Nights at the Circus (12 page)

‘“But my madcap mother, egged on by the squire’s son, who was a rogue, and bet her a silver sixpence she would not dare, once spent the whole of one midsummer’s night inside this earthen castle. She took with her a snack of bread and honey and a farthing dip and penetrated to the chamber at its heart, where there was a long stone, much like an altar, but more likely, in all probability, to have been the coffin of some long dead King of Wessex.

‘“On this tomb she sat to eat her supper and by and by the light went out, so she was in the dark. Just as she began to regret her foolhardiness, she heard the softest footfall. ‘Who’s there?’ ‘Why, Meg – who but the King of the Fairies?’ And this invisible stranger forthwith laid her down on the stone slab and pleasured her, or so she said, as mightily as any man before or since. ‘Indeed, I went to fairyland that night!’ she said: and the proof of it was, nine months later, I made my infinitesimal appearance in the world. She cradled me in half a walnut shell, covered me with a rose petal, packed my layette in a hazel nut and carried me off to London town where she exhibited herself for a shilling a time as ‘The Fairy’s Nursemaid’, while I clung to her bosom like a burr.

‘“But all she got she spent on drink and men because she was a flighty piece. When I got too big to be passed off as a suckling, I said: ‘Mother, this won’t do! We must think of our security and our old age!’ She laughed a good deal when she heard her daughter pipe up in that style for I was only seven years old and she herself not five-and-twenty and it was a black day for me when I took it into my head to turn that giddy creature’s mind to the future because, at that, she sold me.

‘“For fifty golden guineas cash in hand my own mother sold me to a French pastrycook with corkscrew moustaches, who served me for a couple of seasons in a cake. Chef’s hat perched on his head at a rakish angle, he’d bear the silver salver out of the kitchen and set it down in front of the birthday boy, for the
patisseur
had this much sensibility, I was a treat for children only. The birthday child would blow out the candles and lift up the knife to cut its cake, but the pastrycook kept his own hand on the handle, to guide the blade in case it cut me by accident and blemished his property. Then up I’d pop through the hole, wearing a spangled dress, and dance round the table, distributing streamers, favours and bonbons.

‘“But sometimes the greediest ones burst into tears and said it was a mean trick, and cake was what they wanted, not a visit from the fairies.

‘“Possibly due to the circumstances of my conception, I had always suffered from claustrophobia. I found I could scarcely bear the close confinement of those hollowed cakes. I grew to dread the moment of my incarceration under the icing and I would beg and plead with my master to let me free but he would threaten me with the oven and say, if I did not do as he bid me, then, next time, he would not serve me in a cake but bake me in a
vol-au-vent.

‘“Came the day at last my phobia got the better of me. I clambered in my coffin, suffered the lid to close on me, endured the jolting cab-ride to the customer’s address, was cursorily unloaded on to the salver in the kitchen and then came the trip to the table. Half-fainting, sweating, choking for lack of air in that round space no bigger than a hatbox, sickened by the stench of baked eggs and butter, sticky with sugar and raisins, I could tolerate no more. With the strength of the possessed, I thrust my bare shoulders up through the crust and so emerged before my time, crusted with frosting, blinking crumbs from my eyes. My eruption scattered candles and crystallised violets everywhere.

‘“The tablecloth caught fire and all the little dears screamed blue murder as I ran down the length of the table with my hair and tulle skirt all in flames, pursued by the furious pastrycook wielding his cake knife and vowing he’d make a
bonne bouche
of me.

‘“But one child kept her wits about her in this mêlée, sat gravely at the bottom of the table until I reached her plate, when she dropped her napkin over me and put out the flames. Then she picked me up and stowed me away in her pocket and said to the pastrycook: ‘Go away, you horrid man! How dare you torture a human creature so!’

“‘As it turned out, this little girl was the eldest daughter of the house. She carried me off to the nursery and her nanny put soothing ointment on my burns and dressed me up in a silk frock that the young lady’s own doll sacrificed for me, although I was perfectly able to dress myself. But I was to find that rich women as well as dolls cannot put on their own clothes unaided. Later that night, when dinner was over, I was introduced to Mama and Papa, as they sat over their coffee, of which they gave me some, since it was served in cups of a size that just suited me. Papa seemed to me a mountain whose summit was concealed by the smoke from his cigar; but what a good, kind mountain it was! And after I had told my story as best I could, the mountain puffed a purple cloud, smiled at Mama, and spoke. ‘Well, my little woman, it seems we have no course but to
adopt
you.’ And Mama said, ‘I am ashamed. I never thought that horrid trick with the cake might cause suffering to a living creature.’

‘“They did not treat me like a pet or a toy, either, but as truly one of their own. I soon formed a profound attachment to the girl who’d been my saviour, and she for me, so that we became inseparable and, when my legs could not keep up with hers, she would carry me in the crook of her arm. We called each other ‘sister’. She was just eight years old to my nine. My ship had come to rest in a happy harbour!

‘“Time passed. We girls began to dream of putting up our hair and letting down our skirts and all the delicious mysteries of
growing up
that lay ahead . . . although, as for me, I knew I’d never
grow up
in any worldly sense, which made me, sometimes, sad. One Christmas, came the question of the pantomime. Some sixth sense, perhaps, forewarned me that danger lay ahead. I told Mama that I’d put childish things away and preferred to stay at home that night, and read my book. But my sister was lagging a little behind me in the business of maturing, longed to see the bright lights and pretty tinsel and told me that if I was not one of the family party, then the treat would all be spoiled. I submitted to her tender bullying. As it turned out, the pantomime was
Snow White.

‘“I turned, first fire, then ice, in our box as the scenes unfolded before me, for, dearly as I loved my family, there was always that unalterable difference between us. Not so much the clumsiness of their limbs, their lumpish movements, oppressed me; nor even the thunder of their voices, as never in all my life had I gone to bed without a headache. No. I had known all these things from birth and grown accustomed to the monstrous ugliness of mankind. Indeed, my life in that kind house could almost have made me forgive some, at least, of the beasts for their beastliness. But, when I watched my natural kin on that stage, even as they frisked and capered and put on the show of comic dwarves, I had a kind of vision of a world in miniature, a small, perfect, heavenly place such as you might see reflected in the eye of a wise bird. And it seemed to me that place was my home and these little men were its inhabitants, who would love me, not as a ‘little woman’ but as – a woman.

‘“And then, perhaps it was . . . perhaps the blood of my mother
did
flow in these scaled-down veins! Perhaps . . . I could not be content with mere contentment! Perhaps I always was a wicked girl and now my wickedness at last manifested itself in action.

‘“It was easy for me to give my family the slip in the crush at the end of the show; easy to find the stage door and trot past its guardian as he took in a bouquet for Snow White. I soon found the door on which some cruel-comic hand had pasted seven tiny stars. I knocked. Inside, there sat the handsomest young man, on a safe just the right size for both of us, and he was busy mending a tiny pair of trousers with what, to your eyes, Fevvers, would have seemed an invisible needle and a length of invisible thread.

‘“‘What pint-sized planet did
you
spring from?’ he cried out when he saw me.

‘Then the Wonder covered her face with her hands and wept bitterly.

‘“I shall spare you the sorry details of my fall, Fevvers,” she said when she recovered herself. “Suffice to say I travelled with them seven long months, passed from one to another, for they were brothers and believed in share and share alike. I fear they did not treat me kindly, for, although they were little, they were men. How they abandoned me, penniless, in Berlin and how I came under the terrible protection of Madame Schreck are circumstances I relate to myself each night when I close my eyes. Over and over, I rehearse an eternity of fearful memories until the time comes to get up again and see for myself how those who come to slake their fantastic lust upon my small person are more degraded yet than I could ever be.”’

Fevvers sighed.

‘So you see how this lovely creature truly believed herself to have tumbled so far from grace that she could never climb out of the Abyss, and she regarded her pretty, spotless self with the utmost detestation. Nothing I could say would make her feel she was worth more than a farthing in the world’s exchange. She would say: “How I envy that poor being – ” pointing to the Sleeping Beauty “ – except for one thing: she dreams.”

‘But Fanny was another kettle of fish, a big, raw-boned, plain-spoken hearty lass from Yorkshire whom you would have passed in the street without a second look but for the good cheer of roses in her cheeks and the spring of health in her step. When Madame Schreck pulled back the curtain on Fanny, there she’d stand, a bonny lump of a girl with nowt on but a shift, and a blindfold.

‘And Schreck would say: “Look at him, Fanny.” So Fanny would take off her blindfold and give him a beaming smile.

‘Then Madame Schreck would say: “I said,
look
at him, Fanny.” At which she’d pull up her shift.

‘For, where she should have had nipples, she had eyes.

‘Then Madame Schreck would say: “Look at him properly, Fanny.” Then those two other eyes of hers would open.

‘They were a shepherd’s blue, same as the eyes in her head; not big, but very bright.

‘I asked her once, what did she see with those mamillary eyes, and she says: “Why, same as with the top ones but lower down.” Yet I do think, for all her free, open disposition, she saw too much of the world altogether and that is why she’d come to rest with all us other dispossessed creatures, for whom there was no earthly use, in this lumber room of femininity, this rag-and-bone shop of the heart.

‘Seeing Fanny holding the Sleeping Beauty’s head against her bosom to spoon coddled egg between those helpless lips, I said: “Why don’t you marry, Fanny. For any man would be glad to have you, once he’d got over the shock. And bring into the world those children of your own you long for and deserve?” Placid as you please, she says: “How can you nourish a babby on salt tears?” Yet she was always cheerful, always a smile and a joke, but, as for Cobwebs, she never said much, she was a melancholy creature and sat by herself a good deal, playing patience. That was her life, she said. Patience.’

‘Why did you call her Cobwebs?’ asked Walser, out of his revulsion, out of his enchantment.

‘Her face was covered with them, sir, from the eyebrows to the cheekbones. The things that Albert/Albertina would do to get to make her laugh! S/he was a droll one and always full of fun. But, no; Cobwebs would never so much as smile.

‘These were the girls behind the curtains, sir, the denizens of “Down Below”, all with hearts that beat, like yours, and souls that suffer, sir.’

‘And what did
you
do?’ asked Walser, chewing his pencil.

‘Myself? The part I played in Madame Schreck’s chamber of imaginary horrors? The Sleeping Beauty lay stark naked on a marble slab and I stood at her head, full spread. I am the tombstone angel, I am the Angel of Death.

‘Now, if you wanted to sleep with the Sleeping Beauty, sleep in the passive and not the active sense it was, she being in such precarious health and Madame Schreck loth to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs. If you wished to lie down beside the living corpse and hold in your trembling arms the entire mystery of consciousness, that is and is not at the same time, why, that was available, cash down. Toussaint would put a bag over your head and lead you out of the Abyss upstairs to the Theatre and there you’d wait, hear nothing, see nothing . . . absolute darkness, absolute silence and you alone with your thoughts and those phantoms your imagination had distilled from the sight of the girls below. Then Toussaint would spirit the hood off you and there we’d be; he’d hauled us up from below on a well-oiled dumb waiter in the wall in the interim.

‘Only a branched candlestick cast sombre light and shadow over Beauty sleeping on her bier and I stooping over, with my bent wings and my sword, Death the Protectress, you see. So if any of ’em does try to get up to anything not on the tariff, I can rap ’em over the knuckles there and then. As for Beauty, she sighed and murmured and all the time knew nothing, but I would watch the shivering wretch who had hired the use of the idea of us approach her as if she were the execution block and, like Hamlet, I would think: “What a wonderful piece of work is man!”

‘By and by, there was a gent started to come marvellous regular, once a week, on Sundays. He always donned the most peculiar costume to venture Down Below, a sort of velvet frock that came down to his knees, plum-coloured and trimmed with grey fur and, on his feet, shiny red leather boots with little bells at the ankles that rang out very sweetly as he walked along. Round his neck, on a gold chain, hung a big medallion of solid gold most curiously figured that I often saw Madame Schreck cast her eye on enviously.

‘The figure engraved on this medallion was that of a pardon my French
member
, sir, of the male variety; that is, a phallus, in the condition known in heraldry as
rampant
, and there were little wings attached to the ballocks thereof, which caught my eye immediately. Around the shaft of this virile member twined the stem of a rose whose bloom nestled somewhat coyly at the place where the foreskin folded back. Whether the thing was ancient or modern I could not tell, but it represented a heavy investment.