by Janet Ellis
‘He has.’ I think of the vicar, on his knees eating broken cake, or reading the heady verses of Donne to himself in his chilly room, longing not for Heaven but Oxford. ‘Aunt, as you may imagine I did not recount in detail what had befallen me. And I did not mention Mr Onions by name, either, of course. I do not sit in judgement of him, but would rather Mr Onions came both to his senses and to his rightful conduct in good time, rather than because of any correction.’
‘Of course.’ She is struggling to follow this logic. ‘But it is not his soul that concerns us, only the comfort of your own,’ she says.
‘The vicar suggested I take long, improving walks and consider how Mr Onions’ conduct is damaging only to himself.’
‘Walks? Rather than kneel in prayer?’
‘He is of the opinion that spending time in God’s fresh air, observing the good people I see going about their business, and remembering to thank Him for the rich harvest of His gifts to us, might go some way to help.’
This is novel. A man of the cloth who willingly empties his church. Where would she go to show off her new clothes, or to find the poor within easy reach of her patronage, if not to church? ‘Then that is what you must do,’ she says reluctantly.
‘I am indebted to you, for suggesting that I ask for spiritual guidance.’
‘Eh?’ she bites her lower lip.
‘Were it not for you and your wisdom, Aunt,’ I go on, ‘I might be floundering in a bog of lonely unhappiness. I would not know how to manage my silent suffering. Your suggestion that I go to the church and seek my answers there was inspired!’
She blinks and blushes. She has forgotten it was not her idea. She is like a kitten, mesmerised by a waggling ribbon and pouncing, not seeing the hand that holds it and pulls it out of reach.
‘I had been asking Him to help me, of course.’ I look upwards. I had better be careful not to give my aunt the idea that she is responsible for every last morsel of my redemption. ‘But it seems your clear instruction was, finally, all that I needed.’
She must follow the ribbon for one last twitch.
‘Tomorrow, after resting, I shall set out, as he bid me do.’ I cannot help smiling. My aunt takes credit for this expression, too.
‘I am glad to see you so much improved,’ she purrs, admiring her handiwork. ‘Praise the Lord.’
Chapter 15
Fub was like a leech at me yesterday afternoon. In my small mirror, I can see bright purple spots where he sucked. Even if he were to bite me hard enough to let blood, I could not be cured of him.
He told me to wear stout shoes today, but the little boots my uncle gave me to ride in are too small now – I squeezed my left foot into one, but it chafed and pinched even before I took a step. Our route to the fair would leave me walking sore and ragged. My mother has pattens, but I don’t know where she keeps them and I daren’t risk discovery by searching through her things. My soft new shoes will have to do. If my feet were as hard as my heart is to my family, I would not struggle with the ground beneath them at all.
He waits where he said he would. He wears a cord jacket, and when he turns there is a waistcoat underneath. I am suddenly nervous of him, as though his being dressed so smartly undoes our closeness a little. He pulls his clothes about, as unused to their constriction as I am to their appearance. When he sees me, we smile at each other like new acquaintances. He looks to my feet.
‘You are wearing dancing shoes, Anne.’ He is immediately disapproving, his awkwardness forgotten. He may as well be in his apron again. ‘We don’t dance to the fair, do we, we walk.’
It is too late now, isn’t it? The entertainments won’t wait while I change my shoes.
‘Go easy, then,’ I say.
He does not reply, but shrugs .
‘Then do not consider me at all. It is my feet I walk on, not yours, Fub. You will not hear me complain if you do not mind on my behalf where we step.’
I look carefully at him. His hair still curls at the back but the front stands up in spikes. The change is unnerving. His hand goes to where my eyes stare. ‘I chopped at it.’ He looks embarrassed. ‘The knives were just back from the barracks and I tested one. I thought I needed tidying.’
I don’t like to see his newly revealed forehead. I am angry and discomfited that he did not stay as he was. It is like a scratch on polished glass.
In the hush that falls between us we hear a sound, a soft
whispered roar sharpened by cries and shouts: it is a great mass of people. It sounds like an army on the move, but instead they are all revellers bent on their task together. They carry a banner of noise, brandished like regiment colours, and it is coloured with drums, pipes, the pierce of flutes and high songs. None is in tune together but it’s a great, raucous hymn to holiday.
‘Look!’ Fub points upwards; the sky is clear and blue. ‘For us!’ He smiles at me and I catch his humour; he is full of pleasure and good intentions. He takes my hand, laces his fingers through mine and pulls at me, eager now to start our expedition. The day unravels before us like a bolt of cloth. We shall cut shapes from it as we please.
‘Where is your money hid, Anne?’ Fub speaks low, as if pickpockets have better hearing than most. Perhaps they do, and that skill aids their fingers. They can hear which is the cotton and which the velvet purse. Wherever they walk, there must be a constant jangling in their ears of all the coins carried near them.
I pat at my stomacher. ‘Under here. I would feel any hands going there.’ He looks sideways at me and I know we pleasurably imagine our hands going all ways about each other.
‘Give it to me, safer that way.’ He stops and turns to me. I stop, too.
At once, I am jostled at the shoulder by a man. He holds a small child by the hand and the two of them stare at me as if I have halted the entire fair, not just delayed them by a moment.
‘Silly dressy maggit!’ says the boy. His voice is high with outrage. He is about eight years old. I look hard at him. He has the brightest red hair, all in tight curls and as broad as a hat on his head. His face beneath is white with pallor, but he stares back at me with proper anger. How quickly these two have melted my mood. I am tempted to frame a reply but I feel Fub’s arm round my waist.
He pulls me to him and whispers ‘Come here,’ and his voice is enough to restore me to better humour.
I bob a tiny curtsey in mock apology at the pair. The fellow lifts his hat, but the boy just glares at me. I should not like to see him grown to a man, the great pale lummock, and heaven help any wife of his – if he’s lucky enough to find one and she’s daft enough to take him on. What if I pushed him over, kneeled on his chest and pulled out his orange eyelashes till he sweetened? I stand my ground to watch them go. The boy walks backwards for a while to keep me in his sights.
Fub frowns. ‘The crowds here are small, Anne, compared to the mêlée we’ll soon find. If you are going to take issue with every bump and knock, we’d do better to turn round now’.
‘I am unused to it, that is all.’ I do not want him to examine my behaviour – I have enough of that order of things where I stay. Wriggling my hand to where I hid it, I feel for the little bag of coins and pull it free. ‘Here,’ I hand it to him.
He weighs it, looks inside, grins, then swiftly puts it in his pocket. ‘Treats from Mr Jaccob!’ he shouts. But I shiver to recall going into my father’s study to search for money and finding in the drawer of his desk, hidden there, that little lock of my dead brother’s hair, tied up with thin black ribbon.
Fub spreads his jacket open and tucks his fingers into the pockets of his waistcoat, leaning back a little. ‘Off to Bartholomew’s Fair?’ he says, speaking as if his cheeks are plugged with wool. I doubt he has ever spoken to my father, but he is unnervingly accurate in his impersonation. ‘Then you cannot go empty handed! Take this money for your food and your fun there, and take my daughter too for yo
ur other pleasures!’
He grows in his assumed role. He has his head pushed down onto his chest now, to conceal his neck and make his voice gruffer. ‘I am pleased, no, I am honoured, no, I am beyond any happiness that you, such a fine, handsome, hard-working young man, should have chosen my scrappy daughter above other women. I was wondering how I might be rid of her. She is schooled a little, I suppose, but skilled? I doubt it. What’s that?’ He cups one hand to his ear in a parody of deafness. ‘Skilled in the bedroom, you say? Then her virtue is lost! Take her away, do what you will with her, while I, a sorrowing parent, do what I can to assuage her shame.’
He staggers about, feigning sobbing, and mimes the production of a mighty handkerchief, large enough to have to pull hand over hand from his pocket like a sail, to mop at his eyes.
‘Assuage! That’s a fancy word!’
‘Thank you misthtreth!’ He puts on the voice of a lisping child, sucks at his thumb. We laugh, and my happiness is smooth and sweet as honey.
The crowd builds now, and the swell and sway of it would make it difficult to change course, so we all go together. But then it seems to bend and fall back on one side, and as the shape changes I see why: at the front of the semicircle it forms, tethered to a post by a thick chain, stands a bear.
It is shockingly large, standing taller than the man who keeps guard beside it. Although the chain is so short that the animal cannot move much, the man holds a stick and feints a little with it, provoking the creature to wave his upper paws about. If it weren’t for the huge claws that protrude from them, or the sour reek that hangs in the air, it might almost be a man dressed up, so incongruous does the bear seem, so ungainly, his actions a parody of how a beast might move. He turns his mighty head towards me and I can see his little eyes. They are at once bright but broken.
‘That’ll be the sport soon,’ Fub points to two dogs. They are tied up too and while they growl and pull towards their prey, it seems as if both they and the bear are reluctant players at this game. Then one dog barks, then the other and the noise is harsh and loud – there is no mistaking the menace now.
Suddenly the bear roars. Everyone falls back, a collective gasp propelling them away from the sound, till most begin to laugh a little, embarrassed that they feared such a captive threat. But how powerful that roar should be! It should scatter us, dogs and all, to leave the bear in peace. Instead, emboldened, the assembled mass begins to push forward again, testing the limits of safe distance. The two men who keep the animals apart nod to each other, the dogs’ owner bends to release them as they pant and choke to be free. The bear opens his maw; great skeins of spittle join his teeth to his jaw. There is sweat on the faces of the men as they prepare for the fray, and the transparent lines of saliva that hang from the dogs’ mouths shake and tremble as they growl. Soon all these waters will run together with wet blood.
We are near the front, but I begin to make my way back through the audience, I have no stomach for what comes next. When I watched the calf die, it was a solemn and necessary affair, minutely planned and deftly done. This will be a random tearing and gashing till the beast dies as much from exhaustion as laceration. I can face a swift execution. This will be ugly and prolonged.
‘Anne!’ Fub tugs at my arm to pull me back. I shake him off. Behind me, the dogs bark excitedly, the bear answers, the crowd shouts and squeals, but I am the only person facing away from the scene, the only one trying to leave. Against the bulk of people pressed tight together, my progress is slow. Until I step on a toe or dig in an elbow to clear my path, no one looks my way; every gaze is magnetised to the action before them. As Fub follows, his passage is punctuated by the same cries of ‘Watch out, there!’ and ‘Mind me!’ and various cusses, as mine is.
Two pillars of striped blue and white cloth rise in front of me and stop me in my tracks. Now they move, alternately, with a vibrating step, and I realise they are trousered legs extended to extreme length, twice my height. Looking up, I can make out a body above them and a face that peers at mine. A girl looks down. Her straw-coloured hair is braided and long and she teeters on her stilts and moves her limbs constantly to keep her balance. I cannot see her face clearly, as the sun is behind her and everything rises to a silhouetted point above me, but I think she smiles.
‘Anne?’ Fub is beside me now, his hair awry and his expression quizzical. He pulls at his jacket, which has ridden up, and smooths his hair back from his forehead. I can only shake my head at him; I cannot begin to explain how little I’d wished to see the bear baited.
‘Are you travellers, requiring a passage?’ the girl shouts. ‘Hold on.’ She points to her limbs: ‘One to each leg. I am your guide. Watch this! No one gets in my way.’
And we take the billowing cloth as we might hold her hand and follow where she walks; she is our human maypole. People point and clap at us but she is right, they do not stand in front of her, so we get to a clearer place unobstructed and leave go. She waves and bows low at us, her upper body as lithe as her wooden legs are stiff. I watch her stride off with a pang of regret – I would like to be with her longer, my hand holding her clothes like a child clutches his comforter.
‘Were you frightened? You watched the slaughter easily, didn’t you?’ Fub is like a dog at a bone, worrying at me, determined to get an answer.
‘Yes. When you and Levener went about your business, I was ready for it. But today, I am afraid of the sight of blood.’ This is simpler than explaining that things should die with dignity. I give him information as if I’m paying out rope, thinking Fub can hold only a little at a time.
‘Then when we get to the ring, you must stay outside,’ he says
‘What ring?’
‘Thanks to your father’s generosity,’ he sneers at the word, meaning no gratitude to the man, ‘I have enough to enter a bout.’
‘A bout? You mean to box?’
‘Indeed, and if I win – when I win – you can return what you took from him. Or keep it for another such outing.’
Oh, I should have stood still when the dogs snapped, I would like to see him fight! To see him bare-chested, winking at me as he clambers over the ropes to face his opponent. I can see him mock the other’s appearance, pretending to be afraid when they square up to him, then knocking them out clean and quick. He would be the victor, I have no doubt. I could catch the eyes of any woman watching and signal to them: He is mine as they admire his skill, his strength. But Fub believes that I am suddenly squeamish and must not watch.
‘Have you seen the wheel?’ Fub is almost running ahead of me, excited as a child.
It is a wonderful thing: wooden carriages circle above the ground and swing from side to side with enjoyable fragility. They sway like boats at harbour even as we sit down, so that we are immediately pressed close. I squeal, clutching at Fub’s arm. There are high girlish noises from every direction. In moments, we rise a good ten feet above the ground. The men turning the wheel’s handle delight in altering the speed, so we lurch from rushing to crawling; my stomach flips at each spin and we keep being thrown together in a clumsy embrace. The unbalanced sisterhood around me cry aloud too. When we’re done, I have to sit on the ground to get my breath back.
‘Wait here,’ Fub says, leaving me still spinning. He comes back with a posy of flowers, bound together so that you can pin in to your costume. I watch him as he fixes it to my waist, teaching his large fingers to be dainty.
My feelings for him are rich as cream and I am queasy with desire. I want every hair, every follicle, every pore of him. Touching his head lightly, I say: ‘How pretty, thank you.’
But I want to bite him till he cries aloud.
‘It was not your father’s money that bought it,’ he says gruffly. The crowds around us blur and fade – even the sky is muted. He is in sharp relief, coloured and vivid. ‘We must find food,’ he says sniffing the air like a hound. We feast on cold cured meat and hard brea
d.
* * *
Fub holds my hand and walks with a purposeful tread, scanning the crowds about him, till ahead of us there’s a white marquee. He cheers: it is his destination. The man sitting there barely looks up, though he takes the money quickly enough. ‘And does she want a ticket?’ he says, hopefully, nodding towards me.
‘She waits outside,’ Fub says, though he can hardly be bothered to finish his sentence in his haste to go in.
When he has gone, the man looks down at his coins and rotas without saying anything. It appears that if I am not going to pay him, I am of no interest to him. There is room on the bench beside him, but he does not bid me sit down. I have no wish to stand near this surly fellow. He has a large ganglion on his right wrist, but we are a long way here from any bibles to flatten it.
I circle the tent slowly; it is my lair with my precious cub within. The first time I pass him, the grump looks up briefly. The next, because he knows it is me from the colour of my dress, he nods without raising his eyes. From inside the tent, I hear the low excited murmur of a gathering crowd. I pace the ground, but it does not make the time go quicker. I should have argued to stay with Fub but I did not, as I feared an altercation might use up some of his strength. It might only be measured out daily. The crowd roar together in gratified harmony at a hard blow landed.
‘Où est votre amour?’ It is the voice of a child, squeezed and thin. A tiny woman stands in front of me. She comes barely to my waist, though her large head accounts for a great deal of her height. She has applied rouge as you would in a dark room, in thick stripes on each cheek, and above her eyes she has stuck silver moons and stars on her skin in a haphazard constellation.
‘Dov’è?’ she smiles, flashing golden teeth. Without warning or preparation, she tips forward onto her hands and walks about on them, her tiny bright red boots held tightly together. Righting herself, she comes up to me.
‘German?’ I realise that she is quite old for though she is as small as a girl, there are lines and furrows on her face and her expression is distant and a little blank. ‘Do you speak German, then? Wo ist?’