The Trapeze Act

by Libby Angel

  Well, thought Ernest, I can wear coveralls as well as any man; I am unafraid of dirt.

  That night he sat at his desk, pen poised, wondering how best to promote himself and his wife as potential assets to the New Country. To pretend he was a tradesman of any sort would be a falsehood. He was quite good with his hands—at drawing and playing the piano—yet he hadn’t managed to fix the back door.

  Henrietta thought it prudent that Ernest keep the finer details of his scientific speculations out of the initial stages of the application. It was always best to keep one’s research to oneself, she reminded him, at least until such time as one is confident of the findings. She encouraged him to emphasise instead his entrepreneurial skills, as well as their willingness, as a couple, to help breed an elite race with which to populate the colony.

  The next day, Ernest organised the supporting documents for his application. He wrote to the local parish requesting character references, and to his locum to organise medical examinations and certificates for himself and Henrietta. A week later, he lodged the application with Mr Latimer.

  Though Ernest had done his best to hide the fact, the board sensed that he was a man of ideas, and Mr Latimer, in particular, was not the sort of person who was impressed by the conceits of the learned. What the New Country needed most, came the response to Ernest’s application, were men with practical skills: nation builders of the bricks-and-mortar variety. Less useful were men whose talents were limited to pencils and paper, numbers and letters.

  We regret to inform you, the board advised, that due to an overwhelming number of quality submissions, your application for free passage has been declined. Perhaps Mr Lord could retrain in something more employable—carpentry or stonemasonry, for example—then reapply. Alternatively, if he were willing to fund his own passage to the colonies, well, he only had to visit the following address and book a ticket…

  Ernest did not believe in entrusting his destiny to the fickle hand of fate, much less to the likes of Mr Latimer’s Board of Free Passages. He would contact the Royal Geographical Society in London at once, announcing his ambitions to see the Australian interior, and request a referral to their colonial branch. He would impose his will. It was his birthright.

  Henrietta cast herself as devil’s advocate: had Ernest, dear, considered the reality of an expedition into the interior? Could he endure the privations? Was he willing to risk his life and leave her all alone in the New Country? What if there were no tusked animals to be found anywhere on the continent, what then? Were there enough opportunities in the field of natural history alone to sustain a family? But Henrietta had not married Ernest for a safe and sedentary life. If not this scheme, there would always be another, and one no less unconventional.

  It was not long before Ernest received a reply from his friends in London. He was surely aware that the interior of the continent was an unforgiving and dangerous place? A number of men had lost their lives to natives, dehydration or starvation; others had vanished without a trace. All attempts to reach the regions Ernest referred to had thus far ended in tragedy.

  Nonetheless, the secretary of the society wrote, there was still much work to be done in the New Country in terms of charting unknown mountain ranges, exploring pastoral opportunities and documenting native flora and fauna. The secretary would not hesitate in sending a letter of introduction to his contacts in the colony. The men there would, no doubt, appreciate Ernest’s enthusiasm.

  Ernest penned a letter to the colonial branch. After careful geographical consideration, he wrote, it was his opinion that the New Country was rich with hitherto-untapped resources; one had only to know where to look. If the committee would be so kind as to indulge him with a meeting upon his arrival in the colony, he would outline his proposal in detail. Together with his special interest in ivory, Ernest continued, he was keen to dedicate himself in any way possible to scientific advancement in the region. While he didn’t have a great deal of experience in the field, the society could be assured that he was very knowledgeable on the subject of exploration, particularly in Africa; he had a sound knowledge of meteorology (he could read both barometer and thermometer), orienteering, and, if all else failed, could learn to navigate with recourse to the sun, moon and stars, though it made a man feel infinitesimal to do so.

  He looked forward to further communication and signed off in the usual way—That I may have the Honour to be, Sir, Your obedient servant, Ernest Lord Esq.—including in the envelope copies of both the medical certificate he had organised for Mr Latimer and the reference from Reverend Stone testifying to his unimpeachable conduct, moral fortitude and sobriety. (This last included the information that Reverend Stone’s associate, Reverend H, ran a mission for natives in country far northwest of the colony. The Rev happily guaranteed that Ernest and his party would be welcome by him there.)

  7

  IN HER last will and testament, Leda’s mother decreed Leda as the sole inheritor of the Rodzirkus, but only after she turned eighteen. In the meantime, Mighty Mandos was named as executor and trustee of the company. Sad to say, Leda’s mother had misread Mandos’s character if she thought him capable of managing anything other than the lid on a bottle of rum.

  With less than a year to go before Leda’s eighteenth birthday, Mandos committed the troupe to a last-ditch attempt to save the Rodzirkus from dissolution. He borrowed thirty thousand guilders from a red-light-district loan shark and announced to the seven remaining company members that they were about to embark on a comeback tour of the Antipodes. Bound by their contracts, the performers sighed, shook their heads and prepared themselves to walk the plank.

  Mandos sent the rigging and other equipment to Australia by sea. Next, he sent the poodles and pony, which would have to be kept in quarantine for several months, and an ‘animal keeper’ (a nephew recovering from drug addiction). Lastly, the troupe departed. On arrival, they accommodated themselves in a budget motel while they sourced suitable trucks, a horse float, cars and caravans for the tour. And finally, six weeks later than expected, they were able to retrieve their container from the shipping company.

  At last they set off in convoy up north with the intention of performing a series of shows in outback camps and towns before returning to the southern states where, it was hoped, the tour would culminate in a blaze of glory, or at least in a healthy wad of cash.

  But the tour was a failure, as Leda and the others predicted it would be. There was no money in the outback and people in towns and cities preferred going to the cinema or the shopping mall to seeing a washed-up broken-down circus. By the time it reached the south coast, the Rodzirkus struggled to make even enough money to move on to the next town on the itinerary. The performers were driven to busking in the streets at lunchtime. After the evening shows, Leda performed static trapeze or go-go dancing in local clubs. Every night in every town, a handful of men would stand looking up at her, heads tipped back, mouths open.

  It was December when the circus reached that ill-fated town where, more than a century prior, Maartje May had brought the curtain down on the Rodzirkus’s second tour of the colonies. They set up on the same pitch in the western parklands, caravans parked in a semicircle behind the tent, the pony fenced in. The ticket booth, painted with predictable circus scenes—bears on bikes, grinning breasty women flying through the air, a strong man in a loin cloth—stood at the same roadside.

  Leda reclined on the narrow sofa bed, which was on a slight angle because one of her caravan tyres was leaking. It was a terrible indignity to be reduced to touring in this dinged-up rusted piece of mierde with disintegrating foam mattress; there was barely even enough room for a costume change. For most of her life she had travelled in luxury Airstreams with full bathroom and kitchen facilities. Until her mother died and Mandos sold everything of worth.

  She scratched her leg. It was Friday, a perfect day for truancy. Not a decision to be taken lightly, but nonetheless one that had to be taken swiftly, before anyone in the troupe bec
ame suspicious. Before nostalgia could rear its obfuscating head.

  She considered her options. She could build the circus up again from scratch, engaging sponsors, agents, promoters and so on. She could reform the company according to her own vision: a new tent, live music, the latest technology…no animals, except perhaps a dog or two. She imagined a contemporary show, something with integrity. For God knows, she thought, zipping herself into her lurex tunic, there’s none of that here now. But even if she managed to raise the funds to do all this, the Rodzirkus name, she knew, would never be redeemed.

  After a poorly attended matinee, she returned to her caravan. Leaving her costume in a puddle on the floor, she slipped into a short skirt that had once belonged to her mother, her favourite tracksuit top with hood, and a pair of traditional Dutch clogs. She packed a small suitcase with the few things she guessed might function in the real world: a pocket knife, a pair of overalls, the cuckoo clock wrapped in newspaper. From behind the mirror she took the stash of banknotes in various currencies she had been withholding from the common good.

  It was only later, as she ran across the balding grass of the parklands that she realised she had neglected to wear underpants, neglected, in fact, to pack any underwear whatsoever. She looked back at the pennant hanging limply from the main pole, at the caravan door swinging in the wind. She looked at the pony. She ran on towards the town and did not look back again.

  The afternoon was hot and dry. Leda followed a path along the riverbank and underneath a bridge, stepping over the legs of a reclining drunk. She passed a university, a train station, a museum. Her clogs made a comforting knock-knock sound on the bitumen as she walked.

  She wondered if she had chosen the right town, a town about which she knew almost nothing. It looked innocuous enough—bees hummed around bushes along the waterfront, couples sat smiling beneath trees on the grassy slopes, the traffic was orderly and the footpaths were clean—yet it was here, in this town, that Maartje May had reached tipping point. And Leda was unsure whether to be consoled or concerned by this fact, by the persuasion of the same, familial, compulsion. But she was used to this sort of feeling; she’d spent her life tumbling through the air, in freefall—if it didn’t work out in this place she would simply go somewhere else. She stopped at a phone box, looked through the torn remnants of the phonebook on the shelf and found a listing for the RSPCA. She inserted a ten-cent piece into the slot.

  Go to the shabby little sideshow that’s set up in the park on the west side of town, she advised the officer on the other end of the line. Rescue the poodles and the fucked-up pony. Make whatever charges you see fit—it’s a crime scene down there, a scandal!

  Next she rang the city council and told them to check that the circus had the appropriate permits and visas for a six-week season, knowing full well it didn’t, having arranged them herself.

  The Dutch, my mother constantly reminded me, are a proud and pragmatic people: strong and agile in body and mind (unlike the English, who are wan and pasty), innate money-lenders and ship­builders. Cubans, she said, on the other hand, have no common sense at all. Mandos, for example, became drunk on defection, democracy and rum. He gave himself a pay rise at every turn and spent his earnings on gold watches, designer jeans and whitegoods, instead of investing back into the company. He expected to be treated like a celebrity well after his moment had passed, began skiving on chores and delegating his responsibilities to younger members of the ensemble. Worst of all, he started cutting costs with the rigging. Instead of buying new shackles to hang the cradle, for instance, he tied together the frayed cable ends, nearly killing Leda, who was standing beneath it when it fell from the truss.

  How could the story end in any way other than tragedy? Leda never forgave her mother the folly of entrusting her inheritance to a clown. However young she was when her mother died, she would have done a better job at the helm than Mandos. A chimpanzee would have done a better job.

  Striding through the town, Leda soon came upon a row of double-storeyed terraces, one of which was the Capitol Hotel. There was also an Italian restaurant, a pawnbroker, a delicatessen and a neon sign reading, ‘The Ram’, with an arrow pointing to the top of a narrow staircase. She didn’t yet know it, but around the corner from where she stood was a number of legal chambers, located in proximity to the courts across the square.

  Whether her predicament called for celebration or commis­eration, she was still unsure, yet Leda felt she should mark the occasion in some way and she had an appetite for something strong and sweet. Once inside the Capitol, she headed to the Ladies room where she washed some final specks of glitter from her face, watching as they whirled around the porcelain bowl and disappeared down the plughole. (The glitter went out to sea, my mother would later recount, where it shimmered on the fishes’ fins.)

  She sat on a barstool sipping rum and pineapple juice. The hands on the wall clock stuttered forwards to 5.07 p.m. The circus would be preparing for the evening show. She wondered if Mandos had found her note yet, which she had skewered to the caravan door with a juggling knife: ‘Not my circus, not my monkeys, not my problem!’ It was a Polish proverb (she never interpreted it as anything other than literal) but written in the mutant Dutch-Spanish-English lingo that was the shared tongue of their marriage.

  Leda looked around at the men in suits. The men looked back at the girl in the short yellow skirt, at her broad, muscular shoulders. She didn’t look like one of Frank’s peep-show girls from the Ram next door; Frank’s girls were wasted-looking, hollow-chested. This girl definitely wasn’t from around here, but who could place her? And what was with the clogs? Here was a girl, part sexpot, part national costume, part clown.

  Leda did not respond to their inquiring looks for some time, but eventually she was moved to remark, You don’t get much of a fresh breeze through here, do you? The men in suits, who believed they resided in one of the most cosmopolitan towns on Earth, were sufficiently affronted to leave her be.

  Later that evening, a cocky young lawyer called Gilbert, on a high after winning a protracted and harrowing case, walked into the bar and saw before him a vision of offbeat feminine splendour. It was Leda, wielding a pool cue like she meant it. He looked at the scoreboard, saw a list of names crossed out like those of dead soldiers. Among those she’d knocked off the table were three junior solicitors and a notable barrister. Gilbert watched as she set the balls in the triangle and chalked her cue. He saw the drinks she’d won lined up on the bar and, underneath, her small suitcase standing on the floor next to the barstool. He watched her thrash another three opponents: two court officials and a security detail from the Magistrates’ Court.

  He stacked a neat pile of coins on the edge of the table, scrawled his name on the chalkboard and waited, arms crossed, the sole of one foot resting on the wall behind him. He was usually more of a darts man, but what the hell.

  Leda read the chalkboard.

  Gilbert? she inquired in her mashed-up accent. Gilbert? she called out with a little disdain, as if the name itself was absurd.

  He extended a hand and she took it. He felt the calluses, saw the fight in her eyes. She was drunk but sharp, he decided. He tucked his tie into his shirt and selected a cue from the wall. His nonchalance was so well-practised he didn’t even smile.

  Leda walked to the end of the table, leaned across, broke. Behind her, several blokes jostled to get a view up her skirt, but she moved in such a way as to frustrate them. She pocketed two smalls, then click, a third ball dropped and rumbled through the table’s innards. She might have cleaned up entirely without Gilbert getting a look-in had she not attempted a smartarse trick-shot with the cue behind her back and had the white ball not jumped off the table and rolled across the floorboards.

  She shrugged. Your turn, she said, swinging the cue over both shoulders, arms slung over crucifixion style.

  Around 10 p.m. a cluster of girls from the Ram arrived, tired-looking, dressed in black, their stringy hair flattened by hours of
wig-wearing. The men shouted them drinks and hot chips, which they picked at with finicky fingers. It was a warm clear night. The pub windows were opened out onto the street. Overhead fans churned through the smoke and heat. From the back room came the sounds of a folk band tuning up.

  In the end, Gilbert snookered Leda. (More than a decade later, Leda insisted she had lost deliberately because she was tired of playing.) In any case, they shook hands and Leda walked away, uninterested. Gilbert, my father-to-be, turned towards the bar to see her upend a final shot of tequila, pick up her suitcase, and with a cursory wave, waltz out the door.

  He followed her out of the Capitol and into the restaurant next door. La Ricetta was to him, as it was to many of his colleagues who were likewise inept in the kitchen, a regular haunt.

  The interior was softly lit with candles jammed in Chianti bottles. Plastic grapes hung like testicles from exposed brick arches and the tables were covered in starched tablecloths. Leda’s bleached hair glowed from the back of the room where she sat studying the menu.

  She didn’t acknowledge Gilbert as he pulled out a chair opposite her and sat down, but neither did she protest. She figured that if she was going to live in the real world, she might as well get to know some of its inhabitants.

  He said to her, How about a consolation prize? I could buy you dinner.

  Leda didn’t hesitate. Okay, she said, The venison looks good. And how about a robust red to go with it? She put down the menu and looked at him squarely. She knew all about gourmet dining.

  None of the educated women Gilbert usually took out for dinner had ever ordered anything so extravagant, let alone eaten it; they were minestrone-and-salad girls, with-maybe-a-spritzer girls. The young woman sitting in front of him now ate a huge plate of venison, drank most of a carafe of shiraz, then asked to see the menu again before ordering a tartufo for dessert and a mescal to go with it. Even the chef was impressed. All that red wine and in the middle of summer!