The Winter Ground

5

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Now there, my maid,’ she said. ‘Let’s not go back over all that again.’

‘Don’t you start talking comfort to her, Polly Cooke, when she’s cheeking me,’ said Pa. ‘She needs to learn the life as well as the turns, if she’s going to be circus.’

At that, Anastasia jumped up and flounced off in the direction of the horse tent. There was an uneasy silence around the fire after she had left until Mrs Cooke began to direct the collection of the plates and to issue instructions to the children about who was to wash them and who was to dry and, one by one, the others began to drift away. I lingered, having caught a look she flicked towards me.

‘See there?’ she said, softly. ‘Don’t tell me that’s a happy maid.’

I could only agree and I made my way towards the tent very keen to see what act had put Anastasia in such a state of umbrage and what fountains of talent she must have to remain so precious to Ma Cooke despite having all the charm and diplomacy of a sulking mule. Except as soon as I had thought that, I came up hard against the memory of her face, breaking suddenly into smiles as though the sun had come out on a stormy day.

Inside the tent, Topsy Turvy was taking off her skirt and I hesitated in the doorway, unsure about the etiquette, but she looked over her shoulder and hailed me, quite unconcerned.

‘Don’t mind me,’ she said. ‘Looks even worse than a chorus girl, this, don’t it?’ Under the skirt, which she was now folding into a bundle, she wore what might have been very thick tights or very thin britches and something like a boy’s bathing suit. She laid her skirt on a seat outside the ring then went over to one of the poles and began to climb it. ‘Poor Ana,’ she said as she ascended. ‘Pa’s right, so he is, but I can see both sides.’

‘I can’t honestly say I have a solid grasp of it yet,’ I admitted. Topsy stopped and leaned out backwards from the pole looking at me upside down.

‘I thought Ma had called you in to get it seen to,’ she said. ‘I thought you were here to talk to Ana, in her own language like, get things kushty again.’

‘And what language would that be?’ I asked, rather astonished. Topsy chuckled.

‘Now isn’t that the question?’ she said. ‘Isn’t it just!’

‘And can you tell me anything about what’s going on?’ I asked. I spoke deliberately vaguely, guessing that Mrs Cooke would not have informed Topsy of her suspicions regarding the lost swing.

‘Not me,’ said Topsy. ‘And don’t ask me what that clown’s up to because there’s no accounting for taste.’ Her face had hardened and she glared down.

‘Well, what’s the problem with your double act, for instance?’ I prompted her.

‘Oh!’ said Topsy. ‘That. Well, Bisou – Ana’s horse, you know – was trained up for the haute école, but he… well, he died, when Ana was away visiting after the last stand. And now she just has her rosy-back – her voltige pony – and only one spot, so Pa wants her and me to work up an act together for the spring.’ She had reached the top of the pole now and was sauntering along a beam, high enough to make me feel dizzy just watching her.

‘Do be careful,’ I said.

‘Now there’s an idea,’ said Topsy, with a grin. She had reached the middle of the roof dome, where a rope was coiled around the beam, looking like something between a wasps’ nest and a Turkish basket. ‘Ana thinks Pa should buy another horse for her, see, or at least advance her some of her pay so’s she can buy one, but Pa says no. She could never get a new prad trained up in one winter, so she can do a second spot with me and work next season on her haute école. Makes sense anyway, because where would she be getting a horse this time of the year anyway? Needs to wait for the fairs and she knows it. But there’s no telling her anything these days. She wants to watch out, madam, if you ask me.’

Her voice died away as we both heard someone come under the canopy and open the door flaps. It was Mr Cooke, still rather on his dignity, although his face softened when he looked up at Topsy high in the roof.

‘There’s my good lass,’ he said. ‘Got the circus wrote through you like Blackpool rock. Not like some we could mention, eh, Mrs Gilver? You don’t catch Topsy kicking up a fuss and a bother when she turns her back and loses something.’

‘Oh, Pa, come on with you,’ said Topsy. She was frowning down at him from her high perch, with her hands on her hips. ‘I can’t just lay my hands on a prop – probably put it somewhere silly and forgot it – it’s not the same. How would you feel if you went to town one day and come back to find… say, Sambo dead and gone, or Midnight?’

‘Cheek of a monkey, you have, talking to the rum coll of the show that way,’ said Pa Cooke. He shook his whip at Topsy, not too threateningly since it was trussed up like a horse bandage for safe carriage, and besides his eyes were twinkling. Either proper circus folk had privileges of which jossers could only dream or it was just that the sweet, dimpling Topsy could wind any man around her little finger where the haughty Anastasia left them cold. As though to confirm it, his face grew stern again as he turned towards the sound of someone coming into the ring from the backstage doors. Anastasia, evidently, was not to be treated to any leftover smiles.

When the curtains were swept aside, though, it was not Anastasia and her pony who stood there. Rather stark-eyed, Mrs Prebrezhensky came falteringly into the ring.

‘Mee-suss Kilvert?’ she said. It took me a moment to realise that she was talking to me. ‘Can I speak with you, please. It is of most important.’

‘Why, certainly,’ I said. ‘Do excuse me, Mr Cooke.’ I hurried towards the curtains, aware of his contemplative stare and a look of acute interest from the bright-eyed little figure perched above.

With the fall of the curtain behind us came a feeling that we had entered another world. We were standing in a narrow corridor whose walls were fashioned from patched and faded canvas and whose floor was made of slatted boards set on the grass below and covered with sacking. Above the archway back to the ring, the top of the tent was still visible and I could see one end of the beam where Topsy was sitting, but back here sounds were clothy and muffled and I could hear my own breathing, unnaturally loud as when one is wearing a rubber bathing cap, and could smell none of the fresh sawdust and oil of the tent, the purposeful, competent smell I had thought was the smell of the circus, but only the stale dust of the sacking under our feet and faintly from under that the cold smell of the ground, dying grass and earth turning to mud. I shivered.

Mrs Prebrezhensky laid a hand on my arm and drew me further along the corridor, past little cubby-holes full of painted barrels and harnesses, past trunks full of spangled costumes and tables covered with props. I saw the parcel of hats from the clowns’ act that morning.

‘I know why you are here,’ she said, as she hurried me along. ‘Polly told me dinnertime. It is sometimes most useful to be able speak secrets in a crowd.’ She smiled at me as she held up a piece of the canvas and we stooped to pass under it, emerging from the warren of passageways into the low light of the field. ‘I bring you this ways because nobody need to see we go,’ she said. Sure enough, we were near the door end of a wagon and with a quick look round to see that we were unobserved, she flitted up the steps with me hurrying after.

Inside, the wagon was criss-crossed with a veritable cat’s cradle of washing lines, over which were draped dozens of pairs of woollen stockings and as many again woollen vests and winter knickers. The door of the stove was open to help with the drying but it seemed to me that the washing might win and the fire lose, because the air was soft and sweet with steam and the painted walls were beaded with moisture.

‘Kolya, my husband, is gone take girls to see the village,’ said Mrs Prebrezhensky. Then she hesitated. ‘Kolya says to me to say nothing, not to bring trouble to ourselves. He forbids me to speak. But he is wrong.’

‘What is it?’ I asked her. Perhaps it was her accent, terribly glamorous in a sepulchral kind of way, or perhaps Mrs Prebrezhensky’s flair for dramatic presentation was not reserved for showing off her girls in the ring, but I could feel my pulse quicken.

‘Last evening,’ she said, ‘we have found Topsy’s swing.’ She bent down and opened one of the panelled cupboard doors. Various jars and bottles of richly coloured foods, pickles I thought, had been shoved roughly to the back and one of them had fallen over and broken, releasing a sharply pungent smell. In the space thus made was a jumble of rope with a gold lacquered stick mixed up amongst it.

‘Well, that’s a relief,’ I said. ‘Topsy will be pleased to have it returned.’ I quite saw that it was not ideal to have lost property turn up in one’s cupboard, but still I could not account for her sombre face, nor for the secrecy. There was no great harm done, surely.

‘But look,’ said Mrs Prebrezhensky, and pointed one of her long painted fingers at the bundle. I stepped closer to peer at it and could see that just where she was pointing the rope had been cut halfway through.

‘It was not me,’ said Mrs Prebrezhensky. ‘It was not us.’ In her voice there was a note of real fear, not just drama now. I stared at the rope and tried to think quickly.

‘Well, of course it wasn’t,’ I said, after a minute or two. ‘Or you’d hardly have hidden it in your own caravan, would you?’ Her breath came out in a long, hissing sigh. She pressed a hand to her heart.

‘Thank God,’ she said. ‘Thank God you are here to help us.’

I knelt down and extracted the bundle from the cupboard, careful not to upset any more jars as I did so. Then I peered at the cut, but it told me nothing. Perhaps a sailor, or a butcher, might be able to glance at it and sketch the knife that made it, but not me.

‘Nasty,’ I said. I started to roll the bundle up as neatly as I could, but that was not very neatly, I suppose, and Mrs Prebrezhensky took it from me and began twisting it with practised hands. ‘Who would want to do such a thing?’ I asked her. ‘Do you know?’ I wondered how wide the suspicion of Ana might be. She shook her head. ‘And why, after cutting it, would someone hide it? And hide it here? It doesn’t make any sense.’ I wanted to ask if Ana had any reason to do so, but did not like to drop her in it with so little ceremony, no matter what Mrs Cooke might have told me. Mrs Prebrezhensky was beaming at me.

‘You good clever lady,’ she said. ‘You see real things. I told Kolya is very bad if we hush this, but he does not listen to me.’

‘Well, he has a point,’ I replied. ‘Obviously, someone wanted to make things bad for you, Mrs Prebrez-’

‘Zoya,’ she said. ‘I am Zoya, please.’ She shook her head slowly. ‘How could this make bad for us? Someone wants to make bad things for Topsy.’ That was unarguable. She had finished twisting and the swing was now a tight lozenge of coiled rope with just a glint of the golden stick peeping out of each end. She handed it to me. ‘And if I listen to Kolya,’ she said, ‘and say nothing, no one ever would know. Not clever trouble put it here in my cupboard closed for many weeks and weeks. If the jar not smash and we smell something, who knows how long a secret?’

‘Unless there had been a search,’ I said. ‘If Pa Cooke had ordered a search and it had been found here, that would have been trouble enough.’

‘But such a thing would never happen,’ she said, glaring at me as though I had just suggested it. ‘Never in any circus would anything so… what is the word? So disrespect. Never would so disrespect be from one circus man to another.’

Perhaps, I thought to myself, that began to explain what I was doing here. Perhaps it was unthinkable for Mrs Cooke herself to discover Ana’s guilt officially, one circus woman to another, even if she suspected it. If so, matters might be different now: a missing prop was a prank but a prop slashed with enough venom to cut a thick rope halfway through was something else again and would surely outweigh all thought of polite convention.

‘You must tell Topsy,’ said Zoya, as though reading my thoughts. ‘Warn her someone is make danger for her?’ I hesitated. Was it dangerous, exactly? Topsy could hardly have used the prop; the cut was almost at the swing end, after all, and she would have seen it. It was threatening, certainly. Thoroughly nasty. But there was no real danger.

‘I shall ask Mrs Cooke what she thinks best,’ I said. ‘In the meantime…’ I bent and looked out of the window. Mrs Wolf was at the fire, upending washed pots on the tin roof to dry. Two of the grooms were walking four black horses towards the pool. ‘Can I leave it here with you?’ I said. ‘It had better stay out of sight until I have a plan. Even if the damage is hidden.’

I left her busily turning summer clothes out of a deep drawer under the box-bed to put the swing at the very bottom and hurried back to the tent, keen to watch Topsy and Ana together, to see if there were signs of a deep enough hatred to explain what I had just seen.

Anastasia had arrived and was sitting astride a large and rather broad-backed dark grey pony, who stood in the middle of the ring blinking his long lashes. I glanced up and got a wave from Topsy who was perched where I had seen her last, high on the beam. In ringside seats were all of the clowns, Bill Wolf and Ma, who beckoned to me.

‘Now,’ said Pa Cooke, slapping his whip against his thigh to unravel it. ‘I know you have your own ideas about things, Ana, but if you’ll think about it for just a minute, you’ll see that I, with sixty years of circus behind me and ten generations of circus in my blood, know a thing or two and this little act we’re working up here is going to be a beauty. Elegant, breathtaking beauty. There won’t be a sound to be heard and there won’t be a dry eye in the tent. We kill the flares, we powder out Harlequin’s star and socks.’ He nodded to Ana’s pony. ‘We’ll have Topsy on a black rope and the two of you girls… phosphorescent! You’ll be like a couple of fireflies, like fairy queens. I can see you now.’

‘But what do we do, Pa?’ Topsy shouted down. Pa, however, had not finished setting the scene.

‘Music will be clarinet and brushed snare,’ he said. ‘All the babbies will be off to sleep, it’ll be that soothing and peaceful. And the act will be called Reflection by Moonlight. You’ll be the talking point of the whole show and do you know the best of it?’ He paused dramatically. ‘It’s all the kind of lines you’ve been doing since you were knee-high. Well-’ He broke off and spoke the next part in his normal voice. ‘I mean you, Tops, but Ana will be able to do them just as well.’

He certainly knew this bit of his business, I thought. The picture he painted was irresistible.

‘Moreover,’ he went on, ‘I am fairly sure that no such act has ever been seen before. Charlie? Bill? Am I right there?’

‘I never seen it, Tam,’ said Bill Wolf’s rumbling voice, quick to praise the boss man. Charlie Cooke nodded rather reluctantly. Indeed, his whole demeanour was that of a sceptic, come in hopes to see the venture fail. He crossed his arms and put his tongue in his cheek. Tiny had his eyes fastened on Ana, Andrew gazed up at Topsy and Ma sat forward with such an expression of rapt attention directed at her husband that I had to bite my cheeks not to giggle.

‘Now, to start with,’ said Pa, ‘I want just an arabesque from both of you. Start at a walk, Ana.’ He clicked his teeth and Ana’s pony moved forward. ‘There’s a good girl,’ said Pa. ‘Right, Topsy?’

Up on the beam Topsy had uncoiled the rope from its wasps’ nest shape and let its free end drop downwards. She now turned it twice around her body and then twice around her leg. Then, somehow, and it happened so quickly that I could not see how it was done, she seemed to make some kind of a slip knot which allowed her to drop gently down until she was suspended about ten feet below the beam, caught up in the coils of rope. I took a deep breath and told myself that I was going to watch this through without squeezing my eyes shut or wincing.

‘Hup,’ said Pa and, in unison, Ana on the pony lifted one foot behind her and both arms to the side and struck a pose on the broad, rolling back while Topsy above pointed one leg downwards and one behind and let one arm drift dreamily free. She craned her neck to look at Ana and then set the rope spinning, trying to match the pony’s gentle walking speed. There was an appreciative sigh from the ringside seats.

‘Lovely,’ said Ma Cooke. ‘Kushty kativa, Pa!’

It was beautiful, and one could imagine that with the phosphorus and black rope it would be more beautiful still, but I could not help feeling a little sorry for Ana, because Topsy, spinning in the roof, looked the more impressive of the pair – the distance and the perspective lending her some extra magic – but I was sure that it was Ana, balanced so perfectly on Harlequin’s back, who was pulling off the greater feat here.

‘Both arms, Topsy,’ said Pa, lost in concentration on the two girls.

‘Sure if I fly with both arms,’ said Topsy, and the catch in her voice came as a complete surprise to me; she looked so languid, floating around up there, one forgot that every muscle in her little body must be straining, ‘then I’m going to have to wrap me rope foot and flex it. Which one’s better?’

‘Better match with Ana’s base foot if you flex,’ came Charlie Cooke’s voice. I could see what he was saying. Ana was balanced on a flat foot on her pony’s back, while Topsy had both feet pointed as she revolved up there.

‘What do you think, Andrew?’ said Topsy. Andrew Merryman started a little but did not answer.

‘Try it,’ said Pa, but while Topsy bent to wrap a foot in the rope to support herself, Ana suddenly rose up and stood on her tiptoe.

‘That’s lovely, my maid,’ said Ma, ‘but Topsy can’t do that on a rope, now can she?’ Anastasia hooked an eyebrow up as she answered.

‘Can she not?’ she said. ‘I will keep myself to what she can manage then.’

‘Here!’ said Topsy. ‘It’s not like I’m just beginning. There’s what you can and what you can’t do up here, thank you very much, and you can’t have a straight rope leg, a pointed toe and no hands. It’s not possible. It’s the laws of the rope. It’s… Look, Pa, bent leg and I’ve got no problem.’

‘If it’s reflection you’re after, Tam,’ said Ma, cutting through her, ‘they should be mirror image, shun’t they? Someone needs to be upside down.’ At this, there was an unseemly scramble while each of the girls tried to get upside down first. Inevitably Ana, with no rope to rewind, was the winner but it had to be said that her handstand on the horse, while impressive, was nothing like as pretty as Topsy’s artful shape on the rope above. Tiny Truman giggled.

‘Women!’ he said.

‘If – ahem.’ I was startled to hear Andrew Merryman speak and it seemed I was not alone. All of us in the ringside seats turned to him, causing him momentarily to lose his nerve. He dipped his head and started again. ‘If we’re doing this by committee,’ he said, ‘can I s-s-stick my oar in too?’

‘Course you can, lad,’ said Pa. ‘I’m all for listening. The rum coll’s got to listen as well as shout.’ He spoke very pointedly and I wondered who it was aimed at. Andrew looked uncertain at so much protesting, but Pa Cooke gestured to him to continue.

‘Well, to make a reflection,’ he said, ‘shouldn’t Harlequin be turning on the spot under the rope?’ He pointed to where the bottom of Topsy’s rope was swinging gently a few feet above the middle of the ring and seemed about to say more but then stopped himself and frowned. He looked up the rope towards Topsy and frowned again.

‘That’s a fair poi-’ said Mrs Cooke, but Anastasia cut her off.

‘Harlequin is a rosy-back, not a high school horse. I would need a high school horse to spin on the sp-’

‘Just so, just so,’ said Pa Cooke hastily. ‘I thank you, Andrew lad, but we’re fine as we are.’

‘He is right though, Pa,’ said Topsy. ‘You’re right, Andrew.’

‘Aye, aye,’ said Pa Cooke, ‘but let’s get on, will we?’

The work went on; halting, interrupted, slowly feeling a way towards the smooth ease Pa Cooke could see already in his mind’s eye, and all we watchers fell into a kind of reverie; all, that is, except Andrew Merryman who continued to look troubled. Once or twice he half turned as though to speak to Tiny at his side, but each time he closed his mouth and turned to face the front again, still frowning. At last, with Topsy red in the face and panting and Harlequin drooping a little from boredom, Pa began to scratch his head and muse about the finale.

‘Shame we can’t fade on you and just get you off in darkness,’ he said. ‘Could do if we used spots instead of phosphorus but I’d not want to give up on that just yet awhile. Trouble is it’s got to be slow and it’s not easy to make a slow finale. Topsy, have you ever stood up on a pony?’

‘Only playing, Pa,’ said Topsy.

‘Voltige is not play,’ Ana spat.

‘I never meant it was,’ said Topsy, all wide-eyed innocence. ‘My stars, I just-’

‘Never mind that, never mind,’ said Pa. ‘Here’s what I’m thinking. Ana, you take Harlequin to the middle and stand straight like a little tin soldier. Topsy will come down and land on his back, then the two of you together make a line – something fancy, symmetrical, mirror-image like, and Harlequin walks off. Eh?’ Topsy was already twining herself into the rope in another of the complicated slip knots, ready for her descent.

‘No,’ said Ana. Pa Cooke’s mouth dropped open.

‘Harlequin can’t carry two people, Tam,’ said Charlie.

‘He’s carried the two of us,’ said Tiny. ‘And I know I’m not much of a one but Andrew makes up for me.’

‘It’s too dangerous,’ said Ana. There were jeers all around at that and I surmised that for a circus girl to dismiss an idea for that reason was a very poor show.

‘I don’t mind if you join me on the rope,’ said Topsy, purely as Nanny Palmer used to say ‘out of badness’.

‘I am not a monkey to be climbing ropes,’ Ana said, half under her breath. The spectators hesitated, unsure whether to affect deafness or admit that we had heard her. Topsy, unfortunately, seemed to have very sharp ears.

‘Right,’ she said, ‘that’s it. You’ve done it now, you stuck-up, two-faced…’ She was wriggling around furiously as she spoke, trying to free herself to climb down. ‘I’ve had it up to my new teeth with you,’ she said. ‘I’m doing you a favour, in case you didn’t know. I’ve got two spots. I don’t need to be working all winter to save your skin for you. So…’ She paused and glared down at Ana, who stretched out along Harlequin’s back, put her hands behind her head and crossed her legs at the ankle, looking like an odalisque on a couch. ‘… you’re going to get what’s coming and don’t tell me you didn’t ask for it plenty.’

Those watching had not interfered up until this moment, but now Pa Cooke stepped in.

‘Topsy!’ he barked. ‘You stay where you are. You,’ he turned to Ana, ‘you get that pony stalled and wiped and come to my wagon in half an hour.’

‘Never you mind, Pa,’ said Topsy. ‘I’ll sort this out right now.’ She gave up trying to get free and instead wound the rope furiously around her body. ‘It’s been a long time coming,’ she said and tugged on the knot which held her.

Andrew Merryman leapt up.

‘Topsy, no!’

‘Mind your business,’ shouted Topsy. She tugged again.

‘That’s not your rope!’ Merryman cried.

What happened then was both too fast to understand and so slow that it was agony to watch. I saw Tiny, Charlie and Ma look at Andrew and jump to their feet, saw all except Charlie leap, in what looked like single bounds, to the middle of the ring, even Tiny covering the ground like a panther. I saw Pa, caught by surprise, look up, make a feint as if to dash off backstage, turn on his heel, and join the others, head back and arms up as Topsy plummeted towards them. Most of all what I saw was Topsy’s face, her angry scowl turning to a wide-mouthed silent scream as she rushed through the air, the rope a blur around her. Ten feet from the ground, when even I had guessed what must be about to happen, right there before my eyes, Topsy turned like an eel, freed herself from the one remaining loop and, kicking out against nothing, bracing herself against empty air, leapt upwards, put out her hands like two cat’s claws and grabbed for dear life on to the rope. She slid a foot or so, shrieking as the rough cords burned her hands, and then stopped.

There was a moment of total silence as she hung there and then Andrew Merryman reached up and took hold of her calves in his long, strong hands.

‘Let go and sit down,’ he said. ‘I’ll catch you on my shoulders.’

She took a while, but eventually she let go and he cradled her into his arms and sank down on to the sawdust with her. Topsy turned her head against his chest and began to weep. Ma and Pa Cooke were staring at the end of the rope swinging above the sawdust. Charlie Cooke was back in his seat, his face as white and shining as ever it could be in make-up for the ring, tears pouring down it until he wiped them roughly away with shaking hands. He was staring at Ana, who slithered off her horse as though her bones had melted and stood cowering against his flank. Tiny stood with his chin sunk on to his chest and his hands hanging at his sides.

‘What went wrong?’ I said at last.

Topsy looked up and sniffed deeply.

‘He’s right,’ she said. ‘That’s not my rope.’ She pointed past me towards it and winced as her burned palm creased, then opened her hand wide again and blew on it. As she did so, she settled more comfortably into the crook of Andrew’s arm and seemed to regain a good deal of her pluck and even some of her cheer. ‘Looks like I’m going to be having a holiday, Pa,’ she said, showing us the red weals, ‘and I won’t be using it to stitch new costumes neither.’ Tiny, without a word, strode off towards the backstage.

‘But what’s wrong with the rope?’ I asked. I was not enjoying the sensation of being the only one who had no idea why this was happening.

‘It’s too long,’ said Pa. ‘Topsy’s rope stops just here.’ He held a hand above his head. ‘Just right for her to touch one toe down from full stretch. If she had kept going on this one…’ I pictured it briefly, remembering the speed she had picked up as the rope unwound from around her; she had been hurtling down like a bobbin. I could feel the peculiar prickling sensation which accompanies the departure of all blood from one’s face. I had seen the cut swing; I had been warned that Ana was behind the trouble. Yet I came here and sat down to watch them practise an act together – an act bitterly resented by the one, an act where the other was hanging from a rope with no net. I could not look at either of them and turned my face away just in time to see Tiny returning with a long coil of rope across his shoulder, looking grim. He cleared his throat.

‘That’s my rope, is that,’ he said, nodding to the one hanging from the beam. Walking over to it, he gave a little jump and caught hold of its swinging end. ‘Andrew and me sometimes do a kid-on of the corde lisse. This is my one. Haven’t used it for months. I’ll bet if we unroll this one there’ – he shrugged the coil off his shoulder – ‘it’ll be just a bit shorter. It’ll be Topsy’s.’

Topsy was staring at him as he swung gently back and forward by one of his short, strong arms.

‘Ted?’ she said, very softly. Andrew Merryman, too, was staring hard at his friend and he tightened his grip around Topsy’s shoulders.

‘How could they get mixed up?’ I asked.

‘They couldn’t,’ came Pa’s voice, low and terrible to hear. ‘You were right then, Ma. You said there was trouble coming. I thought you were just making stories for me.’

‘No, I warrn’t there,’ said Ma, just as quietly. ‘Couldn’t hardly have been more wrong.’

‘What’s this?’ said Charlie Cooke, who had joined the others at last, still pale but no longer shaking. Andrew and Tiny had begun to uncoil the new rope, spilling in loops on to the sawdust.

‘Ma knew this was going to happen,’ said Mr Cooke.

‘Never, never,’ his wife cried.

‘Knew something anyway,’ Pa went on. ‘Said she did and I wouldn’t listen. Didn’t trust her.’

‘You din’t have to, Tam,’ said his wife. ‘I went my own sweet way without you.’

Mr Cooke frowned at her then until she explained.

‘Mrs Gilver here,’ she said, ‘has come to help me out. Find out what the trouble is, see?’

It took Mr Cooke a long time, with much blinking and staring, to realise what his wife was saying, and when the penny finally dropped his face darkened until it was not red but a deep and terrifying purple. Andrew and Tiny continued to examine the rope, eyes averted from Pa, but I could not help glancing at the whip he held and stepping back a pace or two.

‘It wasn’t your place, Poll,’ he said.

‘Don’t you stand there and tell me about my place,’ his wife said, very quietly but as firm as could be.

There was another long silence, while everyone watched, breath held, to see what he would do. At last, he stepped away from Ma, still watching her, and his shoulders dropped a little. He turned and gestured to me with one of his wide, expansive, ringmaster flourishes. ‘Hear that?’ he said, glaring around at everyone. ‘Mrs Gilver is going to get to the bottom of this and anyone what doesn’t like it and doesn’t help her can walk. Right? New rule in Cooke’s Circus. You keep up your own clobber, you don’t drink before the show and now you help Mrs Gilver and answer anything she asks you or you answer to me.’

‘Look at this here then, missus,’ said Tiny, pointing at the rope on the ground. Impossible to miss, a few feet from one end, it was slashed almost all the way through.

‘Ted?’ said Topsy again. ‘What’s happening?’

‘Tell me you don’t know nothing about this,’ said Pa Cooke, towering over Tiny with his fists bunched. ‘You swear on your life, or you’ll have no life to swear on.’

‘Leave the lad, Tam,’ said Charlie. ‘Course he don’t.’

‘No, sorry, course not,’ said Pa, looking truly chastened. He turned and flicked a glance towards Harlequin. ‘Ana!’ he said, his voice angry again.

‘And you can leave her out of it too,’ said Charlie, even louder.

His brother ignored him.

‘Get that prad stalled and come straight to my wagon,’ he said to Ana. He had gathered his whip into loose coils as he spoke but leaving the tent he cracked it, just once, very hard, and left a slash in the canvas to one side of the door. Ma sighed.

‘Never you mind there, Ana,’ she said. ‘Just you lie low till tomorrow, maid. And you can look out some fresh walling for that and get it laced on.’ She nodded to the ripped canvas. Ana nodded and left the ring on rather unsteady legs, her pony close at her heels and nibbling her hair, worried about her. Charlie, with a look at Ma, followed her. Ma turned to me and drew me aside out of the others’ hearing.

‘You best keep out his way too, my beauty,’ she said. ‘Get on with your work on the quiet. He’s not angry with you for helping, mind, and he’s not even angry with me for being right, not really. He’s angry with Tam Cooke, as usual, see?’

‘But you don’t need my help now,’ I said. ‘You said you knew it was Ana at the bottom of the trouble and now she’s gone as far as this…’

Mrs Cooke opened her eyes very wide so that her wrinkles showed white.

‘Bless us both,’ she said. ‘You must forget that now, my beauty. Circus folk an’t what they were but no one circus would ever… Ana no more than me.’

‘And why should Pa be angry with himself anyway?’ I asked. ‘What has he done?’

‘Din’t spot the rope end, did he?’ said Mrs Cooke. She turned to Andrew Merryman and raised her voice again. ‘You sure you’re a josser, my fine big lad? Don’t seem like one to me.’