Lord Morgan's Cannon (2 page)

Before The Show

The late afternoons were normally a special time at Whyte and Wingate’s Big Top. The sun always began its gentle, inevitable decline. As the fields cooled and shadows lengthened, sleeps were taken and lethargic legs stretched. The seeds of dandelions would breeze on by, buttercups glowing among the clover.

Chores and rehearsals done, Jim the Strongman liked to oil his moustache, hoping the clairvoyant lady would offer to wash his shirt, clean as it was already. The circus boys would practice their chosen art; juggling knives or checking the knots on the ropes of the trapeze they hoped to one day master. The hire-wire girls would flirt and giggle, always living for today, but never doing enough to catch the eye of the Ring Master, who would sit in the open, on a folding chair, with a whisky and his cane, counting the advance tickets for each evening’s performance, calculating just how extravagant it would have to be to turn a profit.

The animals were housed together, their wagons in a circle, ready to be unleashed and walked down the grassy stretch and in through the curtains of the big tent.

That day, Doris stood outside the anteater’s cage, her right front foot chained to a willow tree that somehow grew away from water. Being a good, loyal elephant, who had never yet hurt a clown, she was allowed a ten-metre chain. The circus boys figured she was experienced enough not to circle the tree, and they even put down two bales of hay for her to toss and taste if she got bored of the cocksfoot and common bent grasses under her wide, grey feet.

The mosquitoes were too small to bother her, and she ignored the crows that occasionally landed, trying to peck at her back. She stood as she often did that English spring, gently swaying, as she explored the vertical bars of the cage. Being an Indian elephant, she had two lips on her trunk and she used both to probe the bars and the gaps between, seeing if there was room to squeeze through and touch the anteater, who appeared to be either dead, or sleeping, a motionless ball of spiky black and white lying still on tar-covered planks.

She searched and snaffled, sometimes blowing on to her friend’s body before returning to her hay, and swaying again, occasionally considering whether to place her head against the cage, and lean in, tipping it off its trailer. But she had seen it all before. So as the sun descended, she took to kicking up a dirt pile, and flicking a little over her back.

Doris didn’t notice Bessie flying into the anteater’s cage, alighting silently next to his weeping nose. Nor did she see Bessie bob down, her tiny tongue dipping into a tear the anteater had silently shed, tasting it for salt. The anteater stirred, slowly opening his sorrowful eyes, and he dragged a paw across the cage, his claws etching another four lines into its timber. He pulled himself to his senses, and spoke, quietly, seriously, but without substance.

“I can’t go on,” he said.

The anteater was only seven years old, young for his kind, even among those kept in circuses. His neck was thickening beyond his head, his tail growing bushy and long, yet he hadn’t developed an eye for the best ant hills. Like many captive anteaters, his spectacles were strapped to his tiny ears for show. But he was already exhausted, whipped into submission.

Bessie hopped upon his head, and danced along it, avoiding his wounds. She hoped to warm his blood, reviving some mammalian instinct, encouraging him into the last light penetrating the bars before dusk. She asked him to look out across the meadow and imagine wandering across it, like he had once plodded the evening plains of South America, before being trapped, bagged, sold and shipped.

“You have to get yourself better,” she chirped. “Better and better and better. You have to get yourself better.”

She cocked her head as she told him this, and tickled her feathers.

“But I can’t go on,” the anteater said slowly. “Anyway, they don’t even like me.”

“You have to get yourself better. And you have to make them like you,” said Bessie, picking away at him. “It’s the only way to survive in this business. The only way to survive.”

She jumped along his back, treading her tiny feet into his hair, trying to massage his exotic haystack of a torso.

“It’s the only way to survive.”

The anteater sighed. He stuck out his tongue, curling it right back on itself until it reached his eyes. He licked at them, discovering his spectacles sat off their perch, dangling awkwardly. He realised how easily he could crush his glasses, if only he could summon the energy to roll over.

“They don’t like me. And in all this time, they haven’t even given me a name.”

For Bessie, this was a hard point to argue. She thought she knew the circus business better than any, being the star of every show. She often perched behind the Ring Master’s chair, and would listen to him and the humans discuss how to best entertain the masses. She knew what the audience wanted, what the Big Top needed, and how to put in a performance. She also knew that every star act had a name. And the anteater had no name.

“Then we shall name you,” she declared. “We shall name you Bear.”

Bessie seemed excited by her plan. None of the animals had bothered to name the anteater during the seasons past.

But she didn’t consider how to get the anteater’s new name up in lights, or on all the posters. Perhaps she thought the anteater might take inspiration from a moniker, act appropriately, and the circus boys would notice. They would etch his habits upon a wooden sign, and hang it above his cage. Though quite how the young anteater might act like a bear went unresolved. Bessie also failed to think through how the audience might react on seeing a seven-year-old anteater, when they might be reasonably be expecting a seven-foot ursine. Perhaps that is why the anteater took the name Bear, but no human ever knew him as such.

The anteater considered his new name, then decided he liked it. He was partial to honey after all. And if he was called Bear, the old leopard would finally have to listen to him, big beast to big beast.

“I shall be called Bear,” he said.

With that, he raised his whipped body, much like a bear might first stand after the sleepy season had ended.

“He is Bear, he is Bear,” agreed Bessie.

Doris flapped her ears at the sudden noise, swinging her shoulders to face the anteater’s cage. She blew a matriarch’s trumpet.

“Will you perform in tonight’s show?” asked Doris, expectantly.

“It’s the only way to survive. It’s the only way to survive,” agreed Bessie.

The anteater straightened the spectacles upon his thinning head, using a single claw to draw the band around his ears. He looked a little like the crazy pilot of the steam-powered airship that had briefly drifted high over the show in Farnborough, doubling the takings.

“Yes I suppose so,” he answered quietly. “But what if they whip me again?”

“Oh I don’t think that’s likely,” said Doris. “Tonight is going to be a special performance. All the circus boys are talking about it,” she said.

“Why so special?” asked Bessie.

She started preening her most blue feathers, chattering her beak along their length, getting all excited.

“Why?” roared Doris. “Why?”

She pulled away from the anteater’s cage, and pirouetted as only a trained elephant can, spinning her whole body around a single back leg. She stepped out of her chain, settled and leaned into the bars, her two short tushes splitting them.

“Tonight is special, because the great Lord Morgan is coming to see us all,” she announced proudly.

“Lord Morgan is coming! Lord Morgan is coming!” squealed Bessie.

She flew out of the cage, and round and round in the darkening sky, oblivious to any watching merlins hidden in the trees at the meadow’s edge.

The antics of the elephant and the bird started to draw a crowd. A murmuration of starlings flew past, convulsing itself, unsure whether to stay or go. Edward the pin monkey danced across the field, up Doris’s tail and on to her back. Even a common hedgehog dozing under the wagon awoke and unfurled himself to listen.

Together the performing animals of Whyte and Wingate’s Big Top circus began to piece together all they knew.

Lord Morgan was a most noble man, the foremost animal expert in all the world, said Edward. Being a monkey, Edward considered himself the most knowledgeable of all the animals. He was a little hard of hearing, having sat next to too many organs as they were turned for a few pennies. But he knew how to count, and could remember all the fruits better than any of his keepers, having a particular penchant for passion fruits and kiwis, treats some of the more stupid circus boys struggled to tell apart. Some said the white-faced capuchins of the French circuses were more clever, but Edward considered himself, a tufted capuchin, to be above even them, especially because he was learning to juggle fire.

“He’s a big, hairy man,” said Edward. “The hair on his chin reaches down to his knees.”

“No it doesn’t,” said Doris. “He looks like a nice man, with a long, carefully trimmed beard. I’ve seen many a beard, on many an ape, and Lord Morgan has style.”

“He keeps his money in his watch pocket,” added Edward.

“How do you know all this?” asked the anteater. “Have you ever seen him?”

Doris demurred.

“Lord Morgan has a beard. Lord Morgan has a beard. He is the cleverest man in the world,” said Bessie, flapping her wings.

“Well? How do you know this?” asked the newly anointed Bear.

Edward started one of his tales, describing how the Ring Master had invited Lord Morgan to dinner a few evenings before, the moment the Big Top had arrived in the fields surrounding the old slave city of Bristol. Edward has supped red wine, with the Ring Master, while Lord Morgan preferred white, said the monkey. They had eaten quail shot on the Mendip moors and chewed tobacco to end proceedings, as the men discussed politics.

“No such thing!” declared Doris. “You didn’t have a place at the dinner. You were sitting on the Ring Master’s shoulder. Doing what you were told.”

Edward ignored her. He told the elephant, the budgie, the anteater named after a bear, the hedgehog and any passing birds how Lord Morgan had indeed come to visit the Ring Master.

It was a Tuesday night, the day usually reserved for cards. But on this night, the Ring Master had told Jim the Strongman, the clairvoyant woman, clowns and all the performing boys and girls to stay in their trailers. The Ring Master had prepared his own wagon, unpacked the silver cutlery, and sat down to eat with Lord Morgan of University College, Bristol.

This bearded man was a professor of all the animals, said Edward, reciting what he had heard that night. He was a scientist, Lord Morgan had told the Ring Master over dinner, and he was particularly interested in whether certain animals had extraordinary abilities. He wanted to discover exactly what tricks animals could learn, and how they did so. He had made some observations of kittens and cats, and of his own pet dog, but he had yet to see how a more exotic animal might perform when posed certain challenges. So this Lord Morgan had made the Ring Master a proposal.

He wanted to visit Whyte and Wingate’s Big Top, and he wanted to be given the best seat in the house. He wanted the Ring Master to arrange the most amazing, the most intricate, the most daredevil show he could, and he wanted to sit and observe it all from row E. He would watch each animal with great interest, especially the leopard he had passed on his way to the Ring Master’s wagon. He would take notes, and give them marks for intellect and artistry. He would pay particular attention to the instructions of the Ring Master, and how each animal responded to the directions they were given.

The Ring Master, said Edward, had been gripped by Lord Morgan’s speech. He had twirled his own thin and waxed beard and attempted to use bigger words in his own conversation. As if to prove a point, the Ring Master asked Edward to pour Lord Morgan another glass of wine, which Edward of course did. Then he asked this professor of all animals what was in it for Whyte and Wingate’s Big Top?

This confused Lord Morgan, reported Edward. So the Ring Master took a direct approach, wondering out loud how much Lord Morgan would pay to see such a performance?

Lord Morgan chortled, said Edward. Scientists didn’t pay to study animals, even those in a circus, he told the Ring Master. But he was sure the two men could come to some accommodation. For example, he might be able to write up his findings and share them with people he knew across Europe and America. Even experts in Russia might read his report, he suggested. And that would put Whyte and Wingate’s Big Top on a map of the globe.

The Ring Master shrugged, playing cards after all. So Lord Morgan upped his offer. He was writing a very big book on animals, he said, a very important book that could turn Whyte and Wingate’s exotic creatures into global celebrities.

If the Ring Master could put on a show, and let him study it, Lord Morgan could, in return, make the Ring Master’s circus famous.

“That’s why tonight is so important,” tweeted Bessie. “Oh it’s going to be such fun. I’ll do a twirl and fade, and sing one of my favourite songs.”

“I’m going to try a new routine with the clowns,” announced Doris.

“Well I’ll get better marks than you all,” said Edward, gesticulating frantically. “I’m going to juggle two fire sticks at once. That’s one more than any monkey has ever juggled. Ever! In all of history!”

“So that’s why the Ring Master got angry with the whip,” shrugged Bear, though no one listened.

Edward hadn’t finished. Like all clever monkeys, he knew how to tell a good story, and how to save the best of it till last.

“There’s even more at stake,” he announced.

Instead of continuing, he sat back upon Doris’s shoulders, suddenly uninterested. He placed a small hand inside his waistcoat pocket and pulled out a single peanut. He cracked its shell, and shoved it into his face, bits of nut falling about Doris’s neck. Even the hedgehog, who hadn’t seen a monkey before, couldn’t tell if he was doing it for show, or if that was what monkeys did.

“What could be bigger?” said Bessie, eyeing Edward suspiciously.

She landed, hopped along Doris and ate a nutty crumb.

“A cannon,” said Edward, fiddling with the shell, looking inside it, turning it upside down.

“A cannon?” asked Doris.

“A big gun,” said the anteater. “I saw one in the port of Montevideo. On an old galleon. Passed it on the way here. They fire cannonballs.”

“I know what a cannon is,” said Doris, indignant.

She moved her bulk, causing Edward to hold on tight as Bessie took flight.