Chaplin & Company

by Mave Fellowes

  So bloody lonely. Steady, John. Hold steady.

  ‘Was it your parents who signed you up for the course?’

  ‘Yeah. My dad’s waiting in the car round the corner.’ He lifts a hand to fiddle with that metal brace across his teeth.

  ‘So you’ve had some trouble with your parents?’

  John sees Alwyn nodding his head and does the same. He links his fingers over his knees like Alwyn. Keep busy. Keep busy.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘For drinking?’

  ‘And failing exams. And this . . .’ He brushes a sleeve over his shaved head. ‘And this . . .’ He points to the chipped blue enamel John Kettle saw on his nails last time. John Kettle looks hard now at the line where the blue meets the pink, the jagged line.

  ‘How old are you, Chris?’

  ‘Seventeen.’

  Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.

  ‘So old enough to do whatever you like with nail varnish.’

  ‘Yeah but that’s not the point is it?’ His voice has gone surly and quiet.

  ‘What is the point?’

  ‘It’s a sign, isn’t it? Of something else.’

  Just bloody desperately lonely.

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ said Alwyn. ‘A sign of what?’

  Chris looks down. His trainers stop moving and rest on the rug. ‘My parents think this is a reform group. A Christian group. They think I’m being fixed.’

  God Squad, God Squad, that’s what Frankie used to call them. Had a rhyme – a rhyme for everything, Frankie: There was a young girl from Stadricka, whose knickers could flicker a vicar’s ticker.

  ‘Why do you need to be fixed? The drinking?’

  ‘It’s what I did when I was drunk.’

  Oh, we used to drink, we used to get so drunk. Staggering along the docks, gripping shoulders, yelling out our songs.

  ‘Chris?’

  ‘I fucked up, didn’t I? I got drunk and had a go at someone.’

  ‘Had a go?’

  Just hold on Submariner Kettle. Hold on till you get out. There is such a hotness, such a grip in his throat.

  ‘Made a pass. Made a move.’

  ‘Isn’t that what seventeen-year-olds do?’

  There was a young girl from Stadricka, there was a young girl from Stadricka.

  The lad looks down and pulls his hands back into his sleeves. ‘Yeah, but it was a guy. So.’

  A door swings open to a night many years ago. John has shored his whole life up against it since, just to keep it shut. Now he sees the way this boy can’t look up, the way he’s hiding himself in the folds of his clothes, the shoulders curved in with shame, and he jerks his arm out to take the poor lad’s shoulder, he grabs it, grips it with his fingers, rocks it, and the boy looks up, stunned like an animal braced to run, but John grips harder and pulls the shoulder back proud and tells him, the words bumping over the memory stuck in his throat, over the regrets, all the regrets, over the sobs:

  ‘You didn’t do anything wrong, son. You didn’t do anything wrong.’

  TWENTY-THREE

  It is the afternoon of the first Saturday in September. Odeline is sitting on a bench inside a huge red and yellow panelled tent in a field outside Luton. Around her the audience are noisy and jostling, children are squirming on parents’ laps, people are edging along the rows of benches to go to the portable toilets outside or to fetch ice creams. None of this is apparent to Odeline, who has her face turned upwards in wonder towards the roof of the tent. A man in a diamond suit and a bowler hat is standing on a platform at the end of a wire which connects the two poles of the big top, his arms held out. He slides an enormous shoe along the wire. Wobbling, he brings his other shoe around in an exaggerated arch through the air, and places it ahead of the first. This causes the wire to wobble violently from left to right. Odeline whips her hands to her mouth. The man freezes and the wobbling subsides. He steps back and Odeline’s shoulders drop – he is not going to go. But he leans backwards and takes a cane from the ladder at the back of the great pole. He holds it out horizontally. And then walks forward again, this time more sure of himself, swinging his shoes around each other with a kind of rhythm.

  From somewhere an accordion begins to play and his walk becomes a dance – he is stepping forward and back in time to the tune. He flips the cane upright and throws his bowler hat on the top, twirling it around as he turns to face the audience, and his face breaks into a grin. The audience cheer and clap but these are all distant sounds to Odeline, who is looking into the black diamond eyes of the man on the wire. His hair is speckled with grey and frames his face, which is painted white and heavily creased as he smiles. And it seems he is looking straight back at her. And those eyes, the black painted diamonds, are twinkling at her, and as they twinkle they seem to expand and they are all she can see. It is as if she has dived into the night sky and is falling through it. The rest of the audience are tiny applauding figures, left far behind.

  As he turns to walk back to the ladder, Odeline stands up and pushes past the other people on the benches to get to the aisle and then runs to the exit. She runs round to the back of the big top, ducking under the guy ropes. She sees a metal fence and squeezes through a gap in it. There are a cluster of caravans and cages around the tent’s stage entrance. She weaves through them and pulls back the tent canvas just as Odelin the Clown is taking his exit bow, backing through the red curtain. The audience’s applause follows him out. He stands up and flips his bowler back on. He steps carefully out of the enormous shoes and flicks them to one side with his foot. And then turns around to see her.

  ‘Hello,’ she says. ‘I am Odeline.’

  She is dressed in her complete outfit, including waistcoat, wing-collar shirt, braces and tailcoat, despite the warmth of the day. Her shirt has been freshly laundered and her suit dry-cleaned. Her shoes are blacked and buffed and she is wearing her bowler hat, like him. A mauve flower droops from her breast pocket. She took the window seat on the coach to Luton this morning and it has wilted in the sun.

  He comes towards her, holding out both his hands, which are heavily jewelled and glint like the glitter on his harlequin suit. He is not a tall man: the top of his bowler is about level with her nose. But he is lithe, as she has expected. He walks weightlessly and with the grace of a classical puppet, lifted gently by strings. He is coming towards her, and his face is lined and his eyes are dancing. He is holding out both his hands and she lifts hers to meet them. He takes her hands and squeezes. She feels the stones and the sharp settings of his rings pressing into her fingers. When she looks down she sees that their hands are the same colour, pale brown, and the same shape; they have the same slender fingers. But where her hands are smooth, his are lined, a well-used version of her own. She thinks of her mother’s hands, which were large and freckled and pink as raw sausages. So ungainly compared to the elegant butterscotch fingers that are holding hers now.

  ‘Hello, my dear,’ he says, ‘I am so happy you have come.’

  ‘Hello,’ she says again, feeling overwhelmed. Her breath is coming in shallow gulps. She remembers to keep her mouth small so as not to ruin the neatness of her face by showing her teeth.

  ‘Did you enjoy the show?’ He lifts an eyebrow and his eyes laugh as he speaks.

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ she says, and is knocked off balance by a pair of midgets in sultan costumes who run past and tumble through the red curtain. She hears a cheer go up from the audience.

  ‘Come,’ says Odelin the Clown, and motions towards the caravans outside. As they walk out of the tent he clasps his hands behind his back. He treads carefully as he walks. There is something that surrounds him, a charged aura that is more than the glitter of his suit. Odeline is in the presence of greatness.

  ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘it was remarkable to hear of you, to receive your letter. And amazing that you have followed in my footsteps despite never knowing of my existence. The artist’s gene must be a strong one, oui?’ He looks up to wink at her.

  ‘
Yes,’ she says, feeling short of breath. ‘I would love to show you what I have been working on . . .’

  ‘Bien sur, you must, you must.’

  ‘My prop box! I left it at my seat.’

  He stops and gestures back towards the big top, ‘Off you run, my dear. Come and find me when you are ready. My home is the green caravan at the edge of the field. Come and find me.’

  Odeline walks quickly around the big top. The circus is finished and the audience are spilling across the field towards the stalls. She goes to the tent’s main entrance but is repeatedly forced backwards by the flood of people. Children eating ice creams barge past her and she backs out to make sure they don’t smear her suit. She holds on to her moneybelt, which is strapped tightly around her waist. Crowds equal pickpockets.

  When the bulk of the audience are out she nips through the entrance and goes back to her seat. Her prop box is standing there next to the bench – faithful prop box – with a ziplock plastic bag untouched on top. Inside the bag is a cream cheese and tomato panini, a fizzy drink and three chocolate cookies wrapped in cling film. Odeline had been on deck this morning polishing her shoes when Vera appeared on the towpath with the bag in her hand.

  ‘For you, Odi. You might not get a chance to find something to eat today.’

  ‘Oh,’ Odeline had said, straightening, with one hand inside a shoe, the other holding the brush. ‘I was going to take some cereal bars.’

  ‘Well, take this too. It can fill you up better.’

  ‘Okay.’ Odeline put the brush down and accepted the bag. She couldn’t think of any questions to ask. Vera was wearing the shellsuit top with the floral skirt, socks and trainers. A variation on the same outfit. ‘If I don’t join the circus straight away, I’ll be back soon to collect my things.’

  ‘I am keeping a look out for your boat.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Odeline, and didn’t know what should come next. ‘Lie low!’ she tried, but it sounded empty, like something John Kettle might say.

  Vera smiled. ‘I can do that.’

  ‘Goodbye then.’

  ‘Goodbye, Odi. I hope it goes well with your father.’

  Vera walked away, rocking from side to side in her heavy, lumbering way, and Odeline wondered when she would see her again. As Vera’s squat figure went into the shadow of the bridge, Odeline felt like calling out. She opened her mouth, but then shut it again, she didn’t know what she might say. She twisted back down, picked up the brush and carried on polishing the toe of her shoe, pressing harder now as she pushed the brush from left to right.

  As she walks back through the caravans with her box, the ziplock plastic bag looped around the handle, she tells herself to observe and remember all the things she is seeing. All the colours and the sounds of people in their costumes milling around the back of the tent. Acrobats are sitting half out of their leotards in the sun, clowns are washing the paint off their faces in buckets by the steps of caravans. A man is throwing handfuls of feed into a cage of flapping white geese. No one takes any notice of her. Some time in the future she will be asked about this day, this great reunion. Or perhaps she will write it all down herself in an autobiography.

  She finds the green caravan, large and ornate and slightly set back from all the others. There are green-painted steps leading up to the door, which has a bowler hat hanging from the handle and a window in the shape of an O. This is where she belongs. She pulls her prop box up to the bottom of the steps, takes off her own bowler hat, reaches up and knocks on the door.

  ‘I am disrobing,’ comes a sing-song voice from inside.

  ‘Sorry. It’s me, Odeline.’

  ‘Take a seat, my dear, I will be out in just two minutes.’

  Odeline looks around her. There is nowhere to sit – the steps are too narrow – just grass which is grubby with cigarette stubs. She tips the prop box on to its back and drops down on it, resting the bowler hat on the corner. She can’t decide the best way to appear when he comes out. She tries a nonchalant pose with her legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, hands in her trouser pockets. But actually her legs then just look too long; they stretch right across the patch of grass in front of the steps like a barrier. She brings her feet back and leans forward on her knees in a pensive pose, cupping the sides of her face. But the lowness of the prop box makes her knees stick up like a squatting frog. She crosses her legs at the thigh and clasps her hands around her knees, but this pose feels too feminine, too debutante. She pushes herself up and tries to bring a foot up to sit on, but clips the edge of her brogue on the catch of the prop box, and tips backwards, hitting the ground hard and with some bewilderment. As she scrabbles, her father comes out of the caravan door and closes it behind him.

  ‘I see you have some of the clown in you,’ he says. He is wearing a collarless green shirt with red embroidery, loose striped trousers and green velvet slippers. A Moroccan ensemble, thinks Odeline. His face is wiped clean of its clown make-up and is beautiful. Brown skin sun-weathered, with high cheekbones and a prominent mouth drawing back to reveal very white teeth. His eyes are as round and glittering as planets. They are deep-set under a solid brow, which curves back into a long forehead, framed by that thick arch of hair which spirals out in black and grey corkscrews, each tuft twisted into a point at the end. They are like the curling flames around the face of the sun, she decides: Odeline has never seen such hair.

  She tucks her tailcoat under her and finds an unlittered patch of grass to sit on, leaning back against the prop box with her knees together and her hands clasped around them. Her father sits his small frame on the top step of the caravan and looks down at her.

  ‘We have much to talk about,’ he says. ‘Odeline.’ His accent pronounces her name differently: Oh-dey-line. ‘Odeline, I am truly sorry to hear of your mother’s passing. She was a very kind woman. Tell me, when did she pass?’

  ‘Um, on June the twenty-third,’ says Odeline. She doesn’t really want to talk about her mother, at least not about this aspect. She wants to hear about the great love affair that led to her conception.

  ‘At home?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes,’ says Odeline.

  ‘So she stayed in Arundel all those years, in that lovely house?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Odeline. And then, to move the conversation on: ‘After she died I found my birth certificate, and the picture of you from the Cirque Maroc.’

  Her father’s eyes soften. ‘She came every day. Every day she would be there to collect me and take me home. You must understand what that meant, to me at that time. I was a penniless artist. I had learned my tricks in the main square in Marrakech. That is where I learned to entertain. I wore bells on my ankles and performed acrobatics in the dust. I drew large circles of people, Odeline. I shook a tin around the audience afterwards, most people walked away. It was my dream to be picked up by the Cirque, but they paid nothing. They fed us nothing. We had to work and do all the menial jobs, just for one meal a day. Cleaning the tent, slopping out the animals. It was a hard beginning. But,’ he shrugs, ‘it taught me to work hard.’

  Odeline nods, she is hooked on his words. These are the sort of exotic origins she always knew she had.

  ‘Now we take care of everybody in the Cirque,’ he continues. ‘And the artists are expected to work hard at their acts – we have others to take care of the menial workings. Like Luis.’ He gestures past Odeline to a large-bellied man in a dirty vest, shorts and flip-flops, who is carrying a mop and bucket towards the big top. ‘The Cirque has always been a family, but now we take care of our children. It is I who have been largely responsible for this change. Of course, it is more expensive like this, but also more in the spirit of artistry, more . . . démocratique.’

  Odeline nods, it seems like a good idea. Although circus work for one meal a day does hold a certain romance.

  Her father sighs and makes a comedy frown. ‘Yes, it is expensive.’ Odeline smiles with delight at this clowning, such an expressive face.

  �
�So when your mother met me, I was this thin –’ he holds his thumb and forefinger together – ‘with no energy to develop my art, I was in a state of exhaustion. Surviving on only love, for the art of the circus. This was my only sustenance. Your mother saved me. She took me in, she fed me. She was kind to me.’ He pauses. ‘I think, in her silent way, she understood me.’

  This is a wonderful story. But Odeline still cannot imagine these two people, her mother and father, together. She cannot see that big, pink-skinned, large-limbed woman next to this small, stylish, dynamic man. Her mother would not even fit on the caravan step. Her mother had a heaviness, a width, a vacuity – she cannot be cast in the role of romantic heroine. But perhaps she looked different then, thinks Odeline. Perhaps she was lighter and had more subtlety in her movements. She must have been. Because the only formation Odeline can imagine her parents in otherwise is her neat little father sitting on her mother’s big lap, plain ventriloquist and colourful dummy. She blank-faced, he animated.

  Odeline’s father tips his head to the side and brings his fingers together carefully. ‘Did your mother leave me anything, when she passed? A bequeathment, a message, anything?’

  ‘Um, no.’

  He tips his head further, and says quietly, enticingly, ‘I thought that was why you might have been contacting me?’

  Odeline doesn’t know what to say. His eyes are twinkling and it feels as though he might not believe her.

  ‘So, what has happened to that lovely house? Are you living there all alone?’ He makes another sad clown face, his bottom lip stuck out.

  ‘No,’ says Odeline. ‘I live on a narrowboat on the Grand Union Canal at Little Venice. I chose it for its name, it’s called Chaplin and Company.’

  ‘So the house is . . . empty?’

  ‘Sold,’ says Odeline. ‘Mother left instructions for me to sell it.’

  He pauses as if to think this over. And then his mouth stretches into a smile, wide lips and white teeth.

  ‘And what are you going to do with all that money, my dear girl?’