The Circus

by Olivia Levez

  It’s really not her day.

  I leave Geoffrey’s owner trying desperately to drag her dog off, and race across the beach to the toilets. I am clown bright. I grab paper towels and hide in a cubicle, frantically rubbing my face paint off. In the next-door cubicle I can hear a mother trying to get her child to pull up his trousers. I rip off my beautiful yellow coat and stuff it on top of the cistern. I am leaving pieces of me wherever I go. I grab the pushchair which the mother’s left by the basins and stroll outside with it, heart hammering, my head held high.

  I walk straight through the little crowd of people gathered by the beach. Geoffrey’s owner has him under control, and Pretty Eyes has joined the other officer, who’s scrubbing at her face with tissues.

  Neither of them give me a second glance as I pass.

  The moment I am out of sight, I leave the pushchair by a public bench, hoping the owner will find it again. I don’t have the fire sticks. I will need to go back to the plaza some time and get them. As my panic shrinks, I start to doubt. How would the police officer even know that I was me? I don’t even know who I am any more. I remember how his eyes slid over to Beanie’s badge, but maybe he was more interested in taking in my little enterprise: the chalked pictures, the pot of money, the small crowd watching, my fire-eating act.

  Was it even about me? Was he just going to book me for not having a street licence?

  I jog at a steady pace back home. Back to Suz.

  But it can’t be home for much longer, can it?

  I can’t stay in the squat. It’s not safe. I’ve got to find a way to join the circus soon.

  Rule #9: Never give in to paranoia.

  Ha!

  The Wrong Side of Clean

  There’s a house in Old Hastings with a high wall adjoining a tiny, cobbled alleyway. The wall has overhanging trees and ivy, like it’s hiding a secret garden. More than ever since the police incident, I have a sudden craving to be alone. I climb up and it’s perfect for balancing. No one is in the house; it has the look of empty. Holiday lettings, it says, on a sign. Sleeps ten. There are stripy blue curtains and a wooden sailing boat in the window.

  I stand up, and hold a pose, arms outstretched. I hold my leg up high behind me, reaching out to grasp my foot, and pulling it upwards like an archer. I close my eyes, listen to the birdsong. Then, I take out the devil sticks and begin to juggle morosely. I light the middle one and practise tic-toc, slowly at first, then faster and faster, imagining Suz’s face, then imagining leaving her.

  Should I stay?

  Should I go?

  I slow it right down, lobbing the sticks from one hand to the other, until all the tension goes and I am in a half-trance. I blow out the wick and place the devil sticks carefully on the wall to cool down. I climb the willow and lie on my tummy on the strongest branch, letting my head and arms hang through the leaves.

  ‘Don’t be sad.’

  I scramble up, heart skittering.

  A man is hovering over me, casting a shadow. He is quite literally hovering, as he is on stilts. He’s a clown, a green man, his face painted in looping ivy, and a pair of giant horns sticking out of his leaf-filled hair. He has crinkly blue eyes and a hipster’s beard, full of leaves like a verdant Mr Twit.

  ‘Come to the Jack in the Green Festival,’ he says. He has a soft voice, with no particular accent, but there’s a smoothness to his vowels. He talks like Beanie’s brothers when they’re trying to play down their background. I wonder if he went to public school like them. ‘Come along, put leaves in your hair, nature in your soul. Release your inner druid.’ He reaches over the wall, as far as he dares on those stilts on the uneven cobbles.

  ‘And a special invitation for you, Fire Girl.’ He passes me something. It’s in the shape of a leaf, with hand-painted, curlicued script:

  Free Pass. Le Petit Cirque Invites You to Our Jack in the Green Party. Admits One. Invites Only. Callooh Callay!

  ‘It’s a leaf-let,’ he explains. ‘You’re pretty good, Fire Girl. Make sure you dress up, the leafier the better. I’d like to see you there.’ He shakes my hand, and his grip is firm and confident. ‘I’m Fabian, but friends call me Bee Beard. If you come to the party, you’ll find out why…’

  I shake his hand automatically, and he doesn’t seem to notice my grimy nails, my chapped hands. His are none-tooclean, despite his accent. But inside I’m thinking, Circus? Did he say circus?

  ‘It’s Le Petit Cirque,’ he says, as if he’s read my mind. ‘What did you say your name was?’

  I nearly tell him ‘Willow’, but correct myself just in time.

  ‘I’m Frog,’ I say. ‘Is it…a real circus?’

  ‘Frog! What the bloody hell you doing up there? I’ve been trying to find you –’

  Suz is back. My heart sinks.

  She’s looking madder than ever in her grimiest coat with a Barbie doll’s head in a buttonhole. She hasn’t been the same since I found her after the storm. I watch her as she peers at Bee Beard and me with suspicion.

  ‘What ya doing, Frog?’ Her voice is petulant; she doesn’t like me leaving her.

  The spell is broken; the birds, the butterflies in the garden, the leaf nestled in my hand.

  Bee Beard adjusts his feet back in his stilts and smiles at me. ‘A day to remember, so don’t be sad, fellow leaf-lover. Come join the dance. Callooh callay!’

  I watch him stride down the alley, hollering, laughing, shaking his bells. Then I look at Suz.

  I can see by the look on her face that she’s had her hand in his pockets.

  The Longest Air Walk in England!

  ‘I’m sorry…I said I’m sorry.’

  Suz is still talking. She’s been talking since the pickpocketing incident, all the way from the Old Town.

  I wish she’d shut up.

  She’s saying something about getting me work as a living statue, she knows someone who knows someone who has a costume I can borrow. By ‘borrow’, Suz of course means steal. Being on the streets so long has made her shed any morals like a dog shedding hair.

  ‘I need some space,’ I say. ‘Away from you.’

  We are at the pier. Grumpy Guy has locked up and gone home. The little information kiosk is deserted, the Harley-Davidson gone. Taunting me, rising above us, is the Hastings Pier Opening Soon! sign, with its laughing golden lady; she’s still holding her finger up to her lips and half-closing her eyes as if her lashes are too heavy. She’s still holding that ruffed pig tucked under her arm and turning her face to the spotlight. Grand Opening! Pop-Up Circus! And More!

  Through the grid-iron gate, I can see that they’ve started getting the stage ready for the show. There’s a tightrope being built – two platforms, one at each end of the pier.

  The Longest Air Walk in England!

  Walk on Air over Water!

  Be Amazed!

  ‘I’m going in,’ I say.

  I climb the barrier very deliberately, knowing that Suz can’t follow me. I know without looking that Suz will stay there, waiting and watching.

  She follows me like a stray dog, I think, and I don’t need her. Why do I need her? What use has she ever been to me?

  I start to walk along the pier, away from her, feeling the decking bounce under my feet. Through the slats, the water gleams.

  After a while I stop. Look back.

  Suz’s face is pressed against the gate, and she’s pulling puppy eyes at me.

  I sigh.

  ‘I hate you, Suz,’ I say.

  I drag a stack of deckchairs closer to the gate, climb back over and let her clamber onto my back, piggyback-style.

  ‘I love you, Frog,’ she says, as she gasps her way over. ‘I knew you’d come back for me.’

  ‘Your feet really stink,’ I say. Her trainers are rank with the reek of too many wet days and nights. I wonder when she last changed them.

  She lands with a groan, and lies on the top of the deckchairs for a moment, panting.

  ‘I hope you know I may never get ba
ck over, Frog. I mean, I could totally starve out here.’

  ‘We-ell,’ I say. ‘I suppose I could always push you chips through the gate.’

  She doesn’t answer. There’s just the sound of her rasping and I wonder when she first started sounding like that.

  I drag two deckchairs off the top of the pile and carry them halfway down the pier.

  Across the bay, lights twinkle. The Ghost Train wails.

  ‘We could sleep out here,’ says Suz, settling herself into her chair with a huff of effort.

  ‘You stole from that man with the beard,’ I say, watching the water glimmer through the decking.

  I see her shadow shrug.

  ‘He had money.’

  ‘I was making a contact. He has circus connections,’ I say. ‘You could have wrecked my chances, Suz.’

  ‘Just a posh boy playing at circuses,’ she sniffs. I hear rustling as she pulls out paper scraps from her bag to make origami birds. ‘He’s not the real thing.You’re better than that, Frog.’

  ‘I believe you’re actually jealous.’

  She laughs her gravel laugh.

  ‘You are.You can’t bear to think I may have made a friend. A useful friend,’ I add.

  Suz’s deckchair creaks as she gets back up and shuffles off. I feel her hurt and I am glad.

  It’s a balmy night. From the streets and houses, lights dance like fireflies. I picture all those people in their separate lit-up homes. And then there’s Suz and me, on the edge of it all.

  I clack my deckchair onto its lowest setting and stare up at the tightrope platform. From below, the structure that is going to hold the high wire looks a little like a claw. Something dark and grim: a hook or a scythe.

  I shiver, even though it is warm.

  I will be a performer, I think. It’s what I want, most of all. I’ll do it for my mother. I’ll learn to fly. I’ll learn the trapeze. I’ll leave the Handbag and Daddy and their stupid baby far, far behind. I’ll prove that I don’t need any of them.

  There’s a cry from the end of the pier.

  Suz.

  Struggling out of my deckchair, I hear it again. She’s calling my name, and I can’t see her.

  Why would she climb over the edge of the pier?

  Oh my God – ‘Suz!’ I scream. ‘Stay there. Hold on. Don’t do anything stupid –’

  It was me, I think, as I race barefooted over the bouncing boards. I did this. I should know she’s fragile, I –

  Shaking, I look over the side.

  ‘Shit, Frog. You took your time. Help me, would you?’

  Suz is straddling one of the struts, holding out her cardigan, which is bulging.

  ‘Take it, will ya? Can’t do everything round here.’

  It’s full of coins. I glare down at her.

  ‘What the hell are you doing down there? I thought… She gives a slow smile. ‘Oh, you thought that, did you? I got you worried there, did I?’

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ I snap.

  Later, I count the coins.

  ‘They’ll have been left there by the workmen and women,’ Suz tells me. ‘It used to be a thing, back before the fire. People would chuck coins over the side onto the girders underneath, where they’d stay, like a magpie’s nest of treasure. Kind of like a wishing well,’ Suz adds, sleepily. She’s made more of her paper birds, fingers expertly folding and tucking.

  ‘So you’ve just stolen all those people’s wishes? Nice.’

  I am still shaky with shock.

  Beside me, Suz snores. The sound is strangely comforting, like a horse blowing out its breath. I can’t see her now that the daylight’s gone, but I know if I could, she’d look young as a child, nowhere near her twenty years. Sleep does that to her. Around her feet, her paper birds flutter like bright flowers.

  I pick up a handful of them, and move to the side of the pier, hang over the edge, and throw them into the winking sea.

  I watch one fly, get picked up by the wind, a bright jewel, watch it spin and fall. Below us, the sea slaps against the pillars.

  If the whole world ended today, now, this minute, I think, there’d be only Suz and me, on the edge of the world, at the end of the pier. I watch the shredded light from the town dance in the water like gold confetti. Somewhere, a motorbike revs and ebbs.

  Suz stirs and sighs, like she knows I’m still awake.

  ‘This is where I’ll be, Frog, when I’m gone. I’ll be riding the back of –’

  ‘A bird, Suz. You said.’ But my voice is soft now.

  ‘’Night, Frog.’

  ‘’Night, Suz.’

  Greasepaint

  ‘It’s easy when you know how,’ Suz tells me, sitting on her haunches like a yogi. ‘C’mon, chin up more.’

  We’re in our favourite spot, beneath the palisade, two metres away from sun and shingle and sea.

  ‘How much longer are you going to be?’ I complain. My skin feels tight from the face paint drying.

  ‘I am transforming you, from Frog to…Queen of Flames,’ Suz intones. She has her ubiquitous roll-up in the corner of her mouth, and her eyes are squinched up against the sun. She’s in her element, though, I can tell, humming below her breath, dabbing the paint brush into a plastic cup of water from the public showers and mixing it busily. She’s used the tray from a bag of chips as a mixing palette, and it’s sliding with vibrant colours: indigos and greens and magentas.

  ‘Hold still. Chrissakes, you nonce.’

  She spits on the back of her hand and adds a daub of blue glitter.

  ‘Sorry,’ she says, when I make a face (difficult to move because my face feels like it’s hidden under layers of tightening clay). ‘Forgot you are so precious. You should have got some gold too. Really sets it off, you know, like you’re on fire.’

  ‘It was too expensive,’ I say, without moving my lips.

  Suz rolls her eyes. ‘You don’t mean you actually paid for this little lot. Oh Jesus.’

  ‘I’m not like you,’ I say primly.

  ‘Stealing’s not wrong when you’re trying to survive. As long as it’s not actually harming anyone. How do you think I stayed on the streets for so long? By street magic?’ She nods to the almost empty clay pot in front of her latest chalk drawing. There’s a couple of pound coins in there, but all of the rest are coppers. Enough for a coffee, if we’re lucky.

  I say nothing as she takes a tiny brush, its tip not much more than a single hair, and draws in some complicated shape by my left eye. Blows on my skin to dry it quickly.

  ‘All right, all right, I know I haven’t seen my dental hygienist for a year or ten, but no need to flinch. You’re just as bad. Your breath stinks like a dog’s anus.’ She swills in some more blue as she speaks.

  ‘Bat breath,’ I mutter.

  ‘Dragon dick.’

  ‘Bull balls.’

  ‘Bull balls? What are you like?’ She rocks with laughter, and almost drops her paintbrush. ‘Here, hold still and shut your eyes. I’m going to blow glitter over them.You can hold your breath if you want to,’ she adds.

  I feel her blow gently, and something soft sprinkle over my eyelids. When I open them, I seize the mirror she’s holding out to me and stare deep inside. I am transformed.

  Where my face used to be, there is a magical creature, half-bird, half-lion, with fierce peacock eyes and a roaring muzzle that she’s caught right in the act of breathing fire. As I tilt my head in the sun, I shimmer like I’ve caught fire.

  ‘Shall I do your neck too?’ she suggests. She doesn’t say anything, but you can tell she’s pleased by my reaction. Afterwards, I rinse out the paintbrushes and do Suz’s face, trying to copy the feathers and swoops and swirls, but it doesn’t come anywhere close.

  ‘Sorry, it’s awful,’ I say, handing her back the brushes.

  Suz laughs. ‘I love it! Your first attempt. As a performer, you’ll have to get used to doing your stage make-up, you know. I’ll give you lessons if you like. Maybe tomorrow…’ She yawns and looks shifty, and I k
now that she’s longing to smoke some spice. I can tell by the way her eyes are flitting towards the buckled old tin she keeps, tucked inside her sleeping bag.

  I shrug, and go to rinse out the brushes. Suz is messy like that, never clears up after herself. There’s always a trail wherever she goes, a feather here, trodden-on chalk dust there, a discarded Rizla wrapper, a grubby friendship band, a tinselled streamer from the saris she likes to collect and turn into ribbons.

  ‘You’re so good at all of this,’ I say, when I get back. ‘Why can’t you get a job too, as a make-up artist or costume-maker? Maybe you could make hats for the shows!’

  She shudders. ‘I’ve tried jobs before. Can’t last, not for a moment. Makes me feel like I’m being controlled, like I can’t get up and walk away if I wanted to.’ And she won’t say any more. Just withdraws into that dark place again, that room she keeps locked up and tight. When she’s like that, there’s no talking to her. I give up and wander down the beach, looking for sea glass.

  Popcorn

  ‘Well, how do we get in then?’

  ‘Are you daft? We don’t pay, not at that flamin’ price. You’ll be getting us to buy Meal Deals next, paying a tenner for a bucket of puffed-up popcorn kernels. I could get those down the market for a few pence, for chrissake.’

  ‘Well, you don’t pay for those either,’ I remind her.

  Suz ignores me. ‘We need to find out what time the shows finish. C’mon, Frog –’

  It’s busy inside the cinema. Suz pushes through the Saturday night throng and people don’t look at her, not much. She stands and squints at the times of the shows.

  ‘9.30P.M., perfect. That one’ll do. Screen Six. We need a crappy film ’cos there’ll be more space. Got the time on you, Frog?’

  I haven’t of course, so I ask a boy about my own age, who takes out his phone and tells me it’s twenty past. He’s cleanly dressed in a shirt and jeans, and seems nice. Then his eyes slide to my dirty clothes, my black-rimmed nails, and I see myself reflected in his sympathy. I may as well be sitting on the floor, gazing at his newish trainers, because that’s what it makes me feel like.