Father Unknown

by Lesley Pearse

  Every emotion Ellen had felt as a child seeing her first circus was trebled this time, for now she knew it wasn’t just magic that made people able to walk on wires or make big cats jump on to stools, but years of practice. She forgot she was alone, laughed at the clowns, cried at the beauty of the prancing white horses, and cheered with everyone else when the seals balanced balls on their noses.

  Then at last the Flying Adolphus Brothers came running into the ring. They all looked so young and handsome in their blue outfits, with short spangly capes around their shoulders, yet Pierre looked the best. To her delight he came straight over to her and bowed low in front of her, before turning a row of cartwheels around the ring.

  She watched in awe as he and the other five men tossed off their capes and climbed up ropes to the trapezes. There was a safety net, but it didn’t look very strong, and her heart was in her mouth. Up and up they went, right up to the roof of the Big Top, and then one after another they began swinging on the trapeze. It became more terrifying when three of them, Pierre included, hung by their knees and caught their partners by the hands. Then it was his turn to swing and jump and be caught by someone else.

  Ellen could hardly bear to watch. Her heart was pounding with fright and yet tears came to her eyes because it was all so beautiful, like a ballet in the air. Each time Pierre was left standing alone on his trapeze he blew her a kiss, and the tingles came back to her spine.

  It was almost a relief when the finale came; four of the men gradually made themselves into a human chain, each holding another man’s feet. They swung lower and lower until at last the first man dropped into the net, did a somersault and landed safely back in the ring, quickly followed by each of the others. But Pierre and his partner were still up there, and all at once instead of coming down, they were flying through the air again, this time doing double somersaults before catching the opposite trapeze. The crowd cheered, many people standing up and stamping and clapping their approval.

  Finally the men came down and picked up their capes, and all six strutted around the ring blowing kisses at the audience. Once again Pierre stopped in front of Ellen and bowed low, then he threw her his cape.

  ‘Is he your boyfriend?’ the woman next to her whispered.

  ‘Just a friend,’ Ellen whispered back, clutching the cape like a lifesaver.

  ‘You lucky girl,’ the woman replied. ‘He looks like a god.’

  It occurred to Ellen as the Grand Finale began and the horses and elephants circled the ring with all the different artists and clowns either riding or marching alongside the animals, that when Pierre threw his cape to her, he knew she would have to stay behind to give it back to him. But by now she was swept away into a fantasy world. Let Sally Trevoise go out with a spotty-faced boy from a shoe shop, she was going to have a date with the blond god riding on an elephant.

  As everyone made for the way out of the Big Top, Pierre came back through the empty ring wearing a kind of dressing-gown over his performing clothes.

  ‘Come with me,’ he said, holding out his hand for her to climb over into the ring too. ‘Did you like the show?’ he asked.

  ‘It was all wonderful; amazing,’ she said. ‘But you were truly fantastic. Aren’t you scared up there?’

  He glanced up and shrugged. ‘It’s second nature to me now, I never think about it. Now, what would you like to see first?’

  ‘The animals,’ she said eagerly. ‘Especially the chimp who was with the clowns.’

  He led her out through the performers’ entrance and Ellen found herself in what seemed a chaotic maze of caravans, lorries, tents and cages. Many of the performers were sitting around smoking and drinking tea, their makeup garish in the fast-fading evening light.

  Over to one side, the elephants were tethered to posts by a chain above their feet, the horses were being led into a small fenced paddock on the other, while the seals were in a shallow water tank. But it was the lions and tigers that affected her most, for they were back in their cages and had very little room to move.

  ‘Isn’t that a bit cruel?’ she asked nervously. They were snarling and roaring and swishing their tails. Close up they didn’t look as splendid as they had in the ring; their coats were thin and dull.

  ‘They’re used to it,’ Pierre said nonchalantly.

  The smell of dung was overpowering; Ellen had to cover her nose which made Pierre laugh. ‘It’s not so glamorous from here, is it?’

  He was right. The last of the magic vanished when she saw that the tiny clown dressed as a baby was in fact a rather ugly dwarf, and the girls who had looked so young and beautiful riding the horses in their red satin shorts and waistcoats were in fact plump women of around thirty, slopping around now in dressing-gowns, cigarettes dangling from their lips.

  Yet the lack of glamour made it even more fascinating, especially as Pierre was holding her hand, and every now and then he would touch her cheek or hair and whisper that she was beautiful. She saw the caravan he shared with one of the other brothers, Jack, or Jacques as he was billed in the programme. It was tiny, yet very neat and clean, and Pierre told her that all circus people had to be organized for their world was one of discipline and hard work.

  ‘We never get a break from it,’ he explained. ‘When the show leaves here everything has to be packed away. We might spend two or three days travelling to the next show, then everyone has to pitch in to put up the Big Top, fit the seating and assemble our equipment. When we aren’t performing there’s practice, advance publicity, mending things that have been broken, and the costumes have to be washed and dried. A couple of days of rain and we’re up to our knees in mud, but the show still has to go on, the animals have to be fed and watered, there’s no let-up, ever.’

  All at once it was quarter past ten, and Ellen knew she must go. She hadn’t seen nearly enough, she wanted to talk to the other performers, meet all the Adolphus Brothers, to find out where Pierre came from and how he became a trapeze artist, but there was no time left.

  ‘I shall have to go now,’ she said wistfully. ‘The bus leaves soon.’

  ‘I wish you didn’t have to,’ he said, cupping her face in his two hands and looking down into her eyes. ‘I knew when I met you at the beach that you were the only girl for me. I’m afraid to let you go now in case you won’t come back and see me tomorrow.’

  This staggered Ellen. ‘You want to see me again?’ she whispered, unable to believe anyone as handsome and talented could really want her as his girlfriend.

  ‘Tomorrow, the next day, next week, all the time,’ he said.

  They were by the caravans; lights were coming on in each of their windows, casting small golden pools of light on the worn grass. Laughter, shouting and music could be heard from every direction, cooking smells mingled with that of the animals, and the sky was studded with stars. It was so exotic, like a foreign country, and very hard to imagine that just beyond the circle of caravans and trucks lay sleepy little Falmouth.

  ‘I’ll have to run,’ she said, yet she knew that if he begged her to stay she would, regardless of what her father would say.

  ‘One kiss before you go,’ he said, and swept her into his arms.

  As his lips met hers, she left all her inhibitions behind. Nothing had ever been so sweet, yet so dangerous. Her body seemed to melt into his, and every nerve end tingled.

  ‘Run now, don’t miss the bus,’ he said, holding her shoulders, his fingers caressing the soft skin on the top of her arms. ‘I’d come with you, but I can’t dressed like this, can I?’

  Ellen giggled. There would be people she knew on the bus home, and she could imagine the gossip in the village shop tomorrow if she was seen with a man in a tight blue spangled costume. ‘No, you can’t come with me like that. But where shall I meet you tomorrow?’

  ‘There is a matinee. Come for that at two-thirty, we’ll go for something to eat afterwards. But run now, you’ve only five minutes to get to the bus.’

  Ellen had to take her shoes off a
nd hitch her dress up, but she was so exhilarated she felt she could have run the whole four miles home if necessary. The people in the queue were boarding the bus as she got there, and being out of breath gave her the perfect excuse to do no more than nod and smile at those she knew.

  As the bus sped away she leaned her head against the window and shut her eyes to relive Pierre’s kiss. She felt a tightening in her belly, a kind of wonderful yearning feeling all over her. For once she was glad Josie wasn’t at home. She didn’t want to share this with anyone.

  Chapter Six

  Ellen worked like fury on Saturday morning. She was up at six and by seven she was out with her father harvesting the potatoes, having already fed the chickens, cooked the breakfast and swept and washed the kitchen floor.

  ‘You’re chipper today,’ Albert remarked as he got down off the tractor to help her pick up the potatoes he’d just dug up. It was nearly ten now and she’d already filled a dozen large sacks, yet she looked as full of energy as when she first started. ‘Any reason?’

  Ellen smiled and wiped the sweat from her brow with her forearm, her hands were encrusted with dirt. ‘I love doing this, the soil’s all warm and crumbly and it smells so good. It’s a bit like digging up buried treasure.’

  ‘I never saw it that way,’ Albert said, but he smiled because this year’s crop was a bumper one. ‘I remember all the times I’ve had to do it when the ground was waterlogged and the spuds so small I could scarcely find them.’

  He got the flask of tea from the tractor and they sat down on a couple of upturned crates to pour it. ‘Was it very hard farming here when you were my age?’ Ellen asked.

  ‘Looking back it were, but I didn’t know nothing else,’ he said with a shrug. ‘I counted myself lucky that I had a hot meal every day, a lot of people were starving during the Thirties.’

  ‘Didn’t you ever want to do something else, go somewhere else?’ she asked curiously, suddenly aware she knew very little about his past.

  ‘There was only farming, the mines and fishing in those days, unless you were born a gentleman. I suppose if my brothers hadn’t beaten me to joining up when the war broke out it might have been different. But one of us had to stay and it fell to me. Our Dick got killed in 1940 over in France, he was just twenty-six, a year older than me, and it knocked the stuffing out of our father. He died a year later so I didn’t have any choice but to stay on here.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had brothers!’ Ellen exclaimed in surprise. ‘Where are the others now?’

  ‘There’s only Eric, he’s two years younger than me. We fell out when mother died and I was left the farm, and he cleared off soon after. Don’t know where he is, haven’t heard from him since.’

  ‘Why didn’t you ever tell me about Dick and Eric?’ she asked tentatively. It seemed almost sinister that he’d never spoken of having any brothers before.

  Albert shrugged.’I dunno, reckon as we didn’t get along it weren’t worth mentioning. I married Clare, your mother, then anyway. She weren’t cut out to be a farmer’s wife, it’s too hard a life for women that ain’t born to it. Maybe if I’d been a carpenter, a builder, got us a little house in town, things might’ve turned out different.’

  He was silent then, and Ellen could tell he wouldn’t say anything more on the subject.

  She thought about what he had said as she drank her tea. A week ago she would have agreed, but meeting Pierre had opened up a different perspective for her. Would she be as smitten with him if he did something ordinary like driving a truck or working on a building site? Maybe part of the attraction of Albert Pengelly for her mother had been this beautiful place, the romantic idea of her man growing their vegetables and milking his cows.

  ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘But I think it’s just fate, and people fall in love because they just can’t help themselves.’

  Albert chuckled and tweaked her hair. ‘Now, what would my little girl know about that?’

  She blushed. ‘Only what I’ve read in books,’ she said. ‘But I’d better start picking the spuds again. I promised Janet I’d go into town this afternoon to meet her.’

  Over breakfast she’d told him she’d gone to the circus last night with Janet, her friend from school, she’d even shown him her new dress and shoes. He seemed pleased she’d been out for once, even said she should do it more often. She hoped he wasn’t going to mind that she intended to stay out this evening.

  ‘You’d better stop picking around twelve, the sun’s too hot for you to be out much longer,’ he said. ‘Besides, you’ve earned a rest, stay in town if you want. I’ll be going down the pub tonight anyway.’

  Ellen beamed. She hadn’t expected it to be that easy!

  The matinee was every bit as thrilling as the evening performance, partly because Ellen knew a little about the performers now, and also because there were so many children in the audience. Their gasps and amazement at it all were infectious.

  At last Pierre and his brothers came running into the ring, and like the previous night, Pierre came over to her and passed her his cape with a broad smile. When he blew her a kiss before climbing the rope, her insides contracted with memories of the kiss last night. Her eyes never left him as he climbed up and up to the trapezes, she noted his taut buttocks, thigh and arm muscles bulging through the thin fabric of his suit. When he stood on the trapeze and smiled down at his audience, once again she observed his high cheek-bones and his full lips. She wondered if he felt powerful up there, knowing every eye was on him. Would it make him conceited, or did he just see it as a kind of acting?

  The only male body she had ever seen naked was her father’s and that was a few years ago before they had a bathroom, and he used to have a weekly bath in a tub in the kitchen. She could remember as a little girl being curious as to why he had that dangly thing surrounded by hair, and it wasn’t until years later when she saw a stallion mounting a mare that she realized what it was.

  She had a very good idea of what Pierre would look like naked; after all, when she met him he was wearing the briefest of swimming trunks. She thought his body was beautiful, and that made her wonder what he’d think of hers. She knew she ought to be ashamed of thinking of such things, yet she couldn’t help it. She had once watched her cat Fluff when she was in season; two tom-cats had come to visit her, and Fluff had stretched herself out on the ground and writhed sensuously in front of them, teasing and yet inviting them to take her. That was how Ellen felt now – washing her hair, painting her toenails and putting on her new dress was all part of the preparation. She wanted Pierre to want her.

  But it seemed indecent, putting her in the same light as the common, over-made-up girls who hung around street corners in Falmouth and made eyes at any boys who passed.

  Like the previous time, Pierre came back into the ring to meet her at the end of the show. But now he pulled her into his arms and kissed her, regardless of the fact that the Big Top was still full of people filing out. Ellen felt a pang of fear that someone she knew might be watching, but that was overridden by her delight in his eagerness to see her.

  ‘You look good enough to eat,’ he said, even though she was wearing exactly what she’d worn the previous day. ‘Were you in time for the bus? I was worried. I ought to have gone with you.’

  ‘I caught it by the skin of my teeth,’ she said with a smile, touched by how gentlemanly he was.

  Ellen sat on the doorstep of Pierre’s caravan while he changed and took off his makeup. He had suggested catching the ferry to St Mawes across the estuary and having a meal later. As she sat there watching the performers drifting by she imagined telling her friends about Pierre when she got back to school. ‘He’s a trapeze artist, on our first date he took me to St Mawes for a meal.’ They would be so impressed; it sounded so adult and sophisticated.

  Pierre came out of the caravan wearing jeans and a white short-sleeved shirt and he looked more handsome than a film star. ‘I’ve never been across the estuary,’ he said, taking her hand and l
eading her out through the maze of caravans. ‘But people have told me it’s beautiful there.’

  ‘All of Cornwall is lovely,’ she said with some pride. ‘Where do you come from?’

  ‘I don’t really come from anywhere,’ he said. ‘I was born in Leeds, but my folks were always on the move, the longest I stayed in one place was during the war when they left me with an aunt in Ilkley while they were entertaining the troops.’

  ‘Were they trapeze artists too?’ she asked.

  ‘No, my father was a magician, Ma was his assistant. He retired a few years ago now, they’ve gone back to live in Leeds.’

  ‘So how did you become a trapeze artist then?’

  ‘When the war ended my father got a job in Blackpool, at the Tower. It was a great show, all kinds of different acts. I used to watch the acrobats and the trapeze artists, and before long they were giving me lessons. I guess I was a natural because a couple of years on, a family of trapeze artists invited me to spend the summer with them. I only did the easy things, but they started training me, then every holiday I would join them, and that was that.’

  By this time they had arrived at the ferry, and as it was crowded Ellen didn’t ask him any more personal questions until they’d reached the other side.

  Ellen had only been to St Mawes a couple of times, most recently the previous summer with Josie. They hadn’t thought much of it, it was too small and quiet and the few shops were boring, but when Pierre began admiring the quaint cottages along by the harbour, remarking with real pleasure about the peace and quiet, how clean it was, and how much he’d like to live in such a beautiful place, Ellen found herself looking at it with new eyes.

  ‘Would you really like to live somewhere so sleepy?’ she asked, surprised that he could stand and stare at a cottage garden for so long without being bored.