Every Vow You Break

by Julia Crouch

  Fully disguised again, Stephen presented their tickets and they filed inside to a seatless central space. A live band to one side played loud jazzy rock as acrobats and performers mingled with the audience, improvising small dramas, shouting out for each other in English, Spanish, Italian and French, shimmying up posts and tumbling on the ground, through air scented by perfume, sweat and sawdust. The pressing crowd pushed Lara up against Stephen. Emboldened by the wine, she held her position, glued to his side. It was intoxicating. She could hardly bear it and, when she looked up at Stephen, his eyes were closed.

  ‘Jack,’ she called, looking round for him in the crush.

  ‘It’s OK. I’ve got him,’ Olly said. He was holding Jack, who he had put up on a hay bale a little way away so he could see.

  The last of the audience filed in and the music stopped. In a moment of silence, what had appeared to be the sides of the marquee fell away, revealing, Tardis-like, yet more tents beyond, where eight beautiful young punk-acrobats dangled from high-slung trapeze swings. The lights dimmed so only the top part of the tent was lit.

  The band struck up again, a prowling bass line with snare drum, built on to by a repeated vocal line, rasped by a man who looked as if he had seen it all.

  I. Will. Not. Be-Good.

  I. Will. Not. Be-Good.

  The instruments added to the song one by one: electric guitar, congas, sax and trumpet. By the time the brass extinguished the vocal line, filling the tent with its anarchic energy, the acrobats were describing great arcs across the ceiling with their swings, whooping and trilling.

  Stephen took off his hat and shook his head in the warm tent air, enjoying the anonymity of being in an audience in the dark.

  ‘Can I wear that, man?’ Olly said, appearing out of nowhere, now with Jack in his arms.

  ‘Sure.’ Stephen smiled and passed his hat to Olly, who pulled it on low over his eyes, mimicking Stephen’s stance.

  ‘You’ve made a friend there,’ Lara whispered up into Stephen’s ear.

  ‘It makes me very happy.’ He smiled down at her.

  The acrobats spun and twirled above their heads. Somehow, through leaping, flying and falling, they all came to the spotlit ground to mark the beginning of the show proper. They used the whole vast space, from tumbling over the floor in giant silver hoops to leaping across the ceiling on bungees. The spectators were ushered from one side of the tent to the other – at one moment huddled in the middle while a woman in knee pads and glitter looped herself in and out of a piece of rope, then made to form a circle around an impossibly muscled man who shouted in French as he performed extraordinary feats with a single rod of steel.

  Through it all the band played their raucous music – songs about breaking taboos, about conquering loneliness and desire by transgression.

  Not once were Lara and Stephen separated by the movement of the crowd. Instead, they hung back out of the light, enjoying the secret contact the darkness allowed them. But Olly and Jack roved all around the space. For one disorienting moment Lara thought the person standing close behind her, pressed into her back, his hands on her shoulders, couldn’t be Stephen, because he was over on the other side of the performers, in the front, looking up. But seeing the jaw working on the gum, she realised it was Olly, transformed for a moment by the lighting and Stephen’s hat. Jack was by his side.

  Above them a statuesque woman in a dove-grey silk dress swooped and arched around a static trapeze bar. She reached up into the void of the tent. Then she fell, plummeting towards the audience underneath. The crowd flinched and moved back as one, caught between the thought of catching her as she plunged down into their midst and the urge to run away and save their own skins. Lara hid her face in Stephen’s sleeve. The woman’s move was planned, though. She was saved, caught at the last minute by the foot she had looped around one of her ropes.

  ‘Come to me tonight,’ Stephen murmured into Lara’s hair.

  The acrobat hooked one strong thigh around her bar, her silk dress swung away like wings and she arched her back in victory over her fall.

  ‘I can’t,’ Lara said, her mouth grazing his ear. ‘I want to. But I can’t.’

  ‘Tomorrow then. Come during the day, if you can.’

  Lara nodded. As she watched the boldness and beauty above her, she felt close to tears. If she had envied the lives of the girls in the leather jackets and vintage dresses, she ached to be the woman above her. She would run away and join this group of free-wheeling bodies and souls, living their lives in each others’ beautiful, raggedy pockets, each week a different town, a different country, their only duty to perform with all their hearts.

  The tears came, quietly, for her lost youth.

  The trapeze was winched back up into the gods, and the acrobat melted down a long rope to the ground. An older man in a hat and mac not unlike Stephen’s – although under his open coat he was bare-chested and wore only a pair of leggings – hustled the crowd into another formation to watch a couple perform a double-act on a loop of rope above another part of the tent. Their bodies twisted into each other, moving on top and around, the man holding the woman up in one arm. Then they flipped and she was supporting his entire weight from her leg. He jumped up and their bodies moulded to each other. Lara felt Stephen’s hand as his arm circled her waist.

  ‘There you are, Mother,’ Olly said into her ear.

  Instinctively, she moved away from Stephen. She had thought Olly was still over on the other side of the audience. She looked up at him. Nothing suggested that he had seen anything, but Lara realised that, walking a tightrope of her own, she had let her guard drop.

  ‘It’s great, isn’t it?’ she said. To her relief, Olly nodded.

  ‘Beats Dad’s boring sort of stuff,’ he said, gazing on the coupling going on fifteen feet above his head. ‘I want to do that,’ he groaned.

  ‘Let’s get the A levels out of the way first,’ she said.

  At the end of the show they spilled out of the hot tent into the cooler night air, the rhythms of the band still pulsing through their veins. As they crossed the rutted grass to the car park, a couple passing them turned and stared at Stephen.

  ‘It is him,’ the woman said. ‘I told you.’

  ‘Hey, Olly man, could I have my hat back?’ Stephen said, slipping his sunglasses on. ‘Forgot I wasn’t a normal person for a minute,’ he said to Lara, who squeezed his arm. ‘Forgot I had two heads.’

  Olly pulled the hat off.

  ‘Shit,’ he said, as his curly hair snagged in an adjuster buckle. The couple up ahead had stopped, the woman debating with the man whether she should go up and address Stephen.

  ‘Don’t pull,’ Lara said, but Olly yanked the hat away from his head, taking a hank of his hair with it.

  ‘Ow, shit,’ he said.

  With the hat and geek glasses on, Stephen was another person.

  ‘Well honey, we’d better get our little guy back home to bed,’ he said in his Deep Down South accent, his arm around Lara as they approached the gawping couple.

  ‘Someone needs their eyes testing,’ the man said to the woman as they passed.

  ‘Whatever,’ they heard her say behind them.

  ‘And the Oscar for the part of the hillbilly daddy goes to Stephen Molloy,’ Olly said once Stephen had started up the Wrangler.

  Stephen had bought the CD of the show music and they drove under a fiercely starlit sky, singing ‘I. Will. Not. Be-Good’ at the tops of their voices. Jack, who had loved every minute of the show, led the way, screaming out the words and swallowing them in gurgling laughter. For the first time in a long while, Lara felt entirely encased in the moment, not wishing to be anywhere else. She continued the scene Stephen had set going back in the car park, imagining that they were a family, returning to their home in the forest, where they lived together. She put herself outside the car, thinking how happy they must sound as they passed noisily along the road.

  ‘Damn lights,’ Stephen said.

  La
ra glanced round. A car was right on their tail, so close it was almost in the back seat. Its lights were on full beam, blinding Stephen. He tried to flip the rear-view mirror into reflector mode, but he was still dazzled.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘Hold on to your hats.’

  The car began to overtake them, but as it did so, it edged into them, nudging them sideways. Lara looked over Stephen to their tormentor. To her horror, it was the same dun-coloured car that had nearly run her and Jack over, the same vehicle she had accosted at Pretty Fly Pie … Again she saw the silhouette of a woman through its tinted windows. This was Elizabeth Sanders, and it was pretty clear she was acting out her warning.

  ‘Go away,’ Stephen yelled. ‘Get away from me.’

  They bumped along the road, half on the tarmac, half on the verge. The bridge they had crossed on their way out loomed a couple of hundred yards away. If they carried on as they were going, they would be over the side and into the river below.

  ‘Brake!’ Lara cried, her hands gripping the dashboard, white at the knuckles. Just in the nick of time, Stephen came to his senses and floored the brakes, bringing them to a screeching halt in some gravel about ten feet away from the bridge.

  With a final swerve into them, denting the side of the Wrangler and nearly toppling it, the other car swooped past them and bombed off into the night. Stephen rested his forehead on the steering wheel while the CD played on, an unstructured, atonic improvised brass section riff. Lara reached forward and switched it off, and the sound of the crickets resumed in the empty fields around them.

  ‘Everyone all right?’ She looked at her sons, both hunched-up wraiths. They nodded silently. ‘Stephen?’ she said, carefully laying a hand in the middle of his back.

  ‘See?’ he said at last, lifting his head and smiling. ‘Load of arseholes on the roads round here.’

  Lara searched his eyes to see if he believed what he was saying, if he really didn’t know what was going on, but he was inscrutable. He shrugged, switched the engine on and turned back on to the road.

  ‘Let’s get these young ’uns back home,’ he said, in his accented disguise voice.

  ‘Go, Daddy, go,’ Olly said, in the same Deep South tones.

  When they got back to Trout Island, Marcus and Selina were on the porch, smoking. A large, nearly empty bottle of Yellowtail Pinot Grigio stood on the shabby plastic table in front of the swing seat.

  ‘How was the show?’ Marcus boomed across the front garden after Stephen cut the engine.

  ‘Great!’ Olly said, jumping out of the back of the Wrangler.

  ‘Drink, Stephen?’ Selina said, getting up and sashaying down the steps towards him.

  ‘Shhh!’ Marcus said. ‘Damn.’

  ‘Marcus,’ Lara said. ‘You haven’t?’

  ‘I can keep a secret, darling,’ Selina said, leaning on the side of Stephen’s vehicle. ‘Selina Mountford.’ She stretched over towards him, extending her hand. ‘I really admire your work. I was in Transform, although I don’t think we ever met. I was one of the Water Girls.’

  ‘Hello,’ Stephen said, lifting Jack out of his car seat.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about me,’ Selina said. ‘I’m discretion itself. It’s not as if I’m a civilian. I understand you have to keep a low profile. Do stay and join us.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’ve got animals to get back to.’ Stephen handed the car seat to Lara. ‘’Bye, guys,’ he said, waving to Olly and Jack, who were heading towards the house. ‘’Bye, Lara.’ He gave her a brief, impersonal kiss on the cheek. ‘Marcus,’ he said, pointing a finger at him.

  ‘Cheers, matey,’ Marcus said, waving. He had got up and was leaning on the deck rail, swaying.

  ‘Thank you Stephen,’ Lara said. ‘That was a great night.’

  ‘My pleasure.’ He started the engine and took off. It was only when his tail lights had completely disappeared that Lara realised, with a pang, they hadn’t made a firm arrangement to meet up again.

  ‘Oll, could you get Jack ready for bed?’ Lara said. Olly tutted and sighed, but he scooped up his sleepy little brother and carried him indoors.

  Lara turned to Marcus, diverting delayed shock after the incident on the road into anger at her husband. ‘You do know Stephen being here is supposed to be a secret?’

  ‘Come on,’ Marcus said, waving his arms around. ‘What harm can it do to let Selina here know?’

  ‘You don’t know the half of it,’ Lara said.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘You can trust me, Lara,’ Selina said. ‘I do happen to have quite a few friends who are as famous as him, if not more so. I do know how difficult it is. I’m cool.’

  ‘I hope you’re right about that,’ Lara said. She wondered how gushing up to him and outlining the small part you played in a film he starred in eight years ago counted as cool, but she let it go. ‘He goes to great lengths to stay hidden. There’s a lot at stake for him.’

  ‘Oh come on!’ Marcus said. ‘Don’t you think he’s being a bit grand, a bit mysterious? Like he’s built this myth up about himself, and he believes it so much and no one’s telling him no, so it’s all just become a bit of a game for him.’

  ‘A game? You don’t understand, do you?’

  ‘Oh God.’ Marcus rolled his eyes. ‘What’s he been telling you?’

  ‘Do you know what? You don’t deserve to know.’

  ‘Look. We’ve all heard about the stalker business. But that’s in the past and on the other side of this giant country. So steady on there old girl.’ Marcus got up and attempted to put his arm around her. ‘Look. I’m sorry I told Selina. Does that help? Now, do you want a glass of something?’

  ‘Yes, do join us for a glass of wine,’ Selina said, touching her arm.

  Lara looked down at her toes, which she had clenched so tightly they were cramping. She wanted to slap Selina in the face, then smash the stupid wine bottle and drive it into Marcus’s belly. She actually imagined herself doing this.

  ‘I’m tired,’ she said after a minute. ‘And I need to go and tuck Jack in.’ She wondered if she could make up a story about leaving something in Stephen’s car so she had an excuse to call him, just to hear his voice again, but her imagination deserted her. ‘You stay out here and enjoy yourselves,’ she said to Marcus and Selina. ‘Make sure you lock up when you come in.’

  As she went in and started climbing the horrible stinking stairs, she heard Selina’s light laugh, underscored by Marcus’s low, throaty rumble. He must seem quite exotic to her, Lara thought, all plummily English, having been brought all the way from Europe to play the lead.

  Well, she was welcome to him.

  Thirty-Four

  ‘SO, DANNY WILL BE WITH YOU TOMORROW AT MIDDAY FOR a spot of space clearing. I’ve called Marcus so he’ll be busy and need never know. Now then. Can my little chick make a rehearsal tomorrow evening about five?’

  ‘James, it’s a difficult time of day for a chap of his age. He’s not at his best.’

  Lara heard James sigh at the other end of the line, as if this were just another detail for him to deal with. She hardly had the patience for this after the sleepless night she had endured. Every noise seemed to have had malice threaded through it, from the percussive barking of a dog over the hill behind the house to a creak on the stairs which, clog in hand, she had climbed out of bed to investigate at three in the morning.

  ‘I don’t know if you know, but Marcus has offered to be chaperone,’ James went on. ‘So you don’t have to worry about a thing. You’ll be free for a couple of hours. To do what you want.’ A silence followed.

  ‘OK, look,’ she said eventually. ‘I’ll make sure Jack’s worn out in the morning so he puts in a long nap, then hopefully he’ll be brighter than usual at five. But not too late, OK?’

  ‘Thank you sweets. I’m sure it’s going to all work out marvellously.’

  ‘I’m sure it is,’ she said, and hung up.

  For a few moments she stared at the phone
and thought about calling Stephen, to apologise for Marcus’s big mouth the night before and, just, well, to hear his voice. Then, as if she had summoned it, the phone rang right before her eyes. Grabbing it, she pulled it to her ear.

  ‘Hello?’ she said.

  ‘Don’t get excited. It’s only me!’ Gina laughed down the other end.

  ‘Oh. Hi, Gina. How are you?’

  ‘I heard you went to the circus last night.’

  ‘How on earth?’

  ‘Simon saw you – remember, the guy from the party?’

  ‘Right, yes. We bumped into him.’

  ‘Was it any good?’

  ‘It was brilliant. You should go.’

  ‘Ah, it might be difficult with Bert. He’s not so good in crowds of strangers. Anyway, talking about Bert, he’s asleep right now, so I wondered if you’d like to come round for coffee?’

  ‘I’d love to. We’ll be over in ten minutes.’ The twins hadn’t yet surfaced, and Lara hadn’t been looking forward to spending the morning with Jack like a couple of sitting ducks in the marked house.

  ‘See you then.’

  ‘See, they’re not too bad now I’ve cleaned them up.’ Lara lifted her skirt to show Gina her knees.

  ‘You were crazy,’ Gina said. ‘You were so mad. And what I don’t get is why a woman like that would be going around stealing people’s clothes from the laundromat.’

  Lara peered into her mug and took another bite of the cherry walnut cookie that Gladys had offered her before taking Jack upstairs to play.

  ‘And who was the mystery man?’ Gina said.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘The guy Simon saw you with last night. The one he said sort of melted away when he came up to you.’

  ‘Oh. Just an old friend I bumped into.’

  ‘You bumped into an old friend out here?’ Gina asked. ‘That’s some coincidence.’

  ‘Yes. It was,’ Lara said. They were sitting in the shade at the back of Gina’s house. The sky was blue and the air surprisingly clear. A cool breeze funnelled down the side of the house towards them, and Lara reached into her bag for her cardigan. She slipped it on, folded her arms and sat back, watching the trees as they rustled in the wind.