Circus

by Claire Battershill

  Angry Birds.

  Not likely.

  A weakness for strong cheddar.

  To Canada once, when I was a boy.

  Twilight. I just needed to know what the fuss was about.

  Half full.

  Winston Churchill.

  The questions appear to be in a perplexingly random order. Still, he works his way down the list, answering quickly, honestly, and instinctively. Some of the questions are covertly intimate and sexual (Q: “Rough or gentle?” A: “Gentle.”), and some are frivolous and seemingly irrelevant (Q: “Have you ever been to the London Aquarium?” A: “No.”). What kind of person is he, based on these answers? He begins to regret his hasty approach.

  He uploads a photo Penny took of him during a winter stroll in Kensington Gardens. In the snapshot, he is wearing a winter hat and a duffel coat and laughing, his eyes wrinkled at the corners, while glancing slightly away from the camera. He suspects that the photo will at least attract women who like happy men, and he will come across as what he might describe – if he were writing an old-fashioned personal ad – as carefree and fun-loving. When he eventually hits “submit,” the webpage takes a minute to load before presenting him with a series of compatible matches. Henry gets up and goes to the kitchen to warm up his tea as a measure of procrastination. When he returns to his computer, he sees an overwhelming number of smiling, thumbnail-sized women. The highest compatibility match is 63 per cent, and Henry has no idea if this is a good or a bad sign. He opens up the first profile on the list: Robin Kendry, a librarian who has four cats and lives in Devon. His allergies rule that one out, so he scrolls down, browsing the coquettish poses and made-up faces. He picks up the phone beside his computer.

  “I don’t think I can do this.”

  “That bad? How far did you get?” Penny’s voice is hoarse.

  “I made my profile and now my screen is full of potentially dateable women.”

  “Right. Which picture did you use?”

  “Kensington.”

  “I was going to suggest that one. Look, I have to go, sorry.” Henry hears Garry in the background, asking who it is. Penny doesn’t reply. “Maybe just call it a night and we can go through the profiles together tomorrow? Lunch at that place that does free wireless?”

  “See you at twelve-thirty, then.”

  Penny has dated a number of men (and one woman) since she and Henry became friends all those years ago, and her partners have always been more interested in her than she has been in them. For a while, when she was in university, Henry could hardly keep track of their names, after having been introduced to what seemed to him like an endless succession of polo enthusiasts, thespians, future politicians, and semi-professional tennis players. When Garry, with his broad, muscular shoulders and his high-stress job in finance, had stayed on the scene longer than the rest, and eventually moved into Penny’s flat a year ago, Henry assumed that, as the two most important men in her life, they would become friends. Instead, Garry tends to check his emails on his phone while Henry and Penny practise their falsetto singing along with The Darkness or watch Amélie again. He closes his eyes for a moment. When he opens them, he is faced once again with the miniature portraits on his screen.

  Online dating is the right thing to do. It must be.

  When Henry arrives at the café for lunch the next day, Penny is already sitting by the window with her laptop open. She is unusually pale and wearing an oversized knitted sweater with leggings.

  “Don’t come too close,” she says in a rough voice, gesturing at the chair across from, rather than beside her.

  “Feeling poorly?” Henry asks, still standing.

  Penny nods.

  “Well, you needn’t have come for my sake. Shouldn’t you be in bed?”

  “I wouldn’t miss the start of your romantic adventures. Anyway, what would I do in bed all day aside from feel miserable? I might as well have a distraction.”

  “Right, then. Here we are.”

  As he settles into the seat opposite Penny, Henry silently wishes that she hadn’t come. He is fervently fearful about illness, and absolutely does not want to catch whatever she has. He feels repelled and ashamed all at the same time – perhaps he is the worst friend the world has ever known for being so fickle, when only the other day he was gazing at her and wondering if she was the hidden love of his life. Now he cannot think of anything less appealing than kissing her.

  “I’ll have the soup,” Penny orders, as Henry logs on to the dating site on her laptop.

  Henry orders a chicken sandwich and when he turns his attention back to the laptop, his own face smiles up at him from the screen. “Here’s my bit.” Henry turns the computer towards her.

  Penny leans over the table and points to the yellow star at the edge of the page. “You have a message! Go on, open it!” she says, before lapsing into a coughing fit that rattles her chest. Henry does his best not to wince as he runs his finger across the doubtless germ-covered trackpad of her computer. He begins to read aloud.

  “Linda Rosenberg says, ‘Want to get together? I am American. I work as a waitress in Camden. See my profile for details. Let’s meet, semi-colon, close bracket, less-than symbol, three?’ Wait, what does that punctuation mean?”

  Penny laughs. “It’s a wink and a heart! You’ve made quick work of it all, haven’t you? Don’t you think this is exciting?”

  “Seems a bit much, doesn’t it?”

  “It’s a dating site. She’s supposed to be forward. Here. Let’s check out her profile.”

  The food arrives and Henry excuses himself so he can wash his hands before picking up his sandwich. He washes them three times with antibacterial soap before he feels satisfied. When he returns, Penny is peering intently at the computer screen.

  “She’s super pretty,” Penny says, turning the computer back to face Henry.

  “Unfeasibly beautiful,” he agrees.

  “So? You only have thirty days, right? You might as well answer.”

  Henry takes the computer and composes a terse, matter-of-fact reply to Linda Rosenberg’s message, suggesting coffee at a bakery near his flat next Saturday at two p.m. She is a vision in her white blouse and rosy cheeks and voluminous hair, and he is certain that as soon as she sees him in the flesh it will all be over, but he presses “send.” Perhaps she will turn out to be as kind as she is pretty, and then he can stop Internet dating and just love her.

  “Just one other reason I wanted to have lunch today,” Penny says, watching him as she picks at her fingernails. “Although, you’re right, I should have stayed in bed.” She contemplates her hands and her messy gathering of hair flops to one side in what would under other circumstances be a comical way. “Garry slept behind the couch last night.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “He’s been seeing someone else.” Penny sniffles into a tissue.

  Henry simultaneously wants to hug Penny and punch Garry, so he settles for tapping the table weirdly with his fist. “Bloody. Fucking. Bastard!”

  “No, don’t worry, Henry. It’s just this cold. I’m not really that upset, somehow. I guess there was part of me that must have thought about the possibility of things going south. But it was nice, you know? No need to ruin it by getting all dramatic about the ending. I let him stay the night, but I didn’t want him on the furniture.” She clears her throat, which sounds as though it is full of stones. “He smelled amazing. That’s how I knew. I mean, Garry dresses pretty well, he takes care of himself, but he doesn’t usually smell like jasmine, you know?”

  She’s aiming to make him laugh, but Henry feels so unsettled and unable to help her that he lets out a strange wheeze instead. Henry watches her as she tells the whole story, as she stares out the window and makes an unsuccessful attempt to rearrange her hair. He struggles to quiet his rage at Garry long enough to think of reassuring things to say, but can’t bring himself to interject in case what he does say is the wrong thing. Best just to be here, he decides, and list
en for as long as she’ll have him.

  “But it’s fine. I’m good. I really did know all the time it wasn’t a ‘forever’ thing. So I’m good. I’m good. I’m not worried about it.”

  Henry still has no idea what to do, so he gets up and sits beside Penny and puts his arm around her. She leans into his shoulder and tries to suppress a cough. “I’m sorry. I know how you feel about sick people. You’ve been worrying this whole time about catching my cold. And now I think I might be feverish.”

  Henry feels her forehead with the back of his hand, kisses the top of her head, and snuggles her closer. “Yes, a raging temperature. But for you, at a time like this, even I can overlook a virus,” he says, feeling nauseous. He tucks her wild hair behind her ears and closes her laptop with his free hand. “Let me take you home and put you to bed.”

  As they walk back to her flat, Henry holds Penny’s hand. They don’t speak. They cut through Hyde Park and there are geese by the pond, dipping their webbed feet in the water and honking like maniacs. There aren’t many people out, since it’s not terribly warm, and everything seems grey, the hedges and the flowers and especially Penny’s fingers, which must be getting cold. It’s probably a longer stroll than she can comfortably manage in her condition, but it’s too late now, they’re between tube stations. Henry reassures himself that the fresh air will do her good.

  When they turn the corner onto Penny’s street, Henry nudges her, checking in. She gives him a slightly trembling thumbs-up. Henry tries to distract himself by worrying about Linda Rosenberg and what he’ll wear and what time he’ll have to leave to meet her. What kind of coffee-shop pastry can be consumed with grace? Perhaps he will throw caution to the wind and choose something rich, messy, and sweet. But all the Linda Rosenbergs cease to matter as he wraps his arm around Penny’s shoulders so that they hit an even rhythm in their shared stride, as if they’ve practised walking together every day of their lives.

  ANNIE LOVES IT. SHE CAN’T GET ENOUGH. She could stare and stare at the blue of it all day, just lying on her back with her eyes wide open. There are not many things Annie loves as much as this blue. She loves how the energy-saver light bulb glows like a dying star through the waterproof nylon, how scents from the rest of the house filter in, from time to time, through the mesh windows. She loves the plasticky smell of it, too, and the feel of the carpet through the sturdy plastic on the ground, the way she can stick her sock feet out the front if she wants to. She is open to the elements, but there’s no danger of rain or mosquitoes, no need for thermal underwear or finicky gas lanterns. This is camping at its finest.

  They pitched the pale-blue tent in the living room on the morning of Annie’s sixteenth birthday. They thought they’d just try it out, to make sure it was as simple to assemble as the box promised. Annie and her father moved the sofa over and rolled up the rug to create a perfect spot beside the window. And voilà! They had never imagined how easy! Twist the spokes into place and up it goes with a sound like an unusually hearty sneeze. It seemed almost a genuine miracle, compared with the tents of yore – of Annie’s father’s youth. That kind took an army of boy scouts an entire day to assemble, and then a separate army of their overbearing mothers and woodsy fathers another full day to put away. But not this tent. Annie’s tent opened itself to the living room like one of those tropical flowers that blooms, suddenly, when the sun goes down.

  Annie’s dad, Jake, has never been very good at birthday presents, but this time he got it right. He googled “tents for teenagers” and then embarked on a long Internet excursion involving religious camping experiences for youth-at-risk and Bible study sites that listed fourteen different interpretations of the same line of verse. He liked the archaic-sounding translations best – they made the very notion of a tent sound worthy: “Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations” (Isaiah 54:2). Eventually, he regained his focus and found a site with a tent selector tool. He chose the number of people it needed to sleep from a drop-down menu (1–3); the difficulty of set-up (very easy); the degree of waterproofing (medium is always a good bet, right?). Four possible tents appeared on the screen. The only question missing from the tool was something about the appropriateness for the occasion, though PattiC from Minnesota had written in the comments section that she had thrown an outdoor-themed slumber party for her sixteen-year-old, which had been a “roaring success.” Jake wrote down the model number and went to the store.

  Along with the tent, he gave Annie a new sleeping bag and a little flashlight and some freeze-dried astronaut food from the space museum, in case she was ever lost in the wilderness and needed something to sustain her for hunting and gathering. When they first popped the tent up, it was Jake who was most excited. “Isn’t this neat?” He touched the convergence of poles lightly with the tips of his fingers, as if it might fall down at the slightest provocation. “You can have real shelter, just like that!” he said, snapping his fingers with a satisfying crack. Snapping was one of his best skills. “And it all fits in here! You could carry it in one hand!” He picked up the tent’s tiny mesh stuff-sac and dangled it from his wrist to demonstrate. He could hardly believe the technological innovation in outdoor gear since he had traipsed uncomfortably through the woods with Annie’s mother all those years ago. He had carried heavy steel poles and the enormous canvas tent and all the provisions himself, nearly blowing out his back without asking Annie’s mother to help bear the load. They fought for nearly three hours about how to put up the tent, each having a particular notion of how it should look when it was fully assembled and where exactly the ground was flattest. When Annie’s mother grew tired of arguing, she lit a cigarette and sat on a rotting log while he held two incompatible poles from the frame, one in each hand, and tried to piece them together. She had never been interested in camping, had come mainly to please him. Before she met Jake, she had never even had a s’more, which he thought was a travesty. But when he made one for her, she took a single bite, shrugged, and threw the rest of the delectable treat into the fire. Their relationship lasted for a single autumn. When she called him eight months after they split up and asked to see him in person, he already knew what was coming, although he never would have guessed at his own reaction.

  For their meeting, she chose a local coffee shop furnished with artfully mismatched tables, creaky chairs, and a collection of novelty candy dispensers arranged in colour-coordinated rows along the windowsill. The coffee came in cups that were more like bowls: smooth and round and thick. He ordered a black coffee, and she just had tap water.

  Her baby bump looked strange on her thin body, as though it belonged to someone else.

  “Is that a new shirt?” she asked, sipping her water, delicate as a hummingbird. They sat opposite one another in a booth by the window.

  “I went to the mall the other day,” he answered, though he was never entirely sure when she was making fun of him, because she had perpetually ironic eyebrows. “How are you?” he asked, feeling his heart floating up by his ears.

  “It’s a girl,” she said, as if he were a stranger who had asked a different question. “It doesn’t matter, though, does it?” Annie’s mother glanced up and turned her head to stare either out the window or at the Daffy Duck PEZ dispenser on the sill, he couldn’t be sure. “But, yeah. A girl.” She was avoiding his gaze. “I just thought you should know that this happened,” she said, gesturing at her own tummy. “Just, yeah. You know. It happened. But I’ve made the decision, so that part’s done.” She paused and sipped her water. “Anyway. They seem like they’ll be good parents. They have a backyard. You don’t need to do anything.”

  Jake wanted to turn his head so that he could see what she was looking at out the window, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the bump. The only tenderness between them had always come from him, and there it was still, radiating out in bright beams, newly focused on her belly. As he sat there in the booth, watching her, he knew what he needed to do.

 
“I’ll take her.”

  And that had been that.

  Annie was skeptical about the camping gear at first. She hadn’t been planning an outdoor adventure. Camping was something her friends sometimes did, it was true, but Annie avoided the Outdoor Education trips at school – which involved hiking, orienteering, and kayaking – and always opted instead for Mathletes. She had never even been much of a sleepover person because it freaked her out to be in unfamiliar houses at night. The first time she went to a slumber party, at age nine, she called her dad as soon as all the other girls fell asleep. As he drove them home that night, he told her he would come to get her whenever and wherever she needed, now and always. It was a promise she took so seriously that eventually he stopped going to bed at all when she was away, and sat by the phone instead, waiting for her inevitable call.

  Although it had never really occurred to Annie that outdoor gear would be something she would ever need or want, it was better than the T-shirt with the photorealistic image of a hippo from the previous year. It was much better than the dangly earrings made out of miniature fish skeletons that he bought her for her eleventh birthday, and no one wants to bring up the extra-large puke-green fleece pajamas with the disconcerting flap over the backside that opened and closed with snaps. Her dad insists to this day that he hadn’t noticed that part when he’d bought them, that he just thought they looked “cozy.” Yes, compared to her dad’s spectacularly poor selections over the years, the tent and camping gear seemed, well, inoffensive, and potentially even useful.

  “Thank you,” Annie said, and she meant it.

  They hadn’t always managed so perfectly, the two of them. Jake had never cooked vegetables “from scratch” before Annie started eating solid food, and when she was a toddler he had to pay a housekeeper to come over and teach him how to keep his own home clean enough for a little girl who put everything in her mouth. Fashion was not his strong suit: Annie showed up at her first day of preschool without underwear, which wouldn’t have been as obvious if she had been wearing pants instead of a Snow White costume with a voluminous yellow skirt that flipped up when she went on the swings. And until one of the mothers pointed it out, he hadn’t realized that skirts, unlike pants, usually zip up in the back rather than the front. He was secretly relieved when, at the age of five, Annie took charge of her own wardrobe, among other responsibilities. She was the one who, at ten, planted herbs in the window boxes and added throw cushions to the couch. At twelve, she took him to the department store to help him choose new small appliances for the kitchen when their blender grew so rickety it required a screwdriver to turn on. Annie and her father both figured, now, that they did okay, and that neither of them would want to change much about their little house on Alder Street.