The Winter Ground

7

Alec, to whom I reported dutifully once I was home, solved the mystery of Anastasia right away. In fact, it only took him calling it that and I had solved it too.

‘Oh, come off it, darling, please,’ I said. ‘Anastasia?’

‘She feels herself above the rest of them, she has a very dubious accent, she believes she is in hiding and may have to fly at any moment, she has lost something pretty impressive, she thinks there are spies everywhere.’

‘Yes, and admittedly Topsy was very tickled about my talking to Ana “in her own tongue”. The little minx found that highly diverting.’

‘That’s it, Dandy, I’m sure of it.’

‘But it’s nonsense!’ I said.

‘Well, of course it’s nonsense,’ said Alec. ‘Delusions of grandeur and a persecution complex.’

I clapped my hands. ‘That was just the phrase I was trying to remember.’

‘And really, when you think about it, Dan, it’s exactly the sort of madness that would go along quite nicely with the kind of girl who runs away to the circus.’

‘Taking her pony with her,’ I said. ‘Aha! Well, there’s the proof that it’s rubbish right there. How could she have her childhood pony with her if she had fled St Petersburg with her jewels stitched into her petticoats?’

‘Dandy, let me assure you,’ said Alec gravely, ‘you do not need to mount arguments against it to me.’

‘Although,’ I added, ‘if she really does think there are spies everywhere, she probably has no great love of Zoya and family and she might have cut the rope swing and put it in their wagon to make trouble for them.’

‘Wouldn’t she cleave to them as her country people? Subjects, I mean?’

‘Well, not if they could find out that she was a fake in ten questions,’ I said. ‘And perhaps not anyway. Depends what kind of Russians they are, surely. What sort of name is Prebrezhensky?’

‘A long and unspellable one,’ said Alec, stretching out his feet towards my fire and prodding Bunty with his toe. ‘Is she all right, Dan? She seems rather listless.’

‘She’s stupefied by an excess of effective training,’ I said. ‘I suppose I meant could we tell from the name whether they’d be all for the Tsar or all for the other lot. The way one would know a Cabot was a Yankee or a… what would a Confederate be called?’

‘La Fayette,’ said Alec.

‘Really? How odd.’

‘Besides, do you think it was the same person who cut the swing and hid it? Doesn’t it seem more likely that someone who hates this Topsy did the cutting and someone who likes her hid it so she wouldn’t see it and get upset? Someone who has no love for the Prebrezhenskys, presumably.’

‘So Anastasia for the cutting, but not the hiding?’

‘But why, Dandy? What is it that makes you plump for her anyway?’

‘Mrs Cooke said she had tampered with props before. With Mr Cooke’s whip, to be precise.’

‘Tampered with it how, though?’ said Alec.

‘Pinched it, I think. Why?’

‘Well, because: slashing a prop – nasty but unmissable. Hiding it – harmless prank. Swapping the balloons – pointless silliness. The flour thingy – a bit too subtle for me but I take your word for it that the circus folk would get the gist of the threat. Then comes the long rope – underhand, subtle again but this time all too horribly effective. So until we know all the details of the whip incident I can’t see the point of homing in on Ana and ignoring the rest of them. Can’t see it at all.’

He gave a firm nod and sat back in his chair. I scowled at him. Alec is at his least attractive when he is magisterial and he never admits how much easier it is to make these pronouncements after my orderly reports than to come to the same conclusion when one is grubbing around in thick of it all, as I do.

‘You are a wonderful sounding board, Alec,’ I said, with remarkable grace. ‘Thank you.’

‘So, leaving aside the Tsarina, as either target or perpetrator,’ he went on, ‘who else is there who might be doing it?’

‘No one I’ve come across yet,’ I said. ‘They all seem so lovely and so desperate to keep the circus a going concern despite their troubles. I did wonder about Charlie Cooke – actually not lovely at all, or not to me anyway – but Tiny said he was besotted with Topsy and simply couldn’t have done it. Pa Cooke himself has a foul temper but he’s all fizz and bang – I can’t see him creeping around and setting traps for people.’

‘I can’t see any man doing it, if I’m honest,’ said Alec. ‘It’s all so furtive and silly.’

‘Too furtive and too silly to be the work of a man?’ I said.

‘You sound like Mrs Pankhurst, darling,’ said Alec. ‘A detective, as you’re always telling me, can be no respecter of persons, much less of gentle sexes. What about Topsy herself?’

‘Topsy was the victim of the very worst of the pranks,’ I reminded him. ‘And anyway there is nothing “Pankhurst” about pointing out that when it comes to hurting young women, there is a man at the bottom of it every time.’

‘So tell me about the men,’ said Alec, ‘and stop chirping on about the womenfolk.’

‘The men,’ I said, running my mind over what I knew about them. ‘Bill Wolf is quite simply Father Christmas in his shirtsleeves and that’s that.’

‘Oh, very objective,’ said Alec. ‘How convincing.’

‘Although he knows something he’s not telling. Kolya Prebrezhensky I’ve yet to meet properly. Tiny Truman is perfectly friendly towards Topsy although again there’s a little edge there somewhere. But he would not harm Ana, I’m sure. He’s the only one I’ve seen being kind to her so far, more than kind; I think he might be smitten. And he doesn’t have the figure for manhandling heavy ropes. Andrew Merryman… I can’t say, but again he is a friend of Topsy’s, perhaps more than a friend if Tiny’s hints are reliable.’

‘I don’t think we can cut anyone out simply because they are friendly to one of the girls,’ Alec said. ‘It might be an act. And if it’s more than friendship – if it’s love, or passion anyway – then I should say there’s more reason for suspicion not less. Jealous rages, lovers’ spats, unrequited yearnings. Rich pickings, I’d say. Now is that everyone?’

‘Yes, that’s it,’ I said. ‘Except for the working men. There are five – no, six – of them. Grooms.’

‘Six grooms?’ said Alec. ‘For thirteen horses. That seems rather lavish.’

‘Well, there are as many rough ponies too,’ I reminded him. ‘And they’re not just grooms. They’re tent men. They do the heavy work. They don’t seem to mix with the artistes from what I see.’

‘Ah,’ said Alec. ‘I like the sound of them.’

‘Why?’ I asked. ‘You’ve never even met them. Why on earth should the working men immediately be the suspects?’

Alec stared at me.

‘Good Lord, Dandy,’ he said. ‘Don’t let Hugh hear you. Two days’ companionship with a family of Russians and you’re ready to take up arms for the proletariat.’

‘Nonsense,’ I said, hotly. ‘I’m just questioning your objectivity as you questioned mine.’

‘But I’m making a serious suggestion,’ Alec said. ‘Anastasia, from what you tell me, is an extremely attractive and extremely haughty young woman. As likely to attract the attention of a lusty young tent man as she is unlikely to give him the time of day. And Topsy sounds an out and out flirt, who has wound at least both Mr Cookes around her little finger and has Andrew Merryman on a string too. Well, why should she not have given these working men the same treatment? And why should not these working mean, inflamed by the sight of the pair of them in their tights and costumes and yet spurned by them as honest swains, be moved to play a few tricks on them to get their own back?’

In spite of myself, I was forced to agree that this made a great deal of good sense and with even greater grace than before I congratulated him.

‘And now,’ I said, looking up at my clock, ‘it’s time to go and collect an end to tranquillity. It’s waiting at the station for me.’

What I meant was that my sons were coming home from school for their Christmas holiday and I had volunteered to pick them up at Dunkeld (leaving their bags for Drysdale to collect later since I did not want the Cowley getting scratches on it). My offer sprang not, I told myself, from any wild maternal passion which could not restrain itself while they were brought the last few miles, but from a desire to hear the running jokes and slogans they had brought with them and censor them before they reached the ears of Nanny or, worse, Hugh. I was determined that this Christmas would be an harmonious one at Gilverton, without the shouting, ranting and helpless hot giggling leading to louder shouting which so often ensued when all three of my male relations were at home.

‘Oh yes, Christmas,’ said Alec. ‘What fun.’ He sounded rather doleful and I glanced at him hoping that he would not see me doing so. His mother had died since the Christmas before and his sister-in-law, or so I gathered, had quickly made the Dorset house, Alec’s childhood home, rather horribly her own. He must be dreading Christmas Day all alone at Dunelgar, with his staff resenting him and pitying him in equal measure.

‘Come to us, of course, darling,’ I said as casually as I could. ‘Barrow and the rest can have a holiday.’ Alec said nothing. ‘Although,’ I went on, ‘one could kick Dickens, if he were still here to be kicked. It’s his fault that the servants think they should loll around gorging on goose all day.’

‘Him and Her late Majesty,’ Alec said. ‘It’s her doing that one can’t just spend December the 25th at one’s chosen pursuits and have a cutlet at night without feeling tragic.’

‘Well, the boys will be delighted and you can talk to Hugh about fences and make his day too.’

‘Can’t, I’m afraid,’ said Alec, not looking at me. ‘It’s as I said. One is drawn in and swept along. I’ve been invited to Pess.’

Pess. The home of the Uvings. The home of Magnus Uving, a wonderful host with a wonderful gamekeeper whose forests and moors were jammed with plump birds, and his wife Lady Amanda Uving, a wonderful hostess with a wonderful cook, whose house rang with music and laughter all year long. No one could resist an invitation to Pess, not least for Christmas. Of course, with such delights to offer the Uvings could pick and choose their guests, and they had chosen Alec, a young bachelor of good fortune, even better breeding and the greatest of charm. For as well as Magnus and Amanda, there was it must be said Celia Uving, twenty-two, beautiful, clever and very choosy. Christmas would make Alec’s fourth visit this year.

‘Excellent!’ I cried, hoping that my face had not reddened. ‘I couldn’t be more pleased. I lie awake at night, you know, darling, thinking about you rattling around in that yawning great empty house all on your own. Three cheers.’

‘You’ll be the first to know, Dandy,’ Alec said. ‘But it’s only Christmas for now. Let’s go and fetch the boys.’

What unprepossessing lumps they looked trailing along the platform towards me, dragging their trunks and hatboxes – for they had been trained by their father never to wait for porters like a pair of ladies back from shopping in town. Or not lumps exactly, for they had both shot up again since the summer, but no oil paintings either of them.

‘My God, two badly planted saplings after their first big storm,’ said Alec, hitting the nail on the head as usual. I snorted with laughter and leaned on the horn to tell them we were there, at which they broke into an ungainly and rather wavering trot causing sweet wrappers and tattered story-papers to fall out of pockets and from under arms.

‘Hello, Mother,’ said Teddy, which gave me a twinge: I had still been Mummy at half-term. ‘Hello, Mr Osborne.’

‘Boys,’ said Alec. ‘I’m sorry to be so predictable, but – as I was just saying to your mother – my, haven’t you both grown!’

I saved Cooke’s until they had finished telling their breathless and deadly dull news of football team places and piano prizes and had asked after their dogs and ponies, been given the news that the last of the childhood rabbits had finally died alone and unmourned in its cage in the stable-yard, and been warned not to tell Hugh that they would carry out some requested task ‘with a Dixie melo-deeee!’ or call him Toot-toot-tootsie whenever they said goodbye (some boy in their house had got an Al Jolson gramophone record and they had been playing it all term). When they had quietened down a little at last, I dropped the news into the lull where it went off like a flour-bomb.

‘Really? Really and truly? Are there tigers and elephants? Is there a strongman? Is there a flying trapeze?’

I told them that there were no tigers, elephants or even anything close and that I had no clear idea what the flying trapeze was and whether Topsy could be said to be it, but that yes, there was a strong man (for sixty, I thought but forbore to mention) and there were horses, acrobats, clowns and a monkey, and that both boys were welcome there any time to watch the performers rehearsing.

‘Golly,’ said Donald.

‘Only it’s just the circus you’re to visit, mind,’ I told him. ‘You can’t go traipsing around the castle because Mrs Wilson isn’t well.’

‘Mrs Wilson?’ said Teddy. ‘Is that the Miss Havisham lady with the mad husband?’ It was rather a garbled version, but close enough and so I nodded. ‘Wouldn’t catch me going in there then,’ he said. ‘I’d get bricked up in a dungeon and fed through the keyhole.’ Clearly, the Wilsons were as well known amongst the youth of the neighbourhood as amongst their elders.

‘You don’t get keyholes if you’re bricked up, Swachekopf,’ said Donald.

‘Faxenmacher,’ said Teddy.

‘And don’t speak German,’ I said. ‘Heavens! Al Jolson for Daddy rather than that.’

I had expected simply to ferry them there every morning that I was going and bring them home each afternoon again, fingers crossed that they did not in the meantime make such pests of themselves that I had to break off my work to remove them early, and I am sure that the boys harboured no hopes of any more fun than that, but on the first evening when they described the camp to Hugh over tea, almost whinnying in their excitement about the twelve liberty horses, the tin roof over the fire, the giant man, the intricacy of the rope knots in the dome – for they gave of their admiration rather indiscriminately, it seemed to me – Hugh surprised all of us by suggesting that they too might set up camp there for a day or two.

‘In a tent?’ I squeaked. ‘It’s December. It’s freezing.’

‘They can take my old army wool bag,’ said Hugh. ‘And a mackintoshed groundsheet. They’ll be fine.’

‘Yes! Yes! We’ll be fine,’ the boys chorused, unable to believe their luck.

‘Absolutely not,’ I said stoutly. ‘They’ll catch their deaths of cold and spoil Christmas.’

‘Never did me any harm,’ said Hugh. ‘You shouldn’t coddle them so.’

‘The circus people are camping, Mother, and you’ve never seen rosier cheeks than theirs.’

‘You caught pneumonia,’ I reminded Hugh. ‘And the circus people,’ I added turning to Donald, ‘are in wagons. Up off the ground in beds.’

‘What a bore you are,’ said Teddy, my wonderful gift of visits to the circus quite swept away.

‘Well then,’ Hugh continued, ‘they can take the shepherds’ hut.’ At this the boys’ ecstasy grew delirious and they abandoned tea to race down to the Mains to where the shepherds’ hut was stored in a byre over winter. I could see that this was a much better plan since the hut, itself very like a little living wagon, had a tiny paraffin stove and walls well baffled with fleeces, and although they would have to sleep on its floor it was a lot less likely to lead to lozenges and poultices all round. The shepherds, I told myself, lived in it for weeks at lambing time every year and early spring in Perthshire is far from balmy. Still, I was puzzled; Hugh’s usual role in the boys’ existence leaned towards the quelling of their desires rather than the surpassing of them.

‘It’s an awfully long way to trundle it,’ I said.

‘Nonsense,’ Hugh replied. ‘Jimmy Purves can take it over the hills. It goes practically that far to the black-faces anyway. Much the best thing all round, I should say, Dandy.’

Which remark, I thought, began at last to shed light upon the matter; perhaps not to the casual observer, but certainly to me. Because even two individuals as fully absorbed in themselves and their own pursuits as my sons might begin to wonder at my driving them there and back every day and might begin to ask themselves what I was doing there, but the notion that I flew to them every morning to tie their scarves tighter and hold my hand to their brows would be enough to keep everyone happy and unquestioning.

For the boys knew nothing of my exploits and Hugh was very keen to keep it that way. He was not alone in this, admittedly: I had no wish to have my curious little sideline bandied about the common rooms and playing fields to be carried home and relayed to the mothers of the other boys and served up to my face with a titter at parties for evermore. (As it most certainly would be, for was I not the unwilling recipient of such choice items of news as that Tenburgh’s father had written a play but could not get it performed at the local theatre in Derby even when he offered to pay or that the mother of all those endless little Sewells had been painting pictures of their aunt with no clothes on? ‘In the garden too. And the garden boys were caught peeping over a wall to see and got the sack until Mr Sewell said she had no authority to sack them and anyway what did she expect and gave them their jobs back again and now, Sewell says, they haven’t spoken for a month and Mrs Sewell has moved her bedroom to the far wing.’ So, perhaps the supply of new little Sewells had dried up after all.)

They survived their first night well enough and were sitting on the step of the hut with tin mugs of tea and ragged slices of rather blackened toast in their hands when I arrived in the morning. Bunty, who had been left behind with them as part guard dog part hot water bottle, was tied to the spoke of a wheel just like all the other dogs around the ground, but unlike them she reared up and began to plunge about when she saw me, causing the little hut to roll and wobble and the boys to clutch the sides of the steps and slop some of their tea.

‘Good girl,’ I cooed, tremendously pleased at the greeting. ‘Well, boys?’ They needed no further encouragement to regale me with how cosy they had been, what songs they had learned from Tommy Wolf in his wagon last night and how many Russian words Inya and Alya Prebrezhensky had taught them already. With offers of a piece of toast – and assurances that it was no trouble and they had bread to spare – following on behind me, I left them to it.

My plan was to revisit the Prebrezhenskys’ wagon that day. Stung by Alec’s scorn, I was determined to concentrate on hard facts. I had found Zoya charming and thought her artless, but the swing was in their cupboard, they might have good reason to think little of Ana, and I had not spoken to Kolya at all yet – glowering Kolya who wanted secrets kept unspoken.

And here, I thought to myself as I crossed the ground, was another of my less known quantities. Andrew Merryman was on his way back from the stream with two pails of water and headed straight towards me. He could hardly avoid passing the time of day with me, although his blush and the dip of his head revealed his discomfort as he did so. I should, I thought to myself, hate to be shy, but perhaps if one had gone through childhood getting more and more outlandish-looking until one turned into an Andrew Merryman one would have had no choice in the matter. He really was the most peculiar figure and appeared to be practically buckling under the weight of the water pails dangling from his long arms, although that might have been shyness too.

‘They m-m-might never come home again,’ he said, nodding towards the boys.

‘Oh, I should think I’m safe enough,’ I replied, quite heartily for some reason, as though addressing him in ringing tones would buck him up a bit or at least make him stand straight; it is always wasted effort for a beanpole of a person to fold himself up trying to look shorter. ‘They have absolutely no talents or skills to recommend them.’

‘Neither had I,’ said Andrew, and then blushed even deeper. ‘Although I had an e-e-extra incentive, obviously.’ I was unsure whether to pretend I did not catch his meaning or to nod sympathetically and agree. ‘I f-fit right in at Cooke’s Circus,’ he went on. ‘And I’d hate… I mean I couldn’t bear to think… Tiny says you’re trying to…’

‘I am. And you can help me, Mr Merryman.’

He looked startled at that.

‘Your perspective will be most helpful,’ I said. ‘You must be able to see them all with a clearer eye, from your position.’

‘That’s it, spot on,’ he said and he looked around the circus as though seeing it for the first time. ‘My position. All any flatty sees when he looks at me is circus. And all the proper circus see is a josser. Neither one thing nor the other, that’s me.’

‘Well, you are not alone,’ I said. ‘Ana and Tiny are jossers too.’

‘So you’re telling me I could be as happy and settled as Ana?’ He spoke with a great air of innocence and made me laugh, even though it was not funny.

‘Well, Tiny, then. He seems snug enough here in the circus.’

‘Tiny’s a braver man than I,’ said Andrew, rather cryptically. ‘He’s circus through and through now.’

‘Don’t run yourself down, Mr Merryman,’ I said. ‘I heard from Tiny – Mr Truman, I should say – about you checking everything over after you found the swapped balloons.’

‘If only,’ said Andrew. ‘We didn’t look at Topsy’s rope.’

‘But you saw the problem before anyone else,’ I reminded him.

‘And still I did nothing,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want to draw attention to it. I don’t like trouble.’

‘You acted in time,’ I said firmly. ‘She was very lucky to have you there and I am sure’ – here I could not resist a matronly little hint; really I cannot believe the meddlesome old matchmaker I am turning into – ‘that she must feel most warmly towards you because of it.’ This startled him and he stood up quite straight for a moment.

‘Hah!’ he said, gruffly. ‘Hardly!’ and I made a mental note to myself to leave the prying and clucking to those many women who had a talent for it and mind my own particular business instead.

‘Now, what interests me,’ I said, walking along beside him, ‘is the question of whether the one who cut the swing and rope put them where they were found? And if not, why was anyone rummaging around in a position to find them, already cut, and move them? And why move the swing to where I found it when the rope was so well hidden in Tiny’s prop box?’

‘Where did you find it?’ he asked me, and then as I hesitated he dipped his head again and smiled. ‘Am I a suspect then?’

‘To be quite frank, Mr Merryman, everyone is a suspect right now, and no one is a suspect right now. But you can certainly help. Might I call on you later and pick your brain properly?’ We had arrived at his wagon now and he set the pails down.

‘I have no brain for problems,’ he said, shaking his hair over his eyes and managing to make himself look more hangdog than ever. ‘It reminds me of school, gives me a headache. I’d better stick to jug-juggling.’ With another shy smile he opened his door and crept inside, folding himself almost in two to fit under the low ceiling. I had one glimpse of the interior – the usual box-bed missing and a long thin bunk set up against one side wall instead – before politeness demanded that I turn away.

My efforts with the Prebrezhenskys were not helped by the fact that only Zoya had anything like reliable English and so had to translate for the father and the girls, nor by the fact that it took me a good hour to realise that there were not, as I briefly imagined, a handful more Prebrezhenskys lurking unseen but that little Rosaliya was Alya, Inessa was Inya, Akilina was Ilya and ‘Nikolai’ was Kolya’s Sunday best name. With all of that established, amid much laughter from the parents and not a few quizzical looks as though they wondered what kind of detective could have trouble with it, it did not take too long to arrive at the conclusion that relations were cordial between this family and the rest of Cooke’s – indeed, unsurprisingly, Zoya and Ma had quickly discovered connections, or putative connections, which suggested that this family was yet another branch of the Cooke dynasty, by marriage anyway.

As for Topsy, when I mentioned her, they all broke into smiles.

‘She is like a daughter,’ said Zoya.

‘Gutt, gutt gorrl,’ said Kolya, beaming.

It was not until I touched on ‘Anastasia’ that any of the smiling faces grew stern.

‘What has happened in our beloved Mother Russia, it is not a joke,’ said Zoya. ‘It is not a… a silly for a silly girl to make silly fairy tale.’

‘No indeed,’ I agreed. One could almost become as rattled as poor Hugh if one thought about it for any length of time: to imagine our own King and Queen and all the children jostled into a basement at Sandringham as their cousins had been at Ekaterinburg and then… ‘No, indeed,’ I said again.

‘My Kolya he feels it in his big heart,’ Zoya went on. ‘He hopes in his heart we can go home again when it is well. We speak only Russian to the little ones, against a day when once more we go back and stay.’

Kolya nodded and thumped his fist against his chest to drive the point home. I wondered if they had a source of more hopeful news than the rest of us – family letters perhaps, if these were not intercepted and expurgated on the way. Certainly, if Zoya were reading the same newspapers as Hugh over breakfast I could not account for any hope in anyone’s heart. Endless, dreary, muddy gloom and lots of shooting was all there was to see.

‘And have you actually ever had it out with Anastasia?’ I asked. ‘About this storytelling of hers.’ Zoya frowned, puzzled. ‘Have you quarrelled, argued?’

‘No,’ said Zoya. ‘She is here and we are here. She is new here and we are new here. Just one season. Pa Cooke find us in Glasgow, same time as Ana, and gave us jobs.’

‘Very happy,’ said Kolya. ‘No trouble with gorrl Ana.’

‘Very commendable of you,’ I said. ‘It must be difficult sometimes.’

Zoya shrugged.

‘We circus,’ said Kolya. ‘Ana circus. So. We stay’ – he opened his arms wide and pointed down with both index fingers – ‘here and here and…’ At this his English gave out and he rumbled a torrent of Russian to his wife.

‘We keep out of her way and she keep out of our way and everyone stays happy,’ Zoya said.

I nodded, thinking that for stoic endurance, Russians took the biscuit.

‘To practical matters then,’ I said. ‘Topsy thinks she had the swing two days before her fall, at around seven in the evening. Let’s try to work out when it can have been put here. What time do the little ones go to bed?’

It did not take long to establish just how endless the opportunities were. The girls were tucked up in bed long before seven but the next day the wagon had lain empty and unlocked for two hours in the morning and another hour in the afternoon while the family practised with the mechanic. Someone might easily have sidled up to it with a bundle of ropes under his arm and the disarray of a pickle cupboard in his mind.

As to the deed going unwitnessed, I could only too clearly remember the way Zoya had lifted the canvas walling of the back tent and how she and I had slipped under it and into the wagon, flitting across the few feet of shadow like ghosts. Anyone could have done the same and it gave me a cold prickle of dread, as I stood on the steps minutes after having taken my leave, to think of this faceless figure moving unseen around the winter ground, with its knife and its grievances, its threats no less chilling for seeming senseless.

Something fluttered at the edge of my vision. I turned towards it and felt a cold prickle of dread, indeed, the dread of finding oneself suddenly pitched into intercourse with Albert Wilson, who was coming into the campground around the edge of the pond, almost at a trot, clearly bursting with a matter of some importance.

‘My d- Mrs… Dan… Good morning,’ he called to me. ‘This is a surprise. A pleasant surprise, I should say.’ He took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. ‘This is a very pleasant surprise, finding you here, Dandy.’

My eyebrows shot up.

‘I’ve come clucking over my chicks, I’m afraid,’ I said. ‘My boys. Did you know there were a couple of runaways added to the merry band?’

‘Oh, don’t mention it,’ he replied. ‘They’re very welcome. Think nothing of it.’

I had not considered thinking anything of it, much less asking permission from Albert Wilson, who I always seem to forget is as much a landowner as Hugh. I bristled to think I had given him the chance to forgive an impropriety. Anyway, two more and a tiny shepherds’ hut were neither here nor there.

‘You seem in ebullient spirits this morning,’ I said, finding attack the best defence.

‘Verily,’ he said. ‘I’ve come to arrange the show. Saturday night, I think. You are invited of course. You and uhhhh… both of you.’ His high spirits, wherever they had sprung from, were not quite sufficient to let him drop Hugh’s name in cold blood and broad daylight.

‘This coming Saturday?’ I said. ‘That’s rather earlier than we were expecting. I trust Ina will be coming along?’

‘Oh, I should think so,’ said Albert Wilson. ‘She can sit quite separately from the rest of the company after all.’ I had never heard such airiness from him.

‘The rest of the company being…?’ I asked.

‘Well, yourself and your menfolk.’ He inclined his head as though in recognition of the honour he bestowed. ‘Robin, of course, and he might bring a party. He said he might.’ He gave me a smile of beatitude the like of which I had only seen rendered in marble before and, with a slight bow, he left me.

Robin, indeed! But at least I had an explanation for Wilson’s new air of sublime confidence and for his dragging the show out of quarantine already. Unable to believe his luck, he was willing to risk Ina spending two hours under canvas with heaven only knew what manner of exotic germs, if he could thus snag Laurie and a party of his chums before the strange acquaintance faded away.

Ina, unsurprisingly, was livid when she telephoned to me again that evening.

‘He’s unmovable, Dandy,’ she said, her voice coming down the line with more strength than I had ever heard in it before. ‘And it’s so unlike him.’ I could see that while she chafed under Albert’s excess of care and delighted in outwitting him when she could, she had also grown used to the idea of the caring and had to be flattered in some way. Certainly, now that concern for her welfare had been so ignominiously knocked off its spot she was far from pleased. ‘And, apparently, we have a horde of hangers-on coming for dinner. He was quite adamant about that.’

‘Albert?’

‘Well, Lord Robin, really, but with Albert behind him all the way. So I shall have that to endure too. And after how rude he was last time.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘he was insufferable but I rather got the impression that you had made up your mind about him well before that, Ina. Could you not simply tell your husband whatever it is that makes you dislike the man so? Would not that nip this nonsense in the bud?’ There was a long silence on the line.

‘I’d rather not think about it,’ she said at last. ‘I shouldn’t have to. And I shouldn’t have to have a houseful of strangers come to stare and titter either.’

I felt a sharp retort, referencing the Queen of Sheba, rise to my lips but I managed to swallow it. Albert Wilson, with all his pandering and fuss, really had created a monster. Nanny was right, and I wondered why it had never struck me over the years before now.

The Cookes and what others of the circus I had a chance to speak to thought not much more of the sudden request for a show.

‘It had just better not be the thin end of the wedge,’ Pa Cooke said. ‘A winter standing, Mr Wilson told us, a chance to rest up, make our repairs and get the new acts ready for spring.’

Bill Wolf, who was there at the time taking a glass of beer in the Cookes’ wagon, thumped his fist against his knee in agreement.

‘And I’ve got my costume all unpicked ready for making up again,’ he said. ‘I’ve got nothing to wear for my strongman run-in, and my trumpet’s in fifteen bits for cleaning. I thought I had a week yet.’

‘But there, he always told us there’d be a show, Pa,’ said his wife. ‘We knew that wurr part of the bargain.’

‘Aye, one show. One show. For his missus, and not till Hogmanay most likely. Now here we are not even Christmas and there’s a party coming. And Topsy’s hands could do with more of a rest. If this is him starting to take a lend of me, now he’s got me trapped here, he can think again.’

‘And what would we be doing else?’ said Ma. She turned to me. ‘Do you know, my beauty, even Hengler’s an’t doing the whole season this winter, after last year nearly broke them.’

‘It’s them damned picture shows,’ said Bill Wolf.

‘I mind when Moss’s Christmas Varieties was the highlight of the whole year,’ said Pa. ‘Even bigger than the summer tenting.’

‘You’re going back-aways there, Tam,’ said his wife. ‘Them days is gone. Let’s make what we’ve got all it can be, eh? Let’s go out with a bang.’

‘We’re not going out,’ said Pa Cooke fiercely. ‘It’s bad luck even to talk that way.’ Mrs Cooke looked uncomfortable but said nothing.

In fact, the only voices raised in hurrahs at the news were Donald’s and Teddy’s, for the ring boys were off on loan to Newsome’s in Edinburgh for the Christmas season, Newsome’s being one outfit still clinging to the old ways by its fingernails, and so the tent staff were short-handed.

‘We’re to wear their uniforms,’ Teddy regaled me. ‘Well, their coats because the trousers are rather short – perhaps Nanny might run something up instead? – and we’re to do the ring fence. Andrew and Tiny are teaching us.’

‘Mr Truman and Mr Merryman,’ I said. ‘And what are you to do with the ring fence?’

‘Take the bit out to let the animals run in,’ said Donald, ‘and then put it back in sharpish so’s they don’t run out again.’

‘Don’t say sharpish,’ I said. ‘And don’t say so’s. And how on earth can you manhandle great blocks of wood?’

‘Oh, Mother,’ said Teddy rolling his eyes. ‘It’s hollow ply. Even Inya P. can throw it over her shoulder.’

‘Well, don’t tell Daddy,’ I said, in desperation. ‘At least not yet. Until I’ve had a chance to look at these coats and check them for…’ I coughed diplomatically. If I said the word to them they would say it to someone at Cooke’s and there would be an end to cosy cups of tea in the living wagons.

‘He won’t stop us,’ said Donald. ‘He’s all for our circus adventure. You’re the old stick-in-the-mud this time, Ma.’

I was less sure. Roughing it in a shepherds’ hut in winter might count as building character in Hugh’s book but cavorting around the ring in borrowed coats in front of society people was quite another thing; I could not guess which way Hugh would land on that question.

‘Don’t call me Ma,’ was all I said.