Page 42 of The Show Woman

41

Outcasts

Serena is spinning. Round and round she goes, toes pointed, calves taut, spine arched like an alley cat. Her body is the shape of a star. It is weightless. Suspended in the air, she spins and she spins and she spins, while, far below, a shadow watches from the wings. She does not care. This is where she is supposed to be. This is her purest self. Her truest form. Her innate, unchanging essence.

And then, without warning, she falls. She is no longer spinning but tumbling down, down, until the ground is so close she could touch it.

She wakes with a shuddering jolt, her breath coming in brittle wheezes. The wagon has a milky glow. A snowy dusk, smearing the windows.

She has been dreaming of the ribbon again, one of her acts as a young girl, and always her favourite. Suspended from the top of the tent by great swathes of silk wrapped tightly round her middle, another clutched in her hand that she would swish and sway. By sixteen years old she was outperforming the adult acrobats in her pa’s circus, could pull in the punters all by herself.

Well, almost by herself. She recalls that shadowy figure in the wings, the one who appeared from nowhere and then was suddenly, always there. She had a habit of ruining things, that one. Taking the spotlight away from Serena. And now, it looked as though she had done it again.

Oh, how she misses the spinning. This leaden, lumpy body, whose lungs feel they are on fire with every breath, whose legs no longer operate under her command, has become useless to her. It is little more than a living coffin.

Serena feels under the covers for her pipe, loads up the cherry-wood bowl, strikes a match. Perhaps it will help soothe her aching chest, that smooth, seductive tobacco. She takes a puff, and for a fleeting moment feels a serenity, a satisfaction. And then, of course, she coughs. Hacks. Spits. Takes another suck. Repeats the process.

Serena misses her old pa. Now there was a showman. He had the circus running through his blood, the open road too. Thought nothing of picking up and heading to a new town, just because he heard another circus was planning on going there in a week or two, so he could undercut their profits. He could spot a good horseman a mile away, lick him into shape in the ring, turn him into a real act. And the way he commanded the crowds... Roll up! Roll up! he’d cry. It’s time for the greatest circus of them all. He’d have been proud of her. Of how she’d built the place up, brought in the money, performed for royalty, made stars of them all.

But, as she takes another suck on her pipe and coughs again, she knows this isn’t quite true. For, after he’d gone, carried away by the TB one bleak winter more than thirty years ago, Serena had betrayed him.

Why must the past seep into the present? Wrap its icy tendrils around her thoughts, when she wants nothing more than to leave it where it belongs? She is amazed to find her face is wet with tears. Pa would have been devastated, of course. How could she have done that? To her own family? But he hadn’t understood. He’d never been able to reconcile why Serena and that woman did not get on, just as he couldn’t comprehend Serena’s guilt over the death of her mammy.

‘It wasnae your fault,’ he soothed when she was old enough to ask how her mammy had died. ‘You were just being born. And we wanted you.’

All she’d ever had of her mammy was a lock of her hair, thick and dark. As a child she would search it out among her father’s belongings, old silver-backed combs, an elegant matchbook, and sit with it on her lap, stroking the thin strands, trying to conjure up her mammy’s face. Had she looked like her? She would stand in front of the looking glass inspecting her features. Was this long, slightly crooked nose hers? Her father bore no sign of one. What about her hooded eyes, her thin lips?

And then one day, after she arrived, and a new baby was born, had grown loud and rambunctious, tearing around the cabin, getting bigger and chubbier, the lock of hair was gone. Vanished. When she’d asked, politely, nobody had owned up to it. But she knew that woman had taken it. Thrown it away in a fit of jealousy. It made Serena wonder if she wanted to throw her away too. And she had never forgotten it.

She never forgot how the bairn was treated, either. The finest dresses, the plumpest feather bedding in her corner of the wagon. Serena had always made do, when it was just her and Pa. But this wean was to be handled like a princess, and it made Serena’s blood boil.

It wasn’t the wean she hated. She was pretty, sweet. She adored Serena, followed her around the big top, asked questions, gazed up at her thoughtfully, as though she were the most beautiful and interesting person she had ever seen in her life.

But her . The mother. Her father’s new woman. Not even a wife, because he said he could never marry again. Serena never liked her, not least because they were near enough the same age. And the woman always seemed annoyed that her pa came along with a daughter, would have preferred it if she hadn’t been born. What pained her most was that at night, secretly, when everyone else was asleep, this thought troubled her too. Surely her own mother would have preferred her not to have been born, had she been given a say in the matter?

And so Serena became an outcast in her own family. She wowed the crowds on the ribbons and on horseback – was, her pa said, the greatest performer in the whole show. But back at the wagon, after the circus finished for the night, she was ignored, spoken down to, her father seemingly oblivious to the way the woman treated her.

Her pa was so busy, any free time he could spare was given to her , or the bairn. It was as though he had simply forgotten that Serena existed outside the big top.

She was twenty-three years old when he died. Still the star performer, still the biggest draw. She was courting Davey, thinking of marrying him. Serena thought she was unbreakable. And so it proved. Because, when her pa went, she’d found that the circus had been left to her, Serena; that the woman had got nothing.

And so she had cast them out. The mean, angry woman and the wean, who was becoming a dab hand on the rings. She left them on a quiet road in Perthshire after a winter performance, told them it was time they made their own way in life. Her pa would have hated her for it. But, well, he should have changed his will. As it was, they got nothing. And even though she knew it was a betrayal, she felt she was doing right by Linden’s. And herself.

The past is restless tonight. She takes a long, slow sook on her pipe. A life on the road, she thinks, yet my troubles follow me wherever I go. She coughs. Her chest feels hard and tight. There is a long way to go until morning, and there will be no show tonight. The snow has been coming down thick and hard for two days and the punters are hunkering down in their warm, toasty homes. She might as well head down to the big top, take a look at the acrobats’ latest rehearsal. Her memories may be bubbling up, but she is Serena Linden. Broken, but unbowed. And still the proprietor of this great circus.