She was just hurrying off when Mrs. J*** arrived. She had her husband pushing along their own wheelbarrow, upon which were several floral pieces. Word travels quickly around the Green, but I was still astonished at the alacrity with which Mrs. J*** had leapt into the breach. Mr. J*** wheeled them through the gate, and again Mrs. B*** reacted unexpectedly, gasping as the barrow made its way through the churchyard.
There followed a harshly whispered conversation between the two women that seemed very unfriendly. From what little I could make out, it appears that they had both attended the funfair the previous evening. Mrs. B*** had purchased a quantity of exotic plants, the acquisition of which had required her to sell some personal item. These plants she had used in her arrangements, although why they had survived all the evening yet rotted so quickly when in the church defeated me. Mrs. J*** had also bought something there, presumably a book on flower arranging, for her work — though it uses only common, simple flowers — was the best I’ve ever seen.
Mrs. B*** left in a hurry, presumably after the fairground people to demand her money back, although they have already moved on in the night, and nobody seems to know where. I wish her well, but I fear this is most certainly a case of caveat emptor.
CHAPTER 10
in which the carnival reaches journey’s end and difficulties present themselves en masse
Francis Barrow folded the last bit of fried bread with his knife and fork, speared it, and used it to mop up the remains of the cooked yolk that had escaped from his poached egg. Placing his cutlery on the greasy plate, he picked up his tea and took an appreciative look out of his dining-room window It was a horribly unhealthy meal, of course, and one his daughter only allowed him to have once a fortnight. A luxury’s only a luxury if you don’t get it often, he thought, and picked up the local paper.
Leonie came in as he read the front page. “Anything exciting?” she asked as she cleared up the table.
He sniffed and flicked rapidly through the pages. “No, not really. They’re repainting the crossing in front of St. Cuthbert’s Primary, there’s a Beetle Drive at the parish hall on Friday, and we’re playing Millsby at the weekend, of course.”
His daughter laughed. “‘We’re playing Millsby’?” she said. “When was the last time you wore flannels?”
“Aye, well,” he said, and put the paper down. “Showing moral support, then.”
“It’ll be you and your cronies on the boundary, sitting there in deck-chairs with a relay of local lads running between you and the beer tent. You’re incorrigible.”
“It’s what cricket’s all about,” he said. He looked at her and could see his wife so strongly in the line of her chin and her nose. The tawny blond hair was all her own, but the way she set her face sometimes … Leonie had just turned twenty-five: the same age her mother had been when they’d married. All those years ago. His smile became sad.
There was a slightly frantic knock at the door. “I’ll get it,” said Leonie, and went out of the room and down the hall. Barrow could hear her speaking to Joe Carlton, who seemed busting to tell her something. After a moment, Joe himself came in, the most excited he’d been since he’d almost become mayor six years ago.
“Frank!” said Joe. “You’ve got to see this! Come on!” He did something that looked a little too much for comfort like capering.
“Calm down, you’ll do yourself a mischief,” said Frank. Joe tried, but he just went pinker. “Now, what’s all the fuss?”
“It’s the railway station!” One of Joe’s legs looked like it might involve him in another caper any second.
“What about the railway station?”
“It’s come back!”
* * *
It was a beautiful morning by anybody’s standards. The air was crisp and clear, with birds singing so high in the sky they were little more than dots. The fields were a shocking green beneath the blue vault of the sky, and it was so near perfect it took a little effort to remember that he was going to see something astounding. Carlton had run out of words very quickly, and he now lived for the look he was sure was going to appear on Barrow’s face when they arrived. Barrow was notoriously difficult to surprise, and Carlton was wishing that he hadn’t blurted out what had occurred. Still, he hoped the actual sight was going to be astounding enough. They walked down a cobble path that had long been disused, turned a corner by a bridge that stood over nothing, and there it was.
“Well,” said Barrow. He took out his tobacco pouch and started to fill his pipe. “I’ll be buggered.” The station was indeed back.
The station had been built comfortably over a century before, before there was even photography to record its newly built appearance. It couldn’t possibly have looked so well as it did now. Beautifully painted drainpipes ran down from the eaves of a roof whose slate tiling surpassed mere human precision; a team of twenty master roofers with obsessive-compulsive disorders and micrometer screw gauges could have toiled a year and not even come close to its perfection. Windows so clear that they seemed to actively repulse grease and grime stood exactly and totally framed in a way that no other panes of glass had ever been framed before. A fire bucket depended from a hook by the waiting-room door; never has a bucket been so red, never has the sand within it seemed so pure and just that the act of stubbing a cigarette in it would reduce any man to tears.
And yet.
And yet, as Frank Barrow looked at the supernaturally beautiful station, he didn’t like it. Not at all. It seemed somehow sleek and smug and very, very pleased with itself. Even the illustration of five boys on the chocolate machine seemed somehow unpleasant and unnerving. Then again, it always did. Barrow was still trying to work out how this thing had happened when the door to the stationmaster’s office opened and, awfully enough, the stationmaster came out.
He saw Barrow and Carlton and strode over, a natural ebullience and easy manner showing in every step. “Frank!” he called when he was still ten feet away. He walked over and clapped him on the shoulder. “Have you seen? Isn’t it wonderful?” He waved his hand at the station and the bridge they’d just come over. Barrow looked back at it and noticed for the first time the tracks that lay there. They were made of some black, dull metal and lay upon sleepers of what seemed to be, at first sight, mahogany. Barrow turned back to the stationmaster.
“Morning, Wilf. And how are you?”
“How am I?” He laughed heartily. “How d’you think? Isn’t it a marvel? The old station back? No, no, better than the old station. And look, look.” He stuck his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets and struck a pose. “New uniform! Flash, eh?” Barrow couldn’t ever remember seeing such a striking cloth. It seemed black with just the faintest hint of grey, like a back-combed mole.
“Very flash. Nice to see you happy, Wilf.”
“Nice to be happy again, let me tell you. Back in harness, eh?” He laughed as happily as a child. “Marvellous!”
“Yes,” said Barrow evenly. He glanced at Carlton, but he was looking at the stationmaster with an odd expression, like a man who’s cracked an egg and found inside a favourite toy soldier that he’d lost when he was five. “Yes, it broke your heart when they closed down this line and tore up the rails.”
Wilf’s brow clouded. “Yes. Yes, it was a terrible day.”
“It’s terrible to see a friend go into decline like that. We all rallied round. You know we did.”
“Aye, everybody was very kind.”
“Yes. We were all very upset when you hanged yourself from the bridge.”
“Aye,” said Wilf ruminatively. Then he brightened up. “Anyway, I’ve got work to do. We’ve got a train coming in this evening. Mustn’t show up the station for our visitors. Morning, Frank, Joe. Drop around when things aren’t so busy. Have a cuppa.” He turned and walked back down the platform, pausing to wave to them as he went back into his office.
“Oh, God,” said Carlton quietly. “Oh God, oh God, oh God.”
“No call for blasphemy. Besides, I d
oubt very much God’s got anything to do with this.”
“But, but” — Carlton pointed at the closed office door — “he’s dead.”
“I know. Looking remarkably healthy on it, I must say.”
“We cut him down,” said Carlton. Barrow took him by the elbow and started to steer him away. “We buried him. You were there, too.” He looked for something to put over the finality of death as he’d been led to understand it to date. “There were flowers.” He started to mumble.
“I was there, aye. We all were. Everybody liked Wilf. I don’t suppose he knows a tramp accidentally burned the station down ten years ago.” He stopped by the timetable board. It was empty but for a colourful flyer:
Arriving Tonight! The Cabal Bros. Travelling Carnival! Be There! Be Astounded!
“I already am,” said Barrow darkly, and led the muttering Carlton back to his house and a cup of strong tea.
* * *
The hooting started at dusk. A dismal, unhappy sound that echoed from the hills and sent shivers down the spine. It was a faintly pleasant sensation. With no telephone calls or knocks at doors, the town gravitated en masse to the station that hadn’t been there as anything more than charred beams and blackened piles of bricks even twenty-four hours before. In huddled groups, the citizens waited. The hooting came closer, joined by a gargantuan, rhythmic snorting and a mechanical clanging of metal on metal. Somebody saw the smoke first and pointed, speechless. The huffing plume grew closer and closer, and the people there didn’t know whether to run or to wait. They waited because it was less effort.
And then it appeared: a great, monstrous beast of steel and fire. Sparks flew from its smokestack as they once did from the pyres of martyrs and witches, swirling into the darkening sky like fiery gems on deep-blue brocade. The train’s whistle blew, the triumphant shriek of a great predator that has found the prey. And the hooting grew louder and clarified into a horrid, disjointed tune played upon the steam calliope in the fifth car, a death dance for skeletons to spin and stagger to.
The train drew into the station and spat steam across the platform, making everybody skitter away. The engine made a noise that, to Bar row’s ear, sounded like a contemptuous “Hah!”
And then nothing. The calliope played its tune, the engine panted slowly to itself, and that was it. A few of the braver souls took a couple of steps closer to the cab. Abruptly, a scarecrow lurched out of the shadows and waved at them, grinning crazily. The brave souls traded in their proximity to it for a little more distance and a mental note to change their underwear at the first opportunity. The scarecrow was clearly designed to scare more than birds; it was wearing a singed and filthy pair of overalls and a Casey Jones hat that had seen better days. The hat had a large stain on it that might have been long-dried blood. Its face was a parody of a man, clownish white make-up fixed in place with what seemed to be several coats of varnish. The crowd was just getting the hang of looking at it without fearing for their stomach contents when another one popped up and waved, too. This one was obviously meant to be fatter, but the weight distribution was all wrong. It looked like somebody had stuffed its coveralls with balled-up newspaper to pad it out. It had the same insincere and crazed grin on its face, the same sheen of shellac. Worse yet, the hand it was waving with — the left hand — was gloved, but ivory bone was clearly visible between the glove and cuff.
Nearby Barrow, a young boy asked his mother, “Mum, can I go to the fair?” in the same way he might have asked if he had to go to the dentist.
His mother’s eyes never faltered from the occupants of the engine’s cab, nor did the hard, thin line of her lips soften for a second. “Certainly not.”
“Oh, Mum,” said the boy in a hitherto unknown tone of relieved complaint.
Suddenly everybody’s attention was drawn to one of the rear cars. Two smartly dressed men descended to the platform and walked towards them, deep in conversation. As they got closer, scraps of the conversation could be made out.
“… morally corrupt …”
“… don’t lecture me …”
“… treatment worse than the disease …”
“… two more days …”
Johannes Cabal stopped and glared at his brother. “All I’m asking is for you to keep your moral outrage under control for two more days. Is that really too much to ask?”
“I have no idea why I agreed to this anymore. I thought nothing could be as bad as eight years with the Druins, but this last year …? If our parents were still alive — ”
“Well, they’re not, and I didn’t see anything in the will that gifted you with the privilege of gainsaying my every decision.”
He waited for a witty comeback but was disappointed, as Horst had just noticed their audience. “Johannes. We are not alone.”
Cabal twitched with surprise and looked at the townsfolk. He smiled wanly. Somewhere, a churn of milk went sour.
“Not to worry. Dennis and Denzil have been keeping them amused,” said Horst, and laughed.
Cabal scowled. His attempts at preserving Dennis and Denzil had become more desperate over recent months. Usage of the mortician’s arts had been slowly replaced by those of the taxidermist and finally the carpenter. It was a fraught night when first he had called for varnish and fuse wire. His attempts at cosmetic repairs had been risible, and his next scheme, of making them “look like clowns, people like that sort of thing, don’t they?” had been a grotesque disaster at every level, from the technical to the aesthetic. Although he wouldn’t admit it to himself, they even scared him a little.
“You two,” he barked when they reached the car, “stop gurning like a pair of fools and get back in there.” It was unfair to accuse them of pulling faces when these were now the only expressions of which they were capable, but Cabal was long past the point of being fair. Dennis and Denzil withdrew into the shadows of the footplate, grins fixed. Cabal took a deep breath and prepared to patch up the damage to public relations they had doubtless caused. Things had been getting hard recently. If he’d known a year ago that he would need only two souls to reach his target and had two working nights in which to gather them, he would have considered it grounds for optimism. Now, however, he wasn’t so sure. Horst had been becoming quite withdrawn and argumentative over the past few weeks. Cabal doubted his brother would actually sabotage his efforts, but there was always the possibility that he might cause problems by withdrawing his assistance at an awkward moment. Worse, though, he had a feeling that Satan wasn’t about to let him win his bet just like that. He would have to be on his guard for some dirty tricks being played this late in the game.
He turned to the crowd. They were looking anything from neutral to hostile. This wasn’t going to be easy. He gave Horst a sidelong glance to see if he’d speak to the crowd; he was so much better at it. Horst returned his glance, crossed his arms, and looked off into the middle distance. Fine, thought Cabal, I’ll do this myself.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said in a clear, resonant voice, “I am Johannes Cabal of the Cabal Brothers Travelling Carnival. This” — he indicated his brother, who couldn’t resist bowing very slightly — “is my brother, Horst. We have come here, to your pleasant town of Penlow on Thurse, to — ”
“Why have you come here?” asked a middle-aged man. He caught Cabal’s eye, and Cabal had an uncomfortable feeling of imminent trouble.
“To bring you the best in wonder, excitement, and family entertainment,” Cabal continued. “We have stalls to test the keenness of your eye and the sharpness of your reflexes, sideshows to educate and astound.”
“You’ve already done enough to astound this town,” said the man. There was a mutter of agreement.
Cabal looked hard at him. The man wore a dark-grey trilby that was not new, but clearly well looked after. His overcoat showed the same signs of attention, his trousers sported a sharp crease, and his shoes were polished. His dark hair was greying at the temples, and he had a very sensible moustache, carefully maintaine
d. Cabal would have guessed that he was ex-military — he certainly had the air of authority of a commissioned officer, a company or field rank like captain or major. There was a watchfulness in his eyes, though, that was not the product of a life of honest soldiering. Cabal’s misgivings deepened. “And whom do I have the plea sure of addressing?” he asked with politeness, but not enough warmth to thaw a crystal of helium.
“My name’s Frank Barrow.”
“Well, Frank — ”
“You can call me Mr. Barrow.”
Cabal imagined Barrow upside down in a rendering vat and controlled his temper. “Well, Mr. Barrow, I’m glad to know that our little carnival has made something of a sensation here already.” The two men looked at each other, looks that were on the very borderlands of glares. “How precisely did we do that?”
“This place,” said Barrow, and jerked his thumb at the station.
“And a fine station it is, too,” replied Cabal. He wasn’t quite sure where this was going, but it never hurt to flatter the yokels as to how marvellous the lean-to cattlesheds they called their town were. That said, he was quietly surprised by how spick-and-span the station looked. It was as if it had only been built today.
“That’s as may be. The point is, it wasn’t here yesterday.” There were a lot of agreeing noises and nodding. Cabal fondly hoped he’d misheard.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I said this time yesterday this place was a pile of burnt-out rubble, this line hadn’t seen sleepers or rails in donkey’s years, and he” — Barrow pointed at the stationmaster, who smiled and waved — “was long dead and buried. Now, what I want to know, and I would guess all these people here would like to know, is how that can be.” They all looked at Cabal expectantly.
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