Circus Shoes

by Noel Streatfeild

  Alexsis made a gesture with his hand as if wiping all the words off the programme.

  ‘That will be Paula, my sister. But she may not be first.’

  Peter hated to think his programme was wrong. He spoke quickly and angrily.

  ‘Well, it says so. I suppose they wouldn’t print the programme wrong.’

  Alexsis looked hurt.

  ‘You must not be angry. All programme for a circus says what you will see, but it cannot say how you will see it.’

  Peter was still annoyed.

  ‘Then they shouldn’t charge threepence.’

  Alexsis spoke to Santa.

  ‘A circus it shows two times on each day. The acts they change, so the most difficult to set up is put at the end of one show and he is ready for another.’

  Santa poked Peter in the side.

  ‘Don’t you see? It’s all there. But they won’t be in that order.’

  Alexsis showed her an indicator over the orchestra and another over the entrance.

  ‘The number he will come there.’

  ‘It’s a very silly system,’ said Peter.

  Santa gave him a kick.

  ‘Shut up. What’s the matter with you?’

  Peter kicked her back.

  ‘Who howled in the road yesterday?’

  Having started to argue they would have gone on for ages, but at that moment the conductor raised his baton. Alexsis leant back in his seat.

  ‘Now we begin.’

  In one moment Peter and Santa had forgotten there was such a thing as an argument in the world. The band played. A blaze of light shone down on the sawdust of the ring. The ring-men threw open the gate in the ring fence. An enthralling smell of animals and earth and sawdust swept over the big top. Mr Cob took up his place on one side of the artistes’ entrance. Two ring-men held back the tent flaps. A mass of colour was grouped against the canvas. The circus had begun.

  The parade went by. Neither Peter nor Santa could take in much of it. There was so much to see and it was so new. There were clowns in all imaginable garments. Gus was dressed as a sailor and was striding along on immense stilts. There were the horses. They wore the gayest harness. The ponies pulled a little coach with a girl standing up in it dressed as a butterfly. Then came the four French poodles. They were dragging a tiny brightly painted wagon. The six elephants were magnificent with golden cloths on their backs. They held each other by the tail. On the front one, dressed all in gold, with a golden turban, sat a man whom the children guessed must be Kundra. There were groups of people walking in fantastic clothes. Velvets, tinsels, and tarlatan. All chosen with an eye to gaiety. A lovely procession of motley. While it passed it was like living in a dream. When it had gone it was quite odd to see the ring was still sprinkled with sawdust. It would not have been surprising to see it had turned to gold.

  There was not much time to think of miracles, for in a second ‘One’ flashed up on the indicator.

  ‘This is Paula,’ Alexsis whispered.

  Paula had the same red hair as Alexsis. She was wearing a jade-green velvet tunic and cap. From her cap blew an ostrich feather. She was standing on the backs of two of the greys, one foot on each. She rode round the ring. Then, just as she passed the entrance, in bounded a third grey. He passed under her legs and as he went she caught a silk rein looped on his back, and drove him before her. Round the three horses went until they were again past the entrance; then a fourth grey cantered in, passed under her legs and was again caught and driven in front of her. Santa was terrified.

  ‘Oh, goodness, won’t she fall off?’

  Alexsis laughed.

  ‘No. She have rode this since she is little.’

  ‘How many horses is she going to drive in the end?’ asked Peter.

  ‘Seven,’ Alexsis explained. ‘Then there are the two she stand on. That makes nine.’

  The children began to count. Five. Six. They were terribly afraid she would miss the ribbon on the seventh. But no, she caught it, and drove her team out amidst roars of applause. In a minute she was back standing in the ring bowing and smiling.

  There was a shout of laughter and suddenly the place was full of clowns. Peter grabbed the programme.

  ‘What’s this? No number’s up.’

  ‘No. It is the clowns and augustes. A reprisal.’

  ‘A what?’ said Santa.

  Alexsis screwed up his face to try to explain.

  ‘Always when the clowns and augustes come on that is not an act, that is a reprisal.’

  ‘That can’t be right,’ Peter argued. ‘Numbers eleven and fifteen are clowns and augustes. They’re on the programme.’

  ‘Then that is not a reprisal,’ Alexsis explained patiently. ‘That is a specialty. It is different. Look, the Frasconis.’

  They looked. While the clowns had been playing about in the ring and on the ring fence, the ring hands had fixed up a trampoline. An old man dressed rather like a ring hand had stood by and supervised. Now he moved to the entrance and stood by Mr Cob.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Santa whispered to Alexsis.

  ‘That is Mr Frasconi. He is a very great artiste of the trampoline. These are his two sons. He teach them and build the act.’

  The two Frasconi sons were dressed in pink fleshings and a piece of velvet made like leopard skin. The things they did when on the trampoline were breath-taking. The trampoline might only look rather like a mattress raised off the ground, but it was anything but a mattress to the two brothers. The smaller of the two bounded up and down on it, shooting up as if he would hit the roof, then coming down in amazing twists and somersaults. No matter how he came down the bigger brother, who was the bearer, never missed catching him.

  ‘I can’t believe they’re real,’ Santa sighed, when at last they finished leaping about and stood bowing on the ground.

  After another reprisal from the clowns and augustes, the ponies trotted in. Alexsis leant forward and watched intently.

  ‘I think,’ he said in a worried voice, ‘Prissy is not quite well.’

  Peter and Santa gave each other a look. To them the ten ponies looked exactly alike. They suspected Alexsis was showing off.

  Maxim Petoff looked grand in the ring. He wore riding things and carried a whip. He never used the whip. He just murmured orders to his ponies and they all obeyed. They had difficult things for a pony to do. They had to divide and trot round in opposite directions. They had to walk round with their forelegs on the ring fence and their hind ones in the ring. They had to stand for a moment on their hind legs begging like dogs. When they had finished Maxim stood by the exit and gave each of them something from his pocket as a reward.

  Lucille’s French poodles were so clever it was almost ridiculous. Three of them did really difficult acrobatic feats. The fourth, who had an enormous sense of humour, was the clown. She tried to do what all the others did and just did it a little wrong. She made the audience rock with laughter. Peter nudged Santa.

  ‘Do you remember Ben said they were almost indecently clever? I think they are, too. That one that always does everything wrong. She knows she’s making us laugh.’

  Santa nodded, then she gripped his arm.

  ‘Look. That’s the little ring of roses we saw being made this afternoon. I believe that must have been Lucille we saw making it. She was talking French.’

  Peter looked at Lucille with his head on one side.

  ‘But this lady has got yellow hair.’

  Santa said nothing. She wished she was as observant as Peter. She had quite forgotten the hair. But of course, now she came to think of it, it had been black, with a fringe.

  The rose ring was for the clown dog. She stood some way from Lucille looking at her over her shoulder with her tongue hanging out and the sauciest expression on her face. The band, which had been playing a march, suddenly broke into a waltz. The dog stuck out her tail. Lucille threw her rose ring. It was caught on the tail. There was a pause, then the ring began to swing. In perfect rhythm the dog
spun it.

  If ever a dog knew she was clever that one did. She had no sooner finished her act than she began to show off. She was just like a small child who gets above herself at too much praise. She raced round the ring fence while Lucille tried to catch her. She chewed up a ball. She walked on her hind legs without being asked to. And finally, when Lucille had sent all the dogs away and was bowing in the ring, she came shooting back and bowed too. Lucille was rather fat, with a good deal of her both behind and in front. The dog had evidently noticed this, and how it made her give rather clumsy bows. You would not think a dog could imitate a fat woman bowing, but that one did. How everybody laughed!

  During the reprisal number eight was shown on the indicator. Alexsis smiled.

  ‘This will be the Elgins. It is very, very beautiful. It is a floor act.’ He saw they looked puzzled so he added: ‘Their foots are on the floor.’

  Santa was watching the artistes’ entrance with one eye, and a clown who had water coming out of his hat with the other, but she really could not let Alexsis go on making the same mistakes over and over again.

  ‘Feet,’ she said. ‘You know I told you that before.’

  ‘So,’ Alexsis agreed. But he was not really attending. His eyes were glued to the entrance.

  The Elgins were a beautiful act. There were three men and two girls. They wore very little, but what there was of it was made of red velvet. The idea at the back of the act was that they should keep on forming pictures grouped quite perfectly. To get into these groups the three men hurled the girls at each other. They might have been pieces of wood they were chucking about, they did it so casually. And the two girls might have had no bones to break, from the nonchalant way they shot through the air. Peter and Santa thought it very pretty, but they did not like it as much as the other acts. But it was quite different with Alexsis. He was pale with pleasure when they had finished.

  ‘They are grand artistes,’ he said.

  Peter was watching a clown and an auguste throwing balls to the audience. He was hoping one would not fall on them. It would be awful if everybody stared, but it was quite likely it would be thrown at them with Alexsis sitting with them. All the circus people must know him.

  ‘I don’t think,’ he argued, ‘they are half as great artistes as Paula. I bet none of them could ride nine horses at once.’

  Alexsis looked at him pityingly.

  ‘You do not understand what you say.’

  Santa sighed. Peter was being tiresomely argumentative, but Alexsis’s last answer would have annoyed anyone. She expected Peter would answer back, and so he would have, but at that moment the clowns’ ball hit him, on the head. Peter had forgotten the ball. His mind was racing round with retorts for Alexsis. Instead of using one, he worked off what he was feeling by giving the ball a great thump. It was a fine punch. The ball missed the clown and bounded away into the middle of the ring. At that moment ‘Five’ came up on the indicator.

  ‘That was a good smack,’ Alexsis said carefully, fumbling for the words.

  Peter pulled Santa’s sleeve.

  ‘It’s the Arizonas.’

  Somehow, having fed the rosin-backs that afternoon, both Peter and Santa felt possessive about the Arizonas, perhaps because this was the first moment that they did know a little in a world where everybody else was well informed. If anybody sitting near them had criticized the act they would have been furious. But nobody dreamed of it. The Kenets were all beautiful riders. They and Paula were dressed in cow-punching out-fits. One Kenet had a lasso with which he caught not only the horses but his brothers. The act went at a terrific speed, accompanied by shouts from everybody in the ring. They all leapt from the ground on to the horses and on to each other’s shoulders. They turned somersaults and arrived right way up on the horses’ backs. They formed pyramids. They jumped from one horse to another. They all rode one horse at the same time. It was terribly exciting to watch. Peter and Santa were quite exhausted by the time the horses had cantered out and Paula and the Kenets were bowing in the ring.

  They had no time to be exhausted, for into the ring tumbled the clowns. They had seen Gus in various clothes playing various jokes, but this time he came on with a lasso just like the Kenet brother had used. He seemed just as clever with it as the Kenet brother had been, only he used it funnily. He caught the other clowns and augustes round the neck, and then caught himself in the lasso. He skipped with it. He did it beautifully, but he looked so pleased each time he got through the rope safely that you felt it was only by luck he had done it, and you could not help laughing. Finally he lassoed three clowns at once, caught them all, then got his own foot tangled in the end of the rope, and was dragged out of the ring on his back.

  Alexis was delighted that they found their uncle so funny.

  ‘He is a very good artiste,’ he said admiringly.

  Number seventeen came next. It was a pretty dancing act. The girls wore blue dresses and blue wings. They waltzed to the music of The Blue Danube. Then suddenly they pulled off their dresses and wings, and with nothing on but some trunks and a little bit of blue stuff round their chests, threw each other round as the Elgins had done.

  After this came number six. Most people have seen a comedy horse. They know just how silly it can be. Peter and Santa had of course never seen one before. They hurt inside, they laughed so much.

  Just as Peekaboo trotted out of the ring, Gus and Ted Kenet appeared. They wore fleshings and spangled trunks. Number eighteen came up on the indicator. Peter turned in great surprise to Alexsis.

  ‘Is Gus “The Whirlwinds”?’

  Alexsis had no time to answer, for Santa wriggled excitedly in her chair.

  ‘Don’t you see, it’s what we saw them put up this morning.’

  It was. Gus and Ted climbed up to their trapeze. Of course Santa and Peter knew nothing at all about trapeze work, so they did not see what a technically beautiful display they were looking at. Santa in fact saw very little, for she was so afraid Gus would fall that she sat with her eyes shut half the time. Peter watched, but he felt the palms of his hands get all wet. Ted Kenet had said he needed sulphur sweets and sarsaparilla to keep his blood cool. They looked a poor protection against that terrifying way he and Gus were behaving on the trapeze. They seemed to forget that there was nothing between them and the ground, and swung round and round holding on first by a knee and then by an ankle. They seemed scarcely ever to hold by their hands.

  ‘Is he down yet? Is he down yet?’ Santa kept asking Alexsis. Alexsis understood just how she felt.

  ‘No, not yet. I will tell you.’ Just as Santa felt she could not bear it any more, there was a roar of applause. Alexsis, clapping hard, whispered: ‘It is finish.’

  Santa looked at him out of the corner of her eye. Was it possible that Alexsis, too, was glad when the trapeze act was over?

  There was an interval after that. Then number seven. Maxim Petoff’s Liberty Horses.

  Maxim treated his liberties as he did his Shetland ponies. He whispered orders and the horses seemed to understand. The greys danced. They waltzed in pairs, reared up on their hind legs. The chestnuts did some quite involved manoeuvres. Individual horses reared up and walked right across the ring. Another danced a two-step. There seemed to be nothing they could not do. They even knew their right order behind each other, for after each group every horse pushed himself back into his proper place. After each decapo, as Alexsis told them the individual performances were called, the horses acknowledged the applause by going down on their knees. The audience loved them. They loved Maxim too: he looked so strong, and was obviously such a gentle trainer.

  Gus came on again. He was Follow or Leader this time. He and another of the Kenets did some funny but terrifying work on ladders. They had pots of paste and a bundle of bills. They came into the ring looking for somewhere to stick their bills, and then the fun began. They pretended to quarrel. They climbed up their ladders and with them swaying to and fro they had a fight from the top. How covere
d in paste they got! Peter and Santa laughed till the tears were pouring down their faces. But all the time they kept wondering how, if Gus did this twice a day, he was so clean.

  Number nine. Santa thought it the prettiest act of the lot. Paula in a rose-coloured ballet frock on one of the rosin-backs, jumping through a paper hoop held by her father. She looked quite lovely with her flaming hair and frilly skirts. The audience seemed to adore her; they clapped till their hands were sore.

  Of course, if you have seen sea-lions perform you know the sort of things they will do. Peter and Santa had not only never seen performing sea-lions, they had never seen any at all. In spite of what Hans and Fritzi had told them, and what Ben had said, they were quite unprepared for the brilliance of the performance. Sea-lions have not really got clever faces. They do not look like artistes. But how clever they can be! Schmidt’s sea-lions did all the things performing sea-lions do. They balanced balls on their noses. They juggled. They climbed up a pyramid of blocks and balanced on one flipper. They played instruments. They were enchanted at their own skill and rolled about at the first hint of applause, slapping their flippers together asking for more. They were as clever as Lucille’s poodles. Only the poodles were obviously skilled artistes revelling in their own gifts, whereas the sea-lions were like a lot of precocious children. They were rather like Gus with the lasso, desperately clever but apparently surprised and naively delighted to get anything right.

  The Martini family came next. They were made up of a father, a son, and two daughters. The girls wore sort of rompers made in satin, and they wore socks. Santa thought they were younger than she was. But Alexsis assured her they were quite grown up. Before they came into the ring he tried to explain a Risley act. He told them about the first Risley who had the idea of juggling with a real boy. Of how the idea caught on, and that kind of performance was always known as a ‘Risley act’.

  ‘But didn’t the boy get hurt?’ Peter asked.

  Alexsis shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Maybe. But if a clown he start as a Risley kid, always he is glad. It is the great training.’