Page 35 of The Show Woman

34

Regrets

She has made it to the big top. It is an effort now, to get trussed up in her finery, squeeze her bloated feet into dainty, too-small shoes, affix her gold and ruby brooch to her collar, her very own royal standard. Her chest crackles dangerously with every movement she makes. Her back aches as though she has carried a thousand circuses on it.

But she is here, gripping her cane, standing in the centre of the ring as the audience around her, a panoply of local dignitaries and townsfolk, stand to applaud her.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ says Bobo the clown, his garish smile alighting upon her, ‘I give you Serena Linden, circus proprietor, founder of Linden’s Circus and beloved by royalty, past and present.’

She has told him to say this, of course, hauled the sour, balding old coot in for a harsh word that very afternoon. He was not pleased. But then, Bobo has not been pleased with much since 1897, the year he lost Momo, the other half of his double act, to Pinders-Ord. She should retire him soon. Get some young blood in. If only he weren’t so popular.

Serena waits for the applause to die down. She may not be so steady on her feet these days; her body may have turned to blubber, her face does not have the sparkle that was once so admired when she was a young lass. But she can still command a crowd.

‘Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,’ she says. Her voice is husky, weak, and she coughs briefly before continuing. ‘I am greatly honoured to be here today, among you all. The Royal Linden’s Circus has always striven to be the gold standard – the royal standard, you might say – in high-quality circus acts. We have brought you the very best, and we intend to continue to bring you the very best.

‘When my father started this circus back in 1850 with just one acrobat, a horse, and two rather down-on-their-luck donkeys...’ here, she pauses for the inevitable flurry of laughter ‘...he could never have imagined that, one day, we would be celebrating sixty years in the business. And yet here we are, stronger than ever.’

She stops. Coughs. Feels the bile rise in her throat, the blood slick down her windpipe. She turns away, forgetting, just briefly, that the audience are all around her, a perfect circle watching her from every angle.

She coughs so violently that the force pushes her to her knees. She gasps for air, clutches her chest. Bobo runs forward, huge shoes flapping, but she waves him away, eyes streaming.

There is blood now. She rocks back and forth, blood streaming from her mouth, is vaguely aware of the horrified wheel of faces that surround her.

‘Well,’ says Bobo in his best silly-clown voice, ‘that’s it from us tonight. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and enjoy the rest of your evening.’

There is a smattering of applause. Some members of the audience look appalled as the old woman remains on her knees, wheezing wildly, spitting globules of ruby-red blood from her throat. A young nurse, still in her uniform, runs forward, but she too is shooed away.

As the crowd disperses, muttering loudly, Serena slowly gets back to her feet, clasping her cane for support. She watches their retreating backs, pictures Bobo’s sniggering, too-wide smile, and chokes again. Except this time, it is a sob.

Time with the soothing bottle. For some reason she cannot seem to bend down far enough to remove her shoes, and so they remain on her feet, pointing out at a jaunty angle from underneath the covers as she lies prone, uncomfortable, half-seated, on the daybed.

She should go to a doctor. She has the money for it, could ask for one immediately in this refined city of Edinburgh, chock-full of surgeons and medical students who would no doubt be grateful, even honoured, to examine the extraordinary Serena Linden.

But the truth is that she cannot face it. She already has her suspicions about what ails her, and what good would a quack do when she already has one in her hand, in liquid form? She takes another swig. But the brandy does not do its job as well as it used to, cannot quite blot out the pain.

And there is another thing the brandy no longer obliterates. She thinks of Violet Weaver, her body broken, on the floor of a candy-striped tent. The Loveridge girl – a Loveridge; she still cannot quite believe it – stripped of her show in a mere second.

She pauses, taps the side of the bottle with her old pearl bracelet, the one Davey made for her so many years before. It makes a pleasing tinkling sound. All those pearls, so easily turned to dust.

Her thoughts flutter like birds. Guilt mingles with shame and something else, something deeper. Perhaps, she thinks, as she takes another swig, it is regret.