by David Almond
“Wh-what by?”
“A tiger. And mebbe that's when things started to change. When the animals stopped being close to us. When things would never be the same again.”
She looked up toward the trapeze.
“There's no t-tigers now?” Joe said.
She narrowed her eyes as she turned to him.
“What do you think, Joe?”
“I can't … tell.” He looked inside himself. He thought of last night. “I think there are.”
She shook her head.
“No. There's no tigers now, Joe.”
She took off her coat. She wore a spangled costume. She quickly climbed the rope ladder that dangled by the central pole. She climbed through the safety net spread out above the ring. She stood on a tiny platform. She unfastened a trapeze and set it swinging back and forward beneath the faded stars and sun and moon. Then she leaped with her arms outstretched and held it tight. She swung from her arms, from her knees, moving gracefully through the blue shade, and her spangles shone and her face gleamed. Then she leaped, and tumbled, and seemed to hang motionless for a moment, held in the air above by nothing, as if she could stay there as long as she wanted. Then a somersault and she dropped into the net.
She lay there dead still, then swung herself over the edge of the net and back to earth again.
Joe's eyes were shining.
“That was brilliant,” he said.
“No, it wasn't. My mother, now she was really something. And her mother…”
“Your m-mother? Where's she now?”
She toed the dust again.
“In Russia.”
“R-Russia?”
“She trains kids in circus skills.”
“She trained you?”
“She should have stayed longer and trained me for longer. She shouldn't have cleared off to bloody Russia.”
She put her coat back on.
“What else d'you want to see?” she said.
“D-dunno.” He stared at her, concentrated, tried to compose the question on his tongue. “Where h-have I seen you before, Corinna?”
She shook her head.
“Nowhere.”
“When I saw you this morning…I was sure…”
She waited, patient, as he framed the words.
“Was sure,” he said, “I'd s-seen you before.”
“I know that.”
“Have I?”
“Course not. I have never been to Helmouth and you have never been out of Helmouth.” She toed the sawdust and hung her head. “But I thought it too.” She watched him from the corners of her eyes. “You don't know what it means, do you?”
“N—”
“When you recognize somebody you've never seen before, it sometimes means you were with them in another life.”
Joe breathed the dusty air. He looked down at his hands, which shone with a blue light that seemed to come from inside them.
Corinna laughed.
“Maybe we were tigers together,” she said. “Or elephants. Or a circus act way way back when it all started… Maybe we were each other's catcher, Joe. Maybe we were the greatest fliers the world had ever seen. Once, long long ago. You think it's nonsense.”
In his head, Joe leaped through empty air with his arms outstretched. He looked into Corinna's eyes, eyes he knew he'd seen before.
“No,” he said. “Not n-non—”
“Whatever we think doesn't matter. If it's true, that we were together before, then it means there are things to do together in this life as well. And there'll be nothing we can do about it.”
She giggled as one of the gray dogs in frocks scuttled under the edge of the tent and tottered to them on its hind legs. She scooped the dog into her arms and smiled.
“Mebbe we were pretty little dancing dogs like you.”
Her face fell.
“I could be brilliant, you know,” she said. “I could be as good as my mum.”
“I know.”
“She was so quick, so light. When she spun across the tent they say she moved so fast she disappeared.” She looked at Joe again, as if daring him to disbelieve her. “There were moments in her act, Joe, when she couldn't even be seen.”
Then she grinned, and turned the dog's face to Joe, and it yapped and bared its teeth.
“This is Joe,” she said. “He's nice. He looks little and weak and shy and words get tangled on his tongue but he's strong and brave, I think.”
The dog yapped again. Joe blushed.
“I think we've come to the right place, little doggie,” said Corinna.
She moved toward the door. Joe followed. She held the flap back and bright daylight slanted across them.
“Who l-looks after you?” Joe asked.
“After me?”
“If your mum's gone?”
“The others here. Wilfred and Charley Caruso and Nanty Solo and…Good kind folk. And Hacken-schmidt, of course.”
Joe looked out across the wasteland toward the Black Bone Crags. He wanted to point and tell Corinna to look. He wanted to ask her what she saw out there.
“Go on,” said Corinna. “You'll soon be back. If you're who we think you are, you'll soon be back.”
Nine
The animal children still played outside. There were children giggling, dogs yapping, clowns dancing. A potbellied pig snuffled at the grass.
“Tomasso!” someone called, from miles away. “Tomasso! Tomasso!”
Joe moved toward the village.
“Maloney!” someone barked. “Joseph Maloney!”
Bleak Winters, Joe's humanities teacher. A clutch of ninth graders were at his back.
“Mr. Maloney! How very nice to see you.”
Joe just stood there, eyes downcast.
“After all this time!” Winters said. “Thought our paths would never cross again!”
He strode toward Joe with his arm stretched out as if to shake his hand. Some of the kids followed, nudged each other, giggled, as lots of kids around Winters did. Others hung back, turned away, bored by his booming voice, his showing off. Winters stretched out and took Joe's hand.
“Let me introduce our Mr. Maloney,” he told them. “And, Mr. Maloney, let me introduce some of your fellow pupils from Hangar's High. Hangar's High. You may not remember it. A redbrick educational establishment. Your school, Mr. Maloney. Yes, your school!” He turned to the others and lowered his voice. “You may not yet have come across our Joseph Maloney, for he is an elusive little chap. Something of a star at the disappearing act.”
They carried computer-printed banners: BAN THE CIRCUS; CIRCUS MEANS CRUELTY: LET THE ANIMALS GO; TAKE YOUR TENT SOMEWHERE ELSE.
“Come and join us, Mr. Maloney. This is our lesson for today, a bit of philosophy, history, political action. What right have we to use animals for our entertainment?”
He put his arm around Joe's shoulder.
“Come and join us, Joseph. If you are not with us then you are against us.” He snorted. “Or are you already enlisted as the new tiger tamer?”
“There's no t-tigers,” said Joe.
Winters gasped. He raised a finger.
“Let us listen to the words of an expert! Let us listen to the words of one who has already been inside the charnel house.”
“There's no t-tigers!” Joe said. “There's no w-wild animals! They're gone.”
He wriggled free of Winters.
“That's not the point, Joe,” said Francesca Placido, a skinny girl with a Tibetan hat on. “What about the dogs? What about the pigs? It's not just tigers, it's the whole animal world we have to think of.”
“Well said, Francesca,” said Winters. “Mr. Maloney?”
Joe felt the lark singing inside him and the tiger prowling inside him. He looked at the teacher, and knew that Bleak Winters was never anything else except Bleak Winters. He looked at the children. He knew that they, like him, might have larks and tigers inside them, but they kept them hidden, and one day their larks and tigers might disappear, j
ust as Bleak Winters' had. He wanted to tell them this, he wanted to draw them away from Winters and toward the tent and the wasteland, but he didn't have the words.
He hunched his back, moved on.
“Get back to school!” Winters snapped. “Get back to school or you'll be lost in your own stupidity.”
Joe listened to his larks.
“Tomasso! Tomasso! Tomasso!” called the old man's voice, fading to almost nothing.
Ten
Cody's crew were gone. Joe walked to the Cut. He crawled on the ground there: rubble, litter, dried-out mud, dog prints, cat prints, boot prints. He ran his fingers across the dried-out mud. No tiger prints. He sniffed the air. No tiger smell. Turned back again, circled the village, clambered over piles of heaped-up earth, over the ruins of old cottages, through the spaces where the swimming pools were supposed to come, the supermarkets, the car parks. Circled the great tent, avoided Bleak and his hangers-on. Saw Stanny miles away moving through the ruins of Broomstick Farm, more smoke streaming across him. Imagined having been a tiger, having been a trapeze artist. Watched the Silver Forest and the Golden Hills and the Black Bone Crags as he walked. “Tomasso, Tomasso” came faintly through the air. Clambered through the ruins of old terraced houses. Came to the Blessed Chapel. Fragments of gravestones lay embedded in the earth around it. Fragments of words were written on what was left of the walls. Eroded by wind and rain, odd and ancient bits of prayers could still be deciphered:
God … Blessed art … thy kingdom …In Loving Memory of …
He knelt in the dirt and breathed the words passed down from children to children.
“Spirits of earth and air, listen to my words this day.”
He spat on his hands and wiped them slowly across the name of God.
“Protect my mum this day.”
He breathed deeply.
“Let her heart be refreshed and let her life be lightened and let all harm and evil be lifted from her.”
He took a five-pence coin from his pocket and dropped it through a narrow slot between the stones. It chinked into the space behind.
He closed his eyes, searching for another prayer.
“Protect the larks. Protect the tigers.”
He touched the name of God again.
“Our men,” he breathed. “Our men, our men.”
He stayed there in the Blessed Chapel. Thick soft turf had grown on the ruined floor. He lay there, out of sight of Helmouth. He watched the sun sliding slowly through the sky, watched the summit of the blue tent shifting in the breeze. The gentle breeze flowed over him. He curled his knees up to his chest and slept, leaning on the blurred fragments of ancient prayers. In his dream he walked with Mum across the motorway and strode through the Silver Forest beneath a storm of larks. There were deer watching from the dappled shadows, owls from low branches, rabbits from dark entrances in the earth. She held his hand and they skipped toward the Black Bone Crags and their laughter echoed through the trees. Then his mum was replaced by another who walked lightly at his side. He was about to turn to her, to see her.
He woke. Kids from Hangar's High were nearby. A bunch of boys kicked a ball and wrestled with each other. A couple of couples walked hand in hand. Dejected stragglers trailed knapsacks from their hands. Some cast their eyes across him, then turned away. He saw faces of a few who had been almost friends an age ago. A group of kids from Joe's year, from his class, approached. He crouched in the chapel, kept his head down, focused his mind on making them go away.
“Alone, Maloney?”
A girl's voice, laughing, mocking. Boys' voices joined in.
“Alone, Maloney?”
He crouched there, didn't move, like the rabbit that the weasel took.
A rock bounced into the chapel, rolled to his ankle.
Another came, accompanied by much laughter.
“Let earth eat them,” he muttered to the earth. “Let fire take them.”
“Only Maloney, lalalalalaaaaa!”
Two boys prowled like tigers coming through grass to take their prey.
“Where was you today, Only Maloney?” they hissed.
“Swallow them, burn them, blow them all away,” he whispered.
He fingered the name of God. Nothing happened to them. They came closer, closer. He rolled his fists, clenched them.
“What you bloody doing?”
A new voice. It echoed across the ruins.
“What you bloody doing to him?”
The prowlers lifted their heads. They searched the landscape with their eyes. They stood, began to back away, back to their pack.
It was Joff, standing on a heap of stones.
They scuttled away from him, like crabs, like beetles. They kept turning their heads to him, muttering, but they moved away. He came to Joe, stood by the Blessed Chapel. He swiped his hand across his face and watched. He shook his head.
“Boy,” he said.
Joe raised his eyes.
“Boy!”
“Y—”
“You got to harden up, boy.”
Joff stroked the snakeskin tattoo at his throat. He chewed his lips with his golden teeth. He beckoned Joe from the chapel.
“You think this is how you should be, boy?”
“N-no.”
“A father wouldn't've let you get like this,” he said.
Joe hung his head.
“Hiding in holes,” Joff said. “Scared of your own shadow. He'd have done something about it.”
He reached down, took Joe's arm, drew him out.
“You need a man, boy. You know that?”
Joe saw the snake scales tattooed on the backs of his hands.
“And that mother needs a man, boy,” Joff said. “You know that?”
“Y—”
Joe chewed his lips. Joff slid his hand around the back of Joe's neck and held him. He cupped Joe's chin in his palm.
“The lad says you want to come out with us. Surviving. That's true?”
“Y-yes,” he said. No, he said inside.
“It'd be the making of you. You've seen the change I've wrought in Stanny Mole?”
“Y-yes.”
“Aye. I am not an easy master, boy. And I'll lead you into deepest danger. But lads that walk with me become survivors.”
He stroked Joe's cheek.
“I'll ring changes in you, boy.”
Joe watched Joff stride away, past the blue tent as if it wasn't there, out of sight across the slope. He picked earth, licked it.
“Spirits of the earth,” he breathed. He swiped his hand across the name of God. “Give Joe Maloney the strength he needs today. Our men. Our men.”
He knelt there in the Blessed Chapel. He closed his eyes. The images of his life in Helmouth swirled within him. Then the image of the tiger came. It stared from the shadows, as if it waited for him.
Eleven
As he left, a rat moved through the Blessed Chapel, low to the earth, and took no notice of him. A skylark dropped onto a gravestone three yards away and held its crested head high for a second, then went up again. Hung high over him singing, then went further to a higher plane and hung there too to sing. Then higher and higher till there was nothing but its song, so sweet, so ardent, and so far far far away. He thought of Corinna's mother spinning through the blue light, spinning so fast she went out of sight. Where did she go during those moments?
He stepped across the stones.
He walked through Cody's crew to the Cut. They hardly noticed him. Their eyes were blinded by hate and they were yelling at the tent.
“Gyppo scum! Filth! Get back where you come from!”
They stamped their feet, thrust their chins forward, jabbed their fingers, shook their fists.
Beyond them, a couple of girls sat at the curbside, holding dolls in the air as if they were flying.
“Look, Joe. Fairies!” They laughed.
He paused.
“See them fly!” they said.
He laughed with them.
“Yeah!” he said. He crouched and saw how ordinary dolls were transfigured by the children's vision. “Yeah!”
He walked on. His mum would be back from the Booze Bin by now, her afternoon shift finished. He walked through the broken gate, along the path beside the house. He slipped in at the back door, into the kitchen. Cut himself a slab of bread, started to butter it.
“That's you, Joe?”
“Yeah.”
She came and stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the hall.
“The Wag Man came, Joe.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
They both hung their heads and sighed.
“Oh, Joe,” she said. “What we going to do with you?”
He lifted his shoulders, sighed again.
“He said if you keep on playing hooky they'll start proceedings.”
He glanced from the window to the pale blue tent, paler than the darkening sky.
“He said if they start proceedings it'll lead to fines for me.”
He chewed and stared.
“He said if they fine me and you keep on playing hooky they could even end up taking you away.”
She watched him.
“Do you understand, Joe?”
He nodded.
“Is that what you want?”
“No, Mum.”
“Joe, you have got to go to school.”
“Yes, Mum.”
He stepped toward her and she held him close and whispered his name. It had gone on so long. Psychiatrists had pried into his brain. Social workers had pried into his home. Teachers had been gentle with him, stern with him, furious with him. The Wag Man had trailed him back and forth across the waste-land. Policemen had come calling. Nothing had tamed him. The choice was easy. The eerie wasteland or the gates and walls of school? In school, Joe didn't know the things he was supposed to know. He couldn't think the thoughts he was supposed to think. He chose the wilderness, the larks, the rats and rabbits and stoats. And he accepted the loneliness that went with this choice. He accepted the pangs of fear and shame.
His mum reached into a cupboard and took out a big jar of raspberry jam and put it on a bench.
“Spread some of that on it.”
He spun off the top, plunged in his knife, wiped it across the buttered bread.