Circus of Wonders

by Elizabeth Macneal

  It angers her, the guilt she feels – that, after everything, she cannot suppress her desire to please.

  I can make you brilliant.

  She thinks of that day, standing on the rock, Lenny’s taunt racketing in her ears. She kicked off her shoes and fell, pin-straight, the cold water sucking at her, arms stretching out, pressing through the currents. The sting of a jellyfish against her thighs, sand churned against her stomach, reaching forwards for something she could not name.

  She shuts her eyes. That long beach with its choppy waves, how she swam through them. She pulls her head higher, finds her balance as she did in the water, the effort straining her chest, her calves. She is strong, she tells herself, back tightened from bending over flowers, arms scalloped from lifting wooden crates of violets, from digging out trenches. The rope shudders, swings, and she gives a kick, slices her arms through the air.

  A sudden silence below, gazes pinned on her. Even the urchins raking sawdust pause. They watch her.

  You control it. How they see you.

  ‘Open your wings,’ Jasper says, and she fumbles for the lever, creaks them open and closed.

  A rush of air, a jarring as she tops each arc and is dragged backwards, the see-saw of waves.

  That morning, she tidied her wagon. Levered the drawers back into the dresser, heaped the papers in the corner, straightened her coverlet. When she was finished, she began to feel an ownership over that room, a small piece of space that belonged to her. She had her own door to open and close as she chose. This air, now, is hers – this widening sweep as she kicks her legs.

  ‘Let her down,’ Jasper calls, and the labourers lower the rope.

  It is over; she has done all she can. The ground wells up to meet her. She tries to stand but the wings are too heavy, her body too giddy with the endless rocking. She rubs her armpits, her ribs, where the cord has pressed purple welts. Jasper is standing above her, clicking his fingers. His face is distant, difficult to read.

  She wants to ask, Was I good? but it sounds too pitiful.

  ‘Aren’t you pleased, Jasper?’ Toby asks. ‘She was wonderful, I thought –’

  Jasper does not reply. He is close to fury, his neck pink. He holds up his hand and walks away.

  It is Toby who gathers the rope, who unfastens the knots and helps her out of her wings. The pain awakens her body as if it has been sleeping, the sinew and muscle of her, her small breasts where the cord cut in.

  ‘I tried,’ she says.

  ‘I know,’ Toby says. He looks at the ground, his large shoulders rounded, his hair in his eyes, and she has to stop herself from reaching for his big hands, from linking his fingers through her own. ‘I don’t know what he wanted.’

  Someone else, she thinks; he pictured someone else.

  Jasper

  It dawned on Jasper as soon as she steadied herself in the air; he is small fry. As he walks out of the tent, he can see only flaws, just as a potter notices only where his thumb has slipped and scored the clay. The fabric is scarred with a thousand nicks and patches, stains leaching into the white triangles. His lioness is threadbare and bone-thin. Stella’s ruff is frayed, as shabby as a Drury Lane actress. Brunette’s growing pains mean that sometimes she is too ill to perform, excuses he is certain another showman would not tolerate.

  He stalks up and down the rows of wagons, labourers pressing themselves away from him, sensing his mood like the scent of iron. He finds a groom sprawled in the hay with a cigar, and the boy stubs it out quickly, leaps to his feet.

  ‘Isn’t there work to be done? The tack is filthy! The saddles haven’t been waxed in months.’ Jasper pulls off his belt and beats him, just to feel the power of it, the crack of flesh, the leather warming to his palm, the boy’s side still scabbed from his last whipping. Skin rips as easily as paper.

  A year, he thinks, as the belt lands. A year, a year, a year!

  A year until he can afford a London pitch. A whole twelve months of these scabby villages, playing to a ragged brigade of knife grinders and rural halfwits! A year of unpegging and re-pegging, a year of ferrying and lifting and trundling!

  The boy wails and Jasper casts the belt away from him, then sees Toby leaving the tent. He hates the way he walks – that slow lumbering, his waist so wide. So dull, so unextraordinary. He runs after him, his voice rising. ‘Why isn’t the tent clean? The wagons haven’t been painted in weeks! You’re useless, useless, useless.’ The sight of his brother’s sad, wounded face only irks him even more, and he grinds his knuckles into his eyes.

  As Nell soared on the ropes, he was shocked by her brilliance. Her arms flung wide, carving through the air as if she owned the skies themselves. There was an ease to her, a rapture – that lightness he glimpsed when she danced. She has moved from potential into something real, something valuable – something that could launch him into London. She could set the whole capital alight! But he cannot afford it; he knows what his ledger says. He crosses the grass and slams shut his wagon door behind him, idling his finger down the columns. There are no surprises. A thousand and fifty pounds, rounded down. That is his worth in the world; that is all he has built. It would buy him a pitch for a week and a few thumbnail advertisements in a periodical.

  He fidgets his moustache. If he had more money, he could plaster the capital with advertisements. London could sing his name from omnibuses, from the sails of riverboats, from every broadsheet. ‘Jasper Jupiter’s Circus of Wonders presents Nell, the Queen of the Moon and Stars’ – He could build her act higher, have her soar from a twenty-foot platform. From the basket of a great balloon. In that low tent, she looked penned in, almost forlorn.

  He picks up a quill, presses the nib into his palm.

  If only –

  But there is a way.

  He thinks of his father’s last speculation, two ships wrecked on the rocks off the East Indies. Crates of tea and silk growing waterlogged, sinking into the sea. A fortune risked and lost.

  He thinks of Daedalus in his tower, how he had the courage to jump, to leap into the unknown. Victor Frankenstein, striving for more, longing to make his name.

  There is a man, a debtor in Soho, who would lend him far more than any West End establishment. His press agent has mentioned him several times before. A man willing to share the risk.

  Jasper has never relied on credit, has always felt his troupe is successful enough. And it has been, until now. He has watched Barnum rise, accepting investments, driving himself out of debt. Winston, his greatest rival, borrowed once and was running a hundred-horse show within a year. Perhaps Jasper is the fool not because his tent is shabby or his animals are threadbare, but because he has not seized the chance to make himself bigger.

  And perhaps, too, he has not been ready. His wonders might have weathered the quiet lanes of Somerset, Hampshire and Wiltshire, but country folk will be content with a panpipe and a three-legged dog. The London crowds are different, their palates refined, their tastes discerning. Novelties wilt and rot before they’ve even flowered.

  But now, he thinks, leaning forwards, Nell is something unusual, something truly new. A natural. Her birthmarks like constellations, her poise like that of an acrobat. All she needs is a showman’s backing.

  He picks up her photograph, raps it on his desk. He steels himself, straightens his cravat. He dips his quill in ink.

  ‘I have lately acquired a magnificent act,’ he writes, peacock eye bobbing. ‘A rare and never-seen-before marvel with performing prowess to boot. I am convinced that, if I can secure the capital to raise her, her name and mine will be on the lips of every kitchen-boy, every governess and every Duchess in the country. I would be most grateful if you could pass on my enquiry to the usurer you mentioned when we last met and make enquiries as to a suitable pitch for our show. My troupe currently has eleven performers, but I seek to double that. I seek, in short, to be the greatest showman in the country.’

  Risk big, win big, he thinks. That was what Dash always used to say, but he
had the cushion of wealth and privilege, each gambling debt waved away by his father. Jasper touches the ring in his pocket. E. W. D.

  The letter finished, he takes out a new sheet of paper, as fresh with potential as a clean canvas. As the sounds of revelry magnify, and a girl is sick against his wagon, he burns his candles down to stubs. In his mind, the investment is already secured. No; in his mind, the investment is already paid back. His pen scratches letters to all the London newspapers, all the omnibus companies, and, last of all, to the Queen herself.

  He will take his troupe to London.

  Nell will be magnificent, and he will be even greater.

  Toby

  That evening, Toby is alone in his wagon again, thumbing through the book of Fairy Tales. He knows Jasper has locked himself in his wagon in a fury. How couldn’t his brother see it, her power, her brilliance? As she swept across the air, Toby almost forgot to breathe. He felt like a child again, believing that anything was possible – that there were no ropes binding her, that she could truly fly. Perhaps she is sitting in her wagon now, alone and upset.

  He taps the book, once, twice, and then he hurries out of the door before he can change his mind. He skirts the edges of the caravans, listening for the brisk crack of Jasper’s footsteps. The wind whistles like lips on a reed. A clatter of breaking bottles. He jumps. Huffen Black and Violante are drinking by the fire. This is one of the pitches they all treasure, when the shows are full and there’s no need to move for a few days.

  Her wagon is ahead, light spilling through the slats. He hurries up the steps, raps on the door. A pause. He grips the book.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  The door opens.

  He clears his throat. ‘It’s just – I brought you a book. The one you looked at earlier.’

  He bows his head. His hands are sweating and will stain the calfskin.

  She takes it, doesn’t thank him.

  ‘I can read it to you,’ he says, in a rush, ‘the book, that is, if you can’t.’

  She laughs. ‘In my village, we had fire and the wheel too.’

  He blushes, holds up his hands. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean –’

  But she is opening the door wider, beckoning him inside. He has not expected this. He looks about him. It would be rude, now, to refuse. He crosses the threshold. The room is tidy. His eyes dart from the dresser to the mattress, uncertain where to settle. A small lamp in the corner, a vase of cracked peacock feathers. She is wearing new clothes. Red cantinière trousers that must be Stella’s. A creased shirt. She tucks a scrap of hair behind her ear, perches on the end of the bed. She pats beside her.

  ‘Have you read it?’ she asks.

  ‘Yes,’ Toby says. He almost tells her how their father called them the Brothers Grimm. Jasper cast himself as Wilhelm, confident and gregarious. Toby was Jacob, introspective. I could make up any story about her, Jasper said. He fidgets with his sleeve. ‘I liked the story about the hedgehog the best. But I always liked him more as a hedgehog. Imagine magicking away a suit of fine quills.’

  She shakes her head, as if loosening the memory. ‘Let’s read “The Little Mermaid”,’ she says, too abruptly.

  He moves to sit beside her, not touching. He wonders if this was a good idea; if it is awkward for them to sit side by side, reading in silence; if they would be better reading aloud. If, even, this is a childish and absurd thing to do. The words swim and he reads each sentence twice, three times. He can glean only the vague sway of each story. He nods when she asks if she can turn the page. He always liked this book. Its tales of transformation, of magic, of a girl striking a deal with a sea witch who fed toads from her mouth. Her fish’s tail cut off –

  ‘In order to be handsome,’ Nell says. She brushes her cheek. She pauses, repeats it. ‘In order to be handsome.’

  He wants to tell her that he thinks she is handsome. But she shuts the book, closes her eyes.

  ‘Don’t you like it?’ he asks. ‘The story, I mean?’

  ‘I don’t know any longer.’

  She is looking at him, her head tipped to the side. She licks her lips and they shine in the candlelight. His heart beats so loud and so fast that she must be able to hear it. There has never been a woman before: nobody, a life of not-wanting. His body is a thing of function – he is there to lift and carry and build – and that has always been enough for him. He imagines her reaching out and stroking his cheek. He imagines her slapping him, punishing him for what he feels and knows to be wrong. The claw of her fingernails against his back, her kiss not soft but full of teeth. She is Jasper’s, he tells himself. I cannot have her.

  ‘My father sold me,’ she says. Her voice is high, on the verge of tears. This is the moment where he should comfort her, put his arm around her. But he cannot do it. He stands so suddenly that his head hurts, his vision blotchy.

  ‘I should – I have to find my brother,’ he says.

  His debt to Jasper is a mountain that can never be chipped away.

  ‘Wait,’ she says.

  But he is out of the door and across the grass. Inside his own wagon, he leans against the wall. His legs tremble, his heart alive. Guilt, eating him. He imagines all the other things he might have done. Eyes shut, he moves his hand against himself, and it is a quiet release.

  Four days later, he is startled by his brother bellowing through the speaking trumpet, insisting that they must pack up the wagons now and race for a pitch in London. He dresses quickly, hurries to Jasper.

  ‘My agent,’ Jasper says, breathless. ‘He says there’s a place for us. A new pleasure gardens in Southwark. But it’s been offered to Winston’s show too. The first man there wins it.’

  Toby stares at him. ‘But London. We can’t afford it—’

  ‘We can,’ Jasper says, grinning. ‘I’ve found a way.’

  ‘How?’ Toby asks, and then it dawns on him. ‘A debtor?’ he asks. He remembers the sunk ships, the risk their father took that crippled him.

  ‘This is different,’ Jasper snaps, moving away, shouting that the horses should be yoked, the wagons packed.

  It is a storm of preparations. As rain showers pass over them, Toby works with his back bent to the earth. He pulls and twists great bundles of rope, levers iron stakes from the ground, wraps Brunette’s juggling knives in paper, forks towering haystacks into the elephant’s caravan. Everything he touches belongs to his brother. The dewy fabric which bows his shoulders, even the splinters in his palms. Jasper has built it all from nothing. But a debtor, he thinks, panic clawing at him. How can his brother have forgotten his father’s dank misery as he sat in his new house, his pen patterning looping zeros in his ledger, checking the hall for calling cards and invitations that never arrived? The shame which eventually stopped his heart? His money, his success, all vanished.

  ‘Pick that up!’ Jasper bellows, his whip curling. ‘Faster, faster, faster.’

  Toby glimpses Nell, working at Stella’s side, shovelling sawdust into a barrel. When she passes him the spade, she looks at him and his chest breaks a little. In his wagon, his big hands slide on bottles, wrapping each glass jar in wadding, readying to move.

  His brother’s voice slices through the walls, cajoling, alive with the delight at it all. ‘A snail will beat us to the pitch, at this rate. A limbless sloth! I said, faster!’

  They leave in the middle of the night, as soon as they can, riding to the Devil down narrow lanes and wider roads, through sleeping hamlets which have little idea of the curious brigade that hammers past. Dawn breaks, and Toby sits at Jasper’s side on the bench seat, their weight pressed against each other, the shared warmth a comfort. They will weather this together, he knows; he will do all he can to make his brother a success.

  Jasper links his arm through Toby’s, then raises his right hand and brings the whip down harder and harder. The coaches rattle, the lioness whines. They hit a pothole and Jasper cries, ‘Fuck!’ He is wearing a tricorn hat, in imitation of Dick Turpin.

  Toby clings ti
ght to the box seat. He chokes on the thrown-up dust.

  ‘We’ll be there in two days,’ Jasper says, ‘if we keep this pace.’ In his delight, he draws his pistol and fires two shots into the air. The horses bolt, faster and faster, a stream of forty bouncing carriages, zebras mingling with plain bays. They can do it, Toby thinks. If anyone can defy expectations, it is Jasper.

  ‘We’ll beat the black-coated villain, the lecherous baste of a creature, I’m sure of it,’ Jasper says, doffing his hat at a shepherd, who gapes as they thunder past. ‘Doesn’t it give you pleasure, to see how the peasants admire us? To see how they want to be us?’

  They don’t want to be me, Toby thinks, glancing down at his patched leather jerkin, and then up at Peggy in her tasselled coat, and at Brunette the giantess on her designedly too-big seat. Plated mirrors wink and spin, a thousand colours whirled together. It makes Toby queasy and he tries to concentrate on the grey lines of hills. He is glad that they are moving, as if they are outracing what he has done. He sees a slackening in the tempers of the other labourers, the trail of their own crimes running cold.

  ‘Ahoy!’ Jasper calls, as Stella rides past, Nell on the back of the same horse. She looks astounded, a little afraid, her hands clinging to Stella’s waist. Jasper has mentioned nothing more about his plans for Nell, but he has made her practise whenever the show isn’t on, has had her dive from that platform again and again. Toby has watched it, each time her movements easier, smoother. Slowly, they have realized that Jasper is pleased with her, delighted even. His rage has given way to laughter, to shouts of ‘Yes, like that! Your arms, move them too, and the wings – don’t forget the wings! Marvellous!’

  ‘Ahoy,’ Jasper repeats.

  But Stella pulls the horse away, does not look at him.

  ‘Did you quarrel?’ Toby asks.

  Jasper hovers his whip over the veined backs of the drays. He purses his lips. ‘No.’

  ‘It wasn’t about Dash, was it?’ Toby asks, quiet. ‘You’re sure she doesn’t know?’