[Inspector de Silva 09] - High Wire in Nuala

by Harriet Steel

  The audience fell silent as a tall, bull-chested man dressed in black trousers, a black cutaway coat, a scarlet waistcoat and bow tie, and a crisp, dazzlingly white shirt strode into the centre of the ring. The light from the electric bulbs that were strung in scallops around the ring accentuated the glossy sheen of his black top hat, and the gold finial of his ringmaster’s baton sparkled. A deeply fringed white scarf that draped with the suppleness of silk added a touch of suave informality to the outfit. Presumably this was Boris Goncharov, the man Hebden had met. He certainly cut an impressive figure. His moustache was artfully tweaked up at the ends, and his beard clipped to a point, giving him a slightly satanic air. When he doffed his hat to the audience, de Silva saw that his dark hair was slicked down in the style made fashionable by the stars he and Jane saw in the Hollywood films shown at Nuala’s Gaiety Cinema.

  A drum roll silenced the last murmurs of conversation. Boris raised his baton then brought it down smartly on the ground, raising a little puff of sawdust. ‘Ladies and gentlemen!’ He smiled, gesturing to the children in the front row. ‘And our young friends! Welcome!’

  As he continued to talk, extolling the talents of the performers they were about to see, de Silva gradually became accustomed to his accent. In contrast to the clipped way the British spoke it, the English language rolled off his tongue like warmed treacle. ‘And now,’ he concluded. ‘I have spoken enough. It is time we entertain you.’ The rich bass voice rose to a volume that de Silva was surprised it still had in reserve. ‘Are you ready?’

  There were muffled sounds of assent.

  An exaggerated frown on his face, Boris cupped a hand to his ear. ‘I do not hear you!’

  Laughter and shouts of “ready!” rose from the audience, but he carried on pretending not to hear them until almost all the adults had joined in and the children were squealing with excitement. At last, he made a sweeping gesture that encompassed the members of the band. ‘Music!’

  The first act was the dance troupe that had been advertised on the posters. To the parp of trumpets, the clash of cymbals, and the beat of drums, they performed an energetic, whirling dance that made de Silva feel quite giddy just watching it. The men wore black trousers cinched in below their knees to form pantaloons; their loose white shirts, decorated with scarlet, yellow, and green ribbons billowed as they gyrated. The women’s costumes, made of vividly coloured fabric, were more elaborate. The skirts were full and cut just above the ankle, ballooning as their wearers danced. Tightly fitted over diaphanous white blouses with full sleeves, they were complemented by embroidered waistcoats. The men were bareheaded, but the women sported flowers and wreaths of greenery in their dark hair.

  When the dancing ended, two clowns came on. Both were men, dressed in baggy, multi-coloured check trousers and tunics. Greasepaint whitened their faces, and their exaggerated, scarlet lips clashed with their orange wigs. De Silva wondered if there was such a thing as a female clown. Certainly, the outfits were far from flattering, so perhaps it wasn’t a role that appealed to women.

  The taller of the clowns snatched up a tin bucket and began to run around the front of the ring, scooping out handfuls of red, orange, and blue confetti and throwing them into the audience. Finally, to loud laughter and applause, he upended the bucket over the head of a stout, balding man in the front row. What remained of the bucket’s contents rained down on the man’s head, which brought even more laughter from the crowd. De Silva guessed he was a Britisher and wondered whether he would be amused by the clown’s antics, but fortunately, when he stood up, turning slightly as he brushed confetti from his clothes, he seemed to be laughing as heartily as his companions.

  Meanwhile, the other clown had fetched a wooden ladder. He made a great business of looking for his friend, swinging the ladder as he swirled around. The taller clown had dropped the bucket and now scampered around the ring, making sure that the clown with the ladder always had his back to him. Shouts of “He’s behind you!” rose from the audience, but the clown with the ladder just scratched his head, shrugged his shoulders, and carried on turning around. Finally, a particularly energetic swing of the ladder almost knocked the taller clown over, but just in time, he ducked. The shorter clown jabbed the ladder at him and, to the accompaniment of gales of laughter, a comical race around the ring began. De Silva’s ribs ached. The clowns’ antics were silly, but very entertaining. He wondered how the act would end.

  At last the clown with the ladder, who was now the pursued rather than the pursuer, propped it against one of the tent poles and started to scramble up the rungs. The taller clown stopped; with a gleeful grin on his face, he mimed a question to the audience: should he push the ladder over? There was more laughter and hoots of encouragement. The shorter clown clung on as the ladder tilted slowly backwards then, just at the moment when it seemed impossible for him to keep his balance any longer, he swung sideways and dived towards the sawdust-covered ground, curling into a forward roll as he landed. He lay still for a moment while the audience clapped vigorously then jumped to his feet. Joining hands, he and the other clown took their bows and bounded off into the wings. De Silva was mightily amused.

  The acts rolled on: first, a quartet of flying acrobats. Graceful as swallows and lithe as eels, they dazzled the audience with their daring feats of athleticism and speed. Next came a juggler, then a knife thrower, and after that more dancing, and the promised fire-eater. When the snake charmer appeared, de Silva was surprised that he managed to forget some of his fears in the fascination of watching the man. Compared to Boris, he had a slight, sinewy frame. He wore his thick, lustrous black hair long and curling at the neck, and his complexion was dark. De Silva decided that he must be a local, or perhaps an Indian, rather than a Russian.

  Each of the two large straw baskets he brought on turned out to contain two snakes. Sitting cross-legged on the ground, the snake charmer coaxed them out. De Silva shuddered as they slithered across the sawdust then halted, rearing up in front of their master and waving their heads in time with the music that he made. To de Silva, the instrument looked very like the Indian magudi. It was a long wooden pipe with a gourd-shaped bowl at one end, decorated with woollen cords and braid. Even to the human ear, the tunes the snake charmer drew from it were hypnotic.

  All except one of the snakes was about the length of a man’s arm and as thick, but the fourth was a little shorter and thinner. From the shape and carriage of its head, de Silva guessed it was a young cobra, but he didn’t recognise the others. One had scales of a rich, glossy brown and the others were olive green. He supposed they were fine specimens, but since the mere sight of them made his skin crawl, he found true admiration impossible.

  The snake charmer played on for a while as the snakes continued to perform their swaying dance, then he put down his instrument and stood up. De Silva watched in horror as he grasped the young cobra by the nape of its neck and put it back in one of the baskets. The olive-green pair followed and when he had stowed them, he picked up the brown snake. As casually as if it were a scarf, he wound it around his neck then let it crawl down his arm. When it reached his wrist, he took hold of it again and wrapped it around his waist before drawing it into yet more contortions.

  To de Silva, this part of the act seemed to last for a very long time. He alternated between frozen respect for the snake charmer’s courage and heart-stopping fear that something would go wrong. He imagined the snake striking out and then escaping into the audience. His fear increased when the snake charmer put the brown snake back in its basket and took out one of the olive-green ones again. Smiling, he strolled over to the front row of the audience and walked along it. Many people recoiled as he passed; finally, he picked out a lanky young man with ginger hair.

  The audience clapped as the young man stood up and left his seat, following the snake charmer into the ring. To de Silva’s amazement, he appeared to remain calm while the olive-green snake crawled up his leg, over his torso and around his neck, its forked tongue fli
cking, and its head swaying gently from side to side. When the snake charmer brought this part of the act to a close, taking back his snake, de Silva realised that he had been holding his breath for a long time. The ginger-haired man shook hands with the snake charmer and returned to his seat to great applause.

  ‘I could never do what he’s just done,’ de Silva muttered to Jane.

  She smiled and patted his hand. ‘Do you want to?’

  ‘Goodness, no.’

  ‘Then let’s hope it’s never necessary.’

  The snake charmer left the ring, taking his reptilian charges with him, and Boris Goncharov strode on again.

  ‘Please forgive us, ladies and gentlemen. Today, sadly, we have no horses to entertain you. The journey here was long, and they are enjoying a well-deserved rest. You must come back tomorrow. However, ladies and gentlemen, we do have for you—’ He paused, smiling broadly and displaying remarkably white teeth. ‘An incredible young lady, who is famous from the steppes of Mother Russia to the shores of your Indian Ocean.’

  Drums rolled and the audience waited expectantly. Moving off to one side of the entrance to the ring, Boris doffed his top hat. ‘Ladies and gentlemen! Please welcome, our dazzling star – Tatiana!’

  Truly, the young woman who sashayed on was a dazzling sight. Her raven hair was braided and coiled around a delicately shaped head, the style accentuating a lovely face with sparkling, dark eyes, and a flawless complexion. She moved as lightly as a petal falling from one of the roses in de Silva’s garden. Her ballet tutu was a splash of scarlet that glittered as it caught the light. It showed off her boyish figure to perfection.

  ‘She must be the high-wire walker,’ whispered Jane. ‘There was a picture of her on the poster.’

  De Silva’s stomach lurched as he glanced up to where the high wire sliced through thin air, attached at each end to the tops of two flimsy-looking wooden towers. Close to the one on the left a trapeze dangled, ready for use. He noticed that the trapeze on the right, which the quartet of flying acrobats had used in their show, had been pulled back out of sight.

  As the first wave of applause subsided, a woman who looked several years older than Tatiana followed her into the ring. Boris raised a hand to quieten the audience. ‘And now, her partner, Izabella.’ The way he spoke the name gave it a sibilant emphasis that reminded de Silva of a snake.

  Izabella was taller than Tatiana and far less striking. Her narrow face looked pinched, and her smile was brittle. She too wore her dark hair braided and coiled, but her eyes lacked sparkle. Although an attempt had obviously been made to enliven her complexion by the application of carmine to her lips and cheeks, it was sallow.

  ‘I wonder what part she takes,’ remarked Jane. ‘The poster only showed Tatiana. Izabella looks strong, doesn’t she? Maybe there will be times when Tatiana needs her.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ de Silva replied absently. He had to admit, he was having trouble taking his eyes off Tatiana, as he imagined were many of the men in the audience. She was now climbing gracefully to the top of the left-hand tower, followed by Izabella. When she came level with the trapeze she reached out and pulled it towards her, then with practised ease, swung across to sit on it. Beginning to swing back and forth, she slipped into a graceful series of balletic moves, sometimes perched on the trapeze, sometimes hanging from it with only her bent knees to stop her falling. Gasps of apprehension, and rounds of clapping when danger was past, evidenced the audience’s appreciation.

  After a while she reached out and pulled herself back to the tower where Izabella waited, and they changed places for her part of the act. This relied more on strength than grace and pleased the audience in its own way. As it neared the end, de Silva noticed that a short piece of rope with a metal bar at the bottom hung off the trapeze. His throat tightened as Izabella took the bar between her teeth, let go of the trapeze itself and propelled herself into a vertiginous spin.

  ‘She was exceptionally good too,’ observed Jane when, with Izabella safely back on the tower, the audience applauded enthusiastically. ‘Not as graceful, as Tatiana, but one sees why strength was needed. I hope Tatiana will do her high-wire act now.’

  As Tatiana returned, de Silva wondered why she, as well as Izabella, had performed on the trapeze. It seemed to him that the high-wire act would be enough on its own, for it must require a great deal of concentration. The sound of clapping faded as she stepped onto the high wire and took the long pole that Izabella held out to her. De Silva winced and closed his eyes. When he opened them, she had already walked several feet along the wire, holding the pole at chest height to aid her balance. Gracefully, she continued towards the tower on the opposite side, for all the world as if she were taking a leisurely stroll in the countryside.

  So tense that you could almost touch it, a hush had fallen over the audience. The low, pulsing beat of the drums heightened the apprehension that filled the air. Every time Tatiana paused, there were gasps of alarm. A pain throbbed behind de Silva’s eyes. He felt as if he was making the slow walk with her. At last, the end of the wire was not far away. Tatiana turned her head a fraction towards the audience; he glimpsed a smile of mischievous triumph on her face. She took another step closer to the tower, and the audience exhaled a collective sigh of relief. Soon she would be safe. Clapping began to swell.

  And then it died.

  She had only a few more steps to take to reach the tower, but something was wrong. Her left foot came down next then slipped off the wire. She swayed and tried to put her weight on the right one, but that too slid away from under her. Dropping the pole, she launched herself at the wooden tower, her outstretched hands clawing frantically for something to cling on to. It seemed that minutes passed, although they were probably only seconds, before she fell. As she plummeted towards the sawdust-covered ring, the pole hit the ground and bounced away; she landed with a sickening thud and to screams from the audience that had de Silva’s heart racing.

  With surprising speed for such a big man, the ringmaster, Boris, was beside Tatiana’s inert body. He dropped to his knees and tried to rouse her as several of the circus hands rushed to join him, screening the scene from the audience. A stretcher was produced, and she was carried away.

  Boris stumbled to his feet and faced the audience. ‘Ladies and gentlemen! Do not be alarmed. But if there is a doctor here, please come forward.’

  Jane put her hand to her throat. ‘Gracious, if she’s not badly hurt, she’ll be a fortunate young lady. She fell a long way and with only the sawdust to cushion her fall.’

  Grimly, de Silva suspected that Boris was merely trying to reassure the audience.

  David Hebden was already on his feet. He paused briefly as he squeezed past de Silva’s drawn-up knees and they exchanged glances. De Silva saw that his friend was as dubious as he was about Boris’s words.

  The ring had emptied and the dance troupe that had opened the proceedings returned. This time, they were dressed in oriental costume, glittering with jewellery of such barbaric splendour that it must, thought de Silva, be imitation. But despite all their efforts, they failed to hold the audience’s attention. The musicians too played with a will, their faces red and shiny with exertion, but their eyes strayed to the exit where Tatiana had been carried away.

  ‘They might do better to stop,’ muttered Jane.

  ‘I agree,’ said Emerald. ‘That poor girl. I hope her injuries aren’t serious.’

  Privately, de Silva thought that was extremely unlikely.

  At last, the dancers abandoned their increasingly fruitless quest to keep the audience entertained and melted away into the wings. The ringmaster, Boris, reappeared. This time, he had removed his hat and his broad face was solemn. Even at a distance, de Silva saw how he struggled to control his feelings.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen. Please forgive us. For today, we must end.’ He gestured to the grassy area outside. ‘But the sun shines. Please, eat, drink.’ He forced a smile. ‘Another day, the show goes on.’
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  ‘Oh how sad,’ said Jane as they gathered themselves together and started to move slowly along the row towards the aisle. ‘What a pity that such a lovely day had to end this way.’

  ‘It’s hard to understand what went wrong,’ remarked Emerald, looking puzzled. ‘Surely that high wire is checked before it’s used, but there seemed to be some kind of problem. Something that made her lose her balance. Unless her concentration failed her, but that’s hard to credit. She looked so composed until then, and if it was a loss of concentration, why at the last moment when she was so nearly home?’

  De Silva recalled that smile of triumph. Why indeed? Had Tatiana made the grave error of relaxing a moment too soon? It was something that he was aware he needed to guard against in his own work.

  He heard a familiar voice call his name and looked round to see Archie Clutterbuck shouldering his way through the crowd towards them. The press of moving people made it impossible to stop, but he had nearly caught up with them by the time they stepped out of the tent, allowing them to pause as the crowd thinned and there was more room for manoeuvre. Leaving Jane and Emerald standing in a nearby patch of shade, de Silva waited for him.

  ‘Good afternoon, sir.’

  ‘Afternoon, de Silva. Terrible accident, eh? All most unfortunate. Just when the afternoon was going so well.’

  ‘Indeed it is, sir. And I’d be surprised if the lady’s injuries are not worse than the ringmaster’s saying.’

  ‘So would I, de Silva. So would I. I saw Hebden take himself off to help.’

  ‘I think I’ll go round there too. Just in case there’s anything I can do. Doctor Hebden may appreciate some support.’

  Archie rubbed his chin. ‘In my opinion, as these people aren’t British, it’s not really a matter for us. But I know you, de Silva. Belt and braces, eh? Well, if you’re going, I may as well come with you. Show the flag and all that. On reflection, there are people here who’d probably expect me to.’