When they were a little older and had been taught to read by their minister, they found a battered copy of Fairy Tales and Other Stories on the shelves at the inn. She and Charlie read it carefully together. The Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen. They read about Hans My Hedgehog, half-boy, half-beast; about the Maiden without Hands; about Beast and his elephant trunk and his body glittering with fish scales. It was the stories’ endings which always silenced her, that made her pull her dress over her fingers. Love altered each character – Hans shucked his hedgehog spines like a suit, the maiden’s hands grew back, Beast became a man – and Nell pored over the woodcuts so carefully, staring at those plain, healed bodies. Would her birthmarks disappear if somebody loved her? Each time, Charlie nestled closer to her and raised his hands as if he were casting a spell to rid her of them, and it made her tearful in a way she could neither understand nor explain.
She slips into the water. The cold stabs at her, so sharp it feels like a burn, but it soothes the itching. She gasps, works her arms and legs faster. She pushes past the breaking waves, into the deep where she knows currents lurk beneath the skin of the sea. The trick is to swim across them, never to fight. But when she feels their pull, she enjoys the dance with them. She twists, swims down, little pebbles whirlpooled against her. The horizon shimmers. That familiar longing for annihilation. When she was younger, she could swim all day, until her fingers and toes were as wrinkled as old apples. Even now, the cold tug of the sea reminds her of the childish stories she told herself. That the sea might pull her into an underwater kingdom, to palaces made of cockle shells and seed pearls, a secret place where only she and Charlie could go. She begins to picture it as she did then: plates of mackerel longing to be eaten, the ring of laughter, the brush of an arm against her own – she swallows a mouthful of seawater, coughs. When she looks up, she finds she is further out than she realized, the cliffs as small as wheatsheaves.
‘Nell-ie! Nell-ie!’
In the gap between waves, she glimpses her brother, standing on the edge of the cliffs, beckoning her in. His fear is infectious. Cold stipples her skin. She feels suddenly tired, worn out. Her arms ache, her dress sodden and pulling her down. Her wrists are wrenched like wishbones. She has a terrible thought that she will never see Charlie again. She pictures her bloated body washed up in a week’s time, eyes pecked out by fish, her brother weeping over her. She kicks her legs, beats the current with cupped palms. The sea sucks at her. Each slice of her arms a small victory. The beach grows closer, and she knocks her ankle against a rock, feels the quick score of blood. The boulder is in reach, the waves slurping, the tide rolling her against the pebbles.
‘What are you doing?’ Charlie demands, seizing her by the arm. His trousers are soaked to the knees. ‘You frightened me.’
She turns from him, to hide how out of breath she is; to hide, too, her satisfaction that he cares.
‘It isn’t funny,’ he says, nursing his bruised knuckles. ‘It isn’t funny at all.’
She wades back into the water, then dives for his ankle and gurns like a monster. ‘I’m going to eat you up!’
‘Stop it,’ he says, shaking himself free.
But she sees a grin tugging the corner of his mouth, and soon she is making him laugh again. Soon, she has almost forgotten the cut of Lenny’s words, the stares of the other villagers. She forgets, even, that Charlie has a child on the way and will soon be married, and that nobody will want her. Right now, it is just her and her brother, larking in the water, skimming stones. Each pebble fits her hand perfectly, as if this beach, this village, this life, were made for her. Charlie fetches her shoes and she shivers in the cool of early dusk.
‘Let’s try and catch a squid,’ she says.
They keep a net and an old rusted lantern hidden behind a rock, and Charlie retrieves them and lights the oil.
‘I don’t want to go to the show,’ he says, so quietly she only just hears him.
‘Why not?’
‘I’ve been thinking,’ he says, ‘and I just – I just don’t like it.’
Her relief is a surprise to her. She rests her head on his shoulder. ‘Nor do I.’
They watch the water for a while, the sun sinking until it is boiling in the waves.
‘There!’ she shouts at last, the shadow of a squid pulsing in the shallows. Charlie sweeps it into the net and the creature thrashes, tentacles tangling in the strings.
She grasps its slippery body, as soft as offal. It is so pristine and helpless. She thinks of the fossilized plesiosaurs that men of science dug from the earth thirty years ago, winged and scaled creatures twelve feet long. She tries to imagine a creature like that swimming into her hand, the money men would pay to exhibit it. She has heard rumours of mermaids made of fish skin and monkey pelts, displayed in museums beside two men linked at the waist.
An age of wonder, somebody called it, and Charlie added, And an age of tricks and hoodwinking.
Jasper Jupiter’s Circus of Wonders.
The squid throbs, its tentacles suckering her hand.
‘We can cook it on coals,’ Charlie says.
Her stomach growls. It is a struggle not to pounce on it raw, to feel the comfort of anything in her belly. It has been a slow week with their wages paid late, and they’ve eaten only vegetables and pease pudding.
But Nell arches her back and throws the squid into the water, as far from their net as she can.
‘What did you do that for?’ Charlie demands, and he frowns and hurls the net across the stones.
Jasper
Jasper Jupiter’s shirt is ringed with sweat, the handle of the whip slippery in his hand. It reminds him of those hot days in Balaklava, how they bore down on deserters, the squeak and crack as leather met skin. The man moans, each lash parting the meat of his back. Jasper stops, dabbing his forehead. It gives him little pleasure, but he must keep a grip on his troupe. He recruits his labourers from slums and rookeries, from the dregs cast from the gates of the Old Bailey: wretches who are grateful for any work, any sense of family. It’s hardly a surprise that he needs to discipline them from time to time.
‘You won’t be doing a bunk again, will you?’ Jasper asks, cracking his knuckles. ‘Not until the end of the season. Good man.’
The man limps back to the other labourers, cussing under his breath.
Jasper glances at Toby’s wagon. Still unlit. His brother is late. He should be back, helping dismantle the great skeleton of the tent, readying to move the wagons. Jasper sighs, walks through the field, shouting commands. All is activity, and everyone works even harder as he passes them. His own face smiles back at him from a dozen boards, from parasols for sale and a handbill trampled underfoot. He picks up the leaflet and dusts the footprint from his cheek. ‘Jasper Jupiter’s Circus of Wonders.’ The monkeys gibber more loudly. Huffen Black, his clown and one-armed wonder, scatters bread and cabbages on the cage floor. The triplets are plucking stolen chickens, white puffs of down lighting the air, guts slapped into a bucket for the wolf to eat. Without the king poles holding her in place, the tent’s vast belly billows.
‘Hold her down!’ he cries, and men wrestle with the corners of the fabric, begin to fold segments of white on blue, white on blue.
Forty wagons, ten performers, a growing menagerie, and eighteen labourers and grooms – not even counting their infants. All his. They are a village on the move, a whole community at his command.
He spies Toby trotting into the field, and he hurries to him. His brother’s hair is wild, his face pinked. Jasper decides to make light of his concern. ‘Had you written off for dead. You should be careful, out so late. If a troupe of travelling pedlars found you, they’d pull out your fingernails and teeth and sell you as a dancing bear.’
Toby doesn’t smile. He is fidgeting with his cap, his eyes skittish. With his long evening shadow, he looks even bigger than usual. Their father always said it was God’s greatest joke to assign this hulking shape to such a timid creature.
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br /> ‘Come,’ Jasper says, softening a little. ‘A glass of grog? Leave the tent to the labourers.’
Toby nods, follows Jasper into his wagon. It contains all the comforts of a hotel. Goose-down mattress, an ebony bureau, shelves of books. Every surface is papered with handbills as if the very walls are proclaiming his name.
‘Jasper Jupiter’s Circus of Wonders!’
‘Jasper Jupiter’s Circus of Wonders!’
‘Jasper Jupiter’s Circus of Wonders!’
He presses a thumb to where one advertisement is beginning to peel, and smiles. The decanter chimes as Toby fills his glass.
‘What was the village like?’
‘Small,’ Toby says. ‘Poor. I shouldn’t think we’ll fill the tent.’
Jasper scratches his chin. One day, he thinks, he’ll storm London.
The drink rattles in Toby’s hand.
‘Is something the matter?’ Perhaps guilt has settled on his brother as it often does, weighing down his mood. He reaches out and squeezes Toby’s arm. ‘If it’s about Dash—’
‘It’s not that,’ Toby says, too quickly. ‘It’s just – I saw someone –’
‘And?’
Toby turns his face from him.
‘You saw who?’ Jasper smacks his fist on to his ebony cabinet. ‘Was it Winston? Damn it. I knew it. He beat us to our pitch again. We can fight him. Send in the labourers.’
‘No,’ Toby says, twisting a hangnail. ‘It was nobody. It was just –’ He waves his hand. His voice is high, as it always is when he is exercised. ‘Nobody.’
‘Nobody, eh?’ Jasper says. ‘You can tell me. We’re brothers, aren’t we? Linked together.’
There is a sheen of sweat on his brother’s neck. His leg jiggles up and down.
Jasper grins. ‘It was a girl, wasn’t it?’
Toby looks down at his drink.
‘Aha! Who was she, then? Did you have your wicked way with her? Have a tumble in the hedgerows?’ He laughs.
‘It wasn’t like that,’ Toby snaps. ‘She wasn’t – I – I don’t want to talk about it.’
Jasper frowns. It irks him, this realization that Toby exists apart from him, that he has his own thoughts and secrets. He remembers when he was a boy and he saw the sketch of the Siamese twins, Chang and Eng Bunker, and how it stopped his breath. There on the page was a manifestation of how he felt about Toby. A link so close it felt physical. They might have shared a brain, a liver, lungs. Their hurts were each other’s.
‘Fine,’ Jasper says at last. ‘Keep your sordid little secret.’
‘I – I should help with the tent.’
‘As you please,’ Jasper says.
He watches Toby leave, hurrying to be away from him. His brother, a half of him, as closed as an oyster. His drink is untouched on the counter. What is he hiding? The girl can’t have been special; he’s barely been gone three hours. Jasper will puzzle him out. He always does.
He inhales, pulls a face. The breeze carries a waft of rotting crab, of putrefying seaweed. The knacker’s van has arrived to feed the lioness and he can hear the drone of wasps from here. He fingers the ring in his pocket, runs his thumbnail into the engraved initials. E. W. D. It reminds him of what Toby is capable.
‘Stella,’ he calls, because he cannot bear to be alone. He can see her through his small window, pausing as she washes down his elephant. He named his ‘famed behemoth’ Minnie, and he parades her alongside a mouse called Max. ‘The biggest and smallest creatures in the world!’ Last week, on his thirty-third birthday, he bought Minnie for £300, pleased to liberate her from the traders whose hooks had cut her ears to ribbons. It’s curious, he thinks, how he can stand human suffering but not animal. In the Crimean war, it was the wounded horses which disturbed him the most, while he scorned the screaming of the soldiers. ‘What use is that racket?’ he would comment to his friend Dash. ‘As if elegiac wailing will coax their limbs back on to their torsos.’
‘Come, drink,’ he shouts to Stella, and she puts down her bucket. He longs to bury himself in her, to possess and enter and satisfy. To feel that by having her, Dash has forgiven him. When he lifts his glass to his lips, he is surprised to find he is trembling.
Nell
Nell is candying violets in her cottage. As she dips the flowers into the egg white and spins them in sugar, the cat watches her lazily, his ears pricked. All day, in fact, she has felt as though someone is watching her. In the walled gardens, her back aching as she picked hundreds of posies, she felt the burn of other labourers’ eyes on her. When she walked home with Charlie, the hedgerows seemed lit with a thousand eyes – pheasants and field mice and a single spider in its web.
Her fingers pause, glittering with sugar. She hears a faint noise, like the air being forced from a pair of bellows.
Oompah, oompah.
‘What’s that?’ Her father, in the corner of the room, startles from his nap.
‘Must be the circus trumpets,’ she says, allowing herself a glance through the window. She can see only the top of the tent, its blue-and-white stripes. She wishes Charlie were here with her, that he hadn’t decided to work the fields this evening.
‘I’ll cut the throat of that damned lion if it roars all night again.’ He sits up. ‘I caught a three-clawed lobster once. Could have pickled the bastard and sold it for a pretty penny.’
Nell frowns. The village has been struck with ‘circus fever’, as Charlie calls it. Nobody can talk about anything but giants and dwarves, pig-headed boys and bear-girls. Piggott, the overseer, even showed them the little cartes-de-visite and porcelain figurines he’d bought of several performers: strongman, butterfly man, Stella the Songbird. ‘A shilling each,’ he announced proudly, tapping his silver fob. But in the morning, he found his hens missing from their hutch and his smile fell away. Someone had laundry pinched from their line. There are rumours of travellers robbed on the roads, of a girl attacked. When Nell went to bed, she heard shrieking, laughter, the scream of a fiddle. Her heart quickened with fear and excitement.
Oompah, oompah.
Her fingers, dipping, sifting, twirling, pressing the flowers into a cardboard box. ‘Bessie’s Candied Violets’. A crate waits by the door, marked ‘London Paddington’ in thick black script. Sometimes, she traces her thumb across these words, imagines the violets like a set of actresses in puffy purple skirts, hungering to be somewhere else. Their glee as they racket through the country and wake up in a different landscape. Eyes peeping open, scattering themselves out across the city. There, they’ll wriggle their purple skirts into towering white cakes, kick their little legs. They might be pinched between the fingers of the Queen herself. Meanwhile, she – who seeded and weeded and cut and packed them – will forever pace the small stone cells where they first sprouted, her hands reeking of the manufactured perfume she spritzes over the petals to make them smell more appealing.
Her father starts to snore, dribble linking his chin to his collar. The sea-glass he is sorting patters to the ground. Their cottage is full of these things: useless trinkets he hopes a passing tinker might give him a penny for. Old rusted farm machinery, holed stones, a sparrow skull, mussel shells that he threads on string.
Oompah, oompah.
The other villagers will be gazing at feats so strange she cannot imagine what they are. Magic, spells, tricks. As astonishing as miracles. She feels a twinge of panic, as if everything is changing while she stays still.
Earlier in the day, she heard the showman bellowing from a speaking trumpet.
Step up, step up! Wheezes ever charming, ever new! Step up and see the most astonishing wonders ever gathered in a single show –
She glances at her father and wipes her hands on a cloth. It is only three paces to the yard.
It is a surprisingly cool evening for late May, and she shivers a little when she steps outside. The lavender shakes, the nettles flattened by a sudden breeze. She pulls her bonnet tighter around her face.
The large man in the leather
jerkin will be there. She wonders if he is a performer, though she could not find him on the handbill. A juggler, perhaps, or a fire-eater.
Oompah, oompah.
It would not hurt to take a closer look. Nobody will see her. And before she can change her mind, she is clambering over the stone wall and racing towards the field.
Wagons are scattered like dropped toys. It smells of burnt sugar and orange peel, of animals and sour bodies. The music grows louder. Outside the tent, it is almost deserted, just a few men sharing a cigar, a three-legged dog pissing against a carriage wheel. The grass is littered with cooking pans, pipe ends, blackened patches where fires were lit. Brackish water the colour of gravy. Her heartbeat knocks against her ears.
Each caravan is painted in a different colour with a name in looping script.
‘Brunette, the Welsh Giantess’
‘Stella the Songbird’
‘Tobias Brown, Crimean Photographist’
‘The World’s Smallest Museum of Curious Objects’
It is this wagon that she wanders towards. She waits until the men are looking the other way and darts inside.
The walls are lined with shelves. There are glass jars and polished fossils and a tank with a gleaming fish in it. A white crocodile head swims in cloudy fluid, its eye tracking her around the room. She touches a pair of vast trousers, reads the sign beneath it. ‘Owned by the celebrated Daniel Lambert, fattest man in the world.’ Beside it, a tiny teapot, ‘Used by Charles Stratton, General Tom Thumb.’ For a moment, she thinks of slipping it into her pocket.
Circus of Wonders Page 2
