The Lion Tamer’s Daughter

by Peter Dickinson

  Anyway, she wasn’t going sailing without him, so she sold the boat and the cottage. And they’d lived in our house in Coventry ever since they were married, and she didn’t want to be reminded of him every time she opened the door, so she sold that too. Her job was helping with the costumes for the Royal Shakespeare over at Stratford. Theater people all know each other and I think she must be pretty good because she got herself a new job almost at once, working for the Scottish Opera in Glasgow. So we left Coventry and went to live up there.

  One other thing before I go on. My dad was a good careful guy who liked to do things right. He was pushing forty when he married Mum, and she was only nineteen, so he’d taken out proper insurance for her. Not that he’d expected to die that young—he was only fifty-five—but it meant that she had a bit of money to help us get by.

  Glasgow wasn’t that bad, in fact I found the change easier than Mum did. She’d got her work, but she didn’t seem to want to go out or make friends or anything. Some of the kids at school tried to give me a hard time about being English and not Scottish, but nothing I couldn’t handle, and I soon found a crowd to hang around with. Our new house was nice, not in the rough bits you hear about but out on the edge, a place called Bearsden, with little farms and steep hills and a golf course close behind. I hit it off with a boy called Ken who lived fairly near. He was nuts on bird-watching and summer was coming on, so we did a lot of that.

  But it was amazing how much I missed Melly. There wasn’t anything special about her I missed, it was having someone like that around, someone just there. I’d get home from school, evenings, and put the kettle on and without thinking I’d get two mugs out of the cupboard.… The one Melly used had an elephant on it. I put it right at the back of the shelf, but I still found myself looking for it.

  This is going to sound silly, because we weren’t in love or anything, Melly and me, let alone being married seventeen years, but missing her like that gave me a bit of an idea how my mum must be feeling. We wrote to each other sometimes, and we tried telephoning, but it wasn’t the same. We didn’t want to chat, we just wanted to have each other around. I’m guessing about her. She didn’t say and neither did I. It’s not the sort of thing you can say.

  Scottish Opera doesn’t stay in Glasgow all the time. They go on tours all around Britain, and abroad sometimes. The costumes are all made by then, but they have to take a couple of people from the wardrobe department along to do last-minute fixings. Mum doesn’t usually do that, but that first year, just as they were starting off to do a fortnight in Edinburgh at the beginning of the tour, one of the people got hit by a van and had her leg broken, and the other one got stranded on holiday somewhere, so Mum agreed to do the Edinburgh fortnight. I stayed over at Ken’s and stopped in at home every evening to feed the cats and check the post and the phone messages.

  At the weekend Ken fed the cats for me while I went up to Edinburgh on the bus. She’d said to pick her up at the theater, but when I found her they’d got a crisis on, with a stand-in soprano who was a good bit shorter and fatter than the one the costumes were for. I said OK, I’d go out and bum around Edinburgh for a bit and be back at lunch-time. Someone said to go and look at the castle, which seemed a good idea, but I took a wrong turn and found myself moseying up Princes Street. If you don’t know Edinburgh I’d better describe it. There’s this sort of canyon running into the middle of the city. It’s laid out as a park, with the castle along the top on one side and this famous street on the other, so that you can walk along looking out over the park at the battlements and stuff up on the skyline. There’s steps and paths going down and up the other side. There’s a lot of stuff for tourists, buskers with bagpipes, tartan souvenirs, that sort of thing, and classy shops the other side. It’s worth seeing.

  I walked along as far as the last lot of steps and started down them. They zigzagged to and fro. Turning one of the corners about halfway down, I saw a couple of girls coming up. One of them was Melly. She was chattering away like she used to, with all the body language going. I stopped dead in my tracks and stared. Then I saw her hair was all wrong and she was wearing a mass of makeup and smoking a fag, so I stared some more. I couldn’t help it. She was staring back by now, but she’d have done that anyway, the way I was gawping at her. She said something to the other girl, who stayed where she was while the one I’d thought was Melly came stamping up the steps—she was wearing Doc Martens—straight at me. I was still thinking how to say sorry when she said in a low, furious voice, “Hey! You were in that effing boat when I was chucking up!”

  She didn’t say “effing,” of course. Most of the kids I know swear a bit, some of them every third word, like breathing. Melly was one of the ones who’d sorted out it was cooler not to. Anyway, I knew exactly what this girl was talking about. It was one of the weekends Melly had come to Penmaenan and it had been pretty good sailing weather and Dad had talked her into giving it a go and she’d been as seasick as hell.

  “That’s right,” I said. “That was at Penmaenan.”

  “That was in an effing dream!” she said, still furious.

  “It was real, Melly,” I said.

  “Melanie,” she snapped. She did a double take and stopped being furious.

  “How come you ken my name?” she said.

  Yes, ken. But she had a funny accent. Edinburgh people talk different from other Scots, but this was something else.

  “You’re Melly—I mean Melanie—Perrault,” I said.

  “Perrault,” she said, putting me right. It’s a French name, because Melly’s dad was French. This girl made it sound French.

  “What’s your name?” she said.

  “Keith,” I told her.

  “What more do you ken?” she said.

  (Really she said something like “What mair dae ye ken?” but I’m not going to try and write like that. I hate reading dialect, and I wouldn’t get it right, and anyway that would make her sound much too Scots. She had this other accent—French, I guessed, from the way she’d said her name. What I’ll do is use some of her words, like “ken” for “know” and “aye” for “yes.” She sometimes said “wilna” and “dinna” instead of “won’t” and “don’t” and so on, but mostly she said them the English way, so I’ll stick to that. I’m not going to try and do anything about her accent—it was too weird. What’s more it shifted about. Sometimes it was much stronger than others, but it was always there a bit. While I’m at it, I’ll leave out most of the swearing, but she didn’t do that all the time either.)

  So what else did I know? I didn’t know where to begin.

  “Your name’s Melanie Perrault, and you live, you used to live, in Coventry, like I did, and you went to Ashley Junior with me and then Ashley High, and we’d walk home to my place after school because your mum—”

  She grabbed my wrist so hard that her nails dug in. She’d been frowning and shaking her head about what I’d been telling her, but now she stared as if she was trying to look right into my head.

  “Promise this isn’t a put-on,” she said.

  “Promise,” I said.

  She thought.

  “All right. When I’m at … your place, I get to have my own mug.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “The one with the elephant on it.”

  “And yours is a green one with white spots,” she said.

  “It got broke in the move,” I said.

  “What’s my ma’s name, then?”

  “Janice.”

  “Janice,” she said, trying it out. I guessed she’d known about the elephant but not about Janice. She was pale now under the makeup, and trembling. She took a long suck at her fag and threw it away.

  “Wait there,” she said, and went running down to the other girl. They talked for a bit. The body language was different. The other girl was obviously fascinated and wanted to join in, but Melanie wasn’t having any. In the end the other girl came on up the steps, pretty sulky, staring at me as she went past. Melanie came up be
hind her, a bit calmer now.

  “Probably thinks I’ve gone on the game,” she said.

  “Funny kind of place to start,” I said.

  She looked at me for the first time as if I was human, and smiled. The way she did it was so like my Melly when I’d said something to amuse her, my heart almost stopped.

  “Got any money?” she said.

  “A few quid.”

  “Buy me a Coke?”

  “OK.”

  She took me to a place up another lot of steps, in a sort of shopping mall, with booths and big windows looking out at the castle. Soon as we were sitting down she lit up again. The pack was empty so she threw it away.

  “It’s got to be there’s two of us,” she said. “Twins. When they split up they took one each and they never told us about the other one. What’s she like, then?”

  “Spitting image of you,” I said. “Except she doesn’t smoke and she doesn’t do makeup, much.”

  “Right little pious snob, then? Bet she doesn’t dress this way, neither.”

  I haven’t said that as well as the Doc Martens she was wearing fishnet stockings with tears in them and a fake leather mini and a shiny red jacket and she’d got her hair short and chopped-about.

  “She would, too, if Janice let her,” I said. “Tell you what, a bit before we came north she was having one of her dopy fits and she was drawing in a dreamy kind of way and when she’d finished she showed me. ‘That’s me looking at myself in the mirror,’ she said. It could’ve been you, now. Lipstick and all. The fag, even.”

  “Jesus!” she said. “Just after Christmas, this would be?”

  “Around then. We came north in January.”

  “I bought this lot with my Christmas money, and I remember what a kick it was trying it on in the shop, and feeling effing great looking at myself in the mirror until this cow of a woman came and told me it was no smoking in there. She tell you about that?”

  “No. But … she made a sort of sour face and tore the drawing up.”

  “Yeah.… You said dopy fits.”

  “When she sort of goes away for a bit.”

  “Me too. That’s when I get these dreams. Not like night-dreams—they’re something else—but … Jesus! She’ll have been watching what I’ve been up to! Not just watching, neither—doing it along of me. Like me being sick in that effing boat!”

  She looked a bit shaken by the thought, but then she laughed—Melly all over again.

  “Well, she’ll have learnt a thing or two,” she said, “and maybe she wouldn’t have learnt them in … Coventry? Right? I knew it had to be England, someplace. OK, then—tell me about my ma. Skinny, with red hair—right?”

  “No, that’s my mum. Janice has got dark hair and she’s not so tall. She’s not really fat, but she’s a bit that way. She’s sort of tidy. Nice clothes, but a bit boring, suits and things—but that’s for her job. I don’t remember I’ve ever seen her in jeans.”

  “That’s my ma! I thought she was some kind of aunt. Go on, everything you can remember.”

  “You didn’t even know her name, then?”

  “Papa gets mad if I ask. Real mad … you know …”

  I could guess. Well, I settled down and started telling her everything I could remember about Janice, which was quite a bit. Thinking about it, I wasn’t surprised, if Melanie’d only seen them in these sort of dreams, that she might have thought my mum was really her mum. Mum’s a feeling person. If someone’s in trouble, she’s right there with them in their trouble. Janice is more of a thinking person. If someone’s in trouble she’ll look things up in books and ring round and find what’s the best way to get them out of their trouble, and then she’ll put it onto her PC and print it all out for them with numbers at the start of each bit. They’d have made a great troubleshooting team, together.

  I took a while telling her. Then she borrowed some money off me and went to buy herself more fags. Yeah, she was two years under age, if she was Melly’s twin, but she knew her way round. While she was gone I checked the time and it was getting on half past twelve, when I’d told Mum I’d be back at the theater, so I was up at the bar paying the bill when Melanie came tearing back and shoved what I’d lent her into my hand.

  “I’ve got to go,” she said. “I’m in dead trouble already. How do I get to talk to you again?”

  “I’m coming with you,” I said. “What’s up?”

  “I work in the restaurant Saturdays, and I’m on at twelve. He’ll beat the eff out of me. Got enough for a cab? Pay you back—honest.”

  She was panting it out as we raced up the steps, and there was a taxi just finished being paid off. I jumped out and stopped him driving away. (It made me feel good, valiant-knight-to-the-rescue stuff. Silly, sure, but it happens.) She gave the address to the driver as we got in.

  “We’ve got to sort out about meeting up,” I said. “What’s this about the restaurant? Can’t I just come there—”

  “Chrissake, no. I told you about Papa.”

  “The one who’s going to take it out on you for being late?”

  “Right. Mind you, he won’t let anyone else lay a finger on me.”

  “But Melly says her dad’s a lion tamer.”

  “He used to be, but something happened at the circus—I dinna ken what, he wouldn’t say—and he packed it in. Sold his lions and came to Edinburgh and got a job at Annie’s doing the bar. He married her after a bit. I do waitress when I’m not in school.… Do something for me?”

  “Sure.”

  And I meant it. No messing around whether it would get me in trouble or clean me out. I’d have done what she wanted as if she’d been Melly.

  “You’ll have to act up a bit,” she said, and leaned forward and asked the driver to stop. She got out and scuffed around in the gutter for a handful of dirt and rubbed it into the side of her face, using the wing mirror to see what she was doing. Then she dirtied her forearm and knee and took off her jacket and scuffed it along in the gutter and put it on and got back in. While she was doing this I found a scrap of paper and copied down our hotel number, which Mum had given me, and our number and address in Bearsden. She glanced at them and tucked them into the pocket of her jacket.

  “Ta,” she said. “Right. I’ve been knocked down by a bike and you’ve been looking after me. You’re new in Edinburgh? OK, there’s this steep little street, cobbles, in behind the station. Doesn’t have a pavement. You’re coming up and I’m coming down—it’s a way I could’ve been taking back to Annie’s—and there’s this van just come up past you and a bike coming down, and the stupid sod on the bike thinks he can get between me and the van, and he can’t. Got it? So you’ve picked me up and got a cab and brought me home because you’re a good guy, right? Don’t overdo that, mind. You better pay the cab off in case Papa comes rushing out to grill him about where he picked us up, but then you look like you were hoping to get your money back. Do that for me, Keith?”

  “I’ll give it a go, sure.”

  It wasn’t that far. We stopped in another touristy kind of street, only this one was all gift shops and Scottish woolens in genuine little old houses. Melanie stayed in the cab while I paid the driver.

  I helped her out of the cab and she put her arm around my shoulder and I put mine round her waist and she hobbled along beside me into an alley and there was the restaurant, Annie’s Genuine French Bistro, next to a haggis bar. It didn’t look too bad. I’d hardly got the door open when a square, tough-looking woman looked up and came striding toward us, but before she reached us a man came rushing out from behind the bar, shouting at Melanie in French. They both stopped when they saw the state Melanie had got herself in, and I started explaining to the woman about the accident I was supposed to have seen, while Melanie mumbled away to the man in French. The woman calmed down at once, but the man stayed very het up, but not in your standard comic-Frenchman way. He was short and skinny, but his head didn’t look like a small man’s head. I don’t mean it was too big for his body,
but it had this heavy, hungry look, with high cheekbones and deep-set eyes. I could see he was still furious, but in a frustrated kind of way, because the people he wanted to take it out on, the cyclist and the van driver, weren’t there for him to get at.

  “I don’t think she’s really hurt,” I told the woman, because I knew Melanie wouldn’t have any bruises to show. “She’s just pretty shaken up. She wasn’t making any sense at all at first, and then it took us a while to get to where we’d find a taxi …”

  “The taxi’s waiting to be paid, is he?”

  “He’s gone. I’ve paid him. It was three pounds fifty with the tip. I hope that’s all right.”

  “Course it is,” she said, and went off to the till.

  I looked to see how Melanie was making out. The man had grabbed a chair and sat her down, but as soon as he saw me turn he drew himself up with his head held back like a soldier on parade.

  “I give you most profound gratitude,” he said.

  He had a very strong foreign accent, but he spoke slowly and solemnly, so that I could pick up what he was saying.

  “That’s all right,” I said, and took the chance to tell him too about Melanie not being hurt, just pretty shook up.

  He nodded.

  “You will accept luncheon?” he said. “On the house, naturally.”

  “I can’t, I’m afraid,” I said. “I’m supposed to be meeting my mother. I’m late already.”

  “Very good. In that event you will bring your mother to dinner this evening. I would wish to express my thanks to her also. Excuse me.”

  A customer was getting impatient at the bar. He strode off. The woman who’d gone for the cab fare was dealing with two new customers, so I’d a few seconds to talk to Melanie alone. I wanted to see her again, but I didn’t want any dealings with her dad, if he was the sort to beat her up, and certainly not to take free meals off him. But when I told her she grinned Melly’s quick wicked grin.

  “That’s worked out terrific,” she said. “You’ve got to bring your mum round so I can see her. The food’s pretty good, tell her.”