Circus of Thieves on the Rampage

by William Sutcliffe

  After this exceptionally concise chat, they both felt reassured that the feeling was mutual.

  Gripping hands tighter than ever, they arrived at a door with a large star on it and the thrilling words: ‘QUEENIE BOMBAZINE – DO NOT DISTURB’. Maybe the last three words weren’t particularly exciting, but the first two more than made up for it. This was her dressing room! Queenie Bombazine! Living legend! Mermaid of the Skies! Etc.!

  Granny knocked noisily with her gnarled knuckles.37

  ‘Mmm-hmmm?’ came the reply, which sounded like a ‘come in’, but with a hint of ‘though I’d prefer you to go away’.

  They went in. The first thing that hit Hannah was the smell. Or, rather, the scent. This was the most perfumed room she had ever visited. Entering Queenie’s dressing room was like diving into a swimming pool of rose petals; it was like smacking yourself in the face with a mallet of loveliness; it was a grenade of exquisite, wafty fabulosity exploding inside your nostrils.

  One moment Queenie was sitting at her dressing table, the next she was on top of them, squealing with delight, hugging Granny, then hugging Hannah, then hugging both of them at once, so hard that they both lifted off the floor. She may have looked dainty up on that trapeze, but this was a woman with serious muscles. Hannah had never been hugged like this in her whole life. Her mother’s hugs were ticklish, dainty, fluttery things that felt like being delicately wrapped in a gauze curtain. This hug was more like a cross between a full body massage from two massive silken cushions and how the last few moments of your life might feel before you were gobbled up by a wild bear.

  If Hannah’s mother had been there, she would have no doubt tried to stop the whole thing, chipping in with an ‘Oooh! Goodness! Careful of her little bones.’ But Queenie was not careful, and she clearly had scant regard for the supposed fragility of young skeletons.

  Hannah prided herself on being independent and self-reliant, but in Queenie’s arms she felt an entirely new and strangely delicious sensation of being almost swallowed up by someone big and strong and competent and generally overflowing with wonderfulness. Even though they were almost strangers, Hannah felt as if this was possibly the best hug she had ever been given.

  Everybody needs hugs, just like everybody needs to drink. Hannah’s mother did hug her, and also gave her glasses of diluted juice whenever she asked for them, but hugging Queenie was like leaping under a waterfall.

  Sometimes, when you are overwhelmed by a situation, the strangest things come out of your mouth. This is what happened to Hannah. The first words she ever spoke to Queenie Bombazine were these: ‘Can I feel your muscles?’

  This could have easily proved embarrassing. As I’m sure you know, ‘Can I feel your muscles?’ isn’t your average greeting. But Queenie wasn’t the kind of person who cared for average greetings. In fact, she seemed rather pleased by Hannah’s question.

  ‘Of course,’ she said, clenching her bicep for Hannah.

  Hannah had a good squeeze, with one hand, then two. It was like rock.

  ‘Can I feel yours?’ said Queenie.

  ‘OK,’ said Hannah. ‘They’re not very good yet. I’m only twelve.’

  Hannah clenched. Queenie felt.

  ‘Not bad,’ said Queenie. ‘Your mother was a skinny thing, but she was strong, too.’

  These words zapped at Hannah’s heart, sending an electric jolt through her whole body. Her mouth opened and shut, like a fish. This couldn’t be her home-mother Queenie was talking about – the be-careful-don’t-forget-your-scarf mother – this was her real mother.

  ‘You knew my mother!’ said Hannah.

  ‘Of course I did. She was my protégée.’

  ‘But I thought you were Granny’s proto . . . whatsit . . . thingamajig.’

  ‘I was. I was Granny’s protégée. She taught me everything. Then Esmeralda – Wendy – your mum – she was my protégée. All the secrets of how to be a superstar aerialiste went straight from mother to daughter, via me.’

  Hannah’s mouth was still doing the fish thing. Her head was filled with more questions than ever, but she couldn’t get a sound to come out of her mouth.

  ‘You must have a thousand questions for me,’ said Queenie, who recognised a case of fish-mouth when she saw one, ‘but let’s sit down and have a nice cuppa first. What do you say to that? Me and your granny have got a lot of catching up to do. Pop?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Pop?’

  ‘Have you got hiccups?’

  ‘No. Pop?’

  ‘Er . . . why do you keep saying pop? Is this a game?’

  ‘It’s an old-fashioned word for fizzy drinks,’ said Granny. ‘She’s offering you a fizzy drink.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Hannah. ‘No thanks. I’m not allowed fizzy drinks. My mother says they’re bad for you.’

  ‘She’s right, they are bad for you. Now live a little and wrap your gums round that,’ said Queenie, passing her a bottle of lurid orange liquid.

  Hannah sipped.

  It was really quite spectacularly revolting, with a taste of floor polish, burnt toffee and plastic oranges, but she smiled politely and said, ‘Thank you.’

  Meanwhile, not far away, not far away at all, Billy was circling the concourse of the arena, pushing through the crowds, searching frantically for Hannah, scouring every child’s face, hunting desperately, but in vain.

  She was there, of course, right there, but he was not going to find her. Not tonight.

  Luckily (and cleverly), Billy had remembered one useful thing from their last encounter. He had a strong memory of looking up at her during his performance, while doing some archery from Narcissus’s back, and seeing not just Hannah and her granny, but also the two largest sticks of candy floss he had ever clapped eyes on. This tiny factoid38 represented his last hope.

  Of course, most people go to the circus then go home. Most people go once. But Hannah, he knew, was not most people and nor was her granny.

  By the time the arena was empty, Billy had formed a right-next-door-to-completely-hopeless plan. He had a sensation that was somewhere between a vague instinct and a wild guess that Hannah and her granny might come back for the second night. And, if they did, he had an idea where he’d find them.

  The candy floss stall.

  He had very nearly given up. But not quite. And that tiny glimmer of hope, of determination and intelligence and willpower, was to change everything.

  Queenie drained her tea and turned to Hannah.39 ‘So,’ she said. ‘This takes me back.’

  Hannah had forced down a third of her pop, which gave her furry teeth, a claggy tongue, and a stomach that now thought it was a hot-air balloon. If she wanted a similar sensation again, next time she’d skip the pop and just squirt a fire extinguisher into her mouth.40 ‘Back to what?’ she said.

  ‘Back to the first time I met your mother. She hated pop, too.’

  ‘I don’t hate it. I just think it’s not really my thing.’

  ‘And, like you, she had good manners.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘And intelligent eyes.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I see a lot of her in you. But you also seem like your own person. She was too, of course, so that makes you like her as well.’

  ‘I see.’ Hannah wanted to know everything about her mother, but she couldn’t think where to start.

  ‘Was she nice?’ she said, which was such a dull thing to ask it hadn’t even been on her mental list of questions, but, as I’m sure you know, the moments in life when it is most important to say the right thing are exactly the same moments when your mouth is most likely to shoot off in a random direction and spout a load of old claptrap. Mouths are like that: unpredictable, verging on naughty, verging on downright rebellious.

  ‘Nice? Nice? NICE?’ replied Queenie, her considerable chest bulging with outrage.

  ‘Was she not nice?’ Hannah asked, worried now.

  ‘Nice isn’t the word. Nice doesn’t even come close. Your mother was . .
. she was a force of nature. She was generous with her heart and her laughter and her time and her money and her spirit; she was a fighter and a listener and a performer and a worker and a dreamer and imaginative and inspiring and funny and serious and intelligent and silly and warm and also just incredibly cool and on stage she was luminous with beauty. But it wasn’t mirror-beauty, it wasn’t photograph-beauty, it was something inside her, something in her eyes and her mouth and the way she looked at you, or the way she smiled, or the way she didn’t smile; it’s impossible to describe her, because you can’t compare her to anyone else and it’s very, very sad that she died, but life is full of sad things, and I know that of everything she achieved or could have achieved, nothing – nothing – would ever have come close to the fact that she made you. And meeting you has been pure joy, because now I can see that even though she is gone, in a way she isn’t gone at all. Her spirit and beauty and life-force is right here, fully alive, in you.’

  Silent tears began to roll down Hannah’s cheeks, tears that were both happy and sad and ecstatic and doom-laden and every other emotion in between.

  Queenie enveloped her in another of those colossal hugs. ‘You let it all out, dear,’ she said, stroking her back, and Hannah did just that. She let it all out.

  Hannah wept and wept. Granny wept and wept. Queenie wept and wept. You can insert your own sound-effects here, depending on the thickness of your walls, the proximity of sleeping babies, and your level of enthusiasm for putting on a show, but something along the lines of ‘HUBBAHUBBAGLEEUUURKGLEEUUURK UBABABOOOOHOOOOBOOOOGOOOO DOOOOO-HAGUB-HAGUB-GLIFFGLIFF-NYINNGGGGNYINNGGYOKKAHOKKA HOKKA’ will probably do the trick. Feel free to improvise if you get the urge.

  It was a soggy evening. An aquatic circus of weeping.41 (optional) By the end of it all, Queenie’s dressing room was waist-deep in crumpled tissues.

  When the three of them finally stopped crying, something strange happened. They looked around at the lake of tissues and, without quite knowing why, Hannah began to laugh. She laughed and laughed. Granny laughed and laughed. Queenie laughed and laughed.

  Hannah laughed so hard, she fell off her chair, disappearing entirely under the surface of the tissue-lake, which made Queenie and Granny laugh even harder, until they realised that she might be lost down there and they reached out and hauled her up into the fresh air, still laughing, despite having several tissues stuck to her hair.

  When they finally stopped laughing, Queenie told Hannah that now they had the sad stuff out of the way, it was time for some good news. ‘I’ve saved it until now,’ she said, ‘and it’s a doozy. Your father’s here. At least, he’s sort of here and sort of on his way.’

  ‘My father? You know who my father is?’

  ‘Actually, no. I’m not entirely sure. It could be Ernesto Espadrille or it could be Armitage Shank. But the thing is, they’re both here. Or will be.’

  ‘Both of them!’

  ‘Yes! Ernesto is on his way and Armitage is already at the Oh, Wow! Centre. He’s planning to rob me tomorrow night. Isn’t that wonderful!?’

  ‘You like being robbed?’

  ‘No, not that bit! The rest of it! Both of your fathers will be here for tomorrow’s show. And, believe me, Armitage is not going to get away with it, not unless he has the dastardliest scheme of his entire dastardly, scheming life.’

  ‘How do you know he doesn’t have the dastardliest scheme of his entire dastardly, scheming life?’

  ‘Well, maybe he does – but I can be just as dastardly as him, if not more so – and he will not get away with it, by the hairs on my chinny chin chin.’

  ‘You don’t have any hairs on your chinny chin chin. You’re a woman.’

  ‘It’s just a turn of phrase, dear. And I do occasionally treat myself to the odd pluck.’

  ‘So if Armitage is here,’ said Hannah, ‘does that mean Billy’s here, too?’

  ‘Yes! That’s the whole point of the circus!’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Hannah, who was finding, yet again, that every answer to every question just seem to unfold more layers of puzzlement and confusion and seaweed and old trainers.

  ‘Well – one of two points. I seem to have made myself bankrupt, which is kind of inconvenient. So the show is handy for that, because they’re paying me a ton of money. But I also knew that if I came out of retirement, Armitage would appear and try to finish off his unfinished revenge. This whole thing is what they call a honeytrap. A lure. Because I knew that if he came, Billy would come. And I knew that if Billy came, and I timed it for Ernesto’s release from prison, then I could help them find each other. I have a fan who works in the kitchens at Grimwood Scrubs, and he passed on a message to Ernesto explaining the plan. He’s out of jail and he’s on his way. He’s coming to get Billy! I sent someone to tip off Billy, too, an old acquaintance of mine called Magwitch McDickens. He’s a lovely chap – used to set the chess puzzles in my fanzine – but he can be a bit unreliable, so I’m not sure if the message got through.’

  ‘Wowzer!’ said Hannah. ‘That’s amazing! I’m so happy I think I might have to start crying again.’

  ‘Don’t!’ said Granny. ‘We’ve run out of tissues. What we need to do is find Billy. Tell him his father’s coming. Tell him his granny’s here. And his sister. That’s a lot of news for a boy who thinks he’s more or less an orphan.’

  ‘Where is he?’ said Hannah.

  ‘He’s here,’ replied Queenie, confidently, before adding the word, ‘somewhere,’ not so confidently.

  ‘How are we going to find him?’

  ‘That’s the only problem. I have no idea. But things have a habit of working out. So I suggest we go to bed now and start looking for him tomorrow.’

  ‘Bed!?’ said Hannah. ‘How can you say that at a time like this? How could we possibly go to bed? Billy’s here! We have to find him! We have to look! We have to tell him about Ernesto! We have to tell him about Granny! We have to tell him about me! There’s so much to do! We can’t stop now! How could we go to bed? I’m not tired! I hate bed! Come on! Let’s get going! Bed?! There’s no way we can possibly . . .’

  At this moment, Hannah’s body began to topple. Quite soon, it finished toppling, landing softly on a mattress of only slightly snotty tissues. Her eyes were tight shut, and her breathing was deep and distant.

  ‘She’s asleep,’ said Queenie to Granny, but there wasn’t really much point in her saying this, because Granny was asleep, too, her false teeth rattling like a stick dragged over a cattle grid.

  It had been a long day.

  Apart but together

  THAT NIGHT, CURLED INTO THE WARMTH of Narcissus, Billy dreamed a beautiful dream, of a woman on a trapeze. A woman who was like Queenie Bombazine, but wasn’t Queenie Bombazine. A woman who was also like Hannah, but wasn’t Hannah. She was beautiful and graceful and elegant, and she swung backwards and forwards through Billy’s sleeping brain like some kind of angel, or blessing, or promise, or premonition, or something. Something good, anyway. More than good. Because though the dream woke him in the darkest, loneliest hour of the night, he woke with his heart feeling full and warm. He felt accompanied, protected and looked after, a feeling that for some of us is quite normal, but for Billy was rare and precious.

  He closed his eyes again and tried to sleep, wanting to find his way back to that delicious dream, but dreams aren’t like that. You can’t chase them. Dreams find you, not the other way round, and this one had come and gone.

  Hannah woke at the same moment. She woke from what was possibly the exact same dream. A dream of a woman on a trapeze. A woman who was like Queenie Bombazine, but wasn’t Queenie Bombazine. A woman who was also like Hannah, but wasn’t Hannah. She was wearing a green rubber catsuit with a yellow lightning bolt streaking across the chest and down one leg. She was beautiful and graceful and elegant, and she swung backwards and forwards through Hannah’s sleeping brain like some kind of angel, or blessing, or promise, or premonition, or something. Something good, an
yway. More than good. Because though the dream woke her in the darkest, loneliest hour of the night, she woke with her heart feeling full and warm. She felt accompanied, protected and looked after, which was not a new sensation for Hannah, but on this occasion she had a strong sentiment that there was someone close by who was with her in that moment, right with her, not present in the same room, yet somehow closer than close.

  Binary Tim’s (not very) brilliant plan

  THE NEXT MORNING, Hannah wake up in the presidential suite of the Oh, Wow! hotel. This was a room the size of a football pitch, except without any grass or goalposts. It was so big you could get lost in it, with a bed so wide you could get lost on your way from the middle to the edge, a sofa so plump you could get lost between the cushions, cupboards so enormous you could . . . I think you get the idea . . .

  I seem to have got lost explaining how lost you could get in this hotel room. Where was I again? What day is it? Who am I?

  Oh, yes. I’m me and it’s today and I was about to tell you how Queenie had carried Hannah up the night before, from her temporary bed of snotty tissues in the dressing room, and laid her down on the presidential four-poster, which was a significant improvement, luxury-wise.

  Queenie had given Hannah a long lie-in, but she’d eventually been woken by the sound of Binary Tim, who was arriving for a breakfast meeting to discuss anti-Armitage security measures. Binary Tim was Queenie’s IT42 consultant and a specialist in high-tech anti-robbery surveillance. He wore strange glasses, which made his eyeballs look three times their actual size, not because of a particular problem with his eyesight, but because he thought this would make him more alluring to women. In this, he was mistaken. Binary Tim had only a very sketchy knowledge of female psychology.

  Hannah woke to hear Binary Tim outlining the scheme he had devised.

  ‘We hook up a motion-sensor camera in the box office. I connect that to facial recognition software on my laptop, scan in an image of Armitage Shank, and, if someone with a Shank-like appearance enters, that will trigger a release mechanism on an ornamental medieval sword which I will install directly above the safe, which is where he’s sure to be doing his dastardly deeds. This sword should do for him, but just in case he’s in the wrong position when it falls, I can also connect the release mechanism to the office sprinkler system, causing that to be triggered at the same moment, except that I’ll replace the water in the sprinkler tanks with an extremely powerful laxative fluid. This will cause Mr Shank to need the toilet with quite fabulous urgency, but he won’t be aware that I have booby-trapped the nearest lavatory with a high-voltage electric current running through the toilet seat. I’ve also ordered some poisonous spiders on the internet which I have a feeling might come in handy as a fall-back option.’