The Winter Ground (8 page)

‘And I take it Mr Cooke is not to know what I’m about?’ I said.

‘Well, my beauty,’ said Mrs Cooke, with a look of great innocence on her face that did not fool me for a minute, ‘where’s the use in telling a man everything, eh? He knows I think there’s trouble coming, but more than that would only fret him.’

‘I have had cases before where the diplomacy was as crucial as the detecting,’ I assured her.

‘Cases?’ said Mrs Cooke, looking startled. ‘Well, as to “cases”, I can’t be paying you, mind there. Pa and me have to pull in tight winters, but let me see now … We can give them two lads of yours a Christmas they’ll never forget, can Cooke’s Circus. And that’s got be worth gold to a mother. So what d’you say?’

It did not look much, in prospect, and the briefing was far from full, but Alec and I were without a sniff of any other work and Donald and Teddy would never have forgiven me denying them circus privileges if I had such things in my gift.

No time like the present, I told myself, and twenty minutes later I had packed Mrs Cooke and Bobbo into the Cowley, although she had been more than ready to return the way she had come – on foot over the hills – and was climbing into the driver’s seat to be waved away by Pallister, both footmen and the hallboy. Gilverton’s servants’ hall would not be lost for conversation today.

My first sight as we drew up beside the pond and stepped down again was Bill Wolf, the individual I had taken to be a bear, still wearing the shaggy suit and only marginally less alarming now that he was revealed as a man. He was sitting on an upturned barrel, beside his caravan – his living wagon, as Mrs Cooke had taught me to call it – making the most of the weak winter sunlight as he stitched at something in his lap. Mrs Cooke gave me a look and scuttled away. Ah yes, I thought, Bill Wolf is one of those who knows something. I squared my shoulders and began walking towards the giant with my chin high in the air and my teeth only chattering slightly.

They were stilled as I approached him by my noticing what I had missed before: there was a small child – next to Mr Wolf a
very
small child – tucked in between his knees, half under his beard and helping to hold taut the length of stuff he was stitching. The child watched me, warily at first, and then with frank interest as Bunty started whining and rearing up: the new little friend from the day before was beckoning from across the ground. I unhooked her lead and she went off without so much as a backward glance at her old friend of the last seven years.

‘Tis a waste of a kushty beast like yon, right enough, keeping it as a pet,’ Bill Wolf called to me by way of a greeting, nodding at Bunty’s departing back. His voice was a guttural rumble, with the now familiar mix of Irish and Eastern, pure circus as Mrs Cooke would say. ‘My Sallie there’s got a way with dogs.’

‘Oh, she’s yours, is she?’ I said.

‘Aye, my little rakly, and Tom Thumb here’s her twin,’ said Bill. He put down his sewing – it was a leather strap and he was attaching bells to it with an enormous needle threaded up with a bootlace – and ruffled the boy’s hair. ‘Just about five now, the two of them. Never mind autumn crocuses; more like Sarah and Abraham, eh, Ma?’ He raised his voice to a boom, and a woman appeared at the window of the wagon and leaned out.

‘But no Hagar!’ she said, laughing so that her face creased almost as much as Mrs Cooke’s and she showed every one of her dazzling china teeth. I tried not to look surprised. Why should not circus folk know their Bible, after all?

I leaned up against the side of the wagon, taking their friendliness at face value and hoping that leaning on a living wagon was not some kind of dreadful faux pas like stepping unasked aboard a yacht.

‘I seen you yesterday, missus,’ said Mr Wolf. ‘Along with that Mrs Wilson from the house.’

‘You circus-daft too, like her, then?’ asked his wife. There was no insult in her words and so I did not take offence.

‘It is tremendously exciting to have you here,’ I answered, non-committally.

‘Surely,’ said Bill Wolf, not troubled by false modesty, I could see. ‘If it’s all new to you, it must seem so.’

‘Have you always been with the circus, then?’ I asked. Bill Wolf nodded.

‘All our lives,’ he said. ‘Lally there used to have an aerial act till Tom and Sal put paid to it for her.’

‘I’m not complaining,’ said Mrs Wolf and with a last grin disappeared inside again.

‘Then we thought to have a knife-throwing act,’ Bill went on. ‘Worked it up all the time Ma were carrying the nippers, should have been a treat.’ I could not agree; throwing knives at one’s pregnant wife seemed beyond barbarism to me. ‘But Tam Cooke’s no taste for it. Says it’s not right circus.’ Bill bent to chew off the end of a lace and then selected another bell and began stitching again. ‘Not so sure myself,’ he went on, spitting out some stray threads. ‘Reckon it’s more like he thinks it’s too much of the Wild West and he can’t like it, now his boys are over there without his say-so. Driv him potty, that did. Made him look bad.’

‘I thought,’ I began, newly careful now that it seemed there were circus acts and circus acts and the potential for offence among them, ‘I thought you were a strongman, Mr Wolf.’ Tom, leaning back against his father’s chest, giggled softly.

‘I was,’ said Bill. ‘I was. And now I’m a strong man for my age, maid. A strong man for sixty, but who’s going to roll up to see that? And it’s Bill, Pa or Wolfie. I’m no flatty, with your Mister.’

‘I beg your pardon … Bill,’ I said, smiling.

‘So I do fillers,’ he said. ‘Run-ins. And then I’ve got up a one-man band for before the show. Me and Ma Cooke between us, see. A crystal ball and a one-man band and maybe they’ll never notice there’s no menagerie if we’re lucky.’

There was something ineffably sad about all of this, I thought. Cooke’s Circus shrinking as everyone in it grew old.

‘And shall you retire?’ I asked. ‘Or shall you always stay? Until …’

‘Until the black carriage comes for me?’ said Bill. ‘That I will. I must. And between you, me and who else is listening, maid’ – he dropped his voice – ‘I’ve an idea for a new turn. A proper spot again. If I can get everyone as needs to be talked around to it and start the training. You’d laugh if I told you – size of me – but it’s a good ’un. ’Sides,’ he said in a louder voice, ‘we’ve got to keep on till this little chavvy gets trained up, han’t we? Him and his sister.’ He lifted Tom right off his feet and shook him over his head, making the child squeal with delight.

‘And what’s he going to do?’ I said. ‘Train dogs?’

‘Acrobat,’ said Bill. ‘A tumbler, like his ma. My Lally is Topsy’s ma’s cousin’s girl and all Ilchenko on her pa’s side since way back.’ Bill put his son gently down on to the ground again. ‘He an’t no strongman, that’s for sure.’

‘Could be,’ said Tom, getting over his shyness of me at last, and flexing his thin arms ‘Might be.’ His father shook his head at him, chuckling, and then all of a sudden he looked hard at me.

‘And so Ma Cooke come and got you, did she? Not much gets past her.’

‘Do you know something, Mr … Bill?’ I said.

He hesitated.

‘Too much,’ he said, at last. ‘I dunno what bee Ma’s got in her hat, mind, but I know more than she does about some things. More than I want to, truth be told.’

‘About Topsy?’ I asked. ‘About Ana?’ I was feeling my way in the dark, but I thought I should keep at it while he was in a mood to talk to me.

‘Ana!’ he said, her name seeming to catch his interest as soon as I spoke it. ‘She’s a mystery to me, that one. Someone needs to have a quiet word with the maid. Tell her she wants to be a bit more careful like, keep on the right side if she knows what’s good for her.’

This certainly chimed with what Mrs Cooke had told me.

‘I intend to, Mr … Bill,’ I said. ‘And anything you can tell me will only help.’ But I had pushed too far now; I could see it in his face.

‘I’ve got my place here,’ he said. ‘And after what I’ve done to hang on to it I’ll keep my head down.’

‘After what you’ve done,’ I repeated, careful not to make it a question. Bill Wolf’s eyes showed just a dart of panic all the same.

‘Making a filler of myself,’ he said. ‘That’s what I mean. One step up from an odd-job man, that’s me. But I will tell you this: that old donah loves them chavs like babbies so it’s not the prads and spots that’s aching her, but His Gills is just flash mad he couldn’t stop them and coming down hard enough to break a king pole and if this show don’t hold together there’s more than me and Lall’ll end up nobbing the streets with a stick and a rag.’

In other words, I thought (and getting it into other words felt more like unseen translation than anything I had tackled since my French governess had given up on me), Mrs Cooke was missing her grown-up sons as though they were children but it was Mr Cooke’s pride, not his heart, which was wounded by the boys heading for Coney Island or wherever they were without his say-so and taking trained horses with them, and now Mr Cooke was stamping his authority on the rest of the outfit with such vigour that he might flatten it completely except that some of the artistes would cling on to this job with their little fingernails, ignoring any amount of trouble, if it meant they could avoid … Madame Toulemonde herself would have forgiven me for leaving it untranslated because what could ever express abjectness better than ‘nobbing the streets with a stick and a rag’? Nothing that I could think of.

I excused myself from the – unexpectedly delightful – Pa Wolf after that, mentally turning over the corner of his card to remind me to speak to him again, and wandered over to the tent.

I was hoping for twelve liberty horses or Anastasia riding the haute école, and was disappointed and not a little surprised to see, in the ring, what looked like three clowns standing smoking, with a sausage dog rolling on its back in the sawdust at their feet. It seemed unlikely that they would have to practise their funny walks and pratfalls all winter like the acrobats and high-wire walkers, but I was sure these were clowns. One was the spindly giant, one the midget, and the third was wearing a pair of long shoes and had a hoop in his trousers waist. All three had top hats on. They glanced at me as I entered and the midget nodded a greeting. The long man simply dipped his head as though too shy to meet my eyes. The third noted my presence – I should have said he knew I was coming, for he betrayed no surprise – but otherwise ignored me. He was evidently in charge and the more I watched him the more I thought I could see a resemblance to Mr Tam Cooke. His voice too as he put the others through their paces was the same.

After a few minutes, the little man took the cigarette butts from the other two and walked to the edge of the ring to stub them out and drop the butts over the side on to the grass, then he waddled back at a trot and lined up. Instinctively they faced towards where I was sitting, unable to ignore an audience, even an audience of one, uninvited, to a show not yet ready to be seen.

‘Akilina!’ called the boss clown and at the other side of the ring the littlest Prebrezhensky girl wound up a gramophone machine and laid the arm down.

Like most people, I have not found clowns really funny since I was five but for the next ten minutes, I laughed more than I could ever remember laughing in my life. The hooped clown had a parcel to unwrap. He rolled up his sleeves and gave his hat to the tall man to hold.
He
, unthinking, made to put the new hat on his own head and finding a hat already there, removed it, bent his lanky frame completely in half and gave it to the sausage dog who ran along the line and handed it to the tiny man, who thanked the dog gravely and tried to put the hat on
his
head. Encountering his own hat, he took it off, nudged his neighbour, interrupting the unwrapping, and passed it on.

From there, the three hats were juggled round and round, faster and faster, the parcel being thrown high in the air to get it out of the way whenever a hat came the hooped clown’s way. The sausage dog waited, stretched up against the leg of the tall clown, barking in time with the music, to offer his services again but the tall clown did not have a moment’s attention to spare. After a furious minute the parcel was undone and what was inside but another hat, and another and another and yet another. I could not help clapping as the dog nipped the tall clown’s leg and at last got hold of a hat to run along with and throw up for the tiny man to catch and now the dog was part of the frenzy too, barking first in front of the tall clown, then behind him, making the poor man spin, swaying like a reed in a gale, while the hats kept coming, until, with the music building to a flourish, the tall clown spinning like a top and the parcel empty … they stopped.

The short clown caught all the hats one by one and the dog sat down in the sawdust again. Akilina lifted the arm of the gramophone.

‘If you throw two up, Charlie, instead of giving me one,’ said the tall clown to the hooped one, ‘I’ll spin round, Jinx’ll run along with nothing and jump into Tiny’s arms, Tiny’ll make to throw him up in the air, I’ll lean over to save Jinx and all the hats can come down into the box and you shut it.’ His voice was a surprise to me. He sounded educated, no Irish or Russian about him anywhere, no circus at all.

‘No, no, no,’ said Charlie. ‘The dog’ll get the big laugh that way.’

‘Well, owzabout if Andrew and me chuck all the hats on to your head and Jinx jumps into t’box, then?’ said Tiny.

‘And I just stand there?’ said Charlie.

‘Or you and I chuck all the hats on Tiny’s head.’

‘Won’t look balanced.’

‘Look pretty kushty if Tiny were in the middle,’ said Andrew. The circus word sounded very odd in his accent. ‘I think we always get the big laugh if Tiny and I stand next.’

‘Owzabout if Charlie and me chuck all the hats on your head,’ said Tiny to Andrew. He was standing with hands on hips looking up at Andrew, indeed, almost falling over backwards, in fact, to look up at him. ‘Or if Charlie chucks his and I try and keep missing and Jinx hands them back to me.’ Charlie was shaking his head. ‘Look, just look,’ said Tiny. He and the tall man started the hats moving again. Not even missing the third clown they set them all spinning through the air and then, just as he had suggested, the little man started lobbing them up and the tall man started catching them on his head. Any that missed the dog caught until there was only one left. Tiny threw it up again and again and Andrew bent his long legs trying to catch it on the top of the wavering tower he was already wearing. Charlie, slowly, folded his arms, turned away and lit a cigarette, not even watching. At last, Tiny put the hat on his own head, turned the parcel box upside down and climbed onto it. He whistled the little dog up into his arms, whereupon the dog snatched the last hat off the midget’s head with his teeth and flung it up on to the top of the tottering stack.