Love, Let Me Not Hunger (17 page)

On the way to his caravan he passed the clown wagon, bedraggled and askew. He glanced within. The inmates, Gogo, Panache, and Janos, looked like painted Polynesian savages. Their make-up had run, daubing and striping their bodies. Janos had retired beneath a bunk with the two great Danes and the fox terrier to soothe them by the presence of his small, deformed body, and his grotesque, lumpy face, streaked with red, looked up anxiously at Toby. The two clowns were sitting huddled on their berths.

Toby said, “I think it’s getting better,” which was followed immediately by a crackling bolt as the lightning struck once more somewhere nearby, and another deafening explosion of thunder.

Panache said, “Humorist!” and tried to spit, but he could not, as his mouth was too dry.

Toby went on. Their own great motorised caravan stood some little distance away towards the rear of the lot, and through the shattered windows he could see the girls and his mother panicking about inside. He did not go there but instead continued on to the edge of the field where Judy stamped her free foreleg, sending up great splashes of water and saluted him by raising her trunk.

Toby said, “All right, old girl?” and inspected the chains and the stakes that held her. They appeared to be still firm. And from there it was just a few yards to overlook the road where the wagons of Jackdaw Williams, Deeter, and the Birdsalos were parked.

The street was sunken at that point, a matter of six feet or so beneath the level of the field on which the Marvel Circus had pitched its tents. In all probability it had originally been the bed of a small river which had dried up or which had been diverted higher up and its meagre waters put to the use of the town which lay on slightly higher ground.

Toby became aware of a new noise other than the hissing and splashing of the deluge, the crackling of the dying fire, and the booming of the thunder. It was a steady roar, like the relentless movement of surf upon a coast line. The next lightning flash that illuminated the tober and the surrounding fields disclosed to him what it was. A three-foot wall of water and ochre mud was pouring down the road from the town. It was a flash flood of all the tons of rain collected, racing down-grade to discharge itself into the plain.

Toby began to shout at the top of his lungs, “Hoi, hoi! Hey! Get out of there! Come out of it! There’s a flood coming!” And then he leaped on to the roofs of the wagons and pounded them with his heels, and when their inmates emerged he pointed and yelled, “Get up here, there’s a flood!”

They all came tumbling out of their homes, the Birdsalos, Jackdaw Williams and Rose, Deeter, and Purvey, and when they saw the mass of water no more than a hundred yards away, roaring, frothing and churning up the yellow mud, they moved quickly enough, after only a moment’s counsel. There were not enough of them to shift the wagons, and no time. They would be well out of it to save themselves, and scrambling up on to the axles and shafts they gained the security of the higher ground, and stood there helplessly watching as the flood advanced down the sunken road.

There was now a kind of yellow sulphurous light, and through the thick curtain of descending rain Toby saw Rose, who had been standing next to Williams, the white shirt that she wore soaked and clinging to her so that the pink of her body and breasts showed through it, plunge back down into the sunken road in the path of the oncoming water. She fell to her hands and knees, scrambled to her feet and, with the first of the surge swirling about her legs and thighs, struggled towards her van.

Jackdaw Williams, standing on the field overlooking the scene, watched her imperturbably, but Toby shouted, “You bloody little fool!” and plunged in after her.

The water, swirling, tugging, pulling, and pushing at him like a thousand giants, tried to sweep him away from the slender figure which had gained a finger-hold upon her wagon. Kicking and splashing, he fought against it and himself managed to hold on the spokes of a wheel. “You idiot!” he shouted. “Hang on till I can get to you! What the hell are you trying to do?”

For a moment she looked dazed. Then she replied, “Jackdaw said to get the bird.”

It was a curiously anomalous situation. It was both dangerous and not, innocent and deadly. The water was no more than waist-high and, although it had force, one could manage to keep one’s footing, but if one lost it and was swept away to the centre of it where the flash current was running at high speed, one would have been ground to bits by the small boulders and bits of debris carried along.

One such object, the wreck of an ancient sofa, crashed against Rose and knocked her loose from the van. She screamed and was about to disappear beneath the yellow turbulence, when Toby grabbed wildly for her and secured a hold upon some portion of her soaked clothing near the waist, at the same time hooking a foot into the spoke of the wheel to which he had been holding.

He was young and strong enough to fight against the increasing power of the flood. He kept her head above water and pulled her towards him until both arms were about her, and he secured a grip on the side of the wagon and sufficient leverage to struggle to his feet with her clasped safely to him.

Her eyes closed. She folded her own arms tightly about his neck and pressed her mouth to his, and her lips and soft tongue clung to his in a kind of despairing sexual ecstasy that aroused in him an anger such as he had never experienced before and at the same time such desire for all of her, every nook and cranny, that it was an agony in his loins and a dizzying blindness before his eyes to be thus locked to her without consummation. He was shaken to the depths of his young person by the mystery of the ambivalence—unendurably to want her and at the same time the wish, almost beyond control, to kill her.

Somehow he managed to get his mouth away from hers and improve his footing to the point where the flood no longer plucked at them so persistently.

His face dark with fury, he cried, “What the hell did you do that for?”

She opened her eyes at this and they were as serene as those of a child. She said, “I thought we were going to die.”

Toby took her arms from about his neck and turned her about so that he could brace her against the pull of the water, and said, “Get out of it now.”

But she only murmured, “The bird.” And instead of crawling up onto the roof of the wagon she worked herself inside, climbing through a broken window, and appeared with the caged jackdaw which she held out to Toby.

The bird screamed vilenesses at him. Toby took the cage from her and thrust it onto the roof from whence Jackdaw Williams seized it and carried it to safety.

But the caravans were beginning to move now, swaying and shifting in the speeding current, as the flood with all the weight of the waters behind it was now in full spate.

Rose appeared at the window but did not know what to do, for the sudden movement of the vehicle had alarmed her again. Toby reached an arm inside and lifted her out, as though she had been no more than a doll, for the adrenalins of fear and sex discharged within him were making him tall and strong, a veritable giant.

He held her in his arms and with her clambered to the roof of the wagon, and then made a prodigious leap to the bank as hands stretched out to reach and catch them. The caravan, with its painted jackdaw and grotesque clown’s face and the golden curlicue of its owner’s name, drifted away from the bank, was overturned and carried down the gully by the swirling flood wave.

Toby went up to Jackdaw Williams, thrust the girl at him and said, “Here, take your slut. You bloody near got her killed!”

He then stalked off in the direction of his own trailer, but halfway there felt himself drained of every bit of strength, and as though his legs were robbed of all bone and sinew, they collapsed beneath him, and shaking and trembling, he found himself kneeling in the six-inch pool of mud and water topping the field. He felt that if he did not soon have a girl all of the way, a girl like Rose, who only a moment before had teased and inflamed him beyond endurance, he would go out of his mind. He put his hands to his face so that no one who came by would see that he was weeping tears of frustration, shame, and anger.

It grew lighter still, and the rain began to slacken; the lightning and the thunder had moved in the direction of the Sierra de Alcaraz to the south-east; and at the very edge of the western horizon whence the cloud had come appeared one bright spear of red. This was the last splinter of setting sun.

Soon after came nightfall, clear, cool, canopied by every star and nebula visible over the southern plain. The exhausted members of Sam Marvel’s Marvel Circus, at Marvel’s behest, took stock and found all present and accounted for. There was nothing then but to make do until morning when daylight would help to expose the full extend of the disaster which had overwhelmed them.

They shared out hot tea and what food had been left undamaged, and doubled up on sleeping quarters.

The following morning they awoke to a bright day of washed world and sky, where visibility seemed unlimited, the world which likewise encompassed the total ruin of their circus over which still hung the characteristic after-conflagration stink, though the rain in the end had eventually effectually doused the embers and not even so much as a curl of smoke arose from the blackened, tangled mass of wreckage at the end of the tober.

The field itself was a quagmire of yellow-brown mud which seemed somehow to have got into everything. The broken glass made it dangerous to walk in, several of the performers suffering cuts until they learned to pick their way carefully. In the road the flash flood had spent its force, spilling out onto the plain in a vast, broad river of mud. Two of the wagons, one of them that of Jackdaw Williams, were half-buried. The third stood tilting crazily in the centre of the gully. But birds sang, chickens clucked nearby, and in the town itself bells and dogs came to life.

Sam Marvel appeared at the door of his caravan and looked out over the collapse of the Marvel Circus. There was no doubt as to his estimate and judgement of the night before. They were finished. There was not a hope of continuing. He had already satisfied his mind by rechecking his insurance policy to make certain there was no sneaking fine-print clause about acts of God or natural catastrophes, and had ascertained to his relief that he was well covered. Now, the quicker he could reach London, put in his claim, and get the insurance adjustor on the spot, the better. And once more, as he looked out over the debris, his acute showman’s mind was occupying itself with how to get out of the mess as cheaply as possible.

Across the morass of the tober he saw Joe Cotter and two of the British roustabouts standing amidst the charred ruins. The tent boss was stirring the ashes with his foot and the other two were staring down at the ground.

Marvel, now clad in his daytime garb of fawn raincoat and brown bowler hat, picked his way across to them. Cotter looked up as he approached. The night’s disaster had left its mark upon his rugged face and his eyes appeared to have sunk more deeply into his head.

Marvel said, “It’s over and done with, Joe. You might as well come out of it. We’re insured. Nobody got hurt.”

Cotter said, “I’m afraid that ain’t exactly so.”

“What?” Marvel cried. “What the hell do you mean? We counted noses last night.”

“I know,” Cotter replied, “but I’m afraid there was a feller in the tent.”

“Oh Christ!” Marvel said. “How do you know?”

Cotter replied, “There ain’t much of him left. I was poking around here this morning. I found his false teeth and some of his watch and a ring. That was a terrible hot fire.”

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otter led Marvel through the debris and pointed with his toe. “There,” he said.

Marvel saw the gleam of some bits of gold and the porcelain white of teeth washed partly free of charred grime by the rain. “Jesus!” he said. “It ain’t one of ours.”

Cotter said, “One of the Spiggoties. He must have been stunned by the first bolt or tripped trying to get out. I never saw him. But they were coming and going and ducking out so fast you couldn’t keep track of ’em.”

Marvel said hopefully, “Maybe the josser lost his watch and his teeth scarpering?”

“No such luck,” Cotter said. “It’s one of ’em all right. Look here.” He pointed to some unconsumed bits of human bone and charred buttons. He asked, “What’ll we do? Gather it up?”

“No, no,” Marvel said, “wait! Don’t touch ’em.” He was frightened and confused again. He could not remember what his insurance policy had said about death due to causes, or what the law was likely to be in Spain. He only knew that in his own country when there was an accident or a murder the police didn’t like anyone mucking about with the remains or touching or moving anything. The sharp mind engaged itself with this new problem and how it might affect the manner of extricating the remnants of the circus from Zalano and getting it back to England.

The flash flood had subsided, leaving only a rill trickling through the mud, and the vans of Fred Deeter and Jackdaw Williams lying overturned in the mud were righted by concerted effort and manhandled back to the tober.

Rose wept bitterly at what the disaster had done to her home, and futilely began to shovel the thick, gluey mud which covered everything and was silted on to the floor to the depth of a foot, with her hands. Jackdaw watched unsympathetically for a few moments until, saying, “You won’t get very far that way,” he walked off in the direction of the clown wagon. As usual, the whole thing had left him unperturbed.

At ten o’clock, Sam Marvel called a meeting of the company.

They gathered at one end of the horse tent. The elephant tub prop was produced and reversed, and Marvel mounted it, as he had once before at Chippenham, his brown bowler hat perched on the back of his head and the Schimmelpenninck pointing, undaunted as ever, from the corner of his mouth. This time he did not carry his ringmaster’s whip but had some papers in one hand. He did not have to signal for silence, for they were all watching him and waiting to learn their fate.