Lionboy by Zizou Corder Page B

meaningfully at each other, but with Maccomo having his rest, there was no chance to talk. It would have to be later. Charlie was desperately impatient.
    The singing put Charlie in mind of the strange, exciting music he had heard the first time he saw the circus ship. As Maccomo was settled in the lionchamber, giving Charlie no opportunity to be alone with the young lion, Charlie decided to go and find Pirouette or Madame Barbue and ask them about the music to take his mind off it. But Madame Barbue was shaving her legs, and told him, from behind the bathroom door, that Pirouette was rehearsing in the big top and mustn’t be disturbed. So Charlie wandered back to the ropelocker in search of Julius, but Julius’s father had fallen off a stepladder practicing one of the clowns’ knockabout scenes with the monkeys, and Julius had to hold ice on his father’s leg, otherwise it would never be better by the time they got to Paris.
    “So when are we getting there?” asked Charlie, surprised, because as far as he could tell they were miles from land and hadn’t even seen France yet. Which was, come to think of it, odd, after three days at sea.
    “Oh, that’s because we strike a course down the middle of the channel,” said Julius. “If we go too close to shore, people yell for us to come in and do the show, and then the monkeys get overexcited and make so much noise whooping and chattering that all the other animals get worked up, so the skipper keeps out to sea. France is just over there to port. We’ll be coming in this afternoon, in time to restock in Le Havre and then head up the Seine with the tide tomorrow. We’ll make Rouen by tomorrow night, probably. You should talk to the sailorguys, then you’d know what’s going on.”
    As Julius was stuck with his dad’s ice pack, he was not available to show Charlie where the music had come from. “Ask Hans,” he said. “He’ll take you down there.”
    Charlie found Hans covered in mud as usual, sitting in the Learned Pig’s pigsty. He was eating cake and playing with a kitten and looking sad.
    “What’s the matter?” asked Charlie.
    “The Learned Pig is not learned enough,” said Hans. “There is a Learned Little Horse in France who is doing algebra, but the Learned Pig only does addition and subtraction and multiplication and division.”
    “But how can a pig possibly do that?” Charlie burst out. “Or a horse, I mean . . . it’s hard enough for human kids. How can animals do it?”
    Hans looked up, and for once he seemed happy. He was delighted that Charlie didn’t know. “Oh,” he said mysteriously. “I can’t possibly tell you. Couldn’t possibly. You’ll have to wait and see—see the show, I mean, and then you’ll see that he just is very learned.”
    Charlie looked at the big, solid, tubular pig that lay snoozing at Hans’s feet, his white eyelashes resting on his hairy pink cheek. He looked about as clever as a piece of lard: i.e., about as dumb as a dumb animal can get.
    But then, most people don’t know that cats talk.
    Charlie wondered about the pig. Could he talk? He really didn’t look as if he would have anything very interesting to say. Hans leaned forward and scratched him between the ears and he snuffled in his sleep, in a rather endearing way.
    Charlie sighed.
    “Tell me about the music, Hans,” he said. “When I was brought on board there was the most wonderful music going on. Sort of wheezing and droning and pumping and singing, all at once. Like an accordion, only not.”
    “Ah,” said Hans. “That’s the Calliope.”
    “Ca-what-appy?” said Charlie.
    “Calliope,” said Hans.
    “Ah,” said Charlie, none the wiser.
    “She’s a sort of organ,” said Hans. “She’s fantastic. Do you want to see her? Let’s go and look.” And in a second, both boys were off down the deck, Hans still clutching the kitten and Charlie hurtling behind, not wanting to lose him.
    “Steady on, you two,” cried a sailor as they