by Gary Crew
Stan nodded, entranced.
So Augustus sang:
I love to go a-wandering,
Along the mountain track,
And as I go, I love to sing,
My knapsack on my back.
Val-deri, val-dera,
Val-deri,
Val-der-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha
Val-deri, val-dera,
My knapsack on my back.
When he had sung all five verses, including their respective choruses, Augustus took a bow and declared, all smiles, ‘Did you notice how I sang the final chorus an octave higher, for effect?’
Stan had not, but he clapped and grinned energetically. And while it had never been Rosa’s intention to have her protégé infatuate the roustabout, Stan’s obvious delight was a bonus, suggesting possibilities as yet unexploited.
‘Mr Platten?’ Rosa cooed. ‘Stan?’
‘Crikey,’ he whispered as Augustus beamed triumphantly from his box. ‘Crikey!’ And before Rosa knew what he was doing, Stan leapt up to grab the boy, hugging him to his chest.
‘Stan?’ Rosa repeated.
‘Yeah?’ he said, turning to her, misty-eyed.
‘Augustus will be living with me. He has no family. I am going to be his manager.’ This heady notion had just occurred to her, but instantly made sense. Mercifully, Augustus did not hear that he was so recently orphaned. His trousers having begun to slip, he was too busy yanking them up.
‘Yeah?’ Stan gawped. He had been a boy scout, his anthem “The Happy Wanderer”. How did this phenomenon know that?
‘I was wondering,’ Rosa said, pushing her luck, ‘if you would be, well … his godfather, kind of …?’
Images of Hogarth flashed through Stan’s brain. Contrary to what he let on to sympathisers, sincere as they were, he knew there would never be another to match the chimp but here, in this boy thing, Hogie might live again. ‘I could help look after the kid if you want,’ he mumbled, overcome.
‘Look at him,’ Rosa blurted. ‘Abandoned, friendless, yet so gifted. It’s clothes that he needs. Something to perform in. But where would we find them?’
‘There’s that dress suit I had made for Hogarth, my chimp. Very smart, it is. Hogie never wore it. This little chap could have that.’
‘Really?’ Rosa gasped, all the while thinking, Get it, you fool. Give it to me.
Stan went into his wagon, returning with both the suit and hat. It wasn’t a perfect fit, but when Augustus was done up and posed on his box all lah-de-dah, he looked a smash.
‘What will you do with him?’ Stan asked. ‘He’s a beauty.’
‘Not sure yet,’ Rosa confessed.
‘Don’t forget my mother,’ Augustus reminded her. ‘She’ll be here soon.’
Rosa turned her back to him, shaking her frizz and mouthing to Stan, ‘Sad. Very sad.’
Poor dumb Augustus.
Alert to the absence of a mother in the boy’s life, Rosa began to make arrangements for Augustus’s future. There were certain clearly defined stages planned for this process: modifications to her wagon, a cautious introduction of the child to her brothers and the circus folk, then finally, when she had the home front settled, making his talent known to the world.
Rosa had little trouble getting Stan to make the necessary sleeping arrangements for Augustus in her wagon. An extra bed (a fruit box?), solved the sleeping problem and the addition of a curtain to provide a degree of privacy, not that Augustus expressed any concern about such delicacies.
Then came the meeting with Rosa’s brothers, the famous Tumbling Colleanos, who were about as nasty as any Mafiosi the island of Sicily ever produced. Carlo, Claudio and Cristiano had long since booted Rosa out of their wagon to make way for their card games and booze. Independent as she was, Rosa didn’t care, but when it came to securing financial help to back Augustus’s brilliant career, she needed their patronage. Demeaning though it was to admit, the girl had no income, surviving on handouts from her brothers and the good graces of Donny and Moira.
So she dressed Augustus in his finest – the suit minus the top hat – and on the first available Sunday morning, when she knew the brothers would be lounging in the sun sipping coffee, she took him over.
‘Rosa,’ they shouted, all feigned affection and good cheer. ‘Little sister. You come to cook the breakfast for us, yes?’
The girl approached with caution, shoving Augustus in front of her. ‘No,’ she replied, ‘I have come with a proposition. Business, you know.’
‘Business?’ Carlo laughed. ‘Business? What you know about business? You learn bake the bread. You learn the cooking, then we talk business.’
‘I wanted to show you Augustus,’ she said. ‘He is my business from now on. And perhaps yours, if you care to invest.’
The three Colleanos stared. They were much alike: thick black hair swept back from their foreheads to tumble in waves behind their ears, olive skinned, dark eyed, fleshy featured with hairy chests and dressed only in leotards, they exhibited themselves for all to admire, though their little sister was long since disenchanted. Carlo, the eldest, and Claudio, the second, were two tough peas in a pod, but Cristo (as the youngest was called) was a ‘mummy’s boy’, and easier to con.
‘So, you find other midget?’ Carlo sneered. ‘You chuck Grumpy Donny for this one?’
‘Maybe I eat this one for dinner, with the gravy, eh?’ Claudio laughed.
‘Your brains are in your balls,’ Rosa spat. ‘This is Augustus. He’s a great performer. A singer. He could make us all rich.’
‘He sing nice?’ Cristo asked, inspecting the goods.
‘I make him squawk, eh?’ Carlo chuckled, wringing his hands as if throttling a chicken.
‘He sings like an angel,’ Rosa said, drawing the boy to her.
‘What he sing?’ Cristo asked.
Assured as ever, the boy stepped up. ‘You like Caruso?’ he asked, looking from one to the other. When they stared, stupefied, he said, ‘Then I’ll sing Rigoletto, yes?’ And raising his head to overlook their ignorance, he proceeded to tell them who he was:
La donna è mobile
Q ual piuma al vento,
Muta d’accento – e di pensiero.
Sempre un amabile,
Leggiadro viso
In pianto o in riso – è menzognero.
La donna è mobile
Q ual piuma al vento,
Muta d’accento – e di pensiero.
E di pensier!
E di pensier!
‘He sing “Woman is Fickle”. How he know, eh? He bambino,’ Carlo asked.
Rosa covered Augustus’s ears. ‘He knows all right,’ she assured them. ‘His mother sold him for gin.’
‘I buy him for crate of beer,’ Claudio offered, mistaking the mood.
But Cristo heard, and hearing, understood. ‘The man, he fickle too,’ he sighed, and his brothers turned to him, suspicious. ‘Rosa,’ he said, louder, for the sake of the others, ‘you sell boy to us, yes?’
‘No, Cristo,’ she said. ‘I’m not selling him. I’m his manager. But I need money to set him up. I was wondering if you would help?’
Claudio snorted, turning back to his coffee. Carlo chuckled, ‘You fickle too, little sister. You got the temper. We know. Claudio and me no deal with women, except …’ and he turned to Carlo, winking.
‘Rosa,’ Cristo said, leading her away, ‘what help you want? Tell Cristo.’
‘I want Augustus to sing in the big top. I asked Stan Platten to build him a little stage, on wheels you know, that can be pulled centre ring by a pony. What I need is a booking in the circus calendar. A slot where Augustus can be advertised. I need money for that. Posters, advertisements, you know.’
‘How much?’ he asked, wary.
‘A hundred quid.’
‘A hundred quid? We no got that money. You maybe work for that, okay?’
‘Doing what?’
‘We offer you spot in our act, you say no. You shoot through.’
; Rosa laughed. ‘You dressed me in a tutu and asked me to hold the bloody hoop that you dived through. How stupid was that?’
Cristo shrugged. This was true. She wasn’t stage material. Her fat embarrassed; her red hair looked crazy, even to them. They were glad when she quit their act.
‘I tell you,’ Cristo whispered, ensuring that his back was to his brothers, ‘I ask my friend Bertie. Sometime he say yes, if I ask nice.’ But he did not promise, nor did he smile. Bertie Sullivan could be fickle too, being the Boss’s son.
Stan Platten was never happier than when he was in the company of Augustus, and the thought of building a stage for him gave his life purpose.
‘Augie,’ he called as the boy hung about his wagon, ‘come and have a yarn with me.’
Augustus was delighted to oblige.
‘I have met the Tumbling Colleanos,’ he began, taking a seat on an upturned bucket.
‘They’re tough,’ Stan warned. ‘The circus is a tough place. Look what happened to my darlin’.’
‘But Cristo seemed all right,’ the boy said. ‘He took Rosa to one side and spoke to her, promising that he would put in a word for me with the manager’s son. That way I might be given the opportunity to perform.’
‘Then I better get stuck into makin’ that stage for you,’ Stan said, being ignorant of any other reason that Cristo and Bertie might have to talk. ‘So tell me, what did you have in mind?’
‘I think the stage should be mobile,’ Augustus said, ‘and designed to reflect the theme of my performance.’
‘Yeah?’ Stan encouraged, having no idea what this mouthful meant.
‘Is it true that there’s been a war?’ Augustus asked.
‘So they say,’ Stan replied, disconcerted.
‘And that was between …?’
Given that Stan had been preoccupied with Hogie for the past five or six years, he answered, ‘Between us and them,’ and flicked his head back, leading Augustus to believe that the enemy had been entrenched somewhere between his bucket and Stan’s wagon.
‘And we won?’
‘Yeah …’
‘And would “we” be British?’
‘Yeah …’
‘Then I know what I will sing,’ Augustus declared, triumphant.
‘What?’ Stan wondered, being none the wiser.
Augustus shook his head. ‘That I can’t say, not having discussed it with my manager.’
‘With Rosa?’ Stan asked, seeing a light at the end of this intellectual murk.
‘Yes, but there’s one more thing …’
‘Yeah?’
‘Could my stage look like a chariot?’
Stan sighed, finally relieved. ‘It could,’ he assured the boy, and having attended Sunday School before the worship of apes displaced all other gods, an image of the Egyptians chasing the Israelites into the Red Sea flashed before him.
‘Then that is what I want.’
‘How about I make a drawing?’ Stan asked, ‘and next time you’re around I’ll show it to you?’
‘Excellent,’ Augustus declared, slipping from his bucket to the ground. ‘You are a good man, Stan Platten.’
Stan’s dentures flashed in the sun.
While Rosa had seen to it that Augustus was fed, thanks to the long-suffering charity of Moira and Donny, she knew that sooner or later she would have to introduce the boy to the larger circus community who gathered in the mess tent. Given that people were afraid of her (though she had been on her best behaviour since Augustus arrived), and not knowing whose favours she might need, she was worried that the dislike felt for her might be transferred to the boy. After all, one kick in the guts from some circus yobbo would kill him.
The truth was, every time she went to the mess tent the combined power of the folk was turned against her. By some extraordinary conspiratorial collectivity, the moment she appeared, her red hair afire in the light of the uplifted tent flap, the crowd united to push and shove until she found herself at the tail end of the food queue, to be told by Slops the cook, ‘Stew’s orf’ – though there was always a slab of bread and dripping to compensate, all salty and lip licking, which she devoured in the company of Buddha, the hippo, down behind the dunnies.
Given that Cristo might fail, Rosa wondered, having sought out the hippo’s company, what can I do to ease Augustus in? How can I set him up without drawing attention to myself?
But she could think of nothing, and lapsed into that self-indulgent moodiness first perfected when the Colleanos chucked her out of their wagon some years before.
Why does everyone hate me? Nobody even knows what I did to that dirty little ape, and even if they suspected, they couldn’t prove it. Besides, it wasn’t anything they wouldn’t do themselves. Or wanted to do anyway. If they had the guts.
‘Just wait until they cop an eyeful of the kid,’ she muttered, chucking a goolie at the oozy Buddha wallowing in its pool. ‘That’ll make them jealous, that will. That’ll make them really jealous. Because one day they’ll see that I’m his manager. That he’s mine, and they’re just freaks …’
So she paced, whinging and whining until an idea filtered through her brain: to do just that – to let them cop an eyeful of Augustus, all of a sudden. To let him be there, all of him, all at once, minus her – well, for a minute anyway – until he worked his magic. Until he had them in his pocket (so to speak), until they saw what a treasure he was, heard what a treasure he was … ‘He’ll be the saviour of the circus, that’s what!’ she spat as the hippo wallowed. ‘Then they’ll thank me for lifting the game on their tired old acts –their puny Big Atlas and their drippy Rubber Man. Yeah. But how, eh? How?’
A glutinous bubble burst in the hippo’s left nostril.
‘Buddha!’ Rosa shrieked, ‘That’s the answer. To have him pop out. To put him inside something and just like that, have him pop out! What an idea.’
The animal rolled glum eyes, doubtful.
‘But inside what? What could he jump out of? I’d need to put him in beforehand and shoot through. Something that won’t suffocate him. But what?’
And a thought came to her, There is that brass spittoon just inside the tent flap. I only saw old man Sullivan golly in it once. If I could put the kid in that …
So she skipped away – a rare occurrence; not to be repeated – her shabby boots kicking up dust, as the hippo sank, resigned, into its rancid pool.
‘We need to talk,’ she said when she found Augustus loitering outside her wagon. Whooshing him inside, she plonked him down on her bunk.
He sat up, crossed his legs at the ankle, his tiny shoes so pretty, resting the flat of a hand on each knee. ‘What?’ he said, all bright-eyed and expectant.
‘We’ve got to have a natter about how you’re going to meet the rest of the circus people,’ she said, standing in front of him, arms crossed. ‘You have to get out there and sing. We need the money now that your mother’s abandoned you.’
‘Eh?’
‘Never mind,’ she clucked. ‘I don’t have a mother either. There’s no point in whining when you’re an orphan.’
‘But my mother’s alive. And probably my father too. He’s a sea captain. I reckon I’ve seen him. Tall, handsome, in a white uniform, holding a cap with gold braid.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ she fussed, brushing back his golden hair. ‘We’ve all got sob stories, eh.’
‘What?
‘Sob stories.’
‘What’s yours?’
‘Ah,’ she sighed, looking away in an attempt to appear wistful. ‘My brothers took me from my mother years ago.’
‘Why?’
‘Because they wanted to see the world and be famous and she was a toothless peasant who wore a scarf and they hated her.’
‘Well, that explains about her, but why did they take you?’
‘Because they were arrogant enough to believe that since I was a girl I’d cook and sew for them when I grew up.’
‘And?’
‘And nothing. Tha
t’s all you need to know. It’s time I talked to you about what we’re here to discuss.’
‘So we’re going to talk about my singing?’
‘We are. And how I’m going to manage you.’
‘Sure. But before you do, tell me, will I ever see my mother again? Or that sea captain in the white uniform?’
Rosa didn’t much care, but seeing an opportunity, she said, ‘Ah, that is a question only a real manager could answer.’
‘Eh?’
‘Only a real manager. A personal manager. Which I will be for you.’
‘You’ll help me find my father?’
‘I’ll make you a famous singer.’
‘And then my father might find me?’
‘He might hear of you.’
‘And my mother too?’
‘If you do what I tell you, since I’m your manager.’
‘I will!’ he cried, slipping from the bunk and clapping his tiny hands.
Rosa scowled. ‘Well then,’ she declared, ‘the first thing we need to do is introduce you to the circus folk when they have dinner in the mess tent. Now, to do that …’
‘I want to eat with Moira,’ he protested, ‘or with Donny and Bonzer and Bozo. They’re my friends. They …’
‘Shut up! Just shut up!’
His shoulders dropped, his chin dropped, his lip dropped, tears fell mightily.
Rosa could not lose a moment. To give in and hug him would mean defeat. She must rise above him, trample him, dominate him. She had seen such power exercised over horses, the ponies when they were trained. They must be broken. They must be taught who was boss. Like those revolting dogs that hopped in circles (the infamous canine conga), lashed by Edna, their bowler-hatted trainer, spruce in black leather.
‘Stop snivelling!’ Rosa roared. ‘I can’t manage a sniveller!’
‘I wasn’t snivelling,’ he recovered. ‘I was crying. There’s a difference.’
‘Augustus,’ she said, maintaining her scowl, ‘listen to me. Great singers don’t cry. Nor do they snivel – unless the script calls for it. You understand?’
‘Why?’ he said, wiping his nose with the back of his hand.