The Winter Ground

by Catriona McPherson

  Mrs Cooke poured herself a cup and gave Bobbo one of the buns from which he did, sure enough, begin to pick out raisins. I was mesmerised for a minute or two, watching him crouched on the arm of my sofa with his long toes curled over it, daintily transferring the little morsels to his mouth.

  ‘Well, my beauty, what happened was this: when he’d got Princess Zanzi trained up and in the ring with the other two tigresses – and it took no time at all, for my pa worked a charm on every cat he met and she wurr a quick one to catch on – the very first show, first whip crack, she leapt off her tub and went for his throat.’

  ‘Did he survive?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Mrs Cooke, ‘he turned away in time and she got him in the shoulder there, but he lost his arm and near half his blood and spent the rest of the season in the hospital with doctors coming from all over to look at him, and then how many acts din’t up and leave us, with the boss laid out and my mother struggling. We had a hard winter that year.’ She took a swig of tea. ‘Well, there’s what comes of not sticking to your family way, but he’d learned his lesson. When he came home at last the first thing he did wurr get a lion tamer in and himself went back to his horses.’

  ‘And what happened to Zanzi?’ I asked. ‘Was she shot?’

  ‘No, none of that,’ said Mrs Cooke. ‘Beast couldn’t help her nature, could she? She wurr put in the menagerie and drew a fair crowd there. My ma painted up the sides of her wagon with scenes of the fight, called her Zanzi the Mankiller. Flatties couldn’t get enough of her after that. And do you know, Pa ended up with a set of liberty horses as good as Tam’s is now even with his one arm, so all was well and ended well there.’

  I had the feeling familiar from the day before that Mrs Cooke’s story had gone awry somewhere. Certainly, I could not see the moral of it.

  ‘So,’ I began, ‘are you saying that lightning did strike twice in this case? That you have the gift for big cats like your father?’

  ‘Me?’ said Mrs Cooke, astonished. ‘Not me. I love the beasts but I’m a Cooke through and through, horses all the way. Not but what my ma wurr pure Ilchenko and like as she had no bones the tumbles she could do. No, I’ve no way with the big cats much as I love them. Never even thought myself to try.’ She now looked at me with as piercing a stare as two such round brown eyes could muster. ‘No, it’s the sight I have,’ she said. ‘Even from a babby. I knew trouble was coming from that Zanzi. And’ – she leaned forward – ‘I know trouble’s coming now. I’m not a maid any more and I don’t scream and shout, I play clever. But I knew it, I know it and I’m not wrong.’

  ‘What kind of trouble?’ I breathed. One could take or leave the second sight and one could not help thinking that the history of Zanzi and her old pa was a bit of a shunt up a narrative siding, but if Mrs Cooke had hard facts with her as well as memories, I wanted to hear them.

  ‘Topsy,’ she said and then bit her lip. ‘It goes against my nap to be telling a … someone who’s from the outside, begging your pardon. But I need help there and no other way round it. Topsy has lost her swing. Topsy Turvy, our little tumbler, my niece, more or less. Her swing what she has for the trapeze is gone.’

  I had been sitting forward with my breath held, waiting, and at that I must admit I let it go and slumped back a bit again.

  ‘And you need help to search for it?’ I said. Mrs Cooke gave a short laugh, which made me blush and made Bobbo the monkey look up at us both for a moment. ‘Or you need help to find out who took it?’ I said; a slightly more sensible suggestion.

  ‘I think I know who took it,’ said Ma. ‘I only wish I din’t.’

  ‘So,’ I said slowly, but not slowly enough for what I should say next to spring to my mind. ‘So … I’m sorry, Mrs Cooke, but how exactly can I help?’

  ‘How can she help, she asks!’ Mrs Cooke twinkled at me. ‘Don’t you come over shy with me, my beauty. I saw your hand, remember there? And I looked at your leaves once you’d gone, just to make sure. I know what you are.’ I stared at her and I could feel a prickle as the hairs stood up along the back of my neck. ‘Besides, it in’t just Topsy. There’s more going on than Pa could crack his whip at and the swing’s just the tip what’s broke the surface like. But, one way or three, you can stop it. You know you can. You’ve done it before, han’t you?’

  ‘Apart from anything else,’ I said, regaining some of my composure, ‘it was my left hand you looked at.’

  ‘Left hand’s where some things show,’ said Mrs Cooke.

  I decided that a brisk air of business was the best response to such bewitchments (and I thought, not for the first time, that for a rational woman such as me, brought up to believe that miracles and wonders were the province of the vicar and he was welcome to them, I certainly seemed to be a magnet for mystic fancy).

  ‘So who took it then?’ I said.

  ‘Ana,’ answered Mrs Cooke. ‘I din’t see her or nothing but I’d put my toenails on it. There’s no love lost ’tween her and Topsy and less every time you look there, and it’s not the first time neither, although thanks be that I stopped it a-coming out or she’d have been off that ground there with a flea in her ear.’

  ‘But if she’s a thief,’ I said, ‘then why not?’

  ‘Not a thief!’ said Mrs Cooke, shifting and resettling herself with a great rustling of her petticoats. ‘Not so bad as that. It wurr just a prank.’

  ‘What did she do?’ I asked.

  ‘She took Tam’s whip.’ Mrs Cooke’s voice had sunk to a whisper. ‘If Tam had found out … it just in’t circus to go meddling with props what in’t yours, and the rum coll’s whip in’t just any old prop.’

  ‘The who?’ I asked.

  ‘The boss man,’ said Mrs Cooke. ‘What you’d call the ringmaster.’

  ‘You must be very fond of this Ana,’ I said. ‘If she’s being as naughty as all that and you’re still on her side … and against your own husband too.’

  ‘Tin’t that,’ said Mrs Cooke. She looked at me for a long moment before she spoke again. ‘You know our boys are away across the sea? Kushty boys, they are, both of them. Lads still, not forty, and I miss them more than I can tell you without my heart breaking in my mouth. Do you have babbies of your own?’

  ‘I do,’ I said. ‘Two sons, like you. Fifteen and thirteen.’ I forbore to mention that I had waved them gladly off to prep school at eight and we smiled at one another fondly.

  ‘So there’s how bad it is then,’ said Mrs Cooke. ‘My Tom and Joe are two of the finest horsemen I ever did see, and that’s not just me what’s their ma saying it. They have a voltige act for now – The Brothers Ilchenko – using their granny’s name for the sound of it – a Cossack act and it’s a sight to see, madam, dancing on them two ponies of theirs, fast as a blur and all the galleries clapping and stamping their feet. It wurr the top of the show.’ She was getting quite misty as she recounted this, but soon gathered herself again with a sniff. ‘But young Tom would have gave way in the end,’ she said. ‘Give over the act to young Joe and his wife – when he got one, like – and taken the whip from his pa. Tam Cooke’s Circus it would be, same as ever. That’s what we’ve thought, Pa and me, since the day he wurr born.’

  ‘But they’ve gone,’ I put in, hoping to keep Mrs Cooke from recounting Tom Jr’s entire childhood to me.

  ‘And I thought we’d fold for sure without them,’ she said. ‘Till our Ana came along. Her and her golden pony.’

  ‘She’s the star of the show?’ I said, guessing.

  ‘But don’t you go saying so, mind,’ said Mrs Cooke. ‘I mean to say, the Prebrezhenskys are a grand spot and Topsy’s a pretty girl and always draws a crowd. And them two clowns was made for each other. But a circus needs animals, see? If she ups and leaves us, we won’t hardly be a circus at all no more.’

  ‘But she’s trouble?’

  ‘I wun’t say that,’ said Mrs Cooke. ‘The poor maid’s troubled in herself and who could blame her? For she’s had a hard life there and come to th
e circus to make it better but not a scrap of luck since, none at all. Her golden pony died and Tam – I shouldn’t speak ill of my own man – but Tam’s that down on her and just looking for a reason to give her the ghost. Or she might just up and off by her own self, afore we have a chance to get her bound to us for keeps like. And she could have a grand life at Cooke’s, if she’d just bed in. If she’d just … If she wurr one o’ my own, I’d talk to her myself, find out what’s ailing her and talk her round like. But …’

  ‘She’s not a relation then?’

  ‘Josser,’ said Mrs Cooke. ‘Gently born like yourself there, madam. And so I thought you could mebbes talk to her in her own tongue, get close to her and get her told. Only … don’t go talk talk talking until you know what to say there, eh? I’d talk to the rest of ’em first, find out what’s what and who knows it. Them clowns is up to something for starters. And not just them neither. Bill Wolf knows more than he’ll tell me.’

  ‘And I take it Mr Cooke is not to know what I’m about?’ I said.

  ‘Well, my beauty,’ said Mrs Cooke, with a look of great innocence on her face that did not fool me for a minute, ‘where’s the use in telling a man everything, eh? He knows I think there’s trouble coming, but more than that would only fret him.’

  ‘I have had cases before where the diplomacy was as crucial as the detecting,’ I assured her.

  ‘Cases?’ said Mrs Cooke, looking startled. ‘Well, as to “cases”, I can’t be paying you, mind there. Pa and me have to pull in tight winters, but let me see now … We can give them two lads of yours a Christmas they’ll never forget, can Cooke’s Circus. And that’s got be worth gold to a mother. So what d’you say?’

  It did not look much, in prospect, and the briefing was far from full, but Alec and I were without a sniff of any other work and Donald and Teddy would never have forgiven me denying them circus privileges if I had such things in my gift.

  No time like the present, I told myself, and twenty minutes later I had packed Mrs Cooke and Bobbo into the Cowley, although she had been more than ready to return the way she had come – on foot over the hills – and was climbing into the driver’s seat to be waved away by Pallister, both footmen and the hallboy. Gilverton’s servants’ hall would not be lost for conversation today.

  My first sight as we drew up beside the pond and stepped down again was Bill Wolf, the individual I had taken to be a bear, still wearing the shaggy suit and only marginally less alarming now that he was revealed as a man. He was sitting on an upturned barrel, beside his caravan – his living wagon, as Mrs Cooke had taught me to call it – making the most of the weak winter sunlight as he stitched at something in his lap. Mrs Cooke gave me a look and scuttled away. Ah yes, I thought, Bill Wolf is one of those who knows something. I squared my shoulders and began walking towards the giant with my chin high in the air and my teeth only chattering slightly.

  They were stilled as I approached him by my noticing what I had missed before: there was a small child – next to Mr Wolf a very small child – tucked in between his knees, half under his beard and helping to hold taut the length of stuff he was stitching. The child watched me, warily at first, and then with frank interest as Bunty started whining and rearing up: the new little friend from the day before was beckoning from across the ground. I unhooked her lead and she went off without so much as a backward glance at her old friend of the last seven years.

  ‘Tis a waste of a kushty beast like yon, right enough, keeping it as a pet,’ Bill Wolf called to me by way of a greeting, nodding at Bunty’s departing back. His voice was a guttural rumble, with the now familiar mix of Irish and Eastern, pure circus as Mrs Cooke would say. ‘My Sallie there’s got a way with dogs.’

  ‘Oh, she’s yours, is she?’ I said.

  ‘Aye, my little rakly, and Tom Thumb here’s her twin,’ said Bill. He put down his sewing – it was a leather strap and he was attaching bells to it with an enormous needle threaded up with a bootlace – and ruffled the boy’s hair. ‘Just about five now, the two of them. Never mind autumn crocuses; more like Sarah and Abraham, eh, Ma?’ He raised his voice to a boom, and a woman appeared at the window of the wagon and leaned out.

  ‘But no Hagar!’ she said, laughing so that her face creased almost as much as Mrs Cooke’s and she showed every one of her dazzling china teeth. I tried not to look surprised. Why should not circus folk know their Bible, after all?

  I leaned up against the side of the wagon, taking their friendliness at face value and hoping that leaning on a living wagon was not some kind of dreadful faux pas like stepping unasked aboard a yacht.

  ‘I seen you yesterday, missus,’ said Mr Wolf. ‘Along with that Mrs Wilson from the house.’

  ‘You circus-daft too, like her, then?’ asked his wife. There was no insult in her words and so I did not take offence.

  ‘It is tremendously exciting to have you here,’ I answered, non-committally.

  ‘Surely,’ said Bill Wolf, not troubled by false modesty, I could see. ‘If it’s all new to you, it must seem so.’

  ‘Have you always been with the circus, then?’ I asked. Bill Wolf nodded.

  ‘All our lives,’ he said. ‘Lally there used to have an aerial act till Tom and Sal put paid to it for her.’

  ‘I’m not complaining,’ said Mrs Wolf and with a last grin disappeared inside again.

  ‘Then we thought to have a knife-throwing act,’ Bill went on. ‘Worked it up all the time Ma were carrying the nippers, should have been a treat.’ I could not agree; throwing knives at one’s pregnant wife seemed beyond barbarism to me. ‘But Tam Cooke’s no taste for it. Says it’s not right circus.’ Bill bent to chew off the end of a lace and then selected another bell and began stitching again. ‘Not so sure myself,’ he went on, spitting out some stray threads. ‘Reckon it’s more like he thinks it’s too much of the Wild West and he can’t like it, now his boys are over there without his say-so. Driv him potty, that did. Made him look bad.’

  ‘I thought,’ I began, newly careful now that it seemed there were circus acts and circus acts and the potential for offence among them, ‘I thought you were a strongman, Mr Wolf.’ Tom, leaning back against his father’s chest, giggled softly.

  ‘I was,’ said Bill. ‘I was. And now I’m a strong man for my age, maid. A strong man for sixty, but who’s going to roll up to see that? And it’s Bill, Pa or Wolfie. I’m no flatty, with your Mister.’

  ‘I beg your pardon … Bill,’ I said, smiling.

  ‘So I do fillers,’ he said. ‘Run-ins. And then I’ve got up a one-man band for before the show. Me and Ma Cooke between us, see. A crystal ball and a one-man band and maybe they’ll never notice there’s no menagerie if we’re lucky.’

  There was something ineffably sad about all of this, I thought. Cooke’s Circus shrinking as everyone in it grew old.

  ‘And shall you retire?’ I asked. ‘Or shall you always stay? Until …’

  ‘Until the black carriage comes for me?’ said Bill. ‘That I will. I must. And between you, me and who else is listening, maid’ – he dropped his voice – ‘I’ve an idea for a new turn. A proper spot again. If I can get everyone as needs to be talked around to it and start the training. You’d laugh if I told you – size of me – but it’s a good ’un. ’Sides,’ he said in a louder voice, ‘we’ve got to keep on till this little chavvy gets trained up, han’t we? Him and his sister.’ He lifted Tom right off his feet and shook him over his head, making the child squeal with delight.

  ‘And what’s he going to do?’ I said. ‘Train dogs?’

  ‘Acrobat,’ said Bill. ‘A tumbler, like his ma. My Lally is Topsy’s ma’s cousin’s girl and all Ilchenko on her pa’s side since way back.’ Bill put his son gently down on to the ground again. ‘He an’t no strongman, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Could be,’ said Tom, getting over his shyness of me at last, and flexing his thin arms ‘Might be.’ His father shook his head at him, chuckling, and then all of a sudden he looked hard at
me.

  ‘And so Ma Cooke come and got you, did she? Not much gets past her.’

  ‘Do you know something, Mr … Bill?’ I said.

  He hesitated.

  ‘Too much,’ he said, at last. ‘I dunno what bee Ma’s got in her hat, mind, but I know more than she does about some things. More than I want to, truth be told.’

  ‘About Topsy?’ I asked. ‘About Ana?’ I was feeling my way in the dark, but I thought I should keep at it while he was in a mood to talk to me.

  ‘Ana!’ he said, her name seeming to catch his interest as soon as I spoke it. ‘She’s a mystery to me, that one. Someone needs to have a quiet word with the maid. Tell her she wants to be a bit more careful like, keep on the right side if she knows what’s good for her.’

  This certainly chimed with what Mrs Cooke had told me.

  ‘I intend to, Mr … Bill,’ I said. ‘And anything you can tell me will only help.’ But I had pushed too far now; I could see it in his face.

  ‘I’ve got my place here,’ he said. ‘And after what I’ve done to hang on to it I’ll keep my head down.’

  ‘After what you’ve done,’ I repeated, careful not to make it a question. Bill Wolf’s eyes showed just a dart of panic all the same.

  ‘Making a filler of myself,’ he said. ‘That’s what I mean. One step up from an odd-job man, that’s me. But I will tell you this: that old donah loves them chavs like babbies so it’s not the prads and spots that’s aching her, but His Gills is just flash mad he couldn’t stop them and coming down hard enough to break a king pole and if this show don’t hold together there’s more than me and Lall’ll end up nobbing the streets with a stick and a rag.’

  In other words, I thought (and getting it into other words felt more like unseen translation than anything I had tackled since my French governess had given up on me), Mrs Cooke was missing her grown-up sons as though they were children but it was Mr Cooke’s pride, not his heart, which was wounded by the boys heading for Coney Island or wherever they were without his say-so and taking trained horses with them, and now Mr Cooke was stamping his authority on the rest of the outfit with such vigour that he might flatten it completely except that some of the artistes would cling on to this job with their little fingernails, ignoring any amount of trouble, if it meant they could avoid … Madame Toulemonde herself would have forgiven me for leaving it untranslated because what could ever express abjectness better than ‘nobbing the streets with a stick and a rag’? Nothing that I could think of.