Three Button Trick and Other Stories

by Nicola Barker

  Alberto was introducing her to a new tumbler. He was tall, thickset, blond; physically unlike your average acrobat. Alberto said, ‘This is Marcus. He’s French.’

  ‘Hi.’ Belinda offered him her hand. He took it and squeezed it gratefully, but said nothing, only smiled. Belinda smiled back and said, ‘We usually all go out for a meal when a new acrobat joins. Pizza or something. It’s a tradition. Are you keen?’

  He nodded eagerly.

  ‘OK, I’ll arrange it.’

  The following evening, a large group of them were filling out a significant portion of a local brasserie. Belinda sat to Marcus’s left. On her left was Lenny, who in her opinion was a workaholic and a bore. He was analysing one of their routines. ‘The first set of tumbles,’ he said, his tone rigorous, ‘come from nowhere. It’s like the floor exercises in a gymnastic competition, lacking a certain fluidity, a certain finesse. I mean, there are no hard and fast rules in this business.’

  Belinda looked at him, her blue eyes sombre and unblinking.

  ‘Anyway, the tempo’s all wrong.’

  Choosing her moment carefully she said, ‘Lenny, let’s not talk about work all night, OK?’ She turned and took a glass from a tray that was being proffered by a waiter. ‘Pernod. Excellent.’

  She focused on Marcus. ‘How’ve your first couple of days been? I haven’t seen you around much, apart from at practice and the show.’ She had seen him at practice in his slinky French lycra garments. At least a foot taller than any of the other men, but gratifyingly agile.

  Marcus took so long to respond to her enquiry that she almost came to the conclusion that he spoke no English at all. But eventually he said, ‘It was … all fine.’ He spoke slowly and laboriously. The effort of it brought tiny specks of perspiration to his upper lip. Belinda stared at him, wide-eyed. He’s drunk, she thought, and it isn’t even an hour since the matinée.

  The waiter moved over to Marcus and offered him the tray. Marcus selected a bottle of beer, glad of this distraction, and drank down a hurried swig of it. Belinda said coolly, ‘You’re unusually tall for a tumbler.’

  He nodded. ‘Yes … I am.’ After an inordinately long pause he added, ‘Five foot … nine.’

  He seemed to be relishing his words and observations with a drunk man’s delight. Belinda had been tipsy herself on several occasions and was well acquainted with the feeling of intense gratification that the performance of everyday feats accorded one while in this condition. The brain works so slowly, she thought, that opening a door or saying hello are transformed into tasks of terrible complexity.

  Marcus put his beer down next to his plate and started to say something else, but before he could complete his sentence, she had turned away, towards Lenny, and had begun to discuss the rudiments of their early tumbling routine with him in some detail.

  Later that night, when Belinda attempted to enter her trailer, the door wouldn’t slide back smoothly, but jammed when it was half open. She stopped herself from saying anything worse than ‘Darn!’ adding, ‘Needle and thread,’ for good measure. (The parrots were tucked up next door, covered for the night but ever vigilant.) She then groped around blindly in the doorway until her hand located a tortoise shell. You little swine! she thought, tucking the tortoise under her arm and reaching inside her pocket for a lighter to ignite one of the lamps.

  Once the lamp was lit she kicked the door shut behind her. The tortoise was still under her arm, tucked snugly there, held dispassionately, like a newspaper or a clutch bag. His head and feet were completely drawn in.

  This creature had once belonged to her grandmother and was called Smedley. Belinda dumped him down on to the floor again. He scuttled away instantly.

  When Belinda had taken possession of Smedley, two years ago, she had been misguidedly under the impression that tortoises were no trouble. They hibernate, she was told. They’re one of those creatures that don’t need any attention. She couldn’t reconcile this description with her own particular specimen. He certainly didn’t seem to bother hibernating. In fact he appeared to have difficulty in sleeping at all. Most of his time was spent powering around inside her van, his head fully out, stretching on scaly elephant’s skin, his feet working ten to the dozen. He took no interest in things, only walked into them or over them. Even his food.

  Belinda’s grandmother had owned Smedley for thirty-five years. He had lived in her garden during this time, as happy as Larry. Belinda had been given him, in accordance with the will, and a small financial sum concomitant in quantity with thirty-five more years of carrots and greens. Interest linked.

  Twenty-four and thirty-five. She calculated these two numbers every time she caught a glimpse of the tortoise, scuttling from the kitchenette to her bedroom, emerging from under her sofabed. Fifty-nine. I’ll be fifty-nine years old, she thought desperately, when that bloody creature finally kicks the bucket. It was as if the tortoise had already stolen those years from her. I’ll be sixty, she thought, I’ll be retired. I won’t even have the parrots any more. I won’t be able to do back-flips or walk on my hands. Smedley had taken these things from her, had aged her prematurely, had, inexplicably, made her small trailer smell of Steradent and mothballs.

  It had been ten thirty when she’d returned. At ten forty someone knocked at her door. She pushed her slippers on, pulled her dressing gown tightly around her and yanked the door open. It was Marcus.

  ‘What do you want?’

  She stared into his face, slightly taller than him now, standing, as she was, on her top step. He said nothing, only handed her a note.

  ‘What?’ she asked again, taking it.

  He bowed, low and formal, then walked off.

  Belinda sat down on the top step and unfolded the note. It was written on onion paper. She always found onion paper quite peculiar. So light, so oniony. Very French.

  The note said:

  Good evening Belinda,

  Eugenie told me that you thought I was drunk at dinner. Alas, no. I suffer from a speech impediment, a stammer, which in times of social tension can become terribly pronounced. I apologize if this minor problem irritated you in any way. I can assure you that it irritates me in many ways, but, as they say, such is life. N’est-ce pas?

  Marcus

  Although the tone of Marcus’s note, the night of the dinner out, had been anything but hostile, Belinda spent the following five days trying and failing to apologize to him and to worm her way back into his affections. She found it extremely difficult to talk things over with a person who was virtually monosyllabic.

  Because Marcus spoke so very little, he gave the appearance of listening much harder than your average person. Did he listen? Belinda couldn’t decide. It felt like he did. She noticed how he became a kind of father confessor to all the tumblers, the acrobats, some of the clowns, the most beautiful tightrope walkers. He didn’t strike her as particularly French. His accent—the rare smatterings that she heard—didn’t sound especially Gallic.

  In fact, both of Marcus’s parents were English. They were a couple who had taken advantage of the Eighties property slump in France and had emigrated when he was eight. He was now eighteen. His stammer in French was much less pronounced than in English, which struck him as rather strange.

  One thing his stammer had taught him, however, was never to waste words. In general he tried only to say things that were incisive and pertinent. He preferred to avoid chit-chat. When others spoke to him, he slashed out gratuitous noises and phrases in his mind, analysed what they said, not with the gentle, non-judgemental sense of a confessor, but with the practised, cool, steady calm of a surgeon. For instance:

  Larry says: ‘Marcus, tell me straight off if you think I’m out of line here, but I bet you’ll find that the double back-flip after the hand-walking stuff isn’t strictly necessary. I mean, it’s great and everything but just a little distracting.’

  Marcus hears: ‘Don’t upstage me, new boy’

  Eugenie says: ‘Wow! Those lycra things are fan
tastic. They look so comfy. They really do. I just love blue. I love that shade. It’s my favourite colour. Are they durable? I suppose they must be French. The French are so stylish.’

  Marcus hears: ‘Let me get into your trousers.’

  Belinda says: ‘You really must come and meet my parrots. How about it? Tonight? After the show. If you’re busy though, don’t worry or anything. I mean, don’t worry if you can’t.’

  Marcus hears: ‘I’m sorry.’

  In fact, Marcus was slightly off the mark with his interpretation of Belinda’s babblings. The truth of the matter was that Belinda found him to be both aloof and disarming. She, too, wanted to charm the pants right off him.

  Marcus had, however, noticed several worrying characteristics in Belinda’s behaviour that did little to endear her to him. The first was that she jumped—too easily, too freely—to conclusions. This implied a certain amount of self-righteousness, a nasty, bullying bullishness. Secondly, she completed his sentences, which was something that he especially loathed. He guessed that people who were prone to doing this thought that they were helping him in some way, but it only made him feel useless, gratuitous, inadequate. He’d think: What is the point of me, if it’s so easy to predict what I want, so easy to complete everything I begin?

  The third and final thing that Belinda had done which had both shocked and disturbed Marcus, had occurred in the pub several nights after the meal out. Alberto had taken Marcus to one side, late that afternoon, shortly after the matinée, and had raised with him the possibility that he and Belinda might perform together during Belinda’s contortionist routine. Since hitherto Belinda had been the only contortionist at the circus, this slot had always been solo. Alberto was keen to have Belinda partnered during this section, and although Marcus was no contortionist himself, Alberto felt that his leonine good looks and strong physique would make him the perfect foil to Belinda’s dark skinniness.

  That evening, in the pub, Marcus started to mention this new possibility to Belinda as she sipped daintily at her Pernod. He said, ‘Can we … talk about … your … contortions …?’

  Oh yeah? Belinda thought, and what’s he up to?

  Alberto had said nothing to her about his plans. She was none the wiser.

  She stared at Marcus coolly, vaguely disappointed in him but unsurprised. He was trying to talk again, but she saved him the trouble.

  ‘Cunnilingus,’ she said, baldly. ‘Unfortunately, my tongue is the only part of my body that isn’t double-jointed, otherwise I’d dispense with you boys altogether.’

  She took another sip of her drink and eyed him over the top of her glass. He blushed. He tried to say something, but it wouldn’t come out. He stood up, drank down his drink in one large gulp and left the pub. Now what? She stared after him, profoundly flummoxed.

  Eugenie was lounging against Marcus’s trailer, waiting for him to return. She was a small, pretty acrobat with long, red ringlets. She was thirty, single, an old hand at the circus, sexually voracious. As Marcus made his way towards her he was thinking: Damn Belinda! Damn her! She’s the strangest, coarsest, crudest woman I’ve ever met. She just seems to enjoy frightening me, on purpose.

  ‘Hello,’ Eugenie grinned at him. ‘I’ve come around to borrow a cup of sugar.’

  ‘Sure.’

  She wasn’t holding a cup. He unlocked his trailer and went inside, then emerged within seconds, holding a teacup full of sweet, white granules. He offered her the cup but she didn’t take it.

  ‘You’re so literal,’ she said, still smiling. ‘I like that in a man.’

  ‘Thank … you.’ He inclined his head graciously. After a pause—not thinking to invite her in—he said, ‘Be … linda.’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘She’s … rude.’

  ‘She is?’

  ‘I find … her so.’

  Eugenie shrugged. ‘You must just bring out the worst in her.’

  Marcus considered this and then said, ‘You think?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Why?’

  She took the cup of sugar from him and said, ‘You want to come and have some tea with me? Or coffee?’

  ‘No … I …’

  His stutter was so pronounced that Eugenie didn’t wait around to listen to the reason for his refusal. She didn’t mind. ‘OK,’ she said, phlegmatically, handing him back his cup. ‘Some other time.’

  Marcus sat down on his top step and stared into the cup. Thousands of grains. Mixed in with the pure, white granules were two extraneous tea leaves. That’s me and Belinda, he thought. The world is full of millions of people, all friendly, all benign, the same. Then there’s the two of us, destined not to get along. Belinda and Marcus. Both in the circus, this small circus. Both tumblers.

  He felt relieved that his early and mid-teens had involved a longstanding but secretive intimacy with American Playboy. He was prepared for Belinda’s lewdness, her crudeness. His father had kept an entire suitcase full of them in the attic which he had pilfered whenever he felt the inclination. Also, he had taken Latin at school, which in certain situations he found to be an invaluable linguistic tool. Cunnus—vulva. Lingere—to lick. Like choking on an oyster.

  ‘Hi.’

  Marcus looked up and almost dropped his cup. Belinda smiled at him. ‘Look, I wanted to apologize. I guess I must’ve shocked you earlier.’

  ‘No …’

  ‘Well …’ She focused on the strong, firm line of his jaw, its determined progression from behind his ear to the tip of his chin. ‘I just saw Alberto.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you want to come and see my parrots?’

  ‘I’m …’

  ‘Allergic?’

  ‘No … I’m …’

  ‘Busy?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Go on, they’re very friendly.’

  Inside the parrots’ trailer it was cool and dark. Belinda lit a lamp but kept the flame down low. ‘It’s bed-time for them really. I like them to be well rested. Otherwise they get cross and uncooperative.’

  Marcus had seen the parrots already, in the big top. He thought them quaint but unnecessary. One day he hoped to work in a human circus, a wild circus where the performers did stunts on motorbikes and didn’t use animals—camels with lopsided humps, sad, fleshy elephants, poodles with full wardrobes. Parrots.

  ‘You like them?’

  ‘I …’

  ‘You don’t like them?’

  ‘No … I …’

  ‘You like animals?’

  He sighed. ‘Yes.’

  She said, ‘My trailer’s adjoining. We could have tea if you like.’

  He shrugged.

  Belinda opened a door and led him through. Her trailer was identical to his, only full of stuff: posters, trinkets, an extra wardrobe.

  ‘Sit on the bed,’ she said. ‘I don’t ever bother making it into a sofa. Too much trouble. Watch the legs are out properly. It has a tendency to collapse.’ She filled the kettle.

  Marcus didn’t sit down immediately. First he inspected some of the photographs on her pinboard. ‘These are …’

  ‘Me. Yes. When I was a kid. I got gymnastics medals. I was nearly in the Olympics but I sprained my wrist very badly two weeks before. I cried for a month.’

  The pictures were eerie. Belinda at eight, ten, fourteen. Belinda doing headstands, handstands, flying on the high bar. Belinda with no breasts, mosquito bites, breasts like tiny buds under the thin fabric of her leotard.

  Little girls; gymnastics. He always found this combination vaguely unsettling. On television, with their stiff backs, pointed toes, determined visages. Obscene. Tumbling was different. Better.

  ‘Coffee or tea?’

  ‘Coffee.’

  He sat down. The bed collapsed.

  ‘Merde!’ This word slid out of his mouth as quickly, as smoothly as an angry cat escaping the arms of its owner.

  Belinda stopped what she was doing, turned around and then started to
laugh at him, at his clumsy disarray. She said, ‘You aren’t hurt, are you?’

  He shook his head and dragged himself up, then tried to rearrange the coverlet and cushions. Belinda turned back, still smirking, to complete her coffee-making.

  This bed reminded Marcus in its construction of the deck-chairs his parents had used at home; space-efficient but impossible to set up and make secure. He pulled out the metal bar that acted as the front legs and pushed up the springs and mattress. As he lifted he saw the tortoise.

  Initially, it looked to him like an exotic seashell, or a lump of wood, centuries old, glossed up by the touch of many fingers, many hands. Then he saw it shudder, noticed a head, four feet. He reached out towards it, expecting a reaction. None came. One of its eyes was open, the other shut. That couldn’t be right. He tapped its shell. Nothing.

  I’m going to have to tell her now, he thought frantically, that I’ve killed her tortoise. How will I tell her? After several attempts, he said her name.

  ‘Belinda …’

  ‘Yeah?’

  She had put two cups on to a tray. She picked up the tray and walked towards him. ‘You haven’t managed to get the bed up properly yet?’

  He stared at her helplessly, as endearing and muddy-eyed as a golden retriever at tea-time. He pointed towards the tortoise. Her eyes followed the line he was indicating.

  ‘Smedley!’

  She quickly slid the tray on top of her dresser and crouched down. ‘What’s happened to him?’

  ‘The … bed …’

  ‘He looks all squashed.’

  Marcus thought this an exaggeration, but took into account the fact that he hadn’t seen the tortoise before its misadventure.

  ‘Is he dead?’

  ‘I …’

  ‘He looks dead.’ She reached out her hand as if to pick him up but then shuddered and withdrew. ‘I can’t stand the idea of something being not quite dead.’ She added tremulously, ‘If he wasn’t dead and I touched him and he moved …’ The thought of this made her feel queasy.

  Marcus was staring at her. She saw his face—his expression a mixture of guilt and horror—and realized that these few seconds were crucial.