wants to watch out, madam, if you ask me.’
Her voice died away as we both heard someone come under the canopy and open the door flaps. It was Mr Cooke, still rather on his dignity, although his face softened when he looked up at Topsy high in the roof.
‘There’s my good lass,’ he said. ‘Got the circus wrote through you like Blackpool rock. Not like some we could mention, eh, Mrs Gilver? You don’t catch Topsy kicking up a fuss and a bother when she turns her back and loses something.’
‘Oh, Pa, come on with you,’ said Topsy. She was frowning down at him from her high perch, with her hands on her hips. ‘I can’t just lay my hands on a prop – probably put it somewhere silly and forgot it – it’s not the same. How would you feel if you went to town one day and come back to find … say, Sambo dead and gone, or Midnight?’
‘Cheek of a monkey, you have, talking to the rum coll of the show that way,’ said Pa Cooke. He shook his whip at Topsy, not too threateningly since it was trussed up like a horse bandage for safe carriage, and besides his eyes were twinkling. Either proper circus folk had privileges of which jossers could only dream or it was just that the sweet, dimpling Topsy could wind any man around her little finger where the haughty Anastasia left them cold. As though to confirm it, his face grew stern again as he turned towards the sound of someone coming into the ring from the backstage doors. Anastasia, evidently, was not to be treated to any leftover smiles.
When the curtains were swept aside, though, it was not Anastasia and her pony who stood there. Rather stark-eyed, Mrs Prebrezhensky came falteringly into the ring.
‘Mee-suss Kilvert?’ she said. It took me a moment to realise that she was talking to me. ‘Can I speak with you, please. It is of most important.’
‘Why, certainly,’ I said. ‘Do excuse me, Mr Cooke.’ I hurried towards the curtains, aware of his contemplative stare and a look of acute interest from the bright-eyed little figure perched above.
With the fall of the curtain behind us came a feeling that we had entered another world. We were standing in a narrow corridor whose walls were fashioned from patched and faded canvas and whose floor was made of slatted boards set on the grass below and covered with sacking. Above the archway back to the ring, the top of the tent was still visible and I could see one end of the beam where Topsy was sitting, but back here sounds were clothy and muffled and I could hear my own breathing, unnaturally loud as when one is wearing a rubber bathing cap, and could smell none of the fresh sawdust and oil of the tent, the purposeful, competent smell I had thought was the smell of the circus, but only the stale dust of the sacking under our feet and faintly from under that the cold smell of the ground, dying grass and earth turning to mud. I shivered.
Mrs Prebrezhensky laid a hand on my arm and drew me further along the corridor, past little cubby-holes full of painted barrels and harnesses, past trunks full of spangled costumes and tables covered with props. I saw the parcel of hats from the clowns’ act that morning.
‘I know why you are here,’ she said, as she hurried me along. ‘Polly told me dinnertime. It is sometimes most useful to be able speak secrets in a crowd.’ She smiled at me as she held up a piece of the canvas and we stooped to pass under it, emerging from the warren of passageways into the low light of the field. ‘I bring you this ways because nobody need to see we go,’ she said. Sure enough, we were near the door end of a wagon and with a quick look round to see that we were unobserved, she flitted up the steps with me hurrying after.
Inside, the wagon was criss-crossed with a veritable cat’s cradle of washing lines, over which were draped dozens of pairs of woollen stockings and as many again woollen vests and winter knickers. The door of the stove was open to help with the drying but it seemed
Her voice died away as we both heard someone come under the canopy and open the door flaps. It was Mr Cooke, still rather on his dignity, although his face softened when he looked up at Topsy high in the roof.
‘There’s my good lass,’ he said. ‘Got the circus wrote through you like Blackpool rock. Not like some we could mention, eh, Mrs Gilver? You don’t catch Topsy kicking up a fuss and a bother when she turns her back and loses something.’
‘Oh, Pa, come on with you,’ said Topsy. She was frowning down at him from her high perch, with her hands on her hips. ‘I can’t just lay my hands on a prop – probably put it somewhere silly and forgot it – it’s not the same. How would you feel if you went to town one day and come back to find … say, Sambo dead and gone, or Midnight?’
‘Cheek of a monkey, you have, talking to the rum coll of the show that way,’ said Pa Cooke. He shook his whip at Topsy, not too threateningly since it was trussed up like a horse bandage for safe carriage, and besides his eyes were twinkling. Either proper circus folk had privileges of which jossers could only dream or it was just that the sweet, dimpling Topsy could wind any man around her little finger where the haughty Anastasia left them cold. As though to confirm it, his face grew stern again as he turned towards the sound of someone coming into the ring from the backstage doors. Anastasia, evidently, was not to be treated to any leftover smiles.
When the curtains were swept aside, though, it was not Anastasia and her pony who stood there. Rather stark-eyed, Mrs Prebrezhensky came falteringly into the ring.
‘Mee-suss Kilvert?’ she said. It took me a moment to realise that she was talking to me. ‘Can I speak with you, please. It is of most important.’
‘Why, certainly,’ I said. ‘Do excuse me, Mr Cooke.’ I hurried towards the curtains, aware of his contemplative stare and a look of acute interest from the bright-eyed little figure perched above.
With the fall of the curtain behind us came a feeling that we had entered another world. We were standing in a narrow corridor whose walls were fashioned from patched and faded canvas and whose floor was made of slatted boards set on the grass below and covered with sacking. Above the archway back to the ring, the top of the tent was still visible and I could see one end of the beam where Topsy was sitting, but back here sounds were clothy and muffled and I could hear my own breathing, unnaturally loud as when one is wearing a rubber bathing cap, and could smell none of the fresh sawdust and oil of the tent, the purposeful, competent smell I had thought was the smell of the circus, but only the stale dust of the sacking under our feet and faintly from under that the cold smell of the ground, dying grass and earth turning to mud. I shivered.
Mrs Prebrezhensky laid a hand on my arm and drew me further along the corridor, past little cubby-holes full of painted barrels and harnesses, past trunks full of spangled costumes and tables covered with props. I saw the parcel of hats from the clowns’ act that morning.
‘I know why you are here,’ she said, as she hurried me along. ‘Polly told me dinnertime. It is sometimes most useful to be able speak secrets in a crowd.’ She smiled at me as she held up a piece of the canvas and we stooped to pass under it, emerging from the warren of passageways into the low light of the field. ‘I bring you this ways because nobody need to see we go,’ she said. Sure enough, we were near the door end of a wagon and with a quick look round to see that we were unobserved, she flitted up the steps with me hurrying after.
Inside, the wagon was criss-crossed with a veritable cat’s cradle of washing lines, over which were draped dozens of pairs of woollen stockings and as many again woollen vests and winter knickers. The door of the stove was open to help with the drying but it seemed
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