others, because even months after the Payne Road was finished he
had called her on the telephone, evenings, had asked to see her at the Cavalry Inn. Others had professed to be injured or shocked
when they learned she had no interest in marriage, but Townes
had said only, “Then I’ll take what’s on offer.”
The girl in the book would fall in love with the farmer, a fool-
ishness Beryl lightheartedly scorned. “A roll and a stroll” her own motto had been. Perhaps nature, she thought, had divided things
such that Pearl entertained love enough for them both. Certainly
that would seem to have been so. Heaven knew the poor dear had
never been above folly.
The circus was held beneath a great tent. A big top, Mr.
Avery called it. It had white and red stripes up its length. From the field where they parked, some distance away, it resembled a giant
peppermint sweet; Mr. Avery said so and Tony agreed.
“Perhaps you’ll have a peppermint candy of your own. They
have large sticks that will last the whole day. Would you like that, Tony? A peppermint sweet?”
Tony shrugged and pressed an ear to his shoulder, a habit
because the wool of his sweater was soft.
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OTHER PEOPLE’S LOVE AFFAIRS
“Or is it another you’re thinking about? You can have whatever
you like. It’s not every day you go to the circus.”
“And I ate a good breakfast.”
“Aye. That you did. So which is it? Which treat did you fancy?”
They crossed a bridge over the roadway they’d traveled and
another empty lot at the edge of the fairground. Other children
walked with their parents, holding hands or sometimes running
ahead.
“I was thinking of candy floss, really.”
He’d been told about the pink and pillowy sweet, how it van-
ished as soon as it went in your mouth.
“You’ll like that,” Mr. Avery said. “It’s another favorite of
mine.”
There were booths set up around the edge of the tent. Clowns
were making shapes from balloons. Music played; you couldn’t tell
where it came from. The same sort you’d hear at the boardwalk in
Glass. The clowns wore colorful trousers and shirts, with bright
hair beneath their hats and paint on their faces.
“Let’s find our seats first,” Mr. Avery said. “When we’ve found
them, I can go for the sweets.”
“All right.”
“Or did you want a balloon? The clowns can make marvelous
shapes with balloons.”
Tony regarded one of the clowns. He wore ragged clothing and
gloves on his hands; beside him, propped against the side of a stall, was a handkerchief on the end of a stick.
He shook his head and they made for the entrance, where ush-
ers in fancy dress stood by the turnstiles.
At the Circus
33
“Hold on to your ticket,” Mr. Avery said, handing Tony a piece
of blue paper.
People began pushing as they drew near the entrance. Tony
stood at Mr. Avery’s side. The clown with the kerchief on the end
of a stick had forgotten to paint a bit of his throat. The bare skin had shown, sunburned and stubbled; thinking about it made Tony
afraid.
“Step right up,” said a man in a hat. He was nearly as big as
the one from that morning, by the window eating hot cakes for
breakfast.
“You’ll hand him the ticket,” Mr. Avery said.
Tony nodded. The man tore his ticket in half.
In the big top there was a great deal of noise. Children sat
or stood on their seats, shouting and pointing at the still-empty
stage. The air was heavy and smelled of wet paper. Tony felt too
hot in his sweater. In school it was like this: noisy and savage. At lunchtime, or in the assembly hall. He ate his lunch with Joey
Makepeace at the edge of the yard, many days not saying a thing.
Joey never asked about Tony’s mother, as sometimes other boys
rudely did. If Joey talked, it was about a picture he’d seen or about freight lorries, which interested him. He wore eyeglasses and had
the large teeth of a rabbit.
Their seats were near the edge of the tent, raised from the
ground like gymnasium stands. Beside them were a boy and a girl.
“Wait here,” Mr. Avery said. “I’ll get our treats and be back in
a flash. There’s a good ten minutes before it begins.”
Tony watched Mr. Avery go. From his seat, the stage appeared
distant and small.
34
OTHER PEOPLE’S LOVE AFFAIRS
A freight lorry might weigh forty tons, Joey said, which was
nearly as much as a whale. A hush descended over the tent. Music
started playing from speakers, loud drumming, a voice that said,
“Ladies and gentlemen.” Even the unruly children were still.
From the rafters on either side of the stage, two men began fall-
ing, suspended from ropes. Arms spread, as if in flight, they held on with their feet. Acrobats: Tony knew it at once. They swung
down in shocking, dangerous arcs. People gasped; a number of
children jumped up. Where the acrobats met, they each leaped
through the air, catching hold of the other man’s rope and swing-
ing to the opposite side of the stage.
Tony had never seen anything like it. He couldn’t imagine
being so brave. Even from a distance you couldn’t believe it. They resembled a kite he’d once seen a man fly: triangular, carving sharp lines in the air.
He had been with Mr. Avery on that day as well, and Aunt
Beryl. He had been given a kite of his own, and Aunt Beryl had
allowed him to keep it. Sometimes she said he could not accept
gifts, but when Mr. Avery gave him the kite she said yes. It was
orange and blue, in the shape of a dragon. Aunt Beryl had stood
beside Mr. Avery, not speaking much but companionable. Mr.
Avery had shown him how you’d wait for a gust, then run with
the string taut behind you.
“First time out?” the man with the other kite had asked Tony.
When the green triangle turned in the sky it sounded like a piece
of cloth being torn.
“A birthday present,” Aunt Beryl replied. “From his friend, Mr.
Avery here.”
At the Circus
35
After that it had mostly been spoiled. After she had said friend to the man. It would not have been so bad to be taken for Mr.
Avery’s son. Tony wouldn’t have minded at all. It would have been
all right to be mistaken for a family.
Quickly, he scanned the crowd and the aisles. Mr. Avery
couldn’t be seen.
Now there were four men swinging from ropes. Each of them
tumbled and turned. The music grew louder and faster in pace,
and with it the speed of the jumping increased. Everyone cheered
as the men flipped about. In the end, they all let go of their ropes and landed with their hands on their hips. The audience carried
on with applause.
Another man came onto the stage. He was dressed like the one
who had taken the tickets. He began shouting into a speaker. Tony
covered his ears. He looked again for Mr. Avery but still didn’t see him. He had said he wouldn’t miss the start of the show. A clown
came out and stood behind the man in the
hat, mocking him,
aping his movements. When the man turned around, the clown
would be still. Everybody in the whole big top laughed.
Tony felt a tap on his shoulder.
“Where’s your dad gone?”
It was the girl who was sitting beside him. She wore a blue
dress and had brown hair in braids.
In school, Harriet Aldridge was kind. Joey Makepeace said he
found her very pretty, but Tony thought he was only saying so.
This one was a little bit older. Eight, perhaps even nine.
“He’s only gone to buy a candy,” he said.
“What kind?”
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OTHER PEOPLE’S LOVE AFFAIRS
“Candy floss. I’ve never had it before.”
The girl turned her attention back to the stage, laughing at
something the clown had just done. Her brother leaned across
their mother’s lap. “Eugenia’s talking to a stranger,” he said.
“He’s only a little boy,” the girl said. “His father left to buy a treat and he hasn’t come back.”
“He will come back,” Tony said, though his heart was begin-
ning to thump. The heat and the laughter were making it worse.
Eugenia’s mother was looking at him. She had stopped paying
any attention to the circus.
“All right?” she said, in a delicate voice, and then repeated,
louder, because of the noise.
Tony nodded and pretended to look at the stage.
“Your dad’s been gone since the start of the show?”
The mother had pale, pudgy skin on her face. It looked like the
biscuit he’d eaten for breakfast.
“He only went for a sweet,” Tony said.
“Twenty-five minutes it’s been.”
Aunt Beryl sometimes said you couldn’t count on Mr. Avery.
He was the kind of man who blew with the wind. “More, even,
than most,” is what she had said. But still he wouldn’t miss the
whole show. All morning he had been on about things: The
jugglers and clowns. The bear who could dance. The man who
put himself in a box. It was only that people were crowding
around. That was what was troubling Tony. They were wondering
where his father had gone. He was tired of people wonder-
ing that, and he was tired of them wondering about his mother
as well.
At the Circus
37
“He’s maybe having a cigarette,” Eugenia said. “It might be he
doesn’t like to smoke around kids.”
Tears were coming into his eyes. If a fuss was made, things
would be spoiled again. Aunt Beryl would see that something was
wrong and would say again how you couldn’t count on a man.
She wouldn’t invite him to stay and have tea; she wouldn’t be
companionable.
“It doesn’t matter,” Tony said.
He made his hands into fists and pressed them under his eyes,
the way Joey Makepeace had said you could do. You put your fists
on the tops of your cheeks and pressed there. It was a way to be
brave.
“It doesn’t matter at all,” he repeated. Again, he scanned the
crowd for Mr. Avery’s face.
When Beryl woke, having dozed, she took a moment to
gather herself. The light from the lamp beside the sofa was faint; the embers had begun to die down in the grate. She did not know
how long she had been sleeping, only that she’d dreamed of rol-
licking things.
She rose and spent a moment stoking the fire. It leaped to,
bringing a flush to her cheeks. In the kitchen, she opened a tin of sardines. The sun, through the windows, had peaked. The wash
fluttered lightly where it hung on the line.
In her book, the farmer had proved to be good, but the her-
oine’s father didn’t approve. He wanted her to marry a county
solicitor, but the girl’s youthful passion would not be denied.
The farmer knew about the body in a primitive way, in touch
38
OTHER PEOPLE’S LOVE AFFAIRS
as he was with the heavens and earth. It was a ridiculous, sen-
timental idea, but Beryl indulged it nevertheless. The novel was
called He Worked the Land. On the cover, a man was holding a peach.
It had crossed her mind to give Townes a ring, to call him up,
just out of the blue. That would come as a shock, and he’d say so:
“Now this is a pleasant surprise.”
She had been the one to break off their relations, seeing the
clear direction of things. All the love had gone out of his marriage; increasingly, he talked about that. It might have been a lie, or it might have been true, but in either case she shrunk from what it
portended.
If she’d called him today, he’d have come to the house, able to
only because he’d been summoned. Of all the afternoons and eve-
nings they’d shared, none had ever been spent at her place. He’d
have looked around, sizing it up. The obelisks would have been
on the mantel.
“Been thinking about me?” he would have said, lifting his eye-
brows with playful suggestion.
How they’d laughed in later days at that odd, phallic gift! “I
had designs on you; that I confess,” he had said. “But I didn’t
mean anything by it.” They had been side by side on the starched
hotel bedding; it was after the first time. In the heat, she looked over his body and, gently taking him up in her hand, said, “I had
a scare when I opened the box, what with there being the two of
them there. I didn’t know what you were on to!”
If he’d come today, she might have repeated that joke. Ribaldry
was something each of them liked.
At the Circus
39
In the end, of course, she hadn’t called because of the boy.
With Joe, things were bound to go wrong at the circus: his car
might break down; he might lose the tickets; he might make the
boy sick by feeding him sweets. She laughed as she pictured the
scene there’d have been then: Townes in the bedroom when they
returned, his white rump exposed as he turned to the wall. A part
of her would enjoy such a thing.
When she said it was over, he’d looked at the ground. He’d
taken his woolen hat in his hands. She knew he was only pretend-
ing to suffer, or was anyway exaggerating his pain. His large head fell from heavy, stooped shoulders. It was a kindness, or he meant it as one.
“From the first day, you were something different,” he’d said.
“‘A force to be reckoned with,’ I said to myself.”
She smashed the sardines onto pieces of toast, picking away
the pebbly bones. They might equally have gone to the Cavalry
Inn. That would have been one for old times. She’d have ordered a
sherry and a whiskey for him, remembering the type he preferred.
“Still queen of the parish offices, then?” he’d have asked, hang-
ing his hat on the rack. He’d have taken her coat and hung that as well. Then she’d have had to tell him the truth.
Everybody was standing around. They were watching
Tony as he talked to the man.
“Well it’s not even been the whole of an hour. Could be he can’t
remember your seat. Could be he dropped his ticket someplace.”
It was the man who had torn the ticket outside. The top of
h
is head was shiny and damp; wispy gray hairs clung to his scalp.
40
OTHER PEOPLE’S LOVE AFFAIRS
“All the same,” said Eugenia’s mother, “you could page him.”
Tony was aware of people closing around him. The trick where
you held your fists to your cheeks had stopped working after a
while, and he felt the tears where they’d run on his face. It was all spoiled: people would pity him now.
“Oh, we’ll do that. Just before the start of the next act. Let’s
give him a few minutes more.”
Eugenia came and stood next to Tony. “You mustn’t be wor-
ried,” she said.
“I don’t like people looking at me.”
“Oh,” she said, “I know what you mean. My mother is always
making a show.”
Her brother came and stood next to them, too.
“We could go looking, Ma,” the boy said, but just then Tony
saw Mr. Avery.
He was making his way through the crowd, just a head bob-
bing up between others at first. He moved quickly, perhaps sensing he’d been a long time; he bumped into people, excusing himself.
Tony jumped up and down when he saw him. He was holding a
pink cloud of candy aloft.
“That’s him,” Tony shouted. “I said he would come.”
“All’s well that ends well,” the ticket man said.
Mr. Avery smiled as he approached, a sheepish grin, too big
for his face. His eyes scanned the seats where people had gathered, flitting from Tony to Eugenia’s mother.
“Ah, I’ve made it. Gosh, what a crowd.” He put an arm around
Tony’s shoulders and squeezed.
The space around them remained very close.
At the Circus
41
“What’s this?” Mr. Avery said. “Tears? Were you very upset?
Only it took a longer time than I thought.”
He offered the candy and Tony accepted. When you held it, it
weighed almost nothing at all.
“Come on, then. What did I miss?”
With his free hand, Tony wiped the tears from his face. “The
acrobats. And a bit with the clowns.”
People were still looking at them.
“Was it very good?” Mr. Avery said. “Acrobats are amazing, I
think.”
Eugenia’s mother was shaking her head.
“They swung on ropes,” Tony replied.
“Ah, that would be the trapeze. I must say I’m sorry to have
missed the trapeze.”
They sat down. On the stage, the lights had grown dim. Tony
Other People's Love Affairs Page 4
