The Circus

by Olivia Levez

  Something makes him turn, and for a moment it seems that our eyes must meet, he with his sad-happy face, his old man lines carved into thick white greasepaint. I shrink back under the washing line, dropping a pair of leopardskin knickers on the muddy grass. It’s fine, though. He hasn’t seen me. He just sighs heavily, then props his mirror against the table and picks up a tin of greasepaint.

  I grab armfuls of whatever I can find, and am about to sneak back inside the gingerbread wagon when I hear a voice.

  ‘It’s wrong to steal, you know.’

  It’s a child’s voice, high and clear. I spin round, heart thudding.

  It’s a girl, wearing an Aladdin’s costume of silk pantaloons and a sequinned bra. She has pepperpot breasts and the plump belly of a child. Her eyes are swooped in makeup, pink and purple and blue. She looks magnificent and knows it.

  We both look at the clothes I am holding.

  The girl calls something that sounds like ‘Baya’, and a little boy comes running. It’s the boy I saw earlier, still in his Transformer pyjamas. His brown eyes widen when he sees me; his lashes are as long and curled as a camel’s.

  The girl whispers something and he giggles.

  ‘Thief!’ he says. His voice is deep and hoarse, the voice of a man-boy.

  From somewhere far off, a deep-throated woman sings at full throttle, warbling, commanding. I clutch the clothes to my chest, and try to sound assertive.

  ‘I’m here to see Fabian,’ I say firmly. ‘He’s expecting me.’

  The children whisper and giggle again, and then the girl turns her head and shouts something that sounds like, ‘Delilah!’

  The clothes in my arms feel like they’re burning me. The girl does a handstand, her pink trainers incongruous with her Persian costume.

  ‘And what do you two kids want now? Always bloody interrupting me when I’m trying to do me work –’ The voice breaks off. A man’s voice. Gravelly. Liverpudlian. Out of place in this otherworld.

  But there is nothing ordinary about the owner. I begin to feel that I am in the middle of a strange dream. I try not to stare; instead, try to peg the elephant suit back onto the line.

  ‘They used to have an elephant here once,’ the voice says, matter-of-factly. ‘But she kept eatin’ all me scones.’

  It’s a man dressed as a Geisha girl, with a pale white face and rosebud magenta lips. He’s wearing a Japanese robe, a kimono, covered in shiny jade and orange flowers, a huge sash at the back.

  He reaches out to shake my hand, and his hand is rough and warm, with beautifully painted nails. His sleeve falls back to show a muscle-thickened forearm, on it a blurry tattoo of a mermaid arching her back against a ship’s helm.

  Behind him, the two children run off into a caravan.

  ‘Used to be a docker, didn’t I?’ the man says, seeing me looking. ‘I’m Delilah, by the way. I was the one who carried you to Kit’s room. You’ve slept all night and most of the morning.’

  ‘Kit?’ I say. I feel sure that I’ve heard that name before.

  ‘I think you’d better put all of them clothes back, don’t you?’ Delilah continues. ‘Then we’ll say no more about it, will we?’

  In silence, we peg up the washing, Delilah pausing at the leopardskin knickers to mutter, ‘I wondered where they went.’ He laughs at my expression. ‘Only joking, love. I wouldn’t get me little toe in those, let alone me backside.’

  Something comes trotting, and it is a pig, small and pale. It is wearing a dirty clown ruff round its neck and, as I watch, goes to a step and rubs against the edge, scratching itself. It ignores us and trots off between two caravans.

  ‘I need to find Fabian,’ I say.

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘He told me to come here. To audition.’

  ‘Oh, he did, did he?’

  His eyes, which are carefully made up with pink and gold eyeshadow, are gently creped and hooded. Shrewd eyes, but kind.

  ‘I need to speak to whoever’s in charge,’ I say. ‘It’s really important that I get to audition before you leave.’

  It’s what I want to say anyway. But the words don’t come out. Instead, what comes out is an ugly sound: a gasping, gulping, snorting sound like an animal. Delilah waits until I’ve finished, patient as the moon, and then pats my back, over and over.

  ‘There, there,’ he says. ‘There, there.’

  Overture

  I follow Delilah to the barn. Open the door, and slip inside into another world.

  As we enter, the same clown I saw earlier pushes past us, sweating. He’s carrying a pile of metal poles with a frowning man in a Cossack suit.

  ‘They’re supposed to have loaded these,’ he’s muttering.

  The hay bales I saw last night have been stacked at the far end, and there are cables slithering over the floor, amongst squawking chickens.

  Outside, someone starts up an engine. Inside, the last zithers of a violin.

  In the centre of the ring, a girl in footless tights is spinning upside-down in a hoop. There are claps and shouts as she stops, and casually steps out of her harness. She pulls her pony tail out of its band, and shakes her hair.

  Leaning against a pillar, tapping a pen against her teeth, is a tall woman with dark hair in a gypsy scarf and riding boots. By the ring, there’s a small trampoline where children are practising jumping and catching each other.

  A group of teenagers sits on the hay bales, chattering. One of them’s Kit, the boy from the Art Café, at the pier auditions. It seems worlds ago now. I look down at my dirty, bitten nails, and wonder if he will recognise me.

  I hope he doesn’t.

  The tall woman stands up and claps her hands, and I see that it is Tilly, Fabian’s mother.

  ‘OK, you guys, we’ll leave the horse act, and call it quits.’

  Delilah leans forward to say something to her, and she peers in my direction at the back of the barn, shielding her eyes to focus. I dig my nails into my palms. Wonder why there is no sign of Fabian.

  Delilah’s voice, beckoning me: ‘Come on then, kid. Show Tilly what you’re made of.’

  ‘So what’s your act?’ Tilly asks, in her clear, ringing voice, and a Home Counties accent. She looks like the mothers in green Hunter boots who used to collect Beanie and her friends in their families’ ancient Land Rovers, and shows no sign of recognising me yet. She waves at the other performers, and they move to the seats and start to unstack them, and unclip them from their metal stands. The musicians have stopped playing now, and are packing up their instruments as carefully as if they were tucking children into bed.

  ‘Show me now,’ she says. ‘But hurry – we’re short of time –’

  As if to prove her point, there’s a shout, and a girl throws down a bundle of wires from the top of a ladder. She shouts again, and it sounds like a curse. She has a welding mask on top of her head.

  ‘It’s fire,’ I say. I clear my throat. ‘I perform with fire.’

  I can’t believe how long I have waited for this moment.

  I wish Suz was here with me. I wish I wasn’t here.

  I close my eyes, and see Suz, sitting cross-legged up on the rooftop, calling to me, and waving her rollie.

  ‘You can do it, Frog. Fire Girl. Phoenix Girl, Queen of Flames!’

  ‘You’re the girl in the peacock costume? Fabian’s friend?’ There’s an edge to her voice, her eyes sharp under the spotlight.

  I nod.Wonder if the scene at the Jack in the Green Festival actually happened. I wish my peacock tail wasn’t lying trampled somewhere in Hastings.

  ‘Well, go on, then.’

  She’s polite and friendly, but that’s because she’s wellmannered. You can tell she’s also impatient to get moving.

  There are clatterings and shouts as the circus is dismantled around us; the wooden platforms that support the chairs are unbolted and stacked.

  With trembling hands, I take out my kit from the silver case. There’s a whoosh as the flames catch, and now Tilly is paying atte
ntion.

  I juggle first, raising my head, and getting used to the feel of the sticks in my hands. Without music, and without a crowd to get pumped up, it is difficult, but I think of the noise and foot stamping of the day before, the singing and cider, and try to conjure up the same feeling. And then I’m a wild thing, dancing and twirling. Stamping out all of the rage, all of the anger and loss and hate and loneliness. I spin and I stamp and I fling fire, catch it in blackened fingers. My hands are strong and sure. My legs are thick and strong and defiant. I am fire.

  She’s watching, but giving nothing away. I can make out Kit, perched on a ladder, swinging his legs. He has his phone in his hand, and is in a dark hoodie.

  I pause, panting.

  ‘Can I use the wire?’ I say. There’s a tightrope strung across the back of the ring, low to the ground for practice. It looks as though two acrobats are just about to dismantle it.

  She frowns, but nods.

  I climb the short ladder. Then I face them all defiantly, fire sticks in hand. I have used Suz’s face-paints to paint coloured stripes down my face so that it resembles her chalks. I have taken out her last piece of chalk from my Kit of Happiness and put it in my pocket for luck.

  I close my eyes and grip the sticks more firmly.

  I am doing this for you, Suz, I think.

  I walk quickly to the middle of the rope, tighten my core as I lean my head back and swallow fire, one baton after another. I perform a half-turn like Suz taught me, and then half-dance, half-wobble, to the other end of the rope.

  When I’m done, I let the batons drop onto the sawdust, spent. No one speaks. Then I raise my head.

  Tilly turns to Delilah and beams. ‘I think we’ve found our final act,’ she says. She thrusts out a hand, firm and strong. ‘Welcome to my circus.’

  Bubbles

  I almost cry when I get under the shower.

  In fact, I do cry, it’s literally that good. I can feel days of filth and horror sluicing off me, pouring down my back, over my skin. Tilly has let me use the one in the farmhouse, off her kitchen, and I squelch out yet another handful of shampoo, and push it through my filthy hair, try out each of the little bottles of shower gels and conditioners and facial scrubs in turn, until the shower steams with mint and juniper and lavender.

  When I’ve finished I see that she’s left me towels folded over the tiny basin, and they’re big and warm and dry. When I bury my nose in them they smell of lemon and roses. I use them all, wrapping them round my body and hair and shoulders.

  So clean. So clean!

  I stare at myself in the mirror, rubbing away at the steam with a towel.

  ‘Hello, Circus Girl,’ I whisper, and smile.

  ‘Everything all right in there?’ Tilly’s voice, and a tap at the door.

  I move my shoes and clothes away with my foot, and push it open slowly.

  Tilly passes me a small pile of what looks like ironing.

  ‘Just some more clothes from Fabian’s girlfriend,’ she says brightly. ‘We weren’t sure if you had underthings.’ She says it matter-of-factly, as if it’s the most normal thing in the world to be passing over your son’s girlfriend’s knickers.

  She pauses. ‘And do you have anything you need to wash? We do have time. I can get Marika to put it on a quick cycle.’ She passes me a carrier bag.

  Blushing, I stuff all of my soiled things inside, and hand it to her.

  ‘There are wellies outside, too,’ she adds. ‘It gets very muddy on the farm. Especially when we’re packing up.’ She turns. ‘Oh, and before I forget – we’re having champagne and cupcakes in the kitchen at five. We always have a little celebration before we leave. It’s become a sort of ritual.’

  I close the door and hear her footsteps in the passage outside, swift, confident.

  I stare at the fresh clothes in my hands. She’s added deodorant too, a scented roll-on, tucked inside a cleanly laundered sweatshirt. Slowly, I lift my arms and rub it on. Snap on a clean-smelling bra that isn’t mine, and pull on soft cotton knickers. Push my head through the velvet softness of a top that is unstained. Unstreaked with chalk or sweat stains or grime.

  I take the brush from the glass shelf and pull it through my wet hair, slowly at first, because of the tangles, then fast as it slides through slippery conditioner.

  Then I pull on the knee-length socks, and fold the rest of the things into my emptied bag. Check that my Kit of Happiness is still at the bottom. I leave the shower room, and find a pair of spotty wellies neatly placed outside the door. I put them on, and follow the sound of laughter to the farmhouse kitchen.

  Fabian’s there, sprawling on a chair next to an Aga.

  ‘My Tree Peacock!’ he says, and waves a glass at me. ‘Come give me a hug.’

  I let him squeeze me in a bear hug, and pull away, gasping.

  He is drunk, I realise. He looks unkempt, as if he hasn’t slept or washed since the festival. Beside him is the girl who did the aerial act with the hoop. I recognise her now as his girlfriend, Lala. She and Tilly look grim-faced.

  ‘The wanderer returns,’ laughs Tilly, but there’s a brittleness to her voice. ‘Cupcakes,’ she announces. ‘We all need cupcakes.’

  I let Fabian pour me a glass of champagne, and he sloshes quite a lot of it on the quarry tiles. This is a real farmhouse kitchen, of the type that the Handbag would hate, and Beanie would approve of. The range is pumping out a smell of baking, and there are jugs of roses everywhere, spilling white and yellow petals over the giant scrubbed table and window ledges. An ancient retriever sighs on a rug, stretched out over Fabian’s feet, and thumps his tail.

  ‘Where’s Delilah?’ I say.

  A television is on discreetly in the background, perched almost as an afterthought on a great pile of cookery books on the dresser. It’s showing a twenty-four-hour news programme. Streams of migrant people are trudging endlessly over somewhere in Eastern Europe, Bulgaria or Hungary. They’re trying to cross the borders, and hard-faced soldiers in steel-toed boots are stopping them.

  I switch my attention back to the champagne and jugs of flowers.

  Tilly pulls a face. ‘She doesn’t come to our cupcake feasts, the traitor. Prefers to camp out with the Romanian lot.’ I notice she says, ‘she’.

  ‘I’m getting too old for caravans,’ she laughs. ‘I travel back to the farm when I can.’ She doesn’t look old at all.

  There’s the sound of knocking, the back door is thrown open, and the other performers spill inside, looking tired and sweaty.

  ‘Is everything packed up?’ asks Tilly. ‘The horses too? Come on, let’s get some fizz inside you. We leave in an hour.’

  Fabian, on his chair by the Aga, looks almost asleep. I wonder why he didn’t help the others.

  ‘Cupcakes,’ trills Tilly. ‘Will you help me, Lala?’ The sulky-looking girl helps her perch them onto large blue-and-white china platters. Tilly gets one of the acrobats to take the scones from the oven, and another to pile strawberry jam into an earthenware pot, and I realise that she’s in her element. This is her home, and this is the way she likes it, being in command.

  I accept a scone and pile dollops of fresh cream onto the plate which Kit offers me. He’s sitting on a retro bar stool by the cupcake mountain, and there’s a streak of white greasepaint by his right eye. I point it out to him.

  ‘Sure it’s not cream?’ he says. He rubs it off and licks his finger. ‘No, you’re right, it’s greasepaint.’

  I laugh. ‘How long have you been working here?’

  ‘Since the Art Café. The pier work only starts in the high season, so I took this on as an interim. Mainly to save for uni.’

  I notice again his faint accent.

  ‘And you? What have you been doing since we first met? I remember your first, er, interesting performance.’

  I feel myself blush. ‘Don’t. I was awful.’ But then I am silent. I don’t have the words to describe my life since then. I pass him my glass to be refilled. ‘I was a sort of str
eet performer,’ I say at last.

  I look across the kitchen, which is filling up. It is like the party I once went to at Beanie’s house, when she had both her brothers back from uni, and her sister home from travelling, and they invited all of their friends around for a huge celebration. I sat there, in the middle of all the warmth and laughter, and I wanted to climb right into her life, and zip up the top so that no one could come and take me away. Except they did of course. Martyna came to get me in her car, muttering about being treated like a servant.

  And the house mistress came to meet me at the school gates, and let me stay at her school flat, because I was one of the only ones who stayed at school that Easter.

  The television’s still showing footage of people in boats, people trailing carts and bags and children along dusty roads. Fabian’s fast asleep and the dog’s trying to climb onto his lap.

  And suddenly, there I am. On the television.

  I am on video, in my school uniform. It’s from when I was in the final of the debating society competition. My hair is long, and dark, and spilling out of its plait, but there is no doubt that it is me.

  My palms start to sweat. I take a quick look around the room. No one is looking at the television. I wonder if I have time to turn it off, if anyone will mind, or notice.

  Kit is still talking, pointing to a photograph on the wall, a picture of two little girls of different ages balancing on huge rolling globes. He is saying something about Tilly’s daughters, but I am not listening. I am frozen, staring at my face on the screen.

  Do I look like me? Is that even me, any more? I try to swallow the scone that is in my mouth, but it is dry suddenly. It is made of sand.

  Tilly is raising her glass for a toast. She is standing with her back to the TV set, and surely now, someone must see? Tilly is saying something about the circus. We raise our glasses and drink.

  I see the video switch back to the news studio. A woman in a stripy blouse is talking earnestly to the camera, and then a photograph of me as a little girl slides into view.