Circus of Wonders

by Elizabeth Macneal

  When Sevastopol fell in September, and Dash was dead, Jasper received news that his father too had passed into the next world. He bought up a dozen Russian horses, a few camels, and discharged himself. Showtime, he thought.

  Toby was dropped from running the show without discussion, their dreams of shared ownership forgotten. Dash’s name hung in the air between them like a foetid scent, never acknowledged. Toby hadn’t really cared about the circus, Jasper told himself; but it was more than that, and he knew it. His brother had changed. He was ruined by what he had seen and done. They had never exactly been equals, but now the imbalance had shifted forever. This was Jasper’s dream, and Jasper’s life, and his brother owed him. It was Jasper Jupiter’s Circus of Wonders.

  Jasper is startled, partway through an anecdote about a schoolmaster and a trick frog, by a knock on the door.

  ‘Come in,’ he shouts.

  Jasper can’t be certain if he sees or smells the man first. He is as shabby as a stray dog, clothes so torn they look like mange.

  ‘I’ve no coins for you,’ Jasper says.

  ‘I’m no beggar,’ the man says, wringing his cap between his hands. ‘I had a lobster once – a lobster with three claws.’

  As drunk as a Turk. Jasper exchanges a look with Toby, leans back, and smiles. He intends to have a little fun with this man. ‘And do you have this lobster now?’

  ‘I ate it.’

  ‘Oh-ho, you ate it. And you want to sell the memory of it to me as a – a curiosity, I suppose?’

  The man shakes his head furiously. ‘Not the lobster. My daughter.’

  ‘Your daughter?’ Jasper laughs. ‘You want to sell me your daughter. Well, bring her here, and I’ll see if she’s to my liking.’

  ‘Not in that way,’ the man says, blushing. ‘She’s – she’s like your wonders.’

  ‘I doubt that.’

  He turns to Toby to check he is laughing too, but his brother’s eyes are wide, panicked. There is something amiss. Something – he cannot put his finger on it. Toby has never been able to swallow his emotions. As a child, Jasper could sense his brother’s unhappiness through the wall at night, and would pad through to his bedroom to comfort him.

  ‘Come in. Properly,’ he says.

  As the man crosses the threshold, Jasper sees the wagon as the villager must: the bright handbills, the wolf snuggled against the hare, the fine cut-glass decanters that he wraps in paper when they are on the move. The man bows his head.

  ‘And why is she like my performers?’

  ‘She – she has marks on her.’

  ‘Marks?’

  ‘She was born with them. One over half her face. Others on her legs and arms. Specklings.’

  ‘A leopard girl?’ Jasper asks, and his chest quickens. ‘Vitiligo?’

  ‘Not that. It’s birthmarks.’

  ‘Curious,’ he says. He has never seen a girl like the man describes, and human novelty is the opiate every showman chases. An age of monsters, Punch called the current craze for wonders. Deformito-mania. But where there’s mania, there’s money to be made. He smiles.

  ‘You’ll ask her,’ Toby says. ‘You’ll ask her first, won’t you?’

  Jasper picks up a Havana and presses away the mould that blooms on the leaves. ‘You saw her on that other evening, didn’t you, Toby? That’s what you wouldn’t tell me.’

  He tries to swallow the anger, brimming like bile. Hasn’t he given everything to protect his brother? He smooths a crease in his trousers, takes a breath.

  ‘How old is she?’

  ‘Nineteen.’

  ‘Is she married?’

  The man laughs. ‘No.’

  ‘Then she belongs to you.’

  Toby stares at him, and Jasper knows how to flex his power, how to remind his brother of the debts he owes. He thinks, too, of this girl, the variety she might add to his show.

  ‘How much do you want for her?’

  Toby pulls the skin from his cuticles, and Jasper barrels on. The hare shrinks in its cage, its ears flattened. He can smell fresh shit; when the man is gone, he’ll have the animals sent back to their own wagon.

  ‘Twenty pounds.’ The villager says it tentatively, perhaps believing it to be an outlandish sum.

  ‘Very well. And when can we claim her?’

  The man blinks.

  ‘You’ll ask her, won’t you?’ Toby says again.

  The girl’s father looks at the floor. ‘She won’t come willingly,’ he says.

  Toby shakes his head. ‘You wouldn’t.’

  Jasper waves his hand to dismiss the man’s concerns, his heart pounding. ‘No matter, no matter,’ he says. ‘The Carolina Twins have been,’ he clears his throat, ‘taken several times. One showman even shipped them from America to England.’ He adds, ‘The Two-Headed Nightingale, you know.’

  ‘You’re a better man than this,’ Toby says, picking up his hat, and Jasper pretends he has not heard him. The door slams behind him. Who is Toby to preach to him about virtue? He watches the lemon slice bob in his gin toddy, and he reaches for it, downs it in one. He wipes his lips.

  ‘You’ll be good to her? She’ll be happy. She’ll belong with you,’ the old drunk says, as if he is trying to convince himself.

  ‘Didn’t Tom Thumb’s parents sell him to Phineas Barnum at the age of four? And now look at him – his own yacht and a stable of pedigree horses.’

  He thinks, too, of the Sicilian dwarf Caroline Crachami. Sold at three, dead at nine from exhaustion and consumption. Her skeleton sits in John Hunter’s collection. But there are always tales of heartbreak, wherever you turn. He clips the end off his cigar.

  ‘There’s never been love between us. Never been affection. She’s –’ the man pulls a face – ‘she’s got no place here. My wife died because of her. Breathed her last when ushering her into the world.’ He looks at the wolf, then at the floor. ‘There were some who said she’s a changeling. That I should have left her in the cold when she was born, and the real child would be delivered back to us. They say that, don’t they?’

  ‘Folks have all sorts—’

  ‘I never did that,’ the father insists. ‘I never believed in that. I never wanted her hurt. Just tell me she’ll be happy.’

  ‘She’ll find her place with us. We’ll look after her. You say she won’t come easily, but perhaps I could speak to her, try to persuade her?’

  The man chews his lip. ‘She’d never leave her brother.’

  ‘Her brother,’ Jasper echoes. He thinks of Toby, how he kept this girl a secret.

  ‘I want the money now.’

  ‘Not until I’ve seen her.’

  He falls into the reassuring language of commerce. They will complete the transaction tomorrow evening, when there is a dance in the village. He ushers the man from his wagon, keen to be rid of him. He doesn’t like doing business with wretches. If you lie down with dogs, you rise with fleas.

  He sits back in his chair and looks out of the window. Children laugh as Punch strangles Judy with a string of sausages, as he beats her head against the table. Stella is standing beside a small fire, shrugging off her doublet as villagers watch. He catches a flash of her pubic hair, darker than her beard, her breasts rolling in her hands. One of the triplets is riding a camel in circles. The moon glints like a guinea. Gulls call like hawkers. Yes, Jasper thinks, it is the right decision. Anything can be bought or sold in this new commercial world. He must grow his troupe; he must be constantly novel. If he scrapes his way through enough rural villages and towns, in a year’s time he will have saved enough to afford a pitch in London. And then, perhaps the Queen might even hear about him and request his company. After all, she is known as the freak-fancier par excellence, who has summoned Aztecs, pinheaded people and dwarves to her Palace. He imagines himself, arms spread wide, entertaining her in the Picture Gallery as so many performers have done before him, as Barnum has done several times over. Jasper Jupiter’s Circus of Wonders. The biggest, the best troupe in the co
untry!

  He breathes out, but something snags.

  You’re a better man than this.

  The wolf nuzzles the hare’s skull and begins to lick clean its fur.

  Nell

  The next afternoon, they all pause in the fields as the carriages process down the lane. Camels lumber along, their legs as thin as sticks. A lioness moans. Nell sees Stella the Songbird dressed in trousers, sitting astride a horse like a man. A pipe hangs from her lips.

  ‘Good riddance,’ Piggott says. ‘Bunch of thieves.’

  Soon, the villagers turn back to the field, an army of raised backsides and bent necks. Nell puts a hand to her chest. The relief of it. There will be no more glitter and colour. Instead, the only sounds will be metal tools striking grey earth, the crick as flowers are cut from their stems. Her fingernails are clagged with dirt and her shoulders ache. Other girls wear loose cotton gowns, but hers has long sleeves, a high neck. Sweat trickles down her spine, along her thighs. Dust sticks to her, makes her birthmarks itch. The sun is as sharp as a lance.

  ‘Water?’ Lenny asks, offering her a flask, but she shakes her head. He stands there as if he is toying with saying something more, but then he returns to laying runners.

  Mary begins to sing, and soon the whole field joins in for the chorus. Nell murmurs the words under her breath.

  ‘So keep up heart and courage, friends!

  For home is just in sight.

  And who will heed, when safely there,

  The perils of the night?’

  The day turns and Nell finds comfort in monotony. Her arms work as fast as pistons. Pluck the flower, gather it. Pluck the flower, gather it. Once she is clutching fifty flowers, she ties them with twine and places them in a crate. Sweat drips off her nose.

  When Piggott blows the whistle to end the day, she can scarcely stand upright. It is earlier than normal, to give them time to prepare for the dance. The men will build a bonfire and the women will make a stew, and they will all dress in their Sunday finest.

  On their way home, Nell follows Charlie to where the circus tent was pitched. The grass is trampled flat. It is littered with waste and she picks up a heel of stale bread. ‘It would taste fine soaked in broth,’ she says. Next to it is a scrap of velvet, a long yellow bone that might be a beef shin. The embers are still warm when she scuffs them with her shoe. When she turns to leave, she sees that there is one wagon left, sitting under the shade of the oak tree.

  There is no reason for it, but she drops the bread quickly, and runs.

  The dancers stomp and whoop and clap. The moon is rising, and there is a fire, and dogs lolling in front of it, and old James is sawing at the fiddle. A few people have tambourines and they rattle them in time to the thrust of their hips. The girls dance, the ribbons in their hair slapping.

  Nell sits on a hay bale at the edge of the dance. Her brother is spinning Mary. She is a whirl of white, her chin thrown so far back that Nell can see the ribbed outline of her gullet. The swell of her bump is already showing, and she pats it every so often, just a small rest of her hand. Lucy, a girl her own age, nurses a newborn, the baby’s mouth pursed like a tiny rosebud.

  Nell touches her own empty belly. They say she will be a good aunt, a kind aunt, and that should be enough. Already, other girls and boys are beginning to pair off. They groom each other’s hair, speak in loud whispers, titter at shared jokes. Nell pulls up her legs and rests her forehead on her knees. She wonders what it must feel like to be on the brink of a life changing, to move from childhood to motherhood, to have her own small room with a stove and pots and a bed. Hers, to clean and tidy and live in. Instead, Charlie and Mary will step over her mattress each morning, and she will scrub the pans that they own, fuss over the children they have created.

  Charlie stops dancing, and trips over to her, giddy with spinning. ‘Dance with me,’ he says, pulling her by the hand. His eyes flash in the firelight. Nell shakes her head; already she thinks everyone is looking at her. She catches Lenny watching her, little glances that can only be disdain.

  ‘Come,’ Mary coaxes. ‘Drink this.’

  Mary holds out a jar of gin and Nell grasps it and takes a sip, and then another. She drinks until the glass is half-empty. She feels the kick of it, as sharp as a slap. The trees fuzz at their edges but she likes the courage that grips her, as if she might be another girl entirely.

  ‘Easy,’ Charlie says, squeezing her shoulder.

  ‘Come and dance,’ Mary says. ‘What are you afraid of?’

  ‘Go on,’ Lucy coaxes, stroking her baby’s head. Someone else nudges her forwards.

  Nell touches the ribbons in her hair. The warmth of the drink has started to radiate outwards from her belly. She allows her brother to lead her towards the circle.

  Charlie takes her arm in his, spins her, and she starts to smile. At first, she is stiff, her feet half-heartedly tapping the ground. She is sure people must be laughing at her, that she is as awkward as a fledgling. Someone passes her another cup and she drains it in a single gasp, pulls a face, and wipes her hand across her mouth.

  ‘Faster!’ Charlie says. They lean back, the world whisking past her. Her joints loosen, and when he lets her go, she twists her arms in time to the drum.

  ‘Yes!’ Mary shouts, standing to one side.

  Charlie catches her eye, and he begins to dance as wildly as they do when it is just them, alone in the cottage. She joins in, head flung back, hands raised, feet stamping. Her fears are whipped away. Why hasn’t she danced properly before, she wonders, to the fiddle and the drum? Why has she always sat at the fringes, hidden herself away? The music thrums inside her, pounding like a second heart.

  Nell breaks away from the others, sways her hips, whoops. She casts out her arms and begins to spin once more, leaping from toe to toe. The ache in her shoulders is gone. Villagers are watching her, she knows, but it does not matter. As her plaits flick her neck, she is just like the other dancing, bobbing girls, their foreheads dappled with the thrill of being spun until they stumble. A laugh breaks from her throat. Free, she thinks – she is free. Her hand is in her brother’s again, and he leads her into the middle of the group. Someone says, ‘Nell!’ as if in surprise, or delight. Her palms are sweating, hair stuck to her face. She has lost a ribbon, but she does not care; she does not care at all. As Nell is hurled from Charlie’s arms to Mary’s, she is one of them.

  Jasper

  One Christmas, when Jasper and Toby were fourteen and twelve, their father gave each of them a gift. He led them into the drawing room and explained, ‘A microscope and a photography machine. Each is a different way of surveying the world.’ Jasper put his eye to the cold cylinder and saw only grey. His father laid down the epidermis of an onion, fiddled with the dials and said, ‘There, look now.’

  A universe bloomed before him. There, magnified, Jasper saw a perfectly formed brick wall, invisible to the naked eye.

  ‘How does mine work?’ Toby asked, but his voice was muted. Jasper noted the jealous slide of his gaze, how he could look only at the microscope.

  It seemed to Jasper, as he squished a small beetle and placed it on the glass, that his father had understood the difference between his sons. Toby was a spectator who was content to observe life from the fringes, rarely to involve himself. Jasper was curious, preoccupied with finding the trick behind every object, dismantling illusion to see the real bones of the world.

  To Jasper, the microscope was a portal, a means of beholding the secrets of nature and the way that everything slotted together so neatly, so precisely. He understood the careful design of every creature. He laid out dead ants (monstrous dragon-like creatures with ferocious lacquered pincers), fleas, a fly, a spider. Sometimes he let Toby look through that cold eyepiece, too, and thrilled to share his amazement, to be the orchestrator of it all. They pretended Jasper was an important scientist, Toby his photography assistant, fresh from the jungles of Borneo, where they’d tracked orang-utans and rare moths. ‘You photograph it,
and I puzzle it out,’ Jasper explained. It gave him pleasure to think of his mastery over these kingdoms, that he was the person to make sense of it all. The world could be placed on a small glass pane and made his own.

  And Jasper has this same feeling when he watches Nell. When he sees her on the hay bale, he is choked with disappointment. She is so ordinary, so plain, just a girl speckled with a few birthmarks, as shy as a cat. He has made his name because his wonders are performers too, a combination which elevates his show beyond the thousands of human curiosities displayed in backstreet shops and at the Egyptian Hall, where freaks stand rigid on podiums. He taught his giantess to juggle, his walking skeleton to jump through hoops. Stella chirrups melodies and swings on a trapeze. But this girl – she seems to have nothing to her at all.

  He knows, at the back of his mind, that it isn’t the show that counts but the tale you spin. He’s watched showmen pump thousands of pounds into mediocre acts. Jenny Lind, the Swedish Nightingale, could croak an aria no better than a Drury Lane doxy, but Barnum puffed her up so much that she was escorted through the streets of New York by three hundred firemen bearing torches. Still, it helps if the act has something you can work with, some nose for performance. Charles Stratton’s fame grew partly because he could put on a good show, even if his quips were rehearsed.