Meridon

16

The ponies went past us in a ripple of coloured flags as Jack and I slid wearily from Bluebell’s back. Dandy and Katie were back with a tray of buns and toffee, and a big pitcher of lemonade. Dandy nodded her head at the noise.

‘They liked your act, then,’ she said coolly.

Jack was triumphant. ‘They threw money and cheered!’ he said. ‘And the man from London was laughing and laughing. Whatever he thinks of the flying act, me and Meridon are made! It’ll be London for us!’

Dandy looked at him from under her eyelashes. ‘I reckon it’ll be London for all of us,’ she said. ‘I’ll go with you, Jack.’

‘They cheered so loud!’ Jack said, not heeding her. ‘I’ve never known it go so well.’

‘You were the funniest you’ve ever been,’ I said, giving credit where it was due. ‘You really looked like a drunken farmhand. When you came out from the back everyone thought you were a stranger. Even the man from London did. I saw him look at Robert and wonder what he was going to do.’

Jack nodded. ‘I saw his face when I first vaulted up,’ he said. ‘I nearly laughed myself. He looked as if he could not believe what he had let himself in for.’

I laughed. ‘But who exactly is he, Jack? Your da didn’t say.’

Jack glanced behind him but Robert was still in the ring doing the Battle of Blenheim with the ponies. We heard the audience take the tune from him and then they started singing ‘The Roast Beef of Old England!’ with the rounded drawl of Sussex in their voices.

‘He runs a show he calls a circus in London,’ Jack said in an undertone. Dandy and Katie were out of earshot, preening at the barn doors, ready to go in with their trays. ‘Da says he’s looking for acts that he can put on inside. He’s got a special-built building with a great ring and an entrance and an exit, and he charges people a shilling to go in!’

‘For one show?’ I asked.

Jack nodded. ‘Aye. And the money he is offering for an act is amazing! David knew him and told him about us. He’s come all this way to see us. My da is right, Merry; if he likes us, then our fortunes are made. He hires by the season and he buys an act he likes in gold for the season. We could make enough in one year to live on for the rest of our lives if we wanted!’

I thought at once of Wide. Dandy might have forgotten it, but I had spoken the truth when I said I never would. My dreams might be frightening, but they were clearer and clearer. The land of Wide could not be far from here, I knew it. I felt it every day. Every time we moved I wondered if the next day would bring me to a place which I had looked for all my life, as if someone might say: ‘Oh, this is Wide-fell, or Wide-moor, or Wide-land.’ I knew it was close. The landscape was like this one. The trees were the same, and the lightness of the sky. If Wide was near here and could be bought…I broke off my thoughts and turned to Jack.

‘How are you and Dandy?’ I asked.

Jack glanced at her back at the barn door. ‘All right,’ he said briefly. Then he shot me an imploring look. ‘Don’t ask me now, Meridon. Damn me, you do pick your times! My da’ll come out in a second and there’s a man from London in the front row! We’re as we always were. Hot as a pair of stray dogs, and a deadly secret. She has seldom a civil word for me, and I hate her as much as I want her. Now hush, Meridon. Ask Dandy. Don’t ask me. I try to not even think about it!’

Rea pulled back the doors and the ponies came out in a rush. Jack caught the two first through the door, and I grabbed the next. Rea got hold of two as they trotted past him, and the smallest followed on behind. We took them to their hitching posts and I left Rea to feed them and take their tack off them while I went to my wagon to change. Jack ran past me to his wagon to get into costume for his flying act.

I was back first. I wore a shimmery blue shirt and a pair of thin white breeches, a scaled-down copy of Jack’s flying costume. I was not nervous of the low practise trapeze; and besides my job was only to whet the appetite of the audience for the main trapeze act. But my feet were icy in my clogs as I trudged back to the barn door. And I ached as if I had fallen and been kicked hard in the belly. Dandy and Katie’s elation at their record sales, and the smile the man from London had given them when he had said, ‘No thank you,’ went over my head. I hardly heard them. I had a deep dark feeling, as if I were a bucket going slowly down a deep well. The others’ voices came as an echo from far away.

‘You all right, Merry?’ Jack said as he joined us. ‘You look sickly.’

I looked around for him. My vision was slightly blurred and his face kept coming and going.

‘I feel ill,’ I said. I thought for a second and then recognised that cold feeling in my belly. ‘I feel frightened,’ I said.

Jack’s hand came on my shoulder and I held still and let him touch me.

‘Not that little practice trapeze!’ Katie said scornfully. ‘You can’t be scared of that!’

I looked for her in the fog that was gathering around me. ‘No,’ I said uncertainly. ‘I’m not scared of that.’

I was looking for Dandy. I could not see her. Robert came out and called for Jack to come and help finish rigging the catch-net with him and Rea.

I said: ‘Dandy!’ in sudden fright and then her beloved face was before me and she was saying kindly:

‘What’s the matter, Merry? You’re as white as if you’ve seen a boggart. It should be me that’s sickly!’

I could hear a distant rushing in my ears as if there was a waterfall far away pouring down a cliff. Something seemed to be coming towards us as fast as the tumbling water.

‘Why?’ I asked urgently. ‘Why should it be you who is sickly?’

Dandy threw back her head and laughed. ‘I wanted to tell you later,’ she said.

She paused and I heard Robert say from the ring inside the barn:

‘And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, Honoured Guest, Welcome Visitors All, We Commence the Second Half of our Nationally-Famous Show with Robert Gower’s Amazing Aerial Display. First with Mamselle Meridon on the trapeze!’

‘You’re on!’ Katie said urgently, holding open the door for me.

Through the gap I could see Rea and Jack checking the stakes which held the catch-net taut. Jack had his back to me, but I could see Rea’s face furrowed with concentration. I had a moment of relief from worry. I knew Rea would make sure the catch-net was safe.

I could hear the clapping, the noise an audience makes when they are excited, waiting. They were waiting for me in the barn, but my feet would somehow not go forward. Jack was coming out past me.

‘Go on Meridon!’ he said softly. ‘You’re on.’ He went on past me to check the set of his shirt in a little mirror Dandy had nailed up near the lantern.

I turned back to Dandy. ‘I won’t go until you tell me!’ I said. It was as if I were seeking for a light at the top of the deep well.

She gave me a little push in the back and her face was alight with triumph and laughter.

‘Go on, Merry!’ she said. ‘You’re stubborn as a mule! I’ll tell you it all later.’ Then as my feet made no movement, she gave me another little push and said, ‘Go on! It’s as I said it would be! I’ve caught Jack and I’m going to tell his da. I’m breeding his child so there’ll be a grandson Gower to inherit all this! And I’ll be his ma. I told you I’d win all this, and I have done! I’ve caught him now and he’ll not get away. I’ll tell him after the show.’

I spun around and caught her hands but Katie tore me away from her and pushed me through the barn door. I saw Jack wheel around from the mirror. I saw his stunned face, blank with incomprehension at what he had overheard. Rea had one of the doors and was pulling it shut behind me. I knew that Jack had heard. I knew he had caught Dandy’s exultant tone, I knew he had heard the words. He had turned in time to see her smile as she said: ‘I’ve caught him now, and he’ll not get away.’

I stood helplessly before the audience as if I had forgotten what I was there for. I looked behind me. The barn door had stuck on some roughness on the ground and Jack had come forward to help Rea shut it, obedient as ever to the orders of his father who said that it must always be kept closed during acts.

I walked over to the low trapeze slung underneath the girls’ frame and kicked off my clogs and held my arms above my head. Robert lifted me up and I hung for a moment as if I had forgotten what to do. Then I started working the trapeze and it seemed to go backwards and forwards like the clapper of a bell tolling inside my head.

I could make no sense of what Dandy had said to me. I was too weary and overworked to make any sense of it at all. And the show had its own inexorable rhythm. I saw the man in the front row look at me and I smiled my shallow unreal smile and turned and hooked my knees through the trapeze bar and hung upside down. There was a little ripple of clapping. I swung my head up and leaned outwards, gripping the trapeze with my hands behind my back, and held the bird’s nest pose. They clapped me again, more warmly. The trapeze seemed to go tick…tock…tick…tock in my head as I worked it to pick up speed.

I felt as if a long way away there was the red-haired woman in the big house waiting for her destiny to come to her. And that here I was, a ticking clock, waiting for mine to come to me. I raised myself up and over the trapeze in the pose that David called the kip, with the bar of the trapeze against my hips and my head up and smiling. My red ribbons blew across my eyes but I did not even blink. I was in a deep spiralling haze and I could not think nor see.

I leaped down from the trapeze with a cheating half-somersault and landed on my feet. They clapped me very loudly, someone cheered from the back. I looked around for Dandy.

‘And now!’ Robert yelled as the applause died down. ‘We Present. The Daredevil, the Amazing…Jack Gower!’ Jack came in and took a bow. I saw he was white as his breeches, his eyes dazed. He looked as if his life was about to collapse around him. He shot one bewildered look at me as I stood, my upraised hand gesturing towards him as David had taught us. His face was as puzzled and as scared as a lost child.

I tried to smile at him, he should be thinking of nothing but the task of catching the girls as they swung out towards him; but I found I could not. My lips were drawn back over drying gums in a blank parody of a smile. I was baring my teeth at the audience, not smiling. Jack looked at me as if I could help him. He looked at me as if he would ask me what he should do. He looked at me as if he was puzzled, disbelieving what he had heard.

My face was expressionless. I hardly even saw him. We were far, far away from each other. Somewhere deep down inside us we both knew that after the show there would be the end of this life. An end to the comfort and the friendship, the quiet early mornings and the hard-working days. The sense of belonging, all of us, one to all the others. There would be a row which would mean the end of this life. All the long months of training, and this afternoon’s triumph, would count for nothing.

Robert Grower would not be caught by a slut like Dandy. Dandy would never let go. Jack would be trapped between their two conflicting wills. And I would have to take her away, pregnant, idle, incapable of earning money. She and me, a horse and a small purse of guineas. Jack gestured towards me with his hand, directing the applause towards me, and his face was white and imploring. He took his bow as if all the thief-takers in London were after him and started to climb his ladder slowly.

Robert watched him for a second, puzzled. Then he called: ‘And Performing. For Your Entertainment. Flying at incredible height and speed, the Only girl flyers in the World! The Angels Without Wings: Mamselle Katie –’ Katie strode into the ring, smirked all round especially towards the man from London, and started climbing the ladder. ‘And Mamselle Dandy.’

She walked in without a glance to me. I was standing before the trapeze at the foot of her ladder, like a scarecrow in a field, my hand outflung, gesturing towards the middle of the ring where my sister took her bow with her green ribbons flying and her smile bright with the triumph at the trap she had sprung. I went to hold the foot of her ladder and her brilliant smile and her laughing eyes went past me as she climbed up.

‘Old misery!’ she whispered. ‘I planned this all along! You’ll see.’

I put my weight on the ladder to hold it steady for her and I waited until I could feel she had stepped from the ladder to the pedestal. I did not look up. I never looked up. I left the ring with my head up and my bright meaningless smile stuck on my face, and my eyes down, and I pulled the door shut behind me and leaned my forehead against the hard wooden planks and listened, as I always listened. So that I should hear the gasp of the crowd when one of them was stretching across to Jack, and then the roar when they were back on the pedestal. So that I should know that Dandy was safe.

I was so bone-weary I nearly dozed, standing upright, keeping my vigil for my sister with my face pressed against the rough wood plank. I heard the excited applause as they watched Jack on his pedestal vault up into a handstand, and the sudden rush of clapping when he swung right over to be standing upright again. Then there was the rustle of delicious apprehension as they watched Jack strap himself into his belt, and shuffle his feet on the blocks. They saw him rub his hands together – as he always did – and then reach purposefully out.

That would make them look to the right, where the girls were, and then I heard the great ‘oooh’ as Katie took hold of the trapeze and stepped out into space. She always went across first, I knew. I heard the audience hold their breath and Jack’s, ‘Pret!’ was as clear as if I were in the front row. I pressed my palms flat against the door. The sense of sinking into the darkness was so strong that I could scarcely keep from slumping against the door and letting it wash over me. I felt someone beside me, and glanced quickly to one side. It was Rea.

‘You all right?’ he asked.

Inside the barn Jack yelled, ‘Hup!’ and there was a muted scream from the crowd as Katie swung her legs forward. I heard the smack as Jack caught her ankles and then the cry from the crowd as he swung her towards the back wall, and then twisted her around so she turned and caught the swinging bar, and then their burst of cheering when she reached the pedestal and turned and held up her hand and smiled.

I nodded at Rea’s worried face. He seemed to be wavering, the whole world around me seemed to be melting and undulating.

‘You’re sweating and shivering,’ he said. ‘And you look awful white. Are you ill, Meridon?’

I heard the crowd rustle as Dandy and Katie changed places on the pedestal board and Dandy took the trapeze in her hands. I heard the little gasp as Dandy made her characteristic confident little leap downwards, and I heard Jack wait as she built-up her swing. Then I heard him call, ‘Pret!’ and I knew it would be Dandy he was watching now, Dandy he was reaching out for. Dandy with her legs hooked over the trapeze bar so that she could reach out for him with her hands. That little extra distance which made the trick that little extra bit more difficult. She would be stretching towards him now with her green ribbons flying away from her face and that triumphant dazzling smile on her face which Jack would unerringly recognize as Dandy’s delight that she had gulled him and trapped him, and defeated him and his father.

‘You going to faint?’ Rea asked urgently. ‘Can you hear me, Meridon?’

Jack yelled, ‘Hup!’ and I heard something in his voice which I had never heard before.

The sinking feeling in my head snapped, the planks of the door became suddenly clear. I scrabbled against them in sudden urgency.

‘Let me in!’ I shouted.

The door gave way before me, I looked up; for the first time, I looked up. I saw their hands touch, I saw Jack’s safe hard grip, then I saw him swing her, with the speed of her swing and all his own whipcord strength, he swung her out, and flung her towards the high flint and mortar wall at the back of the barn. And as she flew towards it, her hands uselessly plucking at air, she screamed a long terrified scream which I heard, and recognized at once, as if I had been waiting to hear it for months. Then there was an awful thump as she smashed head-first into the wall and dropped like a nestling to the ground, and an echo of the scream from everyone in the crowd and a hundred voices shouting.

I went in like a bolting horse. They were all on their feet, all crowding round, mobbing her on the ground by the back wall. I went through the crowd like a weasel through a henhouse. I felt someone brush me and I knocked them off their feet with my shoulders as I ran through them. I could see the edge of Dandy’s pink skirt and her pale bare leg twisted around.

Behind me Robert was yelling. ‘Get back! Get away! Give the lass air! Is there a surgeon here? Or a barber? Anyone?’

I pushed a little child to one side and heard him fall and whimper and then I was at her side.

Everything was very slow and quiet then.

I put my hand to the tumbled mass of black hair and the green and gilt ribbons and I gathered her up to me. Her shoulders were still warm and sweaty, but her head lolled back, her neck was broken. The top of her head was a mess of blood, but it was not pumping out. Her eyes stared unseeingly at the wall behind her, they were rolled back in her head so the whites showed. Her face was frozen in a grimace of terror, the scream still caught in her throat.

I laid her down, gently back down on the ground and pulled the short skirt down over her bare legs. She was lying all twisted, her head and shoulders one way, her legs and hips the other, so her back was broken as well as her neck. There was a dribble of blood at the corner of her gaping mouth but that was all. She looked like a precious china doll smashed by a feckless child.

She was dead, of course. She was the deadest thing I had ever seen. Dandy, my beloved, scheming, brilliant sister, was far far away – if she was anywhere at all.

I looked up. Jack was struggling to undo his belt, I guessed his hands were shaking so much that he could not hold the buckle. He looked down at me from the catcher frame and he met my gaze. His mouth was half open as if he was appalled at what he had done. As if he could not believe what he had done. I nodded slowly to him, my eyes blank. It was unbelievable, but none the less he had done it.

I stood up.

The crowd all around me had fallen back. I saw their bright faces and their mouths moving but I could not hear anything.

Rea was beside me. I turned to him and my voice was steady.

‘You’ll see she’s buried aright,’ I said. ‘In the manner of our people.’

He nodded, his face yellow with shock.

‘Her clothes burned, her plate smashed, her goods buried with her,’ I said.

He nodded.

‘Not the wagon,’ I said. ‘The wagon is Robert’s. But all the things she wore, and her bedding, and her blankets.’

He nodded.

‘And her comb,’ I said. ‘Her ribbons. Her little pillow.’

I turned away from the crumpled body, and Rea standing beside it.

I went two steps and Robert held out his arms to me. I ignored him as if I had never loved him, nor anyone in all my life. I turned back to Rea.

‘No one but you may touch her,’ I said. But then I was uncertain. ‘Is that right Rea? Is that the way of our people? I don’t know how it is done.’

Rea’s lips were trembling. ‘It shall be done in our way,’ he said.

I nodded and I walked under the catcher frame, where Jack’s hands were shaking so hard he could not undo his belt. I did not look up again. I walked past Robert and felt his hand brush my shoulder and I shrugged it off without looking at him. I went through the barn door where I had stood like a fool when Dandy went laughing to her death, and I went out to where the horses were tethered.

I heaved the saddle on to Sea’s back, and he dipped his head for the bridle. I could see the shine on the metal girth buckles and the bit, but I could not hear them chink when they rattled. I tightened the girth and led him across the grass to our wagon.

Her bedding still smelled of her. A warm smell like corn-flowers, like hay. The wagon was scattered with her clothes, her ribbons, her hairpins, a mess of powder and an empty bottle of perfume.

I stripped off my trapeze costume and I pulled the ribbons out of my hair. It tumbled down in a sweep of copper curls and I pushed it back. I pulled on my shirt and my working smock and my riding breeches. I had a pair of old boots of Jack’s and I pulled them on without a shiver. I reached under my mattress and pulled out my purse of ten guineas. I laid one on Katie’s pillow. She had kept her part of the bargain and left Dandy a free hand with Jack. She had earned her coin. I slipped the purse inside my breeches and tied the string to my belt. Then I reached into the hole in my mattress and took out the string with the two gold clasps. I fastened it around my neck and tucked it under my shirt, and I shrugged myself into an old worsted jacket which once had belonged to Robert and was warm and bulky. There was a flat cap stuffed in the pocket; I piled my hair into it and pulled it on my head.

Katie was at the door of the wagon.

‘Robert sent me,’ she said breathless. ‘He says you’re to go to his wagon and lie down until he can come to you. He’s getting the crowd out of the barn.’ She hesitated. ‘Rea’s watching over Dandy,’ she said. ‘He’s covered her up with her cape.’

She gave a little frightened sob and put out her hands to me for comfort.

I looked at her curiously. I couldn’t for the life of me see what she had to cry about.

I went past her, careful that she should not touch me, and stood for a moment on the step of the wagon. Sea raised his head at the sight of me and I unhitched his reins.

‘What are you doing?’ Katie said anxiously. ‘Robert said you were to…’

She tailed off into silence as I jumped up into the saddle.

‘Meridon…’ she said.

I looked at her and my face was like a frozen stone.

‘Where are you going?’ she asked.

I turned Sea’s head and rode towards the edge of the field. People made way for me, their faces alight with interest, watching me avidly, recognizing me even out of costume. They had enjoyed a fine show tonight. The best we had ever done. Certainly the most exciting. It is not every day you see a girl flung across a barn into a flint wall. They should have paid extra.

They parted either side of me as I rode towards the gate. Sea paused, looked down the road. South was towards the beach where we had ridden together that morning and I had tasted the salt on her hair when I had kissed her. I turned Sea’s head north and his unshod feet sounded soft on the mud of the lane. To our left the sun was sinking in a haze of pale saffron and apple-blossom clouds. Sea walked quietly, I rode him on a loose rein.

I did not sob. I did not even weep inwardly. I rode carefully past the people walking back to their homes and talking in high excited voices about the accident and what they had seen! and her face! and that awful scream! I rode past them in silence and I kept Sea headed north until we were through the little village and heading for the road towards London. Still heading north, with Sea’s hooves making little squelchy noises in the ruts but quiet on the dried mud. North while the sun went lower and lower in the sky and the evening birds started to trill in the hedges which bordered the darkening lane. North, and I did not sob, or rage. I scarcely took breath.