by Nina Allan
“Where shall we go?” he said.
For the moment I made no reply. I knew that Stephen was keeping something back from me and I resented him for it, for coming the older brother. But gradually my anger subsided. Stephen was dead, after all. He was bound to have the inside track.
“Let’s go along by the beach huts,” I said. “I want to have a look at the pier.”
We set off across the shingle. The tide was a long way out. Close to the edge of the sea two men were digging for lugworms, and a boy in shorts and a T-shirt was throwing a yellow Frisbee. He had a dog with him, a Dalmatian. Each time the boy threw the Frisbee the dog would sprint after it, its ears flapping. The boy looked about my own age, and made me think of the boy the Aunts had been talking about, the baker’s son who made model aircraft and went to the local technology college. I had no real friends apart from Stephen. I shivered in the stiffening breeze.
“Look over there,” said Stephen suddenly. “Look who it is.” He picked up a piece of shingle and threw it towards the sea. I thought at first that he was talking about the boy and his dog, that he had noticed me watching the game of Frisbee. I felt a surge of guilt, wondering if my unconscious desire for a companion meant I had betrayed my own brother.
“That’s a Dalmatian he’s got there,” I said. “Did you know their spots are perfectly round?”
“Not the dog, silly,” said Stephen. “Further along.”
He pointed to a spot to the left of the boy, further towards the West Pier, and suddenly I saw the Circus Man. It was impossible not to recognise him, even at a distance. The straw boater and striped blazer made him unmistakable. He was performing some kind of dance, a repeated pattern of steps that brought him up the beach and then down again, an identical distance each time.
“Let’s go back,” I said. “He gives me the creeps.”
“Just keep walking,” said Stephen. “He’s not going to do anything.”
“He’s a weirdo.”
Stephen shrugged. “He’s harmless. I bet he’d run a mile if you tried to speak to him.”
“Speak to him?” I said. “You must be joking.”
The first time I saw the Circus Man he had been running in and out of the sea. He was doing the same mad dance, and gesticulating at the waves with the black cane he always carried. The cane had a silver head in the shape of a dog’s paw. His trousers were soaked to the knee. I was five years old. Judith had been taking me for a walk along the promenade. It was a grey and windy day, not the weather for sea-bathing.
“Oh look,” said Judith, pointing. “There goes the sandman.” She seemed unafraid, as if the sight of this monster was something she was used to. I was dismayed by her lack of concern. I found it all too easy to imagine the strange darting figure breaking off from its games and dashing up the beach towards us. I don’t know what I thought he was going to do to me but all the same I was terrified of him. I didn’t see him every time I came to Brighton but the thought that I might spoiled my anticipation of the visits even more than the tension between my mother and the Aunts. In all the years I had been seeing him he did not appear to have changed. He always wore the same clothes, or versions of them, always walked with the same dancing gait. He behaved as if he was putting on a performance, and it was this that had first led me to call him the Circus Man. His face and hands were very pale, as if he were wearing some kind of stage makeup. Whenever I saw him it seemed like a bad omen.
I said nothing of this to Stephen. He thought my fear of the Circus Man was childish and irrational. I suspected that he had drawn my attention to the Circus Man for precisely this reason, as a way of curing me of a groundless superstition, of exerting his authority. We walked side by side, saying nothing, our faces turned into the wind. I was determined not to show my weakness and in the end it was Stephen who broke the silence.
“I’m worried about Mum,” he said. “I don’t like the way they gang up on her.”
At first I thought that this was just Stephen’s way of trying to change the subject without conceding defeat but when I turned to look at him I saw at once that he had forgotten all about the Circus Man, that his thoughts were now clearly elsewhere. Stephen never called my mother ‘Mum.’ Sometimes he called her Violet, but mostly it was just ‘she’ or ‘her.’ Again I found myself feeling uneasy, wondering what it was that he thought he knew.
“I don’t know what you’re on about,” I said. My voice came out sounding churlish and petulant. “They’re always scoring points off each other. Today is no different from the rest.”
“It is, though. It’s your birthday.”
“So what?”
“It makes Judith jealous of Mum. Because she has you with her all the time.” He began to walk more quickly, his shoulders slightly hunched beneath his jacket. He looked cold, but I knew that was impossible. Stephen never noticed the weather.
“Wait up,” I said. “What’s the rush?”
“Judith had a child once, you know.” He shot me a glance, as if trying to appraise my reaction.
“But what about Myra?” I felt embarrassed and out of my depth. When it came to sex I was still mostly in the dark. I didn’t want to discuss it, not even with Stephen, but Stephen wouldn’t let the matter drop.
“Judith had boyfriends before she met Myra,” he said. “Myra knows all about it. She doesn’t mind. It’s all in the past.”
I carried on walking in silence, not knowing what I was supposed to say. I didn’t see why Stephen was telling me this, or what it had to do with my mother. I wondered what had happened to Judith’s child.
“Judith’s baby didn’t die, if that’s what you’re thinking,” said Stephen. “She had him adopted at birth.”
“Him?”
“Yes, it was a boy. He weighed seven pounds and three ounces.”
“Did this happen before she met Myra?”
“No, they’d already been together a couple of years. Judith got drunk at a party and slept with a lecturer who was visiting from Germany. It was just one of those things and they soon got over it. But she had never planned on having children and neither had Myra. And in any case there were other reasons.”
“What other reasons?”
“They had a friend who had just lost a child. This woman had been very ill, she even tried to kill herself. They thought it might help her get better, you know, if she had another little boy to think about.”
He gave me a long, meaningful look, and suddenly I felt faint, giddy, as if all the blood had rushed to my head.
“How old would he be now?” I said. “Judith’s little boy, I mean.”
“Thirteen,” Stephen said. “Exactly the same age as you.”
There was a roaring sound in my ears, wide as the sea.
“That’s rubbish,” I said. “You’re making it up.”
The things he appeared to be telling me – that I was really Judith’s child and not my mother’s, that my mother had attempted suicide – were so fantastical they didn’t seem real. The only thing that really registered was that Stephen wasn’t really my brother. I felt tears starting in my eyes, a dry and prickling heat at the back of my throat.
“I’m sorry,” Stephen said. He held up his hands for a moment as if in surrender and then let them fall to his sides. “I just thought you should know. I can’t stand them arguing over you, talking about you when you’re not there. Henry thinks they should tell you everything but Mum’s terrified you’ll turn against her. She’s convinced you’ve always preferred Judith to her. She thinks it’s some kind of gut instinct, the way a lamb recognises its mother even if they get separated at birth.”
“Why would you care?” I said. “Seeing as we’re not even related.”
I flung the words like an accusation. I wanted to strike him, to pound him with my fists. I felt his ghostliness as just one more betrayal.
“You’re still my brother, Marty,” Stephen said. “You always will be. I don’t give a damn about all this other stuff. What does it ma
tter whose kid you are? I just wish they’d all get lost.”
He picked up a stone and lobbed it towards the sea.
“What should I do?” I said.
“Do what’s best for you,” he said. “Don’t let anyone bully you.”
I dropped to the ground, landing heavily and jarring my spine. I dug my fingers into the shingle. The stones underneath were smaller and slightly damp. I put my fingers to my mouth and tasted salt.
“Is it true about the lamb recognising its mother?” I said.
“It’s what people say. It’s all rubbish if you ask me.”
I rested my face against my knees. I knew I could not leave my mother. I loved her with the irrational, unconditional love that comes from years of close proximity, even if that togetherness is habitual rather than voluntary. In spite of her moods and silences I knew she needed me. I didn’t know how I felt about Judith. We looked so alike it was laughable really. It seemed impossible I hadn’t noticed this before.
“Did you mean that?” I said to Stephen. “About always being my brother?”
He didn’t answer. I looked up to find him gone.
I scrambled to my feet. “Steve,” I said. “Don’t do this, come back.” I scanned the horizon in all directions but there was no sign of him. I felt an upsurge of fury that quickly collapsed into despair. He had walked away from me when I needed him most. Quite suddenly I knew things would always be like this, that I had no way of preventing it and no way of confronting him until or unless he chose to show himself. The only sanction I had was a negative one: to reject him, to refuse to let him into my life.
Yet how could I reject my own brother? I choked back my tears. I knew I would forgive him everything if only I could see him again.
I carried on down the beach, walking once again in the direction of the West Pier. Eventually the shingle gave out and I was walking on bare sand. I began to run, loving the feel of it, the wind tugging at my hair, my trainers hitting the ground with a muffled thump. I let my mind go, gradually losing awareness of everything but the wind and the sea and the sound of my footfalls on the sand. My breath sawed in my lungs and there was a stitch in my side but I forced myself to keep going. The West Pier loomed up ahead of me, its wasted hulk rising out of the sea like the desiccated carcass of a beached sea monster. I had stood with Judith many times at evening on the edge of the sand, watching the starlings circle above the pier in the violet air. There were so many they darkened the sky. Judith told me they came every evening, that the flocks of starlings over the West Pier had become something of a tourist attraction. The flocks were called murmurations.
“Nobody knows why they do it,” she said. “Some people think they’re the spirits of the dead.”
I imagined Stephen flying with them, the clamour of wings in abandoned places, the desolate splendour of the ruined ballroom, the faint sweet chiming of phantom music.
On evenings like that, when the twilight was a soft mauve and a pale moon rose gracefully out of the sea, I could almost let myself believe he was better off dead.
My fall was sudden and terrifying. I was catapulted forward, one of my trainers torn free. I put out a hand to save myself but instead of sand there was something hard, something that hurt. The force of the impact made my wrist turn back on itself. I felt the delicate bundle of bones slide and compact together, trying to control the movement. The pain was sickening.
I had tripped over a piece of rusted iron, a section of scaffolding, some tag-end of broken machinery. The metal was half-buried in the sand close to what turned out to be the remains of a concrete ramp once used by local yachtsmen to launch their boats into the sea. Later on that afternoon I would discover that the rusted stanchion had torn a hole in my jeans and cut deeply into my thigh. My knee was so badly bruised it was painful to walk on for several weeks afterwards. But in the moments after the fall I noticed none of this. My first thoughts were for my watch. I was sure I had bashed it on the concrete as I went down. The idea of seeing it damaged or broken made my stomach turn, although later when I came to examine my injured leg I felt quite calm.
The watch glass was cracked across the dial. Seen from above the crack was scarcely visible but when you tilted the watch towards the light it became disastrously apparent, a transparent greenish ribbon, like a fissure in a block of ice. Logic told me that the glass could easily be replaced, that such accidents were commonplace. But this knowing made no difference to how I felt. It seemed to me that the new glass would not be the same as the old glass, that its beauty was ruined and smashed beyond repair.
And there could be no doubt that the watch itself was broken. The second hand had stopped moving. Time stood still at twenty-six minutes past three.
I had never felt so desperately ashamed. It was not just the thought of having to face Myra and Judith and Henry with what I had done. The idea was horrible to contemplate, but it did not matter. What mattered was that the Smith had trusted me and through my own carelessness I had destroyed it. I felt as if my world had come to an end.
I locked my arms around my knees and started to cry. These were not the choked-back tears I had cried earlier over Stephen, the stunted, voiceless crying that comes from repressing an emotion rather than expressing it. This was an all-out wailing, a sobbing so boundless and intense it seemed to break me apart.
I don’t know how long I would have gone on crying if he had not come to me. When I felt his hand on my shoulder I thought at first that it was Stephen, that he had taken pity on me for what had happened and come back. I gave a violent start, mortified that anyone should see me in this state, even if it was my own brother. But when I looked up it was not Stephen I saw but the Circus Man.
I was surprised at how young he was. He had a delicate girlish beauty, like the angels in the Renaissance paintings Henry was so fond of. I had always imagined that his natural expression would be obscured by some awful kind of madness. What I saw instead were light blue eyes of an almost preternatural clarity. Beneath the straw boater his head was closely shaven, showing a dark stubble. His skin was white as porcelain, with the same bluish undertint.
“What is it?” he said. “What’s wrong?”
He spoke with gentleness and warmth. I realised with a shock that I was no longer afraid of him.
“It’s my watch,” I said. “It’s broken.”
He put out his hand. His fingers were long and graceful, white as his face, the fingers of a concert artist or travelling musician. I handed him the watch. I found I trusted him completely. It was as if it was impossible not to trust him, as if I had been put under some kind of spell.
“Oh, what a beauty!” he said. “I love these London watches.” He held it up to the light. The sun flashed in the broken glass.
“It was an accident,” I said. “I fell over and banged my wrist.” I thought of trying to explain further but was afraid that if I did I might start crying again. “It was a present from my aunts,” I said instead. “Today is my birthday.”
“Oh dear,” he said. “I should think you’ll be in for the high jump when you get home.”
It was the kind of thing Henry used to say when I was about six. The Circus Man smiled, a sweet smile with just a hint of mockery. I managed to smile faintly in return.
“It’s not that,” I said. “It’s the watch. I love it, and now it’s ruined.” The last word caught in my throat, starting a fresh rush of tears.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said the Circus Man. “These things aren’t always as bad as they look.” He glanced at the Smith again and then made it disappear. He worked the sleight as deftly as a conjuror palming a coin. He sat down beside me on the concrete ramp, brushing away the sand with the flat of his hand. His clothes smelled strongly of the sea, the same rank odour that came up off the beaches after a storm. His shoes were a spotless black, tap dancing shoes, with shiny half-moons of steel on the heel and toe.
“Tell me about the watch,” he said. “Tell me what you love about it.”
“Time is alive and real,” I said at last. “It’s something you can measure, like water or gold. The watch is so beautiful. When I hold it in my hand I feel as if I’m at the control centre of the universe.” I gave an embarrassed laugh. “I know I’m not making sense.”
“Yes, you are,” he said. “I understand perfectly. Now tell me about your brother.”
The question knocked me sideways, and once more I felt a little afraid.
“Did you see us on the beach earlier?” I said. “We were having a bit of an argument.”
He didn’t answer the question, but I assumed it was a safe assumption. It wasn’t as if Stephen was invisible. Rye Levin had been seeing him for years.
“He told me things I didn’t know,” I said. “Things about my mother and my aunt.”
“Did you believe him?”
“I don’t know,” I shook my head. “I don’t care.”
“I had a friend once,” said the Circus Man. “He always used to say that it isn’t where you come from that matters, but where you are going.”
“Stephen said he would still be my brother,” I said. “That’s all that matters to me.”
“Time is even stranger than you think,” he said. “Most people think of time as a straight line, a road that leads in only one direction. But I’ve always found that time is more like a garden, or a labyrinth, a place where you might wander in circles and never come out.” He reached into the pocket of his blazer and produced the Smith. “A beautiful watch is not just a measuring device. A special watch like this can open doors.”
