Odeline takes a breath and then tells him what she has never told anyone, not even Vera.
‘Well, before I knew about you, my plan was to get some experience performing here, in England, to widen my repertoire and also to experience a freer life, a nomadic lifestyle. I was going to start in London. And then I was going to move to Paris and live in a loft apartment with wooden floors and a high ceiling that echoes. I thought I’d keep it completely empty as a rehearsal space, with just a huge mirrored wall and shelves for my props. And I was going to study at the Ecole de Mime. I wanted to see the Moulin Rouge and Toulouse-Lautrec’s paintings of La Goulue. And walk across the bridges as the sun goes down. I thought I could find other artists and form a troupe. We would devise sequences and perform them in theatres, proper theatres. We would only grant interviews to publications we respect. But that was before I knew about you.’
She pauses. Her father lifts up his hands in mock astonishment. ‘Mon Dieu! What grand plans, for one so young.’ And then leans forward to whisper, ‘I’ve always found Paris a little overrated! Well,’ he continues, ‘enough of this chatter. Would you like to have a guided tour of the Cirque Maroc?’ He stands up and pads down the steps, offering Odeline his arm.
‘Shall I leave my prop box here?’
‘Yes, yes, it will be fine.’
‘Can I show you some sequences from my repertoire after the tour? Some of the things I’ve been working on.’
‘Absolutely.’ He squeezes her hand. ‘I can’t wait to see it.’
They walk arm in arm towards the big top across the threadbare and sunbleached grass, past caravans, Portaloos and open-air washing facilities. Her father walks slowly beside her and it feels as though they are making a stately procession – there is much activity with people carrying things back and forth, but everyone stops to nod to him before they cross his path. ‘Monsieur,’ they say, before moving on with their crates or cardboard boxes or armfuls of costumes. ‘Maestro.’ He nods his head slowly back. As Odeline and her father walk, she imagines a circle of shimmering gold around them.
‘Tonight is our last performance here,’ he explains. ‘Tomorrow morning we are on the road again. You must stay, if you like, for the party tonight. Would you like to?’
Odeline pumps her head up and down. She would like to very much. They come to a square white tent at the back of the big top and her father pulls a flap of plastic back to let her in. ‘This is our prop box,’ he says, ‘la Costumerie.’ Odeline ducks her head under and then tries to straighten but the canvas roof is too low, and, she notices, rather grubby. She tilts her head to one side so as not to let it touch her hat.
‘So, my dear, you are one of the fortunate few to be granted a look behind the red curtain.’ In front of them are rows of clothes on metal rails, colourful, jumbled, jostling. Odeline spots the red and yellow diamonds of a harlequin suit, the gold ensembles of the acrobats, and a ringmaster’s scarlet tailcoat. ‘We don’t have a ringmaster any more,’ says her father. ‘The concept is outdated, un-démocratique. But we keep the outfit as part of the collection.’ She follows her father down a gap between two rails. They both have to walk sideways so as not to knock the hangers. ‘These are costumes from throughout the history of the Cirque Maroc. There will be some here from your mother’s time.’
Odeline is awestruck at the number of outfits in here. On each rail there are a hundred different colours and textures crammed together. Sequin, lycra, leather, felt, frill: she lets her hand run along them as she walks along. She imagines the creative possibilities opened up by having access to even one of these costumes. All the improvisations she could work on, so many new ideas.
She can’t help but notice, though, that it is musty in here, as if these clothes haven’t been washed. And that some of the costumes are stained and threadbare around the neck. It smells more and more stale as they move deeper into the tent. At the end of one rail they come to a huge plastic crate – this area gives off a particularly sharp odour. Odeline brings her shirt cuff to her nose and breathes through it. In front of her is an enormous pyramid of shoes: clown’s brogues, glittering heels, a ringmaster’s patent pumps, flat leather slippers in every colour, some turned up with embroidery and bells at the toes. She looks down at her brogues. Even though polished, they look tired and uninspiring. The leather is cracking across the creases, and peeling to grey. She would like to swap her old shoes with any of the pairs from the crate and see where they took her.
She follows her father towards the far end of the tent, which is less musty. There is a faint smell of cigarettes, though, and a breeze coming in from an opening in the canvas. ‘We have several costumières who work with us,’ he explains, ‘they mend the outfits, and look after them when we are on the road.’ He points to a white plastic chair and a table in the corner of the tent, with a sewing machine next to a pile of clothes. A can of Lilt sits on a magazine next to the sewing machine, with a packet of cigarettes.
‘Marie is our chief costumière . . . She should be here?’ He taps the table with two fingers. ‘Marie?’ he calls, in a sing-song voice. ‘Where are you?’ He turns and flashes a smile at Odeline. ‘Perhaps outside,’ he whispers. He lifts back the canvas flap and Odeline sees a woman squatted on a crate outside, sucking on a cigarette. She has tight black jeans with studs down the side of the leg, and spiky yellow hair which is dark at the roots. Odeline wonders if this is a punk rocker. When she sees Odeline’s father she jumps up and flicks the cigarette on to the ground, stamping it into the grass with the toe of her trainer.
‘Sorry, sir,’ she says, in rounded Irish vowels, ‘just a quick burn.’
Odeline’s father bows his head slowly and smiles, opening the flap of the tent wider to let her back in. ‘Sorry, sir,’ she says again as she nips past them to her seat. She pulls the top garment from the pile of clothes and pushes it under the needle of the machine.
‘Marie makes sure we are all properly dressed when we come through the red curtain. It is important work. Each artist used to have responsibility for their own costume, but now, with Marie and her team, we all have more time to give to rehearsal. So, it is more expensive for the Cirque to have hired the costumières but, I think, it has improved the quality of our performance.’ He brings his thumb and forefinger together: ‘We are sharper now.’
‘Yes,’ says Odeline. This makes sense to her, although, personally, she would not want anybody else handling her performance outfit. Or for it to be kept in a communal tent with everyone else’s. Getting smelly.
‘You must come and see our souvenir stalls,’ says Odeline’s father, leading her out of the tent. They walk around the side of the big top, past a pair of musclemen in black nylon shorts who are juggling skittles between each other. ‘You see, more time for rehearsal.’
He leads her towards the circus entrance, a large gate at the far end of the field. The arced signs – ‘CIRQUE MAROC! CIRQUE EXTRAORDINAIRE!’ – are weathered, the blue has faded, the gold flattened to yellow. Immediately before this is a cluster of caravans with striped awnings and open sides. The first one they pass has a plastic pond inside, numbered rubber ducks floating on the surface and small fishing nets propped against it. On the back wall are computer games in blue, pink and gold packaging. ‘We find we have to have some of these fairground-style attractions,’ says Odeline’s father, ‘just to help with funds. It is not authentic circus entertainment,’ he shrugs, ‘but we have to adapt to the modern audience.’
The next caravan has a newer Cirque Maroc sign painted in old circus script. There are juggling balls and mini big tops for sale, and small harlequin dolls which Odeline realises are models of her father, with bowler hats and a red and yellow diamond suit with an O on the front. Her father picks one up. ‘Perhaps you would like one of these, as a souvenir?’
He hands it to the stall keeper, a boy with a shaven head. ‘Nineteen pounds ninety-nine,’ says the boy. ‘Do you want a bag?’
‘No, thank you,’ says Odeline, a
nd untucks her shirt to access the moneybelt underneath. In the second compartment there is £100 in various denominations. She takes out a twenty-pound note and hands it over. It is more than she has spent in one go since buying her coach ticket to London. The boy gives her the doll and the one penny change, which she zips back into her moneybelt.
‘Mon Dieu!’ says her father, looking at the clock at the back of the stall with mock alarm. ‘It is so late! I must prepare for tonight’s performance. Only one hour!’
‘When would be a good time to show you some of my repertoire?’ says Odeline. ‘Some of the things I’ve been working on.’
‘Of course, chérie, there will be plenty of time later for that. I cannot wait to see it. But now I must go to prepare. Please, feel free, continue looking around the stalls. I’m sure there will be so many things you will like. And then maybe you can take your seat in the audience. Just give my name and they will give you the best seat in the house!’ He takes her fingers and kisses them. Once more, she feels the cold edges of his rings pressing the palm of her hand. He looks up and winks at her before spinning on his toes and walking back to the tent. Odeline puts the doll in her pocket and then walks along the stalls. A few circus-goers – parents with children, couples – are still here wandering in and out of them, picking up items. She keeps a safe distance. She doesn’t want to be persuaded into buying anything else.
Further along there is a stall called Hemptastic! selling clothes made from organic materials. The folk shirt that Odeline’s father was wearing is here in various colours, and the striped trousers. The stallholder, a woman with long grey hair who is getting customers to sniff soaps from the display, is wearing a similar outfit. So they are not from Morocco. There is a rack with leather sandals in different styles. Some have straps over the toe, others around the ankle. Odeline goes closer to look at them. She thinks of Vera and how much cooler these would be for her feet than those hot trainers. What size would Vera be? She picks one sandal up but puts it back down when she sees the price. She doesn’t know if she’ll be going back to Vera again anyway.
She checks her fob watch. Half past five. She should probably go and take her position for the next performance, just to make sure she does get the best seat. There’s a sudden rumble in her stomach. She realises she has left her picnic with the prop box. She buys a chocolate bar from the ice cream stall. It is double the price of a chocolate bar in London.
Ten minutes later she is sitting in the second row of benches in the big top, directly opposite the red curtain. Perfect. Around her the benches are empty of people but dotted with cans and sweet wrappings from the last audience. Perhaps it is because the sun has gone in, but the roof of the big top looks dull. The yellow sections are more of a mustard colour, and have grimy lines along the folds. She is close enough to the ring to see that its sandy floor is in fact mud with sand sprinkled over the top.
She feels a discomfort in her belly, as if the chocolate bar she’s just eaten had something wrong with it. She tries to quieten her mind and follow the sensation. For some reason it leads her back to the computer games in the stall by the gate, and what her father said about having to adapt to the modern audience. Her stomach twinges again and she shifts around on the bench. There is an uncomfortable image in her head: a page of the Cirque Maroc’s accounts, with a full column of outgoings, requiring more incomings. Odeline has always pictured her ideal balance book as an almost empty page, with minimal outgoings meaning she could be less dependent on incomings, and whatever cash came in could be moved straight to the profit column. Her mother’s only outgoings were food, VHS tapes for recording her weekend films and educational items for Odeline. But perhaps this idea of self-sufficiency is naive. Why should her mother have it right? Her father, with his wisdom and years of experience in the artistic world, is surely more enlightened. And he hadn’t seemed impressed by her Paris plan. Perhaps it is just not possible to live the way she has envisaged, needing little, spending little, maintaining her boundaries. Perhaps she will have to change and adapt like the Cirque Maroc. Perhaps, if she joins them, she will have to compromise some of her ideals as well?
TWENTY-FOUR
She is sitting on the ground, facing away from him. He can make out her figure in the dark from about fifty yards away. There is a gap in the houses on the opposite bank where a streetlamp shines through, weakly yellow – otherwise this section of canal is pitch black, invisible to the grid of windows in the looming tower block behind. He wouldn’t usually walk this far up the path – John must be two miles from home now – but he’s kept his word: he’s been looking for her, and now he’s found her. He can see her legs in the chef’s trousers splayed out in front of her, the snaffled shoes pointing outwards – the hands of a clock at ten to two. She is wearing a red football shirt. As he gets closer he reads the white lettering across the back: ‘GIGGS’. The grey beret of hair is nodding back and forth. A figure is crouched beside her. John Kettle sees a white hand on her shoulder, a patterned arm, a blue-black shoulder. It is Ridley, in vest and shorts, bowing his head down to Mary’s.
As John Kettle gets to them, Ridley looks up. ‘I think she’s been attacked. She won’t say.’
‘Bloody hell.’ John plucks the baggy cigarette out of his mouth and chucks it into the water, rushing to bend down in front of Mary. Her head is hanging forward now. ‘What happened, Mary? Did someone hurt you?’ He looks up to Ridley.
‘I found her like this about half an hour ago. Can’t get anything out of her.’ Ridley picks up an empty bottle from the ground next to his foot and shows it to John. Brandy. A red-shirted arm comes out and takes the bottle, and Mary throws her head back with the mouth of it pressed to her lips. The arm sinks back into her lap when she realises it’s empty.
‘Hello, Warden,’ she says, lips flattening against her tombstone teeth as they stretch open. There is a shining swell below her right eye, which is puffy and almost closed. The eyebrow is crusted black and purple.
‘Bloody hell. Bloody hell. What is this?’ John spins around to Ridley. ‘Who did this?’
‘She says she can’t remember.’
‘She says she never can,’ says Mary, breathing brandy. ‘She has the memory of a fish.’
John gets on to his knees, looks again at the eye. There is whiteish gunk between the lids. It isn’t a fresh wound. ‘When did this happen, Mary?’
‘If I had to hazard a guess, I should say it happened on a Thursday.’
‘I’ve been looking for you since Thursday. You didn’t come to the group.’
‘I was making a journey of awareness,’ she says, rattling the bottle at him. Her head flops forward again.
Ridley says, ‘I think we need to see to her eye, but I didn’t want to leave her alone. And she wouldn’t move.’
‘She would not be moved,’ says Mary into her chest. ‘She has found her resting place.’ The arm extends again and flaps around for something out of reach.
‘I’m moored up at Kensal but I could run and get something to clean it up with,’ says Ridley. ‘If you stayed with her. Won’t take long.’
John nods, looking at the bony ankles jutting out of the chef’s trousers, skin scaly dry.
Ridley stands up. ‘She wouldn’t say what else they did. But the trolley’s been kicked about, definitely.’ He points behind him and John can see the trolley sitting crookedly in the undergrowth. It looks like a wheel is missing and the metal caging along the sides is bent. The front has given way entirely, crumpled.
‘Write-off!’ says Mary.
‘I’ll keep an eye.’
Ridley jogs off and John bends down.
‘I’ll stay here and keep an eye on you, Mary,’ he says loudly.
‘Thank God for that.’ Mary raises her bottle. ‘The blind leading the blind. I’ll keep my eye on you as well. I’ve only got one left!’
‘Your eye will be all right,’ says John, loudly again. ‘Ridley’s off to get something for it. It’ll clear up in no time.’
‘He is a nice young man,’ says Mary. ‘Maybe I could get a patch.’ She puts the bottle down and tries to twist round on to her side. ‘Bedtime for the old girl.’ But her hand fails to support her weight and she hits the towpath with her shoulder. ‘I’m very tired,’ she says.
‘Stay where you are, Mary,’ John Kettle says. ‘I’ll make your bed up.’ He goes over to the trolley under the trees. The back wheel is missing so he lifts up that corner to wheel it over. Stuffed into the end of the trolley are the tennis racket covers. He sees there’s a bench in the darkness to his left. John pulls out the racket covers and lays them along the bench, as he has seen Mary do many a time. Then he lifts out the pillow and the burgundy towel, laying the towel over the racket covers and putting the pillow at the head of the bench. The duvet is underneath some magazines, the cream mackintosh and a knot of black wires, so he stacks these things at one end of the trolley and tugs the duvet till he’s got it out. Then he drapes it over the trolley handle and bends down next to Mary. He pushes his arm through her elbow. ‘Right, lass, you ready?’
‘What’s happening?’ she says, her eyes closed.
‘Heave!’ He pulls her up until she’s sitting on her haunches. She balances there, teetering slightly. He takes a breath and smells the sharp, sweet alcohol, the low stench of her body. Then hooks his hands under the arms of the football shirt – ‘One, two, three, heave!’ – and lifts her up to sit on the bench.
She plants her feet apart on the towpath for stability. ‘Don’t break your back,’ she says, chin in her chest again. ‘The old girl weighs a ton.’
‘That’s all my lifting done. You just lie down now. Sleep it off.’
She folds on to her side and he picks her legs off the ground, laying them along the towel. He lifts the duvet off the trolley and places it over her. Tweaks the pillow down under her head. And waits for Ridley to come back with the stuff for her eye.
Chaplin & Company Page 22