CHAPTER 53
Lulubelle had been accepted for the TV show about special children. The researchers had been unanimous in their choice, the letter said, and she was the first to be selected, so they were unable to tell her yet about the other children who would share the programme. A date and time were given for her to attend the recording of the show, which would be televised in a few months.
She was excited. Things were moving. When the letter came, her first impulse was to run and show Arto and Marisa and tell them the good news. It was only when she opened the door of the caravan that she remembered the bad news and closed the door again. Lucinda was sleeping. She sat on the floor cross-legged, her thinking position. There would probably be a few people in the Big Top; there were always a dedicated few, rehearsing and refining their acts, early in the morning. And there would be signs of life in a number of caravans: breakfast cooking, people leaving the site to fetch newspapers or cigarettes, arguments starting. From dawn till late at night, there was always some activity around the circus camp; that was what Lulubelle was used to and what she liked.
But it didn't mean there was always someone around to keep an eye on the children. Sometimes it meant there were so many people milling around, so much noise and activity, that any stranger could pass unnoticed and any sound could be taken for granted - even screaming. People expected to hear screaming, in a fairground. Even after the rides stopped and the lights went down, it wasn't an unusual sound.
She would have to go out this morning; there were classes to go to and she had bunked off yesterday, for her audition. Lulubelle felt that lessons, on the whole, were a waste of time. Even with a tutor coming to the site, there seemed little continuity between what the children learned one week and what they studied the next, and attending local schools was even worse. Lulubelle could only read and write because the ringmaster’s daughter at the circus Lucinda had worked for before Bepponi's and Mannfield's had taught her.
But there you were: it was the law that children had to go through the motions, at least, of being educated in something or other, she thought, so she didn't have any choice. All the important things, like performing, doing publicity parades, rehearsing and trying out new routines, had to be fitted in around non-essentials like kings and queens and wars and maps and calculating the areas of things. Maybe when she was older she would see the point of it all but none of the adults around her seemed to have found it relevant to them.
She stood up and parted the curtains slightly and peered out. There was no one around she didn't recognize. She sat down again. There was no need to go out just yet. If she left it another half-hour, one of the other kids might call for her. It was not that she was scared, she told herself; just that sometimes a girl had to look out for herself.
She had felt protected before, when they worked for Bepponi's. It never occurred to her to look outside the door before she went tumbling out, running to join the other kids the moment she woke up. It was only after that night that she had become cautious: the night when everything went wrong.
She told herself she must think about it now. Only by facing up to it squarely, examining what had gone wrong, how and where, could she make sure it never happened again. She must plan a strategy and work out where her sources of safety were.
Lucinda was not a source of protection. Lulubelle didn't want to admit that, even to herself. It was frightening and it hurt. But there was no point in pretending, because Lucinda had been there that time, asleep inside the caravan, and she hadn't woken up and come running, not even when Lulubelle had screamed with all her voice.
It had only happened because of Lucinda anyway - or that was how Lulubelle saw it. Lucinda disagreed. It had been nothing to do with her, she said. Lulubelle had jumped to conclusions; that's what had caused it.
She had simply had a bad headache, said Lucinda: one of her migraines. And she had happened to mention to Lulubelle, just casually, with no intention for her to do anything, that if Gilby came round this evening she couldn't cope with him and that Gilby wasn't one to take no for an answer.
It was not her fault, said Lucinda, that Lulubelle had taken it on herself to sit on the caravan steps all evening waiting to tell Gilby that her mother wasn't well and he wasn't to go bothering her. She hadn't asked Lulubelle to do it. Nor was it her fault that Lulubelle didn't know who Gilby was. That was to Lucinda's credit, if anything. She knew how to be discreet, with a young daughter.
She knew when to send Lulubelle to share a friend's bunk in another caravan and not come home that night, or when to wait till Lulubelle was asleep, tucked safely under the bedclothes, before she brought someone back with her for the evening. And often as not, the someone was gone before Lulubelle got up in the morning. No one could accuse her of being an uncaring mother, she said.
So it wasn't her fault, when the stranger had come along and stopped to talk to the little blonde nine-year old sitting all alone on the caravan steps and asked where her mother was, that Lulubelle had told him her mother was fast asleep, out for the count, and couldn't be woken up for any reason.
She even had the right to feel offended that her small daughter had assumed this strange character was one of her mother's friends. By all accounts, he was very far from being her type. A nylon padded jacket, worn with a different coloured anorak hood? Torn trainers? Do me a favour! It was plain insulting to think that this could have been Gilby, just because he asked where her mother was. And what was to stop Lulubelle coming in to ask Lucinda who he was? She wouldn't have bitten her head off, and even if she had, it was preferable to staying out there, wasn't it? Better than getting dragged into the bushes and ...
Lucinda never let the conversation go further than this. It was over, she told Lulubelle. It was horrible; she was sorry it had happened but there was no point going over and over it. Put it behind you, she told her. It won't ruin your life if you don't let it. Lots of bad things have happened to me, said Lucinda, but I don't dwell on the past, me; I get on with my life. What's done is done.
That was all very well, Lulubelle thought, if the past would stay in the past, nice and neat and obedient. But it had a habit of intruding on the present, either in waking thoughts and sudden fears or in horrendous nightmares or even - as seemed to be happening now - by repeating itself in reality.
The man who had held her down with his foot while he swirled his jacket around his head and claimed to be Count Dracula had not stayed in the past where he belonged - among the memories of another circus, another time of Lulubelle's life - but had trespassed into her life at Mannfield's now and was threatening her present peace of mind and possibly her chances of a real future.
Did he know she was here or was it coincidence that he had turned up? Was he a follower of circuses, as some people were, or a predator of young girls, or was he obsessed with her, Lulubelle, personally, and determined to find her wherever she was, at any time in her life?
Genius Page 53