Love, Let Me Not Hunger (40 page)

As they passed Toby and Rose, Peabody leaned from the driver’s window of Marvel’s wagon calling, “Goodbye! Goodbye! And thanks again!”

At his shoulder Ma Peabody cried, “You’re sure you two wouldn’t want to come along with us part of the way? We could drop you off in Madrid maybe.”

“Thanks, no,” Toby said. “We’re going on the bus.” If only they would go! He wanted this to end, to be finished with them all, to have them out of sight so that he might begin his life with Rose.

“Good luck to you two, then,” Peabody shouted.

The converted van of Jackdaw Williams drove by, the clown at the wheel, his bird perched as always on his shoulder. As they passed Rose and Toby, the bird caught sight of the girl and, rearing up, flapped its wings, screamed, and scolded. Williams began to shake with silent laughter. He took a hand off the wheel, waved it at the pair, and drove on.

The last of the wagons, squeaking and rattling, rumbled up the road and vanished, drawing the onlookers after them until at last the tober was wholly deserted except for the figures of the boy and the girl with their suitcases at their side, and for a moment they lingered.

It was empty now but for the charred ring which marked the ruins of the tent and which no doubt no one would ever clear; the bits of steel and iron would be remaining there until kingdom come, or they rusted away to dust and mingled with the wind.

On the ground the “U” where the encampment had been was still to be seen, indicated by the different colour of the dirt which had been beneath the wagons and the cages. Rose and Toby stood contemplating the marks, each with his and her own thoughts of all that had happened to them since first they had pitched there. Each for a moment was swept by waves of nostalgia for their friends, two- and four-footed, who had left them: all of their own kind had gone away. They turned instinctively towards one another and intertwined their fingers.

“Okay,” Toby said, “let’s go.” And they, too, walked up the rutted road towards the town.

C H A P T E R
2 8

C
hristmas Day at the Finca Pozoblanco would ordinarily have been a time of fiesta after the morning Mass where every man, woman and child crowded into the little chapel. Then there would have been a great feast of joy and distribution of presents by the Marquesa herself, and after that music, singing and dancing, for there are no gayer and happier people than Spaniards on holiday.

But this Christmas, following upon the departure of the circus from Zalano, there was no celebration or merriment, and at the Mass that morning the church was filled with the sobs of the women of the
finca
and the sound of prayers said for the dying, for it was told that the Marquesa was on her death-bed.

In October, she had been taken ill with a pain in her side, and had become increasingly irritable and demanding. Her morning levees were suspended and she was seen less and less. The local physician, Dr. Calderon visited often and brought with him colleagues and consultants. An appendicitis had first been feared, but when this had not developed the doctors had advised a trip to Madrid to consult specialists.

She had been away the whole month of November, but returned early in December and took to her bed. From then on she was seen only by her day and night nurses, Don Francisco and her chaplain, Father Belmondo, with Juan the acolyte who said Mass at a tiny makeshift altar set up before the shrine of the Virgin Mary at the far end of the room.

The rumour that persisted throughout the
finca
was that she was suffering from cancer of the liver, that the specialists in Madrid and two others who had been flown from London and New York had been able to do nothing for her except to confirm that she would not be able to survive an operation, and that she had been sent home to die.

Yet the Christmas gifts had not been neglected. There were sweets and toys for the children, lengths of material for the women, wine and cigars for the men, or other gifts of more value, depending upon their importance and position in the hierarchy of the estate. Only this time they were distributed by the major-domo and received with sighs and tears, protestations, and questions as to how the Marquesa was faring.

To these queries, Don Francisco would reply invariably: “She is the same. See, Jaime (or Pedro or Manuel or Maria or Conchita) she has not forgotten you. She wishes you happiness this Christmas. Pray for her.”

Winter on La Mancho was as cold as summer was hot. There was no break to halt the winds that blew down from the
Guadarramas.
Sometimes snow fell, but mostly it was wind and rain that lashed the
campo
at that time of year. There had been a high haze in the morning and fitful winter sunshine as the yellow ball of the sun, hanging low in the sky, pierced it momentarily; but in the afternoon it had clouded over, and by nightfall the cold wind brought half rain, half sleet.

The evening meal had been a gloomy one. The weather had clamped down upon all of them, and besides there was the sick mistress in the villa, from which lights of burning candles showed from upper-storey windows.

Mr. Albert was anxious to get to his room and turn on his radio to drive away the Christmas megrims. It had been a solace and a companion to him, this little box, ever since he had bought it with his own money from the sum he had received as his share of the split of Deeter’s pay. It was a treasure, and Mr. Albert, who had once worked in a radio shop, had been able to coax the most out of it. He knew that Continental reception in the daylight hours was not good, but that after nightfall the wave lengths would be packed, and if he were lucky—very lucky—he might pick up a faint whisper from faraway England, some British voice, some well-remembered bit of programme theme music if the atmospherics happened to be right. The set was not strong enough to pull in the BBC except under extraordinary conditions, but he could pick up American broadcasts in English from the big U.S. military base outside Madrid and hear at least his own language.

This particular evening, he hoped to get something that would help him to forget. Not that Christmas had meant very much to him or that he had ever had a home in which to celebrate it or many friends to whom to give presents. But at least had he been in England he would have had a drink of whisky on Christmas Day and a bit of turkey, even if it was a tough old bird slung at him in a cafeteria. There would be decorations everywhere, carols would be issuing from all the radios, and before the day was done somebody was sure to say to him, “Merry Christmas, Bert.”

It was nine o’clock when Mr. Albert hurried from the mess hall through the stinging rain to the garage, mounted to his room, and switched on his wireless—eight o’clock in England.

Immediately the weather invaded the set and filled it with buzzing, crackling, and clicks. As he had expected, the air waves were jammed with a hundred stations, each abutting on the other, heard through the violent crashing of the static.

Then suddenly and unexpectedly a tempest swept a most heartbreaking Christmas gift for the old man into the tiny, white-washed room in the centre of the Spanish plateau a million miles from nowhere. As he turned the dials, discouraged by the reception and of half a mind to give up, an English voice boomed into the room and then was gone. He pounced upon the set for he had tuned too far and passed it. With one hand he clutched the little case to steady it and with the other delicately turned backwards. Loud and clear, as though he had been sitting in a pub in Battersea, he heard: “. . . Light Programme. We go over now to a special Christmas night performance of Peabody’s Marvel Circus Combined for the crippled children of Sheffield, and here is Peter Lewis . . .”

He had locked on to the station, for it was one of those freaks of atmospherics in which a northerly gale sweeping southwards seemed to help radio signals fly to portions of the earth far beyond their strength.

A burst of circus music issued from the speaker—it was the perennial, time-honoured circus entrance march—and then the voice of the announcer, “. . . This is Peter Lewis speaking from the arena in Sheffield, a very special occasion, where we are attending the Christmas night performance for the Greater Sheffield Orphanages of Peabody’s Marvel Circus Combined . . .”

There was a new sound, shrill and high-pitched, which at first Mr. Albert took to be another kind of electrical interference, but a moment later recognised as something he knew and had heard himself whenever they played to audiences of children—their cheering.

“. . . Listen to them!” the announcer was saying. “Three thousand youngsters shouting their heads off! The parade is starting! Here they come—the acrobats, the horses and the clowns.” His voice dropped a pitch lower. “I’ll tell you about them as they pass by my broadcasting booth . . .”

Mr. Albert thought he would die at first from the pain that went through his heart, and he pressed his ear to the metal mesh of the speaker as if he were trying to get inside the instrument there to find himself, Albert Griggs, in the sawdust of the ring in Sheffield, rushing about testing ropes and wires, setting out props as of old, breathing in the sharp, pungent, circus smell compounded of animals, people, popcorn, and sticky sweets.

The voice of the announcer filled the room. “. . . Here they are now, the clowns, Gogo and Panache and Jackdaw Williams with his famous jackdaw, Raffles, on his shoulder—I say, they are funny fellows! Gogo has just fallen head over heels. And here come the elephants, led by the famous Judy, and riding her in Indian costume Ted Walters of the marvellous Walters family . . .”

“Judy!” Mr. Albert whispered. “Judy!” And did not realise he had spoken aloud. And as the voice momentarily faded and crashings and cracklings filled the box, he thought of Toby and Rose and of the card he had had from them a few days before Christmas and which he could see inserted into the mirror over his chest of drawers. It had on its reverse side a picture of Lake Zurich and had come from a place in Switzerland called Rapperswil, and the message space was filled with Toby’s unformed handwriting:

“Dear Mr. Albert:

Merry Christmas. Hope you are all right. We are O.K. It was rough all right, but we are all right now, at least for a while. I am in Circus Knie winter quarters here working in the stables. They are O.K. and say maybe I can ride next year only it’s tough for a single. They got some fine animals here. Rose is all right. She sends her love.

Cheerio,
Toby”

And then in the tiny space left at the bottom in a still more childish hand: “Love Rose” with a series of crosses and noughts.

The voice of the announcer boomed in again, rising in pitch and excitement as he described the passing of each of the colourful troupes and the animals in their cages. Mr. Albert began to cry.

And now the circus proper started and Mr. Albert sat before his set, weeping, for every well-remembered music cue set his muscles to twitching in anticipation of what he knew he should be doing. He felt that he could bear no more. He must return. Surely the Marquesa would let him go now? He would ask Don Francisco for permission to see her, to beg her to release him, to go home, home from where those sounds were issuing that were tearing at his heart.

There came a pounding upon his door, so loud and insistent as momentarily to drown out the voice linking him with Sheffield. Mr. Albert withdrew his ear, dabbed hastily at his eyes with his pocket rag and cried, “Come in!”

Don Francisco stood in the doorway, bare headed, muffled in a huge sheepskin-lined coat. His hair and cheeks were wet.

“Come,” was all he said.

Mr. Albert flustered, asked, “What is it? What’s happened?—I was listening—” He glanced over towards the radio which had resumed its raucous static.

Don Francisco said, “The Marquesa—she wants you.”

Now Mr. Albert felt himself once more in the grip of fear. He said, “My God—the Marquesa—is she—?”

Don Francisco did not reply. Instead he opened the front of his coat inside of which he was carrying something to keep it dry. It was Mr. Albert’s costume—the trousers, the long-tailed coat, the string tie, the shirt, and the bowler hat. There was also a poncho. “Hurry,” he said, and waited while Mr. Albert changed.

Almost as though in mockery, the British voice from the loudspeaker boomed loud and clear without a single scratch of interference: “. . . Here they are, the Birdsalo Trio and their trampoline. Oh I say, look at him bounce! I’ll bet everyone of these kids here would like to be doing that! . . .”

“Hurry!” said Don Francisco.

“I am hurrying,” said Mr. Albert, and only wished he need not go.

He finished dressing and the major-domo threw the poncho over his head and half dragged him through the door. Mr. Albert did not have time to turn off the set and left with the music of the Birdsalos clinging to his eardrums.

Outside, as though to preview what was to come to him, the gale dashed buckets of water into his face as they hurried across the courtyard and into the villa, and once again as they crossed the patio. Then they were rushing up the stairs, the major-domo almost stumbling in his haste, and entered the bedroom of the Marquesa.

The room was illuminated only by candles, dozens of them, burning in sconces on the walls, by the bedside, and on the makeshift altar and shrine at the far side of the room. Dr. Calderon, Father Belmondo, and the acolyte, Juan, were there but not the nurses. In the candlelight the eyes of the acolyte were glittering strangely, and the Marquesa, half propped up in the great carved and curtained four-poster bed, looked her most terrifying.

Mr. Albert noted that oddly she was wearing the tiered red wig in which he had first seen her at that final and fatal matinée performance in Zalano. Her eyelids and her fingernails reflected the yellow of the candles from their metallic silver surface, but the flickering of the flames, moved by a draft through the open door, made the two rouge spots painted on her cheeks appear to quiver and dance.

Most awful of all was that she had shrunk, as though death had chosen to melt away her fat before claiming her. The skin of her arms hung in folds, as did her sunken, flabby cheeks and sagging chin. Only the green eyes showed that she was alive.