Peter dug Santa in the ribs.
‘And that’s what Alexsis wants to do. Sooner him than me.’
Santa, gazing in horror at the girl, expecting every moment to see her break in half, nodded.
‘Or me. I’d much rather ride, even if I didn’t do it as well as my father.’
The sea-lions arrived in the artistes’ entrance with an incredible amount of fuss. They came barking out of their tank, almost falling over in their excitement. Each bark sounded as though they were saying: ‘It’s us! It’s us! It’s us!’
Peter and Santa had a good look at the Risley act while it was waiting to go on. Close to, it was quite clear, in spite of their rompers and socks, that the two Miss Martinis were not children. The younger one, though she was not much taller than Santa, looked about seventeen. Directly the family arrived for their entrance, they threw off the towelling dressing-gowns they had round them, took off their clogs, rubbed their feet in the rosin tray, and began their own kind of limbering-up. This meant Mr Martini took the elder of the girls and juggled with her, and the son took the younger one. The two girls were completely unmoved and went on with a conversation they were holding in Italian.
Peter and Santa were getting a bit cramped under the seats. They came out and went for a walk through the stables, which looked oddly depleted.
All the horses, except those the Kenets and Paula were using in the high-school act, had gone to the station. The bereiters were just riding the last of the liberties out of the stables as the children came in. The sea-lions, poodles, and lions had gone. Only the elephants were still on their platform. They were dressed for their act, which came next. The elephant man had already unfastened their feet. The thought that it was almost their entrance had excited them. Each was desperately rehearsing. Trunks swinging from side to side, feet raised. As Peter and Santa came near them, Ben caught hold of each of them by a shoulder and drew them into one of the loose boxes which had not yet been pulled down. At that moment Kundra gave an order in Hindustani. The first elephant stepped off the platform. The second caught hold of his tail and followed. In a neat line they hurried to the artistes’ entrance.
‘You kids want to watch out,’ said Ben. ‘You’ll get kicked or trodden on one day. None of the animals wouldn’t mean to do it, but they get kind of excited like when it’s their act.’
Peter and Santa were just going to step out again when there was the sound of horses’ hooves. Round the bend in the tent came one of the Kenets. He was leaning out of the saddle to watch his horse’s forelegs. It was pretty to see the way they were picked up. Left, right, left, right. At the end of the tent they turned. The horse went false. He was checked a moment, then off he went again in perfect rhythm.
‘Would the horse do it wrong if he didn’t practise before he went in the ring?’ Peter whispered.
Ben chuckled.
‘There was never a high-school rider yet who didn’t have to show off. Be out at the front if they were allowed to.’
Peter sighed.
‘I wish I could ride.’
‘Do you, son?’ Ben gave him a thoughtful glance. ‘Your dad was a groom, so Gus was tellin’ me. Maybe it’s in the blood. You come along one mornin’ when I’m exercisin’ the ’osses in the ring. I’ll put you up and see how you shape.’
‘Would you?’ Peter glowed. That was something like. If he were allowed to learn to exercise the horses he would feel much better.
Santa came out into the centre of the tent. A groom was pulling down the wall of the stall.
‘Why don’t you exercise them outside? It’s dull for them in the big top. They’d have much more fun in a field.’
Ben chewed at a bit of straw. It was rather an old bent one, but there were not many clean bits lying around.
‘They ain’t shod right. A ’oss what’s shod for this work won’t never stand up to hackin’ across country. We don’t exercise ’em just for exercisin’ in a manner of speakin’. It’s on account of their gettin’ a roll. Those Suffolk punches what the Arizonas ride, you watched them at work?’ Peter and Santa nodded. ‘Well, which way did they go round the ring? Clockwise or against the clock?’
They tried to remember.
‘Clockwise,’ said Santa.
Peter thought a moment longer.
‘Against the clock.’
Ben chewed placidly.
‘Peter’s right. No matter where you see a barebacked act it goes that way. Well, when the ’osses has done twelve rounds of the ring somebody’ as got to ride them twelve times clockwise. If they didn’t that ’oss would get a roll. Stands to reason. You try runnin’ round in a circle always goin’ the same way. You’d get lop-sided like, and then you’d roll.’ Ben spat out his straw. ‘Well, I must be movin’.’ He gave Peter a nod. ‘You come along. I’ll see how you shape.’
Santa walked back up the tent kicking up the earth with the toes of her gum-boots. Peter looked at her.
‘I expect he meant you too.’
Santa made a proud face.
‘As a matter of fact I wasn’t wanting to ride a horse.’
Peter shrugged his shoulders.
‘You are a fool. Why don’t you ask him?’
Santa skipped up against the wall of the tent.
‘You want to watch out,’ she said nastily. ‘Anybody who was attending would hear six elephants coming.’
Peter jumped across to the other side of the tent. He would have liked to tell her not to be so cocky, but by the time the six elephants had hurried by it was too late.
They watched the elephants go to the station. They saw them splash their way out into the rain and mud. As usual they held on to each other by the tail. One of the keepers rode on the leader. Peter lifted the tent flap. They watched them disappear into the night, their greyness almost at once giving them the look of shadows.
‘If anybody in Carlisle doesn’t know there’s been a circus and suddenly meets those I should think they’d get a shock,’ he said.
They went back to the artistes’ entrance. The Whirlwinds were just finishing, Gus and Ted Kenet swinging round faster and faster. Then the music stopped. They slid to the ground and stood bowing in the ring. The bandmaster held up his baton. The band burst into God Save the Queen.
Crash! Bang! ‘Pass along outside quickly, please!’ Everybody busy. Everybody working very quickly. For a minute or two Peter and Santa were too fussed they were in the way, and too confused, to see what was happening. Then they began to sort things out.
The audience were leaving. The ‘Pass along outside quickly, please!’ was for them. Of course they were not passing out quickly at all. Who would when such exciting things were going on? The uniformed men from the entrance had come inside and were driving them forward. They looked rather like sheepdogs folding a stubborn flock.
Not that anybody belonging to the circus was paying any attention to the audience. As the last notes of God Save the Queen died away, artistes, ring-hands, tent-men, had swarmed in from the artistes’ entrance. The band came hurrying down from their balcony. Mr Cob stood in the middle of the ring.
The crashing and banging was the seats. Starting on those farthest from the audience, they were being pulled down and stacked in heaps. The queer thing was the people who worked on them. Of course all the men were there, but with them, dressed in fearful old overalls, were some of the clowns and three of the Kenets.
Then the artistes were surprising. It had already upset all Peter’s and Santa’s ideas of what was what to find that the dancing butterflies were also the people who sold programmes. It did not seem to them at all suitable that such lovely ladies should do a job like that. Now they had a further shock. The butterflies had changed into cotton overalls, and were busy pulling covers off those seats which were expensive enough to have them. Two great baskets had been dragged to the ringside, and into them, neatly folded, the butterflies put the covers.
Gus and Ted Kenet had pulled disgraceful old dressing-gowns over their W
hirlwind clothes. They took down their trapeze quite unmoved by the pointing and nudging of the departing audience.
The two Frasconi sons and their father packed the trampo-line. The Frasconi sons had changed into dark suits. They did not look interesting. Santa gazed at them with disapproval.
‘If I was a circus artiste and wore pink all over and a little bit of velvet fur, I wouldn’t let the audience see me except while I had it on. They don’t look a bit nice now. And they were so lovely when they were on the trampoline.’
Peter pointed up at the roof, where Gus was sitting nonchalantly on the trapeze doing something to a rope.
‘And if I was Gus I wouldn’t wear that awful dressing-gown. It isn’t even clean.’
One of the butterflies staggered towards them with her arms full of chair-covers. She looked at Peter and made a gesture with her head at the basket.
‘Heave the lid up, would you?’
Peter was delighted. Even opening a lid made you feel as though you had something to do. He watched the butterfly put her covers in a neat pile in the corner of the basket. He hated her cotton coat. It was the sort of thing Aunt Rebecca had worn when she did the housework: It worried him to see her and the other artistes working. He might not be a sort of relation of the duchess, but he had comforted himself with the thought that at least in the circus he moved in the best world there was. He quite understood that everybody might help now and again as a favour; but all these people who so short a time ago had been looking marvellous in the ring, were appearing in dirty old clothes in front of the audience. It must be wrong. He leant against the basket.
‘Why do you all help pack?’
The girl went on folding covers.
‘Why not?’
‘I should have thought somebody else would. Some of these men.’
The girl went off to uncover a few more chairs. She looked over her shoulder.
‘I shouldn’t fuss, Little Lord Fauntleroy. Work never hurt anybody.’
Peter came back to Santa looking very red.
‘Did you hear what she said?’
Santa kicked up a little pile of earth with her toe.
‘Perhaps she didn’t mean to be as rude as she sounded.’
‘Well, then, why call me Little Lord Fauntleroy?’
Santa shrugged her shoulders.
‘He’s a boy in a book. Mrs Ford saw a film of it. She told me about it. She said he was a dear little boy.’
Peter gave her a look.
‘You would say a thing like that. You’ve grown hateful since you came here. You never used to be.’
Santa sat down on a box somebody had put near them. She thought of the way Peter had sulked lately, and of how Ben had said he would let him ride and had not said anything about her. She looked smug.
‘If you want to know, I’ve been a Christian martyr of goodness. It’s you that’s always cross.’
‘I like that—’
Santa put her fingers in her ears.
‘It’s no good talking. I’m not listening. I’m watching the pull-down.’
Peter could have hit her. Nothing is more annoying than a person not listening when you want to argue. He put his hands in his pockets and walked off to the other side of the ring.
In a few minutes they both forgot they had been quarrelling. The seats were still being taken down but fewer men were working on them, the rest were carrying away the tent-props. It was queer, as the seats vanished, and the props were carried out, and the ring fence was taken away, how gradually you could see the rough ground beginning to be just the empty ground again that it was last Sunday. Peter came across to Santa.
‘There’s masses and masses of straw just come. They’re going to put it in here. I heard the men say so.’
‘Why?’
Peter did not know.
‘I didn’t like to ask anybody. They all look so busy.’
They went outside to look at the straw. It was very interesting out there, though horribly wet. The wagons had drawn up in a circle round the big top. They were being loaded. It was a queer light. It was made by great arc-lamps fixed to lorries. It gave a greenish tinge to everything. The moving figures looked quite ghost-like in it. A continual stream of men came out of the big top carrying props. The props were long and heavy, and the ground slippery with mud. It was amazing that nobody skidded and dropped one.
There was added to the crash and bang of the seat-packing a sound of hammering on metal. The men were loosening the staples. Ben came stalking through the rain. He went up to one of the stable hands who was unlacing the side-flaps of the stable tent.
‘Tell ’em I’m ready for my straw.’
He was turning away, but Santa caught him by the arm.
‘What’s the straw for, Ben?’
Ben smiled. His face was dripping with rain.
‘You both here? It’s a nasty night. Still, may as well see things all ways.’
‘That’s what Gus said, more or less,’ Santa agreed.
Peter nodded at the straw now being carried in armloads into the stables.
‘Why the straw now? All the animals have gone.’
Ben picked a straw off a bundle that was being carried by. He put it in his mouth.
‘You take a look at your boots.’ Peter and Santa looked at their legs. ‘Look at all that mud ’n’ water. What d’you think these tents would be like if we laid them down in this?’
Ben was moving away, so Peter caught up with him.
‘But why should you lay them down.’
Ben shook his head.
‘Where’s your eyes, boy? You’ve seen the buildup. How did the big top come?’
‘Folded in bundles,’ said Santa.
Ben went into what was left of the stables.
‘You must put it on the ground to fold it. Of a wet night we put down straw. Keeps it dry like. Most of this is for the big top. I only need a little on account of what I already ’ave for the ’osses. Very partic’lar Mr Cob is about straw. “Keep everythin’ dry inside,” he says, “and maybe God’ll dry the outside.”’
‘But suppose it’s raining in Whitehaven?’ said Santa.
‘Well, then it’s lucky we’re dry inside. I’ave known it rain off’n on for near a month tentin’. The canvas was always soused. The men lost heart on the pull-down. That big top weighs somethin’ terrible when it’s soused. But there’s one thing a wet spell tentin’ teaches you, and that’s gratitude for small mercies. Bit of wind and a few hours’ sun and you have all the place singin’.’ He nodded to the children. ‘See you in the mornin’.’
Peter and Santa went round to the front entrance. They had to keep well away from the big top, as the men were hammering at the staples and loosening the guy-ropes. It was not so easy to get along farther out. The wagons were everywhere. The caterpillar tractors were manoeuvring more lorries and wagons into position to be packed. Those lorries and wagons which were ready to go to the station were surrounded by men putting planks under their wheels, trying to lever them up out of the mud.
‘Do you know,’ Peter said, ‘that Ben sleeps on the train and he won’t get there till late, and then he’s wet, and he’ll be on the ground at Whitehaven about seven in the morning.’
Santa made a gesture covering all the drivers, tent-men, ring-hands, electricians, carpenters, and grooms.
‘So will they all.’
‘I know.’ Peter hopped over a staple. ‘But Ben’s seventy-five.’
Santa thought about Ben.
‘He never feels old. He’s the nicest person we know, I think, except, of course, Gus.’
‘Yes, excepting him, of course,’ Peter agreed. ‘And I don’t know if we’d like him if he wasn’t an uncle.’
Santa hurried on to get under the shelter of the big top.
‘Well, he is an uncle, so we have to like him. Anyway I do.’
Peter followed her.
‘So do I. But I think he simply hates me.’
Santa did not answe
r. She did not think Gus did like Peter much.
The seating was gone. The last of the props were being carried out. Gus and Ted Kenet had disappeared. The boxes with their trapeze gear lay in the ring, locked and roped. All the Frasconis had gone. Their stuff, in an iron-bound box and a kind of canvas hold-all, lay beside Gus’s. The electricians were up in the roof disconnecting their lights.
‘Bring in the straw, boys,’ said the tent-master.
Everybody helped with the straw. A few odd hands collected Gus’s and the Frasconis’ stuff and carried it out. The rest scattered the straw in a fine carpet so that not one bit of wet ground showed. Mr Cob beckoned to the children.
‘You kids come and stand along here beside me. They’ll be dropping the tent now. Mustn’t stand in the ring.’
It took a long time to spread the straw. The tent-master came up and spoke to Mr Cob.
‘It’ll be two before we’re away.’
Mr Cob nodded.
‘Maybe it’ll be fine for the build-up. The glass is rising.’
The tent-master grunted.
‘There’s no wind. That’s one thing.’
Peter was so interested he had to interrupt.
‘Do you mind a wind? I thought it dried the tent.’
Mr Cob gave a short laugh.
‘Not much good the wind trying to dry it while it’s still raining.’
The tent-master looked at Peter.
‘You’ll be Gus’s nephew. Well, you ask Gus whether we like a wind. He’ll tell you.’
Peter and Santa had hardly ever been up so late before and they were getting cold and tired. The last part of pulling down the big top seemed slow. They could not see what everybody was doing. Ropes were loosened, and there were still some men in the roof. Then suddenly Mr Cob had hold of them.
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