The Winter Ground (12 page)

There was another long silence, while everyone watched, breath held, to see what he would do. At last, he stepped away from Ma, still watching her, and his shoulders dropped a little. He turned and gestured to me with one of his wide, expansive, ringmaster flourishes. ‘Hear that?’ he said, glaring around at everyone. ‘Mrs Gilver is going to get to the bottom of this and anyone what doesn’t like it and doesn’t help her can walk. Right? New rule in Cooke’s Circus. You keep up your own clobber, you don’t drink before the show and now you help Mrs Gilver and answer anything she asks you or you answer to me.’

‘Look at this here then, missus,’ said Tiny, pointing at the rope on the ground. Impossible to miss, a few feet from one end, it was slashed almost all the way through.

‘Ted?’ said Topsy again. ‘What’s happening?’

‘Tell me you don’t know nothing about this,’ said Pa Cooke, towering over Tiny with his fists bunched. ‘You swear on your life, or you’ll have no life to swear on.’

‘Leave the lad, Tam,’ said Charlie. ‘Course he don’t.’

‘No, sorry, course not,’ said Pa, looking truly chastened. He turned and flicked a glance towards Harlequin. ‘Ana!’ he said, his voice angry again.

‘And you can leave her out of it too,’ said Charlie, even louder.

His brother ignored him.

‘Get that prad stalled and come straight to my wagon,’ he said to Ana. He had gathered his whip into loose coils as he spoke but leaving the tent he cracked it, just once, very hard, and left a slash in the canvas to one side of the door. Ma sighed.

‘Never you mind there, Ana,’ she said. ‘Just you lie low till tomorrow, maid. And you can look out some fresh walling for that and get it laced on.’ She nodded to the ripped canvas. Ana nodded and left the ring on rather unsteady legs, her pony close at her heels and nibbling her hair, worried about her. Charlie, with a look at Ma, followed her. Ma turned to me and drew me aside out of the others’ hearing.

‘You best keep out his way too, my beauty,’ she said. ‘Get on with your work on the quiet. He’s not angry with you for helping, mind, and he’s not even angry with me for being right, not really. He’s angry with Tam Cooke, as usual, see?’

‘But you don’t need my help now,’ I said. ‘You said you knew it was Ana at the bottom of the trouble and now she’s gone as far as this …’

Mrs Cooke opened her eyes very wide so that her wrinkles showed white.

‘Bless us both,’ she said. ‘You must forget that now, my beauty. Circus folk an’t what they were but no one circus would ever … Ana no more than me.’

‘And why should Pa be angry with himself anyway?’ I asked. ‘What has he done?’

‘Din’t spot the rope end, did he?’ said Mrs Cooke. She turned to Andrew Merryman and raised her voice again. ‘You sure you’re a josser, my fine big lad? Don’t seem like one to me.’

Thus began my immersion in circus life, that curious winter of 1925, when rabbit stew in the open air became my accustomed luncheon, when talk of dots and batts and belly boxes grew to be second nature, when Bunty was a buffer and I was a beauty although neither of these last two developments, unhappily, was to last. It has a dreamlike quality now when I look back upon it.

At least, however, I discovered a mundane explanation for the strangest thing of all. It had not unsettled me too badly when Mrs Cooke read my palm, for I was well aware of the clever way these people phrase their tale to make one roomy size fit all, how they read one’s face and tailor the talk until it really does appear that they read one’s palm and one’s mind, but I admit that when she arrived in my sitting room telling me that she knew what I was, I found it harder not to wonder.

It was Ina Wilson who provided the voice of reason when, the day after the incident of the long rope, she arrived rosy-cheeked and slightly breathless at the winter ground, clutching a sketchpad and a tray of watercolour paints. I prepared to offer some account of my presence, but when she saw me she only said:

‘Oh! Good. You came then.’

For it transpired that Mrs Cooke had gone to Ina first, seeking help, and it had been Ina who passed her along to me, having heard of my exploits from some Fife connections of hers.

‘
I
couldn’t help,’ she went on, wide-eyed at the very idea of it.

‘No?’ I asked, wondering why.

‘Trouble and nastiness upset me,’ Ina went on. ‘I’d rather not have to know. And besides, I don’t want to take sides in their wrangle and have any of them not pleased with me. Much better you, don’t you think?’

When I was a child and grown-ups, Nanny usually, spoke of ‘spoiling’ I was hard to convince of the dangers; never could I agree that a new doll, more pudding or a carriage home from church instead of a wet walk would harm my character in any way, but listening to Ina Wilson fail to explain why she should not be troubled – fail even to comprehend that an explanation might be called for – I could not resist the thought that Albert and his devotion had – quoting Nanny at her most vituperative – ruined the girl.

‘And where is your husband off to today?’ I said, aware that the intention behind the question was not a kind one. Sure enough, her face clouded slightly as she answered.

‘Lunching in town,’ she said, ‘and going on to a club for the afternoon.’

‘Well, that’s wonderful news,’ I replied. The unkind impulse had passed and I really was pleased, for her sake. As far as I had been able to gather, Albert Wilson had not heretofore been much given to sloping off whenever he could, as normal husbands do, but if he were to begin then Ina would surely be the better for it.

‘Yes,’ said Ina. ‘With Robin Laurie.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘he certainly does seem to have taken you up, doesn’t he?’

Ina gave a tight smile and said nothing.

Refusing to be distracted any longer, even by such an absorbing mystery as this, I took my leave of her and squared my shoulders; I was about to conduct the interview which might bring me to the end of this rather peculiar case and I was not looking forward to it.

I had, the day before, had a gentle, probing little chat with Topsy in her wagon. She had been propped up in a tiny tub-like armchair near her stove with buttered muslin on her poor hands and a cup of hot broth at her elbow. Andrew was there when I arrived and left with some reluctance, unfolding himself out of the wagon like a dragonfly emerging from its nymph.

‘He is a good friend to you,’ I remarked once I thought he would be out of earshot.

‘He’s a good man,’ said Topsy. She looked rather uncomfortable as she admitted it. Then she roused herself and smiled. ‘A good friend, like you say. We’re all good friends at Cooke’s, missus – Zoya’s gone to town to buy paraffin bandage for me and Lally Wolf’s gone along to make her get boracic lint instead.’

‘Golly,’ I said. ‘Your hands might be soothed but you won’t be able to breathe in here for fumes.’

Topsy giggled.

‘Good friends for sure,’ she said. ‘You don’t want to listen to Ma too close, you know. She’s like a mother to us all and a kinder heart you couldn’t wish for, but she gets run away with her stories and her “funny feelings”. That rope was an accident, must have been.’

‘What sort of accident?’ I said.

‘Tent men must have put the wrong one up at the build-up somehow,’ she said.

‘But wouldn’t you have checked?’ I said. I could not imagine climbing a rope without checking the knots and examining every inch of it for fraying.

‘No need,’ said Topsy. ‘Tent men know their job and I got my own.’

‘Are the two ropes kept in the same place?’ I said. ‘That seems rather reckless.’

‘No, no, they’re not. But it must be that.’

‘But wouldn’t you have noticed?’ I said. ‘Haven’t you practised already since you got here and done a … one of those … I don’t know what you call what you did at the end.’

‘A rolling drop,’ said Topsy, and she screwed up her face. ‘I’ve been trying to remember and if I had to bet my wages I’d have said I did. But I can’t have, can I?’

‘You have a very sweet nature, my dear,’ I said, ‘but in this instance I think it is leading you astray. Haven’t you even con sidered the possibility that …’ I hesitated. ‘… someone
changed
the rope?’

‘No one would,’ said Topsy. She looked away from me. ‘I know I had that daft idea about Ted – Tiny, you know – but just for a minute and only because I was so rattled.’

‘I didn’t mean Tiny, particularly,’ I said.

‘If one of the tent men needed a rope for something,’ said Topsy, ‘he’d use a spare, or he’d ask the boss if there wasn’t no spare would do. No one would ever take mine. I keep my swings and rings in my prop box, but that corde lisse is up all the time and it moves with the tent rig. The tent men look after it. Tiny’s long rope stays with the clowns’ rig. The tent men would never go near it. And anyway, Pa has asked them already and they didn’t.’

I was beginning to find her lack of suspicion exasperating.

‘And the damage to Tiny’s rope?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Must be some kind of mishap.’

‘Quite a string of mishaps,’ I said. ‘I found your swing.’ I thought my voice was laden with portent, but Topsy did not notice it.

‘Well, there’s some good news anyway,’ she said. ‘Where was it I had put it in the end?’

‘It was stuffed into one of the store-cupboards in the Prebrezhenskys’ living wagon,’ I told her. Her smile faltered slightly. ‘And one of the ropes was cut halfway through.’ Her smile disappeared completely now.

‘Cut?’ she said. ‘Not frayed? Cut?’

‘There was no mistaking it. Just like the other one. I did mean to tell you about it, but thought it could wait until after the rehearsal. I can only ask you to forgive me.’ I closed my eyes and shuddered. I am not one of those who relishes clucking over what might have happened when nothing has, but this had been such a very near miss that I could not quite banish the thought yet.

Topsy got up from her chair and stepped over to the little window in the side of the wagon. She did not move the lace curtain aside but stood behind it, looking out at the rest of the camp, slowly letting her gaze travel all around.

‘Can you think of anyone who would want to harm you?’ I asked. It seemed a mere formality to me as it would to anyone who had seen the rehearsal, seen the way Ana looked at her and heard the words she spat out like venom. Topsy swung round and stared at me.

‘No,’ she said, but it was more as though she were forbidding me to ask than as though she were answering. ‘You don’t understand,’ she went on. ‘No one would do that.’

‘Someone has,’ I reminded her.

‘Nobody circus would
ever
do such a thing.’

‘Nobody
circus
,’ I said. ‘But what about someone else? Can you not think of someone else who might be angry enough to want to hurt you?’

‘Who?’ said Topsy, looking bewildered. ‘There’s nobody here.’

‘There are jossers in Cooke’s as well as the rest of you,’ I explained, but Topsy’s puzzled look dissolved and she only grinned at me.

‘You’re not speaking your own language, sure you’re not,’ she said. ‘Jossers is circus, or getting there, just not proper circus. I meant flatties, roughs. There’s nobody here except the folk at the house and they don’t even know me.’

‘Well, at least tell me when you last saw the swing in one piece,’ I said. ‘And let me start narrowing it down.’

Shortly afterwards I had left, bidding her to be careful and getting the cheerful response that with no hands worth the name she hardly had scope to be otherwise. Outside, I shivered again, but this time it was only from the cold. The blink of winter sun had gone behind the pine trees already and a penetrating chill was seeping up from the ground as the light faded. I wondered where Bunty was and whether I should be able to persuade her to return to Gilverton with me that evening. Then I squared my shoulders, strode up to Ana’s wagon and rapped on the door.

There was no answer from inside, but Charlie Cooke’s head appeared from his own window across the way.

‘She’s gone for a walk,’ he called over to me. ‘Keeping out of Tam’s way.’

I should, if I were any kind of detective at all, have been thwarted by this, but in fact a flood of relief washed over me. From what I had seen of her so far, she was a most imposing individual and I could not quash the idea that if she were beyond Mrs Cooke’s powers of scolding and charming, she would make mincemeat of me.

‘Are you feeling better, Mr Cooke?’ I said, spurred on to friendliness by the good news of my reprieve.

‘Me?’ he said. ‘Nowt wrong with me.’

‘I couldn’t help noticing that you were very upset at what happened earlier.’

Charlie gave me a long speculative look before he answered.

‘I
was
upset,’ he said. ‘Course I was. I’m sore fond of that little lass and I wouldn’t see a hair harmed on her head.’

‘How do you suppose it happened?’ I asked him. This time the silence was even longer.

‘I don’t like what you’re hinting at,’ he said at last.

The next silence was all my doing. I had merely been passing the time of day. Was it possible that I had stumbled over something solid underfoot?

‘I wasn’t hinting at anything,’ I told him. ‘I know you were very shocked. I mean, you were so surprised that you stayed in your seat while everyone else rushed forw—’

‘You’ve no business speaking to me that way,’ he said, talking over me.

I was now more convinced than ever that there was something amiss here. I drew myself up.

‘I beg your pardon, Mr Cooke,’ I said, ‘but I most certainly do. Your brother was very clear on that point.’

‘My brother!’ said Charlie Cooke, almost spitting. ‘My brother isn’t the Great Panjandrum he thinks he is, missus. I could have you off this ground before you can blink.’ Then, his face thunderous, he withdrew into his wagon and slammed the window shut behind him.

He seemed very sure of himself, but I had heard enough already about the fearsome power of the rum coll to feel rather confident myself that he was wrong. For, I told myself, if circuses are full of family connections then family must abide by the hierarchy or no one would. Well, when I returned the next morning I should find out if I were the honoured guest still or were to be sent packing. I would, though, leave Bunty at home for once. I told myself this was because an inglorious departure was slightly less so when there was no large spotty dog whining to stay, but it was more honest, perhaps, to say that I felt Bunty deserved a long boring day at home to remind her where her loyalties should lie.