The Winter Ground (28 page)

In fact, I told myself later as I drove away, Ina Wilson’s view of Laurie was getting curiouser all the time. For it seemed to me that the shared influenza nurse must have seen Robin the brother and Robin the uncle at his most impressive and endearing and could only have praised him to the heavens to her next patient. Well, perhaps the nurse was pretty and Robin had seduced her or perhaps – this was much more likely – Ina, knowing that he was a poppet underneath, found his veneer all the more tiresome and did not trouble to hide it. Perhaps she was one of the many who had tried to save him, got stung and retired, smarting.

Determined to show Hugh that his capacity to do without me was more than matched by my utter indifference as to whether he were a feature of my day, I went straight back to the winter ground from Cairnbulg on Tuesday morning and arrived to find the circus in a state of some uproar. There were raised voices in the stable tent, sounds of childish weeping from the Prebrezhenskys’ living wagon and the unexpected sight of Bill Wolf stamping up and down in front of the performing tent, his brows thunderous and his boots making the very earth shake beneath them. Mrs Wolf could just be seen watching from behind the lace in her wagon window, a pained expression upon her broad face, and Tommy and Little Sal were sitting on the steps gazing at their father with a mixture of curiosity, trepidation and awe.

Ma Cooke popped her head out at the sound of my motor car and came over to meet me, moving at a trot, wiping her hands dry on her skirt as though upon an apron which her evident agitation had made her forget she was not wearing.

‘So, here you are back again and where were you when we needed you so?’ she scolded me as she arrived at my side.

‘What’s happened?’ I said.

‘The police have gone. Accident, they said. Only to be expected, they said. What were we doing wasting their time a-calling it anything else?’

‘But you didn’t want them to stay,’ I said. ‘So what’s wrong?’

Ma’s eyes flashed to Bill Wolf before she said anything. He had ceased his stamping up and down and was now stamping over towards us.

‘Fie, fi, fo, fum,’ I said under my breath. ‘What on earth’s up with Bill?’

‘The good Lord knows and He won’t tell the likes of me,’ said Ma. ‘I don’t know what we’re at, my beauty. I’ve known that man there fifty years and more and been in the wagon with thon forty-five and this is the first time either of them’s puzzled me in all my days.’

‘“Thon” would be Pa?’ I hazarded.

‘He’s gone too far now,’ said Bill as he drew close to us. It was a considerable effort not at least to take a step back from him. With his shoulders thrust forward, his fists bunched and his voice an angry rumble he made one think of those thrilling gods from
Norse Stories Retold
; thrilling, that is, when presented in the form of a little woodcut showing how Thor got his hammer, but rather terrifying when standing right before one, larger than life, clearly fuming. ‘What’s he playing at, eh? He’s overstepped the mark and no mistake about it.’

‘Isn’t that what I’m telling Mrs Gilver? I don’t
know
what he’s at. I can’t work it out for my life. And there’s Inya, Alya and Ilya breaking their little hearts.’ Ma sounded almost ready to join the Prebrezhensky girls with some weeping of her own.

‘But what’s happening?’ I insisted, hoping that I did not sound as shrill as I felt inside.

‘He’s lost his senses,’ said Ma. ‘Lost his circus sense anyways. He’s said he’s going to shoot the pony and won’t hear a word against it. As soon as the police told him what they’d made of it, he decided. I tried to change his mind and Charlie tried, then we both tried together and he just got madder and madder and he won’t listen to anyone.’

‘But I won’t stand for it,’ said Bill, his temper rising again on the swell of his booming voice. ‘I won’t be made a fool.’

‘Shoot Harlequin?’ I said. ‘Kill him?’

Ma nodded miserably.

‘But … but what about Princess Zanzi?’

‘Who?’ said Bill.

‘Tigress what bit my pa when I wurr a little maid,’ Ma told him.

This was very troubling news. The hasty shooting of hapless little ponies was common enough in my world, of course, where fond fathers of suddenly crippled daughters were wont to reach for their guns, but Pa Cooke killing off a highly trained and surely valuable rosy-back prad, at a time when Cooke’s Circus was far from thriving, and when the lost girl had been such a thorn in the collective Cookes’ side? The only explanation I could see for that was not one I welcomed: the police had chalked up Ana’s death as an accident and happily wiped the chalk dust from their hands and Pa was falling over himself to boost the official version. Surely, he would only do that if …

‘Oh no,’ said Ma. ‘No, no, no, don’t be thinking that there. Pa would never.’

‘You give me goose pimples sometimes, Ma,’ I said. ‘How did you know what I was thinking?’

‘Twas wrote on your face like love and hate,’ said Ma, and for once I should rather have thought her psychic, since to have his every thought ‘wrote on his face’ is as unhelpful to a detective as to a card player.

‘And you, Bill,’ I said, mustering my courage and turning to look up at him. ‘What think you? And why are you so angry?’

‘I think no harm of Tam Cooke,’ said Bill, rather unconvincingly to my mind. ‘And don’t you go twisting up my words on me. I just want what’s best for us all. All I ever did. And killing Harlequin is just burning pound notes, to my mind. I won’t stand for it.’

‘I’m not sure I shall either,’ I said. ‘Where is he, Ma?’

Pa Cooke, as Ma indicated with a jerk of her head, was in the performing tent so squaring my shoulders I strode off to have it out with him. He was standing in the middle of the ring in what I had come to think of as his rehearsal dress, long boots and flashing whip but coatless and with his sleeves rolled to the elbow, shirt buttons open piratically low upon his chest, giving an effect close to pantomime. Certainly his audience seemed not far from booing and hissing. Topsy, arms folded very tightly across her chest, was looking stonily ahead without a trace of her usual twinkles. Zoya and Kolya, just behind her, were slumped forward, elbows on knees, staring coldly at Pa and muttering now and then to one another in their guttural Russian, a language so suited to gloomy muttering that one does wonder how Russians do anything else, such as telling jokes or wooing maidens, and surely a Russian wedding with the vows repeated in those doleful lumps of sound could not be festive.

Pa saw me enter, but only cracked his whip and turned his back. I slipped into Alec’s row of seats and shuffled along until I was sitting beside him.

‘You’re back,’ he said. ‘Have you heard what’s happening?’

‘Ma just told me. Do you have any idea why?’

Alec gave a short laugh ‘I’m up to my eyebrows in artistic temperament and haven’t the faintest of clues about anyone. Even Miles is beginning to seem a bit odd, frankly.’

‘Quiet,’ barked Pa, from the middle of the ring. ‘Quiet when we’re working.’

‘News to me,’ said Topsy and Pa treated her to a glare. Then he whistled earsplittingly shrilly through his teeth and Tiny and Andrew came bowling into the ring on two unicycles, with Charlie Cooke trotting after them pushing a wheelbarrow. Jinx, in the barrow, looked his usual irrepressible self but Charlie’s face was mutinous and a moment’s viewing told me why.

‘This is instead of Ana and Harlequin,’ Alec whispered, as Tiny and Andrew sped around the edge of the ring, juggling coloured balls, while Charlie and Jinx chased after them, never catching them up.

‘Charlie won’t think much of being the chump,’ I said. ‘I take it he can’t ride a unicycle himself, then?’

‘I suppose not,’ said Alec. ‘But look at Bill Wolf: packed up his medicine balls and crossbows and took to the accordion with never a grumble.’

‘He’s grumbling plenty today,’ I pointed out. ‘Stalking up and down like a thundercloud out there.’

‘That’s because Pa chucked him out of the tent. For lip.’

‘Can he do that?’ I was amazed. I had grown used to the idea that the circus folk were as civilised as Alec and me, only sprinkled with a little strangeness, as a kind of garnish.

‘Apparently,’ said Alec. ‘Because he only had to say it once and off Bill went. It seems the boss can do whatever he likes.’

‘Even as far as killing ponies,’ I agreed. Most unfortunately, there had happened to be a moment’s silence just then while Tiny and Andrew balanced, arm in arm and wheels still, and so my words reached Pa Cooke’s ears.

‘Right,’ he yelled, ‘that’s it. Clear the tent. Everybody out.’

‘I’m not presenting to an empty tent, Tam,’ said Charlie. ‘You clear them out and I go too.’

‘That’s right,’ said Topsy. ‘You always said an act needed eyes and ears right through from first reckoning, Pa. Like you always say an act needs noise to rise above if it’s any good.’

‘You stick to what you know, lass,’ said Pa. ‘It’s only an animal act that needs to practise noisy.’ Then he seemed to realise what he had said and shut his mouth firmly, glaring round, daring anyone to make something of it. Andrew Merryman, of all people, took the dare.

‘I can only offer again,’ he said. ‘If you would let me go and get Harlequin and show you what Tiny can do …’

‘Arabesques as elegant as I can make them,’ said Tiny, jumping down from his cycle and striking a pose on the sawdust, with one short leg stuck up in the air, foot daintily pointed. ‘I’ll even wear a tutu and tights. Owt for a laugh, me.’

‘Because it’s like you always said, Pa,’ Andrew went on, ‘bringing the cycles out in the spec is going to kill our first spot.’

‘Enough,’ said Pa. ‘Out with the lot of you. You’ – he jabbed a finger at Tiny – ‘and you’ – another jab in Andrew’s direction – ‘two spots and the spec from everyone and don’t tell me I didn’t say that up front. The spec’s my worry and the spots are yours.’ Now he turned and scowled at Topsy. ‘I’ll not be bending over to help anyone with a second spot ever again.’ He wheeled back again. ‘And Charlie? Brother or none – I’m the boss of Cooke’s Circus and nobody talks to me that way.’

With one last poisonous look around the tent he marched away to the ring doors and disappeared through them.

‘Golly,’ said Andrew, which made Topsy laugh and eased some of the tension.

‘Only don’t you think his exit would be stronger wi’ a puff of smoke?’ said Tiny. ‘I’ll suggest it later, maybe.’

‘This is no time for jokes,’ Charlie snapped at them. ‘That lass is still in not in the ground.’

The other clowns and Topsy looked at their feet.

‘That is not the only why is no time for laughing,’ Zoya said. Kolya nodded gravely and turned to me.

‘Mee-zuss Kilvert,’ he said. ‘You talk to him, heh? One more act go pfft! and we all gone.’

Between the beseeching look on his face and the knowledge that he would not understand my excuses anyway, he was hard to refuse. So, reminding myself firmly of what Ma had told me – that Pa Cooke’s bark was all and that his bite was toothless and hardly deserved the name – I hopped over the ring fence and followed him.

‘Mr Cooke?’ I called, scurrying through the backstage warren. ‘Mr Cooke? Wait, please. I need to talk to you.’ I caught up with him, rather unfortunately, just at the back doors, almost at the precise spot where Anastasia had lain. ‘Mr Cooke,’ I said, panting slightly. ‘Ma told me about Harlequin, but I could scarcely believe it. Why would you do such a thing?’

‘I’ve no call to be giving you an account of myself,’ he said. His tone was lofty, but the anguish upon his face belied it.

‘I’m not sure I can agree,’ I told him. ‘I am engaged to make all well at Cooke’s Circus and you said that I was to expect co operation from everyone. Are you exempting yourself from the requirement?’ It was hardly unexpected that his eyes widened at that; my own heart was thumping at my temerity and I was not unconscious of the whip coiled in his hand. Did I only imagine it twitching?

‘I never knew what nonsense Ma was at getting you in here anyways,’ he said. ‘She gets these feelings of hers most days and twice on Sundays.’

‘But this time she was right,’ I said. ‘The rope and the swing and …’

‘Aye, this time,’ said Pa. ‘So I thought it’d do no harm to let them know you were here watching and reporting back, let them know who’s boss, in case they were forgetting.’

‘But don’t you see? The police might be wrong. Whoever played the tricks might have killed Ana.’

‘Never, never, no,’ said Pa, contradicting himself rather. ‘Your own babbies saw what happened, didn’t they? And a pony that can’t be trusted in the ring is no good to anyone and I can’t afford to keep him in hay, not with things the way they are.’

We had arrived at his wagon and since he did not say goodbye to me, but only mounted the steps and opened the door, I took it upon myself to follow him. Inside Ma was perched on one of the armchairs and Ina Wilson was ensconced in the other. Ma’s face was drawn with worry, but Ina greeted us with a smile and continued stroking Bobbo and feeding him raisins with a great show of cheerful nonchalance.

‘Missus,’ said Pa Cooke politely when he saw her.

‘Well?’ said Ma to me. I shrugged. She turned to Pa. ‘And didn’t Old Nellie once crush a lad in her trunk when my pa took her calf off her too quick and she was broken-hearted there? And didn’t she turn out to be the best elephant as ever was in the ring and out of it? Flatties could ride her, little chavs and raklies could run under her belly and she never turned a hair.’

‘Have the clowns finished?’ said Ina.

‘Aye, they’re off,’ Pa replied, ‘if you could call them clowns. If you could even call them circus. And my own brother too. I never thought I’d see the day when being the boss meant less than that.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘When my old granddad was the rum coll at Cooke’s his word was law, and the whole place run a sight better for it.’

‘Your Grandpappy Cooke bought a unlucky white dog what Old Man Chipperfield himself couldn’t do nothing with, Tam,’ said Ma. ‘And he finished up in the ring, in a silver halter pulling a little carriage full of doves. My Auntie Magda told me. I think I might have a photograph of him somewhere in my cupboards there.’ She looked about at the panelled walls of her home as if about to leap up and begin rummaging for it. ‘Snowball. Swiss mountain dog, he was. You must remember him yourself.’