Page 51 of The Show Woman

50

Plumes

Rosie is knitting a baby’s hat. A letter has arrived. Jennifer has been safely delivered of a little girl. She and Richard are still deciding upon a name.

Several times she has been on the verge of packing up, leaving this place for good, and returning to her sister. She is still in one of the old Weaver wagons, and, although Harry has assured her that it is hers for as long as she wants it, she feels awkward here, out of place. This was never her world, after all. Sometimes she wonders what on earth she was doing, trying to make it her own.

The knitting needles click in the silence. How could Mary Weaver be capable of such cruelty? Lena has shown her the picture of her mother, and she cannot imagine the evil that must have coursed through Mary’s veins, to make her take that life away.

Every day she fears a knock on the door from her father. But it has not come. Harry has told her not to worry, that he would have been by now, so why worry about something that’s probably not going to happen? But still, she keeps up a fearful watch.

She lays down her needles and goes to the window. It has stopped raining. Time to feed Tommy Pony. She has spent more time with him recently, even taken him down the Gallowgate on quiet mornings before she is due at the factory. He has never done well with the cold, or being shut up. If only Lena were to bring the circus back together. Get out on the road for the summer. Would it be possible? Belle is coming along well on the trapeze, and would surely enjoy getting out of this dark, miserable place after everything that has happened with her mother.

Rosie wonders what little Belle went through with Mary during those long stretches when it was just the two of them in that wagon. Her sullen, blank face, her curious habits, her endearing friendship with Morag, her gift of the second sight – they all seem to make a little more sense now.

And perhaps Violet, too, makes a little more sense. The way she could lash out. Her sharp tongue and quick temper. Rosie was one of the few who saw her soft underbelly, the quietness that stilled in her heart, but even she knew how harsh Violet could be. Perhaps it was all her mother’s fault. A woman who could murder her own daughter must surely have instilled fear in the hearts of her remaining children, even if they didn’t know the true nature of the evil that squatted inside her.

She pictures the show again, tries to imagine it without Violet, or Carmen. They would need new acts, posters to advertise for them. Would Lena want that? After all that has happened?

She heads across the showground to the stables. The grass is soft and wet underfoot, and camp fires have started up, plumes of woodsmoke rising lazily into the sky.

‘Rosie?’

She turns around in fear. But it is not her father’s voice.

‘Carmen?’

Her beautiful Spanish friend is standing in front of her, carrying a small suitcase, a red flower in her hair.

‘What do you say, little Rosie?’ she says. ‘Will you have me back?’