The Winter Ground

Prologue

Twelve black horses spanned the ring, nodding and snorting, six to either side, with their master a splash of blood red and ink black at the centre where the whip kept cracking. Just beyond its reach, the Risley man lay back on his trestle bench, knees working like pistons and satin straining across his thighs as he threw the little girls in their tutus up into the air and caught them again. The girls flashed their eyes and snapped their arms at each cymbal crash, each landing. The clowns, in their spots and stripes and checks, racing along on the ring fence, held high the paper hoops, and the grey horse cantering hard around the edge ducked its head as the girl on its back leapt clear, broke through and landed again, her powdered feet curling on to her horse’s broad rump, her arms floating outwards as gently as her feathers, her smile serene. The spangled figure high in the dome swung and spun, plummeting downwards as the coils around her body unfurled, her toes pointed, the arch of her neck elegant and the tilt of her chin as delicate as a child’s.

Where to look first? What to feel? Not for nothing was this called The Spectacular, where every sight and sound conspired to overwhelm the senses, excite children beyond any hope of sleep that night, pluck the grown-ups out of their slouches and back to clamorous wonder, enrapture all and keep them saucer-eyed and thrumming.

Look closer though and the bones were revealed. Nothing wasted, nothing left unseen. While the spangled girl spun and every eye marvelled at her, the bare-back rider stood square and let her feathers stream. When the rider leapt, the clowns skipped along the ring fence to their spotlit marks. While the clowns tumbled and turned their clumsy cartwheels, the little girls waited, moving only to keep their balance true. When the girls rolled and flipped, the horses trotted quietly on until, at another crack of the whip, they reared up, kicking out their hooves, and every eye was drawn to them, no one looking at the spangled girl as she climbed with steady grip and slowly coiled the rope around herself again.