The Winter Ground

by Catriona McPherson

  In the middle of it all sat Robin Laurie, lolling on a sofa like a leopard in a tree, his own cocktail barely tasted and pushed away from him and his hip flask unstoppered and constantly at his lips.

  Margot Stirling had even had the nerve to bring along the boy, a chauffeur to my recollection or a gardener perhaps, for whose sake she had given up her name and her reputation and with whom she was now ensconced in a tiny cottage on her brother’s estate. I was very glad that Hugh was not here to see her, and even more glad that he was not here to see the way she glanced at Alec and then winked at me. The boy himself looked perfectly at his ease in his surroundings, gulping his drink and affecting an insolent sneer, and the others for the most part ignored him – Margot was a chum and therefore a given, but there were limits – and shrieked across the room at one another.

  ‘But darling, that’s what I told you. I don’t think I ever did go to one when I was tiny. I think this is my very first time.’

  ‘Such a thrill! I’m much too excited to eat any boring old dinner first.’

  ‘But I don’t want to sit near the front under the thundering hooves, for I shall scream.’

  Albert Wilson bustled and scurried, nagging the sweet butler about drinks and practically bouncing on the balls of his feet with glee to be hosting such a party. At least, I noted, the guests were not laughing at him or teasing him into greater vulgarities than he might naturally display, although their wholesale disregard was just as rude in its own way. They acted as though he were another butler, and one with no tray and therefore nothing to offer them that they could possibly want.

  When Ina arrived in the hall, Albert made extra efforts to gain their attention and actually managed to get through about a third of his prepared talk about her health and the guarding of it before the shrieking began again and his audience was lost to him.

  ‘Now, really, I must just tell you,’ he said, his voice rising. The chattering voices only rose still higher and drowned him. ‘And please, ladies, no cigarettes, I implore you.’

  ‘Don’t trouble yourself, Albert dear,’ said Ina, ‘I shall go into the dining room and take my seat. Please, dear, please.’

  Robin Laurie, hearing this exchange, making quite sure that he did hear it, I thought, from the way he leaned forward and stared at Ina as she was talking, spoke up at once.

  ‘Splendid idea, Mrs Wilson,’ he said, his eyes dancing, ‘let’s go to the dining room and wait for dinner there.’

  The shriekers turned to face him as one and there was a moment of quiet, before the first of them answered.

  ‘What a naughty Robin,’ she said. ‘Why on earth?’

  ‘We can’t let our hostess sit all alone,’ said Laurie, ‘and you have spread yourselves all over the place in here and left her nowhere safe to perch. I told you all about Mrs Wilson, didn’t I?’

  ‘Such fun,’ said another of the women, this one a rather raddled forty-year-old got up like a girl in pink frills and white satin shoes. ‘I haven’t gone in to wait since nursery tea. Do let’s.’

  So, to Albert Wilson’s bewilderment and his wife’s silent fury, the shrieking women and drawling men put down their cocktail glasses and trooped along after Ina into the dining room, where obeying the name cards set out at each place they sat around the table in a horseshoe all staring at her alone on the fourth side.

  After a long and rather hollow silence, someone giggled, and one of the parlour maids poked her head in at the door, her eyes round with surprise to see us all there.

  ‘Perhaps we could have a glass of wine while we wait?’ said Laurie. Albert Wilson leapt to his feet.

  ‘Oh yes, splendid, an excellent idea. I believe there was going to be sherry with the soup so maybe we could have that now and then if I can just …’ He drew the butler off into a corner of the room, but still his hissed questions about the sherry and the temperature of those bottles of good Sauternes were clearly audible. The giggles began to grow.

  ‘What the bloody hell is he playing at?’ said Alec to me under his breath.

  ‘He’s just a wrecker,’ I said, not caring that Laurie must guess we were discussing him, for we were both staring right at him as we murmured to one another. ‘Just a silly little wrecker. And the rest of them!’ I glanced around at the faces, some still sparkling with the enjoyment of the moment, some bored again already. ‘My God,’ I said, ‘it’s like the fall of Rome in here.’

  At that, even Alec giggled a little and I almost joined him, although I was quite serious really in my way and I did not dare look at Ina. Fortunately the kitchen staff came up trumps; perhaps they had been well beforehand as my own dear Mrs Tilling always prefers to be, or perhaps there was a gas ring which could be pressed into service to speed things up. One way or another, the soup began to arrive before the vexed question of the sherry could be settled and while it was handed and drunk things became slightly more normal again.

  Alec, bless him for it, dug deep within himself, all the way to prep school tea with the housemaster’s wife and after-church chats with ladies from the village, and kept the table afloat through soup, fish, venison and spiced steamed pudding, valiantly quizzing Albert on the broad sweep and the nitty-gritty of the common house brick far beyond anything I could have imagined possible. Of course, the topic rendered the rest of the company helpless with silent amusement and one or two of Wilson’s earnest answers even brought gales of quite loud laughter. Meanwhile, I did what I could with Ina, reminding myself more than a little of a governess taking a child for a long walk in a high wind, one part exhortation and three parts dragging. By the time the meal was over I was exhausted.

  Thankfully, there was no time for coffee in the drawing room and port around the table, just some hot cocoa to help the spiced pudding do its work and then we were off to bundle ourselves into furs and make our way through the icy night to the circus.

  And what a very different prospect it presented, with the great white stable tent glowing like a full moon come to earth and the performing tent starry with lanterns. There were no tickets to be sold but there Ma Cooke was in the little ticket wagon anyway, with her black hair piled on top of her head and festooned with gold-coloured beads as bright as the rings in her ears.

  ‘Roll up, roll up, roll up there, my fine ladies and gents,’ she said. ‘Madame Polina welcomes you to Cooke’s Family Circus, the oldest circus as ever was in all this scepter’d isle and still the finest.’ Of course there were giggles at that, but they seemed less harsh than they had before, less braying, with a little real pleasure at the magic, even the tawdry magic, of it all.

  At the door of the tent, where the canvas flaps were covered with sleeves of red tonight and looped back with gold braid ropes, stood Donald and Teddy. They looked rather splendid in their blue satin coats and pillbox hats (all well-doused with Keating’s powder) and with red ribbon hastily tacked down the sides of their old school trousers by Nanny that afternoon – proper circus, as Ma Cooke would say – and none of the guests gave them a second glance, except Alec who pressed ten-shilling notes into their hands as he passed, with a wink. They winked back, but scrupulously ignored me.

  Inside, Albert Wilson ushered Ina into a seat in the back row to the left of the door and stood guard on the end to stop anyone joining her there, before taking his place a couple of rows in front. He need not have worried. In the manner of the bright young things they were hoping to be taken for (and might, in fact, be) all of the ladies raced to the front and packed themselves in like children on a school treat, jostling and giggling, and pleading with the men to sit in the row behind to protect them. The men, for the most part, filed into the row with good grace, only Robin Laurie himself standing aloof and amused in the doorway, finishing his cigarette, before sidling into the back row across the aisle from Ina, where he leaned against a pole and stretched his long legs out in front of him. Ina, looking straight ahead, nevertheless scowled and shifted slightly in her seat until she was turned far enough away from him that even
his shoes must be out of sight to her.

  I sighed and led Alec to a seat midway between the pack of giggling idiots at the front and whatever nonsense was passing between Laurie and Ina at the back.

  ‘And remember,’ I said to him in a low voice, ‘we’re not here to amuse ourselves. We’re here to watch. Watch their faces, watch for hints of dark passion, watch for glares of hatred, watch for … anything really.’

  But there was nothing to see; there was no hint at all of what would happen until the very moment it did.

  Sallie Wolf, who was huddled beside the gramophone close against the ring fence behind one of the king poles, now grasped the handle in both hands and cranked it furiously, looking like Buster Keaton on one of those frantic handcart journeys along desolate railway tracks (a journey which he takes inexplicably often to my mind; I have never known anyone in real life who did so). When the contraption was well wound, the child set the arm down with a slight screech and the tent began to fill with a rather reedy oompah-oompah, which Sallie augmented with a little drum of her own, and soon there was enough noise to make one feel a thrill of anticipation.

  The chatter of the crowd subsided until only one or two giggles were breaking out intermittently from the front row and then Donald and Teddy, to my astonishment, swept the ring door flaps aside and strode confidently inside holding them open. Through the opening Pa Cooke appeared, swaggering in gleaming boots and britches and a tailcoat, his hair glittering with brilliantine and his moustache waxed to needle points. Donald and Teddy sprang forward and lifted out a section of the ring fence to allow him to pass through on to the sawdust, into the lights. Behind him came one, two, three and then too many to count snorting black horses, their coats shimmering like pools of ink. They lifted their hooves high, knocking foot against hock, foot against hock, as though they were dancing and all the time their beautiful necks arched to one side and then the other nodding their heads in time to the music. They fanned out on either side of Pa Cooke and at a crack of his whip they began to canter. The show had begun.

  It opened with The Spectacular, in which everyone crams into the ring at once and performs edited highlights of their acts, not the highest of the highlights, for those are saved for the act finales with drum rolls and spotlights, but some of the tricks which are impressive enough to whet the appetites for more. So, Pa’s horses stepped in time, rearing up and bowing down; beyond their reach, Anastasia circled the ring on Harlequin’s broad back, jumping down to one side and the other and leaping back up again to stand with her arms spread behind her, her face a picture of joy; Topsy, her hands strapped up in what looked like strips of leather, wheeled and spun on her corde lisse, matching each flourish to a bang on the drum; Charlie Cooke juggled and danced; Andrew and Tiny, when they were not holding up streamers and balloons for Ana, tumbled and turned cartwheels, perfectly in time with one another, perfectly in tune, the little man ducking in and out of Andrew’s flailing limbs like a pilot fish.

  Presently the black horses stopped wheeling and began to weave chains instead. Into the open space they had made, the Prebrezhenskys bounded as though on springs and, once Kolya had thrown himself down, the girls leapt up on to his waiting feet and began spinning. Zoya walked around, beaming, showing off her girls with a flourish of her arms, inviting us to marvel. At least that was what we were supposed to think, I realised. In fact, she was watching them closely, moving in whenever they attempted a high somersault, and stepping back, her face filled with relief, when they had landed again.

  Down by the king pole, Sallie was cranking the gramophone handle as though her little life depended upon it; the clowns’ somersaults grew faster until they were flashing past one another like a kaleidoscope and then with a final spring and bound they were gone. The horses reared steeper and paddled their hooves, Alya and Inya, with their mother standing rigid, one hand up towards each, flew up in the air, higher, higher, twisting like bobbins. Topsy held on to the rope with one foot and her teeth, or so it looked to me, and spun so fast she was almost a blur, Ana flashed by on Harlequin, now on her hands, now on her feet, tumbling over and over, faster and faster. She passed behind the line of weaving horses towards the back of the ring and …

  Nothing stopped, but everything, somehow, slowed and there were no more flourishes, nothing to make one gasp, as though everyone was marking time, waiting. Ana had left the ring. Pa Cooke kept his whip cracking, kept his horses dancing, but glanced over his shoulder. Zoya signalled to her husband with a downward pressing movement of her hand and the swift shuffling movements of his feet grew calmer, the girls making easy little spins. It was Topsy who took matters into her own hands and she had no choice: she could not keep spinning for ever for once the coiled power in the rope was spent, it was spent and besides she was panting hard, her ribs under their spangles heaving and her arms beginning to show the strain, juddering and twitching as she held her line.

  In the end, she had to do what she did, which was let herself down hand over hand to the floor with her legs kicking out like the sails of a windmill around her. She bowed as soon as she touched her feet to the sawdust and she was off. Then the Prebrezhensky girls jumped clear and landed with their arms spread wide, Kolya leapt up and all four of them bowed low and bounded from the ring. Pa Cooke shouted some swift command to his horses and they formed a ring again. I could see Donald and Teddy lifting the piece of fence and as soon as the first horse reached the ring door it led the procession out.

  ‘Ladies and Ah-gentlemen,’ bellowed Mr Cooke, for the applause was clamorous, ‘thank you thank you thank you. I thank you.’ At last the audience stilled but his voice remained as loud as ever. The gramophone record had wound down; he was shouting not to be heard above it, but to drown out the sound of commotion from backstage. ‘And first, for your delectation and delight, may I present The Troupe Prebrezhensky.’ He swept away backwards, his movements as sure and as firm as ever, only a slight frown twitching at his face showing that the raised voices from behind the ring doors were angering him. He bowed deeply and left the ring empty. We waited. Donald and Teddy shifted their feet a little, shooting panicked looks around them. The silence lengthened and the guests in the front row began to glance about themselves too and whisper. I looked behind me and saw Albert Wilson, sitting up very straight, frowning. I could just see Robin out of the corner of my eye but of Ina there was no sign.

  ‘What do you think—’ Alec began, but he did not get a chance to finish it. From behind the ring doors, slightly muffled by the canvas but piercing enough at that, there came a thin, high scream.

  I leapt the ring fence, in step with Alec, and raced across towards the door, turning halfway to shout behind me: ‘Keep to your seats, ladies and gentlemen. Keep to your seats.’ The last thing we needed was the bright young things surging through into the warren of the backstage when heaven knew what was going on. The two rows of guests stared owlishly back at me. Albert Wilson was wringing his hands. Robin Laurie was on the edge of his seat, his head cocked up in alertness. Ina, I noticed, was still nowhere to be seen.

  As we burst through the doorway, I could hear the sound of someone weeping but whoever it was was a long way along the winding passageways; we were almost at the back flaps before we saw them all. Both Prebrezhensky girls were wailing and in one voice I thought I could hear the shrill note which had produced that scream. Topsy and Tiny stood, arms around one another, their chests still heaving from their exertions in the ring, but their faces stricken behind the paint. Mrs Wolf was standing staring at the ground, little Tommy’s face buried in her skirts. Charlie Cooke was sitting on a barrel with his head in his hands, still wearing his wig, the red woolly tendrils sticking out between his fingers.

  ‘Get out the back and find Harlequin,’ said Pa Cooke’s voice, sounding ragged. As Kolya stepped away to obey him and Zoya followed, shepherding the little girls, I saw what they had been hiding. Ma Cooke was sitting on the ground halfway out into the open, plumped down with her Madame Poli
na skirts spread around, her shoulders shaking and her head bowed low. In front of her lay Anastasia. She was on her side with her legs bent beneath her, her hands flung wide, her hair covering her face. I stepped off the board on to the worn grass in the doorway and crouched down beside Ma, putting out a hand to feel Ana’s wrist. It was limp and still. I gathered up a handful of her hair and swept it back from her face. Her eyes were half-open, staring. From the side of her head where it lay on the ground a dark stain was spreading. I let her hair fall again and sat back on my heels. Mrs Cooke gathered one of Ana’s hands under her chin with both of her own and began rocking, mumbling a quiet prayer.

  ‘I found Harlequin,’ said Andrew Merryman’s voice. He was panting and when I looked up I saw his thin chest heaving hard. ‘He’s fine. Rattled but fine.’

  ‘Get a board,’ said Mr Cooke to Bill Wolf, who was standing in the shadows with tears rolling down his cheeks and into his beard. ‘Ma, go and see that her bed’s made up nice and let’s get her shifted.’

  ‘Wait!’ I said. ‘You can’t move her.’

  ‘What?’ said Mr Cooke. ‘Of course we’re moving her. We’re not shy of life here, missus. We don’t leave the work for some undertaker. It’s not our way.’

  ‘The men carry her home to her bed and the women sit with her is the circus way, my love,’ said Mrs Cooke.

  ‘But the police …’ said Alec. ‘They’ll need to see her where she lies. Where she fell.’

  Mr Cooke set his jaw so firmly that a small muscle danced in his cheek.

  ‘A doctor,’ he said. ‘A doctor, I’ll give you. But there’s no need for anything else. The poor lass fell off her horse – there’s no need for any of that.’