The Palace of Laughter (8 page)

They carried on eating with no less gusto, but it seemed that Mrs. Farmer's cheeks were growing redder by the moment. She glanced in Miles's direction again, and stopped in mid-chew, a ribbon of cabbage hanging from the corner of her mouth. She nudged her husband sharply in the ribs. He had just put his tumbler to his lips, and took more wine up his nose than into his mouth. While he coughed and spluttered into a grubby handkerchief, Mrs. Farmer beckoned to Miles. “Come here, come here,” she called, a smile breaking out on her plump face. “Don't be shy, lad.”

The farmer glared at Miles as he shoved his
handkerchief back up his sleeve. “No beggin' allowed here,” he grunted, tearing off a chunk of bread and wedging it into his cheek to allow other food free passage through his mouth.

“Oh put a sock in it, George,” said Mrs. Farmer, whose mood seemed to be brightening by the second. “Can't you see the boy's 'ungry? Looks like he's never had a proper feed in his life. Where'd you come from, lad? Call your little sister over—there's plenty 'ere for both of you.”

Mr. Farmer stared over Miles's shoulder in puzzlement. “What little sister, woman? There's only another young lad there.”

“Don't be daft, George! Them's just boy's clothes. Anyone can see it's a little girl what's wearing 'em, ain't that right, lad?” Miles nodded. “She's shy,” he said.

“Bless 'er,” said the plump woman, chuckling, it seemed, at nothing in particular. She emptied some of the bread basket into her pie dish, filling the empty space with the remaining slices of sausage and a lump of rank cheese.

Mr. Farmer grunted, but the miserable expression seemed to be melting from his face too, like winter snow. “I don't spend the day breakin' my back to feed every 'ungry urchin that 'appens by,” he
muttered, though none too loudly.

“You don't spend the day breaking yer back at all, you lazy old coot, unless it's liftin' a beer tankard you're talking about.” She handed the bread basket to Miles, throwing in the last few olives for good measure. “'Ere, lad, this'll stop your ribs knockin' together. Take it over to your sister and mind you share it, eh?”

“Thank you,” said Miles. He hesitated by the table.

“Well?” said Mr. Farmer. “What is it, sonny? Want me socks and britches as well?” He laughed loudly at his own wit.

“I was just wondering if you knew where I could find a place called the Palace of Laughter.”

The reaction to Miles's question was not what he had expected. Mrs. Farmer's face went strangely blank, yet at the same time her mouth stretched in a sort of strained grin that was quite unlike the sunny smile she had worn a moment before. A strangled whinny came from the back of her throat. Mr. Farmer stared fixedly at Miles, as though he were trying to remember where he had seen him before. “Never 'eard of it,” he said eventually. He picked up the wine jug and emptied it down his throat, then he and his wife got up from their
bench without another glance at Miles, for all the world as though he had become invisible. They walked a slightly meandering path to their battered old car, giggling like a couple of schoolchildren, and drove away in a cloud of dust.

Miles stood for a moment staring after them. He noticed that some of the people at the nearest tables were looking at him with suspicion, so he took the basket of leftovers and hurried over to where Little was waiting for him. She sat on the rim of a stone fountain that stood in the center of the small square, dangling her fingers in the cool water. “Why did those people leave so suddenly?” she asked.

“I don't know. I asked them if they knew the way to the Palace of Laughter, and they reacted very strangely. They said they'd never heard of it, but I don't think they were telling the truth. I suppose I could ask someone else.”

Little put a piece of cheese in her mouth. She pulled a face and bit off a chunk of bread to dilute the sour taste, and shook her head. “I don't think anyone here is going to tell us. As long as we can still see the train tracks we must be going in the right direction.”

They ate in silence for a while. The midday sun
was hot for October, and after they had quenched the thirst of their long walk with handfuls of clear water, they sat down on the warm paving stones, leaning against the fountain's smooth rim. With his belly full and the sun on his face, Miles felt sleepy. He looked around him for a moment, half expecting to see the strange figure the circus had left in its wake, but there was no one to be seen but the chuckling landlady, her melancholy customers and the two small girls, who had been joined by a blond boy and were squatting in the dust making patterns with pebbles. “We'll rest here for a few minutes before we go on,” said Miles, but Little was already asleep.

Miles felt in his pocket for Tangerine, who gave his fingers a squeeze. He seemed tired too, although he had done none of the walking. A fly buzzed somewhere above their heads, and wood pigeons hooted softly in the trees beside the inn. Squinting through his eyelashes, Miles noticed a circus poster tacked to a pole across the square. Beneath the words “CIRCUS OSCURO,” the tiger, magnificent and fierce, reared in the center of a flaming hoop, while a fearless boy in a red suit with gold epaulets brandished a whip in the background. He wondered whether he would ever again meet the tiger
he had spoken to in the moonlight. It seemed such a long time ago.

Miles felt his head nodding, and the tickle of Little's soot-blackened hair as she leaned against his shoulder. “She weighs nothing at all,” Miles thought as he drifted into sleep. “She must have hollow bones, like a bird.”

M
iles Wednesday, stone-warmed and Tangerine-less, blinked in the afternoon sun and wondered for a moment where he was. He lifted Little gently upright and…just a moment…Tangerine-less? His hand dived into his pocket, but somehow he already knew what he would find there. A silver ticket to the Palace of Laughter, and no bear. Where had he gone? He shook Little's shoulder.

“Little—wake up! Have you got Tangerine?”

“No,” she yawned. “Isn't he in your pocket?”

Miles shook his head. He stood up and looked into the fountain behind them, but there was
nothing in the water besides a few yellow leaves. He had a panicky feeling, as though the ground were falling away beneath his feet. The square itself was almost empty. At the inn tables the crowd had thinned out, but there were still clusters of people, hunched over beer tankards and talking of horses and hoes and the storms that came down on them from the mountain. Small bottles with green labels stood empty on some of the tables, and if Miles had not been searching so anxiously for Tangerine he might have noticed something odd. Unlike the other knots of silent, gray-faced diners, the people sitting at those tables laughed and chatted as you would expect people enjoying a long lunch and good company to do.

Miles shaded his eyes with his hand and searched the shadows beneath the tables for a sign of Tangerine. He spotted him after a moment. A wave of relief swept over him. The bear was ambling between the table legs toward the door of the inn. Miles took from his pocket the cap that Lady Partridge had given him, and pulled it low over his eyes. He made his way among the tables to the point where he had last seen Tangerine. No one paid him any attention. He bent and looked quickly beneath the table next to him. Tangerine was not
under that one, but he could see him in the shadow of the table behind that. The bear had come face to face with a large tabby cat, who stood frozen with his tail fluffed, and stared at him with unblinking green eyes.

Miles ducked under the table and crawled between the muddy boots toward Tangerine. The cat hunched lower and shifted his paws, preparing to spring. Miles wriggled over a crossbar between two table legs, desperately trying to reach Tangerine, who had decided that hide-and-seek must be the cat's game, and was trying to hide himself behind a pair of ankles.

The ankles that Tangerine had chosen to hide behind were dressed in lemon yellow socks, plainly visible beneath too-short trousers. As he stuck his threadbare orange head between the ankles and stared at the slightly bemused cat, two things happened at once. A hand reached down from above the table, and the cat sprang. The tabby cat and the owner of the lemon-yellow ankles reached the small bear at the same moment, and the cat's claws sunk themselves into the man's hand instead.

Genghis (for who else would wear lemon-yellow socks?) staggered to his feet with a yell. The bench fell with a crash. He let fly several strange curses that
you would only hear in a circus, and not very often at that, but he did not let go of Tangerine. He aimed a kick at the cat, who bolted for the nearest tree and ran straight up the trunk until he disappeared among the rattling brown leaves. Miles clambered out from under the table, the panicky feeling growing stronger in the pit of his stomach. Genghis was sucking the torn knuckles of his right hand, and holding Tangerine tightly in his left. Miles cleared his throat loudly, the cap still pulled low over his eyes. Genghis turned to him with a face like thunder.

“That's my bear,” said Miles. He could see Tangerine pushing feebly at Genghis's thick stubby fingers. He frowned at him desperately to try and get him to lie still, but Tangerine took no notice.

Genghis took a good look at Tangerine for the first time. His sly eyes widened as he saw the bear struggling in his grasp. “Not anymore it ain't,” he said. “Now take a hike before I polish my boot with your backside.”

“Give him to me!” shouted Miles, grabbing Genghis's wrist. People stared from the surrounding tables, but Miles didn't care. All the love that a luckier boy might have given to his parents, Miles had given to Tangerine, and he was not about to let him go.

Genghis reached over with his bleeding right hand and grabbed Miles by the collar in a grip that was starting to feel too familiar by half. He tried to squirm from Genghis's hold, and the cap was knocked from his head. Genghis gave a start. “Well skin me alive!” he said. “It's you again, you little weasel. You seem to be everywhere, except when you're nowhere to be found, that is.” He shoved Tangerine into his overcoat pocket and leaned closer to Miles, his words floating on stale cigar breath. “My boss would like a word with you, little weasel. And I don't think he'll be offering you no job, neither.”

The landlady of the Surly Hen had emerged again from the inn's dark interior to see what the commotion was about. “Leave that young 'un alone, you big lummox,” she said. “'E's just a boy.”

“Get lost,” growled Genghis, swinging around to face the landlady. As he did so, Miles twisted in his jacket, sinking his teeth into Genghis's hand at the base of his thumb and stamping on his foot with all the strength he could muster. Genghis yelled and let go of Miles's collar. He stuck his clawed and bitten hand back into his mouth and aimed a clumsy swipe at Miles with his other. Miles ducked, but not fast enough. The big man's fist hit him
squarely in the ear, sending him sprawling on the dusty paving stones. Through the ringing in his ears he could just hear the landlady squawking at Genghis, her face red with anger and her finger stabbing the air in his direction. The diners were glaring at Genghis now too, and from the shadows of the inn door a large bearded man was emerging, hitching his gravy-stained cook's trousers up to an imaginary waist and squinting in the light. He had a large meat cleaver in his hand, and did not look happy to be disturbed in his work. “What is it?” he growled.

“This big lummox is pickin' on that boy, Ted,” said the landlady. The sight of Ted, who was an even bigger lummox and with a meat cleaver to boot, was enough for Genghis. He turned on his heel and strode around the side of the inn to the patch of trodden and rutted earth where the carts and tractors of the inn's patrons were tethered.

The landlady opened her mouth to speak to Miles, but before she could utter a word he had scrambled to his feet and was running after Genghis, desperately hoping that Tangerine would manage to wriggle unnoticed from the big man's pocket, as he had from his own. Genghis was climbing aboard a battered blue van as Miles turned the
corner of the Surly Hen. He saw the words “THE PALACE OF LAUGHTER” painted in silver letters on the side, as the engine coughed into life and the van made a sharp turn out of the lot. With no thought but to stay close to Tangerine, Miles ran after the van, but before he could reach it the battered vehicle bounced into the road and roared away up the hill, leaving a cloud of dust and the trace of a smell that might have been rotten bananas in its wake.

Miles stood for a minute, bruised and panting, staring after Genghis's van as it disappeared over the brow of the hill. He felt a strange tug, as though something deep inside him had been hooked by an invisible fishing line and was being pulled away along the dusty road. He closed his eyes and tried to fix a picture of Tangerine in his mind. “Sit tight,” he said silently to the bear. “I'll come and get you.” He opened his eyes again and suddenly remembered Little.

She was no longer to be seen at the fountain, or anywhere else in the square. He hoped she had had the sense to hide herself at the first sight of Genghis, and he looked around the trampled field for any sign of her. A forest of dark conifers began at the edge of the field and ran along the right-hand
side of the road that the van had taken. Shading his eyes, Miles spotted Little among the nearest trees. She was standing half hidden behind the trunk of a tall fir, but she was not looking in his direction. She was staring at something a little farther into the shadows. He followed her gaze and saw to his surprise that someone seemed to have hung a circus poster well inside the wood, where it was barely visible in the mossy gloom. He could just make out the dull orange glow of the tiger's stripes, but he could not see the boy with the whip, or the flaming hoop.

In the shadows of the trees the tiger appeared to be moving. Miles walked over to where Little stood, to get a closer look. Without turning, she put her finger to her lips. He could see the tiger more clearly now, and there was no longer any doubt that he was moving. He was walking slowly toward them, his enormous paws making barely a sound on the carpet of pine needles. There was no poster after all, just a large and magnificent Bengal tiger, and this time Miles knew for sure that he was not dreaming.