Page 15 of The Show Woman

14

Caged birds

Rosie sits astride Tommy Pony, breathing in lungfuls of early morning air. Ahead of her on a fencepost sits a magpie, its black wings gleaming like oil in the sunshine.

‘Good morning, Mr Magpie, how’s your wife and bairns?’

It was her mother who taught her to say this, a talisman against the bad luck of seeing a single magpie without its companion. One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl and four for a boy.

‘I never did see four magpies,’ her mother said once, when Rosie was about ten. ‘That must be why I ended up with you and your sister.’

Rosie chokes at the memory. She misses her mother; fears for her, given how her father will react to her disappearance. The man treated her as though she were a possession, a plaything, believed she was under his complete control. Whatever rage has been kindled in him as a result of her flight, her mother will bear the brunt.

She thinks of Jennifer, preparing for her wedding, gathering her meagre trousseau, hopeful for a new life, bairns of her own. Rosie’s bridesmaid dress still in the parlour, newly sewn and unworn. She wonders if she has been monumentally selfish, leaving them to him. Then she remembers her father’s thick, evil hands. The words he whispered, rough and guttural, into her ear. The way he touched her. Running away from him is the only selfish thing she has ever done in her life. She will not persecute herself for it. She grew up believing that control was something only others could have. Her father, his father before him. The women who orbited around them were merely possessions, assets, like the chickens kept locked at night in a coop in the front yard. Ready to be used when necessary. But the day Tommy Pony arrived it had dawned on Rosie that it did not have to be like this. That if she were brave enough, she could wrest back control of her life, herself, and her body. Finally, she had. She would never let anyone, or anything, control her again.

She reaches down to pat Tommy. He has been nervous around the big Clydesdale horses, and is not used to performing either. Yet he has been brave. Held his own. Been there for her, too, good as gold.

‘Morning.’ Violet strides into the small paddock, eyes bleary, hair tied loosely in a bun. It has rained overnight and a light smirr hangs in the air. The ground is soft, squelches under her boots. ‘How’s Tommy boy today?’

Rosie jumps down. The magpie is still on the fence, its beady eyes resting on her.

‘Not too bad,’ she says. ‘Thought I’d take him out for a quick trot this morning, away from the crowds. It’s been a big change for him.’

Violet lights a cigarette and perches on the fence. The magpie flicks its head with annoyance, opens its wings and flies into a nearby tree. ‘You too, I’d imagine.’

Rosie says nothing. She is still a little afraid of Violet, her worldly ways, her experiences and her stories. She has met lion-tamers, toured with the famous Linden’s Circus, and been all the way to England. Until she left the farm Rosie hadn’t even got as far as Ayr town. But there is something else about Violet which unnerves her. An undercurrent. A sense of something other . When Violet is around, the air crackles with electricity. Excitement. She is afraid of her, yes, yet she wants to be around her. Life feels vivid, more brightly coloured, when she is near.

Finally Rosie nods.

‘It’s strange,’ she says slowly. ‘Not being at home. It’s where I’ve always been. All I’ve ever really known. And this world...’ She gestures out behind them to the showground, where tents huddle together, Wurlitzers are striking up their tinny tunes and a swirl of people, ready for a day at the fair, are starting to gather. ‘It’s still so different. And it’s always changing. I like it, but it’s scary, too.’

‘Perhaps you need to change with it,’ says Violet, taking a long drag on her cigarette and looking at her closely.

‘Is that what you do?’

Violet snorts. ‘I suppose so. When your home is the road, you keep moving. Your head is always racing on to the next thing, the next place. It becomes part of you. The road, the travel, the life. It’s all I’ve ever known.’

Rosie smiles shyly at her.

‘Do you think you could ever live in a house? As a . . .’ the word sounds strange in her mouth ‘...flattie?’

Violet snorts again, reaches her hand round to the nape of her neck to tug on her bun. ‘Not likely. I’d feel like one of those birds they sell on the penny shies, all caged up.’

She looks up at the magpie, still solitary, watching them from a branch of the tree.

‘You imagine Mr Magpie up there.’

Rosie blushes. Violet must have heard her talking to the bird.

‘If we put him in a cage, fed him worms through the bars, how long do you think it would take for all those lovely black and white feathers to fall out? Do you think he’d still be a handsome, fine-feathered chap in a month? Or even a week? Or do you think he’d turn into a bald little coot, shrivelled and miserable, refusing even the juiciest worms?’

Rosie looks up again at the magpie, at its taut, gleaming feathers. Then she looks at Violet, imagines for a moment how she would look without her magnificent long hair, or the sparkle in her eyes.

‘It’s the only life I’ve ever known, but it’s the life for me,’ says Violet, grinding out her cigarette.

‘I was caged too,’ says Rosie in a small voice. ‘In my own way.’

Violet looks at her. ‘Tell me,’ she says. ‘I know you’ve been holding something in. Keeping it close. You can trust me. I’m like Mr Magpie. I won’t breathe a word.’

And so Rosie tells Violet about her father, about the unspeakable things he did to her, how she was suffocating with anger and grief in that farmhouse, how she had to get away before it burst out of her and broke everything.

‘I can’t tell you how much it meant when I saw that poster,’ she says, looking at Violet, at her pale skin, almost translucent, her wide eyes. ‘I knew it was my ticket out of there. It was the end and the start. A new life.’

Violet catches her wrist and squeezes it. Her hands are cold, the fingers soft.

‘I think you’re the bravest person I’ve ever met, Rosie Posy. I’m proud of you. And you should be proud of yourself. And don’t you go thinking you’re the only one around here starting a new life. We all are. Me, Lena, Carmen – we all needed to be here. That’s why it’s working so well.’

She lets Rosie’s hand drop.

‘Lena says we’re off tomorrow, on to Falkirk. So if I were you I’d get Tommy Pony trussed up for his show this afternoon, and then come and help us get the tent up.’

She touches Rosie’s cheek briefly, then turns towards the wagons.

Rosie leads Tommy back to the stable, feeling lighter than she has in years. When she looks up at the tree, the magpie has gone.