by Bruce, Leo
I found the village, when I reached it, to be small and almost indistinguishable from the other villages we had been stopping at for the last few days. It was built around a crossing of two narrow roads, none of which went to anywhere particularly important, but led eventually to other villages such as this one. As the street entered between the houses it grew far narrower than it had been in the open country, but there was no traffic other than my car, so I had no chance of observing the constriction which would be inevitable when the main body of the circus reached it later in the morning. Every other shop window, and every pub, displayed the bright yellow bill of Jacobi’s Circus, but they were of little help to me in discovering the tober. I asked the only occupant of the street; an elderly, vague man, who was staring at me as if I had been a procession of Red Indians in full war-paint.
“Circus?” he repeated.
“Yes,” I said. “Can you tell me where the circus usually pitches when it comes to this village?”
“Is a circus coming here?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Can you tell me,” and so on.
“Is it the same one was here a month ago?” he asked. “Called itself Boggles or Woggles or something?”
“No,” I said patiently, and repeated my original question.
This time it drew response, and the man directed me to a field on the edge of the village. “That’s where they usually go,” he said. And I took his word for it and drove the car down to the gate. I did not enter the field, but parked the car just outside on the road, and sat there waiting for the circus to arrive. I had not long to wait, for in something under an hour the first lorry drove up, closely followed by the rest of the caravan. Daroga waved and drove the first lorry in.
Pete Daroga’s was always the first wagon to enter the new tober. He drove it over to the far end, leaped out and was inspecting the ground by the time the next wagon had drawn in. Selecting the flattest portion of the field as the place on which to pitch the tent, he proceeded to supervise the raising of the king-poles into position. Within half an hour the iron pegs had been driven home and the swaying canvas was being hauled slowly up into the air. Most of the other wagons had arrived and had arranged themselves in a rough circle round the field, each in its special position facing the big top. Jackson’s wagon was the last to arrive, and as the large blue trailer was pulled into position the proprietor himself opened the door and stood grimly on the grass watching the operations. For a while he did not speak, but watched the men moving backward and forward. His mouth was set in a hard thin line, and his eyes were concentrated on the figure of Pete Daroga as he moved among the men giving them instructions. Not until he had moved over to the front of the field did he speak.
“I suppose you know, Daroga, that you are building up on the wrong tober?” he said, and his voice was cold and biting as he spoke.
Pete turned quickly at his voice. “This is the tober you told me,” he said abruptly.
“We all know,” said Jackson suavely, “that you are infallible, Daroga. But in the present instance—although I am sure it is not your fault—what you have done will have to be undone. Unless, of course, you would like to pay the rent of this field out of your own earnings.”
Pete flushed at the cold insult in these words and walked slowly across the field towards the proprietor. “Are you trying to tell me that we’ve got to take the blasted tent down and move it into another field?” he asked.
Jackson shrugged as if he were not interested in the question, and would have turned to walk into his wagon if Pete had not grabbed him roughly by the sleeve. Jackson shook off the hand impatiently, but nevertheless waited for the man to speak.
“This was the field we built up in ten years ago, isn’t it?” asked Pete.
Jackson shrugged again. “Ten years ago—certainly. But it so happens that the arrangement has been changed since then and the landlord prefers that we use the smaller field across the road.”
“Then you’d better go and persuade him otherwise,” said Pete bluntly. “Don’t go trying to put the results of your own dam’ carelessness on to me. The tent’s nearly up now, and it won’t be shifted for you nor all the landlords in the village. Carry on, men,” he shouted at the hands, who had been standing about watching the quarrel. “Get those quarter-poles in.”
The two men stood facing each other with less than a yard separating them. Neither of them moved, but stared straight into each other’s faces. Pete was tall and almost loose-jointed, his hands on his hips and his feet slightly apart pushing his battered, ugly face forward from between his shoulders as if inviting anyone to hit him. Jackson, small, slick, with glossy hair and a faint sardonic grin, watched him as if in contempt.
“You know who’s boss here, Daroga?” he asked quietly.
Pete spat on the grass to one side. “I know one or two things more than that,” he said. “And that makes us even.”
Jackson’s eyes flickered for a moment, and he turned them away and looked over towards the tent where the men had begun work again. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said at last.
Pete said nothing, but turned his back abruptly on the little man and did not even trouble to watch him climb into his car and drive off down the road to the village. The work continued in silence now, for the men had seen the battle and looked respectfully at the old man who had apparently won it. They were not very concerned as to how Pete had achieved it, they merely admired him for being able to get the better of a boss they all hated—and thoroughly feared.
Within ten minutes Jackson was back, and as he climbed up the steps of the wagon he waved Pete over to him. Pete took his time, sauntering slowly across the grass issuing instructions as he went.
“The tent can stay where it is,” said Jackson. “I arranged it with the landlord.”
Pete’s mouth curved in a pitying grin, and then he turned to the men and shouted: “Mr. Jackson says the tent can stay where it is. You don’t need to take it down after all.”
Jackson’s face went white, and he took a step forward as if to speak. But suddenly changing his mind he retreated to his wagon and slammed the door ferociously.
After that the morning’s work went on fairly peacefully. The tent was finished and most of the seating unloaded. Although it was a weekday and well past school-time, the field seemed full of small groups of children who wandered around getting in the men’s way and listening curiously to the sounds which came from the animal wagons which had not yet been opened.
“Can’t you put them chavvies to work, Pete?” Ginger shouted, indicating the children. But he was too late, for at that moment the elephants arrived and the whole mob went tearing off across the field to watch them come in through the gate.
The elephants ignored them, and without any direction from Albert they made straight for the elephant-tent. The children ran around them shouting, scattering if a trunk seemed to sway out a little too much, rushing in to touch the thick, rough hide when the attention of one of the animals was elsewhere.
One of the elephant-men, a negro, stood holding the canvas flap up for them and shouting at the kids to “Git away,” but they took no notice of him unless he made a threatening movement of his arms or legs, and even then they were back as soon as his back was turned, peering under the tent to see the shackling chains fixed to the elephants’ hind legs.
Pete strolled over with a grin on his battered face. “Here, you,” he shouted, “give us a hand with the lion-cage.”
The children immediately surged round him pelting him with questions, leaving only two rather cynical little souls, determined that it was a ruse to get them from the elephanttent, and so stolidly refusing to help with the lion-cage.
With twenty or thirty children breathlessly leaning on the ropes, the animal cages were slowly drawn round to form three sides of a square. Brightly painted wings were swung out from two of the wagons and bolted together to discover that “Jacobi’s Wild Animal Zoo” had been created.
B
y the middle of the morning the camp had begun to take on a look of permanence. The white canvas was steady in the sun, and the wagons had begun to collect oddments around them, pails, boxes, chairs, which gave the impression that the inhabitants were settling in. A long clothes-line tethered the proprietor’s wagon to the nearest tree, and Corinne stood lazily under it, her mouth filled with clothes-pegs, hanging out a long series of clean tights and circus costumes in the sun. The ancient gypsy wagon was similarly decorated, and by the front door, seated in a rickety arm-chair, Anita lay half asleep, letting the warmth soak through her.
Most of the children had disappeared home to their lunch, although here and there a short-cropped head would push its way under a canvas sheet and glance distrustfully around before emerging fully into the zoo, the elephant-tent, or the big top. All the work of building up was finished. Most of the men had gone down the street to the pub, one or two others lounged around the ground talking or simply lying silent in the sun and smoking.
When a neat young man walked on to the field only two people saw him. Corinne quickly emptied her mouth of pegs and watched him out of the corner of her eye, and Herr Kurt, the lion-trainer, stopped hammering at the lion-tunnel for a moment.. He forgot to bring the hammer down, and just sat cross-legged on the top of the box with his hand in the air and his brows knit almost into a straight line.
Yet there was nothing particular about the stranger to make people look more than once at him. He was dressed in a light fawn suit and walked with a buoyant step. His eyes looked quickly over the tents and wagons with a sort of amusement. He was probably a young commercial traveler or a car salesman; fairly well off for a bachelor, cynical, not over-burdened with work, rather complacent, but with a curiosity sometimes at odds with that complacency. He noticed Anita sitting in the sunshine and Corinne pegging out clothes.
Herr Kurt, whose real name incidentally, and that by which he was generally known among the circus people, was George Franks, did not attempt to hide his hostility as he watched the young man. When he laid the hammer down on the board beside him and folded his arms he looked more than ever like a figure of judgment. Actually his feelings were those of bitter resignation. From experience he knew that sooner or later the young man would approach Corinne and begin a conversation.
“You know,” he said to me, “this is always happening. Not that it worries me, you understand. But every village we go to she seems to pick up one of these young whipper-snappers, and gets him to follow the show around for a couple of days. I don’t know what they expect to get for it. They sit in the most expensive seats, and she gives them each a special smile from the ring. Perhaps they have a little talk after the show’s over. And then, of course, they fade away directly we get too far along the road for them to be able to come to the show in the evening.”
I could tell from Kurt’s voice that he did not take this so philosophically as he pretended to. For some reason he sounded hurt over it. But I asked no questions, and when he picked up his hammer and began to bang nails home with the maximum possible noise, I left him and went along to rouse Beef. He had already slept well on to the middle of the morning, and I wondered if perhaps he was feeling ill. Such behavior was not usual with him.
CHAPTER XI
April 28th (continued).
“Piebald horses
And ribald music
Circle around
A spangled lady.”
BEEF was just on the point of getting out of bed when I entered the wagon. He smiled sleepily at me, and rubbing his eyes with the backs of his clenched hands, asked: “Well, what’s the news?”
“Nothing more important than that it’s nearly eleven o’clock,” I said.
“Good,” commented Beef, beginning to search around for his clothes, “they’re open, then.”
Experience had told me what “they” were, so I waited silently for the Sergeant to complete his dressing, and then accompanied him in the direction of the village. Most of the circus folks had mentioned “The Jolly Shepherds,” and this turned out to be the first pub on the route.
“Very sensible, too,” said Beef, and I followed him into the public bar.
The atmosphere here was thick with smoke and hostility. Five of the villagers sat in a line along one of the wooden benches and drank in silence. Now and again one of them would make a short remark to his neighbor about a purely local problem. On the other hand, the visitors from the circus ignored the other occupants of the bar and continued their conversation as if they had been alone. It struck me that they were probably used to this sort of hostile greeting, and were using their most effective defense against it; circus language and “toughness.”
I observed to Beef that these people, in the presence of strangers, tended to make their talk more and more unintelligible and filled with a mixture of Romany, Italian, German, Spanish, Russian, and even Hindustani, words and phrases. This language—the circus language—born out of the isolation of the early circus people, served now to increase that separation from ordinary society. From being a defensive weapon it had now, under modern conditions, become a method of attack. Beef, however, seemed unimpressed by my theorizing, and with a brief, “I shouldn’t be surprised if you wasn’t right,” he went over to join the group at the dart-board.
There were perhaps a dozen of us crowded into that small bar, all talking, drinking, laughing among ourselves and taking no notice of the five villagers on the bench. Clem was playing darts with Sid Bolton, and Peter Ansell was scoring for them. Peter Ansell, the ex-public school boy, a man who had seen the inside of a prison, a wanderer who seemed for the present to have found his home among professional wanderers. His pale, rather thin hair was brushed back closely, his face long and sensitive, with a faint yellowish tinge in the skin, which gave him a semi-mournful, semi-humorous expression.
In a corner, and a little apart from the others, sat the two trapeze artists, Paul and Christophe Darienne, speaking quietly together in French. From what Ginger had told me, and after watching them during the last few days, this apparent isolation of the two brothers had assumed a clearer importance than I had first guessed. It seemed to me now that in their reserve, in their frequent silences, in their use of French as a secret yet common language, was the clue to the relationship between them. It could hardly be called “love.” That abused and almost meaningless term was something far less than the bond which seemed to unite the two Darienne brothers. As individuals they were different in almost every way, and yet together one felt that they were complementary rather than “different.” I had little doubt in my own mind that such experiences as telepathy were common, if unconscious, between them. I had noticed, for instance, that if one brother saw something, he did not need to say to the other, “Look,” because the act of his seeing seemed to carry itself to his brother without the word or gesture that other people need to convey experience.
But there was more to it than that. It was not simply that they were attuned to each other, as the expression is. It was rather that existence to either of them actually included the other in the definition. The ordinary individual sees himself as separable from all his surroundings. Honesty compels him to admit that if he were transferred to the other side of the world, where every person and every item of the surroundings was utterly foreign and unknown to him, yet he would still live as that same individual. Changed perhaps or rapidly changing, but nevertheless most people can envisage such an occurrence, and farther, can see themselves continuing in those new surroundings. But in the case of the Dariennes I felt that this was not true. For Paul, existence has no meaning when it is separated from Christophe’s existence, and for Christophe, though I suspected in a somewhat lesser measure, the same held true.
As I watched them now I realized that there was nothing unfriendly in their concentration in each other. When remarks were thrown at them they always answered. They were not outside the circus “atmosphere,” but seemed to have seized a small corner of it for themselves.
“Hullo, Uncle,” said Ginger, “what about a game of darts?”
“And now,” said Beef with a grin, “you are asking for it.”
“You’re going to have your work cut out,” said Ansell quietly, as he ruled a new page for the scoring, “Ginger’s our champion dart player. Hasn’t been beaten this season.”
“Have to see if we can’t do something about that,” said Beef, and he arranged his large feet carefully behind the throwing line.
I noticed that the whole group of the circus folk in the pub were taking much more than a casual interest in this game between Beef and Ginger, and it took me some minutes to discover why. Then it struck me that when Ginger had called Beef Uncle there had been something more than leg-pulling in it. The fact was that Beef had got himself accepted here as I should never be able to. With his humorous, natural behavior he had conquered a vast difference of outlook and character. He had made himself liked and popular with people to whom I should always remain a friendly stranger. And he had done it quite simply, because he was that sort of a person. And that, I suppose, is one of the biggest compliments one can pay anybody.
The game progressed amid growing excitement. Beef won the first leg, and Ginger the second. It was going to be a close finish. I moved over towards the board in order to watch it. They were both throwing for their final double, and it was Beef’s turn. He seemed to be unperturbed as he stood stolidly, hefting his dart for a moment before he threw it, and then—“Office,” shouted the whole group together.