Love, Let Me Not Hunger (39 page)

C H A P T E R
2 7

T
here was another event that same day. It was the arrival in the late afternoon of Mr. Albert driving a jeep. He was dressed as they had always seen him, in his long-tailed cutaway coat. Only the bowler hat sitting on the back of his head was new. Toby had sent him a letter to the Finca Pozoblanco to tell him the news of Sam Marvel and the arrival of Peabody.

He drew up before the clown wagon which had been his former home, peered over his spectacles, and saw Rose and Toby standing in front of it. He raised his hat and, crowing like a rooster, cried, “Rose!” leaped out, and galloping over to her, threw his arms about her. “Rose! Rosie!”

Toby said, “We’re together now—for keeps, that is. I’m glad you got here. Where’s Janos?”

Rose had turned and was regarding Toby curiously, narrowing her eyes as she did frequently when she looked into his face, as if she were gazing into the sun. Mr. Albert’s exuberance subsided. He shuffled his feet awkwardly, looked down and said, “He’s dead—he died.”

Rose said, “Oh, no! Poor little Janos!”

“What happened to him?” Toby asked.

Mr. Albert replied, “The doctor said it was aperlexy. He ate too much. He died during the night.”

Rose said, “The poor little feller. All alone by himself!”

Mr. Albert said nothing. He was thinking of Janos in his clown’s suit with the candles burning at his head and feet, the strange puce colour of his countenance, and the acolyte like a raven, cawing prayers. And he was thinking, too, of that word
cascanueces
and how time had eroded some of the terror and horror from it as though nothing very much could ever frighten him any more. What was done was done. Janos was dead and there was no bringing him back or going before a magistrate and saying, “Could she have killed him with a casca-something-or-other, sir?”

He said, finally, “They gave him a real toff’s funeral, they did. Put him in a rosewood box with solid silver handles. The Marquesa herself was there.”

Toby said, “That was nice. The little man would have liked that. What’s become of his dogs?”

“They’re there,” answered Mr. Albert. “I’m looking after them. We got quite a little zoo—quite a nice one.”

“But you’ll be going back with the circus,” Toby said.

Mr. Albert did not reply.

Joe Peabody came around the corner, beaming as usual. So far no hitches had developed and it looked as though they might get off on schedule on the morrow. The plan was to travel northwards to Santander exactly as the circus had come, retracing its route but without giving performances, of course.

Toby shouted, “Hey, Mr. Peabody! Here’s your man. Here’s Mr. Albert.”

Peabody came over and shook Mr. Albert by the hand. “Pleased to meet you,” he said. “Toby here tells me if it hadn’t been for you and this rich woman who’s a friend of yours—we’d have had a lot of dead animals. I guess we owe you something.”

Mr. Albert looked at Peabody doubtfully. “No, you don’t,” he said. “Only Mr. Marvel owes me my money. He said I was to be on half pay till he came back.”

Toby said, “He isn’t coming back. He’s sold out to Mr. Peabody here. He’s bought himself a bloody bowling alley somewhere.”

“By Jiminy,” said Peabody, “that reminds me. Sam Marvel sent along your wages. I clean forgot about it in the excitement.” He turned to Toby. “Yours, too. Now you can’t say that Sam Marvel ain’t honest.”

Toby laughed and said, “Groom’s wages!”

Mr. Albert looked apologetic. “I give out six quid of my own money—it was all I had—when they was starving. That is until the Marquesa—”

An expression that was almost mischievous crossed Peabody’s face and he said, in a half whisper, “He sent along Fred Deeter’s wages too,” and he placed a bony finger to the side of his long nose. The two men stared at him. “I’ll split it between you two. You’ve got it coming to you. That there Deeter is a crook, and what’s more, I’m taking his living wagon too. He stole my Liberty horses, didn’t he? If I ever meet him, I’ll have it out of his hide. I wouldn’t have minded if he’d sent the money back to you like he said he would, but he ain’t honest and that’s a fact. You come over to Sam Marvel’s—I mean, to my wagon later and I’ll pay you off.”

Toby turned to Rose and grinned. “Well, that’s one break I hadn’t expected. We got a stake.” Again she blinked at him and the expression about her mouth was puzzled and uncertain.

Peabody said to the old man, “Mr. Albert—I hear that’s what you’re called, ain’t it, and by God, that’s what you’ll be called on my lot—you’ve got a job with me as long as you like. They say you can make them lions and tigers sit up just like little kittycats. That’s the kind of beast man I’m after. Whatever Sam Marvel paid you, I’ll give you ten bob more.”

Mr. Albert looked as pleased as a child. It was the first time in his whole life that anybody had ever put a value upon his services or raised his salary. He looked from Rose to Toby to make sure they had heard, and smiled winningly. “You heard that?” he said. “Ain’t that nice of Mr. Peabody?” And he looked to the new owner. “Only I’m sorry, Mr. Peabody, I can’t take it. I can’t come.”

“Well, bless my soul,” said Peabody, “why not?”

Mr. Albert shuffled his feet and looked a little foolish. “Well, you see—the lady—the Marquesa—I gave a kind of a promise.”

Peabody said, “Why? The animals are going, ain’t they? She won’t have to send any more food, will she? You told her the animals were going, didn’t you? That makes you quits, don’t it?”

“No,” said Mr. Albert softly, “I’m afraid it don’t.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I promised, you see. She said until she released me. Well, she ain’t released me.”

Toby suddenly cried, “Don’t be a mug, Mr. Albert! Who’s to stop you? You’re English, ain’t you? They’re leaving tomorrow. Nobody can keep you from going. She can send for the jeep.”

Mr. Albert looked hard at Toby, and now his expression was no longer foolish. “Are you going back?” he asked.

“No,” Toby said shortly.

The merest wisp of a smile played about the corners of Mr. Albert’s moustache. “Well,” was all he said, but his washed-out eyes were alive and confidential, and his manner of speaking the single word linked him and Toby into an immediate brotherhood.

And Toby felt the thrill of a new kind of communication with men. No one had told Mr. Albert of the impossibility of his returning to the family with Rose and his decision not to do so. Yet simply from a statement that they were staying together the old man had known or guessed all the rest, and was merely reminding Toby that he was now admitted to that circle of adults who acknowledged their responsibilities and paid their debts of honour.

Peabody looked bewildered. “What,” he said to Toby, “you too?”

“That’s right,” Toby said, and then closed his mouth so that no more words could issue therefrom.

It was a blow to Peabody that Toby was not to ride in the family act, but on the other hand if he did, they would be snapped up by any of the bigger circuses and he had the Walters family and their name at bargain rates. “Well,” he said, “come over to the wagon and I’ll settle up.”

Later, Rose and Toby saw Mr. Albert off on the road to the Finca Pozoblanco. Rose kissed a cheek of the old man and he kissed hers and wiped a tear from his eye, and then shook Toby’s hand, and everything he had meant to say about good luck and good wishes went out of his mind and all he could think of was to stammer, “She’s a good girl, Toby.”

And Toby replied straightforwardly, “Yes, she’s a good girl.” And then he added, “Maybe we’ll all meet up again some time.”

“I don’t know,” Mr. Albert said, blinking over his glasses, and climbed back into the jeep. And then repeated, “I don’t know. But perhaps you’ll send me a postcard some time telling me how you are and things are going.”

He waved his hand and drove away, and they watched him until the back of the vehicle was wholly obscured by the cloud of dust it whirled along behind it.

They were alone then on the road, and Rose turned to Toby putting a hand on his arm. “Toby, aren’t you going back?”

“No.”

“Toby, you ought to go back to your family. Your father asked you to, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you got to go. It’s your life, Toby. You’ve got to go back to them. You’re different from me—all of you.”

Toby said, “They wouldn’t have you. They’d kill you with meanness. They’d suck all the blood out of you, all the good of you, until you’d be yellow and dry. They’d worry the heart and bones from out of inside you and then you’d die.”

“I wouldn’t ever want to make you take me, Toby. I’d go away. I’d be all right. You belong with them.”

He was thinking and figuring as though he had not heard her. He said, “We’ve got half Deeter’s pay. That’ll keep us a while. We can get married in Madrid. We’ll go to the consul.”

She protested no more. He had made his decision. He was in command, but it was no longer the ruthless and arbitrary kind with which he had first taken her, for the way he was looking at her now was compassionate as well as possessive.

He said, “After that maybe it’s going to be rough, Rose. Finding a job won’t be easy, but I can look after horses and I can train ’em. We’ll do the best we can and manage somehow. There mightn’t be so much to eat at first, and maybe not even any kind of home or a proper place to sleep.”

Rose added, “We can sleep at the railway station.”

“Is that what you used to do?”

“Yes, or in the bus station as though I was waiting for a bus. And sometimes in the summer in a park or on the beach.”

In his mind’s eye Toby saw Rose sitting up in a bus terminal on a bench packed between people so that she would not fall over when she went to sleep, or lying curled up, a solitary figure, on the sand of some beach sheltered by the shadows of the promenade.

“I oughtn’t to do that to you, Rose,” Toby said. “You’ve had enough of that. Not if I loved you like I do.”

“I wouldn’t care,” Rose said. And then, looking up into his face, repeated with a fierce and breathless intensity, “I wouldn’t care.”

“Okay, then,” Toby said, put his arm around her shoulder and they went back to the encampment.

The next morning many of the townspeople of Zalano, including even the
alcalde
and Dr. Perrera, came out to the tober, for word had spread that the remnants of the circus which had been in their midst so long were about to depart. Toby and Rose stood by and watched, and in love though he was and his decision made, the boy could not prevent a sinking in his heart, a nostalgia, and all the doubts and uncertainty of the future arising to affect him.

For the little circus had been restored and rejuvenated, and those who had come over from England, the performers as well as those in Peabody’s employ, had worked with paint and brush as well as wrench and block-and-tackle. The caravans, living wagons, and cages of the animals glittered once more in colours of red and gold. On the side of the lead lorry the name of Sam Marvel’s Marvel Circus had been painted out and Peabody’s Marvel Circus Combined substituted in bolder and larger letters.

Old owner Peabody had the true showman’s feeling for the dramatic. Once they were out of town, the elephant and the horses would have to be sent on ahead and the faster lorries lay by for a later start so they would not catch up with the slow-moving animals too soon, but the departure was to be in the shape of a parade through town so that pictures could be taken and eventually the story of the circus that nearly starved to death in Zalano would reach the outer world.

Under the careful, organizing eye of Joe Cotter, they assembled on the tober, the elephant in the lead, then the horses with Harry and Jacko astride the two Arabs. The big lorries containing the horse tent and all that was left of properties and equipment came next drawing the menagerie cages open to public view, and finally the gaily repainted caravans.

There had been a moment of uneasiness with Judy. The big, grey beast had been nervous and unwilling. Her little eyes were anxious and she searched with her trunk until she picked up the scent of Toby. She trumpeted shrilly for him to come to her, and leaving Rose for a moment he went forward, took her lead rope and put it in the hands of the elephant man Peabody had brought with him. He said, “Good Judy. Good girl. Go, girl.”

She looked bewildered for a moment.

The elephant man, an old, experienced hand reached up and patted her cheek and urged, “Come on, Judy. You and me are going to get along fine.” She explored him with her trunk for a moment, decided she liked him, and became docile.

Toby returned to Rose who took his hand and said, “You loved her, didn’t you?”

Toby replied, “Yes. But it don’t matter.” And then added. “She’ll never get over it, hating women. I told Peabody.”

Harry Walters looked down from the back of one of the Arabs. It was Sally, Toby’s favourite. Jacko was on the other leading the rosin-backs. Harry’s mouth was unpleasant and contemptuous. “You don’t want to change your mind, do you?” he asked.

Toby said, “No.”

Inaudibly, Rose spoke his name, “Oh, Toby,” and clung to his hand, for all along she had been afraid that he might still go at the last minute.

Walters touched the side of his horse and rode it into the line of the parade.

Jacko had to have the last word. “We’ll make out.”

“Okay, make out!” said Toby.

From somewhere along the line came the thrilling trill of the ringmaster’s whistle, the latter-day pipes of Pan, introduction to fun, joy, and excitement that set every heart, young and old, a-beating, and it was followed by a burst and blare of the circus entrance march. The panatrope had been activated from the generator wagon.

The elephant man astride Judy’s head tapped her gently with his stick; she recognised that he knew his business, raised one forefoot, put it down, and they were off, as a great cheer went up from the Spaniards. Hats and handkerchiefs were waved and once more the gallant music of the circus parade was heard in Zalano as the glittering wagons passed by to the grinding of their engines in a low gear, the barks and whines and roars of the animals, the shouts of children, and the applause of the spectators.