The Circus

by Olivia Levez

  And then I’m on stage, facing a green-faced, leaf-clad crowd.

  I swallow.

  ‘Here’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for!’ cries Bee Beard. ‘The Wondrous, Splendiferous, Fire-tastical… Tree Peacock!’

  And then I realise that the crowd has hushed, and everyone is standing back in a sort of circle, and looking at me expectantly.

  This is what Suz would call a Big Moment.

  With hands that only tremble slightly, I reach down, hand my plastic cup to Bee Beard, and draw out my fire sticks.

  ‘I need a lighter,’ I say.

  ‘A lighter! The Tree Peacock needs a lighter!’ yells Bee Beard. A Morris dancer throws me one from the side of the stage.

  Careful not to let my costume get in the way, and glad that there is no breeze, I flick the lighter and there is a whoosh as the Kerosene flames up. I think of Suz and lift up my chin and howl. Then I give the performance of my life.

  I hurl the devil sticks high into the air, I toss them and reach and catch and dive and spin and swoop. Only once do I nearly miss one, and there is a hairy moment when I worry that my tail feathers will catch fire, but the laurel leaves on my costume are fresh and glossy, and won’t take easily.

  And all around, painted faces are smiling and staring and laughing, and there is clapping, and drum-beating and the stamping of feet. As the climax to my act I draw the longest stick dramatically from its sheath and tip my head back and swallow the flames, one after the other, over and over, as Suz has taught me.

  Afterwards, people whoop, and Bee Beard high fives me, and his friends scoop me up and lift me high over their heads, and I am lifted onto the throne, and crowned Green Woman there and then.

  Well, obviously that last part;s made up, but it feels like that. It really does. When I’ve finished, and I put my fire sticks away, I look about for Suz, but she isn’t there.

  If only she had been here to see.

  Bee-Bearding

  We share a banitsa, pastry flaking over our painted chins. Fabian picks his off with a grubby finger and sucks it. For a posh boy, he has awful manners.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well what?’ I say. I am too busy tucking into all the food he has ordered to talk much. We are in a Bulgarian restaurant, tiny, narrow, busy. Inside it is packed around the bar, but the restaurant section is quieter. There’s a humming buzz of low chatter. A quartet band with violins plays something slow and yearning. It reminds me of the Romanian band that made me cry in the Art Café. A scythe hangs above us, some relic of Bulgarian past. Its blade winks and gleams.

  ‘Love this place,’ said Fabian. ‘Like, it’s really authentic, you know.’ He’s pretty drunk by now, but I don’t mind. I am drunk too. And hungry.

  I accept the last piece of banitsa and refill my glass with the free water on the table. When the waiter returns, I point to the bean stew. Bread comes, warm and wrapped in a white linen napkin. My stomach roars, and Bee Beard laughs.

  ‘Hungry?’ he says. He doesn’t seem to mind my unkempt state. He looks just as bad, and so do most of the diners; cider-flushed, tangle-haired and dropping leaves from their homemade costumes, everyone’s in good spirits, keeping out of the cold until the fireworks start. A candle sputters on our table. I feel warm and content.

  The stew comes, and it is delicious. I seize fistfuls of doughy, warm-from-the-oven, thyme-scented bread, and mop up the gravy. Beans, soft as butter, wild herbs, sweet potatoes, rich, tomato-scented gravy; it is incredible. When I’m done, I burp and sigh.

  Bee Beard is watching me curiously.

  ‘Where are you from?’ he asks. ‘It’s just that you sound more Home Counties than Hastings. Are you in a commune or something?’

  I laugh. ‘No.’ But I won’t say any more.

  I am not Willow Stephens now, I remind myself. I am Frog. I am the girl who plays with fire.

  I lean forward, fix him with my brightest smile, and hope that my teeth aren’t too dirty.

  ‘So, can I join your circus?’ I ask.

  Beneath the table, the fingers on both hands are crossed. The waiter hovers, and I point to what seems like the biggest dessert.

  Rule #8: Always ask for more than you can eat. You never know when your next meal will be.

  ‘So can I?’ I repeat.

  Bee Beard finishes his glass of red wine and offers me the carafe. I shake my head. I prefer the cider, and have three plastic cups of it lined up on the table, despite the waiter’s frown.

  All right, so my manners are awful now, too.

  ‘Come down to the farm tomorrow,’ says Bee Beard. He pulls out a little card, and it is the same one that Tilly gave me earlier. He shows me the map on the back. ‘I’ll remind my mother to expect you, but you’ll have to hurry. It’s our last day of rehearsals before moving on to Eastbourne.’

  I make short work of the apple tart I have chosen. I eat the mints that come with the bill. The taste reminds me how long it is since I have cleaned my teeth.

  By the bar, people are starting to move. Bee Beard stands up. ‘Time for the fireworks,’ he says.

  Catherine Wheel

  I did go and look for her, I swear.

  After the fireworks, after we have danced in the trampled -in trash of polystyrene trays and plastic pints and mudclagged costumes, after we drank more cider under the star-shot sky and I’ve been introduced to all of Bee Beard’s friends, and instantly forgotten names, and faces blur and fireworks arc and whistle and splatter-crackle.

  After. After. After.

  It is only when I peel a sparkler wrapper from my shoe that I think of Suz.

  I don’t know what time it is, then. All I know is that I am tired and drunk and happy. I have lost most of my costume, and it is cold, but I don’t mind. It is like the early hours after the May Ball at school, when Beanie and I met up with the boys from the neighbouring school, and sneak-stumbled back, trying to persuade the irate groundsman to let us back in with our sixth form passes. Hitching up our evening dresses and running, clutching each other and hiccupping with suppressed laughter.

  Suz. Fireworks. Alone.

  I can’t believe I didn’t think of that.

  I rip my tail feathers off, take off my shoes and start to run back down the hill path, leaving Bee Beard and his friends calling after me.

  I helter-skelter back to our house, yank off the boards covering the broken windows on the ground floor. I am too tired and too panicked to go the roof way.

  What if she’s done something stupid? a little voice says. I think of what I might find hanging from the rafters and shudder.

  Spinning like a dead fly in silk.

  Stop it.

  I try to breathe calmly, and climb through the window, leaving my silver case outside on the ground. I’m careful to avoid the jagged glass where vandals and ex-squatters have smashed their way through before the council boarded it all up. Inside it is quiet and hushed as a church. I know instantly that she is not there. I don’t bother to check up in the rafters.

  I stop only to shove on my DMs and grab my bag and an old cardigan. Then I push my bag out of the window, clamber back outside, and retrieve my devil sticks. I take one last look at the graffiti wall.

  No grades or advice from Suz today; just the skill-less scrawl of someone’s tag, a soulless squiggle, written over and over again, as if whoever made it was trying desperately to remember who they were.

  There’s the ghost of a chalk mark underneath, meant for some other tag, too many days ago.

  Could do effing better, it says, in her confident scrawl. I smile.

  Then I remember the sparkler wrapper, and start to run again, back towards the town.

  It’s hours later that I find her under the arches, by the sea wall.

  It is sheltered from the wind and the rain by a curved roof canopy. Her head hangs, and she’s huddled in her silver pixie hood.

  I sit beside her. She groans, but doesn’t look up. It’s obvious she’s on something. The spice is
eating away at her, little by little. Her lips are dry and cracked as the tiles she’s sleeping on.

  It is too shadowy to see Suz’s face, but I can tell she’s asleep, her pouch spilling tobacco by those black-rimmed fingernails.

  Far off, a gull screams. Suz coughs.

  I shake her. ‘Suz? Suz, it’s me. Wake up.’

  She moans and shakes her head, pushing further into her sleeping bag. I feel a stab of irritation. I have to audition before the circus moves on. I need to shower, find a costume, and work out how to get there. I need to persuade Suz to come with me.

  ‘Suz, come on. Wake up and listen to me.’

  I kneel down in front of her, trying not to breathe in her smell. I think of Bee Beard, circuses and honey. Imagine another night in the rain-soaked, chilly depths of the rafters.

  Rats and pigeons live in rafters, don’t they?

  I try not to think of The Meadows.

  Sounds like a haven. Like I’ve come home.

  Try not to think of how even the word makes me think of ponies and cantering and sunbathing by the tennis courts in the summer term at school.

  Try not to feel guilty.

  ‘I’ve found us a circus, a real one, Suz,’ I say, pulling at her.

  ‘You can help make the costumes, do the make-up, anything you want.’

  She shakes me off. She’s awake now, watching me with shadowed eyes. ‘You left me,’ she says. ‘You fucking left me.’

  I don’t know why I ever thought her eyes were like sea glass. Today they’re dark as storm clouds.

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t think –’

  I tug her again. ‘Suz, come on, please. We have to be there by the end of today because they’re packing up.’

  I turn away because Suz is gasping at her spice. I am sick of darkness. I leave her under the arches, a huddled shape. I decide to leave for the circus there and then.

  ‘Suit yourself then,’ I say.

  At this point, I still think that I’m going to come back for her.

  The Circus

  In the end, I follow the path through the woods. A few people pass me, walking their dogs. No one gives me a second glance.

  Suz just shrugged when I asked if I could take her fire kit. She shrugged again when I promised to return for her.

  I turn left, following Bee Beard’s map until I come to the track that it says will take me to the farm.

  The Meadows.

  It is a word filled with sunshine and cider. I smile, and try to push Suz from my mind.

  By the time I reach the turning, it is raining, in thick dull thuds.

  The silver case drags at my shoulder, my DMs are clagged in mud. My carefully applied make-up smears on my sleeve as I wipe my eyes. I force myself to keep walking, because what else is there to do? Where else can I go? All the time, Bee Beard’s card lies damp and pulpy in my hand.

  They were laughing at you, sneers a voice. What would they want with you? You used to be like them, but you left that girl behind, remember?

  Once, an owl lifts in front of me, its great tawny wings outstretched as if it owns the evening I stare as it disappears over the bank. I thought owls only hunted by night, but maybe I am wrong about this, like I’m wrong about so many things. The trees beside me bristle. I climb over a stile, sliding, slipping, thinking that I must be close. I trudge over the field, dragging the case and my bag. And then I see a sign at last:

  The Meadows.

  And behind it, misted in rain, big tops and tents, like silver and yellow ghosts. A circus. Some giant has dipped a brush in watercolour and splashed in the yellow amongst all the grey. A little patch of magic.

  The circus. Where all runaways end up.

  The best place to hide, after all, is in the spotlight.

  Like a dreamer, I follow.

  Pirouette

  Something nudges me in the dimness, and I nearly cry out, but it is only a horse – a miniature pony, uninterested in anything but tugging up the trampled grass. He is fat as butter, glossy in the misted rain with his wire-and-straw mane.

  Huff, he says, when I trail my hand along his flank. Huff.

  I wish Spook was with me now. I miss him missing me.

  Music draws me.

  It is the same music that seems to follow me, at street corners, in cafés, at the edge of my hearing. Haunting, yearning, shuddering. And somewhere, a woman’s throaty voice, singing, lifting, emptying.

  There are farm buildings dotted around, a manège for exercising horses, a large barn, which looks like it’s been recently fitted with a new roof. A large white farmhouse.

  Near me are static caravans. Dotted around are wagons and trailers. I can hear the squeals of children. Somewhere, a baby cries. A young boy in Transformers pyjamas and flip-flops darts past on a scooter. I shrink back. He is only three or four. He slips back into the shadow of a wagon. There are a few broken wooden chairs outside, and a clothes dryer which is strung with pale tights of all sizes. Wooden steps, painted red. Inside the big barn, more music: fiddling fast, quick, light songs, chatter, laughter, clapping, applause, faster and faster, until the barn seems to throb with drumming, thrumming clapping fiddles, men’s whoops and occasional whistles.

  I pass dirty-faced children, catching and throwing each other on trampolines in the space between the caravans. I pass unnoticed, ghostlike. I wonder if I should call for Fabian. I am dizzy, shaky from no sleep and too much cider the night before. The bean stew and bread seems a long time ago.

  A boy slips out of the barn, dressed in fishnets and tails, legs lovely as a girl’s. He pulls his phone from his hot pants and starts swiping with his thumb.

  I drop my case and bag in the muddy grass. Sway my way up to the barn door.

  Inside all is light and warmth.

  I see a ring filled with sawdust.

  Men and women playing violins and singing.

  A giant woman with the face of a Geisha girl.

  I lean against a wooden pillar, exhausted. Leather and wood and the sweet scent of roses rushes to meet me, and I collapse in the sawdust.

  Dancing Girl

  Yellow. Silver. A small round tent topped with a blue flag.

  My mother turns to face me, smiles, as she pats her hair. ‘Come,’ she says, beckoning me to sit on her lap. Her hair smells of rose oil and magic. She points to the picture on the wall.

  ‘Home,’ she says. ‘Your home and mine.’

  Alice in Wonderland

  Sheets, cool and clean.

  A painted door.

  A map stuck with pins.

  There is a little lamp glowing softly on the shelf beside me.

  I unglue my cheek from the pillow and sit up, trembling. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know how long I have slept for. I am fully clothed.

  My bags!

  I scramble off the bed to look for them, because it’s my whole life in there, my world, and then I see my things: the silver case containing my devil sticks, my cloth bag, my shoes – they’re standing neatly on the floor next to some small trainers and a juggling pin. I breathe again. Sit back on the bed, which is a child’s bed and built into the wall with cupboard doors.

  There is a strong smell, a mixture of stale sweat and garlic and, strangely, roses.

  The bed is tidy: a bright crocheted blanket and flowery, old lady sheets. A pillow without the slip. There is a book upturned at the end of the bed, a Manga comic with a bugeyed warrior girl with pointy breasts. I wonder how old the child is.

  There’s a tiny washbasin set into the wooden sideboard, and a built-in stove and a kettle. Bottles of something dark line the window shelf, along with different-sized glasses and mugs. I open the lid of one and sniff inside. Smells pungent, of plums and spirit and apricots. Rakia, it says on the label.

  The curtains are drawn tight – pretty curtains sprigged with violets and primroses. I wrench them open and see that it is bright and sunny outside.

  How long have I been asleep for?

  There are noise
s outside, sounds of poles clashing and banging. The sound of a lorry rumbling. They were going to move today! I think. Fabian…

  I splash water on my face, straighten my clothes and grab my shoes. My hands tremble as I pull them on. It’s important that I find Fabian, and get him to take me to his mother. Then I need to audition and, somehow, find time to go back for Suz. I’ll make enough money, and then I’ll take us both to Paris.

  I imagine us both on the coach, and then showing her the sights. I’ve been there, of course, many times, on school art trips and language trips, and once with Daddy on business.

  Just as I am about to leave, I catch sight of myself in a mirror and freeze. I can’t go like this. I am covered in mud from where I must have slipped, climbing over the stile.

  I rummage in all of the cupboards that I can find, but there’s only child-sized clothes: joggers and hoodies and dungarees, and costumes – a sailor suit, a pirate suit, a clown.

  Outside the window I can see lines of washing strung up between the caravans.

  From the line, I’ve taken a pair of gold leggings, some thick knee-high socks, an orange T-shirt, and a revolting pink hoodie, studded with rhinestones. There are branded tops and vests and hoodies. Joggers with big designer logos and diamante-studded leggings and tights. Long harlequin socks and stripy stockings and arm sleeves. A bear suit. A silver-sequinned leotard, ripped. Nike T-shirts. Kappa track-suit. More pants. Bras. Holey ballet tights.

  I am rooting through a line of knickers when I freeze.

  A clown is hunkered on a plastic garden chair, under an outside lampshade. He has a mirror propped on his knee, the sort you hang in a hallway, and is drawing black teardrops under his eyes with a thin brush, which he dips into a little pot. On the grass is a cone-shaped hat. White. Black pompoms. He looks like the sort of clown you’d get in one of Beanie’s School Friend annuals, the ones that her granny gave her from when she was a child. A retro clown, straight from the 1930s.