Circus of Wonders

by Elizabeth Macneal

  She tries to hold herself like Stella might, legs apart, chin high.

  ‘Leave me alone.’

  He laughs, but there is bitterness in it, as if he is not used to being thwarted. ‘I’m looking for Brunette.’

  ‘I haven’t seen her.’

  ‘Very well.’

  He whisks his whip against the low grass, turns towards the forest. Brunette will be there, with the man who loves her. She thinks of the sounds her brother and Mary made in the cottage when she was sent to wait in the yard outside. Panting like wild animals. The sound of two bodies moving against each other, fabric rustling.

  He says he loves her.

  Envy lodges itself in her chest.

  She notices that the lamp in Toby’s caravan is still lit. She remembers his fingers, the way they brushed hers as she held the photograph. The scents of strange liquids, the book of handbills and cartes-de-visite he showed her. A room so dark she could not read his expression.

  A horse whinnies, and Nell jumps. She runs back to her wagon, hair whipping behind her.

  Toby

  Somebody once told Toby that the act of taking a photograph was an aggression. In the war, surrounded by the smell of powder and blood, and dogs feasting on the offal of the freshly dead, the thought felt ludicrous when he seemed to be the only person not fighting. But now, whenever Toby hunches behind his camera, he feels as if he is appropriating something. As he unpegs Nell’s image from the line, he wonders if he is stealing something that belongs to her.

  A moment, caught in time, a girl trapped on paper. The jut of her chin, her eyes that seem both uncertain and defiant.

  He should already have carried this photograph to his brother, but he finds himself tidying his wagon, polishing the bottles. Every so often, he glances at Nell’s image, as if to check she is still there. Twice, he lifts the card and moves towards the door, but then he stops himself. Instead, he pulls out the book which she looked at earlier. Fairy Tales and Other Stories. He could sneak across the grass to her wagon and give it to her. Perhaps it would comfort her. It would be harmless, nothing in it. Jasper wouldn’t have to know – but he would. His brother can read every small deceit in the twitch of his eye, the downturn of his mouth. He wonders if Jasper would know if he imagined the way Nell looked at him, if he could sense whether the mashing of his pulse echoed her own. He pictures his brother like a butcher, lifting his heart from a bed of brown ice, squeezing it in his fist, placing his ear against it to listen to the quiver of its chambers. Toby shakes his head a little, then weighs the volume of Fairy Tales in his hand and casts it to the back of his cupboard. It lands beside a small box, half-buried. He pulls it forwards. The wood is swollen and he has to lever it open.

  Inside, he finds photographs of smooth plains, contented men drinking. He sorts through them. Soldiers leaning against guns, their epaulettes winking like stars. This image was printed in the Illustrated London News, sent to London in a packet with a general’s post. More photographs: troops sitting before a whole roast chicken, laughing in front of their tents. He moves to the pictures at the back, those that nobody has ever seen apart from one officer, who seized him by the lapels and hurled him from the room. A shattered pelvis. The ground littered with fragments of skulls. A dead man, his mouth twisted in agony.

  When Jasper joined the military, Toby knew that it spelled the end of things as they’d been before, that this was a place where he could no longer follow his brother. He saw their paths splitting as he knew they always would – one towards glory, the other towards mediocrity. He was not cut out for a glittering military career; instead, his father found him a position at a clerk’s office.

  Each night, he returned to their new, smaller house in Clapham. The whole terrace felt as if it were fresh from the shelves of a shop. The crisp wallpaper carried the arsenic scent of cut almonds. The banister glared with polish. Each day, Toby wore a small track down the stairs and caught an omnibus to a narrow airless office off Fleet Street, where he filed accounts and filled columns with numbers that meant nothing to him. Jasper visited less and less often, drawn instead to dinners at the barracks and White’s, to games of whist and hazard. And so, Toby sat alone in his bedroom, listening to the sad shuffle of his father’s footsteps downstairs. The words were on the tip of his tongue. I can’t be a clerk because I’m going to run a show with Jasper. But it felt like the idle fantasy of a child, one that even Jasper seemed to have forgotten.

  Every day, The Times was delivered, and Toby scanned it for William Howard Russell’s dispatches from the Crimea. He settled on the new cloth divan and imagined Jasper joining this war in only two weeks’ time. He could see him, rifle tucked in to his shoulder, pulling half-drowned men from rivers, his bayonet shimmering. My brother, a hero, he pictured himself saying. He commanded bravely where others failed.

  The type turned his fingertips ashy.

  ‘Dead bodies rose up from the bottom of the harbour, and bobbed grimly around in the water, or floated in from the sea. All buoyant, bolt upright, and hideous in the sun.’

  He thought of Jasper, dead. ‘Bobbing grimly.’ He could not stop reading.

  ‘My sleep was disturbed by the groans of the dying.’

  ‘Another night of indescribable agony.’

  It was horrifying. But so too was his own life. Every evening he folded his broadsheet, took the new stairs to his room. Without Jasper, it was as if all the candles in the house had been extinguished, the hall echoing with only his footsteps. He saw his life reaching before him like a single-track lane, each day pitted with the same tasks, performed day in day out. His thick hands, mechanically fixing accounts. His feet, pausing on the creaking step. His body, given mutely to the service of others. His was an existence leached of colour.

  And then, Jasper announced he would have some friends for dinner, a few days before he was dispatched. He introduced several new acquaintances from the barracks, and he seemed to Toby to be impossibly old – twenty-one with the authority of an adult.

  ‘Excuse these shabby surroundings,’ Jasper said with a quick laugh. ‘Lo, how the mighty have fallen! We practically have to serve ourselves nowadays. If you hadn’t brought Atkins, Dash, we’d have been roasting our own quails over the candles.’ He introduced his friends. ‘And this is Dash,’ Jasper said, and his voice was filled with the same pride as when Toby would say, This is my brother. ‘Edward Dashwood. His father owns horses at Newmarket. His uncle’s making a name for himself in Parliament. Parliament, you know! He’s connected in ways that you wouldn’t believe.’

  Dash’s laugh was thick with false modesty. ‘Really, Jasper, you embarrass me,’ he said. ‘Toby, how do you do?’

  The man was scattily handsome, his army jacket slung over his shoulder, and Toby said nothing when Jasper placed Dash in Toby’s usual seat at dinner. He picked up the glass he had already drunk from and set it further down the table. He saw how Jasper smiled when Dash did, how frequently he mentioned Dash’s connections, his estate with a trout stream, his politician uncle. Money and social currency seemed to drip from Dash – the silver chain of his fob, the casual references he threw in about Paris fashion and a Florentine greatcoat and his grand tour. Toby too leaned towards him, as if they were all plants growing towards the sun.

  ‘I was just saying to Jasper, on the ride here, what a disgrace Russell’s dispatches are,’ he said to Toby.

  Toby nodded, enthused. He could have recited most of the reporter’s articles from memory.

  ‘I agree,’ he said, and he did. The government’s mishandling of the troops was a disgrace, a point Russell reinforced in each article. He was about to voice this when a man with mutton-chops cut in.

  ‘He’s a vulgar low Irishman. A wily creature.’

  ‘It was easier, you know, before the damned telegram, when we could handle our wars without this infernal scrutiny,’ Dash added.

  ‘A disgrace,’ Jasper repeated.

  ‘He can sing a jolly good song, drink anyone’
s brandy, and smoke as many cigars as a Jolly Good Fellow. And he’s just the sort of chap to get information, particularly out of youngsters,’ mutton-chops said.

  ‘Valley of Death! Six hundred dead! We didn’t lose more than a hundred and fifty.’

  Toby’s hand slipped on the wine glass.

  ‘It makes us look shoddy. All this public outcry. But we’ve got the antidote for his poison,’ Dash said.

  ‘Oh?’

  Toby saw his brother lean forwards.

  ‘Uncle’s put a man on the case. Roger Fenton, a photographer. But it takes time, you see. He might only be able to go out in the spring. Doesn’t want to shiver through a winter. Uncle was incensed, of course, but what’s a man to do?’

  ‘Fenton? Never heard of him.’

  ‘He’s travelled to Kiev, Moscow, that sort of thing. And we’ve tasked him with photographing the battlefields. The Illustrated London News has agreed to print them. You see, a photograph can speak the truth in a way that words simply can’t.’

  ‘The truth?’

  ‘Well, the truth as we decide to show it.’ Dash squared his hands into a mock photograph. ‘Ordered lines of tents. Laughing soldiers. That sort of thing. None of Russell’s damaging tosh. There’s more than one way to tell a story.’ Dash yawned as they stood and moved towards the small drawing room with its ugly new sofas. Toby carried a tray of cigars and port and tiny crystal glasses.

  ‘Are you playing butler?’ Dash asked, and grinned. ‘Very good, sir.’

  Jasper paused, settling himself beside Dash. He looked at Toby. ‘Well, what about Toby here? He can wield a photography machine, you know.’

  ‘I haven’t since I was a boy, and I only photographed foolish things, like trees, or—’

  ‘What?’ Dash leaned forwards. ‘You know how all that –’ he waved his hands vaguely – ‘works? It’s all potions and humbug to me.’

  ‘What about it, Toby?’ Jasper asked, swivelling in his chair. ‘You could travel out after us. Join us on our little adventure. You could be there in four weeks.’

  For once, Jasper didn’t speak for him, but waited for his answer. As the chandelier’s shards glimmered, and the candles dripped down, Toby scarcely paused. He saw his brother, laughing over a joke, as handsome as any swell that rode on the Row. He remembered their shared dream of the circus, and he knew his brother would keep him by his side, that he wouldn’t leave him to rot in a clerk’s office. It was a struggle to blink back tears.

  The truth, he thought, but only fleetingly.

  There’s more than one way to tell a story.

  He wished, afterwards, that he’d given it more consideration than he did, that he’d stopped to reflect on the influence his work would have. But it scarcely occurred to him. He thought only of joining his brother, of his life changing, of this being one of the last times he sat on the ragged tapestry armchair and rested his head against that new lace antimacassar.

  ‘My old photography machine will be quite outmoded by now,’ he said, the only indecision he expressed.

  ‘Oh heavens, Uncle will buy you another,’ Dash said. ‘It’s the hobby of every Englishman and his dog these days. They’re hardly difficult to find.’

  And it was decided as easily as that.

  ‘Have you seen Brunette?’

  Toby startles, slams shut the box, but a few images fall loose. Jasper is standing at the entrance of his wagon.

  ‘Brunette? She was by the fire with Nell—’

  ‘That was an hour ago.’ Jasper rasps his chin. ‘Do you think she’s run?’

  ‘Why would she?’

  ‘I can’t afford to lose her. Why weren’t the labourers watching her?’

  ‘I’ll look for her,’ Toby says, standing. ‘I can’t imagine she’s gone.’

  When he walks down the steps, he sees her tall shape, walking over the fields. ‘Isn’t that her?’

  ‘So it is.’ Jasper pats his shoulder. ‘Good man.’ He looks at the photographs on the floor, with their neat rows of tents. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘You’re thinking about Dash, aren’t you?’

  Toby gives a small shrug of his shoulders.

  ‘It’ll swallow you up. You need to find a way to dam it. To forget.’

  ‘It isn’t that easy,’ Toby says.

  Jasper pats his arm, then looks around the little wagon, the lamp stammering in the corner. ‘Is Nell’s carte-de-visite ready?’

  Toby bows his head and hands his brother the scrap of card.

  Jasper holds it to the candle. ‘Yes. Yes. It’s just right. The way the light is feathered here.’ He runs his fingernail over her legs. ‘She looks half-real, like a phantom. She will be marvellous. I know it.’ He sits in the small wicker chair in Toby’s wagon, pours himself a brandy. ‘I’ve thought of how she’ll perform. We can lift her up on ropes, lying flat. Three loops. One under her arms, one around her waist, one across the top of her thighs. If she can balance – if she can do it – well, perhaps we’ll be in London next spring, even sooner than planned. My very own Queen!’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m going to winch her up tomorrow, see how she does.’

  Jasper chatters on, about the wolf’s puzzling appetite for fried potatoes, about hiring a new foundling for Peggy as their current baby is almost six months old. But Toby cannot stop thinking about the look in Jasper’s eye when he said, My very own Queen. He thinks of all the wonders whose handbills he has collected. Charles Stratton, the little man who now owns a stable of pedigree horses. Chang and Eng Bunker, Siamese twins with their own plantation. Performers who have money, opportunities, that they wouldn’t have otherwise. But they are still alive, their stories not yet over. There are others whose endings are well known. Sara Baartman, the Hottentot Venus. Toby read about her when he was a child, his eyes racketing over lines that stopped his breath, that made him queasy. How she was sold into slavery in South Africa and displayed in a cage in England and Paris. Bought, at last, by the naturalist Georges Cuvier who dissected her body and pickled her genitals. Later, his brother told him about Joice Heth, the ex-slave who made P. T. Barnum’s name. ‘Barnum had her teeth extracted so he could exhibit her as the oldest woman in the world,’ Jasper said, and laughed at Toby’s wince of horror. ‘You think that’s bad?’ he asked, and there was something close to delight in his voice. ‘When she died, he charged fifty cents for anyone to see her autopsy. It was performed before a thousand spectators!’ There was a distant look in Jasper’s eye, almost wistful. ‘Barnum’s a man who knows how to draw a crowd. He’s the greatest showman we’ve ever seen!’ Toby pressed his hand to his stomach and stood up too quickly, the room swinging in and out of focus.

  Toby thinks of that small defiant girl on the card, her chin raised up, her metal wings spread behind her. What might become of her? Jasper is not Barnum, not Cuvier. He is not evil. But what happens if Nell does not live up to Jasper’s expectations? Would he, Toby, hold Jasper to account? Would anyone?

  Toby accepts the drink his brother hands him. He drums the crystal. His eyes settle on the open cupboard, the volume of Fairy Tales he thought of bringing her.

  ‘In a few months, I might save enough to advertise her,’ Jasper says, and smiles, and his good humour is infectious. Toby clinks glasses with his brother. It is enough for Toby to be in his brother’s presence, to be his confidant.

  Nell

  The ropes gnaw at Nell’s skin. They circle her waist, her chest, her legs. The wings are tied beneath her arms and torso. She is bound, crouched on a six-foot platform at the edge of the ring. A labourer fiddles with the cords, tells her that he used to sail on great tea clippers, that he knows which knots will hold. She barely listens. Her mouth is choked, her throat dry. Jasper nods at her. She would like to tell him that she has changed her mind, that the idea is absurd. Above her, the jaws of the pulley click, the rope pulled tight. She is supposed to lean forwards, to spread her weight evenly.

&n
bsp; The boy snaps his fingers. ‘Now!’

  She cannot do it. She cannot let herself drop. The tent is as hot as an oven, sweat spangling her doublet.

  ‘Why isn’t she moving?’ Jasper demands, walking closer.

  Tears prick her eyes.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ she whispers to the boy. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘It’s no different from the trapeze,’ Stella shouts. ‘It’s safer, I’d wager.’

  ‘Help her off,’ Jasper shouts.

  ‘No,’ Nell whimpers.

  If she doesn’t move, someone will push her. She inches forwards, feels the ropes tighten across her chest. She gives a little cry as she leans off the platform. The ropes clench, a monster’s hand, throttling the breath out of her. She swings, pitches at the highest point, is wrenched back. Her weight is uneven, her head too low. The rope bites into the soft skin beneath her arms. Through half-shut eyes, she can see only faint outlines: the raked sawdust of the ring, the rows of empty benches, the horses which crop sun-baked grass. Her stomach gives a great lurch as she reaches the crescendo of each arc, arms limp, her angel wings stuck out. Commands, thrown from below. ‘Kick your legs.’ ‘Raise your head.’ ‘Shift your weight.’

  She can do nothing but hang there, wilted, ropes smarting. She thinks of how Stella swung on the trapeze, how she soared bird-like, as if she were made only of feather and dander. How she grinned and chattered and twittered.

  Performer deaths pulse through her mind. Last night, Peggy was a trove of them, revelling in each account and passing them on in a voice thick with glee. Richard Sands, who walked across theatre ceilings with rubber suction pads attached to his feet, but who fell to his death when the plaster gave way. The female Blondin, a tightrope walker who slipped and died when she was seven months pregnant. How must it have felt – the quick slip of air, limbs spinning, hands cradling her taut belly, the hard rise of the ground?

  ‘Not so much a denizen of the heavens as a convict at the Newgate gallows,’ Jasper shouts. ‘Make her do something.’