Love, Let Me Not Hunger

LOVE, LET ME NOT HUNGER

Paul Gallico’s haunting novel, L
OVE
, L
ET
M
E
N
OT
H
UNGER
, is the saga of a little British traveling circus stranded in Spain. Deserted by the owner and the main body of performers, their livelihood reduced to ashes, their resources exhausted, strangers marooned in the heart of a savage, poverty-stricken land, five ill-assorted human beings embark upon the struggle to keep their remaining animals, themselves, and their hopes alive. The need is for food, but the hunger is for love.

There is Toby, the young rider striving to escape from his prudish family into sexual manhood; Janos, the Hungarian dwarf clown who lives only for his stomach and his dogs; Fred Deeter who once punched cattle down through Wyoming and Texas and now presents cowboy and animal acts; Mr. Albert, the old beastman who after a life of pervading failure has found an aim in the love of animals and a profession in caring for them—and Rose.

Rose who? Rose nothing! Rose nobody! Rose the outsider, picked up off the streets by Jackdaw Williams, august and professional funny man, and forced upon the strait-laced circus artists as his mistress and caravan companion.

Their fate becomes entangled with the grotesque and horrifying Marquesa de Pozzoblanco, who battens upon human misery and degradation, obese monster who might have stepped down from the most macabre canvas of a Goya. Yet, without her, none might have survived. Not Rose, with her well-nigh hopeless love for Toby, nor Judy, the great elephant who tried to kill her, or the big, graceful, helpless cats.

Through this passionate and thoughtful novel runs the theme of the humility, humanity and simplicity of old Mr. Albert in his rusty frock coat and bowler hat, who inadvertently becomes a comic butt through the forces of his own kindliness and pity, drawing upon himself and his last shreds of dignity the greedy and fatal gaze of the Marquesa.

Books by Paul Gallico

Farewell to Sport
Adventures of Hiram Holliday
The Secret Front
The Snow Goose
Lou Gehrig—Pride of the Yankees
Golf Is a Nice Friendly Game
Confessions of a Story Writer
The Lonely
The Abandoned
Trial by Terror
The Small Miracle
The Foolish Immortals
Snowflake
Love of Seven Dolls
Thomasina
The Steadfast Man
Mrs. ’Arris Goes to Paris
Ludmila
Too Many Ghosts
Mrs. ’Arris Goes to New York
The Hurricane Story
Further Confessions of a Story Writer
Scruffy
Coronation
Love, Let Me Not Hunger

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 63-18229
Copyright
©
1962, 1963 by Paul Gallico
Copyright
©
1963 by Mathemata A. G.
Copyright
©
1964 by The Book Club, London, UK
All Rights Reserved

T
O
R
ICHARD
H
EARNE

L O V E,
L E T  M E
N O T  H U N G E R

P A R T  I
Fire

C H A P T E R
1

T
he gathering in the main building of the winter quarters of the Marvel Circus at Chippenham was an unusual one. Summoned by Sam Marvel, the recently arrived contract artistes and staff stood around in uneasy groups, murmuring and waiting.

Ordinarily, they would have been unpacking their gear and props, seeing their animals into their stalls, and preparing to begin the weeks of limbering up and practise necessary after the long winter months of hibernation before their acts would be ready to take to the road in the spring.

But on this twilight-like day in the middle of a wet, miserable English February, Sam Marvel had called a meeting to be attended by everyone, from the aristocratic Walters riding family down to the lowest groom, and including even lower than low, Mr. Albert, the servant of the beasts.

Winter quarters for Sam Marvel’s Marvel Circus consisted of a group of buildings on the outskirts of Chippenham. The long barns were ideal for the sheltering of the horses and the animal cages during the cold months, and there was also one large rectangular structure which had originally served as an indoor market where sales had taken place, and which had been turned into a rehearsal ring and practise hall.

It offered more than enough space for a regulation-size circus ring, the same one they would carry with them on tour, and the roof girders were studded with the necessary eyebolts and rings to support trapezes and other gear of the various acts in the show. It was further equipped with an American riding machine. Here, also, the circular portable steel safety cage could be set up for the wild-animal presentations, and all in all it was a useful and efficient building.

From the time in February when the performers arrived, there was hardly a moment when something was not going on in the hall. There would be acrobats warming up, trapeze artistes stretching before attempting their more spectacular routines, and perch acts balancing gingerly. The Liberty horses would be drilling, trotting through the same movements over and over; the only way to fix the proper habits in their beautiful but thick skulls. Children of the equestrian families would be at their training attached to the belt of the riding machine, a contraption not unlike a fishing pole, from which they would swing suddenly like small, struggling frogs used for bait as the great dapple-grey rosin-backs galloped out from under them, leaving them suspended in mid-air, embarrassed but safe. And strangest of all would be the clowns rehearsing their routines, performances made even more weird by the fact that they were not in costume but clad in trousers and sweaters.

But now there was no such activity, only the polyglot groups of people who seemed quite out of place sitting on the edge of the ring or standing about in the tanbark in their everyday clothes, made all lumpy by the muscular bodies they concealed. The women looked dowdy and ordinary, and the men, mostly small in size, even less impressive in their street garments, with the foreigners easily identified by the white scarves they inevitably wore inside the collars of their jackets.

The uneasiness resulted from the mystery of the meeting call, for in the past Sam Marvel had never been one for speechmaking, or for that matter having much to do with his performers. Usually upon their arrival they were simply greeted by him with a nod, which was more a checkoff to acknowledge their presence than a welcome, and thereafter they went to work under the eye of their immediate superior, Captain Burroughs, the ringmaster, who was also the director and stage manager of the circus.

Much of the rumour that ran through the groups was caused by the fact that many of the acts which had been with the show the previous disastrous summer were missing. The Marvel Circus had prided itself upon presenting the best small circus programme in England. What anyone with experience could see was that there was only half a circus here, and that likewise Captain Burroughs was not in their midst. The usual clutter of clowns also appeared to be drastically cut.

Someone had placed one of the inverted tubs used by the performing elephants at the end of the building outside the permanent ring, and there was a stir as Sam Marvel emerged from his office opposite, climbed up onto it and stood there silently looking them over. He was wearing a Tattersall waistcoat under his jacket and the inevitable fawn raincoat and brown bowler hat which was his uniform. Veteran members of the circus claimed he slept in them. He was carrying the long-stocked, thin-lashed ringmaster’s whip.

It was foggy outside and the lights in the building were turned on. One of them, a flood-lamp, beamed from the roof and picked out the spare jockey’s figure and the shrewd, dark eyes snapping from the seamed, leathery face of the circus boss. In repose, the hard lines of the thin, almost lipless mouth seemed permanently cynical and contemptuous.

Sam Marvel thumped the stock of his whip on the bottom of the tub so that the blows echoed through the cavernous enclosure, and then said, “Okay, okay! Pipe down. Is everybody here?” And even as he asked, his shifting eyes were prying, searching, and counting.

All the members of the Walters equestrian family were there, and standing with them Marvel noted Fred Deeter, the American ex-cowboy who also presented the Liberty act and who was always clamouring for a chance at showing off the cats. Well, now he was going to get it. He took in the moonfaces, Chinese and Japanese, of the group of oriental jugglers, Risley balancers, and wire walkers known as the Yoshiwara-Fu Tong troupe: tiny people in out-of-place Western garb. He noted the Albanos, a group of ground acrobats, pyramid builders, and tumblers looking like all such performers, as though they were about to burst from their too tight clothing, and the Birdsalos, husband and wife, and Joe Purvey their partner, who did a trampoline and bar act. The four clowns he had signed were all there: Tom Drury and Bill Semple who worked as Panache and Gogo, whiteface and Auguste; Jackdaw Williams, his bird perched on one shoulder, whom he was lucky to have acquired at the end of a season in the music halls, and the ugly little bow-legged Hungarian dwarf and utility midget clown, known only as Janos. As always, Janos was munching on something.

There was a girl standing next to Jackdaw Williams, or, as Sam Marvel decided, “with,” and for a moment his eyes paused in their restless traverse. It was someone he did not know. She had on a beret from beneath which there showed a glint of reddish hair. She was wearing a blue cloth coat and her hands were pushed down into the pockets. Her mouth was full with a humorous quirk to it. Her eyes, picked out by the lights, returned a greenish glow. Her expression was wary. She was the only one in the group who obviously did not belong.

Over to one side in a cluster of their own he saw the ground staff he had kept on: Joe Cotter, the tent boss, his bald head covered with a cloth cap; Pete Sprague, the mechanic, as always in his grease-stained overalls with grease marks on his face; and the three experienced tentmen who had travelled permanently with the show the year before, as opposed to the floating population of hands and roustabouts who came and went during the season. There were also the two grooms, and, standing slightly detached from the group, and as always faintly ridiculous in the black swallow-tailed coat and black bowler he had adopted as a kind of a uniform when not actually engaged in cleaning the cages or feeding the animals, Mr. Albert, the beast man.

“Okay, okay,” repeated the circus boss. “I suppose you’re all wondering what I’ve got you together for? Well, here it is. You’ve all signed to tour with the Sam Marvel Circus this summer. Only this year the Marvel Circus ain’t showing in England. It’s going to Spain.”

There was a murmur of surprise amongst the performers, some of them looking at one another blankly, and others involuntarily reaching towards their breast pockets in which were their agreements.

But Jackdaw Williams expressed what was in the minds of most when he stepped forward and said, “My contract don’t say nothing about touring in Spain.” The girl standing beside him looked at him anxiously.