The Circus

by Olivia Levez

  ‘And the galleries. Don’t get me started on them When I’ve sold a couple of portraits, that’ll be me done for the day, so I can just stroll around the galleries, maybe soak up some Impressionists at the Musée d’Orsay, or peruse the Neoclassicals at the Louvre or gaze at Monet’s lilies at the Musée de l’Orangerie, before getting hungry and hitting the Marche Mouffetard for some really cheap fruit and vegetables and bread. If I get tired walking, Frog, there’s even a little white train that’ll pull me to all the best places. Waddaya reckon, Frog? Waddaya reckon? That’s what I’m going to do, Frog, when I save the money and get myself a passport…’

  And she sighs and hunches over her Pocket Guide to Paris 2006, the only book she ever reads. I hear her through the night, thumbing pages in the candlelight.

  Pigeon Drop

  The wind’s up.

  I struggle along the promenade, buffeted as if by an invisible force. I have two shopping bags stuffed with purchases. I hung around the market as they shut up, watching the stallholders wrestling with the canvas awnings and poles and shouting for their helpers, their children, their dogs. It was like watching a circus big top being dismantled. One minute, a little village of huddled tents and canopies, the next, a few boxes and crates shoved neatly into white vans.

  ‘Want them, love? Three for a pound.’

  A florid-faced woman, struggling with a crate of cauliflowers, nods towards a box of aubergines. I am not sure how to cook them. But I remember Martyna – or was it one of my au pairs, the sad one, with dirty blonde hair? – cooking up something she called lecsó, chopping aubergines and frying them meltingly with peppers and onion and paprika. Suz would love it.

  ‘I’ll take all of them,’ I say. ‘And the mixed veg too.’ I point to a box of browning cabbages and carrots and onions, all tumbled together in the rush to get out before the storm.

  She laughs and nods. ‘Awright, love. You drive a hard bargain, don’t ya?’ She watches me as I scoop the vegetables into Suz’s satchel, along with the aubergines.

  ‘One pound,’ I say firmly. She’s not to know that I found the coin on the pavement by her stall.

  She shrugs and tucks it into her money belt. Then one of the awnings is ripped away and takes off like a giant mushroom.

  ‘Hey!’ she shouts, and runs to join the men who are trying to rescue it.

  I grab cloves of garlic and handfuls of bunched thyme, and pick up several apples that are rolling around on the ground.

  ‘Hey, you –’

  More shouts – at me this time. But I’m gone already. I have perfected the art of melting away. How to disappear. Watch the Wonder of Willow! See How She Vanishes! You Will Not Believe Your Own Eyes!

  So I’m battling along the path, lowering my head and bracing myself against the wind, bags cutting into my palms. But I’m excited, too. Suz will be so happy when I make us this vegan feast. I am even going to risk using her flour to make flatbreads. If I close my eyes, I am sure that I can remember how. I think of Martyna’s big red hands kneading and pummelling at the dough, and slapping it against our wooden worktop. Daddy got a bespoke carpenter to make the butcher’s block central island. It is almost the same size as a football pitch and used to take Martyna most of the day to keep the wood oiled. There was rage in her flatbreads, but sorrow too.

  I remember that now.

  A sudden gust pushes me sideways, and I gasp. It is almost frightening, but exhilarating too. I reach down to grab an onion which has rolled out of the bag, and push forwards, laughing and gasping. There is no one about. Wisely, they have stayed indoors. Gulls are ripped through the sky, which is sullen grey and apricot. The little kiosk at the entrance of the pier is empty, the ice cream van outside gone.

  It takes me forever to cross the road and climb the fire escape with my bags. I crawl across the roof because I am afraid I will get blown away. Or struck by lightning. Or both.

  There is a flash, which lights up the whole world and makes me scream. I can’t remember the rules for being in a lightning storm, but I do know that you are not supposed to be alone on top of a roof.

  Inside, the house is silent, and too warm. It is as if all the electricity in the air has bunched up and collected in this space. My nerves jangle. A crackle, and the house fills with white light, like the after-flash of a nuclear bomb. Rafters, windows, beams, corners: all of the hard edges and lines are outlined like knife cuts, like the skeleton of the house has been X-rayed and exposed.

  ‘Suz?’ I call.

  The heat pushes upwards, like a physical mass.

  I place the food bags carefully on the Barbie hooks, and edge along the planks to find Suz. She’s not in bed, and she’s not on her usual perch, swinging her legs in the middle of the central beam, singing. She’s not in her favourite corner, cross-legged over her latest creation, busily stitching or painting or drawing. And she isn’t engaged in her one-girl chalk battle against the crap graffiti-ist out in the yard.

  Then I hear it: the keening.

  It is a sound that lifts and lowers, sends shivers in my bones. A constant moaning that rises into whimpers of terror as the storm flashes and rumbles. We are in the very eye of the storm.

  ‘Suz?’

  I search the whole house, climbing down the ropes on the walls, circumnavigating across to the different levels and floors. I follow the sound as it pines until, at last, I find her.

  Suz.

  She is hidden underneath a three-legged table, right on the bottom floor amongst the rubble of previous squatters. She has pushed mattresses and boards and planks up against the table, as if she’s in a nuclear bunker, or an air-raid shelter. I pull aside a piece of wood just as there’s another flash. There’s an immediate rise in the wail.

  ‘Suz? It’s me, Frog.’

  At first I don’t recognise her. She’s sitting in a filthy nest, hair hanging down instead of in its usual bright hat, her eyes closed, shivering violently. An unwashed fug rises from her. She’s closed her arms around her chest, and is panting, teeth chattering, all the time making that horrible, unearthly keening noise.

  ‘Suz, what’s wrong?’ I climb inside, not minding the reek of fear and dread, and try to cuddle her, but it is like hugging stone. She is in some other place, experiencing some other terror.

  In the end, I just sit with her, and all the time she is rocking, and keening, and chattering, eyes closed, or staring like a blind person at some horror that only she can see.

  ‘I don’t like storms.’

  It’s a whisper, a butterfly breath.

  I wait.

  ‘They remind me…of when it happened.’

  I squeeze her hand, cuddle her, and this time she lays her head against my shoulder, her body softens.

  ‘It was when I was travelling around Europe, and there was a beach party in Turkey. Fireworks, plenty of booze, plenty of guys there. We drank and we smoked a lot of weed, and there was all kinds of other stuff being passed around. I took it all. I was fifteen and I’d had enough.

  ‘I’d run away from my third set of foster carers, and just taken off. It was wonderful. At first. Then there were some things that happened…’

  She takes a shuddering breath. The house is quiet now. I light a candle in a jar and bring some cushions into our nest. I manage to roll her a cigarette, and light it, and put it into her mouth. Stroke her cold hand.

  ‘So, we’d been skinny-dipping and all of a sudden I was alone with the boys. There were six of them, and me. They were in their twenties…I guess I was wanting to show off, but also I was kind of lonely.’ She breathes out a huff of bitter-scented smoke. ‘I ended up with this one guy, and all the time we were doing it, I was looking over my shoulder at the fireworks, and never have I felt more lonely. And after, he just kind of laughed, and that’s when I saw his eyes, with the fireworks dancing in them, and they were mean eyes. They were dead as stone.

  ‘He called something over his shoulder, and I was wandering about, drunk and high, trying to find my clothes
, trying to pull on my bikini over the sand, and then he pushed me back down, and said something in Turkish or Greek, and I felt cold, all of a sudden…and still the banging of the fireworks.

  ‘When I looked behind him, they were all there, his mates, the ones I’d been flirting with, in the sea.’

  Suz is fumbling in her bag, lifting cushions, and I know what she’s looking for. It’s what she always needs when the darkness comes over her. She finds her tin, takes out a little plastic bag of the stuff she calls ‘spice’, and opens it with shaking hands. I look away. I can’t bear to be with her when she takes it. I can’t bear that version of Suz.

  ‘Please don’t,’ I say. But I know that, for her, it is the only thing that will help.

  Suz takes a huge hit, I can hear the gasp of it as it fills her lungs and blanks out her mind. Soon, there will be peace. Before the hell of it.

  ‘There were six of them, Frog. And all the time, there were the fireworks. I tried shouting, but nobody could hear me. Every time there’s a storm…I’m reminded…I’m reminded of the fireworks…’

  Suz stops talking now. She’s in that zombie state, eyes dark and blank as a blind man’s.

  I leave her sitting and staring, taking the rollie away and the candle, so that she doesn’t hurt herself. Then I climb slowly back up to the crow’s nest. There, where I left them, are the carrier bags of vegetables. I leave them hanging up, and crawl along the rafter for the peanut butter. Eat it, huddled in my yellow coat, in the storm-cooled house, straight from the jar.

  Below me, the keening has stopped, but somehow the silence is far worse.

  Caged Tiger

  It takes Suz two days to recover from the storm.

  In that time, I feed her, and I lead her outside to go to the loo, and I roll her cigarettes and try to give her clean bedding. In the day, I fire-juggle and braid bracelets or try to copy her chalk drawings.

  Today I am a clown. I have painted my face, all sad-eyed and droopy-mouthed. Rule #8: If possible, hide in full view.

  I am balancing on my homemade plinth next to a lamp post, chin on one hand, crook-legged like a broken doll, watching the police officer. It is much harder to be a living statue than a pavement artist. A fly has landed on my nose. My knees are trembling, and my lower back aches. But there’s little crowd gathered now, and the odd sound of coins being dropped. I can tell without looking what they are. Copper coins. Given to a child who doesn’t know any better, to pacify them. If I’m lucky, they’ll add up to a pound, and I’ll be able to buy a pot of winkles.

  The officer’s young, in a yellow luminous jacket as if he’s scared he’ll not be noticed for what he is. He’s got a radio in one hand and a bag of crisps in the other. I wonder if he’s supposed to be eating on duty. As I watch, he tears the packet open with his teeth. Good teeth, I think. He’s got brown skin and eyes that tilt at the corners. Beautiful eyes. As long as they don’t notice me.

  But they do.

  He walks up to me and passes me a flyer. It’s a picture of me. Missing Person, it says at the top. Have you seen this girl?

  He glances down at Suz’s fire sticks. ‘You often in this spot?’ he asks.

  I nod a tiny fraction. Behind him, a woman is looking on curiously.

  It’s just procedure, I think. He doesn’t know who I am. He can’t possibly recognise me. All around me are other living statues, in various poses. As I watch, one of them, dressed as a silver pirate, takes a break. Scratches her leg and accepts a Costa coffee from her friend.

  ‘Have you seen this girl?’ he asks. He’s watching me closely with those almond eyes. He seems awfully young to be a police officer. Maybe he’s just dressing up as one, pretending to be something he isn’t, like me.

  ‘Look closely at the picture,’ he’s saying. So I do. I examine this girl’s face and her hair and her prefect badge. Willow Stephens, Missing Schoolgirl, looks absolutely nothing like me.

  ‘I don’t know her,’ I say, which is true enough. ‘Definitely not seen her around here.’ I realise he’s looking at me strangely. Too late, I hear my public school accent ring out, too loud, too clear, too enunciated. At odds with my clown face and scruffy clothes.

  ‘She went to boarding school,’ he says, and his voice is carefully casual. ‘Her father’s a wealthy man. He’s pulling out all the stops, looking for her.’

  I shake my head, but my legs are shaking now too. I wish I could make them stop.

  ‘Have you been in Hastings long yourself?’ he asks. He doesn’t seem young any more, just very keen, thorough, good at his job.

  ‘Why, certainly, officer,’ I smile brightly. ‘I’m a performer, here with my dance troupe. We’re kind of on tour, you know.’

  He’s nodding, but you can tell those eyes are searching, taking everything in. I am just thinking that he’s going, I’ve got away with it, when his eyes shift to my lapel. We both look down, and my stomach drops.

  He’s looking straight at Beanie’s head girl badge, pinned like a trophy.

  ‘May I ask where you got that, miss?’ he says. His hand is reaching for his radio.

  I gabble. ‘What? That? It’s mine. I mean, someone gave it to me –’

  His other hand reaches for it, palm upwards. ‘It’s really important that you tell us. We have reason to believe –’

  But what he has reason to believe, I don’t know. Because at that point, I get up, jump off my plinth and run.

  ‘Look at that clown, Mummy!’

  Faster and faster. He’s still following me.

  I can outrun him.

  I forget all about Rule #6: Do not draw attention to yourself, and instead focus on Rules #1, #5 and #7. It seems for the best.

  I pick up pace until I am at full sprint. People are cheering us on. They probably think it’s all some kind of living art performance.

  Pretty Eyes is fast and fit. He has pumped-up arms, under his regulation shirt, a gym regular. The pavement pounds. I don’t want to go down on the boardwalk, not after the incident with Fairground Man, so I take a right and veer along past the miniature railway, the fish shacks and dab sandwich stalls. Ahead, the funicular.

  I duck in front of a group of silver-topped tourists, heads bent over maps and leaflets.

  I think that I have lost him, but he’s still running, rhythmically, easily, relaxed in his stride.

  Ignoring the shouts from the irate ticket seller, I vault the funicular barrier and hurl myself onto a wooden bench in the little carriage just as the glass doors slide shut. On the other side, Pretty Eyes is a fraction too late. He presses his hands briefly against the glass and stares. The passengers inside my car stare too. And then it judders and starts to glide upwards, almost vertical, like the tamest theme park ride never invented. People in the carriage close their open mouths. One little boy is halfway through licking his ice cream; there is a slow drip of blueberry from his chin. A pair of twins, swollen-cheeked and eating double cones, can’t keep their eyes off me. Their grandparents glance at each other and pull them away. It is like I’m a wild tiger, and they’re all caged in with me.

  ‘Nice weather, we’re having, isn’t it?’ says a mad old lady to no one.

  I pant, fighting to get my breath. It wouldn’t do to have an attack now. I watch the top of the ride for a glimpse of fluorescent yellow. Would he have climbed up? Taken the steps?

  But no, he’s climbing into the other carriage, just as I reach the top. He’s talking into his radio.

  Our doors open. The parents in my carriage drag their children out, away from me. Should I stay inside? Or get out, and head along the cliff path, hide in the National Park, in the woods? I hesitate, but then a group of elderly people get in chattering with excitement. I stay or the descent, gripping the slatted bench with my hands.

  Halfway down, the other funicular car passes. Pretty Eyes and I gaze at each other through the glass. He looks furious. I wave, and blow him a kiss. When I reach the bottom, the doors open, and I launch myself out and stumble onto the
platform. Scramble up and pelt towards the beach.

  I clamber up onto the deck of a boat, panting and heaving. I am safe – aren’t I? By the time he comes down again, I will be long gone.

  ‘She went over here…’

  A woman’s voice. I crane my head to look who it is, trying not to make a sound on the rotting decking.

  There are more of them.

  Another yellow jacket, and a lady with a Labradoodle.

  ‘Geoffrey,’ she calls. Her dog’s seen me. It wags its tail and barks.

  I will it to ignore me. But it’s a stupid, friendly animal. It gambols over to me, tail fanning like a burlesque dancer’s plume.

  ‘Go away,’ I hiss.

  Geoffrey doesn’t.

  Instead, he rolls on his back, trying to rub something revolting into the back of his neck. It looks like a dead seagull.

  I shrink back into the shadow of the cabin, but by then it’s too late. The dog’s owner is standing below. Behind her, the second police officer is nosing around the hull of the boat, flashing her torch and speaking into her radio. I wonder if Scally’s on the other end.

  I crouch, praying the dog doesn’t give me away.

  But Geoffrey’s bored with the seagull slime, and looks straight at me.

  ‘Woof!’ says Geoffrey.

  Both the woman and the police officer see me at the same time. The dog owner screams, and it’s only later that I realise I’m still wearing my clown face make-up.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

  With a yell, I leap on top of the officer, knocking her off her feet. Geoffrey joins in joyfully. I grab the stinking dead seagull and slap it smack in her face. Both me and the dog are panting. She cries out in disgust, rubbing at her cheek.

  The dog owner’s holding her phone up to her face, mouth open.

  ‘Sorry,’ I keep saying. ‘I’m terribly sorry.’

  Geoffrey licks seagull off the officer’s face, just to be helpful. By the way she’s cringing, it looks like the officer’s scared of dogs too.