He didn’t move from his seat, though, or ask her to do anything. No one from the troupe did either, and now, in the coach on the way back to London, she feels the hard landing of another realisation: they hadn’t been interested. She had prepared herself for some initial jealousy; perhaps they would resent the daughter of Odelin the Clown, a rival for his affections and another artist. But she had sat on the bench while they danced, laughed, performed and cheered each other, and she can’t remember any of them looking over.
As Odeline stared at the fire, some of the circus workers carried and wheeled things back and forth in the shadows behind her. At one point, the bleach-haired costumier stepped forward into the firelight. She lit her cigarette by Odeline’s bench.
‘They love him,’ she said. ‘They totally adore him.’
Odeline followed the woman’s gaze to where her father was sitting upright on his bench, with his legs crossed at the ankles and hands held regally in his lap. A small acrobat had his head resting on his knee, others around his feet looked up at him as he enjoyed the spectacle of two clowns chasing each other around the fire. A lithe young woman Odeline recognised as the trapeze artist was watching from behind him, absent-mindedly twisting the spirals of his hair. She rocked her head from left to right to the beat of the drums. Other members of the troupe were entwined around each other on the bench and beside it. Odeline half closed her eyes and they looked like the various heads and limbs of one being, lit up yellow in the firelight.
The woman dropped her cigarette and pressed it into the grass with the toe of a white trainer. ‘Work to do,’ she said, and walked away. Odeline shifted the bench a little further back into the darkness.
She slept in the big top – her father had presented this to her as a great honour. The circular ringside and rows of benches had already been removed and stacked on the grass outside. She unstacked a bench and dragged it back in, placing it far back from the ring so that the stench of animals would be less immediate. Then she parked her prop box next to the bench and ate Vera’s picnic. The panini was soggy from sweating in the ziplock bag but it filled her up and she was grateful. After that she laid herself out on the bench with the soles of her shoes facing the doorway. Her elbows fell off the side and so she linked her fingers over her stomach. She could hear the drumming and laughter continuing at the bonfire. Blurred shadows from outside jumped in the firelight on the walls of the tent. She turned her head away from these and forced herself to sleep.
She was woken by a panicky, fluttering noise. Her eyes sprang open – it was quiet outside and the big top was dimly lit with dawn light. She twisted her head around. There was no one there. She looked up at the dirty slices of yellow and red canvas spreading out from the centre. Their frayed threads hung down into the stillness. Odeline noticed then that the wooden poles around the ring were a veneer; she could see metal platforms at the top and screws along the sides.
She heard the fluttering noise again and saw a small shape swoop across the roof of the tent, from one tent pole to the other. It landed on one of the metal platforms, folded its wings and turned, before swooping back to the other. Its trajectory was the same as a trapeze, dipping in the middle and swinging up to the landing stage. It went back and forth in a rhythm, with a pause between each flight. It was lighter, more effortless and more perfect than any trapeze artist Odeline had ever seen. As it flew, the bird’s body curved up at the beak and the tail, shaping itself to the arc it was flying. She watched it back and forth, back and forth, and the big top colours began to grow brighter with the morning sun. When she heard hammering outside the bird stopped flying and Odeline got up quickly. She pulled her prop box towards the doorway and out, where men in shorts and vests were pulling up the stakes around the tent and releasing the ropes.
The sky was a lid of solid blue: there was not one cloud. One side of the big top fell inwards and the entrance flapped down on to the grass. Odeline watched as the whole construction sank slowly sideways, the heavy canvas folding in on itself. It made a ripping sound like thunder. She looked to the back of the tent, where the performers’ entrance had been, hoping to see the bird fly out.
Odeline pulls her prop box along the towpath back from Paddington Station. It bumps over the cobbles and the noise grates. It is a stupid thing. A stupid, heavy thing. The plastic handle makes her fingers numb. She stops walking, and looks at it. Black reinforced plastic holding years of collected items. But she has failed to impress the one person who mattered. He has not seen an artist, a protégée in her. He talked of sponsoring young talent and did not think to include her. Her body burns with all the moves, all the mimes she did not show him. She takes tight hold of the handle and swings it round with all her strength. It skids and bounces and then drops off the edge of the towpath into the water. The momentum carries it bobbing into the middle of the canal. For a second she thinks it will float and this annoys her, but then the handle tilts up and the bottom of the box begins to sink. As its sides go under, bubbles travel up to the surface. She imagines water flooding in, washing over the chalkboard, darkening the silk handkerchiefs, saturating the white gloves, the clip-on bowtie, the rainbow feather duster; rusting the harmonica she has hardly played and the roller skates she has never learned to skate on. She imagines the paper roses disintegrating, and the fold of false banknotes. Water soaking the £19.99 Harlequin doll with the bowler hat which is squeezed inside the lid. She feels nothing. The top corner of the box disappears and a green film of water closes over it. A few last bubbles hit the surface and then the canal is still. The prop box is gone. She does not dive in to rescue it, as Ridley dived in for John Kettle. She stands cold-eyed on the towpath and watches it sink.
She walks empty-handed towards her boat. As she comes round the corner to the Little Venice pool the sunlight seems to bounce piercingly off the triangle of water, making liquid stars in Odeline’s eyes. The edge of the pool is luminous green with the reflection of the willow tree, so sharp she can see individual leaves. This end of the pool is empty of boats and there is no one on the towpath, a film set after the wrap. As she walks on she sees something new, something out of place: blue and white tape on the towpath beyond John Kettle’s boat. What has he done?
She walks slower, wary of what she will see. But John Kettle’s boat looks fine, almost celebratory, with pots of silly plants around the deck and gleaming sides. In her absence, the name Peggy May has been repainted in white letters, with a flourish added to the tails of both Ys.
The tape is not here: it is around the barge cafe in a triangle where the tables and chairs are usually set out. Odeline goes to it. The tape says ‘POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS’ and as she gets closer she sees the cafe doors pushed in with fingers of splintered wood interlinking where they have been smashed across the middle. A lock hangs from the doorframe. She stands at the edge of the tape and she must be swaying slightly because she hears it scratch at her suit trousers. Through the doors a stool is on its side by the counter and the coffee machine is tipped on its face in a pool of something that has seeped on to the floor. Odeline can see broken plates and glass shored up against the counter. And Vera’s light-blue shellsuit top in a wet bundle by the doorway.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Things had gone pear-shaped in America. They’d been chucked out and couldn’t go back. Buying the boat for Inga, that was Fizz’s way of making the best of what had happened. Because he loved her. He really loved her.
And he was so sorry.
Inga’s face, the glaze of her eyes as she came out of the police station, it was the worst thing he’d ever seen. She was still wearing the pale linen trouser suit from the day before, now badly creased, and her sandals. She was gripping her sunglasses tightly to her chest. Those tiny shoulders shook silently in the car as he drove her home. He squeezed her hand and it sat cold and limp under his. Barely there. He felt his own heaviness, his pink hammy hand with its big gold rings desperately trying to hold her down as if she might float away from him. She wa
s out of reach and it made him frantic. What had he put her through? She wouldn’t say what they had done to her. She wouldn’t say what she had told them, or what they had threatened.
They weren’t allowed to take anything back with them. They only just had time to organise somewhere for the dogs to go.
Back in Britain they had nothing. Lawyers had hoovered up all the money and the remainder wasn’t enough to buy a place, nothing nice anyway.
Getting a boat had been a brainwave. Inga had grown up with the boats in Stockholm and he knew she was happy on the water. He bought it and kept it a surprise. Persuaded her out of the house down to the boatyard in Harrow where he had arranged to pick it up.
‘What’s going on, Fizz?’
They walked towards the old packet boat, with its nose swaying gently away from the bank and then back again.
Fizz held out his arms in presentation. ‘This is our new home, Ing. We’re going nomadic for a while.’ She tipped her head and looked at him. ‘I’m not joking, my love. She’s ours.’ Inga looked up and down the length of the boat and took a step nearer, letting her hand rest on the roof. She read the lettering on the side and mouthed the words: the name, the year. When she turned back to him he thought he saw some light flicker behind those pale-blue eyes. For the first time in weeks she looked right at him instead of through.
‘We’re a pair of hippies at heart,’ he said. ‘We can pad around barefoot on deck all day, lie out in the sun and get wrinkly.’ She almost smiled. ‘I promise not to screw things up –’ and he pulled her in. He felt her hesitate and then her arms moved slowly around his back. So light he could only just feel the pressure of them. Her shoulders were shaking again. He looked at their reflection in the water and saw the pale column of her body with his huge frame wrapped around it.
Fizz Clements was a big man; big rather than fat, because the extra pounds seemed part of his substance, as vital to his being as the slicked quiff of black hair, now greying, and the bright Hawaiian shirts he wore all seasons. He was a loud man, fond of retelling the old stories. His best one was him and Inga getting married on the beach in San Diego in 1977, both barefoot. ‘She looked like an angel,’ he’d say, ‘I looked like fat Elvis. It was so fucking hot I was melting. Drenched in sweat. She was cool as a cocktail. What was she thinking!’
Inga had been one of the four Swedish girls in Marta’s Microphone, the group Fizz had managed in the early 1970s. They’d been a hit in Britain, known as much for their look as for the songs. Four wispy blonde dancing things in floaty clothes, swaying synchronised, loose-limbed puppets. It was a sort of post-hippy look. Fizz had taken them to America, where he released a record. Toured them for a bit. They hadn’t worked well there – a bit too Scandinavian, a bit too cold, bit strange. Two of the girls got homesick and eventually the band broke up. The others went home. But Inga stayed out there, and Fizz organised a few small gigs for her, but nothing much. After a quiet gig in Phoenix, he asked if she didn’t want to go home too. She looked up from behind her pale curtains of hair and said she felt like she was home, being near to him. ‘I don’t need anything else.’ Hanything, she pronounced it. Her lovely, quiet accent. The first time he held her in his arms he felt like his heart was swelling up so fast in his chest it would explode.
They bought a place in LA and Fizz found a few bands to look after. Inga stopped doing gigs. She seemed happy at home and he did most of his business from there too. In LA business was social and usually done over lunch, which suited Fizz. He could blame his big belly on working too hard. They built a poolhouse with an outdoor bar and a music system, planted palms in the garden. They entertained, Fizz sweating and shouting over the barbecue, Inga swaying around barefoot with the drinks. She had a way of walking on her tiptoes as if there was nothing keeping her weight down. They’d moved their record collection down to the poolhouse and when the guests had gone they’d sit on the sun loungers and listen to old tunes. ‘Never been happier,’ he’d say last thing at night as he held her to his big beating heart; ‘What a morning,’ first thing every morning as he pushed himself up in the bed and looked over at her. He would put his hand out and eventually she would link her cool fingers into his. How bloody tiny was her wrist, and skin like honey. What a girl. One day Fizz came home with two retriever puppies and Inga dropped to her knees as they ran to her. Her face beamed up at him. Thump thump thump went his heart.
Standing by the boat he took her shoulders in his hands, felt the birdbone shoulders in his great fat idiot’s hands. He would make this a new home for them, he promised her. He would organise for the dogs to be sent over.
‘Can you do that?’ she asked.
‘Sure you can,’ he said, not sure. That was his problem, he thought: the promising. It was impossible not to promise the world to this lovely creature.
‘I’m so lucky,’ he would say, ‘to still have you.’
‘That’s right,’ she would say, and smile.
The boat had been owned by an old Government bod who said his boating days were over. Fizz saw an ad for it in the local paper. The old boy’d kept the inside pretty basic with just a bunk bed and a tin hurricane lamp with a glass bowl hanging from a hook in the ceiling. There wasn’t even a tap.
They decorated and remembered how fun it was to do a place up. They decked it out like the inside of their poolhouse had been. Groovy wall lights and orange carpet, a black tiled bathroom: showbiz lights. Fizz found a light cord shaped like a mic and got it for Inga. ‘Once a popstar,’ he said. They put in a fold-down double bed and a wardrobe. They got themselves his ’n’ hers pyjamas like they’d had in America. They had their initials carved on the cabin doors. They hired a plumber, put a kitchenette in, bought a drinks fridge and a barbecue. They replaced the worn-out fittings, the decking, the door handles and the glass in the portholes. Fizz got them a fancy music system. The cash flow was drying up but they had to have music. They bought maps and boating books. He said the bonus of being back in England was the pubs. They would do a pub cruise by canal.
Inga knew boats so she did the steering. She looked noble as a queen the way she stood with her hand resting on the tiller, making tiny adjustments back and forth. She loved it. Fizz called her skipper. She was bloody good. She knew how to do the locks and could do the niggly stuff like turning and passing when you only had a foot between boats. He took care of food, drinks and orientation, announcing each new place on the map as they reached it as if over a ship’s radio. From Harrow they went down the Grand Union Canal to Bull’s Bridge, where they took the southern arm towards Brentford. Ahoy there, Brentford! And then back up from Brentford through Hounslow, back to Bull’s Bridge and along the Paddington arm towards Ealing, travelling in the morning then stopping for a big lunch and hanging out for the rest of the afternoon.
The weather was good and the pubs did not disappoint. It felt good to drink proper beer. And to have a laugh. A good laugh. He and Inga spent happy afternoons with fat cold pints on pub terraces. She would turn her face to the sun and he’d make friends, inviting people back to their boat for more drinks in the evening. He’d heave out the barbecue, put the music on. Sometimes he’d get them dancing on the towpath.
Inga didn’t seem to mind, she only asked that people not come indoors. That was their private space, she said. Their bed where they slept. It was sacred. But one night they had a gang back from the pub and the heavy warm drops of rain began to hit. ‘Come on then,’ shouted Fizz and swung back the cabin doors. They all piled in. He kept on serving drinks and people sat on the bed and on the counters of the kitchenette. Someone changed the music and they started dancing again. Fizz noticed a spill on the carpet and looked around for Inga. She wasn’t inside. He went out on deck. It was bloody monsoon rain now. Went straight through his shirt.
‘Ing!’
He stuck his head back inside the door – she definitely wasn’t in there.
‘Ing!’
He looked along the towpath and saw her long pale figure o
n the edge of a deckchair under the trees. She was bent over, arms around her knees. He wheezed over and pushed at his chest as he felt it complain. She was wet through, her linen shirt transparent and clinging to the narrow back and ridge of spine underneath.
‘Come inside, darling. You’re soaked.’
She didn’t answer. He lifted back the dripping curtain of her hair and her face was set behind it. He had a horrible flashback to the LA police station.
‘Come on then, my darling.’ He pulled at her arm and she snatched it back.
‘Nobody inside. That’s what I asked, Fizz. That is our space. You can’t hold a party in our bedroom. You can’t bring strangers in there.’
‘I’m sorry, darling. I’ll get rid of them. Just come inside now. Don’t stay out in this weather. You’ll catch something. How long you been sitting here?’
‘I don’t want to go in there, I don’t want to go in.’ She hit her shins with the flat of her palm as she spoke, her voice brittle. ‘People trampling. All over our things.’
The way she looked scared him.
‘I’ll get rid of them, love. I’ll get rid of them right now.’
He ran back to the boat and felt the same twinge echo in his chest, like a single pluck of a guitar’s string. He pushed back the doors and yelled ‘Everybody out’ again and again, herding them out, stupid drunk and complaining, taking glasses from their hands and jostling them up the steps until they were all gone. He turned off the music and chucked the ashtrays overboard. The barbecue was sizzling in the rain and stacked with shiny charred sausages, chops, burgers. He tipped those into the water too. People stumbled up the towpath and Fizz kept looking back to where Inga was crouched on the deckchair, a pale folded figure in the shadow of the trees. He went back inside and wiped at the kitchen counter with a towel. He put all the cans and glasses into the sink. Their eiderdown was covered in mud and so he stripped it off and shoved it under the bed. Then he grabbed his leather jacket from the wardrobe and rushed back out. He put the jacket over her shoulders and pulled her off the deckchair and on to her feet. She still hung her head. He walked her back to the boat holding the jacket around her.
Chaplin & Company Page 24
