The Winter Ground

by Catriona McPherson

  I excused myself from the – unexpectedly delightful – Pa Wolf after that, mentally turning over the corner of his card to remind me to speak to him again, and wandered over to the tent.

  I was hoping for twelve liberty horses or Anastasia riding the haute école, and was disappointed and not a little surprised to see, in the ring, what looked like three clowns standing smoking, with a sausage dog rolling on its back in the sawdust at their feet. It seemed unlikely that they would have to practise their funny walks and pratfalls all winter like the acrobats and high-wire walkers, but I was sure these were clowns. One was the spindly giant, one the midget, and the third was wearing a pair of long shoes and had a hoop in his trousers waist. All three had top hats on. They glanced at me as I entered and the midget nodded a greeting. The long man simply dipped his head as though too shy to meet my eyes. The third noted my presence – I should have said he knew I was coming, for he betrayed no surprise – but otherwise ignored me. He was evidently in charge and the more I watched him the more I thought I could see a resemblance to Mr Tam Cooke. His voice too as he put the others through their paces was the same.

  After a few minutes, the little man took the cigarette butts from the other two and walked to the edge of the ring to stub them out and drop the butts over the side on to the grass, then he waddled back at a trot and lined up. Instinctively they faced towards where I was sitting, unable to ignore an audience, even an audience of one, uninvited, to a show not yet ready to be seen.

  ‘Akilina!’ called the boss clown and at the other side of the ring the littlest Prebrezhensky girl wound up a gramophone machine and laid the arm down.

  Like most people, I have not found clowns really funny since I was five but for the next ten minutes, I laughed more than I could ever remember laughing in my life. The hooped clown had a parcel to unwrap. He rolled up his sleeves and gave his hat to the tall man to hold. He, unthinking, made to put the new hat on his own head and finding a hat already there, removed it, bent his lanky frame completely in half and gave it to the sausage dog who ran along the line and handed it to the tiny man, who thanked the dog gravely and tried to put the hat on his head. Encountering his own hat, he took it off, nudged his neighbour, interrupting the unwrapping, and passed it on.

  From there, the three hats were juggled round and round, faster and faster, the parcel being thrown high in the air to get it out of the way whenever a hat came the hooped clown’s way. The sausage dog waited, stretched up against the leg of the tall clown, barking in time with the music, to offer his services again but the tall clown did not have a moment’s attention to spare. After a furious minute the parcel was undone and what was inside but another hat, and another and another and yet another. I could not help clapping as the dog nipped the tall clown’s leg and at last got hold of a hat to run along with and throw up for the tiny man to catch and now the dog was part of the frenzy too, barking first in front of the tall clown, then behind him, making the poor man spin, swaying like a reed in a gale, while the hats kept coming, until, with the music building to a flourish, the tall clown spinning like a top and the parcel empty … they stopped.

  The short clown caught all the hats one by one and the dog sat down in the sawdust again. Akilina lifted the arm of the gramophone.

  ‘If you throw two up, Charlie, instead of giving me one,’ said the tall clown to the hooped one, ‘I’ll spin round, Jinx’ll run along with nothing and jump into Tiny’s arms, Tiny’ll make to throw him up in the air, I’ll lean over to save Jinx and all the hats can come down into the box and you shut it.’ His voice was a surprise to me. He sounded educated, no Irish or Russian about him anywhere, no circus at all.

  ‘No, no, no,’ said Charlie. ‘The dog’ll get the big laugh that way.’

  ‘Well, owzabout if Andrew and me chuck all the hats on to your head and Jinx jumps into t’box, then?’ said Tiny.

  ‘And I just stand there?’ said Charlie.

  ‘Or you and I chuck all the hats on Tiny’s head.’

  ‘Won’t look balanced.’

  ‘Look pretty kushty if Tiny were in the middle,’ said Andrew. The circus word sounded very odd in his accent. ‘I think we always get the big laugh if Tiny and I stand next.’

  ‘Owzabout if Charlie and me chuck all the hats on your head,’ said Tiny to Andrew. He was standing with hands on hips looking up at Andrew, indeed, almost falling over backwards, in fact, to look up at him. ‘Or if Charlie chucks his and I try and keep missing and Jinx hands them back to me.’ Charlie was shaking his head. ‘Look, just look,’ said Tiny. He and the tall man started the hats moving again. Not even missing the third clown they set them all spinning through the air and then, just as he had suggested, the little man started lobbing them up and the tall man started catching them on his head. Any that missed the dog caught until there was only one left. Tiny threw it up again and again and Andrew bent his long legs trying to catch it on the top of the wavering tower he was already wearing. Charlie, slowly, folded his arms, turned away and lit a cigarette, not even watching. At last, Tiny put the hat on his own head, turned the parcel box upside down and climbed onto it. He whistled the little dog up into his arms, whereupon the dog snatched the last hat off the midget’s head with his teeth and flung it up on to the top of the tottering stack.

  ‘Finished?’ said Charlie, turning round again. ‘Right then, here’s what we’ll do. I’ll throw a hat up and catch it in the box, snap the lid shut. Then you’ll throw them all in, one to each side, in, snap, in, snap, until there’s three left and we catch those three on our heads.’

  ‘What about Jinxie?’ said Andrew.

  ‘Four then,’ said Charlie. ‘Jinx gets one too.’

  ‘Littl’un what fits or a big’un what hides him?’ asked Tiny.

  ‘Up to you,’ said Charlie. ‘What d’you think?’

  ‘Big one and he trails off wearing it,’ said Andrew.

  ‘Nah,’ said Charlie. ‘Ends on a downbeat that way.’

  ‘You’re the boss,’ said Andrew.

  Charlie’s face split into a lopsided grin around his cigarette. ‘Now, see, you’re learning! We’ll make clowns out of you two jossers yet.’ With that, he strolled over to me and put one long shoe up on a section of the curved box which separated the seats from the ring. ‘Charlie Cooke,’ he said to me, holding out a hand. ‘You’re Ma’s pal, aren’t you? What is it – painting like the Tober-omey’s missus? Writing stories?’ He winked at me as he said this and I hesitated, partly because if this Mr Cooke – surely Tam Cooke’s brother – was not in Ma’s confidence then I should be circumspect with him too, partly because I could not interpret the wink, and partly because I was distracted by the way the hoop in his trousers waist allowed me to see right inside them, all the way down his long winter drawers to the tops of his boots.

  Thankfully, he did not wait for an answer. ‘What’s your tuppenceworth, then?’ he asked, jerking his head back to the other two who were retying the parcel behind him. It was pretty obvious that his main concern was that he, Charlie Cooke, should be the centre of the act and I half wished I could have argued with him, but I had to be honest.

  ‘I think it’s wonderful,’ I said, ‘and I think your ending is best.’

  ‘There it is, lads,’ he said, turning round with his arms spread wide. ‘The customer is always right.’ Then he shucked off the flipper-like extensions to his boots and, leaving them in the sawdust, he sauntered off out of the tent, whistling. Akilina Prebrezhensky straightened up and scampered after him.

  ‘Sorry, chaps,’ I said once he was out of earshot.

  ‘See, Jinxie-boy,’ said Tiny. The dog looked up at him out of adoring liquid brown eyes. ‘Not everyone is a champion of the underdog and a friend of the little man.’

  I could not help chuckling, although he was being impertinent, really.

  ‘If you want to know the truth …’ I said. Tiny came over to the side of the ring and hopped up to sit on the edge. ‘The truth is I think the whole
act would be fine with just the two of you but since he’s in it it would be a poor show to have him just stand there for the grand finale.’ I looked over to see if the tall man, Andrew, would join us too but he scraped a bow and left by the curtained exit which led to behind the scenes.

  ‘He’s shy, not rude,’ said Tiny, ‘is our Andrew Merryman. Not me.’ He swung his short legs around until he was facing me and held out his hand to shake, sticking his arm straight out as if challenging me to grasp it. His hand was bigger than mine and his grip immensely strong; I am sure he could have pulled me off my seat if he had tried to.

  ‘Edward Truman,’ he said. ‘Tiny to me friends and me enemies too, more’s the pity. Big Bad Bill Wolf calls me Little Bad Ted Truman and for a time I was The Pocket Colossus, until Andrew there said it made me sound like an encyclopedia.’ He hugged himself and crowed with laughter.

  ‘Dandy Gilver,’ I said. ‘A neighbour. Of the Wilsons, I mean, and so of you for this winter too.’

  ‘It’s going to be a hard one,’ said Tiny. ‘All them girls was mumping on about the weather, mud getting inside t’wagons. Said we needed frost, cos it were cleaner.’ He rubbed his big hands up and down his little arms, shivering. ‘Way I see it, a bit of mud on your rug won’t freeze you in your bed before the morning comes.’

  ‘Mrs Cooke’s living wagon seemed rather cosy,’ I said.

  ‘Ma Cooke’s proper old circus,’ said Tiny. ‘Born in a wagon and lived there all her days. She keeps that stove going all night without waking. Gets up and feeds it sticks and her wagon’s as warm as pies in t’morning, but see a josser like me, I fall asleep at night and wake up next day with me teeth chattering in me ’ead.’

  ‘A josser,’ I repeated. ‘I’m only learning, but I believe a josser is a flatty who’s trying to mend his ways.’ Tiny clapped his hands, his whole body bouncing slightly with each slap of his palms. ‘You’re not from a circus family, then?’ I said.

  ‘Wouldn’t that have been handy?’ he replied with heavy irony. I flushed. ‘No, me father had a chandlery in Scarborough. His father were a merchant seaman and his father, they do say, were a pirate. Well, he were hanged in Jamaica for summat or t’other. So, I suppose you could say running away is in me blood, only I reckoned I’d have more luck running away to the circus than to sea. I hooked up with me first show when I were ten and I’ve been atching ever since.’

  ‘Atching?’

  ‘Summer tenting,’ said Tiny Truman. ‘Travelling round.’

  ‘Always with Cooke’s?’ I asked him.

  ‘Nay, that were me first season just gone,’ he answered. ‘Lorra changes at Cooke’s last spring. Before that, I were five year with a show, name of Gregson. Lovely little show, but …’ He stared down at his feet for a moment or two without speaking. His face with its heavy brow and flattened nose, deep lines bracketing his mouth, should have been grotesque, but there was such expression in his eyes and such humour in the wide grin that one very soon forgot to find him peculiar. He glanced up, breaking his reverie, and the grin widened. ‘Old Man Gregson got past doing two shows a day, that’s all. Then t’kangaroo died.’

  ‘A kangaroo?’ I could not hide my astonishment.

  ‘That’s what Gregson’s were known for,’ Tiny said. ‘Biff the Boxing Kangaroo. As long as old Biff were still going, we was on clover, but after he’d gone … Ma Gregson sent him off for stuffing, but before she got him back again, the show had folded.’

  ‘It’s terribly sad,’ I said, feeling the inadequacy of the words.

  ‘Well, it is and it ain’t,’ said Tiny. ‘Pa Cooke came to t’sale, since Cooke’s and Gregson’s was both in Aberdeen at the same time – and if there’s anywhere more like to make a kangaroo drop dead and a show fold, I’ve never seen it. He were looking for working ponies, but he saw me and it just so ’appened that all season Andrew Merryman had been pestering him for a job, so he looks at Andrew and he looks at me and he puts three and a half and a little half together. He’s a seeing man, Pa Cooke, knew from the off Andrew and me was made for each other.’

  I nodded, thinking. In other words, both Truman and Merryman had every reason to be loyal to Cooke’s Circus. If this Ana was indeed stealing props and causing trouble they would want to help. And had Mrs Cooke not said that she thought ‘them clowns’ knew something?

  ‘You must,’ I said, carefully, ‘be wondering what I’m doing here.’

  Tiny gave me a look as sharp as a little blue dagger, but before he could speak a loud dull clanging sounded from outside.

  ‘Dinnertime,’ said Tiny. He put his hands down by his sides and, lifting himself on to them, he swung his legs up behind him, clicked his heels and sprang back to land in the ring. ‘Or, begging your pardon, my lady, I should say: luncheon is served.’

  5

  I could see that luncheon – dinner, as the circus folk called it – was delightful in its way, if one found delight in thick stew and potatoes around a campfire in the open air. I have always preferred carved slices and thin gravy eaten off a table in a dining room with the potatoes cooked in a pot out of sight in the kitchen somewhere and not plucked out of the fire on a long fork and thrown around the assembled diners with a flick of the wrist. Still, one does not like to be above one’s company and so I sat down, laid my gloves in my lap and accepted a bowl of stew with gratitude, even managing to field my potato when it came.

  There was a considerable crowd at the start, since the artistes and their families were joined by half a dozen others whom Mr Cooke nodded vaguely towards and identified as tent men and grooms. There was a strict order of precedence in play, however. These workers, once their plates had been filled, took themselves off to sit cross-legged on mats, at the far side of the fire, downwind of the smoke. Those remaining upwind and lording it on boxes were all Cookes, Wolfs and Prebrezhenskys as well as Tiny, Andrew and me and two equally pretty although otherwise very different young girls who I guessed were the Topsy of whom I had heard mention and Anastasia, who I only then realised must also be Ana, my prey.

  There were no formal introductions and so I had to make a further guess that the diminutive little figure with the tumbling mass of golden curls falling around her shoulders and the chuckling, gurgling voice was Topsy Turvy, the acrobat, while the large, strong and utterly silent young woman with her black hair scraped back as severely as a ballerina’s and her boots planted a foot apart on the grass was Ana, horsewoman and troublemaker combined.

  It was not so easy to catch and name the several currents which were flowing around the company with a constant troubling hum, but it was clear that Cooke’s Circus was a far from happy little band. Topsy, at first, seemed impervious to it all. She prattled on, gently teasing the Wolf children and earning their giggles. Both Tommy and Sallie Wolf, whom I had not forgotten were Ilchenkos on their mother’s side, were translating into Russian for the Prebrezhensky girls whose laughter was just as loud and of an even higher pitch. Ma Cooke struck me as very composed, gossiping quietly – again in Russian, one assumed – with Mrs Prebrezhensky. This lady herself was less at ease, studiously ignoring her husband who was glowering at her from afar and kept craning in any time she spoke, as though trying to hear what she might be saying. Tam and Charlie Cooke, although they appeared calmly to be debating such mundane matters as oil lamps versus paraffin flares, ‘continentals‘ (whatever they might be) and ‘tarry tape’ (apparently a scarce commodity in this part of Perthshire), kept running dry and having to clear their throats and start again.

  Odd for a pair of brothers, I thought, unless it was that they were only paying heed to one another with half an ear each, both distracted by what was passing elsewhere around the fire. I was pretty sure that it was the increasingly helpless gales of laughter from the little ones which were annoying the boss, but his brother’s quick glances and sudden attentive silences were all for Tiny Truman.

  I could not hear what Tiny was saying from where I sat, but from the eye-rolling and occasional flouri
shes I could guess that he was engaged in some kind of clownish patter; in any case, it was aimed at Anastasia alone. He sat very close to her and talked incessantly, but she was a tough nut to crack and withstood quite five minutes of the little man’s efforts with no more than a sleepy blinking of her dark eyes and a pointed stare at his hand whenever he emphasised a punchline by laying it on her arm. Eventually, though, at something whispered into her ear, she finally broke into laughter and her oval face lit up with a grin as wide and as wicked as Tiny’s own. Immediately, he looked over to Topsy with a glint of triumph and her eyes, just for a moment, lost their twinkle. Perhaps making the children laugh was small beer and getting a smile from Anastasia was proof of one’s brilliance as a performer.

  Certainly Charlie Cooke, touchy as he was when it came to clowning prowess, was now glaring at Tiny and had stopped listening to Tam Cooke completely. Tam broke off from talking in mid-word, aware that he had lost his brother’s attention again, and, in his turn, shot a look of fury at Ana, whose smile snapped off as though it had never been. Even Mrs Cooke caught some of the feeling this time and she looked up with a frown. For a moment there was silence all around and I caught Andrew Merryman staring about him at the ring of faces, smirking to himself and shaking his head slightly. Judging from his accent, I should have said he was from my world and had not long been gone from it; his memories had to be fresh still of dining rooms and of light conversations with no torrid undercurrents tugging at them and I wondered, regarding him, if he – if anyone – could really make the journey from that world to this and stay for good.