“This is for you.”
John turned. Meredith stood with a glass of water outstretched in one hand.
“Holy shit,” he said. “Don’t creep up on me like that.”
A flicker of a smile touched her lips. “Relax. It’s only water.”
“Well,” he said, taking the glass. “I didn’t hear you. Sing out next time.”
As he drank, Meredith observed him with unblinking eyes. The sunlight played over her face. She looked as white as dough. The breeze shifted her lifeless hair, first this way and then the other. John held up the empty glass. She took it.
“What are you doing out here, anyway?” he said.
“Don’t worry. The fences are high. Our neighbours won’t notice me.” She smiled again. “I’ve been watching you through the window. You looked hot. I thought you’d like a drink.”
“Sure. Okay, thanks.”
She approached the sleepers. “So you’ll have tomatoes again.”
“Fingers crossed, yeah, if I can get the kind I want.”
“Will you offer any to that woman over the road?”
His skin crept into gooseflesh. It felt like she had been reading his mind. “You mean Donna?” he said at last. “Who knows? I haven’t even thought about it yet.”
“Yes. Donna. Will you offer any to Donna? Your new, flirty little friend?”
The breeze worried at Meredith’s sleeveless smock, long and shapeless, rippling it about her bare legs. Each of her limbs bore a line of scars, regularly spaced, every scar a pair of crescents facing each other. The scars shone faint and silver in the daylight, like dozens of waxing and waning moons. John didn’t like to see her scars. They made him queasy. It must have taken Meredith a lot of time, patience and determination to cut herself like that, so methodically, so precisely.
“Listen,” he said. “I don’t want you hurting any cats around here, all right?”
She gave him a slow blink, and arched an eyebrow, ever so slightly.
“I mean it,” he continued. “You remember why we had to get out of the last place? The Kapoors were going to call the cops. Did you know that? About those notes you kept writing them. Merry, you have to leave other people’s animals alone.”
“Interesting. So, Donna has a cat.”
He could feel the blood coming to his face.
“Okay, I’m off to the nursery,” he said, striding past her.
He could sense Meredith’s gaze boring into his back, but he wouldn’t let himself turn around and check.
The plant nursery was all but deserted this early on a Monday morning. The elderly woman sitting behind the register had a buzz-cut of grey hair, a sour face, and bright red lipstick bleeding into her wrinkles.
“Cash or credit,” she intoned, chewing on gum.
“I’d like to EFTPOS from my bank account,” John said.
Grunting, she held out her hand for his card.
As she swiped it and thumbed buttons, John glanced across the countertop at tiny potted cacti; postcards; magnets featuring cartoon-style illustrations of fruit; and a stack of brochures for the Atlas Circus Royale. Visit our wondrous kingdom!
He took a brochure.
The colour photographs included a scantily-clad girl spinning hoops around her body while perched atop a glittering ball, and a fat clown in a bowtie grasping a fake bunch of flowers and mugging for the camera.
“Savings?” the old woman said, hovering her thumb over the device.
“Uh, yes thanks.”
She offered the handset. John pressed the digits of his PIN. While waiting for the clearance, he scrutinised the brochure. Fun for young and old! The circus had set up on a vacant block not ten minutes from John’s house. Expect the unexpected!
The register spat out a docket. The old woman handed it to him.
“Tell me something,” John said.
She pursed her lips and glared with cold, hostile eyes.
“Do kids still like the circus these days?” he said.
Her bellow carried the scent of tobacco and peppermint gum. “Like it? Hey, they love it, mate. Lions, tigers, elephants: what’s not to love?”
John tucked the brochure into his back pocket.
The tent reeked of hay and horse manure. Canned music blared. Spotlights swirled.
The Atlas Circus Royale did not have lions, tigers or elephants.
Instead, it had a dozen budgerigars that could ascend tiny ladders (MAKE YOUR BIRDS SHUT UP!!) and turn a miniature Ferris wheel (YOUR BIRDS WILL DIE!!), which elicited a half-hearted clap or an “aw” from the audience at every lame trick. Clowns blew whistles, squeezed air-horns, and threw buckets of water at each other that turned out to be—surprise—confetti. Listless ponies trotted the ring in feathered headgear, led by overweight women in silver sequinned bikinis. A couple of moustachioed idiots wearing frilly shirts juggled what looked like bowling pins.
Oh, dear God, for a beer. John pinched his upper lip, over and over.
About a couple of hundred people, mainly fat women with toddlers and squalling babies, were scattered around the tiered benches. Was anybody enjoying themselves? Hard to tell. The parents always seemed to be fussing with milk bottles, screaming at one of their tots, dragging a kid outside to the portable toilets, or doling out smacks. Mostly, the children appeared grizzly, tired and bored.
Jesus Christ.
Monday night, he had knocked on Donna’s front door and asked if he could escort her and Cassie to the circus this weekend. Oh yes, Donna had said, how terrific.
And now, Saturday afternoon and ringside, occupying the most expensive seats in the house, they sat like a family, Cassie between John and Donna, and what an unmitigated fucking disaster it had turned out to be. The show-bags he had bought for Cassie lay ignored on the dirt floor, and now she was holding the untouched fairy floss by its stick, upside-down, tenuously between finger and thumb, as if waiting to drop it. He caught her eye by accident. With an imperious glare, she cut him dead with a slow, disdainful blink.
John wished he were anywhere else.
The clowns came out after every act. They kept hauling audience members into the ring to participate in dumb games. John hoped they wouldn’t pick him. If they did, he decided, no way would he leave his seat. Fuck it, the whole audience could boo; he wouldn’t leave his goddamned seat.
Donna turned to him and smiled.
“I’m sorry about all this,” John said.
Donna said something, but he didn’t get it. The music was too loud. She tried again, and again he didn’t hear. Shit. He offered a wan smile and looked away.
No, stupid old woman at the plant nursery, kids don’t like the circus. Kids like computer games, Facebook, and messing about on their mobile phones. The Atlas Circus Royale belonged to another era. John gazed around at the stands, at the children. Cassie was the oldest by about seven or eight goddamned years. No wonder she hated it. The blood burned in John’s face.
If he’d had any chance with Donna, he’d blown it.
With a screech of tinny music, the clowns disappeared between the canvas curtains at the back of the ring. A new tune started up. Nothing happened. John checked his watch: 2.24 p.m. This must surely be one of the last acts. The music played on and on. The audience became restless. Talking noise got louder. The spotlights swirled. The tune stopped and then started over again from the beginning. 2.27 p.m. John’s foot jiggled. What he’d do for a cold beer…
Cassie turned to him and said, “Is it over?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
She slumped in her seat and, with a flourish, dropped the fairy floss. Donna did not notice. John contemplated heading outside for a smoke.
With flailing arms, a man staggered through the curtains. He wore shorts, bare feet and a blue singlet, but had the green nylon wig typical of a clown. He stopp
ed, squinted at the audience, and gathered himself, swaying. Oh, for the love of Christ…a drunken roadie, perhaps? John felt irked. This was too much, deserving of a refund. Why weren’t the staff ushering this pissed dickhead backstage? Frankly, it was embarrassing. The man stumbled to the middle of the ring. The audience hushed.
The music ran out.
Donna gave John a quizzical glance, and he shrugged.
Cassie said, “Is this guy part of the show?”
“Maybe,” John said. “Let’s see.”
“He’s pissed, isn’t he, Mum?”
Donna said, “Mind your language. But yeah, I think so.”
A chubby woman in a sequinned bikini ran out with machetes, three in each hand. The drunk took the long knives. It seemed he was preparing to juggle them.
“For real?” Cassie said. “Oh my God, no way, he can’t chuck those things around. He’ll cut his fingers off.”
John couldn’t answer. He was too busy processing the sensation of Déjà vu; too preoccupied with a slow and dawning recognition of the man’s posture, gait, and mannerisms; the shape of his nose, his face. John’s mind reached into the dark depths of long years past, groped about, searching…
Noah?
Nick?
Nate?
Sudden knowledge flooded John in a hectic kind of panic.
Yes, Nate. This plastered and pathetic clown, this juggler, this alky, was from high school, from John’s year level: Nate Rossi. The realisation hollowed out John’s guts and pricked his eyes with unexpected tears. Nate Rossi had been smart, an A-student, but athletic and cool too, a perpetual love interest for the girls, the kind of bloke that John had envied, a bloke with the proverbial world at his feet. He had typically ignored John in the few classes they had shared. And who could have blamed him?
Nate threw the long knives into the air.
The audience, including John, collectively gasped in horror.
Cassie put both hands to her cheeks.
But something strange occurred; Nate turned into a well-practised automaton, juggling with speed and precision. How many thousands, no, tens of thousands of times had he performed these exact same actions? A couple of roadies held the curtains wide open, and the woman in the sequinned bikini pranced out, holding at arm’s length a number of flaming sticks. With a grin and a curtsy for the audience, she turned to Nate and tossed a stick at him, then another, and another and another, until he had all the knives and all the flaming sticks whirling through the air in two smooth, unerring and mesmerising arcs.
When Nate’s act ended, the applause went on and on, more from surprise and relief than anything else, in John’s opinion.
“That was awesome!” Cassie said, her eyes shining.
The grotty caravan was dilapidated and small, one-berth. Hesitating, John turned to the decrepit woman who had led him here behind the circus tent, through the churned ground and mud, between the dozen other vans and trailers. She must have seen the indecision in his face because she smiled and nodded, bouncing dyed-red ringlets about her sagging neck.
“Yep, this is it,” she said, pulling the coat tight about herself, and retreated with a dispirited wave.
Bracing, John stared at the caravan door. After the circus performance, he had driven Donna and Cassie home, and returned straight away, determined to find Nate. So he had found him. Now what?
John knocked on the door anyway.
No response.
He knocked again, harder this time. The caravan lurched on its retread tyres.
A petulant voice called, “That you, Claude? Hey, I fucken told you already, man, I’ll get it to you by tomorrow, all right? Fuck. Give me a fucken chance.”
John thought about walking to his car, letting go of the past.
Too late, the caravan door opened.
There stood Nate in singlet and shorts. The curly brown hair of his youth was a scattering of locks hanging from a balding scalp. The sight punched John in the gut.
“Who the fuck are you?” Nate said.
“Okay, hi, you may not remember me, but—”
“What do you want, mate? I’ve got no money. Fuck off.”
John tried to smile. “You don’t understand. We went to high school together.”
Nate scratched at his ear. “Yeah?”
“John Penrose, Year Twelve geography? You and me had to do an assignment on South America.”
Nate’s brown eyes looked cloudy, bloodshot, confused. “South America?”
“Yeah, remember?” John grinned hopelessly. “Capybaras. We did this whole bit on capybaras, and the teacher—what was her name?—failed us because she thought we’d made it up. She’d never heard of the capybara. What an idiot.”
Nate stared at him blankly.
John sighed. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you. I’ll leave you to it.”
“Hey mate, hang on, wait. You mean Mrs Van Fleet?”
John laughed. “That’s right. Mrs Van Fleet.”
“Oh man, yeah, what a stupid bitch. Who hasn’t heard of the capybara? It’s the biggest fucken rodent in the world.” Nate grabbed John’s hand and shook it hard, his palm rough and callused. “Well, come on in, you old bastard. Jeez, how long has it been? You like whisky? Sure you do.”
John stepped inside.
The caravan smelled dank and sour, like unwashed laundry. An array of empty beer bottles, the large 750ml size, filled the tiny bench that surrounded the sink. The centre of the caravan held a laminate table and an L-shaped, built-in lounge consisting of upholstered foam rubber. Nate snatched up a discarded t-shirt and dusted a seat. Then he flung the t-shirt over his shoulder, where it landed on the double mattress, the bed sheets twisted into knots.
“Take a load off,” Nate said. “You like your whisky neat? I don’t have ice.”
You’re an alky if you drink and drive. But John pushed aside any reservations. “Okay,” he said, “but just one shot. I’ve got my car with me.”
Nate poured a couple of drinks into water glasses, gave one to John, and sat at the other end of the table. Grinning, he swallowed his drink and poured another.
“So,” Nate said, turning his glass around and around on the table, his fingernails bitten to the quick. “You live around here?”
“Nope,” John lied, “on the other side of the city, across the Westgate Bridge.”
“No shit? What the fuck are you doing out this way?”
“A favour for a friend. I brought them and their kid here for the matinee.”
“Ah, okay.” Nate drowsily nodded his head. “What did you think of the show?”
“Yeah, it was good.”
“The budgies suck, but.”
“True.” John looked at the glass in front of him, which was dirty, smudged with small flecks of…something…in the lip prints. Dried spit? Flakes of skin? His stomach gave a little churn. Pushing the glass away, he said, “What happened?”
Nate opened his eyes and blinked. “Huh? What do you mean?”
“I figured you’d end up as a lawyer or something.”
“Oh, that.” Nate spread his hands. “Shit happens, hey?”
“It sure does.”
Nate laughed. “You manage a warehouse, don’t you? Come on, Little Johnny Butt-Rose, you followed in your dad’s footsteps, right? He gave you a job and you took over as manager when he retired.”
John offered a tight smile. “Actually, he wasn’t my real dad.”
“Oh, yeah, I remember hearing about that stuff. You were adopted?”
“And it didn’t work out. I left home and that was the end of it.”
Nate raised his eyebrows. “No contact with any of the rellies?”
“Not a one.”
After a moment, Nate raised his glass. “Well, here’s to an uncomplicated life.”
John raised his glass too, but didn’t drink.
For a few minutes, they spoke of the circus. Nate was single, had been part of the troupe for years and, in his estimation, had travelled through eighty cities and towns across Australia at least twenty times over. Then, when John couldn’t think of anything else to ask, they lapsed into an uncomfortable silence.
“See any of the old crew from high school?” Nate said at last.
John hesitated, and decided to keep lying. He shook his head.
“Me neither,” Nate said. “You left before the end of Year Twelve, right? After Lyle Berg-Olsen disappeared. Sometime in November, wasn’t it?”
“Sunday October 19th, 1985.”
“Yeah, sometime around then. Love him or hate him, Lyle had personality. What a funny fucker! Remember his impersonations of the teachers?”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“His piss-take on the principal always cracked me up.” Nate’s chuckle gave way to a sorrowful smile. “Aw, Jeez, his disappearance came as a shock, didn’t it? Fucked us all up, hey? But Lyle being your best mate, shit, everybody understood why you dropped off the radar.” Nate slurped his drink. “Where’d you go, anyway?”
“Devonport.”
“Tasmania?” Nate sniggered. “You went to Tasmania?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You’re shitting me. What the fuck did you do down there?”
“I got off the boat,” John said, “found a caravan park and booked a cabin.” The mournful sound of blaring ship horns came back to him; how the ships in the harbour had woken him every night, saving him from the same nightmare about Lyle. The long drag of time made John feel old and weary. “I walked along the street,” he continued, “went into the first business I found, a carpet factory, and asked for a job.”
“Just like that?”
“Yep, just like that. The manager gave me a spot in the warehouse, driving the forklift. I was there for six years, until the factory closed down.”
“Then what?”
“What else? I hopped on the car-ferry and came back to Melbourne.”
John reached for his whisky glass, rubbed off the detritus, and drank. The spirit flared as hot as heartburn along his oesophagus.
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