‘No skill in her,’ the agent agrees.
Jasper touches his neck, finds it hot.
Eclipse, he thinks. Eclipse.
His hard work is not so effortlessly undone. Any fool can see this girl holds little charm.
And yet, what was he thinking only five minutes before? It isn’t the show that counts, but the story you spin.
What possible narrative could Winston manufacture about this girl? Jasper can think of nothing. Perhaps he means to beat him at his own game, have this child swing from a balloon higher than Nell’s – he has the money for it, and thousands to spare!
The girl begins to hum. It is unsettling, like attending a seance with a dud mystic. She is beautiful, he admits, a perfect child. As precious and pearlescent as a shell.
Eclipse.
He’s seen it happen before – giants found in distant corners of Scotland, half an inch taller than the current marvel. Trade diverted, halls empty, the only audience a mouse scrabbling across the floor.
‘I’ll almost certainly take her,’ the man says. ‘But let me ponder the sum. I’ll have my offer with you by tonight.’
Jasper’s pamphlet crumples in his fist, the paper torn. He watches Winston leave. Tebbit beams at the crone, balls his fists in delight. Jasper breathes through his nose. He strokes the wad of notes in his pocket.
He has a hundred pounds to spare, on top of the thousand he owes the Jackal. Perhaps Tebbit will take that, and be glad of it.
But what if he asks for more?
Jasper dabs at his forehead. The line, he knows, between success and failure is so thin. Because if Winston does buy the child, the damage might be far worse than one missed payment. Better to renege once more, surely, than to lose everything? The Jackal would understand, if he explained – didn’t he say he was a man of business?
He has a small silver knife in his waistcoat. He cuts the stitches of his pocket. The notes are there, thick in his palm. His heart skips. He inches out from behind the screen, pretends he is just entering the room.
‘Ah! Tebbit,’ he calls, and the words slip from his tongue, as smooth as swallowing an oyster. ‘What a felicitous surprise! I was just visiting the girl, as I mentioned I would, and I find her very much to my liking. I’m to perform before the Queen, as you might have heard. I received a letter late last night.’
She costs him a thousand pounds. The agent tells him she will be delivered late that night, after she has attended a soirée at a duke’s house. He will not agree to a short-term hire but sells her outright. ‘Not when there is demand like this. She’s yours, or she isn’t.’
Jasper staggers into the street.
The Queen, he tells himself, but the word sours in his mouth.
He spends a few pennies on port and a hot pie. A woman sidles up to him at the counter, kisses his cheek, her hands hungry for him. When she has gone, he touches his pocket and finds it empty.
Toby
Toby has pressed his fingers into each flower and vine. He has watched the slow budding of each seedling, each magpie, each leaf, the gradual transformation of his torso. At night, he inspects himself by candlelight, gasping with recollected pain, the skin raised as if insect-bitten. A snake wriggles down his calf, its tongue licking his ankle bone. The tattoos stop at his wrists, at the back of his neck, and it is his secret until he decides to reveal himself.
He will no longer be Toby Brown, the dullard brother of Jasper Jupiter, little more than a ballast man. He will be a performer, a living garden, with any history he chooses. He could be a boy who was conceived in a rose bed. The result of a coupling between a woman and a lily, pollen scattered on her skin as she lay naked in a meadow. A child kidnapped by sailors and painted with strange emblems.
He lies on the soiled divan in the shop, wincing with pain, biting hard into a calfskin strap that rests in his mouth. His old leather jerkin is slung over the chair like the discarded shell of another life. He watches a snake in the vivarium, lumpy with a swallowed mouse.
We’re brothers, linked together.
He wonders if, somehow, Jasper feels these quick wellings of pain on his own skin. If Jasper looks down at his hips when he is undressing and sees the shadow of a rose, blooming there.
‘That’s you finished,’ the woman says, standing up. ‘All done.’
He thanks her, pays, and dresses quickly, not daring to behold himself, not yet. The bells are tolling two. He must hurry back to feed Grimaldi and prepare the ring for the evening shows.
He limps home, head down, his thighs burning from the sting of the needle. He sees hawkers selling towering stacks of crabs, bawling for attention. Ragged boys turning cartwheels in the hope of a few pennies. Ladies in varnished carriages, paste diamonds glittering on their sleeves like the plumage of a parrot. Everyone is peacocking, fighting to be seen and heard. The thought strikes him as one his brother might have, and a borrowed confidence builds inside him. His fingers linger on his shirt buttons. He twists one, then another, down to his midriff. His shirt billows open. He swings his arms wider. Gazes begin to snag on him. Someone nudges her child and points at him. He feels lit from within. A marvel, a wonder. At school, he hurried with his head lowered, dressed in greys and browns. In the Crimea, he hid behind his photography machine. In the circus, he arranged the scenery, put up fakements. It has always been Jasper blustering forwards, Toby trailing behind. He imagines himself on that camel, with that red cape, the crowd stilling –
‘Look at him!’ someone shouts. ‘His skin! Did you see?’
He could soar like a kite, turn somersaults in the air. The sunlight catches coach windows, the glinting epaulettes of grooms. A man on his horse slows and stares. Tears prick his eyes. He imagines it is Nell watching him and desire knocks him so hard that he touches his chest.
When he turns into the pleasure gardens, the benches are still stacked upside down, the grooms lolling on hay bales, smoking thick rolls of the Indian herb.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asks. ‘The show’s in two hours.’
Peggy points at Jasper’s wagon.
‘Is he sick?’
He has the uneasy feeling that he will find Jasper’s caravan empty, the man vanished. That his tattoo has performed some kind of magic and written over Jasper’s life.
But when Toby knocks, he finds his brother hunched over his desk, his eyes bloodshot. A reek of spirits, of stale bodies.
‘What is it?’ Toby asks.
Jasper shakes his head, skull rolling loosely on his neck.
‘What happened? What about the show?’ Toby asks.
A memory flashes – his father stooped over his desk in their cramped, new drawing room in Clapham, his thumbs working his brow like clay.
‘I’ve – I’ve made a frightful mistake.’ He shields the ledger from Toby.
Toby swallows. ‘Are you ruined?’
His brother’s voice is small. ‘I don’t know.’ He pauses, draining the last drop of liquid from the bottle. ‘What will become of me?’
‘The Queen,’ Toby says, desperately. ‘She’s coming to our show. Think of the crowds, the fame, the money –’
‘I’m so tired,’ Jasper says.
When his brother looks at him, the skin is crêped about his eyes, his lips downturned. It occurs to Toby that Jasper will die, that his breath will empty as easily as an old dog turning over. He does not know if he could bear his brother’s death, if he could live on after him. He clutches Jasper’s hand.
‘You can’t be ruined,’ Toby says. ‘Look at everything you’ve built!’
His brother holds out the ledger for Toby to read.
Rounded zeros. Toby swallows. ‘There must be a way to trim fat from the show.’ He studies the page, runs his thumb down the columns. His mind performs clumsy mathematics. He speaks slowly, with more confidence than he feels. ‘If we can shorten the show, put on a third performance each night, then can’t you make up the shortfall in three days?’
‘But what if –’ Jasper�
�s voice is distant. ‘You said yourself he’s a butcher.’
‘You haven’t paid him today?’
Silence.
Toby closes his eyes. ‘If you can prove the money’s coming, then maybe – maybe he’ll be generous. What use are you to him if you’re dead?’ Toby asks, but his heart is pounding. The tendril of a vine is peeping out of his sleeve. He pulls back his hand, but Jasper only stares ahead. He clears his throat. ‘If you’re too tired, I know your show, Jasper. I can be the showman tonight –’
‘No,’ Jasper snaps, and he glares at Toby, breathing hard. There is cruelty in his gaze, a narrowing. ‘You little imposter.’
‘It’s just –’ Toby gestures at the empty bottle of gin, then gives a small shake of his head. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Little imposter,’ Jasper mutters again, and he picks up the vessel and laughs into it, his voice loud and distorted.
When he leaves, Toby tells Huffen Black to bring bread and water to his brother, and he orders the grooms and labourers to ready the show. He watches as the benches are overturned, the zebras let out of their cages. He prepares his own photography machine, unrolls the cloudy backdrop. The light is bright enough to lower the exposure time to a few seconds. He calls out to the new performers, photographs them in their costumes, slotting in greasy glass slides one after another. A lobster girl in her wheeled tank, a fat boy, ancient twins, a woman with a curious growth on her ankle who winces with pain. She tells him about her three children, the money she will provide for their schooling.
Already, crowds are forming. He can hear Nell’s name murmured, shouted. ‘Nellie Moon! Give us Nellie Moon.’ He flinches as he remembers how her chin rested against his shoulder. How she leapt from that rock and he wanted to reach out and catch her before she hit the surface.
In his wagon, he develops the slides in ceramic baths. His fingers seem too big for his hands and he knocks over bottles, soaks one of the images for too long. He pegs them to the clothesline, palms trembling. Soon, he too might shine from the water, wet paper gripped between thumb and forefinger. ‘Toby Brown, the Living Canvas.’
He reaches for his box of photographs and flicks through them. Jolly men. Soldiers with flasks of steaming whisky. A man gripping a pair of fresh socks. And then, a skull resting beside a dandelion clock.
After he saw the reporter at Stella’s Christmas soirée, he began to look out for the man, to haunt him, as Jasper said with a laugh. He watched the Irishman playing at cards or sauntering between the tents. He hoped that, if he lingered around him for longer, he might absorb some of his boldness. He watched how soldiers hurled abuse at him, called him Toad because of his croaking, but the man did not seem to care. He and Toby were both there with the same task – to report on the war. And yet, Russell’s aim was truth, and Toby’s was deceit.
All of history is fiction, he thought.
But ever since that Christmas meal, he could no longer hide the fact that each of his photographs told a false story.
One afternoon in early April, he yoked a pair of horses and moved his photography wagon closer to the battle. Along the way, he could hear the groans of choleric men from within their tents, the air reeking of human waste. Already, he was becoming numb to it all, not noticing or caring as he had in the early days. Death was everywhere, suffering and pain a simple fact. He levelled his machine at the scene and ducked behind the cloak.
Camels, he thought, shivering. We will ride in on two camels with red cloaks on our shoulders.
He captured a skull with a shred of fabric beside it, half-wedged in the mud. A harbour, floating with offal and dead dogs.
There will be an elephant called Minnie.
A shattered cartouche.
Our show will be the greatest in the country, in the world. Toby and Jasper’s. The Jupiter Brothers. It will be us together.
He developed the images shakily, saw the truth in the scenes, the abject beauty, how he had pinned pain on to a sheet of card. He felt it again, horror needling between his ribs. It reassured him that he wasn’t a monster, stripped of compassion. This was a record, he thought, a making of real history.
It was no surprise when Toby handed the officer his photographs a week later, and the man ripped them in two and told him to get out of his damned sight. The strange thing was, as Toby stood there in the honeyed light, and a hornet buzzed in time with the military band, he found he did not particularly care.
Crouched in the basket, Toby throws out the bags of ballast and the balloon lifts slowly. He watches as the ropes binding Nell tighten and she is hauled up too, her legs twitching as she finds her balance. The basket rises higher, and when the crowd glimpses Nell, the applause becomes thunderous. He leans over the edge of the basket and begins to nudge the cords that hold her, to swing her back and forth.
She moves as she did in the sea when he first saw her, as if she is only just in control. She soars across the sky, wings creaking, feet kicking. He nudges the rope further, and she lets out a whee of delight. The crowd gasps, whistles. Perhaps she senses his eyes on her, because she twists her neck to look at him for just a moment. It feels as though a small fish is trapped in his chest, tail beating against his heart. He is emptied by hope, by the impossibility of taking what is Jasper’s. If he touched her, it would destroy at least one of them.
Below him, Jasper sings out his patter, and there is only a trace of slurring in his voice. Toby mouths along to every word. ‘And tonight I – the Prince of Humbug – have presented wonders you never could have imagined –’
Later, when they are pulled down, and the second show is over, and everyone is tired and complaining at being worked to the bone, Toby watches Nell sitting by the fire. She, Stella, Peggy and Brunette are playing whist, cards smacking down. She glances at him, and there is that look of yearning that he remembers from the first time he saw her.
If she pulled him towards her again, he would not be able to stop himself. She has worked her way under his skin like a knife. The powerlessness is pleasing, as if he has passed the decision to somebody else entirely.
Nell
When Stella hands her a pot of rum, Nell shakes her head. She is content merely to sit by the bonfire and watch as bottles are handed around, as Violante sings, and the children fan out the trinkets they have pickpocketed. The mood is bright, expectant. In five days, they will perform before the Queen, and all of their stock will rise a little higher. The triplets practise their act by the wagons, climb on to each other’s backs, jump, cartwheel. Nothing can go wrong, Jasper has told them, spit gathering in the corner of his mouth. Not one mis-timed leap. Not one dropped juggling ball. The show will be pristine.
Brunette sits a little apart and, when Peggy begins to play the fiddle, she clambers to her feet. Her movements are slow, pained, her body weighed down with the ache of growing. Nell looks at the trees, sees Abel waiting there.
Stella raises her head. ‘Be careful.’
Brunette takes her hand, squeezes it, then walks away, limping towards the woodland where the iguanodon bones sit.
‘What did you say to her?’ Peggy asks, putting down her bow. ‘If you were being cruel again—’
‘Go and boil your head, would you?’ Stella snaps, and Nell takes another stick and throws it in the fire.
Stella says quietly, ‘She married him yesterday.’
‘Abel?’ Nell asks, and she is surprised by how jealous she feels. ‘Will she leave the show?’
‘Leave?’ Stella laughs between her teeth. ‘Leave the show? Nobody leaves. Jasper would find her. She’s hardly inconspicuous.’
Nell looks at the floor, rolls a painted pine cone under her toes. She wants to ask, And then what happens? but she is afraid of the answer.
‘Brunette wouldn’t be so stupid,’ Stella says, but she doesn’t sound certain.
A wedding, a marriage. Nell tries to picture it – the mildewed stone, the candles wavering in their brackets. In the stories Nell has read, these are moments of joy, the n
eat resolution to one’s life, any difference obliterated by the magic of love. She thinks of Brunette with a dandelion pinned to her frock, two heads taller than the fisherman at her side, wishing not that she would change but that the world would. Simple rings made of tin. The minister stammering through the vows, sneaking glances at the seven-foot bride. A holy sight. What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder –
A kiss, where Brunette’s dreams should come true, for other people to change themselves and the way they see her. But then stumbling into the gritty air, carriages slowing and fingers pointing. A dawdling return to the show Brunette hates. Could she leave? Would she dare to?
From the corner of her eye, Nell sees Toby glance at her. She cannot bring herself to look at him.
Nell waits until the performers begin to turn in. She walks the empty pleasure gardens alone. The plants are ripe to the point of spoiling: roses brown and crisp and in need of deadheading, damsons turning to mush underfoot. She reaches for a perfect-looking plum, soft and yellow, and turns it over in her fist. It is ripe, ready to eat. A sharp pain in her finger. She cries out, and the wasp crawls, sugar-drunk, from the burrow where it hid itself.
Once she has sucked out the poison, she follows the path back to the wagons. She stops. Brunette is standing beside an oak tree, Abel’s forehead pressed to her ribcage. Nell should not pry, but she cannot stop looking. She sneaks closer. Brunette is crying, but the man strokes her back, stands on tiptoe to whisper in her ear. He pulls Brunette’s head down to his and kisses her cheek. Nell feels a longing so intense she has to look away.
She tiptoes back, down the woodchip paths, to the wagons. Something shifts behind her: a labourer. Was he watching her, making sure she didn’t escape? Perhaps he, too, was just taking a walk. At the menagerie, the men guarding the animals tip their caps at her, and a monkey beats its chest and shrieks. There are more labourers awake than usual, their eyes on the gates, as if they are expecting something. She treads on a handbill, picks it up. She is at the centre of it, beneath Jasper’s face.
Circus of Wonders Page 18
