Page 6 of The Show Woman

5

Circus of Ladies

Spring arrives. Across the city they feel it: in the dense, clanking shipyards where huge hulls are constructed from sheet metal and men’s sweat; in the elegant west where ladies take tea in chintz-papered parlours and waft tiny fans against smoothly buffed faces. In the packed, stench-ridden Gorbals where families live ten to a room, children run barefoot over jagged cobbles and the whole place reeks of piss and despair. The air is coming closer, needling its way through brick walls, under doors, and on to skin. Soon, a damp warmth will rise over the city. The showmen and women are already streaming away from its cloying grasp, out into the countryside where the air is clear, soft patches of grass await them among the tall, swaying lupins and moonlit nights beckon, fresh and alluring as a young lover.

At Vinegarhill, under a threadbare awning that stretches over the front of the wagon, Lena clutches her mother’s pendant to her throat, enjoying its metallic coolness. It is mid-afternoon and auditions are under way. A young lassie with no shoes and an oversized pinafore is showcasing an uninspiring flea circus. Her fleas are limp and lethargic, and, despite repeated prods by the girl, the little paper steam engine she has built for them refuses to move. Lena suspects at least two of the insects are dead.

‘Can’t you make them do something?’ asks Violet. She looks hot and irritated, a bead of sweat rolling slowly down her cheek like a tear.

The girl flushes. ‘I’m trying, miss,’ she says. ‘I think it’s too hot for them.’

Gently she picks up a single flea and places it on top of a tiny miniature horse next to the steam train. It immediately hops off.

‘I think we’ll leave it there, hen,’ says Lena. The girl dispiritedly packs up her circus and trudges off. Lena turns to Violet, who is rolling her eyes. ‘Do you think that’s it?’

So far they have seen an old tarot-reader named Mavis who her father always said spent more time with the bottle than her cards, and Violet’s sister Belle, who at thirteen can perform an excellent cartwheel but little else, and anyway, her mammy has strictly forbidden her from getting involved in Violet’s latest hare-brained venture.

Then came a large woman with a peculiar flat nose and wide, flared nostrils. She was the pig lady, she said. Would they like her to dance? They said no.

The year her mammy vanished Lena had been separated from her father at one of the large Edinburgh grounds, stranded amid a throng of loud, excitable fairgoers. A crowd of men, beery and shouting, had jostled her, and she’d fallen through a curtain into a dark, acrid-smelling tent. An oil lamp flickered in the corner next to a vast bed. On it sprawled a woman. She was naked save for a bolt of ruby-red silk draped over the vast folds of her body. She stared at Lena, as surprised to see the little girl as she was to have encountered her.

‘Hello,’ the woman said. ‘What’s your name?’ The flesh on her arms hung down by her sides like a set of folded wings.

‘Lena,’ she said. She turned her head away, suddenly ashamed to be staring at the woman, and to her surprise the lady laughed.

‘You’re not embarrassed to be looking at me, are you?’ she asked. Her voice was high and unusual, and her laugh had a tinkling quality. Lena wondered if she might be foreign. There had been more and more Europeans at the shows in the last few years, her father said they had changed things, brought new acts and curious languages and a breath of strangeness that hung over the showgrounds. ‘Everyone looks at me, young girl. That is what I am for.’

Lena turned her head back. The woman was beautiful. She had a rosebud mouth, and long black hair that tumbled in messy curls. The layers of flesh around her middle pillowed out in soft white rings. Lena thought she could fall asleep on her, that she would be warm and comforting, a mother of sorts. Her eyes pricked with tears.

‘Do you like to be looked at?’ she asked.

The woman smiled again. ‘That, little girl, is not the point. It is what I am for,’ she repeated.

Lena took a step towards her and the woman stretched out a round, pale hand. But just as Lena reached her a man appeared at the door, shouted at the woman in a sharp, staccato language. Lena could not understand what he was saying but knew he was angry. He shooed her out of the tent like a troublesome dog and she ran as fast she could, out into the crowds, back towards the sunlight and away from the strange, beautiful fat lady. But she had never forgotten that woman, or what she said. It is what I am for . It made her unbearably sad. Lena knew that freaks were popular, but she could not bring herself to hire one.

‘I’m starting to think this is the worst idea I’ve ever had,’ says Violet, lighting a cigarette. ‘And I once slapped Serena Linden.’

Lena looks out on to the vast ground, strangely empty now. Vinegarhill has lost some of its usual hum since the shows went back on the road. The shouts of drunken men falling into wagons at midnight have gone, replaced by the cackle of foxes. Where Hammond organs piped all day next to Wurlitzers and carousels, now the thwack of women from the tenements across the way beating their washing carries on the air.

They have bought a large tent with gay pink stripes down the side from a friend of Billy Weaver, Violet’s brother. It is big enough for Violet’s trapeze, and if they can hire another three acts they can catch up the shows already on the road by May, make enough money to get through the winter. But that will only be possible if they have acts to show.

‘Lena?’

A sharp voice cuts across the showground. Lena shades her eyes from the sun, sees Mary Weaver standing staunch, arms folded, outside her caravan.

‘Lena, come over here, will you? I’m needing a word.’

‘Uh-oh,’ says Violet.

‘What does she want?’ whispers Lena, rising from her seat. ‘I’ve already told her we won’t be taking Belle on the road with us.’

‘I imagine,’ says Violet, a small smile playing on her lips, ‘she’ll be wanting to give you a wee bit of advice.’

Lena trudges across the ground. The earth is hard and dry, tufts of moss nudging through the cracks. Mary was always trying to give Lena’s mother advice when Lena was little. She’d materialise in their wagon, sometimes late at night, or early in the morning when her daddy was still asleep, hustling Maggie to one side, talking in a low, urgent voice about takings and money and other things too, matters that Lena could never quite grasp. She knew her mother only endured it because her daddy had such respect for old Billy. That Maggie found the older woman oppressive, stifling.

‘Oh, she doesn’t even let me breathe, that woman,’ she said once, after a particularly long session at the Rood Fair down in Dumfries. Lena’s father had been minding the carousel, and it was just her and Mammy in the caravan when Mary came calling.

‘Tell her to go away, then,’ said Lena, and her mother’s face had hardened.

‘It doesn’t work like that, hen,’ she’d said. ‘Not any more.’

Mary is wearing an apron now, her face red from the flames of the open fire. Flour has streaked her grey hair white, and she looks old and tired. ‘Just been baking some bread,’ she says, motioning for Lena to step inside. ‘I’ve been wanting a word with you, seeing as you’re hell bent on this circus idea,’ she says, shutting the caravan door. ‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing? You’re still a wee lass.’

Lena prickles at the remark. She is twenty-one years old. She has been running the takings for her daddy since she was a bairn of ten. She might not be a married woman with a brood of her own, but she knows how to run a show.

‘I think I know what’s best,’ she says. ‘It’ll take time, I know that. But once we get a few acts . . .’

‘Acts?’ Mary interrupts her. ‘You’ve got that wayward daughter of mine on the trapeze and that’s it. You won’t last five minutes on the road, the pair of you.’

Lena has never quite understood Mary and Violet’s relationship. As a child Violet was always out on the ground, hanging around Lena’s daddy’s carousel, begging other families for a go on their rides, flitting into the nearby town – anything really, so as not to be back at the wagon with her mammy. And yet, although she knew Mary could be stern, Lena has always thought her a good mother, fierce and protective. When her own mammy disappeared it was Mary who gave her cuddles, soothed her when she cried, when some of her other friends’ parents had retreated, backed away, as though Lena were somehow tainted.

Perhaps Violet and Mary, both stubborn and equally unpredictable, were just too much alike.

‘We’ll get some acts, I’m sure of it,’ Lena says.

‘And what about money? You won’t get far without it. Have you enough to feed your horses, pay your fees for the pitches on the fairgrounds? How will you feed yourselves, for that matter?’

‘I’ve got money,’ Lena says shortly. And she does. The carousel was a good sale. There’s enough for a few months on the road. But her mother used to drill it into her that you did not talk about money to outsiders. It was a private affair, not to be discussed. As far as Lena was aware, Mary was the only person outside the family that Maggie had ever talked to about it. But that didn’t mean Lena had to.

‘Your mammy wasn’t always good with the takings, did you know that?’ Mary says now, and Lena flinches. ‘Ach, she could talk a good game, but she was a little light-fingered at times. Don’t know what she did with it all.’ Mary laughs, showing yellowing teeth.

Lena shakes her head. ‘I don’t think that’s true. My mammy ran a tight ship.’

Mary regards her, one eyebrow raised. ‘As I say, she could talk a good game.’

Lena looks around. The caravan is dark, not as cosy as she might have expected. There are few drapes, and the day bed is threadbare. Only one window ledge is decorated, an array of shells, stones, and forgotten fairground knick-knacks. The glass eye of a carousel horse. An old ticket stub. A penny with the old Queen’s head, polished to a bright copper. That’ll be Belle’s, thinks Lena. What a curious little child she is.

Lena stands up. ‘Is there anything else?’ She doesn’t want to hear anything more about her mother. Not from Mary.

‘Well, I can’t stop you,’ Mary says, brushing flour from her apron. ‘But just you keep an eye on Violet. She can be a menace at times. She needs a firm grip. Not even the Linden woman could control her in the end.’

Lena snorts. ‘I don’t even plan to try.’

She steps outside the wagon, Mary at her heels.

‘Here,’ says Mary. ‘Dinner’s on me.’ She hands her a loaf of bread, still warm.

Back under the awning Violet sees the loaf and rolls her eyes. ‘Been bribing you, has she? Telling you to keep an eye on me?’

‘Something like that. Anyone else been?’

‘Nope. Quiet as the grave. We might as well pack up. It’s not going to happen. Not today, anyway.’

‘Let’s give it another few minutes,’ says Lena.

They sit in companionable silence, watching a group of boys at the far side of the ground playing marbles, the soft clack cutting through the silence.

‘Look,’ says Violet. ‘Do you think she’s for us?’

At the far end of the showground near the tall front gates, a figure on a horse is trotting towards them. The girl is riding a bedraggled grey pony that looks as though it needs a good feed. The girl is thin and wiry with long brown hair. She is barely five feet tall.

‘Are you Lena?’ she asks shyly, as she approaches. Lena nods.

‘Are you here for the audition?’ she asks her. The lassie looks exhausted.

‘Yes. My name is Rosie. Am I too late?’

‘Not at all, but are you sure you don’t want a wee rest?’

The girl shakes her head vehemently. ‘I’ve been practising my routine in my head all the way here. I’d like to do it now, please.’

Lena turns to Violet.

‘She says she’d like to do it now, please,’ Violet repeats, in a lazily mocking tone.

‘What are you going to do for us?’ asks Lena.

Rosie pulls a whip and some pins out of the small bag secured round her tiny waist, and fastens her smock up above her knees. She removes the pony’s saddle and affixes a small cone of feathers on to his head. The pony tosses his head disdainfully. Then Rosie leaps on to his back and carefully stands up.

‘Ah,’ Violet whispers. ‘We’ve got a bareback rider.’

Rosie cracks the whip lightly over his side and the pony trots elegantly in a circle. Rosie is ramrod-straight, her spine rigid. Then, slowly, as though her joints have been oiled, she lifts one leg and turns her head to the side. Tommy speeds up and Rosie jumps, landing on her other leg. The pony continues his circular trot, and this time Rosie moves backwards, until her tiny feet are almost dangling off the side of the pony’s rump. She raises her arms, spins slightly to the left before turning a cartwheel on his back.

Violet raises an eyebrow. ‘Well, well, well,’ she says.

Rosie slows the horse down to a stop, dismounts, and performs a little curtsey.

‘Was I any good?’

She is flushed, two high spots of colour on her cheeks. Despite the purple shadows under her eyes she is clearly excited.

‘It’s just that I taught myself. I’ve only been to the circus once. But it’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.’

‘ Brava ,’ says Violet. ‘You’ll need a few more bells and whistles to your act but you’ve got the technique, at least.’

The tiny girl bobs on the balls of her feet, and Lena relaxes. Life will be much easier if Violet gets on with the other acts. She sits Rosie down and gives her a cup of tea. The girl’s arms are covered in old, dirty bruises.

‘Where have you come from today?’ she asks. ‘Not Glasgow, surely?’

The girl shakes her head, suddenly shy again. ‘I came down from Ayrshire,’ she says. And then, in a smaller voice, she adds, ‘I didn’t tell my family. But I doubt they’ll miss me.’

‘So you’ve never been on the road before? What age are you?’ Violet asks. She looks sour again.

’I’m eighteen,’ says Rosie. ‘But I turn nineteen in May. Oh, look. Do you think that’s someone else coming to audition?’

A woman is heading for them, colourful ribbons streaming from every part of her body. She looks like a walking rainbow. As she approaches, Lena can see that she is tall, with dark hair and large hoops in her ears.

‘Lena? Violet?’ she asks. Her voice is deep, heavily accented.

‘Aye, that’s us,’ says Violet.’

‘I am the rainbow girl. Let me show you what I can do.’

Later, as the city quietens and the night sky spreads out a blanket of stars above them, the four women sit around the campfire smoking and talking. The rainbow girl, who turns out to be called Carmen, is an acrobat, and she is from Spain. She turns cartwheels and spins and twirls and rolls. It is as though she, Carmen, is a ribbon too, as flexible and airy as a reed in the wind. She can do her act on the ground or in the air, and has also worked as a catcher on the trapeze, which pleases Violet. And she is funny. Standing next to little Rosie, she says drolly, ‘Look at us. I am a tree and you are a little bush.’

She has changed out of her ribbon costume now and seems suddenly older, more mature. Lena notes that she is wearing rouge on her lips, has put on a pair of black leather shoes with heels. There is an air of glamour about her, and something else, too, something she can’t quite place.

Lena wonders how Carmen and Rosie will cope with life on the road. Rosie is a flattie, has never lived anywhere other than a house. Will she revel in a home that is constantly moving, with a different view each week, horses to maintain, all the noise and danger of the fairs? Or will she be away home to her mammy and a nice warm bed within the week?

There is only one way to find out.

She gazes into the flames, dying now, the firewood torched to black. The last recurring image of her mother returns, her vibrant blue shawl, that toffee apple smell, her father’s face twisted in fear and panic. She slams it back into the furthest recesses of her mind.

She has a new family now. Her show. Her circus of ladies.