The Lion Tamer’s Daughter

by Peter Dickinson

  “So she decided to leave him. She’d got a little necklace and a bracelet and some other things which she sold secretly, and bought a railway ticket, and just as the circus was getting going one evening she slipped away with the baby. It was a local train and it took her only about twenty miles back to Arles. There wasn’t a train out until the morning and she knew he’d come after her, so she went and hid in a little hotel in a back street, but somehow he found out where she was, because in the middle of the night he came to her room with half a dozen other circus people. When she started to scream they put a gag in her mouth and tied her up and took the baby away, but two of them stayed with her all next day. After a bit they untied her and took the gag out, but they told her that if she made a noise they’d use it again. Apart from that they wouldn’t say a word to her. They offered her food but she was too frantic to eat. They stayed with her all next night, but next morning her husband’s sister came and gave the baby back. The other two left, but the sister gave her some money and said, ‘If you try to find my brother again, your child will die. That is the truth. Now, go.’ In case you’re thinking it might have been some other baby they’d found somewhere, it wasn’t. You know your child after the first half hour.”

  “Anyway, they wouldn’t look the same now,” I said.

  We sat and tried to think about it. Melanie stubbed out her fag and blew out a long smoky breath and stood up and stretched. As she did so the sleeve of her cardigan slid up, so that I saw, halfway up the forearm on the inside, a white scar like an inside-out “N.” I grabbed her by the wrist and showed Mum.

  “I don’t know how much more of this I can take,” said Mum.

  “What’s up?” said Melanie. “Oh, that. Caught it on a nail one time we were loading the ponies. Papa was making me learn bareback.”

  “Only Melly’s is on her left arm, isn’t it?” said Mum. “You’re right-handed, aren’t you, Melanie? I noticed when you were lighting your cigarette just now.”

  “Right as right,” said Melanie. “Melly’s left, is she? Mirror images, then? Don’t you get that with twins?”

  “Not always, I think,” said Mum. “And anyway, those scars … What’s more, Melly caught her arm on a nail at some stables where she was having riding lessons. This is making me feel most peculiar.”

  “Did M. Perrault say anything to you about why he left the circus, Mum?” I asked. “I mean, if he was making Melanie learn bareback he must have been expecting to stay on.”

  “As a matter of fact he was rather odd about that,” said Mum. “I remember Janice saying that one of her problems was that he adored his lions …”

  “That’s right,” said Melanie. “He was nuts about them, and if one of them got ill … Always getting sick with something, lions.”

  “But he was very offhand about them last night,” said Mum. “It seems there was some sort of disagreement in the circus, but I’d have thought he’d have taken his lions off to some other circus, rather than giving it all up and moving to Edinburgh. It’s almost as if he wanted to get as far away as possible … Look, I’ve got to go. I think the first thing is for me to try and ring Janice. No, hell, she’s at a conference this weekend. She’ll be home this evening. I’ll try and … No, I can’t—it’s Giovanni and that goes on forever. Maybe I can find a gap. Please, please, be careful, Melanie. It isn’t just your father. There’s something going on here … And you and Keith have got to work out a way of staying in touch.”

  She was standing up by now.

  “I’m really concerned about this,” she said. “You were right in a way, Melanie. I do think of Melly as almost my own daughter.”

  “Do I get in on that?” said Melly, not joking, or not much.

  Mum looked really pleased, but a notch more and she might have been crying.

  “If this crazy business is true, you’re in already,” she said. “I’ll see you at the theater, darling. I might be clear by one.”

  “I’ll be there,” I said.

  When Mum had gone we just sat there, not saying anything. I was thinking about Mum. It was a crazy business, like she’d said, but it had really done something for her. I hadn’t seen her so alive, so interested, since my dad died. Suited me, anyway. If she actually wanted me to keep in touch with Melanie …

  “He took me away from my own mother,” said Melanie, quietly, to herself, to nobody, to the world. She looked down at her arm and stroked the scar with her fingertip. “And now we’re being pushed around, I’m thinking. Yon’s more than a wee coincidence, Keith. And it was more than a wee coincidence you happening down the stair just as I was happening up.”

  “Your dad’s doing it somehow, you mean?” I said.

  She shook her head.

  “Not him, no—he wouldn’t want it. Maybe like your ma was saying, he came to Edinburgh to get as far away as possible. And maybe now it’s come after us … It’ll be all about what he did when he took me away from my ma, when I was a wee bairn.”

  She was dead serious, but it didn’t make any sense to me.

  “It’s got to be something to do with the circus,” I said. “They were all in it together. I don’t believe in magic and stuff. I always knew Father Christmas was just a story.”

  “This is no Father Christmas, Keith, but you’d best start believing in it.”

  “If you say so … Well, supposing I did believe, I’d still say it was something to do with the circus. Was the circus just animals and acrobats and clowns, or was there something else? Palmists, I suppose, and fortune-tellers and stuff. They’re making out they do magic, sort of. You must have had some of that.”

  “Just Madame Raquel,” she said. “Herbs and potions, she sold, and she’d a crystal ball she looked in, but that was only, like, advertising for the potions. Herself, she’d tell you that, though she made a hocus-pocus of it for the customers. Buy me another Coke, then?”

  “If you like.”

  We wandered off and found a place where we settled down.

  “Tell you what,” I said. “We haven’t got a holiday fixed for this year—Mum didn’t have the heart. I could try and talk her into taking us out to Arles, see if I can find anything out.”

  “They’ll never talk to you.”

  “What about you coming along too?”

  “Don’t be thick. And it’s not just Papa—we get wall-to-wall tourists here, August. I’ll be working my arse off in the restaurant.”

  “Suppose …”

  “It’d give me the creeps, besides.”

  I looked at her because she’d said it in an odd way, more to herself than me.

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  “I dinna ken,” she said. “Just sometimes I’m dreaming about it, and it’s aye bad.”

  “That figures,” I said. “Is this something new? Have you always had these dreams? When did they start? After you left, or before?”

  “On the train it was, and very, very bad. It wasn’t the whole dream then, only the flying. When it’s the whole dream, I’m in the circus and I’m watching Papa feed the lions, and then a body comes—I don’t see who it is, and he tells me he’s going to feed his animal and I can watch if I’ve the fancy to, so I start off with him across this big open field, and there’s one of the traveling cages way over on the other side. And then it comes into my mind that this fellow’s planning to feed me to his animal, and he’s a bit ahead of me and I turn and tiptoe away, and then I’m flying. I can see Papa far down below, waving to me, but I’m flying away, free as a bird. It’s beautiful, Keith. But then I feel something following after me. It can’t fly, but it’s down there, following, calling for me, waiting until I am tired with flying. And then I’m getting heavy, and I ken that I can’t fly much longer … and that’s when I wake up. There’s nobody I’ve told that to before, Keith. Nobody ever.”

  “Melly has nightmares. I heard her having a bad one, once, at Penmaenan. That was about flying, I think. She didn’t want to talk about it.”

  “No, s
he wouldn’t.”

  “Was there anything in the circus you were particularly afraid of? Your dad’s lions, for instance?”

  “Not they. I was feared of Tante Sylvie, of course, but so were all the others. A great ogress, your ma called her, and that’s about right. Even Papa was feared of her. And one of the clowns, Monsieur Albert, I dinna ken why, since I’d nothing to do with him. They said he was a great miser, and if you looked out in the wee small hours you’d see the light in his caravan, where he was sitting up late counting his gold. And Madame Zazu, who rode bareback. Most days she’d be fine, but then the devil would be in her … when I was a bairn I heard a body say, ‘Keep away from Zazu, the devil’s in her today,’ and I went and looked and I could see it glaring out of her eyes …”

  “Run herself short of smack or something?”

  “Maybe. But I kenned aye that Papa wouldn’t let a body touch me, and there was nothing to be feared of. Only him.”

  We talked around and around until it was time for her to go back to Annie’s. She’d told M. Perrault she was meeting me, so it was all right for me to go along with her. On the way I bought a bunch of flowers for Annie to say thank you for last night’s dinner. I started to bother about what Melanie might be thinking of me. I’d got the feeling she liked talking to me, but I was pretty sure I’d be a lot younger, and a lot less streetwise, than the sort of boy she usually hung around with.

  I glanced at her, trying to guess what she felt, but she wasn’t noticing me at all. I could tell that at once. We were almost at Annie’s by now, and she was walking along looking calm and sure and set. I’d seen exactly that look before once, on Melly, when she’d dealt with the yellow dog. The lion tamer’s daughter.

  Mum was almost through when I got to the theater, so she took me out to a not-bad vegetarian place for lunch. The business with Melly and Melanie had really got a grip on her. She’d obviously been thinking about it pretty well solidly since she’d left us.

  “I’ve had a thought,” she said. “It’s almost too crazy to mention, but so’s the whole business.”

  “Except that it’s happening,” I said. “It’s all right, Mum. I won’t stomp on you. I’ve been swapping crazy stuff with Melanie all morning.”

  (I’d better explain that Mum’s more into believing weird stuff than I am. UFOs for instance. She thinks there are intelligent somethings visiting us from space. I think there aren’t. Dad used to say, Yes there are, and they’re conducting experiments to see just how gullible humans can be.)

  “Well,” she said. “Do you know what a doppelganger is? We did a play about one four years ago at The Other Place. It was by one of those gloomy old Germans, very intense and poetical and utterly boring, I thought, but the point was that the hero had this double who seemed to be some kind of fiend, who stalked him, and if ever they came face to face the hero was going to die. I think the idea came from an old German fairy story … I know it sounds stupid as soon as I say it, but do you remember what Melly’s aunt said when she gave the baby back? I’d assumed it was just a threat, that he’d kill Melly if Janice tried to get in touch with him, or the aunt would, or something, but if you think about the doppelganger story … I mean, I’ve never understood why the aunt brought the baby back, after M. Perrault had taken all that trouble to get hold of her. Janice’s explanation is that he was under his sister’s thumb, and the sister wanted Janice out of their lives, and she knew that as long as they’d got the baby Janice wouldn’t stop trying to get her back, so the sister bullied him into giving the baby up.”

  “I’d go along with that. Melanie said everyone was frightened of her aunt, including M. Perrault.”

  “But then where did Melanie come from?”

  “I don’t know. And you’re not going to tell me either of them’s any kind of fiend. Or that Melly’s the real Melly and Melanie’s her doppelthingy. I’m not having that. They’re both just as real as you or me.”

  “You don’t have to shout, darling. I completely agree with you about that. If you’d brought Melanie home out of the blue one evening and she’d not been Melly’s double and so on, then I don’t say I wouldn’t have been a bit alarmed for you, but as things are I feel just as concerned for her as I do for Melly. In fact, though I’ve met her just twice, I feel as if I’ve known her for most of her life. I want you to do something for me, darling. You’re going to think it’s stupid, but I have a very strong feeling it’s important. It’s the sort of feeling I’ve learnt to trust. Are you going to be talking to Melanie again soon?”

  “She’s ringing me at home tomorrow. After school. Is it all right if I ring off and call her back, so that it’s on our bill?”

  “Yes, of course. And when you’re talking to her I want you to try to persuade her not to get in touch with Melly for the moment. Melly’s staying with Christine”—that’s a friend of Janice’s and Mum’s in Coventry—“but she’ll be home this evening. I want you to ring her too …”

  “I was going to, anyway, and tell her about Melanie.”

  “Yes, of course. Then will you say the same to her, about not getting in touch? Try and get them to take it seriously, darling, even if you don’t believe in it yourself.”

  “Look, Mum. I take you seriously. I believe in you.”

  That shook her. It shook me too. It’s not the sort of thing you say.

  “Do you want me to tell them about the doppelthingies?” I said, to cover it up.

  “Doppelgangers. um … I think not … There’s no point in frightening them …”

  “It’s all right. I’ll just say you’ve got a bad feeling about it. They’d probably pay more attention to that than anything, anyway. Both of them. Melanie thinks you’re terrific, you know. I’m hoping she’ll put up with me because it gives her an in to you.”

  “I’m glad you’re having fun, darling.”

  None of this worked out. I took the bus to Glasgow after lunch and got out to Bearsden somewhere around six o’clock. I went home first, to see to the cats and check the post and the answer-phone. There was only one message, from Melly, saying she’d be home by three and would I call her as soon as possible, so I made myself a mug of tea and dialed her number. She answered first ring, and as soon as she heard my voice she broke in.

  “Who were you talking to yesterday? You met them on some steps and you went to a caff and drank Coke and talked and talked, and then you ran and got into a taxi, I think, and then … no, I’ll leave that bit out … there was a restaurant. And a man and a woman. Some sort of fuss going on. No. Wait. Yesterday evening you came back to the restaurant with Trish and had what looked like a really nice meal, and champagne, and the man and the woman were there again, and the man was sitting and talking and talking to Trish, and she was playing up to him. I think they were talking French. And somebody … somebody brought you the meal and did the waiting and so on … This is all real, isn’t it? I’m not making it up. Tell me I’m not making it up.”

  She was pretty upset, I could hear.

  “You’re not making it up,” I said. “It all happened. The bit you left out was looking at your own face in a wing mirror, wasn’t it?”

  “And rubbing some dirt in. Who is she, Keith? What’s her name?”

  “Melanie Perrault. We think she’s your twin, only Mum says she can’t be.”

  “And the man’s my father, then?”

  “Looks as though he’s got to be.”

  “I thought so. Oh, God! Tell Trish to watch out for him, Keith. He’s got a foul temper. What’s she like, then? Does she call herself Melly too?”

  “No. Melanie. Suppose you smoked a bit and swore a bit and had your hair cut ragged … You remember that picture you drew of how you’d get yourself up if Janice would let you? That’s what she was wearing—it looks as if you’d actually seen her trying it on in the shop. But the clothes and the hair don’t matter … Jesus, was I glad to see you coming up those steps. Notice how I stared?”

  “Did I notice? A right twit you lo
oked, Keith.”

  “Thanks. OK, I’ll go on from there …”

  I settled down and did that, best I could remember, backtracking when I’d left anything out. It must have taken getting on an hour—but at least Sunday calls were cheap rate.

  “How long has this been going on?” I asked her when I’d finished. “It’s when you get those dopy fits, isn’t it? You’ve had them ever since I’ve known you.”

  “Always,” she said. “But not like this before. It was just bits, and I knew it wasn’t real. I mean I knew I was sitting at the kitchen table or somewhere—I mean like when you’re watching TV, you can get very involved, but you know it isn’t happening to you, really. This time it almost was.”

  “Except you couldn’t hear what we were saying?”

  “I can sometimes, but only when I’m not trying. It drives me crazy. You know sometimes you’re reading a book in a dream and you’re getting along fine until you start paying attention, and then the words won’t stay still anymore. It’s always been like that. When I was little, and still when I was in junior school for a bit, it used to be in some kind of circus, and I knew it was in France because sometimes I’d hear them talking French, and I’d understand what they were saying although my French wasn’t really that good, but as soon as I tried to listen it didn’t make any sense at all. And last night I could hear that Trish and the man were talking French but I was trying to listen to you and it was just a sort of jumble.”

  “We were talking about Hole and P. J. Harvey, if you want to know. Do you have nightmares about a man leading you across a field toward a sort of circus trailer, and then you running away and finding you can fly, only something’s pulling you down, following you below?… Melly?… Are you there?”