Page 32 of The Show Woman

31

Fillings

That night, Lena dreams of the coal merchant’s cart. Her father’s body, little more than bones now, rattling viciously in the back while she sits up front with the horses, their breath heavy and forced. Before she can stop them they plunge into a river, and it is deep, too deep, and they are sinking into the rushing water, and Lena is gasping for air, and just as she disappears below the waves she can see her mother’s blue shawl in the watery shadows beneath them.

She wakes, soaked in sweat. Outside there is only the faint rustle of the wind, blowing through the sparse leaves that remain on the trees. Winter is at the gate. Soon it will be dark by four o’clock and the city will take on a pale, sickly glow in daytime, the sky a pallid, effortful grey.

Lena has been restless since the moment they arrived back at Vinegarhill. Most of the shows were still on the road, the familiar clatter replaced by a deadening flatness. It was as though the showground herself had slept through summer, stirred only by the lazy time-keeping of the dandelion clocks that wound around her edges, the land waiting patiently for her occupants to return.

Lena did not want to be here, yet she could not, would not, go anywhere else. She had been born at Vinegarhill, in the same wagon she now lay in, and it was here, on this same bed, where her father had died. But even then, in those harsh, bright days after her daddy’s death, she had still felt as though she was in perpetual motion, forever moving forward.

Lena thinks of the promise she made to her father. Find her , he said. But her daddy is dead and gone. For all she knows, her mammy might be too. Violet is here, weak and feeble, but alive. Several times in these past, dark, miserable weeks Lena has considered lashing up the wagon, heading for Galston, searching for the tree, just as she had decided. But then she will think of Violet, the way she spun downwards, the sickening thump as she hit the ground, her body crushed, the spine bent, and she knows she must stay here, for now.

Like Violet, albeit in a different way, Lena too had been grounded.

‘Are you in there, hen?’

There is a loud thump on the side of the wagon. Lena has slept late, unusually for her, and her eyes feel sticky and sore as she hauls herself out of bed. Mary Weaver is at the door, as stout and implacable as she was the day after her daddy died.

Lena was not sure if Mary would blame her for Violet’s accident, would be furious with the lassie who put her daughter in such danger. But Mary has instead laid the blame squarely at Violet’s feet.

‘It was bound to happen,’ she said when Violet was eventually brought back from Ayr, strapped to the back of a cart, lifted gingerly into a wagon by Harry and her oldest brother, William, down for a brief visit. ‘All that swinging around on the trapeze like a wild woman. I’m only amazed she didn’t break her back long before this.’

Lena is astonished that Mary could be so detached from her own daughter’s pain, particularly when she had been so attuned to Lena’s. But Mary had always been something of an enigma. With old Billy dead, she preferred to stay at Vinegarhill with their youngest, Belle, now fourteen, rather than do the shows each summer. Her daddy had called her a ‘sour’ woman, which had confused Lena when she was younger because she was always so nice to them both, particularly in the years after her mammy was first gone, bringing them plates of leek and potato soup she’d made fresh, or offering to lend a hand with their washing.

‘You need any clothes done?’ asks Mary, and Lena shakes her head.

‘I’m alright, Mary. It’s just me now, don’t forget. I can do my own washing easy enough.’

‘Aye, well,’ says Mary. She does not move.

‘Do you want to come in?’ Lena says eventually.

Mary steps in without another word and parks herself on the unmade bed while Lena unfurls herself into the old rocking chair. Mary’s eyes flit around the caravan. Apart from the rumpled sheets the place is as neat as a pin. Clothes hung up and carefully folded, Lena’s mammy’s old silks hung on the wall, the window clean, surfaces scrubbed and polished until they are gleaming. It is one of the only benefits of no longer being on the road: the time to get the place straight, only one body in the wagon each night instead of four of them sharing the same tiny space. Lena’s heart strains with sadness.

‘It’s about Violet,’ says Mary. ‘She’s going to have to go. Harry and I had her away up at the hospital today and it’s no good. Her back’s gone. She’ll never walk again.’

Lena says nothing. She feels a weight in the pit of her stomach.

‘They’re willing to take her at Stobhill. She’ll be on a ward with the ones with broken spines. It’s for the best. We just can’t take care of her here. That wee lassie that sticks to her like a limpet isn’t up to it.’

Lena is suddenly furious. They can’t dump Violet in a hospital for the rest of her life, surely? Violet who loves the open road and the air, who used to fly on her trapeze? She’ll wither and die in a place like that.

‘Can you not keep her here? I can help look after her, and there’s Rosie, and you. Even Belle’s been helping her get dressed. Surely between the four of us we can work something out?’

Mary shakes her head. ‘I’m not up to it any more. And Rosie can’t afford those pain draughts that doctor’s been giving her, not long-term. I’m afraid this is the only option. She will never walk again, the doctors confirmed it. The Corporation will pay for her, and she’ll have a place for life.’

Life, thinks Lena grimly. What sort of a life would that be, hidden away in an institution?

‘But she’ll hate it. Surely you know that.’

Mary shrugs. ‘She’ll have to get used to it.’

Lena is panicking now. Surely the old woman wouldn’t do that to her own flesh and blood? To her wee girl?

‘Please, Mary. You can’t do this. We’ll sell a wagon, I’ll get a job in the factory; we could sell the tent, come to think of it. I started a show by myself, didn’t I? Surely we can give her something of a life?’

‘Oh, come on, hen. You’re talking nonsense. Are you going to give up everything you own to wheel Violet round in a spinal chair? Clean up her piss five times a day? You realise she wouldn’t be able to live here at Vinegarhill at all, don’t you? She’d need full-time care in a house or a flat somewhere. You think you can afford one of those on the money you’ll get from that tent? No, the institution is the only answer. They’ll give her more care than we can here. She’ll be grateful one day. So will you.’

Lena slumps back, defeated. ‘Does she know?’

Mary shakes her head. ‘Not yet. The doctor told me privately. She’ll only get all worked up about it. They’ll give her a bed in the new year. It’ll keep until then.’

She looks at Lena, sees her horror-stricken face.

‘You can still visit her, hen.’

She smiles. Mary has a tooth missing, near the back. Lena has never noticed it before. Mary sees her looking.

‘Fell out years ago,’ she says, tapping at her gum with her finger. ‘Never could find it. A right bugger. It had a wee filling in it, real gold. Could have sold it.’

She laughs, a deep guttural crack, and Lena smiles politely, wondering how she could ever have believed this coarse, uncaring woman to be a mother figure.