by Olivia Levez
I feel an ache then, of something I can’t put a name to.
‘Wait,’ I say. I don’t know why I’m talking. I don’t know what I’m going to say. I only know that I’m breaking the sixth rule.
She turns.
‘I wondered if…I wondered if you’d teach me to juggle fire.’
The dirty lines on her face deepen into a frown.
‘I mean, I’ll pay you,’ I say hastily. ‘I wouldn’t expect you do it for free or anything. Of course not. I have money –’
Shouldn’t have said that.
Her eyes spark green. ‘I’m very busy,’ she says, indicating her chalk drawings. ‘I have work to do. Like, I’m really exceptionally busy.’ She breathes tobacco and something sour and foul over me. ‘How much?’
I realise she’s talking money. ‘Ten pounds?’ It’s not as if I’m getting expert tuition or anything. I know that Daddy pays my extra tutors forty pounds an hour. Like the time when I was tutored for Oxbridge. But they were always superqualified, whereas Suz…
She smiles broadly. ‘Look, I’m real tired right now, Frog. I’ve been on the move all day. My feet ache. My whole body aches. And now you’re asking me to be your teacher. Look at that crowd. I could just get up there right now and they’d be hurling money into my hat. So long, Frog.’
‘Twenty.’
Her back stiffens.
‘For half an hour. Just give me half an hour to teach me the basics.’
A sigh, deep and heavy. ‘We-ell. OK. But you have to buy me a drink after.’
‘Done,’ I say. I try not to recoil as I shake her grimy hand again.
She lights one of her batons with a whoosh.
‘They’re called devil sticks,’ she says. ‘You hold them here, like this.’
She shows me how to hold one horizontally so that the flames don’t lick up and burn me.
‘You have to soak the wicks first. I use Kerosene ’cos it’s the cheapest, and lasts ages. Spin the excess off before you light it, or you’ll get fireflies.’
‘Fireflies?’
‘Little splashes of oil that set alight and hit the audience.’
‘Oh.’
‘Wait till it dies down a bit, and then you’re ready.’
We watch the flame flicker and dip, and then Suz takes the baton from me.
‘First you make friends with the fire,’ she says. Her face is soot-grimed, but her eyes are bright. ‘Just twirl it like this. Look.’
She passes it from one hand to the other, then does it faster and faster, hollering like a wild thing, twisting and throwing her devil sticks, feet scuffling in the chalk.
‘The shouting’s just for effect,’ she hisses. ‘Now it’s your turn, Frog.’
I take off my yellow coat and pass the baton from one hand to the other, feeling its weight, the roaring dry heat of it. Through its vapour, the pavement shimmers.
Suz passes me the other.
‘Come on, dance,’ she calls, dreadlocks shaking.
So I do. I spin and swoop the fire sticks through the rainspilled air, one in each hand, feeling the heat soar, seeing people’s faces spin and sparks shoot like burning sawdust.
This is what I’m here to do, I think. I’ve finally started. It’s really happening!
Time shudders and rainbows fly.
Around us, people shout and clap. At last, I stop, exhausted. I’m flushed, exhilarated. Suz is grinning at me. ‘Whoo-oo,’ she shouts. ‘You’ve brought me luck, Frog. Look in the pot.’
A little crowd has gathered. Someone leans forward and tosses in a coin.
‘Next time, I’ll teach you the tic-toc,’ she says.
‘Tic-toc?’ I ask. And inside, I’m thinking: Next time?
‘It’s the first step in juggling with devil sticks.You pass the big one between two smaller sticks. It’s heaps cool. Looks great at night.’
She shows me how to blow out the flame and dip the wick in fuel again, ‘so that it doesn’t dry out’. She ties up the ends in a plastic bag and wraps the sticks up in a canvas pouch, before shoving them in her silver case. ‘My brother bought me them when I was little and he came to visit me.’
I wonder what she means by ‘visit me’.
‘You’re a natural,’ she adds. ‘Miss Phoenix, with the devil sticks – here.’ Suz tips out what’s in the top hat.
She counts it out. Eleven pounds and eighty pence. ‘A fortune! You can stay longer, Frog. You bring me luck.’
She grabs the chalk and draws vigorously, kneeling down on the sun-dried pavement. Soon there’s a picture of me, spinning and flying in flames. My hair is tongues of fire tipping upwards, topsy-turvy. My eyes, spirals like Catherine Wheels.
As she tries to lever herself back up, I notice she has something wrong with her left leg. Compared to the right, it’s withered and not as well muscled. She has to use an arm to straighten up.
‘Worse on a rainy day,’ she laughs, when she sees me looking. But there is pain through the laughter.
She holds out her hand for the twenty pounds I owe her. I watch her tuck it inside her baccy tin.
‘So now, what about that drink?’ she says.
The Mermaid
I order a glass of white wine. Suz orders a double vodka.
‘Crisps too.’ she says. ‘Salt and vinegar. On account of I’m vegan.’
I leave her sitting at a corner bench and go to pay for the drinks, telling myself that this is all part of the grand plan.You have to invest to benefit. You can’t reap the rewards without initial outlay. That’s what Daddy’s always saying.
And it’s relationship-building, I think. In order to move forward I need contacts.
But how does that fit with Rule #6?
As I pay for the drinks with our earnings, I think of the long night ahead, the long night I will have to spend alone.
My arms ache wonderfully after all the juggling.
When I get back to Suz, she’s crouched on the floor next to an enormous shaggy dog, chatting animatedly to its owners and fondling its ears. Every now and then, she laughs, the sound as sudden as a handful of gravel being thrown at a window.
‘I have a special way with dogs,’ she says, when she sees me. ‘I was just telling this lovely couple here, I just love dogs. Don’t I, Dennis?’ She smacks a huge kiss on top of the dog’s head and holds heavily onto the table to lever herself back up.
I can see the couple want to be rid of her. ‘Bye, Dennis,’ she shouts, as I lead her away.
Suz drinks the vodka in two seconds flat, and says she wants another one.
‘I’ll pay,’ she says. She shows me a crumpled fiver in the palm of her hand. I have a feeling it was the tip that Dennis’s owners left on their table.
‘So, what do you do, Frog, when you’re not Duke of Edinburgh-ing?’
I feel the white wine warm me. It’s cosy in the pub, full of happy holiday-makers. Next round, I order a double vodka too.
I find myself telling Suz about Daddy and the Handbag, and she nods sympathetically.
‘Oh, god, yes. It’s always the same story, right? Abusive stepmother. Alkie father. Foster care. Sofa-surfing till your mate kicks you out. Yada, yada, yada.’
I think:
Housekeepers, gardeners and grooms.
Daddy with his glass of whisky.
Zebra-print fingernails.
‘Something like that,’ I say.
I tell Suz all about my different ponies.
‘Oh yeah? Oh yeah? Nice.’
Suz tells me she used to ride, back in Melbourne.
‘On the beaches, galloping through the sand,’ she says. ‘Best feeling ever.’ She’s on her third double vodka, and I’m not sure who’s paying. She has a face full of listening.
I tell her about my mother and the circus and all of my plans.
‘You know what you need, Frog? You need a manager, that’s what. You need some luck. You need…You got a cigarette?’
She’s shaking her hat upside down on the table. T
he barman is giving us slanted glances; he’s looking Suz up and down like she’s something the dog’s just rolled in.
Then she leans forward, heavily, on the table, and gets herself to stand up. Her face is screwed up with effort.
‘Gotta go now, Frog. S’been lovely meeting you.You keep safe now, d’ya hear me?’
‘You could be my manager,’ I say. It all seems obvious suddenly. It’s the missing link, the thing I need. I am talking faster now, trying to stop her from leaving. ‘I could pay you for more lessons. Give you a cut of anything I earn as a performer. You said I brought you luck –’
Suz stares at me, her chalky hand still gripping the edge of the table. Then her face is transformed by a broad smile.
‘We should celebrate,’ she says. ‘I know just the place.’
Tiramisu
‘It might take up a little bit more than our earnings, Frog,’ she says, as we walk down towards the sea through the lanes. She rises up and down slightly with each step, her hip pushing out. On each downhill step, that wince. She’s crammed her top hat over her dreadlocks, and looks like a limping Artful Dodger.
‘How much have we spent?’ I try to ask her, but my voice is thick and slow. We only had eleven pounds to start, I think. And the five that Suz took from the dog couple. I think we might have spent the twenty I gave her for teaching me devil sticks. And we bought all those drinks. So that would be…a lot.
‘You OK to take my arm? I’m not so good on these down bits, since my accident.’
‘What did you do to your leg?’
‘Aww, this? It’s nothing. Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall,’ she sings. ‘Let’s just say, I decided I’d have a go at flying, and the ground had other ideas. But they fixed me up good. Put Suz back together again.’ She pats her left hip. ‘More metal in me than a car scrapyard. You got any more money?’
I pat my bag. ‘That’s fine,’ I say. ‘Totally fine.’
Initial outlay, I think.
The restaurant turns out to be Italian. One of those that’s all low ceilings and warm pizza smells and candles in wine bottles. A middle-aged couple eating pasta give Suz the once-over and then turn away. This makes me angry. I could take their heads and slam them down in their bowls of linguine, I think, until there are clams in her hair and passata down his face.
I realise I am very drunk.
Suz surprises me by asking for a table in Italian.
A waiter, small and dark-haired and big-bellied, shows us to one right at the back of the restaurant.
‘Doesn’t want us to be by the front door when people come in,’ Suz hisses. ‘But that’s OK. Who could blame him?’
I could, I think. I could blame them, and then I could –
Suz orders a bottle of wine and two more double vodkas.
‘Do you think we should?’ I say. ‘Honestly, Suz. There’s not much money. We only earned eleven pounds, remember?’
Suz leans forward and grabs both of my hands. ‘Frog… Frog,’ she says gently. ‘You need to relax. We’re celebrating, remember? Everything has to be nice. And who says I don’t have money?’
She winks and draws out two crisp twenties from under the table.
‘It’s a treat,’ she says. ‘On me. It’s from some…winnings.’
Her eyes are wet now with tears and vodka. ‘It makes me feel human, being here. Don’t spoil it, Frog.’ She clasps my hand in her grubby ones, and I find I don’t mind.
‘Now for pizza!’ She claps her hands.
Suz orders bruschetta and tomato salad to go with her Florentine pizza. ‘No meat?’ she keeps saying to the waiter. ‘You sure you’ll hold the egg and mozzarella?
‘I don’t do animal products,’ she tells me, for the hundredth time. Then: ‘Olives,’ she yells. ‘Let’s have plenty of olives. They’re totally vegan.’
I’m not sure I can eat anything, but when my pizza comes, it makes me feel better. It’s herby and handmade and totally delicious. Out of deference to Suz’s passionate animal rights stance, I have chosen one with aubergines and artichokes, and it’s been so long since I had delicious food that Suz is right: it does make me feel human.
The waiter pours in some wine to taste, and Suz snatches the glass and bends her face to it, sniffing deeply, like a dog.
‘Divine,’ she declares, mimicking my accent. ‘Quite simply divine.’
When he refills her glass, she drinks it straight down without tasting a drop.
I find myself showing Suz my mother’s photograph, and she pores over it, sighing. ‘She’s beautiful, Frog. She has your eyes.’
She wipes off a smear of sauce that has got onto the corner of the photo. Gazes at it with those understanding, sea-glass eyes. ‘You gotta do as she wants, Frog. Make her proud. She’s riding the back of a giant bird right now, looking down on you.’
‘A bird?’ I say. Our voices are loud and I know there are people watching: that lady with the sunburned shoulders; the man with the long face with his long-faced son.
Suz is breathing all over the picture. ‘She’ll be on a starling, Frog, or a kestrel. Or a red kite. No doubt about it. I have the Gift.’
‘The Gift?’
Suz lowers her voice to a whisper. Heads turn back to their meals. ‘The gift of talking to birds. They tell me things. When I go, Frog, I’ll be sitting on the back of a seagull, riding high over the ocean…Dessert, please!’ she bawls.
The waiter comes, his mouth a tighter line than when he started his shift.
Suz orders a sundae and an Irish coffee and I order tiramisu. I feel a little sick.
I watch as Suz drags her hip over to the glass counter and points out all of the flavours of ice cream she wants in her sundae. I can see her waving her arms and explaining in Italian which sprinkles she needs. From the back, she doesn’t look world-worn. She looks like a little girl.
When she’s slurped her way through her mound of pistachio-fragola-limone, Suz leans forward heavily. Her eyes are bright and brimmed with friendship.
‘Listen, Frog, I gotta go to the little girl’s room.You enjoy your coffee, won’t you? S’been nice.’
She takes my hand then, and clasps it, trailing it across the table as she gets up and hobbles away.
I watch her make her way to the washroom, dipping her head at the other guests as she goes. Even through my drunk haze, I can tell the waiters want us to leave. There are hardly any other diners left.
A manager, I think. That’s what I need.
Although Suz has only gone to the toilets, the pool of warmth that’s wrapped me since I met her ebbs away.
‘Signora?’
The waiter is hovering. He has our bill on a little tray, and there are two sweets on it, one for me, one for Suz.
‘Thank you,’ I smile. My voice comes out all thick.
The amount is ludicrous, far more than Suz’s twenties, or our earnings, even if we still had them. I will have to dig once more into my savings.
But it’s all right, I think. Totally fine. It’ll all be made back once I’m earning, won’t it? And I try to remember all of the plans Suz talked about; they sounded so extravagant and wonderful and hopeful when she outlined them. I can’t think of even one of them now.
‘You pay by card?’
‘Oh, cash, please.’
Suz is being a long time. I wonder if she feels ill, like me. I wonder if I should go in and see if she’s all right in there. Offer to hold her hair back if she’s throwing up. But the thought of holding those filthy dreadlocks is a little too much. Suz isn’t Beanie.
I realise Suz hasn’t left me her twenties.
I reach into my rucksack, feeling the waiter’s eyes on me, and draw out my brown envelope. To my relief, it’s still there, fat and full with cash. Just for a moment I thought…
I smile at the waiter as I ease out some notes and start to count them.
But then I begin to feel very cold and hot at the same time.
In my hands are pieces o
f torn-up paper, scribbled and doodled with chalk drawings, birds and ladybirds and giant eggs. I let out a sort of a whimper and pull out more of the papers, fistfuls of them, while the waiter looks on. Only more and more pieces of paper.
No money. No notes.
Suz has taken it all.
Helter Skelter
And now I know that when I go into the ladies, she won’t be there.
There’s an open door, just by the kitchens, leading out onto a backyard with bins and crates, and an open gate to the street.
She must have known this would be the best restaurant to choose, to make an easy exit.
‘Signora, you must pay. We call the police!’
I hardly hear him. I am breathing too fast, too fast, but I must focus.
A thought flashes into my head. Her leg. Her hip. She can’t be far away. Ignoring the shouting waiter behind me, I scramble past the bins and head out into the street.
I’m going to find her.
And when I do, I’m going to kill her.
Swing Seat
Suz is gone. And so are her chalks, and her bags of friendship bracelets and her devil sticks.
She has left me my picture, drawn on the pavement just outside the ghost train. No words, just a yellow-headed girl, spinning endlessly in the spilling sunlight, fire batons and fireworks and shooting stars.
So long, Frog.
I want to scribble it out viciously. I force myself to take calming breaths and scan the plaza. Only a row of silverhaired ladies, nodding off in the evening sun.
She can’t have gone far – please make her not have gone far.
I run up and down the narrow lanes, asking inside restaurants, peering over walls into gardens, even though I know she couldn’t have climbed them, not with her hip. I race along the streets of the Old Town, back through the fairground, back past the ghost train. People’s faces, bemused, open-mouthed. Pushing past elbows, bags, bodies. Take a right, and then another, and I am back at the funicular. Still full of holiday makers, eating and drinking. I run past the fish stalls and past the miniature railway to the fishermen’s beach.