Page 23 of The Show Woman

22

Someone

Lena sits on her bunk, waves of tiredness crashing over her. Her eyes feel dusty and dry, and she is glad the light glows low, just a flicker of orange from the embers outside to illuminate the inside of the wagon.

She wonders where Carmen is, hopes she has not simply wandered off into the night. The showground is a perilous place for women after dark, but for show women, particularly foreign ones as beautiful as Carmen, the town holds even more danger.

Earlier that day, before the night’s show, Carmen had produced a set of knitting needles and, with bundles of wool pooling at her feet, embarked on what looked like a scarf.

‘I didn’t know you knitted,’ Lena had said, intrigued.

‘I learnt it as a child,’ said Carmen. ‘My town, it was by the sea, and in the winter the winds were very cold, particularly for the men who went out on the waves.’

‘Your father was a fisherman?’ Lena asked.

‘ Sí . That is how he died. The boat went down.’ Her face had clouded, her beautiful features momentarily stunned into sadness, before she shrugged it off, composed herself.

‘My madre , she said we should knit jumpers for the men on the boats. Thick wool, very warm. She taught me when I was very young. He was wearing one of mine when he died, I think.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Lena. ‘You really miss him, don’t you?’

‘Very much,’ Carmen had replied. ‘He was my favourite man in the world.’

Lena unbuttons her corset now, breathes out with relief. She is pleased that Carmen is opening up to her, even if she still likes to go off by herself sometimes. She is less concerned about Violet and Rosie. She can see that their friendship, or whatever it might be, is blossoming, like the flowers which bear their names, and that to meddle in any way would be, not just unfair, but an unwise course. Violet on the warpath is never to be taken lightly. Just ask Serena Linden.

She wonders why the old woman has brought her circus here, to Blairgowrie of all places, at the same time as the fairs. Is she going dotty? Or is it a threat? A warning sign? She has never met Serena, but it was a name that was talked about in hushed tones when she was a bairn. She recalls a time when Linden’s was at Vinegarhill and she had craiked to her mammy to take her to see the elephants and the lions, the funny little donkey that her old friend Betsy, who had been twice, told her could walk on its hind legs.

And so they did. Just once, her mammy reluctant, slinking in at the back of the huge tent, Lena’s hand clutched tightly in hers. She had been entranced by it, those huge animals, the hoops of fire that dogs and ponies jumped through, the way those acrobats hurtled around the ring.

It’s a memory that had been obliterated by her mother’s disappearance. But ever since she stumbled upon the old ticket stub in her box of precious things, since Violet first made her the proposal, since they took their ladies’ circus on the road, it has fluttered around her head like a starling. Could she, too, one day, run a circus to rival Linden’s? With magnificent beasts, a whole troupe of acrobats, a sparkling big top that glistened from miles away?

A feather-soft tap at the door. Lena bunches her corset around her, stiffens. She has not drawn the bolt.

‘Who is it?’

‘Harry.’

‘Oh,’ she says, furiously buttoning her corset back up again, fingers fumbling with the tiny hooks. ‘When did you blow in?’ she says through the door.

‘About twenty minutes ago. Time for a chat?’

When she emerges from the wagon a few minutes later, dressed once more and with a faded green shawl shrugged around her shoulders, Harry has stoked up the fire, and flames are licking gently at the stone circle.

‘Cigarette?’ he says, offering her one from the now-familiar gold-edged box.

She shakes her head. ‘My voice is hoarse enough as it is. Got to look after it these days you know.’

Harry strikes a match and lights his own.

‘Right enough. Should be doing the same really. My pa used to say that honey’s good for your throat. There might be a farm round here, do you a pot or two. I’ll ask around.’

‘Thank you,’ she says. She pulls the shawl tighter, surprised at the nip in the air. She wonders why he is here. Is he looking for Violet? Or is it her he has come to see? The thought makes her nerves tingle.

‘Violet not here, then?’ he says, as though reading her thoughts.

She shakes her head, feels the sparkle drain away. ‘Away out with Rosie. Don’t know where they’ve gone, but you know Violet. Shall I tell her you were asking for her?’

‘Actually it was you I came to see.’

He takes a long, methodical draw on his cigarette and looks at her.

‘Violet told me about your mammy. That you want to find her. About the letter and all that. And, well, I remembered something from back then.’

Now Lena is sitting bolt upright. Hears the familiar rushing sound inside her ears, the blood pulsating.

‘What?’ she says. ‘Tell me.’

‘Ach, it’s probably nothing. I was a lad myself back then. Spent most of my time in the stables seeing to my pa’s horses. But that day one of them, Buster, the biggest of our drays, was lame. Didn’t know what it was but he was suffering, the poor old boy, so I’d brought him out to the yard to have a look at his hooves.’

Far away and over the field, Lena hears a great whooping and shouting, as though a large mass of people is slowly making its way towards them. The circus, it must be, letting the crowds out from the big top. A high old night, by the sounds of it. Lena shivers.

‘I had one of Buster’s hooves in my hands, was having a proper look-see, when suddenly there was your mammy in the yard with me.’

‘You’re joking,’ says Lena, and Harry shakes his head.

‘She’d been greetin’,’ he says. ‘Great tearstains on her face. And when she saw me, well . . .’ He pauses. ‘She started greetin’ some more. She came up to me and Buster and she gave Buster this great old pat and when I asked what was the matter she just shook her head and said, “You think you know someone.” And when I asked what she was meaning she just turned round and left. Or at least I thought she’d gone.

‘But when I walked out of the yard a couple of minutes later she was standing in front of this tree. It looked like she was stuffing something in there. After she’d gone I went and had a look but I couldn’t feel anything. I thought maybe I’d imagined it.’

Lena is stunned. She has so often imagined where her mammy went that day, after she’d vanished into the crowd like air. Who had she seen? Had it been a faceless man with a knife? A handsome cad with a rose, and a promise? Yet all along she had gone to the stables, and someone had made her cry, and she’d been confused and upset. Lena swallows a sob. It is almost too much to bear. And yet in the tendrils of Harry’s story there is hope. Even, possibly, a clue.

‘Give me a smoke,’ she says, and Harry places one between his lips, lights it, and hands it to her. The end glints and crackles.

‘Why didn’t you tell us back then?’ She doesn’t know whether to be angry with him for keeping quiet all these years, for not speaking up, for not helping, when he could.

‘Lena,’ he says. He looks at her across the fire, fluttering flames casting shadows across his face. ‘I did. I told yer daddy. The next day, when it was all over the showground. Came and found him. Didn’t tell no one else, just him. And he just said, “Aye, thank you, son.” That was it. I didnae really know what else to do.’

Lena takes a long drag on her cigarette. The tip is slightly moist.

‘Did my mammy say anything else to you?’

‘No. That was all she said. But I felt I should tell you, now I know that you’re looking for her, and that you’ve been thinking she’s been shacked up with another man all these years. I can’t imagine . . .’ He tails off. He is probably considering his own mammy and daddy back then, solid as their drays, with their squadron of bairns and unbreakable family, no matter how scattered to the four winds they were come the summer season, with Mary back at Vinegarhill with the youngest, Harry and Violet up to God knew what.

‘Thanks for telling me,’ she says.

She feels no urge to cry, nor weep or wail. It is as though she is putting together an enormous puzzle, like the old wooden jigsaws they kept in the primary school she and Violet attended in winter. Harry has simply handed her another piece.

‘Nae bother,’ he says. He stands up, tips his cap at her formally. ‘Looks like I have a few concerts lined up later in the summer. Glasgow, and in Ayrshire too. Might you like to come and hear me sing one night?’

The question is unexpected, and Lena lets it hang in the air, enjoying the sound of it, its musical quality, the stiff formality.

‘Aye,’ she says. ‘I might.’

Harry grins. ‘Goodnight, then.’

Lena finishes her cigarette, tosses it into the fire. It is dampening down again, will soon be no more than clinkers and ash.

She is getting up to go to bed, at last, when Carmen materialises, ghost-like, out of the darkness.

‘You’re alright?’ asks Lena. ‘I was starting to worry.’

‘I went to Mass,’ says Carmen. There is a chain of wooden beads in her hand, a silver cross looped at one end. She looks calmer than Lena has seen her for weeks and Lena remembers that time in the little church back in Stirling, the great Jesus on his cross, his crown of thorns, the strange air, both damp and dusty. ‘There was a bishop there. I took Communion. It was nice. But the wafers tasted like an old shoe. I am tired now, though.’

She drifts past Lena into the wagon, and the thought strikes Lena that Carmen was probably waiting in the shadows for Harry to leave, could see she has been upset. How kind of her to do that, she thinks, and how thoughtful.