Circus Shoes

by Noel Streatfeild

  Gus did not answer directly. He went to the glass and straightened his tie. Peter and Santa thought he was thinking if he would or would not. But he was not. He was trying to be fair to Peter. From the first moment he had set eyes on him in his neat blue coat he had annoyed him. He was sure underneath the boy was not as namby-pamby as he looked. Just before he had gone to sleep he had spoken severely to himself for being unfair. After all, he had told himself, what could you expect from somebody brought up by Rebecca? He had decided to be more tolerant. Now the first second Peter spoke he had let him get on his nerves. That was why he tied his tie before answering. He was giving himself time so that he would answer quietly. He turned round, smiling.

  ‘Don’t see why not. It’ll have to be the first show because you kids must be in bed early.’

  Santa got out the butter and skipped with it to the table.

  ‘Oh, thank you awfully, Gus.’

  Gus looked at the table.

  ‘Is that all right for you? What do you generally have for tea?’

  Santa put out some jam.

  ‘Just this. Bread and butter and jam. Sometimes cake, but not often, because they take eggs to make and Aunt Rebecca hadn’t much money.’

  Gus sat down.

  ‘Then you’ll have supper, I suppose, before you turn in?’

  ‘Yes.’ Santa measured out the tea into the pot. ‘Nothing much. The duchess didn’t think children needed a heavy meal before they went to bed.’

  ‘Never did care for the old duchess, so what she said doesn’t cut no ice with me. Would bread and milk or a milk pudding or something of that sort be about right?’

  Santa put the teapot on the table.

  ‘It would be very nice. We often had bread and dripping with Aunt Rebecca.’

  Gus poured out the tea. He nodded at the food on the table.

  ‘You get on with that. Never eat anything at tea-time myself. I have a big supper later. I’ve fixed to have it with the Kenets now you two are here. Wake you up if I’m clattering about.’

  Peter spread a piece of bread with jam.

  ‘We shan’t mind.’

  Gus’s eyes flashed.

  ‘It isn’t what you mind, young man, it’s what I arrange.’

  Santa saw that even Peter’s ears were turning red, a bad sign. She could see rows of angry answers welling up inside him. She gave him a look to ask him to say nothing. They ate for a bit in silence. Then she said: ‘Where are we going to sleep?’

  Gus sipped his tea. He was furious with himself. Some uncle they must think him. Picking on Peter every time he opened his mouth. He smiled at Santa.

  ‘The Schmidts have a spare camp-bed and bedding. It’s coming in here for you. Peter will sleep with me in the other room.’

  Santa cut herself another piece of bread.

  ‘Is that the Schmidts who own the sea-lions?’

  ‘That’s right.’ Gus poured himself out some more tea. ‘You’ll see them around somewhere. They’ve a couple of kids about your age. Twins they are. Fritzi and Hans.’

  Santa spread her bread with butter.

  ‘Will they come to school with us?’

  Gus stirred his tea.

  ‘That’s right. There’ll be quite a lot of you now.’

  Santa finished a mouthful.

  ‘Olga and Sasha Petoff, and Peter and I, and Hans and Fritzi Schmidt. Six.’

  Gus paused to drink.

  ‘No. There’s seven of you. The Moulins have a kid.’

  Peter let his mental eye go up and down the stables. He looked in a puzzled way at Gus.

  ‘The Moulins haven’t any of the animals, have they?’

  Gus leant back in his chair and lit a cigarette.

  ‘Yes. French poodles.’

  ‘Oh!’ Santa raised her eyebrows. ‘On them was written “Lucille’s French poodles”.’

  ‘That’s right. That’s what they call them. That’s Madame Moulin. Her name’s Lucille. They’ve one girl. Fifi they call her. She’s very smart.’

  Santa was surprised. Although Gus was such a neat man himself he did not seem the sort of person who would like smart clothes on children.

  ‘Are they very rich?’

  Gus looked puzzled. Then he laughed.

  ‘I don’t mean what you mean. When I say smart I mean clever. She’s a very neat little acrobat, though she can’t be more than ten.’

  ‘Is she?’ Santa was surprised. ‘Will we see her in the circus?’

  ‘No.’ Gus blew a smoke ring up to the roof. ‘She can’t go in the ring in England. That’s on account of the law. Twelve is the earliest you can get a licence, and then there’s a lot of trouble. The kids don’t go in the ring in England not till they’re fourteen.’

  Peter finished eating. He lolled back in his seat.

  ‘What about Alexsis? Doesn’t he go to school?’

  Santa thought that a silly question.

  ‘You know he doesn’t. He was sitting in the big top with us this morning.’

  Gus got up.

  ‘Alexis had his fifteenth birthday round Christmas.’

  Peter and Santa got up too. They began to clear the table.

  ‘Funny he isn’t in the act now,’ Santa said. ‘Olga and Sasha said he was going in next winter if he worked.’

  Gus stood in the doorway.

  ‘He would be working now if Maxim had his way. But Mr Cob wouldn’t give him a contract. He’s got sense, Mr Cob has.’

  Santa folded the tablecloth.

  ‘Why? Isn’t Alexis any good?’

  Gus threw away the butt of his cigarette.

  ‘All depends.’ He came back to the table. ‘I’ll get Alexsis to take you in tonight. He’ll be along by the time you’ve washed up. I’ll go and fetch that bed.’

  The washing-up basin stood on a Tate’s sugar box at the side of the caravan. Peter brought out the kettle of water and filled it. Santa washed up while he dried. While they worked they looked around them. The circus was changing again. All the afternoon it had had a sleepy look. Nobody seemed in a hurry. Nobody much had been about except Ben and the grooms who were watching the stables while the townspeople saw the menagerie. But now there was an air of bustle. It was not so much that anything was happening as a kind of excitement in the air, like you feel sometimes just before a storm.

  Peter, who was drying a plate, moved to the other side of the caravan. He came back in a moment.

  ‘Come and look. There’s hundreds of people waiting outside to come in.’

  Santa took her hands out of the bowl, and, holding them away from her so she did not wet her coat, went to look.

  It was quite true. The ticket wagon was pulled forward. A long queue was formed ready to buy tickets as soon as the pay windows opened. Peter and Santa stood staring at the people with interest. Then suddenly they felt embarrassed. It is an odd feeling to be stared at by about a hundred and fifty people at once, and that was what was happening to them. They hurried back to the washing-up bowl. Santa giggled as she put a cup in the water.

  ‘I think they must have thought we belonged.’

  Peter picked up the other plate to dry it.

  ‘Well, so we do.’

  Santa stopped washing and stared at him.

  ‘Do we?’

  Peter nodded.

  They both looked round them. At the big top. At the line of caravans. At the wagons. At the tents. They heard all down the line of caravans talk and laughter in perhaps five different languages. They heard a short hoarse bark. They heard deep roars.

  Santa looked at Peter. They both began to laugh. It was so unlike any world they had ever dreamed of. But it was true they did belong. The situation was so queer that the only thing you could do about it was to laugh.

  Gus came along with two fair-haired children. Between them they were carrying a camp-bed, some blankets, and two pillows. Gus put down the bed and leant it against the caravan.

  ‘Here’s my nephew and niece. These are Hans and Fritzi Schmid
t.’

  Peter and Santa grinned, and the Schmidt children grinned back.

  They were rather a nice-looking pair. They had hair nearly as fair as Santa’s. Hans’s was cut so short he hardly looked as if he had any. Fritzi’s was worn in two plaits; the plaits were turned up and tied close to her head with check bows.

  ‘What do you think, Santa?’ said Gus. ‘Mrs Schmidt wanted to come over and make up the bed for you. She said she didn’t think you’d know how to.’

  Santa washed the last knife.

  ‘’Course I can make a bed.’ She did not add that the duchess had insisted on Lady Moira, Lady Marigold, and the Manliston girls learning all the domestic things. She had said: ‘Every woman must be able to do the work herself, or how can she direct others?’ Although Aunt Rebecca had never seen much possibility of Santa having any others to direct, she had trained her carefully. She had in fact trained Peter too. After all she was not as young as she had been, and she had worked all her life. She was glad of help in the house. In fact, training in housewifery was probably one of the few things that Aunt Rebecca would have insisted on, even if the duchess had never said anything about it.

  ‘My mother makes the joke,’ Hans explained solemnly.

  Fritzi climbed the caravan steps.

  ‘Santa and I the bed will make. My mother thinks that in England no woman the things of the house is taught.’

  Gus and Peter pulled the bed up the steps. When there were four of them inside, as well as Hans looking through the door, there did not seem much room for a camp-bed, but somehow it went in.

  ‘Come on, Peter,’ said Gus. ‘We’ll leave the rest to the women. I’m going to buy a bit of a tent tomorrow. That’s where we’ll put the bed in the day time. And in the summer you can sleep in it, Santa. You’ll find sheets in the drawer under my bed.’

  Santa and Fritzi went into the other room. There was a large drawer running the full length of Gus’s bed. Inside were quite a lot of sheets, pillow-cases, towels, and kitchen cloths. Everything was neatly folded and marked in the corner, ‘G. Possit’. Fritzi was overcome with admiration. She clasped her hands and gasped.

  ‘Kolossal! Such a man is he. It as neat as my mother’s is.’

  They took two sheets and two pillow-cases and went back into the other room. Used as she was to making beds, Santa noticed that Fritzi was quicker and more thorough than she was. She would not allow a crease. Santa was quite glad when the bed was finished. Fritzi was so severe that she was afraid they might start to make it all over again. As Mrs Schmidt had lent the bed, blankets, and pillows, she would not have liked to refuse. But in her own mind she marked Fritzi down as terribly fussy. When they had finished they came out and found Peter and Hans sitting on the steps. Peter looked up at Santa.

  ‘I was asking about the sea-lions. The ones they use come from California. Mr and Mrs Schmidt bought them when they were quite little.’

  ‘That is so.’ Fritzi sat down on the top step and patted the place beside her to ask Santa to sit too. ‘My grandfather he does not sea-lions show. He has the wild beast.’

  Hans nodded.

  ‘He in all Germany the best wild animals had.’

  Peter stretched out his legs.

  ‘Well, why doesn’t your father have them?’

  Hans looked up at Fritzi. They both made gestures to show they did not know.

  ‘My father he with some bears works,’ Hans explained; ‘and in Hamburg he my mother meets.’

  Fritzi patted Santa’s knee to be sure she was attending.

  ‘She two sea-lions has. They work well.’

  Hans nodded to Peter.

  ‘You see?’

  ‘No.’ Peter shook his head. ‘Why didn’t your father go on with his bears?’

  Hans looked at Fritzi. Fritzi nodded and took up the story. She spoke slowly, as if she were dealing with subnormal intelligences.

  ‘The bears my grandfather’s was.’

  Peter turned round.

  ‘I’ve got it. The sea-lions belonged to your mother.’

  Fritzi and Hans looked pleased.

  ‘That is so,’ Hans agreed gravely.

  Santa rested on her elbows.

  ‘But how did your father know how to train sea-lions? They are quite different from bears.’

  ‘No.’ Hans’s face was very serious. Obviously, both to him and Fritzi, training animals was not a subject you spoke of casually. You discussed it properly or not at all. ‘All animals are as little children. First they must to speak learn.’

  Santa sat up.

  ‘What language does a sea-lion speak?’

  ‘With us,’ Hans explained, ‘it is German. With you it would English be.’

  ‘But they don’t speak any language,’ Peter argued. ‘I mean no animals do.’

  Fritzi’s voice showed that she was amazed at his ignorance.

  ‘All animals to speak learn. How else do they obey? First each a name must have. Each day he will the more easily when he is called come.’

  ‘So,’ Hans agreed. ‘Then he must his trick learn. You speak German?’ Santa and Peter shook their heads. ‘Well, one sea-lion, the best, he is Siegfried called. Mine father he say in German, “Siegfried, come.” One day, two days, three days he does not come. Then one day he come.’

  Fritzi broke in.

  ‘Then he have a fish.’

  Hans went on.

  ‘Siegfried he go back in the tank. He thinks, “Why did I that fish have?” The next day my father say to him, “Come,” and Siegfried remember. He come. He have his fish. He has his first lesson learned.’

  Peter and Santa had been so interested in hearing about the sea-lions that they had not been noticing what was going on outside. Now they were startled to hear a band. They looked up. A band was playing in front of the big top. All the bandsmen wore green with a white star on their coats and a white band on their caps. The conductor wore a green coat and white trousers with a green stripe down them.

  ‘What’s that band doing?’ Santa asked.

  Hans and Fritzi did not know what she meant. They were incapable of grasping that there were children in the world who did not know that all circuses have bands.

  ‘They “pull them in”,’ Fritzi said at last.

  It was Peter and Santa’s turn to look at each other. Ben had said: ‘That’s the way we speak when we mean getting an audience.’ Was the band Mr Cob’s? Was it playing to get an audience?

  ‘Is it Mr Cob’s band?’ Santa asked Fritzi cautiously. Fritzi nodded. ‘Do they play like that to let people know there’s going to be a circus,’ Santa went on, ‘and to make them buy tickets?’

  ‘So,’ Hans agreed.

  Santa gave a pleased look at Peter. Evidently they had got that right. One more expression they understood.

  Alexsis came out of the Petoff caravan. He beckoned to Peter and Santa. They got up.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ said Fritzi, ‘we for you will come. We take you to the school.’

  The first time you go to a circus must be exciting to anybody. To Peter and Santa, who had reached eleven and twelve and a half without even seeing a film, it seemed as if for over two hours they had stepped out of the world they knew and into a fairy story. Somehow, in spite of what Ben and Hans and Fritzi had told them, they had not expected the animals to be so clever. They had known people would ride on the horses. They had thought the dogs would beg. They did not know what they thought the elephants would do. And they had no idea what sea-lions looked like, and even in a dream could not have imagined them so clever.

  Mr Cob was standing in the entrance to the big top. He wore a red coat and a top hat. He carried a long whip.

  ‘Mr Cob,’ said Alexsis, ‘this is the nephew and niece of Gus.’

  Mr Cob shook hands with Santa and Peter. He was a tall man with greying hair, a mouth that looked as if it had given a lot of orders in its time, and eyes that seemed to take in the whole of you in one quick flashing look.

  ‘Never seen a ci
rcus before, I hear.’

  ‘No, sir,’ said Peter.

  ‘Well’ – Mr Cob looked round – ‘there’s a box empty round the other side.’ He turned to Alexsis. ‘Tell the girl to put you in there.’ He nodded to the children. ‘That’s because it’s your first visit. Next time you want to see the show you ask me and I’ll put you in at the back somewhere.’

  Peter still had their money on them so he bought a programme. The girl who put them in the box seemed very unwilling to sell it to them.

  ‘Alexsis can tell you what’s on,’ she objected. ‘Don’t go wasting your money.’

  Alexsis too disapproved.

  ‘There is no need. I tell you all the acts.’

  But Peter and Santa were firm. This was their first circus and they intended to know exactly what was happening. They paid their threepence and pored over the programme together. There were eighteen acts:

  1. THE MOSCOW COURIER.

  2. THE TWO FRASCONIS. In their daring trampoline act.

  3. MAXIM PETOFF’S PONIES.

  4. LUCILLE AND HER FRENCH POODLES.

  5. THE ARIZONAS. In their sensational equestrian display.

  6. PEEKABOO. The comedy horse.

  7. MAXIM PETOFF’S LIBERTY HORSES.

  8. THE ELGINS. In their remarkable acrobatic novelty.

  9. MADEMOISELLE PAULA PETOFF. In her graceful bareback riding act.

  10. SATAN’S LIONS.

  11. FOLLOW AND LEADER. In their unique clowning novelty.

  12. SCHMIDT’S SEA-LIONS.

  13. THE KENETS. In an exposition of Haute École.

  14. THE MARTINI FAMILY. In their world-famous Risley act.

  15. CLOWNS AND AUGUSTES. They have more uses than one for water.

  16. KUNDRA’S ELEPHANTS

  17. THE DANCING BUTTERFLIES. Sixteen girls in an exceptionally pretty dancing and acrobatic display.

  18. THE WHIRLWINDS. In their hair-raising trapeze novelty.

  By the time they had finished reading the programme the band had come in from outside and were sitting in a balcony over the artistes’ entrance. Alexsis pointed to them.

  ‘You watch the leader of the band. When he raise his baton then the circus it will begin.’

  Peter looked back at the programme.

  ‘The first is the Moscow Courier.’