by Kate Riordan
I relax a little, noticing for the first time how enchanting the scene must seem to you: lights strung through the plane trees, the air as soft and warm as breath, the noisy lure of the circus up ahead. Speakers pump out a dance track I’ve been hearing since before we left London, issuing from white vans and building sites, and now spread to France too, its distinctive bass and insistent refrain lodged in my brain. ‘What is love?’ is the title. It seems apt.
There’s no big top, as there would be in England: no one here is expecting any rain. Behind the ring, shadowy open-sided trailers house the animals and I feel an old fear prickle the back of my neck. As a little girl, I refused to go to the circus after Camille told me a story about an escaped tiger that had mauled an old woman before being shot dead.
I’d assumed they would have moved on from this kind of act, as British circuses have, but the flimsy cages are exactly the same as when I was a child, and exactly the same as when, years later, Greg insisted we take you and Élodie – with a row of gnawed wooden bars being all that separated us from the big cats. One year – the last time we went as a family – Élodie crept too close to an old male tiger in a cage on his own, first making faces and then hitting the bars with the flat of her hand.
She knew I was afraid: like a wild animal herself, Élodie could always smell fear on anyone, especially me.
‘Attention, Élodie! Attention!’ she mimicked, as she ran her hands along the bars, repeating my panicked entreaties for her to watch out and get back.
Greg was off buying drinks and, because I was carrying you, I was too slow to catch hold of her. Every time I tried, she danced away, laughing.
The tiger, who had been watching her intently from the shadows, suddenly launched himself at the bars, reaching right through them to swipe at her with a paw as big as her head, missing her face by inches and making me scream. As you burst into terrified sobs, Élodie whirled around, her face lit by the thrill of it. She had barely flinched.
‘Do they have animals at this circus?’ you say now, noticing the cages for the first time. ‘Isn’t that a bit cruel?’
‘They still do that here,’ I say shortly.
We move towards the stalls again, and I see Laurent from the back. Annette is with him, apparently haggling over a leather purse. She looks much the same as she always did, though possibly even thinner. ‘It’s all that disapproval of women like you,’ Greg used to say. ‘It burns off the calories.’
She looks up and notices me. Laurent, following her gaze, turns. His face lights up when he sees us, and I wish, as I always did, that he wouldn’t be so obvious.
‘Luc is here,’ he says to you in careful English when he reaches us, his eyes twinkling. ‘Annette, come and say hello to Sylvie and Emma.’
We kiss the air near each other’s cheeks. She smells of pine air-freshener and the plastic furniture protectors she always covered her sofas with.
‘Do you think you’ll be here much longer?’ she says, after I’ve thanked her for Luc’s help with the pool. Part of me has always admired her rudeness.
‘I don’t think so.’ I keep my voice neutral. ‘Camille is back and we’re putting the house on the market.’
Annette regards you, her head on one side. ‘This one is nothing like her sister, is she?’ She turns to Laurent. ‘You said there was a likeness but I can’t see it. She looks so English.’
I glance down at you, grateful again that you won’t understand. In fact, you’ve tuned out altogether, which means you haven’t noticed Annette staring.
‘You must be thankful for that, at least,’ she continues, fingering the crucifix she’s always worn round her neck. ‘That lightning didn’t strike twice.’
‘Arrête, Annette,’ Laurent murmurs. ‘Ça suffit.’
‘Mum, we need to go,’ you say. You might not have understood the words, but you’ve picked up something uncomfortable in the air around us. I realize you’re rescuing me. My lovely girl, I think, who already understands so much. I hate Annette even as I acknowledge that she’s right. I am thankful you’re different.
‘I don’t like her,’ you say with feeling, once you’ve led me away. ‘She seems like a bit of a bitch.’
‘Emma!’ I exclaim, but I’m smiling, most of it relief that the confrontation is over without much harm done.
You grin back. ‘Is there time to get an ice-cream?’
*
Near the end of the first act, the ringmaster calls for volunteers from the audience. While the French children around us lift their arms, stretching towards the spotlight so they might be picked, I feel you shrink against me. You’ve always hated being the centre of attention.
The ringmaster asks for the lights to go up, his sharp eyes roving around until they light on you. A part of me knew they would: your white skin and shyness would be like a flare in the mass.
‘Mademoiselle,’ he shouts, gesturing towards you. ‘Viens!’
You shake your head. ‘Mum, I don’t want to,’ you say urgently, but the big man on your other side is already passing you towards the end of the row. Everyone claps and cheers as you emerge, blinking, at the edge of the ring, the ringmaster’s arm already around you, hustling you into the middle.
‘Comment tu t’appelles, mademoiselle?’ he says, leaning close, but you aren’t looking at him, your eyes searching the crowd for mine. He grips you tighter. ‘You are a very shy one, no? Don’t you want to help me with my trick?’
‘Je suis anglaise,’ you quaver into the microphone – the phrase I taught you in case you were faced with a round of rapid-fire French you didn’t understand.
The crowd roars with laughter.
‘Voilà, la petite anglaise,’ the ringmaster announces with a flourish. ‘She won’t tell us her name.’
Your task is thankfully easy. Another couple of children, a little younger, are brought into the ring and you’re each given a set of balls. Clowns with buckets gesture for the balls to be thrown into them while they caper and trip. You do well, and I feel myself swell with an absurd pride watching you, your flushed face set with grim determination, hating every moment but too polite to walk off.
When you sit down next to me, I lean in close to your ear. ‘I think you deserve some more of those friendship bands after enduring that, don’t you?’
You give me a quick, tremulous smile and it’s then, as I’m sitting upright, smiling back at you for your courage, that I think I see her. My heart stops and so does the world.
1974
The easiest times between the two of us are at the sea. Élodie loves it there, like she loves dancing to my music. It forges a rare and fragile bond that I handle with the utmost care. It’s why I have the urge to go there with her today.
Greg’s parents left last night, Margaret unable to meet my eye as she waved goodbye. They were supposed to go at the end of the week but said they wanted to avoid the holiday traffic. I don’t believe this. Margaret had the same expression I see on my own face sometimes, a preoccupied unease that makes her look drawn.
I sneak glances at Élodie in the mirror as I drive south, hair blowing because she likes the window wound right down, her eyes flicking back and forth as she watches the passing road. I turn on the radio and it’s an Elton John song that seems to be played constantly. The uplift of the chorus makes my throat swell with tears I have to swallow hard. Her foot taps the back of my seat in time. I turn up the volume surreptitiously, because if she catches me doing it, she’ll stop.
One of the stick figures from her drawings comes into my head. It was wearing a long skirt like I often do – like I am now – and lying, eyes shut, in a swimming pool, the water scribbled right over her in lurid green. I chase away the image, and put my foot down on the accelerator.
Élodie likes the speed of the autoroute, especially when we overtake one of the huge transcontinental lorries, wheels spinning at eye level. On these journeys, it’s possible to feel as though we are co-conspirators, even allies, no one watching us, no one knowing where we a
re.
It’s late in the season, the holiday crowds thinned to nothing when we get there, the resort tired-looking, ready for its winter hibernation. As we walk to the beach from the half-empty car park, Élodie two steps ahead of me, the mistral whistles disconsolately through the metal shutters of deserted apartment blocks. There’s something disquieting about it but I have grown so sensitized to atmospheres and tiny shifts of mood that I make myself dismiss it.
In the sea, we present a relatively normal picture of mother and daughter to anyone who might be looking on. Élodie insists on staying in for so long that we’re both exhausted when we emerge. I roll out a couple of straw beach mats so we can lie down and dry off.
She seems to fall asleep almost immediately and I must nod off myself because the next thing I know I’m alone. There’s nothing left of her but a pair of shucked-off armbands and the damp imprint of her body on the mat.
I jump to my feet and call her name. I scan the sand around me but she’s nowhere. I run up and down the beach, screaming it over and over. Everything slows down, as moments of high drama do, and in the lulls between the fear and panic and horror, there is a speck of relief that shimmers, soft-lit and quiet. And I am so appalled by myself that I think I might be sick, right there in the sand.
It’s another mother who finds her. She’s holding Élodie’s small hand when I race up to them, falling to my knees in the sand and checking her over in case she’s been hurt. She watches me, dry-eyed and impassive, while I do this, our faces level. My hands are shaking but she doesn’t appear remotely upset.
‘She said she didn’t know where her maman had gone,’ the woman says from above. She can’t keep the reproof out of her voice. Just behind her, three stolid little boys are digging in the sand.
I stand. ‘She was right next to me. I closed my eyes for a second.’
The woman nods, relenting, and pats Élodie’s head. I wait for her to scowl and pull away because she hates to be touched like that. But she doesn’t. She looks up and gives her rescuer a brave, tremulous smile.
‘You’ve got a little beauty there,’ the woman says, as I take Élodie’s hand. ‘Look after her, won’t you?’
‘Why did you go off? You frightened me so much. Anything could have happened to you,’ I say, as we make our way back along the beach, my voice strained with the tears I’m holding back. She’s trying to wrench her hand out of mine but I’m holding on too tight. ‘Why didn’t you wake me?’
But she won’t answer. She refuses to speak a single word until we get home and Greg comes to the door, asking how our day at the beach went. She turns voluble enough then.
1993
In the concentrated heat of the circus audience, I close my eyes but when I open them again she’s still there. She’s standing at the back, looking towards the centre of the ring, where the entire troupe has begun to parade in a circle as the audience rises to its feet to applaud, slow-clapping in time to the music.
I crane to see past all the oblivious people now in my way, to try to spot the sharp little chin again, the familiar sway of long hair, the mesmerizing stillness she was always able to inhabit when she wanted.
‘Come on, let’s go,’ I say, taking your hand. I pull you after me through our row, treading on people’s feet in the rush. Your reluctance tugs at me, slowing us down like a puncture.
‘Mum, what are you doing?’
You wrench your hand free but I blunder on anyway, running to the back of the raised benches, desperate to see her, terrified of seeing her. But people are starting to move now, wanting to get out ahead of the rush. I push through a large family, stupid and slow to part, and catch the reek of garlic sweat on the father as our bodies briefly make contact. He grumbles at me, ‘Attention, Madame! Doucement,’ but I go on regardless.
Even in the sudden crush of people filing back towards the square, there’s a curious hollow in the place where I thought I saw her, as though she’s left a small force field in her wake. I look down at the straw as if, like something from a fairytale, I might spy some dropped token. One of the rings Greg brought her back from his trips, maybe – different shapes and styles but always set with a turquoise stone, like the necklace you’ve appropriated.
Of course there’s nothing. Élodie was never there in the first place. I wouldn’t find her, as I once had on a beach, nearly twenty years ago. It must have been someone with a look of her or the memory of the tiger or else I’m finally losing my mind.
I look around but I can’t see you. Trying to slip inside the crowd, I find myself pushed back, unable to penetrate the wall of unyielding shoulders and hips. I hover helplessly in the small void Élodie’s lookalike has left behind, an illogical panic spreading through my chest. I glance over my shoulder towards the cages. The tigers and bears will be back inside them now, locked in for the night. The old fear rears up again: the faulty bolt or the rotten bar, the tiger on the loose.
‘Emma!’ I shout, loud and desperate enough for a few people to turn. ‘Emma!’
A hand on my arm makes me swing round. It’s Olivier. He looks down into my face with concern. He seems taller.
‘Sylvie,’ he says. ‘Qu’est-ce qu’il y a?’
‘I saw her,’ I say breathlessly. ‘She was here and now she’s gone.’
‘She’s just over there. Look.’ He points.
I can’t seem to catch my breath. ‘Where?’ Everything has slowed down, the noise muffled. And then I see that it’s you, not her, talking to Laurent about fifty feet away.
I close my eyes with relief, my body going limp.
Olivier touches my shoulder. ‘See? She’s fine. Let’s just wait here a minute. There are too many people to get through.’
I take in a lungful of too-hot air and force myself to let it out slowly, the panic ebbing with it. Olivier’s hand on my bare shoulder is cool and dry. He’s so close I can see every gold fleck in his brown eyes.
‘Doucement,’ he says, unwittingly echoing the man from before, but sounding completely different, the words slow and coaxing from him. ‘Nothing’s wrong. You need some air, that’s all.’
He reaches out and tucks a damp strand of hair behind my ear. I can feel a solid heat coming off the rest of him. He still seems bigger than I think of him in my mind, hard muscle and dense bone pressing into me. My heart is still fluttering in my chest, a different fear – or perhaps it’s excitement now – sparking outwards to my every nerve-ending. We’re standing too close to each other for almost-strangers, but I don’t move away and neither does he. When he runs his hand down the sensitive inside of my arm, I feel a pulse deep inside me. He’s gazing at me so intensely that it makes me flush and look away, unable to meet his eye any longer. I turn to beckon you over.
*
Olivier buys us ice-creams from the new gelaterie just off the square, open late to catch the circus custom. We walk slowly back towards the stalls because you want another look, and the cold ice-cream slipping down my throat is soothing. I’m acutely aware of Olivier next to me.
‘Okay now?’ he says, quietly so you won’t hear.
‘Thanks for rescuing me back there,’ I murmur. ‘I owe you.’
‘Any time. Perhaps you can pay me back by coming to dinner with me.’
‘I think I can manage that.’
He smiles and guides me gently past a group of people, his hand warm at the small of my back, making my skin tingle.
I glance back to check on you and stop dead because you’re no longer alone.
He’s ten years older than when I last saw him and the sun damage has made it look like twenty but I still recognize him immediately. Marc Lesage. He’d run the tabac when I was growing up. He’d always been a bully people avoided crossing but I’d never drawn his attention until Élodie.
You catch my eye over his shoulder and I see how uncomfortable you are. His clawed old hand is on your arm, ice-cream dripping down your wrist because he won’t let go.
‘… ta soeur,’ I hear him say, as
I stride up. Your sister.
‘Bonsoir,’ I say, getting between the two of you so he has to let you go. ‘Ça fait longtemps, Marc.’
‘I was just saying that she doesn’t look much like her sister.’ He slurs the words, his breath a hot aniseed fug of sour pastis. ‘Probably a good thing, eh? You wouldn’t want another like the first one.’ He laughs, baring yellow teeth, unknowingly echoing Annette’s earlier barb.
He reaches for you again, staggering as his weight shifts, and I push you in the direction of Olivier, who is hesitating, wondering whether to intervene. Before he can, I lean as close to Marc as I can bear.
‘You’re drunk, as ever. I told you ten years ago to mind your own business. Don’t you ever come near me or my daughter again.’
‘Why have you come back anyway?’ he calls as I walk away. ‘We were glad to see the back of you. Vous nous avez apporté encore une brebis galeuse?’ Have you brought us another rotten apple?
And then he switches to English, raising his voice so you’ll hear. ‘Bad apple,’ he shouts, his accent thick but understandable, as I hurry you away. ‘She bad apple.’
People turn towards us, the background hum of the crowd abruptly switched off. A group of boys standing under the plane trees with their mopeds are laughing and whistling and I think we both notice in the same instant that Luc is among them, though he remains silent and unsmiling. I barely have time to absorb your stricken expression before you turn and run in the direction of the square.
Without a word to Olivier, I follow. People are dawdling and stopping, seemingly oblivious to anyone behind them. Ahead of me, you’re pulling away, somehow able to weave much more deftly between the groups than I.
Just before reaching the square, where the clot of people is finally able to disperse, I lose sight of you, just like before. You’ve eluded me as easily as the mirage of Élodie by the benches, another ghost daughter vanished. I come to a stop, unable to think straight about what you might do next.