvy, the acrobat, while the large, strong and utterly silent young woman with her black hair scraped back as severely as a ballerina’s and her boots planted a foot apart on the grass was Ana, horsewoman and troublemaker combined.

It was not so easy to catch and name the several currents which were flowing around the company with a constant troubling hum, but it was clear that Cooke’s Circus was a far from happy little band. Topsy, at first, seemed impervious to it all. She prattled on, gently teasing the Wolf children and earning their giggles. Both Tommy and Sallie Wolf, whom I had not forgotten were Ilchenkos on their mother’s side, were translating into Russian for the Prebrezhensky girls whose laughter was just as loud and of an even higher pitch. Ma Cooke struck me as very composed, gossiping quietly – again in Russian, one assumed – with Mrs Prebrezhensky. This lady herself was less at ease, studiously ignoring her husband who was glowering at her from afar and kept craning in any time she spoke, as though trying to hear what she might be saying. Tam and Charlie Cooke, although they appeared calmly to be debating such mundane matters as oil lamps versus paraffin flares, ‘continentals‘ (whatever they might be) and ‘tarry tape’ (apparently a scarce commodity in this part of Perthshire), kept running dry and having to clear their throats and start again.

Odd for a pair of brothers, I thought, unless it was that they were only paying heed to one another with half an ear each, both distracted by what was passing elsewhere around the fire. I was pretty sure that it was the increasingly helpless gales of laughter from the little ones which were annoying the boss, but his brother’s quick glances and sudden attentive silences were all for Tiny Truman.

I could not hear what Tiny was saying from where I sat, but from the eye-rolling and occasional flourishes I could guess that he was engaged in some kind of clownish patter; in any case, it was aimed at Anastasia alone. He sat very close to her and talked incessantly, but she was a tough nut to crack and withstood quite five minutes of the little man’s efforts with no more than a sleepy blinking of her dark eyes and a pointed stare at his hand whenever he emphasised a punchline by laying it on her arm. Eventually, though, at something whispered into her ear, she finally broke into laughter and her oval face lit up with a grin as wide and as wicked as Tiny’s own. Immediately, he looked over to Topsy with a glint of triumph and
her
eyes, just for a moment, lost their twinkle. Perhaps making the children laugh was small beer and getting a smile from Anastasia was proof of one’s brilliance as a performer.

Certainly Charlie Cooke, touchy as he was when it came to clowning prowess, was now glaring at Tiny and had stopped listening to Tam Cooke completely. Tam broke off from talking in mid-word, aware that he had lost his brother’s attention again, and, in his turn, shot a look of fury at Ana, whose smile snapped off as though it had never been. Even Mrs Cooke caught some of the feeling this time and she looked up with a frown. For a moment there was silence all around and I caught Andrew Merryman staring about him at the ring of faces, smirking to himself and shaking his head slightly. Judging from his accent, I should have said he was from my world and had not long been gone from it; his memories had to be fresh still of dining rooms and of light conversations with no torrid undercurrents tugging at them and I wondered, regarding him, if he – if anyone – could really make the journey from that world to this and stay for good.

At length, Pa Cooke wiped around his bowl with a crust of bread then set it down and lit a cigarette. He offered his case politely to me, but I could see that his cigarettes were hand-rolled, their ends twisted like toffee papers, and I declined.

‘Now then,’ he said. ‘Topsy and Ana, you’re up.’

‘Right, Pa,’ Topsy said. ‘Might as well get started.’

Anastasia’s brow lowered until her dark eyes were entirely lost in shadow, not a spark showing. There was a long pause and I was aware that everyone around the fire was waiting. At last, she spoke.

‘I am not a chorus girl,’ she said. Charlie Cooke, I noticed, nodded slightly. ‘I should appreciate not being treated like one,’ she went on, looking to Charlie as though she expected more from him, but even the nodding had stopped at a quick gesture from Ma, which went unseen by her husband. Her voice was the most curious I had heard yet, with none of the lilt of Topsy and Ma, none of the colourful mix to be found in Lally Wolf and little Tommy, yet it was not the like of Tiny’s or Andrew’s: not, that is, an ordinary accent from somewhere or other on its way to turning circus. She spoke as though unaccustomed to English and she was expressionless to the point of sounding wooden.

‘You,’ said Pa Cooke, ‘are an entrée artiste and every entrée artiste in this show does two spots. So unless you’ve got a better idea, we’ve an act to practise and you should think yourself lucky Topsy is letting you in.’

‘Sure it’s all one to me, Pa,’ said Topsy. ‘Until I find my blessed swing I’m stuck with the corde lisse anyway.’

Far from her cheerful assent helping matters, however, it only served to throw Anastasia into a worse light. She turned and glowered at Topsy now.

‘I have two acts,’ she said, and her slow, blank voice lent her words a threatening air. Ma Cooke stirred again.