The Winter Ground

4

‘So I for one decided to get drunk,’ said Alec on the telephone the next morning. I was waving a biscuit in front of Bunty’s nose and she was snapping at it and whining. ‘Yat!’ I said. Bunty ignored me.

‘What?’ said Alec.

‘You don’t need to tell me you got drunk,’ I reminded him. ‘I drove you home.’

‘I couldn’t decide which one I felt more sorry for, you see, so I decided to give myself such a crippling hangover that I’d only feel sorry for me. But it was very good port and I feel fine.’

‘At least I got my question answered,’ I said. ‘Laurie must have heard about the Wilsons and decided to come along to tea and treat them to a sermon. That’s what he was doing there.’

‘Pretty cruel sort, isn’t he?’ said Alec.

‘Not usually,’ I said. ‘Your initial character sketch was more on the nose – silliness rather than cruelty, as a rule. And besides, it was in a fairly good-hearted cause.’

‘Do you think it’ll make any difference? Do you think Wilson could let his poor wife live her life? Could she insist on it?’

‘She’s not the insisting type,’ I said. ‘She endures. And makes the best of it when she gets the chance.’

‘Yes, but why?’ said Alec. ‘She can’t really love the man. I could tell she was trying not to wince every time he opened his silly mouth last night. A comfortable home and respectability? But didn’t you say her parents were terribly advanced? They’d surely welcome her home and tough out the divorce, wouldn’t they?’

I felt rather ashamed to admit that the question had not occurred to me. One simply did endure. I did and it seemed unremarkable that Ina Wilson did too. ‘Worn out by ill health?’ I suggested. ‘Can’t summon the energy? Or maybe she does love him, deep down. Who can say?’

‘No,’ said Alec. ‘I think you’re right about the enduring, but I got the distinct impression that she has an end in sight. She’s putting up with it all until something. Do you see?’

All of a sudden, I did. All of a sudden, Ina’s kindness to Albert Wilson the evening before seemed a little like the treat one gives to an old horse while, out of sight, a groom is loading the gun.

‘I suppose the obvious thing is widowhood,’ I said, reluctantly.

‘Not much chance of that – Wilson looks good for decades yet. I’d back him surviving her any day.’

‘And she doesn’t have the leisurely air one sees when good fortune is just about to fall into someone’s lap.’

‘The cushioned look of sure inheritance,’ said Alec. ‘The one that Robin Laurie wears like a mink cloak. It’s pretty sickening and, I agree, absent from young Mrs Wilson. So anyway, what did she say to you in the drawing room once you were alone?’

‘Not much of import, as you can imagine,’ I told him. ‘She was knocked flat by that debacle at the table.’

‘She must have said something,’ Alec insisted. ‘Tell me at least that you got to work on her and didn’t just let her sit there fluttering and fainting.’

‘Alec, darling,’ I said, ‘I couldn’t truffle on just for practice. We’re not on a case, if you recall.’ Even as I said it, though, I could hear the approaching footsteps which would render my words untrue.

Pallister had been pushed beyond his – considerable – capacity for cold disdain and looked simply stunned.

‘A visitor for you, madam,’ he said and he delivered it without any editorialising at all, not so much as a meaningful hesitation; but numbly, as though in shock. He did not hold the door open but turned and walked away.

Into the doorway, with a rustle of bombazine and a flash of gold, stepped Mrs Cooke, a small black monkey in a sequined waistcoat perched on one arm.

‘I’m ringing off now, Alec,’ I said into the telephone, ‘but I imagine we’ll be speaking again very soon.’

‘You’ll excuse me bringing the little one, my beauty,’ she said as she plumped down on to a sofa, ‘only he gets so bored in the winter there and then what mischief like you wouldn’t believe.’ The monkey, closely watched by a very puzzled Bunty, was looking around my sitting room with bright interest and twitching fingers and I followed its gaze, taking in the Dresden clock and candlesticks on which there were porcelain petals and cherubs’ wings so thin one could see the sunlight through them, and the Rockingham pottery Dalmatians, which were admittedly rather vulgar but had been presents from my sister and had terribly spindly legs. On the other hand, no one had ever called me her beauty, and as a sweetening tactic it was hard to beat.

‘Would you like some coffee, Mrs Cooke?’

‘Cup of tea would go down a treat there,’ she answered and I pulled the bell-rope.

Pallister had clearly recovered himself enough to spread the news because the parlour maid was in the room almost before the rope had stilled again, her eyes like soup plates.

‘I’ll have my coffee now, Becky,’ I said. ‘A pot of tea too.’ I glanced at the monkey. ‘And some cocoa? Milk?’

‘Bobbo would take a few raisins,’ said Mrs Cooke. ‘But he’s not a lover of milk.’

I dismissed Becky with a nod and a smile and turned to business.

‘Now then, Mrs Cooke,’ I said, ‘what can I do for you?’

‘My father,’ she said, apparently in reply, ‘wurr a lion tamer. Now, you might not think that’s strange there.’ She stopped and regarded me for a minute.

‘It’s certainly less surprising than if my father had been a lion tamer,’ I said.

‘Well, my beauty,’ said Mrs Cooke, ‘that’s where you’re wrong. For although there’s families of balancing slangers and tumbling slangers stretching right back, for wurn’t the first Tam Cooke a horse man just like Pa, the big cats is quite different, see. It’s like lightning, strikes anywhere, and dun’t come back.’ At this moment, she unclasped a little knitted bag she had hanging from her wrist and drew out a piece of card. ‘That’s me,’ she said, passing it to me. It was, I saw, a very old and rather yellowed photograph – a daguerreotype, probably – showing a fat baby dressed in the heavily beribboned style of the previous century, lolling amongst a set of cushions. I took a closer look and could feel my eyes widen. They were not cushions at all, but lion cubs, four of them, one of them with a big soft paw on the baby’s leg.

‘I loved the cats,’ Mrs Cooke said. ‘Watched them for hours, lions, tigers and leopards the same, watched my old pa in the cage every day, watched him break in the new stock, watched him clean their teeth and trim their claws. One time he tripped and fell over and got a bit of a biff for his trouble, because it dun’t do to show a cat your belly, and that day I just watched and din’t even leave off licking my lolly.

‘Until this one day.’ Mrs Cooke had a new note in her voice. ‘It wurr a tigress. Princess Zanzi was her name and Pa had bought her from the Rosaires to make three for his second spot. Well, as soon as I saw my daddy step into that cage with Zanzi I started to scream and holler and drum my heels, just like a little flatty rakly instead of a circus girl. I got tooken out, leathered hard by my ma and put in the wagon with no dinner, tea nor supper that day. And what do you think happened, there?’

The door opened and Becky entered with the coffee tray, followed by Annie with a tray of tea and one of the housemaids carrying a plate of buns which could easily have been brought by one of the others, but I could hardly blame them.

Mrs Cooke poured herself a cup and gave Bobbo one of the buns from which he did, sure enough, begin to pick out raisins. I was mesmerised for a minute or two, watching him crouched on the arm of my sofa with his long toes curled over it, daintily transferring the little morsels to his mouth.

‘Well, my beauty, what happened was this: when he’d got Princess Zanzi trained up and in the ring with the other two tigresses – and it took no time at all, for my pa worked a charm on every cat he met and she wurr a quick one to catch on – the very first show, first whip crack, she leapt off her tub and went for his throat.’

‘Did he survive?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Mrs Cooke, ‘he turned away in time and she got him in the shoulder there, but he lost his arm and near half his blood and spent the rest of the season in the hospital with doctors coming from all over to look at him, and then how many acts din’t up and leave us, with the boss laid out and my mother struggling. We had a hard winter that year.’ She took a swig of tea. ‘Well, there’s what comes of not sticking to your family way, but he’d learned his lesson. When he came home at last the first thing he did wurr get a lion tamer in and himself went back to his horses.’

‘And what happened to Zanzi?’ I asked. ‘Was she shot?’

‘No, none of that,’ said Mrs Cooke. ‘Beast couldn’t help her nature, could she? She wurr put in the menagerie and drew a fair crowd there. My ma painted up the sides of her wagon with scenes of the fight, called her Zanzi the Mankiller. Flatties couldn’t get enough of her after that. And do you know, Pa ended up with a set of liberty horses as good as Tam’s is now even with his one arm, so all was well and ended well there.’

I had the feeling familiar from the day before that Mrs Cooke’s story had gone awry somewhere. Certainly, I could not see the moral of it.

‘So,’ I began, ‘are you saying that lightning did strike twice in this case? That you have the gift for big cats like your father?’

‘Me?’ said Mrs Cooke, astonished. ‘Not me. I love the beasts but I’m a Cooke through and through, horses all the way. Not but what my ma wurr pure Ilchenko and like as she had no bones the tumbles she could do. No, I’ve no way with the big cats much as I love them. Never even thought myself to try.’ She now looked at me with as piercing a stare as two such round brown eyes could muster. ‘No, it’s the sight I have,’ she said. ‘Even from a babby. I knew trouble was coming from that Zanzi. And’ – she leaned forward – ‘I know trouble’s coming now. I’m not a maid any more and I don’t scream and shout, I play clever. But I knew it, I know it and I’m not wrong.’

‘What kind of trouble?’ I breathed. One could take or leave the second sight and one could not help thinking that the history of Zanzi and her old pa was a bit of a shunt up a narrative siding, but if Mrs Cooke had hard facts with her as well as memories, I wanted to hear them.

‘Topsy,’ she said and then bit her lip. ‘It goes against my nap to be telling a… someone who’s from the outside, begging your pardon. But I need help there and no other way round it. Topsy has lost her swing. Topsy Turvy, our little tumbler, my niece, more or less. Her swing what she has for the trapeze is gone.’

I had been sitting forward with my breath held, waiting, and at that I must admit I let it go and slumped back a bit again.

‘And you need help to search for it?’ I said. Mrs Cooke gave a short laugh, which made me blush and made Bobbo the monkey look up at us both for a moment. ‘Or you need help to find out who took it?’ I said; a slightly more sensible suggestion.

‘I think I know who took it,’ said Ma. ‘I only wish I din’t.’

‘So,’ I said slowly, but not slowly enough for what I should say next to spring to my mind. ‘So… I’m sorry, Mrs Cooke, but how exactly can I help?’

‘How can she help, she asks!’ Mrs Cooke twinkled at me. ‘Don’t you come over shy with me, my beauty. I saw your hand, remember there? And I looked at your leaves once you’d gone, just to make sure. I know what you are.’ I stared at her and I could feel a prickle as the hairs stood up along the back of my neck. ‘Besides, it in’t just Topsy. There’s more going on than Pa could crack his whip at and the swing’s just the tip what’s broke the surface like. But, one way or three, you can stop it. You know you can. You’ve done it before, han’t you?’

‘Apart from anything else,’ I said, regaining some of my composure, ‘it was my left hand you looked at.’

‘Left hand’s where some things show,’ said Mrs Cooke.

I decided that a brisk air of business was the best response to such bewitchments (and I thought, not for the first time, that for a rational woman such as me, brought up to believe that miracles and wonders were the province of the vicar and he was welcome to them, I certainly seemed to be a magnet for mystic fancy).

‘So who took it then?’ I said.

‘Ana,’ answered Mrs Cooke. ‘I din’t see her or nothing but I’d put my toenails on it. There’s no love lost ’tween her and Topsy and less every time you look there, and it’s not the first time neither, although thanks be that I stopped it a-coming out or she’d have been off that ground there with a flea in her ear.’

‘But if she’s a thief,’ I said, ‘then why not?’

‘Not a thief!’ said Mrs Cooke, shifting and resettling herself with a great rustling of her petticoats. ‘Not so bad as that. It wurr just a prank.’

‘What did she do?’ I asked.

‘She took Tam’s whip.’ Mrs Cooke’s voice had sunk to a whisper. ‘If Tam had found out… it just in’t circus to go meddling with props what in’t yours, and the rum coll’s whip in’t just any old prop.’

‘The who?’ I asked.

‘The boss man,’ said Mrs Cooke. ‘What you’d call the ringmaster.’

‘You must be very fond of this Ana,’ I said. ‘If she’s being as naughty as all that and you’re still on her side… and against your own husband too.’

‘Tin’t that,’ said Mrs Cooke. She looked at me for a long moment before she spoke again. ‘You know our boys are away across the sea? Kushty boys, they are, both of them. Lads still, not forty, and I miss them more than I can tell you without my heart breaking in my mouth. Do you have babbies of your own?’

‘I do,’ I said. ‘Two sons, like you. Fifteen and thirteen.’ I forbore to mention that I had waved them gladly off to prep school at eight and we smiled at one another fondly.

‘So there’s how bad it is then,’ said Mrs Cooke. ‘My Tom and Joe are two of the finest horsemen I ever did see, and that’s not just me what’s their ma saying it. They have a voltige act for now – The Brothers Ilchenko – using their granny’s name for the sound of it – a Cossack act and it’s a sight to see, madam, dancing on them two ponies of theirs, fast as a blur and all the galleries clapping and stamping their feet. It wurr the top of the show.’ She was getting quite misty as she recounted this, but soon gathered herself again with a sniff. ‘But young Tom would have gave way in the end,’ she said. ‘Give over the act to young Joe and his wife – when he got one, like – and taken the whip from his pa. Tam Cooke’s Circus it would be, same as ever. That’s what we’ve thought, Pa and me, since the day he wurr born.’

‘But they’ve gone,’ I put in, hoping to keep Mrs Cooke from recounting Tom Jr’s entire childhood to me.

‘And I thought we’d fold for sure without them,’ she said. ‘Till our Ana came along. Her and her golden pony.’

‘She’s the star of the show?’ I said, guessing.

‘But don’t you go saying so, mind,’ said Mrs Cooke. ‘I mean to say, the Prebrezhenskys are a grand spot and Topsy’s a pretty girl and always draws a crowd. And them two clowns was made for each other. But a circus needs animals, see? If she ups and leaves us, we won’t hardly be a circus at all no more.’

‘But she’s trouble?’

‘I wun’t say that,’ said Mrs Cooke. ‘The poor maid’s troubled in herself and who could blame her? For she’s had a hard life there and come to the circus to make it better but not a scrap of luck since, none at all. Her golden pony died and Tam – I shouldn’t speak ill of my own man – but Tam’s that down on her and just looking for a reason to give her the ghost. Or she might just up and off by her own self, afore we have a chance to get her bound to us for keeps like. And she could have a grand life at Cooke’s, if she’d just bed in. If she’d just… If she wurr one o’ my own, I’d talk to her myself, find out what’s ailing her and talk her round like. But…’

‘She’s not a relation then?’

‘Josser,’ said Mrs Cooke. ‘Gently born like yourself there, madam. And so I thought you could mebbes talk to her in her own tongue, get close to her and get her told. Only… don’t go talk talk talking until you know what to say there, eh? I’d talk to the rest of ’em first, find out what’s what and who knows it. Them clowns is up to something for starters. And not just them neither. Bill Wolf knows more than he’ll tell me.’

‘And I take it Mr Cooke is not to know what I’m about?’ I said.

‘Well, my beauty,’ said Mrs Cooke, with a look of great innocence on her face that did not fool me for a minute, ‘where’s the use in telling a man everything, eh? He knows I think there’s trouble coming, but more than that would only fret him.’

‘I have had cases before where the diplomacy was as crucial as the detecting,’ I assured her.

‘Cases?’ said Mrs Cooke, looking startled. ‘Well, as to “cases”, I can’t be paying you, mind there. Pa and me have to pull in tight winters, but let me see now… We can give them two lads of yours a Christmas they’ll never forget, can Cooke’s Circus. And that’s got be worth gold to a mother. So what d’you say?’

It did not look much, in prospect, and the briefing was far from full, but Alec and I were without a sniff of any other work and Donald and Teddy would never have forgiven me denying them circus privileges if I had such things in my gift.

No time like the present, I told myself, and twenty minutes later I had packed Mrs Cooke and Bobbo into the Cowley, although she had been more than ready to return the way she had come – on foot over the hills – and was climbing into the driver’s seat to be waved away by Pallister, both footmen and the hallboy. Gilverton’s servants’ hall would not be lost for conversation today.

My first sight as we drew up beside the pond and stepped down again was Bill Wolf, the individual I had taken to be a bear, still wearing the shaggy suit and only marginally less alarming now that he was revealed as a man. He was sitting on an upturned barrel, beside his caravan – his living wagon, as Mrs Cooke had taught me to call it – making the most of the weak winter sunlight as he stitched at something in his lap. Mrs Cooke gave me a look and scuttled away. Ah yes, I thought, Bill Wolf is one of those who knows something. I squared my shoulders and began walking towards the giant with my chin high in the air and my teeth only chattering slightly.

They were stilled as I approached him by my noticing what I had missed before: there was a small child – next to Mr Wolf a very small child – tucked in between his knees, half under his beard and helping to hold taut the length of stuff he was stitching. The child watched me, warily at first, and then with frank interest as Bunty started whining and rearing up: the new little friend from the day before was beckoning from across the ground. I unhooked her lead and she went off without so much as a backward glance at her old friend of the last seven years.

‘Tis a waste of a kushty beast like yon, right enough, keeping it as a pet,’ Bill Wolf called to me by way of a greeting, nodding at Bunty’s departing back. His voice was a guttural rumble, with the now familiar mix of Irish and Eastern, pure circus as Mrs Cooke would say. ‘My Sallie there’s got a way with dogs.’

‘Oh, she’s yours, is she?’ I said.

‘Aye, my little rakly, and Tom Thumb here’s her twin,’ said Bill. He put down his sewing – it was a leather strap and he was attaching bells to it with an enormous needle threaded up with a bootlace – and ruffled the boy’s hair. ‘Just about five now, the two of them. Never mind autumn crocuses; more like Sarah and Abraham, eh, Ma?’ He raised his voice to a boom, and a woman appeared at the window of the wagon and leaned out.

‘But no Hagar!’ she said, laughing so that her face creased almost as much as Mrs Cooke’s and she showed every one of her dazzling china teeth. I tried not to look surprised. Why should not circus folk know their Bible, after all?

I leaned up against the side of the wagon, taking their friendliness at face value and hoping that leaning on a living wagon was not some kind of dreadful faux pas like stepping unasked aboard a yacht.

‘I seen you yesterday, missus,’ said Mr Wolf. ‘Along with that Mrs Wilson from the house.’

‘You circus-daft too, like her, then?’ asked his wife. There was no insult in her words and so I did not take offence.

‘It is tremendously exciting to have you here,’ I answered, non-committally.

‘Surely,’ said Bill Wolf, not troubled by false modesty, I could see. ‘If it’s all new to you, it must seem so.’

‘Have you always been with the circus, then?’ I asked. Bill Wolf nodded.

‘All our lives,’ he said. ‘Lally there used to have an aerial act till Tom and Sal put paid to it for her.’

‘I’m not complaining,’ said Mrs Wolf and with a last grin disappeared inside again.

‘Then we thought to have a knife-throwing act,’ Bill went on. ‘Worked it up all the time Ma were carrying the nippers, should have been a treat.’ I could not agree; throwing knives at one’s pregnant wife seemed beyond barbarism to me. ‘But Tam Cooke’s no taste for it. Says it’s not right circus.’ Bill bent to chew off the end of a lace and then selected another bell and began stitching again. ‘Not so sure myself,’ he went on, spitting out some stray threads. ‘Reckon it’s more like he thinks it’s too much of the Wild West and he can’t like it, now his boys are over there without his say-so. Driv him potty, that did. Made him look bad.’

‘I thought,’ I began, newly careful now that it seemed there were circus acts and circus acts and the potential for offence among them, ‘I thought you were a strongman, Mr Wolf.’ Tom, leaning back against his father’s chest, giggled softly.

‘I was,’ said Bill. ‘I was. And now I’m a strong man for my age, maid. A strong man for sixty, but who’s going to roll up to see that? And it’s Bill, Pa or Wolfie. I’m no flatty, with your Mister.’

‘I beg your pardon… Bill,’ I said, smiling.

‘So I do fillers,’ he said. ‘Run-ins. And then I’ve got up a one-man band for before the show. Me and Ma Cooke between us, see. A crystal ball and a one-man band and maybe they’ll never notice there’s no menagerie if we’re lucky.’

There was something ineffably sad about all of this, I thought. Cooke’s Circus shrinking as everyone in it grew old.

‘And shall you retire?’ I asked. ‘Or shall you always stay? Until…’

‘Until the black carriage comes for me?’ said Bill. ‘That I will. I must. And between you, me and who else is listening, maid’ – he dropped his voice – ‘I’ve an idea for a new turn. A proper spot again. If I can get everyone as needs to be talked around to it and start the training. You’d laugh if I told you – size of me – but it’s a good ’un. ’Sides,’ he said in a louder voice, ‘we’ve got to keep on till this little chavvy gets trained up, han’t we? Him and his sister.’ He lifted Tom right off his feet and shook him over his head, making the child squeal with delight.

‘And what’s he going to do?’ I said. ‘Train dogs?’

‘Acrobat,’ said Bill. ‘A tumbler, like his ma. My Lally is Topsy’s ma’s cousin’s girl and all Ilchenko on her pa’s side since way back.’ Bill put his son gently down on to the ground again. ‘He an’t no strongman, that’s for sure.’

‘Could be,’ said Tom, getting over his shyness of me at last, and flexing his thin arms ‘Might be.’ His father shook his head at him, chuckling, and then all of a sudden he looked hard at me.

‘And so Ma Cooke come and got you, did she? Not much gets past her.’

‘Do you know something, Mr… Bill?’ I said.

He hesitated.

‘Too much,’ he said, at last. ‘I dunno what bee Ma’s got in her hat, mind, but I know more than she does about some things. More than I want to, truth be told.’

‘About Topsy?’ I asked. ‘About Ana?’ I was feeling my way in the dark, but I thought I should keep at it while he was in a mood to talk to me.

‘Ana!’ he said, her name seeming to catch his interest as soon as I spoke it. ‘She’s a mystery to me, that one. Someone needs to have a quiet word with the maid. Tell her she wants to be a bit more careful like, keep on the right side if she knows what’s good for her.’

This certainly chimed with what Mrs Cooke had told me.

‘I intend to, Mr… Bill,’ I said. ‘And anything you can tell me will only help.’ But I had pushed too far now; I could see it in his face.

‘I’ve got my place here,’ he said. ‘And after what I’ve done to hang on to it I’ll keep my head down.’

‘After what you’ve done,’ I repeated, careful not to make it a question. Bill Wolf’s eyes showed just a dart of panic all the same.

‘Making a filler of myself,’ he said. ‘That’s what I mean. One step up from an odd-job man, that’s me. But I will tell you this: that old donah loves them chavs like babbies so it’s not the prads and spots that’s aching her, but His Gills is just flash mad he couldn’t stop them and coming down hard enough to break a king pole and if this show don’t hold together there’s more than me and Lall’ll end up nobbing the streets with a stick and a rag.’

In other words, I thought (and getting it into other words felt more like unseen translation than anything I had tackled since my French governess had given up on me), Mrs Cooke was missing her grown-up sons as though they were children but it was Mr Cooke’s pride, not his heart, which was wounded by the boys heading for Coney Island or wherever they were without his say-so and taking trained horses with them, and now Mr Cooke was stamping his authority on the rest of the outfit with such vigour that he might flatten it completely except that some of the artistes would cling on to this job with their little fingernails, ignoring any amount of trouble, if it meant they could avoid… Madame Toulemonde herself would have forgiven me for leaving it untranslated because what could ever express abjectness better than ‘nobbing the streets with a stick and a rag’? Nothing that I could think of.

I excused myself from the – unexpectedly delightful – Pa Wolf after that, mentally turning over the corner of his card to remind me to speak to him again, and wandered over to the tent.

I was hoping for twelve liberty horses or Anastasia riding the haute école, and was disappointed and not a little surprised to see, in the ring, what looked like three clowns standing smoking, with a sausage dog rolling on its back in the sawdust at their feet. It seemed unlikely that they would have to practise their funny walks and pratfalls all winter like the acrobats and high-wire walkers, but I was sure these were clowns. One was the spindly giant, one the midget, and the third was wearing a pair of long shoes and had a hoop in his trousers waist. All three had top hats on. They glanced at me as I entered and the midget nodded a greeting. The long man simply dipped his head as though too shy to meet my eyes. The third noted my presence – I should have said he knew I was coming, for he betrayed no surprise – but otherwise ignored me. He was evidently in charge and the more I watched him the more I thought I could see a resemblance to Mr Tam Cooke. His voice too as he put the others through their paces was the same.

After a few minutes, the little man took the cigarette butts from the other two and walked to the edge of the ring to stub them out and drop the butts over the side on to the grass, then he waddled back at a trot and lined up. Instinctively they faced towards where I was sitting, unable to ignore an audience, even an audience of one, uninvited, to a show not yet ready to be seen.

‘Akilina!’ called the boss clown and at the other side of the ring the littlest Prebrezhensky girl wound up a gramophone machine and laid the arm down.

Like most people, I have not found clowns really funny since I was five but for the next ten minutes, I laughed more than I could ever remember laughing in my life. The hooped clown had a parcel to unwrap. He rolled up his sleeves and gave his hat to the tall man to hold. He, unthinking, made to put the new hat on his own head and finding a hat already there, removed it, bent his lanky frame completely in half and gave it to the sausage dog who ran along the line and handed it to the tiny man, who thanked the dog gravely and tried to put the hat on his head. Encountering his own hat, he took it off, nudged his neighbour, interrupting the unwrapping, and passed it on.

From there, the three hats were juggled round and round, faster and faster, the parcel being thrown high in the air to get it out of the way whenever a hat came the hooped clown’s way. The sausage dog waited, stretched up against the leg of the tall clown, barking in time with the music, to offer his services again but the tall clown did not have a moment’s attention to spare. After a furious minute the parcel was undone and what was inside but another hat, and another and another and yet another. I could not help clapping as the dog nipped the tall clown’s leg and at last got hold of a hat to run along with and throw up for the tiny man to catch and now the dog was part of the frenzy too, barking first in front of the tall clown, then behind him, making the poor man spin, swaying like a reed in a gale, while the hats kept coming, until, with the music building to a flourish, the tall clown spinning like a top and the parcel empty… they stopped.

The short clown caught all the hats one by one and the dog sat down in the sawdust again. Akilina lifted the arm of the gramophone.

‘If you throw two up, Charlie, instead of giving me one,’ said the tall clown to the hooped one, ‘I’ll spin round, Jinx’ll run along with nothing and jump into Tiny’s arms, Tiny’ll make to throw him up in the air, I’ll lean over to save Jinx and all the hats can come down into the box and you shut it.’ His voice was a surprise to me. He sounded educated, no Irish or Russian about him anywhere, no circus at all.

‘No, no, no,’ said Charlie. ‘The dog’ll get the big laugh that way.’

‘Well, owzabout if Andrew and me chuck all the hats on to your head and Jinx jumps into t’box, then?’ said Tiny.

‘And I just stand there?’ said Charlie.

‘Or you and I chuck all the hats on Tiny’s head.’

‘Won’t look balanced.’

‘Look pretty kushty if Tiny were in the middle,’ said Andrew. The circus word sounded very odd in his accent. ‘I think we always get the big laugh if Tiny and I stand next.’

‘Owzabout if Charlie and me chuck all the hats on your head,’ said Tiny to Andrew. He was standing with hands on hips looking up at Andrew, indeed, almost falling over backwards, in fact, to look up at him. ‘Or if Charlie chucks his and I try and keep missing and Jinx hands them back to me.’ Charlie was shaking his head. ‘Look, just look,’ said Tiny. He and the tall man started the hats moving again. Not even missing the third clown they set them all spinning through the air and then, just as he had suggested, the little man started lobbing them up and the tall man started catching them on his head. Any that missed the dog caught until there was only one left. Tiny threw it up again and again and Andrew bent his long legs trying to catch it on the top of the wavering tower he was already wearing. Charlie, slowly, folded his arms, turned away and lit a cigarette, not even watching. At last, Tiny put the hat on his own head, turned the parcel box upside down and climbed onto it. He whistled the little dog up into his arms, whereupon the dog snatched the last hat off the midget’s head with his teeth and flung it up on to the top of the tottering stack.

‘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.’