The Winter Ground (3 page)

‘Except you’re going to the campground this afternoon with me,’ I said. ‘And you’ve already met William Wolf.’

‘Well, when Albert goes to the works, things are rather different,’ she said and her smile faded. ‘Don’t look at me that way, Dandy,’ she said. ‘He really
is
very kind, but it’s only the days when he’s gone that have made me able to be kind back again. So don’t look at me like that. Don’t think ill of me.’

‘My dear,’ I said, ‘nothing could be further from my head.’ This was true. I was not sitting in private judgement on Ina or her husband; I was merely marvelling at the rich feast of strangeness in other people’s lives, like looking down a microscope into a scoop of water from a pond. One hardly needed a circus at all.

Still, nothing would have kept me from going to visit it and, since the rain had almost stopped, we set out on foot with me holding Bunty very firmly on a short lead wound twice around my wrist. I had no concerns about her mixing with rough company (as I always tell Hugh – a Dalmatian might be decorative but it is a real dog, not a toy) but I was sure circus dogs would be beautifully trained and would sit at their masters’ sides and look down their noses while she racketed about, trampling over tents and knocking down small children, if I let her.

The circus folk had set up camp a ten-minute stroll from the castle, choosing an excellent spot I thought as we neared it. They were sheltered from the worst of the winter winds by a steep hill to the north and by crescent-shaped arms of pine trees spreading from the east and west and almost meeting, surely planted there to force some unnatural movement of birds (although I do not pretend fully to understand the ways of the pheasant or the wiles of their tweedy enemies, any more than I see why the grouse must have their gorse and heather in such gaudy patchwork on the hilltops, ruining the view). As well as this hill and these trees, there was a burn which gurgled down in streams and short waterfalls and ended in a pool. In other words, in summertime this would have been a sunless, boggy, midge-infested hell but in December it was an oasis, since there was no sunlight to speak of anyway and boards had been laid to the pool edge until the rain should stop, the mud dry and the ground harden with frost as it must do.

I had imagined the circus to be battened down and burrowed in, awaiting the spring, and was surprised to see the big top set up at one side of the pond, rather a small big top, frankly, but valiantly jaunty against the black pine trees, even with its wet flag wrapped around the top of the pole and the bunting on its guy ropes dripping on to the grass. It was red and white like a seaside minstrel’s coat and – like a minstrel’s coat – best seen from afar. Close up, the red stripes were sun-bleached here and there and the whole was rather scuffed and worn, rather muddy round the hem, and made me think of a governess between jobs and getting shabby. From inside it, as we walked by, I could hear a rhythmic thumping and grunting and although Ina had seemed very sure about the bear I quickened my footsteps.

Around the other side of the pond and quite near its edge there was a plainer but just as large a square white tent inside which, upon passing, I could see upwards of twenty horses standing, deeply strawed, in trim wooden stalls; polished black beauties and shaggy cart ponies alike, each with a stuffed hay bag hung on a nail and a water bucket hooked over the stall gate in front of its nose. There was a puff of warmth from the open entranceway and I was not surprised to glimpse three lads sitting on upturned boxes bent in concentration over a game of cards, for if one could bear the reek of horse – and some find it pleasant enough to call it, straight-faced, a scent – there would be nowhere snugger than here to pass the dregs of such a miserable day.

Beyond both tents lay the camp itself, a ring of green and gold caravans with curls of wood smoke rising from their bent tin chimneys and lamplight glowing out of their lace-covered windows into the dullness of the sinking afternoon. They were set in pairs, open door facing chummily to open door, and on some of the steps women were busy peeling potatoes or mending, tiny children peeping shyly at us from behind them. In the middle of the circle a large fire was laid, ready to light, with a sheet of tin balanced over it on sticks and a collection of girded water buckets placed to catch the rainwater at the edges.

‘Can you imagine living in one of those wagons?’ asked Ina, waving around the campground. It was not an exclamation, but rather a question, and she studied me with some earnestness while waiting for an answer.

‘Very … natty,’ I said. ‘Most … snug, I should imagine.’

Ina nodded, satisfied with my answer it seemed. ‘We’d better call at Mrs Cooke’s first,’ she said. ‘She’s the head of the—’

‘Here she is again, the pretty maid!’ came a voice from the caravan nearest the big top. Bunty wagged her tail and all three of us turned towards the sound. ‘What did I tell you, first time I clapped my eyes to you? A circus face. You have a circus face as sure as I ever saw one. And here you are again.’

In the doorway, stooping slightly under the bowed roof, was a dark woman of around sixty, I should have guessed, dressed in rather shiny and old-fashioned garments, with a smile splitting her brown face into creases and her eyes twinkling as bright as the gold hoops through her ears. How satisfying it is when someone turns out to be exactly what one has expected and looked forward to. What a disappointment it would have been if Mrs Cooke, surely the matriarch of Cooke’s Family Circus, had been an efficient little figure in serge too busy with the business accounts to pass the time of day.

Mrs Cooke stood back and let Ina and me clamber into her caravan and sit down. Luckily, she seemed very proud of her home and so I did not have to resist having a good look round; at the lace and velvet and painted enamel and brass, at the glass-fronted cupboards full of rose-patterned china and heavy crystal, at the panels which lined the walls – surely doors hiding more cupboards although I could see no handles, at the intricate moulding on every panel which was picked out in gold and blue and which, since each panel was so small that it
was
mostly moulding, made the whole of the little cave glitter with gold and blue as though we had somehow got inside a Fabergé egg and lit lamps there.

Although I am sure Mrs Cooke would not have minded, I forbore to look too closely at the box-bed beyond the draped curtains at the end, finding it odd to think that I had climbed into the woman’s bedroom before she had even heard my name, but I thought I noticed a small black dog curled up on one of the many pillows and my heart warmed to her; I always let Bunty take her nap on my bed if she is not muddy.

All the time I was gazing around, Mrs Cooke was filling a kettle, opening the door of the stove to puff the fire to life, gathering cups and plates on to a tray, all without moving from her little padded stool, just reaching out to this side and that and keeping up a good-natured commentary in her nameless, but very appealing accent.

‘Mrs Gilver, you say? Now, I knew some Gilvers over in Donegal, years back. Horsewomen they wurr, bred racehorses and rode them too, and they were dark like yourself there. Have you some Irish? You’ve a grand flat back to you, anyway. Ah well, you’ll be a mixture like the rest of us and best of us. I’m mostly Russian with some Irish and French – pure circus, you might say – and Mr Cooke always says he’s Scotch on account of Cooke’s Original English Circus 1750 started in Scotland, but he’s the same as me, and how could he not be since I’m a Cooke on both sides? Born a Cooke and married a Cooke and … what are you after?’

A very small child had appeared at the top of the steps and was trembling there, looking out from under a fringe of black hair.

‘Come on, little Sal, speak up. They won’t eat you,’ said Mrs Cooke.

The child did not stop trembling but put her chin in the air.

‘Is that a slanging buffer, missus, or a jugal?’ she said nodding in my direction, without meeting my eye.

Mrs Cooke tutted loudly.

‘Don’t mind Sallie, maids,’ she said. ‘She’s not been much around flatties and she’s not five yet there. Folks that’s not circus, I should say. She’s just asking after the dog. Want to know if she’s just a pet or if she does a turn.’ Bunty, sensing that she was the centre of attention, stood up and swept her tail back and forth once or twice, perilously near the crowded mantelshelf above the stove. ‘Why don’t you take her out and see if you can get her to slang, little maid,’ said Mrs Cooke, hastily, with one eye on her brass ornaments. ‘Keep you both out of mischief.’

I handed Bunty’s lead over to the outstretched hand and, with one brave peek up into my face, the child turned and scampered back down the steps taking Bunty with her.

‘But stay away from the tent,’ Mrs Cooke shouted after them. ‘You get under the feet of that prad and the rum coll’ll take his hand to you.’

‘I was surprised to see the big top up, Mrs Cooke,’ I said, plumping for the only bit of her discourse I was sure I had understood.

‘And where else would they work?’ she asked. ‘There’s no good working an act up in a field and then asking the horse to do it in a ring, now is there? He’d knock his legs on the ring fence every step and then he’d bolt, wun’t he?’

‘I suppose so,’ I said. ‘It never occurred to me.’

‘One time, when I was a girl, a chavvy – a feller, I should say – with a clever donkey act come up and joined us in the middle of the year. He’d been doing his turn on the nob there – round the streets, you know – and a fine turn it was too so my old pa took him on as a run-in to fill where a tumbler had come off with his arm broke … always something in this lark, and no lie there … but the first night in the tent, bless us if that cuddy-horse didn’t stop in the middle of his turn, kick the poor chavvy’s legs out from under him and take off out the door to the wide blue yonder, right across the gallery packed with screaming babbies. And can you guess why?’

‘Because of the tent?’ suggested Ina. ‘The ring?’

‘No there,’ said Mrs Cooke. ‘My old pa was too fly not to see that. He’d had the pair of them in the ring from sun-up to early doors. No, it wurr the band. The drums and cymbals. We never saw that cuddy again, nor the rig-out and props he had on him when he scarpered. And my mother always said the chavvy did it on purpose, to land himself a new kit when his old one was wore through and then back to the street corners again.’ I could not help thinking that the moral of Mrs Cooke’s story was getting lost somewhere, and she seemed to agree. ‘But now there,’ she went on, ‘Ma was a dread suspicious type, shame on me for speaking ill of my own dear mother what’s gone but it’s true. Nothing happened anywhere on the ground but she saw it fraying her purse string. What I’m saying is the tent’s up all winter and then just you wait and see what grand acts come out of it in the spring there. Just you wait and see.’

‘And will the band be playing too?’ asked Ina, possibly gauging the distance from the tent to her drawing-room windows and wondering whether the drums and cymbals would carry that far.

‘Time was, but no, Tam paid the band off after the last stand and we’ll get another come spring again. We have one of them Panatrope machines now and them round records – does the job there.’

She had been busy plying the teapot and milk jug while she told her tale and now she watched us sipping with the delighted watchfulness of the true hostess.

‘Delicious tea, Mrs Cooke,’ said Ina. ‘Oh, I’m so glad you’ve come!’

‘Twas a godsend to be asked, maid,’ said Mrs Cooke. ‘Your man has done us a favour there and no two ways, because we wurr in for a hard winter in that nasty Leith, only the shops for a bite of meat and town roughs bothering us of a Saturday night with a drink in them. When Mr Cooke told me about woods and streams and rabbits in the pot I thought
he’d
been at the bevvy.’

‘I feel rather a churl for asking you to keep my little visits here a secret from him,’ said Ina, but Mrs Cooke shushed her.

‘Away!’ she said. ‘A woman needs a man and a fine strong man is the best kind, but …’ She flicked a glance at me and, appearing to find reassurance there, she creased up into another of her grins. ‘… but of course we have to let him think he’s the king and all or he’d only think something more trouble still. Don’t you fret your head, maid.’

In complete accordance about the proper disposal of our loyalties, then, the three of us drank our tea.

‘I could read your leaves, Mrs Gilver,’ said Mrs Cooke when we were done. I was mildly offended that I remained so called when Ina was a ‘pretty maid’ but then she had her circus face to recommend her and I assumed I did not.

‘You tell fortunes?’ I asked. I had not had my fortune told since the departure of the last nursery maid from my parents’ house and my promotion to my own bedroom and lady’s maid, and I cannot say that I had missed it.

‘Palms and leaves,’ said Mrs Cooke. ‘I tell fortunes in the ticket wagon before the show, Madame Polina and her crystal ball: all good news and happy futures – ah, changed days, changed days – but my real talent is palms and leaves.’

I edged forward in my seat and held my palm out to her, thinking that palms were much less mess and bother than upturned teacups and at least she could find no dark strangers or sea voyages there.

‘A long lifeline,’ she said, running her fingertip around the pad of my thumb. ‘Very clear and sure, but your money has run out – turn your hand a little to the light – no, there it is! It’s just coming from a different place now. And your heart line, let me see …’

‘Broken?’ I suggested.

‘Chained,’ said Mrs Cooke. ‘Intertwined, doubled, and it dun’t untangle any time soon there.’

I said nothing.

‘And that’s not all,’ she went on, warming to her task now, bending close over my hand. ‘What’s this I’m seeing?’

‘But Mrs Cooke, that’s Mrs Gilver’s left hand,’ said Ina. ‘Shouldn’t it be the right?’

‘Of course it should,’ said Mrs Cooke, ‘unless you’re left-handed. Well, forget all of that and we’ll start again.’

The sound of feet on the caravan steps, however, prevented it and we all turned to see a dapper little man, breathing heavily and dressed only in shirtsleeves and britches despite the cold, step through the door to join us. He was about Mrs Cooke‘s age but looked younger somehow, his greying curls less draining to the complexion than her blackened ones – when one looked closely one could see that the black extended to her scalp and even crept across her forehead here and there. His figure was youthful too and better suited to caravan life, one imagined, than Mrs Cooke’s comfortable girth.