Mourning Ruby

by Helen Dunmore

  ‘Our light disturbed it,’ said Mr Damiano.

  Suddenly the bird gave out a few notes, liquid and hopeful, testing for the dawn. The notes broke off. The leaves rustled again, and then were still.

  ‘I think I told you, Rebecca, that my family were trapeze artistes,’ said Mr Damiano. But we both knew that this was the first time I’d ever heard it. The thought of Mr Damiano’s bulk flying through the air made me smile.

  ‘I know. But I was not then as I am now. Trapeze artistes, you know, are not fine willowy people. We have muscle. We are stocky, like this.’ He slapped his thigh. ‘I remember my mother in her costume. She worked until Bella was born. I told you, we age slowly in my family.

  ‘My mother was strong. Strong arms, strong hands. I remember how she would warm up before every practice and every performance. She never hurried or cut corners. I can see her now, in a patch of sunlight at the back of the tent, stretching and bending, bringing her arms up and rotating them from her shoulders, bringing one foot up above her head, and then the other. She would skip with a skipping rope to build up her endurance. I used to count for her. That was before Bella was born, and my mother seemed young to me, although she was already in her mid-forties. She had dark hair which she rinsed with henna and the sunlight would strike on it. She was about as dark as you are – yes, the colour of your hair is very similar. Bella inherited my mother’s looks.

  ‘After a performance my mother would towel herself down with a rough towel which was always clean and folded ready for her. She would towel every part of her body then she would rub oil into her muscles. It was a special type of oil, very expensive, in a dark-blue bottle without a label on it.

  ‘I remember once when we were touring in Austria, she took me to bathe in a lake which was called the Black Lake because of its water. It was black, peaty water and it was full of carp. They would brush against your legs when you swam. I didn’t like the shadows of the carp. My mother swam under the water and she would rise up close to me and laugh. Water would stream off her shoulders. I would see the power in her and then she would let me swim on her back, out into the deep water.’

  ‘Did you like being a trapeze artiste?’

  ‘At first, I liked it. I was training from the time I could walk. Tumbling and exercising, three hours each day. Bending and stretching and doing flips in the dust. Every night I watched my parents perform. I watched the first performance, then there was an interval, then sometimes I saw the second performance if I hadn’t fallen asleep.

  ‘My mother was a flyer. Her costumes were made to catch the light as she flew. They were very expensive and she was always repairing them. The fabric would rub and split under the strain. Her sweat would rot it. My mother spent hours with the needle in her hand. She had to repair, repair, because we couldn’t buy new.

  ‘She was still a flyer but she knew she had only a few years left. Soon she would slow down and her coordination would deteriorate, no matter how much she practised and how flexible she kept herself. And then one day she would fall.

  ‘She thought ahead, and at that time she believed that I had the build to become a flyer, too. My father would continue to be catcher for me, as he was for my mother.

  ‘Yes, my mother possessed foresight. In fact I believe it was more than that. There was a touch of second sight in her, but it wasn’t steady. It came and went and so it was of no use to her. She would see pictures of the future but she wouldn’t be able to interpret them. I remember once, when Bella was a tiny child, not more than two, my mother announced that she had seen Bella in a convent. She was sure it was a convent because it was full of nuns in their habits and there were bells, and there was Bella. My father laughed, and bounced Bella on his knee and asked her if she was going to cut her hair off and be a little saint. Bella didn’t understand a word, but she said, “Sì, papà,” and we all laughed. “Sì, papà.” I can hear it now, and the sound of Bella laughing, not because she understood the joke but because she was glad to have made the big people laugh.

  ‘Bella’s birth was very difficult and after that my mother was never as strong. The act was limited.

  ‘When I was four years old I was measured for a costume which sparkled all over and I went into the ring with my parents. Everyone clapped because I was so small. But they clapped more when they saw that I knew how to work. My mother sat me on her shoulders and walked the low wire with me. I knew how to balance, what I had to do. When she squatted I jumped down lightly on the balls of my feet as I’d been taught and I did a somersault and stood up with my arms outstretched. That was my first time in the ring. I didn’t go up in the rigging, and the wire was only a few feet above the ground, but it was the beginning of real work for me. Everyone was glad and my parents were proud of me. But as I grew older, other things began to interest me. I would rather read than practise. Several times my father had to beat me.

  ‘So, I was twelve and my sister Bella was four years old. I was a flyer. Don’t get the idea that I was good: I was not. But I learned fast, I was supple and strong and I worked hard because I knew I had to. My father didn’t miss anything.

  ‘Bella was small for her age, with black curls around her face. She looked so young when she came into the ring that it made them gasp. You could hear the hiss of breath from beyond the ring kerb. She did not have to do anything to get applause. Just to be herself.

  ‘Technically she was at the earliest stages. But already she had something. Her coordination was really astonishing. I don’t think I ever saw Bella drop a thing from the day she was born. I remember that when she was two years old she could crack a fresh egg clean to separate the white from the yolk.

  ‘Bella loved the ring, and she had something that my father hadn’t got and I hadn’t got. My mother had this quality when she was younger, but not as strongly as Bella. You would want to watch my mother, even while she was practising the same thing over and over. And Bella was the same, but more. She had a spark in her.’

  ‘Were you jealous of her?’ I asked.

  ‘No. I did not want that applause any more. I wanted to study, which was impossible. Families like ours do not study. I wanted to get away, which was also impossible. I wanted to be a student and sit in a big library with columns and high windows and read and read, and in the evenings to stroll with my friends along the river bank and into cafés, and sit and talk about our thoughts. I never wanted to be measured for another costume. I wanted to smell water and coffee and fresh new books, instead of animal dung and human sweat.

  ‘By this time we were in Spain. It was 1942 and there was no other place in Europe where we could be. My parents had joined a small circus which went from town to town in southern Spain. It didn’t tour the cities, it wasn’t good enough. It was a step down for us all. It was what my mother had feared. My parents didn’t like it, but what could they do? We were the only artistes in that circus. It was a ragbag – badly trained performing bears, an African elephant which had skin trouble, a dwarf and a hermaphrodite, a couple of clowns, an equestrian act. We were out of place there. But it was the war. Spain was a bad country for us, but not as bad as everywhere else.

  ‘How they used to beat those bears! I was used to animals being beaten, but those guys did not even get any results from it. The bears would shamble on their hind legs for a while and that was that. Even for country towns, it was not impressive. They had some plan of bringing in a snake-charmer, but it never happened. I would go into the countryside to look for snakes myself. Anything to make life more interesting.’

  Mr Damiano lit another cigarette, got up, walked up and down the flagstones without speaking. After a few minutes, he came back to me. Against the garden light, his profile was deeply cut and harsh.

  ‘A year passed. Bella was five. Every town we came to, Bella sparkled. It didn’t matter who came, they fell in love with her. They threw coins into the ring for her and my mother made her a sequinned bag and she put the coins in it, curtseying to the audience. Bella did some t
umbling, a few little tricks, and she developed her own balancing act on the low wire. Nothing difficult but she seemed to flow from one position to the next like water. She was beautiful to watch.

  ‘My mother would lead her out into the ring and then Bella would cartwheel her way round it, over and over, and then she would work on the low wire. Easy stuff, but she was so bright and happy that everyone loved it. And she remained small. She was five, but she looked less than four.

  ‘My father was a good catcher. He should have worked with a girl, it would have gone down better. There was a girl called La Palomina who wanted to work with him. She liked my father and he liked her. There was sympathy between their bodies – you have to have that for the act to work. La Palomina could hang from a rope by her teeth. She was very good, but it would have meant a share going outside the family, and we couldn’t afford that. She became famous after the war.

  ‘So we carried on, me and my father. But it’s not so interesting, a middle-aged man and a boy who’s too old to be cute any more. There’s no magic.

  ‘We did what we could. But Bella, down on the ground turning a cartwheel, had more magic than us, and we knew it.

  ‘It was in those months that my father had the idea that Bella would work with us.’

  ‘You mean high up? On the trapeze?’

  ‘No. She was far too young for an aerial act, even my father could see that. But she could be worked into the act. My father designed a special rigging. I would stand in the ring with Bella on my shoulders. My father would hang from the aerial ladder, catch her, and I would move away. Then he would swing with her. It was nothing at all but it would look pretty. In time it could be developed.

  ‘We tried it. Bella was perfect. She kept her feet together, pointed the way we had taught her. She smiled. She learned to let go with one of her hands when he gave her the signal, and wave to the crowd as she swung. She blew kisses. Very pretty. They loved it.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing. It was a nice little act. Then we developed it so I lifted Bella upside down with her hands on my shoulders. I held her by the waist. My father caught her by the feet and she swung upside down. That was even better. Bella was perfectly self-possessed. She held her arms like a dancer. My father saw how good she was going to be. The next Lillian Leitzel, he said.

  ‘My father knew that Bella was at the point where I would not need to hold her in the handstand. She would be able to balance on my shoulders. So we practised over and over.

  ‘“I can do it,” Bella kept saying. “Why don’t you let me do it?”

  ‘It was even more boring to practise with Bella than to practise with my father. I used to have a terrible fear that time had stopped and I was caught in it like a fly on glass who thinks he is treading his way into the air but will die still trapped. I think all adolescents know that feeling.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘I would prickle all over with it. It was like a frenzy. I would see my mother sitting on the steps, mending my father’s tights. I would see the bears dragging at their chains and a yellow village dog yapping round them, just out of reach of a blow from their paws. I could smell excrement and straw and dust. The heat was so great that the mountains vanished in a white haze.

  ‘One morning Bella and I were in the ring together. My father had marked the exact place where we should stand. Again and again I squatted, Bella put her hands on my shoulders, I held her as she went up in a handstand, then I let go. She remained steady.

  “‘Good girl,” I said. “And now we’re going to have a break. You can play.”

  ‘I was teaching myself English, can you imagine? I had bought a teaching book from a second-hand shop, and I was on the fourth chapter. I took the book out from under the ringside bench, and sat down on the ring kerb. I didn’t look at Bella. She would be practising flips, or walking around the ring on her hands. Bella was always practising, even when nobody made her.

  ‘This horse is lame. Please bring me a fresh mount.

  ‘I put my finger under the words and said them aloud. I wondered if horse and mount were the same thing, and if so, why there were two words for the same thing.

  ‘My horse is lame. Please bring me a fresh mount.

  ‘I pronounced those words with exhilaration. I was speaking English. I was educating myself. If I stared as far as I could, out through the tent flap, across the field and the clump of the town, into the yellowish dusty distance, nobody I saw would know what those words meant. But I knew.

  ‘Then I glanced up. The ring was empty. For a moment I thought Bella had run out to my mother, then I saw her. She was climbing up to the pedestal board, where the fly bar had been left looped over. I had left it like that. She was already more than fifteen feet in the air, climbing into the dark. When we performed, it was all lit up, so you could see exactly where to put your feet. But Bella was climbing up steadily into the darkness. The rungs of the ladder were too widely spaced for her.

  At each step she stretched and grasped and pulled herself up. And she was making for the pedestal board, and the fly bar. She thought she was ready to fly.

  ‘My book dropped. I thought of calling but I didn’t want to scare her. And it was dark up there. If she looked away, if she misjudged, she might fall. Even Bella might fall.

  ‘I thought what to do. It sounds long when I’m telling you, but it was no time at all. Like the space between one breath and the next. I was over at the foot of the ladder. I grasped it and began to climb. I knew I would be faster than her. I would be behind her and I could hold her and bring her down, safe. I could get to her before she reached the pedestal board.’

  ‘But you didn’t get there,’ I said. In my mind the little girl cartwheeled through the air to smash on the floor of the ring.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s not what you think. I reached her. She felt me coming up behind her and she looked round and laughed. I could see the shine of laughter on her face, but she was still just out of reach. She swarmed up the next rung of the ladder. I could see she thought she was going to make it and reach the pedestal board before me. God knows what she thought she was going to do once she got up there.

  ‘I got her. I held her fast between the ladder and my chest. She didn’t struggle, but her body went rigid. With one arm around Bella and my other hand gripping the ladder, I brought her down backwards. When I had got her feet on the ground I shook her hard and she began to cry. I made her look up at where she had been. She knew that she was forbidden to climb into the rigging.

  She knew, because my mother was always telling her. My mother knew that Bella’s fearlessness was a danger as well as an asset. I was so angry with her that I was shaking myself.

  “‘You see? You see? You could have fallen all that way down. You might have killed yourself.”

  ‘But she hadn’t fallen. She roared and screeched until my mother came, and then Bella snatched herself away from me and ran to my mother and buried her face in her skirt.

  ‘I was afraid Bella would tell her what had happened. My mother would blame me for not watching my sister more closely. My father would hear of it and he would beat me. But Bella didn’t say anything. She roared and stamped and screamed until her anger was dissolved. My mother scolded me for teasing Bella, but she didn’t notice my book lying in the dust.’

  ‘So it was all right?’

  ‘No.’

  17

  How My Mother’s Vision Came True

  To know the change and feel it,

  When there is none to heal it

  Nor numbed sense to steal it –

  ‘No,’ said Mr Damiano. He ground his cigarette into the flagstones with his heel. ‘Are you all right, Rebecca? You’re not cold?’

  ‘No, it’s warm.’

  ‘It’s very warm.’ He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and carefully wiped his face and the back of his neck. ‘Do you want a drink?’

  ‘Yes, all right.’

  Instead of the l
ean-to, there was a brick-built shed in the garden now. Mr Damiano kept a few bottles of wine there. It had electricity, and a fridge. Mr Damiano disappeared inside, and light curled out of the shed and lay on the stones like a tongue. Bottles clinked, then there was the pull of a cork. Mr Damiano came out of the shed with a round tray on the flat of his hand. He swivelled, switched off the light and closed the door behind him. All the while the tray in his hand remained perfectly steady.

  Mr Damiano put the tray on the iron table, poured the wine and gave me a glass. It was nice wine. It had a French stoniness in it, instead of ready fruit. I drank it slowly. My head felt as light as zero. Aeroplanes and fear and seeing Ruby on the fire-truck were cancelling each other out. I could remember everything very clearly, but I couldn’t feel it.

  Ruby had not worn her bike helmet. She had taken it off when they left the park, because Adam was pushing her bike. If she had been wearing her helmet, would it really have protected her? Adam had taken time over buying the best type of helmet for Ruby, and making sure that it fitted. But it had been fastened around the handles of her bike.

  Ruby was wearing a child-sized fireman’s helmet, as the fire-truck raced alongside our plane. Where had that come from? My brain was still flying. I wasn’t even tired. Maybe sleep had been a con all these years. You only needed it if you thought you needed it. I would not let myself go there. Today, I’d seen Ruby. It was still today. I wasn’t going to let myself sleep, and turn it into yesterday. I wasn’t going to let sleep separate me from Ruby’s presence.

  Mr Damiano drank his glass rapidly, in silence, and then he poured another.

  ‘Bella stopped crying,’ he went on. ‘My mother smoothed Bella’s hair and wiped her face. She said she was going to finish the chicken stew, and she left us to practise again. Bella was still angry. She was burning with fury because I’d come up behind her and lifted her down just when she was near her goal. I could feel the stiffness of anger in her.