Meridon

6

We kept the Sabbath, now that we were on show as Robert Gower’s young ladies. Dandy and I were allowed to walk arm in arm slowly down the main street of the village and slowly back again. I – who could face dancing bareback in front of hundreds of people – would rather have walked through fire than join Dandy in her promenade. But she begged me; she loved to see and be seen, even with such a poor audience as the lads of Warminster. Also, Robert Gower gave me a level look over the top of his pipe stem, and told me he would be obliged if I stayed at Dandy’s side.

I flushed scarlet at that. Dandy’s coquetry had been a joke among the four of us in the travelling wagon. But in Warminster there was nothing funny about behaviour which could lower the Gowers in the eyes of their neighbours.

‘It’s hardly likely I’d fancy any of those peasants!’ Dandy said, tossing her head airily.

‘Well, you remember it,’ Robert said. ‘Because if I hear so much as a whisper about you, Miss Dandy, there will be no training, and no short skirt, and no travelling with the show next season. No new wagon of your own, either!’

‘A new wagon?’ Dandy repeated, seizing on the most material point.

Robert Gower smiled at her suddenly sweet face.

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘I have it in mind for you and Merry to have a little wagon of your own. You’ll need to change clothes twice during the show and it’ll be easier for you to keep your costumes tidy. You’ll maybe have a new poorhouse wench in with you as well.’

Dandy made a face at that.

‘Which horse will pull the new wagon?’ I asked.

Robert nodded. ‘Always horses for you, isn’t it, Merry? I’ll be buying a new work horse. You can come with me to help me choose it. At Salisbury horse fair the day after tomorrow.’

‘Thank you,’ I said guardedly.

He shot a hard look at me. ‘Like the life less now we’re in winter quarters?’ he asked.

I nodded, saying nothing.

‘It has benefits,’ he said judicially. ‘The real life is on the road. But only tinkers and gypsies live on the road for ever. I’ve got a good-sized house now, but I’m going to buy a bigger one. I want a house so big and land so big that I can live just as I please and never care what anyone thinks of me, and never lack for anything.’

He looked swiftly at me. ‘That make any sense to you, Merry?’ he asked. ‘Or is the Rom blood too strong for you to settle anywhere?’

I paused for a moment. There was a thin thread of longing in my heart which was my need for Wide.

‘I want to be Quality,’ I said, my voice very low. ‘I want a beautiful sandstone house which faces due south so the sun shines all day on the yellow stone, with a rose garden in front of it, and a walled fruit garden at the back, and a stable full of hunters on the west side.’ I broke off and looked up at him, but he was not laughing at me. He nodded as if he understood.

‘The only way I’ll get my house is work, and hard trading,’ he said. ‘The only way you’ll get to yours is marriage. You’d better make haste and get some of your sister’s prettiness, Meridon. You’ll never catch a squire with your hair cropped short and your chest as flat as a lad.’

I flushed scarlet from my neck to my forehead.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ I said turning away, angry with myself for saying too much; and that to a man I should never wholly trust.

‘Well, take your walk,’ he called genially, to Dandy and me together. ‘Because tomorrow you start work in earnest.’

I knew what Robert Gower’s idea of earnest work was like, and I kept Dandy’s saunter to a minimum – just up and down the wide main street – so that I could be home before dinner in time to muck out the stables and groom the horses. Ignoring Dandy’s protests I insisted we leave the kitchen straight after our dinner, so that we could turn the horses out in the paddock just as it was growing dark. In the corner of the field stood the barn which Robert Gower had ordered to be ready, where Dandy’s work would start tomorrow.

‘Let’s go and see it,’ Dandy said.

We trod carefully across the uneven ground and pushed the wide door open. Our feet sank into deep wood shavings, thickly scattered all around the floor. Above our heads, almost hidden in the gloom was a wooden bar on a frail-looking pair of ropes swinging slightly in the draught like a waiting gibbet. I had never seen such a thing before, except in that hand-bill. Just standing on the floor and gazing up made me sick with fright. Dandy glanced up as if she hardly minded at all.

‘How on earth will we get up there?’ I asked. My voice was quavery and I had my teeth clenched to stop them chattering.

Dandy walked across and stood at the bottom of a rope-ladder which hung from a little platform at the top of an A-frame built of pale light wood.

‘Up this, I suppose,’ she said. She tipped her head back and looked up at it. ‘D’you see, Meridon? I suppose we stand up there and jump across to the trapeze thing.’

I looked fearfully up. The trapeze was within reach, if you stretched out far and jumped wide out over the void.

‘What d’we do then?’ I asked miserably. ‘What happens then?’

‘I s’pose we swing out to Jack,’ she said, walking across the floor of the barn. On the other side was a matching A-frame with an open top. ‘He stands at the top and catches my feet, swings me through his legs and back up,’ she said as if it were the easiest thing in the world.

‘I won’t do it,’ I said. My voice was harsh because I was so breathless. ‘I won’t be able to do it at all. I don’t care what I promised Robert, I didn’t know it would be so high and the ropes so thin. Surely you don’t want to do it either, Dandy? Because if you’d rather not, we’ll tell Robert Gower we won’t do it. If the worst comes to the worst we can make a living some other way. We could run away. If you don’t want to do it too, he cannot make us.’

Dandy’s heart-shaped face rounded into her sweetest smile. ‘Oh nonsense, Merry,’ she said. ‘You think I’m as big a coward as you are. I don’t mind it, I tell you. I’m going to make my fortune doing this. I shall be the only flying girl in the country. They’ll all come to see me! Gentry, too! I shall be in all the newspapers and they’ll make up ballads about me. I can’t wait to start. This is everything for me, Merry!’

I held my peace. I tried to share her excitement, but as we stood in that shadowy barn and I looked up at the yawning roof and the slim swing and the slender rope I could feel my mouth fill with bile and my head grow dizzy.

I put my hands over my ears. There was a rushing noise, I could not bear to hear it. Dandy took hold of my wrists. She was shaking them. From a long way away I could hear her saying: ‘Merry, are you all right? Are you all right, Merry?’

I shook my head, pulling away from her grip, fighting in a panic for my breath, waiting for the vomit to curdle up into my mouth. Then the next thing I knew was a sharp slapping on my cheek. I opened my eyes and put up my hand to ward off a blow. It was Jack. I was held in his arms, Dandy hovering beside him.

‘You with us now?’ he asked tersely.

I shrugged off his hold and sat up. My head still swam.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m all right.’

‘Was it just looking at the swing?’ he asked glancing upward, incredulous that anyone could faint for fear at such a petty object.

I hesitated. ‘Yes,’ I said uncertainly. ‘I suppose it was.’ Jack pulled me to my feet before I could think more clearly. ‘Well, don’t look at it then,’ he said unsympathetically, ‘and don’t go setting Dandy off neither. Da is set on having her up there, and you promised you’d try it.’

I nodded. Dandy’s face was bright, untroubled.

‘She’s set on going,’ I said. My voice was croaky, I coughed and spat some foul-tasting spittle. ‘An’ I’ll keep my word and try it.’

‘You won’t be up there for a while,’ Jack said. ‘Look there, that’s the practice one.’

He gestured over to the other side of the barn near the door where a swing hung so low that I could have jumped up to reach it. Someone hanging would be only ten inches from the floor, just enough to dangle.

‘On that!’ I exclaimed. Jack and Dandy laughed at my face. ‘I could face that!’ I said. Relief made me giggly and I joined in their laughing. ‘Even I could swing on that,’ I said.

‘Well, good,’ said Jack agreeably. ‘It would please my da very much if you would swing on the practice swing. You need never go high unless you want to, Merry. But he’s paying a big fee for the man from Bristol to come and teach us. He’d like to see him in full work for the two months.’

‘I’d wager on that,’ Dandy said nastily. ‘But he agreed that Merry needn’t learn if she was afeared. She’s doing enough for the two of you falling off horses all day, as it is.’

‘I don’t mind swinging on that,’ I said, and I meant it. ‘I might even like it.’

‘Getting dark,’ Jack said. ‘You two had best get back. We’ll start work early in the morning.’

We went out into the grey twilight and Jack pulled the door shut behind us.

‘What’s it like sleeping in a house after being in a wagon all your lives?’ he asked.

‘Too quiet,’ Dandy said. ‘I miss you snoring, Jack.’

‘It’s odd,’ I agreed. ‘The room stays still all the time. You get used to the wagon rocking every time someone moves, I suppose. And the ceiling seems so high. In our old wagon, with Da and Zima, the roof was just above my head and I used to get a wet face when I turned over and brushed against it.’

‘What’s it like for you, Jack?’ Dandy said insinuatingly. ‘Will you miss not seeing us in our shifts in the morning? Or getting a little peep at us when we wash?’

Jack laughed but I guessed he was blushing in the darkness.

‘Plenty of girls in Warminster, Dandy,’ he said. ‘Plenty of choice in this town.’

‘As pretty as me?’ she asked. Dandy could make her voice sound like a gilt-edged invitation to a party, if she had a mind to. I could feel Jack sweat as he walked between us.

‘Nay,’ he said honestly. ‘But a darned sight less troublesome.’ He turned abruptly as we walked into the stable yard. ‘I’ll say goodnight to the two of you here,’ he said, and went through the little door in the wall to the garden and the main house.

Dandy went up the stairs before me humming, and unpinned her cap before the bit of mirror while I lit our one rush candle.

‘I could have him,’ she said softly. It was almost an incantation, as if she were making magic with her own lovely mirror-image. ‘I could have him, though his da has warned him against me, and though he thinks to look down on me. I could call him into my hand like a little bird with a speck of bread.’

She untied her pinny and slid her gown up and over her head. The curves of her body showed clear as a ripple on a stream. Her breasts rounding and plump with pale unformed nipples. The dark shadow of curly hair between her legs and the smooth curve of her buttocks were like magical symbols in an old book of spells. ‘I could have him,’ she said again.

I stripped my Sunday gown off and bundled it into the chest and leaped into my bed, covers up to my chin.

‘Don’t even think of it,’ I said.

At once the desirous tranced expression left her face, and she turned to me laughing. ‘Old Mother Meridon!’ she taunted. ‘Always on the lookout for trouble. You’ve got ice between your legs, Meridon, that’s your trouble. All you ever want there is a horse.’

‘I know what a horse is thinking,’ I said grimly. ‘Pretty Jack could plan a murder and you’d never see it in his eyes. And Robert wants nothing but money. I’d rather have a horse any day.’

Dandy laughed. I heard the floorboards creak as she lay down on her mattress.

‘I wonder what the trapeze artist will be like,’ she said sleepily. ‘I wonder how old he is, and if he’s married. He looked fine on that hand-bill, d’you remember, Merry? Half-naked he was. I wonder what he’ll be like.’

I smiled into the darkness. I need not fear the charms of Jack Gower nor the anger of his father if the man of the trapeze act would just flirt a little with Dandy for the two months that he was with us – and then go.

He was prompt, anyway. He walked into the yard at six o’clock on a bitterly cold November morning, a small bag in his hand. He was dressed like a working farmer, good clothes, made of good quality cloth, but plain and unfashionable. He had a greatcoat on and a plain felt hat pushed back. His impressive moustaches curled out gloriously along his cheeks and made him look braggish and good-humoured. William took one look at him and bolted into the house to tell Robert that he had arrived. Dandy and I observed him minutely from our loft window.

Robert came out at once and shook his hand like an equal. William was told to take the little bag into the house.

‘He gets to sleep inside,’ Dandy whispered to me.

‘But where will he eat?’ I replied, guessing that it was the entry to the dining room which was the significant threshold.

Jack came out at once and was introduced to the visitor.

‘My son Jack,’ Robert said. ‘Jack, this is Signor Julio.’

‘Foreign,’ whispered Dandy, awed.

‘Call me David,’ the man said with a beaming smile. ‘Signor Julio is just a working name. We thought it sounded better.’

Robert turned so quickly that he caught sight of us as we ducked back from the window.

‘Come down you two,’ he called.

We clattered down the stairs. Dandy pushed me before her. I was wearing my working breeches and a white cut-down shirt which once belonged to Jack. I flushed as I saw him look me over. But when I raised my eyes I saw that he was measuring my strength, as I would look at a new colt and wonder what it could do. He nodded at Robert as if he were pleased.

‘This is Meridon,’ Robert said. ‘She’s horse-mad. But if you could get her up high I’d be obliged. She’s the one who doesn’t fancy it, and I’ve given my word she won’t be forced. She’s scared of heights.’

‘There’s many like that,’ David said gently. ‘And sometimes they are the best in the end.’ His voice had a singing lilt I’d heard only once before, from a Welsh horse-trader who sold Da the smallest toughest pony I had ever seen.

‘And this is Dandy, her sister,’ Robert said.

Dandy walked slowly forward, her eyes on David’s face, a hint of a smile around her lips as she watched him scan her from the top of her dark head to the glide of her feet.

‘They’ll pay just to see you,’ David said to her, very softly.

Dandy beamed up at him.

‘Right,’ Robert said briskly. ‘Let’s go to the barn. My lad said he’d set the rigging as you ordered but if there’s anything amiss we can set it right at once. If it is all to your liking then the girls and Jack are ready to start the training at once.’

David nodded and Robert led the way through the stable gate into the garden and then down to the paddock at the end of the garden. David looked around him as he followed Robert and I guessed he was thinking, as I had done, that this was a man who had come very far with very little except his own hard work and brains.

Robert threw open the door of the barn with something of a flourish and the Welshman stepped inside and looked all around. His shoulders squared, his head came up. I watched him narrowly and saw him change from the new employee in the stable yard to a performer at home in his element.

‘It’s good,’ he said nodding. ‘You understood my drawings then?’

‘I had them followed to the letter,’ Robert said proudly. ‘But the carpenter had no idea what was wanted so part of it was done by guess.’ He took his pipe from his pocket and tamped down the tobacco.

‘Good guesses,’ David said. He went over to the rope-ladder and swung it gently. It quivered up its length like a snake. He cast his eye over the ring.

‘Good and level,’ he said approvingly.

He went over to the practice trapeze and his walk was not like that of an ordinary man. He was muscled so hard and he walked so tight that he looked as lean and as fit as a stable cat ready to pounce. I glanced at Dandy; she met my eyes with a wink.

David the Welshman made a little spring with his hands above his head and I saw his knuckles turn white as he gripped on the bar. For a second he hung there, motionless, and then he brought his straight legs up before him and then beat them back with a smooth fluid force which sent the swing flying forward. Three times he swung and the third time he let go and spun himself head over heels towards us, and landed smack on his feet, solid as a rock, his blue eyes gleaming, his white smile bright.

‘No smoking in here,’ he said pleasantly to Robert.

Robert had just got his pipe going and took it from his mouth in surprise.

‘What?’ he demanded.

‘No smoking,’ David replied. He turned to Jack and Dandy and me. ‘No smoking in here, no eating, no drinking, no fooling around. Never play tricks on each other in here. Never show off on the ropes or the swings. Never bring your temper in here, never come in here courting. This place is where you are going to learn to be artistes. Think of it as a church, think of it as a royal court. But never think of it as an ordinary place. It has to be magic.’

Robert went quietly outside and knocked the hot ember out of his pipe into the wet grass. He said nothing. I remembered the time he had told Jack and me that we were never never to fight inside the ring. Now the barn was to be half sacred! I shrugged. It was Robert’s money. If he wanted to build a barn where he was not allowed to smoke his pipe and pay a man to give him orders it was his affair. He saw my eyes on him and gave me a rueful smile.

Dandy and Jack were spellbound. They were awed by the idea of the practice barn becoming a special place where they would become special people.

‘It is magic,’ David went on, the lilt in his voice more pronounced. ‘Because here you are going to become artists – people who can make beauty, like poets or painters or musicians.’

He turned abruptly to Robert. ‘Is there no heating?’ he asked.

Robert looked surprised. No,’ he said. ‘I know you had a stove on your drawing but I thought you’d all be warm enough, working in here.’

David shook his head. ‘You can’t keep the sinews of the body warm by working them,’ he said. ‘They get cold and then they strain and even snap. Then you can’t work for weeks while they heal. It’s a false economy not to heat the building. I won’t work without a stove.’

Robert nodded. ‘I was thinking of how we work with the horses,’ he said. ‘I always get hot enough working with them. But I’ll have one put in this afternoon. Can you use the building until then?’

‘We can make a start,’ David said grandly. He looked at Dandy. ‘Do you have some breeches like your sister?’ he asked.

Dandy’s face was appalled. ‘I’m to wear a short skirt!’ she said. ‘Robert promised! I’m not to be in breeches!’

David turned to Robert, smiling. ‘A short skirt?’ he asked.

Robert nodded. ‘In pink,’ he said. ‘A little ruffled skirt with shiny buttons, and a loose matching shirt at the top.’

‘She’d be safer with bare arms,’ David said. ‘Easier to catch.’

Robert puffed on the cold stem of his pipe. ‘Bare arms and a naked neck with a little stomacher top, and a skirt above her knees?’ he asked. ‘They’d have the Justices on me!’

David laughed. ‘You’d make your fortune first!’ he said. ‘If the lass would do it!’

Robert pointed the stem of his pipe at Dandy. ‘She’d do it stark naked given half a chance, wouldn’t you Dandy?’

Dandy lowered her black eyes so that all one could see was the sweep of dark eyelashes on her pink cheek. ‘I don’t mind wearing a skirt and a little bodice top,’ she said demurely.

‘Good,’ David said. ‘But you must practise in breeches and a warm smock with short sleeves.’

‘Go to the house, Dandy,’ Robert ordered. ‘Mrs Greaves will fit you with something from Jack or William. Make haste now.’ He looked at Jack and me wearing our riding breeches and our stable smocks. ‘These two all right?’

‘Yes,’ David said.

‘I’ll leave you to it, then,’ Robert Gower said reluctantly. ‘You’ll remember our agreement is that they can spring to the trapeze and swing out to Jack and back to their platform inside two months.’

‘I remember,’ David said steadily. ‘And you will remember my terms.’

‘Daily payments in coin,’ Robert concurred. ‘If you work till eleven you can all take breakfast in the kitchen. Then an afternoon session until dinner in the kitchen at four.’

‘Then they’ll need to rest,’ David said firmly.

Robert nodded. ‘The girls can make their costumes then,’ he said. ‘But tomorrow I promised Merry she could come to the horse fair with me.’

David nodded and waited for Robert to go out and close the barn door behind him. Then he looked at Jack and me.

‘Better get to work,’ he said.