Page 48 of The Show Woman

Crieff Market Park February 1911

47

Milky pearls

It is done now. For good or for ill. Mr McClaverty has made light work of a difficult subject. And now, she must try to do the same.

Serena has always liked Crieff, nestling in the bosomy swell of the Ochil hills, with its well-heeled flatties who come for the restorative waters and the dry bar at the Hydro hotel, then sneak out after sundown to take in the circus show, and a quick dram on the fly.

‘It’s the invisible border between the Highlands and the Lowlands,’ her pa once said. ‘That’s why the drovers brought their cattle here for market, raked so much money in. Did a roaring trade.’

The drovers are mostly gone, but it is a place with a brisk, professional air. That was why her pa chose a man here to deal with his legal affairs. And she has done the same, sending the youngest McCracken out to fetch the now ageing, wizened McClaverty, bending her stiff back, so sore now, to dictate her orders, sign her ‘X’ mark, handkerchief at the ready to stop up the blood that threatens to run from her throat each time she coughed.

Now she lies on her bed, a red velvet throw pulled up to her doughy chin, a shroud almost, although one fit for a queen. What will the Loveridge girl do now? Serena had searched for a flicker of familiarity in that young, frightened face, and thought that, right enough, her mouth turned up at the corners a bit the way her pa’s had. Something about the eyes, too. That piercing quality. As though they could see right through you. A bit like hers were, once.

And she can see Maggie, too. The upturned nose, the staunch defiance, a trim elegance. Maggie Linden was a talented girl, already learning the ropes on the rings when Serena cast them out. It wasn’t the girl she had loathed, her little half-sister, who thought Serena as magnificent as the crowds did, who followed her everywhere like a puppy, gathering her lavender buds and crushing them into her pillow at night because she had heard from a gypsy girl on a showground once that lavender gave the sweetest of dreams.

But her pa had left the circus in her hands, to do with as she wished, and Maggie’s mother, that woman, had to go. She was lazy, always on the beg, sloppy, drank too much, there was often more in her pipe than just tobacco. She had seduced her father when he was weak and vulnerable and already on the decline, always had her eye on the big prize. And, most importantly of all, she wasn’t a Linden. At least Maggie was. And so was the Loveridge girl.

Serena closes her weary eyes, shuts out the weakening daylight. There will be a performance tonight. She can hear the clank of the big top outside as the final flags are adorned, the stage set, but she will not be there to see it. Her charges will not know, until later. As it should be. The show must always go on.

The Loveridge girl must surely have realised, by now, what happened to her mammy. That she, that woman, was to blame, as she was for so much that became rotten and ugly in the lives of others. If she didn’t now, she would soon.

Serena thinks of her own mammy, the one she never knew, of the lock of hair she once treasured that was now, surely, gone forever. If only her mother could have held her, just once. Pulled Serena into her, told her she loved her, kept her warm and safe as only a mammy could. Instead she had been nothing but bones, right from the very start.

Her chest is heavy, her breathing laboured and slow. It is coming now. She can feel it. Soon the darkness will close over her, as if she has never been. She spins, spins, down into the blackness, towards oblivion, and release.

And as she takes this perilous final journey, it is not to the royal brooch at her throat that her hand moves, but to the milky pearls at her wrist, her tiny lost loves, gleaming in the dusk like miniature rays of light.