Page 25 of The Show Woman

24

Cream and honey

Lena rises early. The air in the wagon is stuffy and close, and she creeps past the three still-sleeping figures, huddled under blankets, to open the window.

Once dressed, she makes her way to a small stream that putters methodically over rocks that have been smoothed out like silk. For a moment as she crouches to fill her buckets with water for tea and porridge she is tempted to touch them, feel the slimy sheen for herself, but instead she stops to watch a mayfly, its wings glistening in the morning air. It hovers, dives towards the ripples, then disappears into the sky. She stands up, glances to see if anyone is around and, seeing that the bank is empty, crouches again to urinate.

Back at the wagon, she sets the fire with the collection of wood she and Rosie gathered the morning before, carefully arranging the kindling, just as her daddy taught her.

Lena has always loved the ritual of the early morning, when the day is still ripe with possibility, tingles with a languid, unspoken magic. When her mammy left them it had seemed natural for her to take on her chores, keep things running seamlessly. To sweep out the wagon, keep it neat as a pin, to cook the porridge and the stews and the soups, and, when her daddy gave her the pennies for it, to buy bread and apples, thick blocks of cheese from a nearby dairy.

At times she had begged, would go to a farm outside whatever town or village they were showing in, with an empty milk pail and a winning expression. Some would shoo her away like a troublesome flea, others take pity on her – ‘You’re only a bairn, fancy making you come and beg, where’s your mammy anyway?’ – and she was always left with the sour feeling that even when she was given something – a drop scone hot out the oven, a jar of pinkish raspberry jam, a pail heaving with ripe plums – somehow, she left poorer than she’d arrived.

She hangs the smaller cast-iron cooking pot, the one they always use for breakfast, over the fire, and fills it with oats, water, a wee dab of salt and, a surprise for the girls, some cream. Nothing begged or borrowed here. She bought these oats herself from one of the towns further down the road in Perthshire, and the cream yesterday, from a stall in the fair. A bit of luxury to start the day, kept cool overnight in the shallows of the river. And then, to swirl in at the final moment, another rare treat: honey. She had found the jar waiting for her on the doorstep this morning.

Once again she considers the words Harry said to her last night. She has been turning them over in her mind all night like small, precious beads. Her mother, obviously distressed, sounding as though someone had betrayed her. The possibility that she had hidden something in a tree, miles and miles away in an Ayrshire showground. What was it? And why would she have tucked it away like that? Or was Harry merely mistaken?

Then there was her daddy’s reaction. Had he not believed Harry? Not taken him seriously? Or had he been to look himself and, like Harry, found nothing? How she wished she could ask him.

‘Morning,’ says Violet, emerging from the wagon, wrapped in a tatty blanket and yawning widely.

‘How’d you sleep?’ asks Lena. She is stirring the pot now with an old wooden spoon.

‘Like a happy wee babby,’ says Violet.

‘Where did you go last night?’

‘Nowhere exciting. Just a wee turn around the fair. Rosie wanted to see the fortune-teller.’

Lena knows she is lying, says nothing. The porridge is starting to thicken now, great creamy globules sputtering happily, and she feels in her dish bag for the dishes and spoons. ‘Wake the others, will you?’

Violet, who has lit a cigarette, removes it from her mouth, bangs on the door of the wagon and shouts, ‘Wakey wakey, sleeping beauties.’

‘Such grace, such refined elegance,’ says Lena, but she is smiling. Indulgent, in anticipation of her treat.

The other two emerge just as Lena is dishing up the porridge.

‘Right, ladies, a wee bit of the good stuff for breakfast this morning. Porridge mixed with a dod of fresh cream, and some honey.’

Rosie, whose face – pale at the best of times – is a greenish colour, does her best to smile. Carmen merely says that it will be better than last night’s wafer.

‘I’ll just finish this cig first,’ says Violet.

Lena, deflated, starts eating. It does not, in her opinion, disappoint. The porridge is smooth, the cream rich, and the honey impossibly sweet.

‘So what did the fortune-teller say, Rosie?’ she asks between spoonfuls.

‘The who?’

‘The fortune-teller. Violet tells me you were away seeing her last night. It’s that Madam Esmeralda, isn’t it? My daddy always said she was an auld hack.’

Rosie blows on her porridge, looks at Violet for guidance. Violet, however, is studying a tiny ladybird crawling up her dress.

‘Oh, just, you know, the usual?’

‘The usual?’ asks Lena.

But they are interrupted by a shout. Tam, their loyal hawker, is tearing towards them, barefoot and panting, his cap clutched in his hands.

‘It’s the tent,’ he says, gasping for lungfuls of air like a fish on a river bank. ‘Somebody’s slashed a hole in it.’

They have the tent sewn back up by morning’s end, and in Lena’s humble opinion the four shows they perform that afternoon are better than ever. Violet seems energised, her leaps and twirls showing such flair and poise, while Carmen has taken to joining her on the bar for a final spectacular scene, which provokes much cooing and gasping from the crowd.

Rosie meanwhile, after a wobbly start, gives a masterclass in horsewomanship. She controls Tommy with a mere nudge of her foot, performs exacting jumps, and gives a proud little smile when she hops off at the end.

But the trouble with the tent has unsettled Lena. It was a crude slash, probably done in pitch dark and by someone who’d had a bit too much of the bottle, and it has not cut as long or as deep as they perhaps intended. But it was intended. By the same person who tried to poison Tommy Pony? Or another malevolent force?

That night they bring the tent back to the wagon, instead of leaving it sitting out on the showground. They are staying in Perthshire for three weeks, then they will be heading north, up towards the Highlands and the chilly northeast coast. The rest of the season is stretching ahead of them. She holds it close, like a secret, resting next to Harry’s last words to her.