Circus of Wonders

by Elizabeth Macneal

  ‘I’m certain.’

  Toby watches them cantering in the scrubland beside the road, Nell’s hair tangling. Her feet are bare, toes curled like little shells, trousers turned up around her ankles. He would not recognize her from a week ago.

  She must feel his eyes on her because she turns and smiles. He nods, startled. He wonders how long it will be until Jasper puzzles him out, realizes that he visits her each night, even if they only sit in silence and read a book together. Toby winces, touches his arms as though his skin is transparent, his body there for his brother to slice open and delve into. But Jasper is staring straight ahead, eyes narrowed, hand cracking the whip with a casual violence.

  ‘By God, London won’t know what’s hit it when Nell arrives,’ Jasper murmurs. ‘You won’t be able to open a newspaper in the country without seeing her face. “Jasper Jupiter’s Newest Act, the Queen of the Moon and Stars”.’ He grins, looks skywards. ‘My Nellie will set the city ablaze. Everyone will come to my show. She’s going to be the making of me, just you see.’

  My Nellie, Toby thinks, and he remembers the microscope that he longed to possess.

  Jasper

  London’s fog sits so low he can taste it. Sun as pale as a gauze-wrapped lemon. Jasper jumps from his horse, smiles. The pitch is his. All about him, the thump of more boots hitting the earth, labourers and grooms awaiting his command. Their cages stilled at last, the menagerie begin to whine and roar and wicker.

  ‘There,’ he shouts, pointing to a large clearing on one side of the grounds. ‘Set up the wagons there.’ Beside it, there is a broad circle of lawn where his grandstand will be built.

  The tall gates of the pleasure gardens loop in elaborate curlicues. He strolls the other half of the plot, past bowers and follies and pagodas, and a towering replica of an iguanodon skeleton. In a week’s time, these grounds will burst with the shrieks of puppets and ladies and frock-coated gentlemen. Lamps will flare like farthing candles. Patrons will dine at long tables, drink overflowing bowls of punch in its quiet enclaves, and form winding queues for his show.

  ‘Jasper Jupiter’s Circus of Wonders, London’s Newest Show!’

  He sniffs the aromatic Southwark air and even that feels loaded with potential. It smells of commerce, of a struggle to survive, of bodies vying to outlive, to outsell, to outperform other bodies. It reminds him of the first man he shot, how he watched the Cossack through the eyepiece, clad in a white beshmet. He twitched the trigger. Boom. That split moment between his finger moving and the soldier falling – the man alive, then dead.

  ‘Shall we build the tent?’ a labourer asks him.

  ‘There will be no tent,’ he says, enjoying the man’s surprise.

  A tent would only restrict Nell, like a fly butting against a closed window. His agent has told him about a wooden grandstand, offered for a pittance by a struggling show. Twenty staggered rows of benches curved around the ring, an awning to shield them from rain. But apart from that, it is open which means – and this is the feather in his cap – that he can buy a balloon, tethered so it flies only forty feet off the ground. Nell will swing beneath it, dressed in her green doublet, her legs and arms dappled like stars.

  He glances at his fob watch. It is still early. In three hours, he will plant his topper on his head and cross the bridge and walk to Soho, and he will return with twenty thousand pounds.

  It was Dash who began it, Dash whose fingers ripped the first silver crucifix from the dead Ruskie’s throat. Did he? Jasper wondered. Could he have –? But his scruples passed when Dash sold it and they sat down to a dinner of pork and French champagne. He realized everyone was at it; men sent home Paris-made watches to their mothers, their pockets brimming with crucifixes and lockets of saints.

  Their appetite grew, and with it the lust for destruction. Sometimes they stole, sometimes they just enjoyed watching things burn. At the museum in Kerch, they smashed priceless pottery across the floors. ‘I snatches whatever I sees,’ Dash cried, wielding a hay-fork, and it became the battle cry of their regiment, a way of dealing with the loss they inflicted and incurred daily. These were bonds forged in fire, a kinship closer than brothers. At a great house, Jasper ran from room to room, bayonetting silk pillows and cushions. He waded through goose feathers a foot deep, crunched on shattered mirrors. He hurled physic jars on to the floor, cracked open a grand piano with an axe, lacerating its brass ribs. He stumbled outside, and Dash was firing shots at a coop of peahens with his revolver. He seized Dash’s arm and they waltzed, spun apart, laughed. They were like foxes, killing for the fun of it. At the end of the terrace, they found the storehouse, stacked with dried fish and bags of black bread, and they burnt it to the ground. They plunged down into the vineyard, through valleys of brushwood and creepers, eating peaches until their shit was water. In battle, they snatched lives like amulets, robbed the dead before the mule litters and ambulances moved in. How couldn’t this much death make them feel alive? They saw the enemy like a monster, a creature to be destroyed. Dash called it the Hydra; cut off one head and another three rear in its place, and they kept cutting and cutting and cutting. They ate well, drank well, bought the finest food from Mary Seacole’s establishment. The world was theirs, and it was ripe.

  Jasper has the same feeling when he stands outside a skinny brick building on Beak Street, beneath a sign of three balls. ‘Money Lent’. Dander glimmers in the air like gold, windows shining like cut diamonds. All Jasper needs to do is reach inside and scoop loot into his pockets.

  ‘Sir,’ a man says, bowing, and Jasper follows him up a narrow staircase, candles spitting mutton fat down the walls. ‘He will see you now.’

  Jasper recoils when he sees the man. It is – it can’t be – Dash is dead. And as his vision adjusts, the resemblance fades away. The man’s hair is blonde where Dash’s was dark, his eyes too close together. He merely sits like him, that same easiness, the same pink cheeks and complexion so smooth it looks greased.

  ‘Mr Jupiter,’ the usurer says, gesturing to a seat in front of him.

  ‘I haven’t long,’ Jasper says, steepling his fingers. To be busy is to be successful, and to be successful is to be rich. A simple equation which he knows this man will grasp. I am a serious prospect. ‘We arrived in London only this afternoon, and I have much to prepare.’

  ‘Yes, yes, your press agent mentioned you might be fatigued.’ He touches a set of keys. ‘Well, why don’t you explain what you’re about? Your agent has given me the bare bones.’

  ‘I want,’ Jasper says, ‘I want – I am building my show to greater heights. It’s already a success. I made five thousand pounds profit last year, which I largely reinvested in stock. Replacing the animals that died, repairing costumes, recruiting two new acts.’ He waits for the man’s approval, but it does not come, so he blusters on. ‘There’s a fair fortune to be made. The public’s fascination with living wonders is on the rise. By heavens, it’s on the rise. Demand shows no sign of abating. American troupes are beginning to tour here. And with this competition, we must innovate. Barnum made twenty-five thousand dollars a year from Charles Stratton – from Tom Thumb, I should say. And last year he invested fifty thousand in his museum.’

  ‘His museum,’ the man says, stroking his chin, ‘is ashes now. Nothing but fricasséed crocodile and roasted kangaroo, I’ve heard.’

  ‘But if the fire had not taken hold –’ Jasper says, then adds – ‘and now he is out of the game. Now there is opportunity, less risk he will tour here and mop up our crowds.’

  ‘And you want to exceed what he has achieved?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jasper says. ‘Exactly. Ask any child if they know Barnum, and there’s a good chance they will. Or Astley or Sanger or Wombwell or Winston. But my show is still too small, and it’s taking too long to rise. I want a menagerie that would have put Wombwell out of business. I want a horse show that would have made Astley weep. I want wonders that would make a physician lose his mind.’ He flexes his fingers. ‘I have a new perfo
rmer, a girl. I’ve marked her as a sure card, but I must have advertisements. I must make her into a spectacle – an aerial machine, I thought, with her soaring from the basket.’

  ‘Intriguing,’ the man says, smiling a little. ‘So, tell me, Mr Jupiter, how I can assist you in realizing this dream.’

  Assist. Jasper notes it, and he pulls back his shoulders a little further. ‘I would like to borrow twenty thousand pounds.’

  ‘Twenty thousand?’ the man says. ‘Well, Mr Jupiter, that’s quite a sum—’

  ‘I need to spend on advertising, to build my acts. If we can triple the capacity of the audience by replacing a tent with a grandstand, then that’s triple the revenue—’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ the man says, waving his hand. ‘I can see how it would work. These sums are simple. But you must bear in mind my rates of interest.’

  ‘I expect—’

  ‘Seventy-five per cent.’

  Jasper grips the chair. West End financiers charge fifty per cent, and this is a back-street shop, but still – seventy-five per cent!

  ‘If I lend you twenty thousand pounds, you will pay me back thirty-five thousand pounds. I expect one thousand pounds paid every week for thirty-five weeks.’

  Jasper nods.

  ‘And say you were to default on your debt. What insurance, what securities, what worldly capital, do you possess?’

  ‘My troupe and fakements, as they stand, are worth twenty thousand pounds. I’ve built it all steadily.’

  The usurer sucks his teeth. ‘I conduct business in the best and fairest way. I don’t seek people out. It’s their own doing, and their own fault, if they come to me.’

  ‘I understand that.’

  ‘I am a man of business myself, first and foremost. I am not interested in the causes of the destitute, of the suffering. In short, I am not interested in excuses if you default on a payment.’ He reaches under his desk and takes out a tiny skull with a silver lid. ‘Snuff?’

  Jasper nods, and he takes a pinch and snorts it. It is stronger than mere tobacco, something else mingled with it. He dusts his nostrils.

  ‘Is that a monkey’s skull?’

  ‘I suppose you do run a circus.’

  The man begins to explain preliminaries, speaking so quickly that Jasper can barely catch his words. He should pay attention, he knows, but the coals are smoking and the room is too warm. He looks at the large eye sockets of the skull, the yellowed teeth, the perfect jagged seam across the forehead. He hears ‘bill of sale’, ‘worldly goods’, ‘monthly instalments’, ‘principal and interest’.

  ‘Mr Jupiter,’ the man says, at last. ‘This is no three-card trick. I’ve been quite clear on my expectations. I’ve spoken to your agent, who confirms everything you’ve told me. I can arrange your loan in five minutes if you choose, and then you shall have the money. But the choice shall be entirely yours.’

  Jasper smiles. He thinks only money. He thinks only fame, success. The show, triple its size, revealing an array of nature’s wonders. Curious animals, human marvels, and Nell – his star act. She swung across the tent as if she were scything through water, as if she were escaping a force which might swallow her. There was fight in her, verve, a yearning that mirrored his own ambition. As he looked up at her, he thought, We are alike. She was Icarus, and he had crafted those wings from iron. He imagined Winston’s expression when he saw what Jasper had unearthed. His fury, his envy, his utter inability to compete. Jasper will draw the crowds away from him like sardines in a net.

  The man takes the key and places it on the desk. Jasper’s mouth is wet.

  ‘Before I attend to your business, I’d like to make you aware, Mr Jupiter, of my methods.’

  ‘Of course,’ Jasper says, but every moment seems to drag. Every moment, the man might change his mind.

  ‘There are other moneylenders, financiers, usurers – whatever you might call them – who will cart you off to debtors’ prison if you renege on your debts. These are not my methods. Holding a man hostage in gaol will not magic coins into my purse, especially if he has no wealthy dependents.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But rattle him, and coins will pour from his throat.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘You should know,’ the man says, quite breezily, ‘that they call me the Jackal. I’m not to be trifled with. I will secure my return. It would make me happiest if this were through your own success. I am, like you, a man of business, with my own establishment to keep afloat.’

  ‘I see that.’

  ‘If you prefer, you can visit a gentleman financier in a West End establishment, who drives a four-in-hand, rides on the Row, and for whom money-lending is a mere hobby. A gentleman, who conducts his business in a similarly gentlemanly manner. I shall take no offence if you prefer such a gentleman to transact your business. If you find me too low for your liking.’

  ‘No,’ Jasper says, because he knows, and he knows this man knows, that they wouldn’t touch him with a king pole. ‘I am content to proceed.’

  The man smiles. ‘Well, Mr Jupiter, I can see that we are in agreement.’

  And with that, it is done. With that, Jasper is picking up a pen and scratching his name at the bottom of a contract, and waiting for his money, and shaking the man’s hand, and leaving with a fistful of crisp bills and banker’s cheques. As he steps into the sunshine, his only regret is that he did not come to the Jackal sooner.

  The day is blue and white. The cramped Soho dwellings are sun-dipped, the pavements spangled with old wrappers and horse dung. Wasps hover, as if held up by strings.

  A boy with a board tied to his neck totters past. ‘Extraordinary phenomenon! Pearl, the Girl as White as Snow. Now Exhibiting Alive at Regent Gallery, Regent Street –’

  Across the road, a butcher is setting out his stall, his hands purpled from the glossy cuts of ox heart and lamb pluck and the tiny blackened lungs of city chickens. Sliced bits of animals. Jasper presses his own chest, feels his ribcage expand. ‘Ten kidneys for thruppence,’ the butcher bellows, and Jasper smiles. A man of business, Jasper thinks, just like him. Doesn’t he know that he need only cross the street to discover untold riches? That green door is a portal to another life. Tomorrow, this butcher could open a shop in the finest West London premises, and all it requires is his signature.

  A hand tugs on his trousers. He leaps back.

  ‘Sir, sir,’ a child says, pointing at her leg stump. She clutches a wooden spoon wrapped in a shawl, in imitation of a baby. ‘Penny, sir, please, sir.’

  Usually Jasper would frown and kick the imp away, but this is not a normal day. ‘What’s happened to you, then?’ he asks, curious as to what lie the wretch will spin. He can see that the girl’s calf is tied behind her thigh, the toes peeping out of the top of her trousers. A classic beggarly trick.

  ‘Machine took it, sir, at the factory, sir, where I earned an honest living, sir, and now I am dest-you-tute, and must nurse my dying sister myself.’

  He smiles at her. ‘Here,’ he says, pressing a shilling into her hand.

  The girl snatches it and bolts down the street, hopping on her scrap-wood crutches. Perhaps her instinct is a good one. He looks behind him at the sign with the three balls, and hastens his pace. He thinks of Dash, that fleeting moment when he thought it was him sitting behind the desk. But Dash is dead; Jasper saw his body broken beneath the battlements. His fingers, swollen and sun-warmed. Jasper spat on them and attempted to inch the ring free.

  Nobody knows, he tells himself, nobody but Toby. But he remembers Stella’s eyes on his ring, how she has scarcely spoken to him since. He hurries down an alley. Better to be away, and on.

  Part Three

  They rush by thousands to see Tom Thumb. They push, they fight, they scream, they faint, they cry help and murder! and oh! and ah! They see my bills, my boards, my caravans, and don’t read them. Their eyes are open, but their sense is shut. It is an insanity, a rabies, a madness, a furor, a dream. I would not have believed it of the
English people.

  A diary entry by B. R. HAYDON, Easter Monday, 1846, upon displaying his paintings in the Egyptian Hall, in the room beside Charles Stratton. Stratton was an eight-year-old child with dwarfism, whose stage name was ‘Tom Thumb’. A month later, Haydon died by suicide.

  Nell

  ‘And now, we present the eighth wonder of the world, the most extraordinary display of nature ever seen before, Jasper Jupiter’s very own Queen of the Moon and Stars –’

  Through Nell’s scrunched eyes, everything is blurred: the wooden structure, the puttering gas lamps, the basket of the balloon. Snuffing boys race around the ring, trimming wicks and lighting more tallow candles. Argand oil lanterns blaze in glass chimneys, torches the colour of sunlight. A labourer raises a chandelier on a pulley.

  The candles shiver. The drums shake. A burst of light. Firecrackers. They are waiting. Hundreds of people, dressed in their crêpe and silk and lace, are here to see her. They sit in that tiered stand, and soon the balloon will rise from behind the curtain – a velvet sheet which hangs at the back of the ring, and from the sides of which each act has galloped or juggled or swung.

  That morning, Jasper showed Nell a pile of newspapers, jabbed his finger at a small bordered box. She was astonished to find a drawing of herself beneath a large sketch of Jasper. Her birthmarks were speckled and exact, her toes pointed, arms stretching out as if her little figure was swimming through rows of type. ‘Jasper Jupiter’s Newest Exhibit, the Act Everybody Is Talking About.’ It could not be true, she thought – how could anybody be talking about her? She ran her thumb over the drawing of that girl and it felt as though she was a different person, someone she had met only briefly. An invention, like the characters in the books she and Toby read together.

  ‘Tonight,’ Jasper said, ‘might be our biggest audience yet.’

  The show has been open for six days. Almost a week of soaring above the crowd, basking in the mounting applause; almost a week of advertisements in the broadsheets. The performers do not know how Jasper has done it, how he can be so flush with tin. Peggy whispered that Jasper will sink himself, that the new stand must have cost more than a thousand pounds, the balloon the same, made as it is of acres of silk and fine paper. Perhaps, she added, he will not be able to pay them.