As always, Hannah got straight to the point.
‘Granny,’ she said, from the back seat of the mountain tandem, ‘something’s bothering me. I need to know. Am I a civilian?’
As always, Granny’s answer started off heading towards the point before taking a serious diversion to somewhere else entirely. Yes, soon enough it was seaweed and old trainers time, as Granny responded to what seemed like a simple question with a long and complicated rummage through events that happened way back in the olden days. This time, she didn’t go back to when Hannah was born, and she didn’t go back to when Hannah’s mothers were born, she went even further back than that, to when Granny herself was a sprightly young thing, fresh and minty and pure.
‘You see, back then I was a trapeze artist myself,’ she said.
‘You were WHAT?!!!’
‘I was an aerial artiste. And not a bad one, either. That’s where I met your grandfather, God rest his soul. You never even met him. He was a wonderful man.’
‘He was in the circus, too?’
‘No, he was an accountant. Like your father. Your father at home, I mean. Not the father we’re looking for. But he loved the circus, and when I did a fourteen-night run in Birmingham he came every night and sat in the front row eating a truly enormous candy floss, and as soon as I spotted him I knew he was the man for me. And he was.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘Well, he was a very good accountant, but he didn’t really want to be. A few years after the twins started school, he decided to chuck in his job and reinvent himself as a tightrope walker. Thing is, balance wasn’t his strong point. In fact, he could barely even ride a bike. Which is much more serious when you’re a tightrope walker than when you’re an accountant. I can’t talk about it without feeling weepy and vomitous, but he died doing what he loved, so we must cling to that for comfort.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Hannah. ‘I never knew.’
‘We kept a lot of things from you, my love. Maybe we shouldn’t have. But we thought it would be too much for you when you were small. You see, I gave it all up when I was pregnant with the twins. Until your mother came along, nobody thought pregnancy and trapeze artistry went together. And, of course, once the twins came, I knew I couldn’t go back. Part of me wanted to, but it’s a hard life with children. Being on the road all the time. And your grandfather had a job. He had to stay put. So I walked away. Left it behind. Or, at least, I thought I did. But when it comes to children, and grandchildren, things from your past have a habit of popping back up again.’
‘So Grandad was a civilian, but you’re not. You’re circus.’
‘That’s right. I’ve spent most of my life trying to be a civilian, but it’s not really me. In my heart, that’s not who I am.’
‘But what about your circus friends? Did you just forget about them?’
‘I tried to. A few of them visited sometimes, but we mostly drifted apart. They couldn’t understand why I chose what I chose, why I married out of the circus, and I don’t think I wanted to be reminded of the life that I’d abandoned. There’s only one who I stayed close to. She was my protégée, and I still adore her, and you’re about to meet her.’
‘What’s a protégée?’
‘It’s a young person who’s learning to do what you do, and you teach her. Nurture her. Pass down your knowledge to the next generation. It was so long ago, though, that my protégée is middle-aged herself now. She probably has her own protégée. Or is looking for one.’
‘Is this . . . ?’
‘Queenie Bombazine. From the second I met her, I saw star quality. She hardly knew one end of a trapeze from another back then, but she already had something special. If there were twenty people on stage, it was always her you found yourself looking at. She shone. It was as if she was lit up from the inside. You’re going to love her.’
‘You still haven’t answered my question. Am I a civilian?’
‘Strictly speaking, you’re a mix. But it always seemed to me it was Grandad’s genes that got through to your aunt and mine that went into your mother. Wendy was half civilian, but you’d never know it. Wanda’s half circus, but you really wouldn’t know that, either. Maybe it hasn’t even got anything to do with genes. They just always wanted to be opposites, both of them. The wilder Wendy got, the more cautious Wanda became, and the more cautious Wanda became, the more Wendy wanted to go wild. Siblings are often like that.’
‘And my father? I mean my fathers? I mean the one I thought was my father until yesterday is a civilian, but he’s not my birth father. And the other two who might be my real father, whichever one it is, they’re both circus, aren’t they? So I’m circus! I’m almost completely circus!’
‘You can’t be cut and dried about these things, but I have to say it’s always looked to me like that’s what you are. Your mother – your aunt-mother – she tried her best to raise you as a civilian, but frankly it was an uphill struggle. And it really didn’t take, did it?’
‘I knew it! KERCHOO it! BAZOO IT! HULLABALOO it!’ All her life Hannah had felt somehow different, in a way that always worried her. She found it hard to concentrate at school, hard to concentrate at home, and even quite hard to concentrate on walking from home to school and back again. Nothing clicked. But now Granny had told her she really was different – different in the precise way she most wanted to be different – and this was the most joyous, uplifting, thrilling relief.
In all the excitement of having her dearest wish confirmed, Hannah found it almost impossible to sit still.
‘Hannah, dear, why don’t you get down. I don’t think tandems are designed to be ridden by standing on the saddle,’ said Granny, patiently.
‘What about like this?’
‘That’s very good, but I don’t think standing on one leg makes it any safer.’
‘Safety shmafety. I’m going to try a handstand.’
Granny pedalled on wearily. She’d seen it all before, twenty or so years earlier, on this very tandem, with Hannah’s mother. It was following an unhappy tandem ride shared by the twins, during which Wendy had insisted on attempting a tandem wheelie down a staircase, that Wanda had decided on a career in health and safety enforcement.
The twins, after that day, were never close. Even once Wanda was out of her casts, she never really trusted Wendy again.
But, of course, Wanda did raise her child. Because however hard it is to get on, however different you may be, a sister is still a sister.
So Hannah and Granny pedalled onwards, towards the Oh, Wow! Centre, Hannah’s heart beating to a new, jazzy beat now that she knew she was circus. It had been a quite extraordinary birthday. She had learned that her mother wasn’t her mother; that she had an aunt she never even knew existed who was actually her real mother; that her real mother was dead; that her granny was a former trapeze artist; and that Billy was either her brother or her half-brother. It was all rather a lot to take in.
‘This must be rather a lot to take in,’ said Granny, sympathetically.
Freaky.
‘Are you a mind-reader, too?’ said Hannah, who did not like the idea of this one little bit.
‘No, dear,’ said Granny, ‘I just know what you’re thinking.’
‘Then you are a mind-reader.’
Granny stopped the bike and turned to face Hannah. ‘I’m not, because I can only do it with you, and I can only do it sometimes,’ she replied, looking at her through those penetrating blue eyes that Hannah suddenly realised were exactly like her own. Granny smiled, with lips that Hannah noticed were strikingly similar to her own lips, and the chunky tandem fell to the ground as the two of them toppled into a big, soppy hug. In among all the crazy and exciting and weird and scary changes that had crashed into Hannah’s life today, the most important thing she had learned was that Granny was still her granny.
‘Yuk!’ shouted the bike. ‘Hugs!!! I hate hugs! Stop it right now or I’ll do a big chunky puke on your shoes.’
They ignored the bike and finished their hug.
‘I’m all muddy now,’ ranted the bike, ‘but I don’t even care! I can’t even feel it. I could be ten times as muddy as this and I wouldn’t even feel a thing!’
Granny then did something surprising. She dashed to the nearest tree, faster than Hannah had ever seen her move, scampered up the trunk, tiptoed to the end of a long, high branch, jumped off, caught the branch with her hands, swung back, then forward, then back, then all the way round, before letting go, somersaulting through the air, and landing neatly in front of Hannah.
Hannah’s mouth opened, but no sound came out.
Granny picked up the bike and got on. ‘I’m terribly out of practice,’ she said, ‘but it’s fun to dust off the old skills once in a while.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you show me before?’ stammered Hannah.
‘Oh, the past is the past,’ replied Granny, casually. ‘No point dwelling on things.’
‘That was incredible!’
Granny shrugged, and off they went.
After a short while, the bike chipped in, sulkily, ‘I could do that. If I had hands. Easy. No sweat.’
The middle of nowhere becomes the centre of everything
THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE PREPARED carefully for Queenie Bombazine’s arrival. Kelvin Pype had ensured that no stone was left unturned in getting everything perfect for the arrival of his heroine. As soon as he took the booking, he’d called a meeting for all the staff and said to them: ‘Big news! Queenie Bombazine’s coming to perform! Go outside and turn over all the stones!’
After the mammoth stone-turning exercise, there were lots of other arrangements to arrange, preparations to prepare, plans to plan, measures to measure, fixings to fix and organs to organise. The finest suite in the Oh, Wow! hotel was set aside and plumbed in with three extra baths; a football-pitch-sized area of car park was cordoned off for Queenie’s vans, caravans, vanacans and vanacanavanacanavans; the seating was rearranged to point towards a ring in the middle of the arena; lighting was rigged up; sound was checked; and everybody went for a haircut, because they all wanted to look super-good when they met the legendary aerialiste. Most importantly, of course, the Oh, Wow! Centre was flooded.
Don’t worry. I’m not talking about one of those pesky natural floods where streets turn into rivers and rivers turn into raging torrents and raging torrents just go nuts. No, I mean flooded in the sense of being filled with water on purpose. Not right to the top. The seats all stayed above water. The stage alone was transformed into a giant, glass-sided swimming pool. Because, as you may recall, this was no ordinary circus – it was Queenie Bombazine’s Ecstatic Aquatic Splashtastic Circus of the Century. And, while it is perfectly possible to be ecstatic in the dry, for the aquatic and splashtastic elements of the show, water was a necessity. It was the essence of what made Queenie’s show unique. Queenie was fabulous in every single department of fabulousness, but a star cannot rest on her fabulousness alone. In the circus world, you need a gimmick, and water was Queenie’s.
When she arrived and saw Kelvin’s work, Queenie politely ignored the fact that every stone in sight was upside down, and told him that his preparations were fantastic. She was so pleased, she gave him an enormous kiss on the cheek (a kiss that, as it happens, he thought about every single day for the next fifty-eight years, until he died a contented, peaceful death, moments after blowing out the candles on his 100th birthday cake).
‘It’s s-s-s-such a p-p-p-pleasure to see you again,’ said Kelvin, who was doing a poor job of disguising his nervousness. ‘I’m so excited about the sh-sh-show.’
‘My sea lions need their water changed,’ said Queenie, which was not the reply Kelvin was expecting. He had hoped that the hug might lead to some kind of friendly chat, but this was not Queenie’s way, at least not when there was work to do. ‘Could you possibly lend me a hose, a bucket, a pair of waders and a colander?’
‘I . . . I’ll get them right away.’
‘And a gin fizz.’
‘OK.’
‘That’s for me, not the sea lions.’
‘Of course. And I thought you might want to know that we’ve installed some extra baths in the hotel’s presidential suite.’
‘Thank you so much. I’m going to be knee-deep in sea-lion poo for the next half-hour, but after that, a bath will be just the ticket.’
The roar of a motorbike engine signalled the arrival of Reginald Clench, who dismounted from his bike, removed a brown leather crash helmet with built-in goggles, and marched towards Kelvin Pype. Literally marched. He stopped with a firm stamp and shook Kelvin’s hand.
‘Pype!’ said Clench.
‘Clench,’ said Pype.
‘Absolutely. AtennnSHUN!’
Kelvin stood to attention.
‘Not you, private. The dog.’
Kelvin looked down. At their feet was a dog, standing rigidly upright on its two hind legs, like a meerkat. But it wasn’t a meerkat. It was a mere dog. It was Rudolph.
‘At ease!’ snapped Clench.
The dog lay down. Clench turned to Pype. ‘Fine to see you, Pype, what what, and all that nonsense. Onwards and upwards. No time like the present. Let’s get cracking. Charts are here – lighting cues, sound cues, set, safety rig, timings, costume requirements, dressing-room requirements, other requirements, sundries, extras, expenses, etc. I’ll give you thirty-five minutes to peruse and digest, then I’ll chair a meeting. I want all the relevant teams. No lateness, no slackness, no interruptions, no trainers, no loose talk or sloppy posture. Pip pip. Things to do. See you in thirty-four and a half minutes.’
And off he marched. Literally. Rudolph followed, perfectly in step, one pace behind.
‘He’s a wonder,’ said Queenie. ‘Isn’t he?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Kelvin. ‘A wonder.’
By the time Clench’s meeting was finished and the animals were settled and the stage was prepared and the lighting was perfected and the sound rechecked, the Ecstatic Aquatic Splashtastic Circus of the Century had run out of time. The audience was already arriving. For almost the first time in the history of the Oh, Wow! Centre, the show would have to start without a dress rehearsal.
This had only ever happened once before when a rock band went out to the pub, then forgot what city they were in and got lost for six hours, only to return in a very unfocused frame of mind five minutes before curtain-up. That notorious occasion had given Kelvin a stomach ulcer which took several months to heal.
This time, he wasn’t worried. Well, he was worried, because he was always worried. He ate worry for breakfast, from a worry-bowl with a worry-spoon, accompanied by worry-tea and worry-on-toast. But, over and above the usual background anxiety, Kelvin trusted Queenie Bombazine more than he trusted any other artiste to have set foot on his stage.
She was a legend. Most stars these days weren’t proper stars – they were just skinny people with lollipop heads and good teeth who looked good on telly – but Queenie was different. She was the real thing.
Kelvin, for no good reason, and against all his principles, felt confident.
Queenie wouldn’t fail him.
Billy’s low point
‘TURGABURBLE LEBEBBLE OBOBBONTO thobble B983,’ said Armitage’s satnav. The burble was getting worse. As Billy and Armitage made the final turning of their very slow rampage, a thrilling sight appeared on the horizon.
Yes. A huge and pointless tent. The Oh, Wow! Centre.
‘Look!’ cried Billy. ‘It’s the middle of nowhere! At last!’
Armitage smiled, which was approximately as hard for the muscles of his face as it is for an average human to do three hundred press-ups. Smiling was right near the top of the list of Activities That Armitage Did Roughly Once A Year.29
What drew Armitage’s eye was not the huge and pointless tent, but the array of vans, caravans, vanacans and vanacanavanacanavans in the car park, the largest of which was emblazoned with the words ‘Queenie Bombazine�
�s Ecstatic Aquatic Splashtastic Circus’.
‘Ha!’ said Armitage, which was the smallest cackle he could manage. ‘Splashtastic! That’s not even a word!’
‘Isn’t it?’ said Billy. ‘It makes me think of frolics and excitement and fantastic watery entertainments.’
‘Well, it shouldn’t. It should make you think of going out and buying that show-offy woman a dictionary and a tin of paint and suggesting that she correct her advertising so as not to lead vulnerable youth into the clutches of eccentric and irregular vocabulary.’
‘Is show-offy a word?’
Armitage’s moustache began to twitch, which is what happened when he sensed someone might be getting the better of him.
‘Listen to me, young man,’ he snapped. ‘I don’t want any of your lip. You’re either with me or against me. Do you hear? Now which is it?’
‘I can’t remember,’ said Billy.
‘DON’T MAKE JOKES! I HATE JOKES! JOKES ARE FOR STUPID PEOPLE WHO CAN’T THINK OF ANYTHING SENSIBLE TO SAY, AND NO SON OF MINE HAS THE RIGHT TO BE STUPID! DO YOU HEAR ME?’
‘PSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS SSSSSSSS SSS S S S S,’ said Narcissus, and not with his mouth.
‘He’s splashed my shoes!’ said Armitage. ‘Can’t you keep that beast under control?’
‘Yes, Father,’ said Billy, who had decided this was a good moment to stop being cheeky. Narcissus, he felt, had done a pretty unbeatable job of winning the argument for him.
They rode the rest of the way to the Oh, Wow! Centre in silence, and arrived with two hours to spare before the show.
Armitage deposited Billy at a café in the enormous shopping centre that ran all round the Oh, Wow! Centre, told him not to move, and ordered an apple juice for him.
‘Does that come in extra-extra small?’ Armitage asked the waitress, employing what he thought was a charming smile, but was in fact a dismal and terrifying leer that gave her nightmares for two weeks.
Circus of Thieves on the Rampage Page 5
