Page 36 of The Peculiar Incident at Thistlewick House

After the girl, who had belatedly introduced herself as Sarah, had scampered back home, Mallory took the gathered washing down to the stream and set about the backbreaking task of doing the laundry.

Soon it would be almost impossible to dry the clothes, but the day was mild and it was gusty on top of the cliffs.

She would throw the garments over some bare bushes and hope for the best. Back in September, they’d been camped near the most glorious lavender bushes and the washing had never smelled so good.

Po Po, a tiny Burmese woman with the most extraordinary, elongated neck supported on brass coils, appeared with another basket of dirty clothes on her hip.

Sarah would have been astonished to come across this shy member of the troupe.

Samson billed her as the Giraffe Woman and she was another of the Living Wonders.

The poor soul had been stolen from her people and everything she knew many years ago, but the details of this were never discussed.

Samson had acquired her from another circus but Mallory felt there was something dreadfully wrong about taking Po Po from her country and culture for the entertainment of others.

And yet it was only the animals – the horses, zebras, snakes and monkeys – that were tethered and caged.

Yes, they’d all signed contracts binding them to Samson, but had Po Po chosen to run, there was little anyone could realistically do about it.

The truth was, as a foreigner, and a woman in a strange land, she’d be foolish to try and find her way home.

The troupe knew that they were at least fed and protected by Samson. Better the devil you know.

The pair walked to the nearby stream that ran down to the sea, and worked silently but diligently, scrubbing the soiled clothes with lye soap and rubbing them against the washboard.

The water was icy cold, and their hands were raw and red, but the flowing water carried away both the dirt and the soap.

They then stood opposite each other and twisted the washing between them, to remove as much water as possible, before bundling it all back into the baskets and returning to the camp.

They’d only been at Thistlewick Tye for a day and it took time to make a new pitch feel homely, so everyone had been allocated tasks to help them settle in.

Katerina had gone to see about buying hay and maybe some turnips for the horses, and Samson was seeking out the blacksmith to discuss a lost horseshoe.

Zella and Esfir had been sent by their mother to the grocer’s to buy vegetables and the Caley sisters had been given directions to the dairy to collect fresh milk and butter.

A small group of their men were trying their luck at the village public house – the Sailmaker’s Arms. The final leg of their journey from Bury St Edmunds had been arduous, and even Katerina acknowledged the stable hands needed to let off steam.

Getting drunk and fighting with the locals was the usual way they went about it.

Only Mallory, Little Cupid and Po Po remained at the camp. They were the Living Wonders, the freaks, the oddities. And, as Katerina constantly reminded them, if people were prepared to pay for the privilege of seeing them up close, they shouldn’t be minded to provide a free show beforehand.

Cupid’s real name, if it had ever been known, was long forgotten.

He’d been with Samson for well over a decade, a year or two longer than Mallory, and was selling cheap trinkets on the streets of London when the Ballards found him.

He had wide blue eyes and a cherubic look about him, but in reality was miserable and foul-tempered unless he had an audience to impress. He was also a rotten drunk.

Po Po was equally melancholy, often sitting cross-legged in dark corners, consulting chicken bones that she threw before her onto the ground.

Mallory hoped it gave her the answers to the questions she was asking, but she spoke little and never smiled.

Harry, the coarse-spoken ruffian in charge of the animals, had laid unofficial claim to the woman, and she didn’t seem to mind, possibly because she didn’t understand all the unpleasant things he was saying as he did the deed.

The canvas wasn’t soundproof, and there were often occasions when everyone was too intoxicated to care, including Po Po herself.

Sometimes he didn’t even give her the dignity of taking her out of view of the others.

Everyone knew what they were doing, but then the sexual freedoms of the troupe were part of their lifestyle.

Zella and Mallory were the two exceptions, both of whom Katerina guarded fiercely.

The Ballards’ precious daughter attracted men wherever she went but her pregnancy had cost the company dear.

The men generally avoided Mallory, however, possibly because they couldn’t be sure that her lesions weren’t contagious.

But then, they all had their vices and did what they needed to do in order to greet the sun every morning and plaster smiles across their faces for the paying audiences.

It was a different life to that which most people lived, Mallory acknowledged.

One seen as debaucherous and wicked by others.

But everyone who belonged to Samson’s Circus of Astonishing Spectacles felt like an outcast for one reason or another, and were treated as such everywhere they went, so why should they follow the rules and religions of the people who chose to mock them and treat them as though they were nothing?

Mallory began to throw the laundry over the bushes as Po Po scurried off with the empty baskets.

There was the rumble of hooves from behind and she turned to see a young man on a noble-looking bay hunter approaching, with a liver-and-white pointer trailing along behind.

The rider was in a smart red coat and his horse was outfitted in the finest tack.

Instinctively, she pulled her hood back over her head.

‘You part of this damn circus?’ he asked, pulling on the reins as he came to a halt. His thick black hair was parted at one side and he sported neatly trimmed side whiskers.

Mallory dipped her head, to shield her shame even more, but said nothing as the dog caught the scent of something and ran off.

‘Captain!’ the man called but the dog didn’t react. Getting no response and clearly not really caring what his hound was up to, he returned his focus to Mallory.

‘How long are you intending to camp here? Not for the whole damn winter, I trust? I don’t want your sort causing trouble. My father owns most of the land hereabouts and we respect the countryside. I can already see your rubbish piling up.’

She finally found her voice. ‘Just a couple of weeks, I believe.’

The quarrel that she’d inadvertently overheard between Samson and Katerina confirmed this wasn’t to be long term, and they’d be gone before Christmas.

He was keen to return to London, but his wife insisted she could pick up a sizeable sum of money here.

In response, Mallory had heard him shout, ‘Radi Boga!’ – one of Katerina’s familiar curses, as his use of her language was only ever in exasperation.

‘We need to rest the horses and repair some of our equipment, but we’ll be on our way shortly.’

The gentleman nodded just as his dog wandered back with a long-handled wooden spoon in its mouth.

‘That belongs to us.’ She pointed at the spoon.

‘Then you shouldn’t leave it lying about on common ground where Captain can find it.’

He tugged at the reins again to turn the horse about, but as he did so, they both spotted Zella returning with a basket of vegetables.

Esfir was clinging to her skirts and chattering away – at that age when she demanded answers to everything.

Why didn’t the sun fall out the sky? What happens when you die? Why aren’t people very nice to us?

Mallory knew it had been hard for her friend to relinquish the role of mother, but had instead focused on being the best big sister she could be.

It was the bargain she’d struck with her mother after having Esfir at just fourteen.

The lad concerned had been her age and she’d believed herself in love, but the circus had moved on, and her parents had assumed parental responsibility – partly to avoid a scandal, but partly because Katerina was better placed to bring up the child.

The man paused, as men often did when they saw Zella.

If he was enchanted by her appearance in her long cotton dress, hair loose and pale cheeks flushed by the strong sea breeze whipping across the common, then he’d be utterly bewitched by the sight of her in her fleshings, fitted close to her slender body, under a highly decorated bodice embellished with sequins, glass beads and silver threads, as she gracefully swept across the rope, twenty feet in the air.

‘More of your kind,’ he said, with feigned distaste, but there was not one person on the planet who wouldn’t be captivated by the sight of such a beauty, skipping through the damp grass, head to the heavens as she laughed at something the small child beside her had said.

‘They’re sisters,’ Mallory said. ‘Zella is our high-wire performer. You should see her when—’

But the man had encouraged his horse to trot towards the two girls, leaving Mallory talking to herself.

With her hood still screening most of her face, and returning to the task of hanging laundry, she observed them talking.

She envied Zella’s confidence, as she stood defiantly with one hip jutting forward, twirling her hair around her fingers and jutting her chin up towards the stranger.

Her friend knew the power she had over men and used it to full advantage.

He slid from the horse, towering over the two girls, and his body language changed subtly the longer Mallory watched.

Initially, aggressive and confrontational, he was soon nodding and smiling – his whole body more relaxed.

Because that was Zella’s vice – the attention of young men was like a drug to her and, despite the result of her previous folly tugging at her skirts demanding attention, the young woman revelled in it.

It had been her undoing once before, and with a strange lurching in her stomach, Mallory wondered if it would prove to be the case a second time.