The Trapeze Artist Page 22

  Another pause. The ringmaster looks around at the faces of those assembled.

  ‘What do you say?’

  Silence. The spectacle of Big Pete trying to rally them as if they were his troops is excruciating, yet at the same time no one can tear their gaze away. It is almost hypnotic, a car crash of epic proportions.

  ‘This show ain’t over!’ Big Pete proclaims. ‘Not by a long shot!’

  A couple of members of the company let out small cheers at this, including Midge, but the cheers peter out when it becomes clear that the majority are not going to join in. Big Pete glares at them, his shoulders squared and his fists clenched as if ready to take them all on at once. But just as Big Pete seems set to lose it his shoulders slump and his chest, so proud and puffed, turns concave as he exhales a long weary sigh. Finally the ringmaster raises his hand again and waves it at them. But this time the gesture is not theatrical, only dismissive.

  ‘Come on then,’ he snarls – it sounds as if he is choking – ‘piss off and get packing. We’ve got a date to make in Lonsdale.’

  People start to disperse. He hovers uncertainly, and in doing so accidentally meets Big Pete’s gaze. The ringmaster’s eyes lock on to him and he feels himself being assessed and inspected. He waits for the news that he is dead weight, useless, that it is time for him to fuck off and annoy someone else.

  ‘As for you’ – Big Pete says – ‘there’s cleaning up needs doing.’

  Edward and he were giggling, but Paul walked a few steps in front, his arms folded tightly across his chest and his posture hunched like he was trying to ward off bad spirits. As they passed by the vicarage Edward gave his arm a squeeze and, trying not to laugh outright and give themselves away, they both quickly vaulted the small wall to the churchyard. Paul did not turn, and they ducked down behind it. Leaning against the wall and panting from the sudden spurt of energy, he kissed Edward hard on the mouth and felt him respond with equal force. Emboldened by alcohol and the effects of the joint, he reached for Edward’s crotch and squeezed the swelling he found there, and thought he heard Edward gasp as he reached out to return the pressure.

  ‘Hey, guys – where are you?’ called Paul from somewhere up the road.

  They peeped over the edge of the wall and watched Paul return, looking furious, his arms still tight against his chest as he looked from one direction to another. When he turned away from them Edward reached down, picked up a clod of earth and flung it. It connected beautifully with the back of Paul’s neck.

  ‘Ouch – hey!’ Paul cried, whipping round. ‘Look, where are you, OK?’

  ‘Woooh,’ he called, making a ghostly sound. ‘Paaauliee! Come to me!’

  Paul approached.

  ‘Look, this really isn’t –’

  ‘Boo!’

  He stood up and Paul let out a shriek and raised his hands as if to defend himself. He burst out laughing, but even in the dark he could see Paul was livid.

  ‘You think you’re so great, don’t you?’ Paul screamed at him. ‘Just because he lets you go round with him. Well, I’ve got news for you, you’re nothing but a sad hanger-on! And that’s all you’ll ever be!’

  Paul panted, apparently exhausted by this outburst. He stared back at Paul for a few seconds, then smiled cruelly.

  ‘If I’m a sad hanger-on, what does that make you?’

  Paul looked as if he was about to explode.

  ‘Children, children,’ said Edward in a mock-motherly voice. ‘Calm down now. It was my idea to hide, Paul dear. And it was me who threw the earth. I thought it would make a good joke. I’m sorry. The last thing I wanted to do was get you all worked up and bothered.’

  Paul said nothing but fixed his glare on Edward instead. Looking contrite, Edward held out the half-finished bottle as a peace offering. For a few seconds he thought Paul was going to turn and run, and on the one hand he was pleased because it would leave him alone with Edward and on the other he was sorry, because they were getting such good sport out of him. But then Paul snatched up the bottle, wrenched off the cork, threw back his head and started to gulp it down. ‘Steady on,’ murmured Edward, but Paul did not stop until the bottle was empty. Then, looking exhilarated, he hurled it overarm in the direction of the church. There was a loud tinkling as it crashed against something made of stone.

  ‘That’s desecration,’ he said. ‘You hit one of the graves.’

  ‘So fucking sue me,’ Paul replied.

  Paul took hold of the wall and vaulted over it with a sprightliness that surprised him, then started purposefully towards the church. He sniggered.

  ‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘He’s become a rebel.’

  Edward gave him a disapproving look, and he suddenly felt a little ashamed, as well as annoyed with Edward since just a moment ago they had been in cahoots and so now it was a bit rich for Edward to act as if he was the only one picking on Paul. He realised his bladder was aching and his head felt cloudy and light. He wasn’t sure if it was caused by the joint, by the wine or by shame.

  ‘Come along,’ said Edward.

  They set off after Paul and found him standing before the church gazing up at the tower, which looked rustic and quaint by daylight, but now, by the light of the moon, seemed ominous and eerily Gothic.

  ‘Doesn’t it just make you want to don a habit and sing hymns?’ said Edward. He was talking to Paul, but Paul did not answer. Edward dug in his pocket and produced something that he handed to Paul with a lighter.

  ‘Here,’ said Edward. ‘A little something I made earlier.’

  It was another joint. Wordlessly Paul took it and lit it. He watched as Paul went through the same farce of taking in a mouthful of smoke and then letting it straight out again. Edward glanced at him as if to warn him not to say anything, then took the joint and had a long toke himself.

  He looked up at the tower, at the spire that tapered into a cross atop which the moon seemed to be balanced like a precarious pearl, luminous white against a black mantle. Against the tower was a trellis, upon which a wandering rose had climbed almost to the tracery of the cross-shaped window beneath the spire.

  ‘If you loved me, you’d fetch me that moon,’ he said dreamily.

  Edward peered up at it.

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Edward. ‘Just wait here.’

  Edward handed him the joint and made a movement towards the trellis, putting his foot on one of the wooden slats and making as if to climb. He laughed and Edward let out an exaggerated yawn.

  ‘Well – perhaps in just a minute.’

  He nodded, suddenly incredibly tired – too tired even to laugh any more or continue with the joke. He put the joint in his mouth and sucked on it then passed it to Paul who plucked it off him without looking at him. He felt another pang from his bladder.

  ‘I’ll be back,’ he muttered, stumbling across the graveyard towards the hedgerow. Here he saw what seemed to be a large hole in the bushes, and he went through and found himself in a small enclosed bit of woodland, with several old beer cans lying around – which meant that other people must come here too. Pleased with his find, he unzipped and let out a long stream of piss, watching the white steam rise and then evaporate into nothingness in the dark.

  At Lonsdale they do not go down well. Travelling in the opposite direction, the Red Circus has already been through here just a week before, and there is still a frayed corner of the gaudy poster advertising them on the town hall noticeboard. The smattering of audience they get look unimpressed – everyone knows they are being compared to the Red Circus and that they do not come off well in the comparison. Big Pete swears and shouts at the company more than ever before, and people avoid entering the big top until the very last minute, driving him almost to a frenzy. Pierce and Imogen’s balancing act is now pushed to the headline spot, and backstage Pierce becomes angry when he hears Big Pete building them up to impossible proportions. When Big Pete returns backstage Pierce starts towards him, but Imogen stops him, putting a hand on Pierce’s shoulder and w
hispering ‘Don’t.’ Their act is met with polite applause, and people start to leave before Big Pete has even brought everyone back for the final bow. Afterwards there are complaints to the box office because Vlad the Vampire, prominently displayed on the posters, made no appearance, and Big Pete tells him to unravel each poster and insert over the image of Vlad a white sticker carrying snippets of praise for the circus from local newspapers. He spends a whole afternoon sitting cross-legged in the box office, pasting over the aerialist. With each poster his heart receives a wrench, for it is as if he is deleting the aerialist’s very existence. After it is done Big Pete inspects the posters and grunts his satisfaction, but everyone who sees it is horrified by the white box and how ugly it makes the poster, and how uninviting it renders the circus.

  The fact of Vlad’s leaving is oddly distant to him, as if it has not yet properly set in. At night he misses the aerialist’s body and the warm and salty smell of his skin, yet it is also peaceful not to have to worry about Vlad and what he will think and say. Not to have to be afraid when the aerialist fails to return at night, of where he is or what he is doing. The matter is no longer in his hands, and there is something soothing about the reliable throb in his heart when he returns after each show to the empty caravan, or when he wakes in the morning and traces his hands over the scattering of belongings Vlad did not see fit to take with him. He wonders if Vlad is already performing for the other circus, and he wonders if he has already got his eye on someone else, has already slept with them, perhaps even shares their bed on a regular basis. He wonders these things but they do not add to his suffering. It seems to him as if all along it was Vlad who was the adopted one and not he, and that deep down he knew eventually the aerialist would leave without him. He is grateful still to have the circus, such as it is.

  On the morning they are due to leave Lonsdale Pierce and Imogen pay Big Pete a visit in his trailer. They are in there for five minutes. Shouting is heard, and then they emerge – Pierce red-faced and Imogen wide-eyed. Without a word to anyone, Imogen starts their car while Piece attaches their trailer, and, with no goodbyes, they drive off.

  He could hear a strange noise, but it wasn’t until he had almost reached Paul that he realised it was Paul sobbing. He realised too that Edward had not gone off somewhere, but was lying on the ground, and that Paul was doing a sort of mad dance over him, as if he was having a fit. It was hard to make Edward out exactly, but as he got closer he saw Edward wasn’t moving and his eyes were open and staring skywards.

  Paul met his eyes and froze, his mouth opening ridiculously wide and his eyes round and shining in the moonlight. He pointed down at Edward.

  ‘We have to get an ambulance . . . We need . . .’

  He laughed and Paul gaped at him. Edward was being kind to Paul, trying to make him feel he was one of them again, because they had hidden from Paul and given him a scare. But Paul was such a bad actor that it was hard not to feel sorry for him.

  ‘Oh no,’ he said flatly. ‘He’s dead.’

  He prodded Edward with his foot. Edward’s face rolled to the side, revealing a crest of red foam that seemed to be bubbling up from a crack behind his left ear. Edward’s brains oozing out of his head.

  Time seemed to freeze and all he could hear was the steady thump of his heart. He saw that Edward’s leg was twisted at an impossible angle, and despite the darkness he could make out something white and sharp jutting through the knee of his jeans, something that shouldn’t be there at all.

  ‘Not . . .’ he heard himself say.

  ‘He was climbing!’ wept Paul, resuming his mad dance. ‘He was climbing up to fetch the moon, he said, for you! He slipped . . . he hit his head on the ledge – he just bounced off it!’

  He stood over Edward, thinking that he must check his pulse, try to remember CPR, must try to stop the bleeding. But he could not seem to do any of those things. All he could do was stand and stare at the bone protruding from Edward’s knee. He swallowed.

  ‘Go and find help,’ he said.

  His voice came out calm and ordinary. Paul stared at him for a few seconds. Suddenly Paul took off down the path, screaming at the top of his lungs, leaving him and Edward alone.

  He tore his eyes away from Edward’s leg and looked at his face. It didn’t seem like Edward at all, but rather like a waxwork with Edward’s likeness. His eyes were empty and fixed on some undefinable point behind him, as if whatever substance it was that made Edward who he was had been sucked out through those glassy pupils.

  He swallowed again, and the swallow turned into a shudder. Then it seemed as if something truly extraordinary was happening – the world was turning upside down and its contents were draining away into the endless darkness that now lay beneath his feet, glittering with stars like a jet black carpet flecked with shards of diamond.

  It wasn’t until much later, after the vicarage lights had come on and the vicar and his wife had followed Paul back to the churchyard to find out what he was raving about, and he had shaken his head unable to answer their questions, and the vicar had carefully draped his coat over Edward’s face while his wife went to call the ambulance, that it occurred to him he must have fainted.

  By now he will relish the aching in his muscles after each set of exercises – the deep shrieking pain in his tendons after each stretch, the pins and needles in his shoulders as the strength ebbs out of them, the soreness in his palms and fingers, and the flood of endorphins to his brain as he lies still on the mattress afterwards, gazing up at the trapeze.

  Each night after he has eaten he will go to his room before he bathes, take off all his clothes and stand naked in front of the full-length mirror – the mirror salvaged from his mother’s room. He will inspect the effects of his regime. The slight belly acquired over the years will have receded as a wall of muscle tightens around it like a girdle, forcing it to diminish almost entirely. His biceps and forearms will now carve themselves out of his arms in artful bumps and bulges. His back will have grown broader, bulkier, and his pectoral muscles will swell out from his torso like slabs of paving stone. He will admire these changes to himself, this sheath of strength growing out from his body, not from a sexual point of view – though he will be undeniably pleased with his new looks – but as if they were a trophy, one that grows incrementally more valuable. It will feel proof of the work he has done, medals from the ongoing battle to discipline his flesh.

  But the real triumph will be his achievements with the stretching. By increasing his leg span in minuscule amounts each session, he will for the first time in his life be able to raise his leg above his head and kiss his own foot. It will be a point of pride with him now that he can slide into the splits from standing, and that every day he grows closer to a box split – letting his legs slide out on either side of him until he is sitting in straddle, his torso ever inching towards the floor.

  When he looks at himself in the mirror his predominant impression will be of his body as a weapon, a missile created out of human tissue, one he has been honing with a single-mindedness of purpose such as he has never felt before. It is the power of despair, he will understand, that is the secret ingredient in this process. He will stare at his new body from every angle and he will feel as if he is ready for something. Though what that something is, he will not yet know.

  After Lonsdale the company moves further south. At the next town they draw a moderate crowd for the first night and then only a handful of people for the follow-up shows. Big Pete holds a meeting in which he again tries to raise morale, telling the company he is advertising for new acts, and that there will be auditions once they reach Newquay, in which he will want to know what everyone thinks – for they are a family, he claims, and in his family everyone’s opinion matters. But among themselves people are dubious: they are not falling for it. The discontent has spread like a disease, beyond the point of a cure. He overhears Griselda again talking about the theatre in Manchester that is looking for tissu girls, and this time when Franka replies
she is openly enthusiastic.

  He is hosing down the mud-splattered plastic covering on the outside of the entrance to the big top when the clown appears. He has seen him only briefly since the night Vlad left – coming out of his caravan to use the facilities and at the shows, in which he wanders drunkenly towards the stage entrance and gives a half-hearted half-inebriated performance, sometimes even falling over unintentionally. At the last show the little girl he picked on to caper with screamed and shouted to her mother about his stinky whisky breath. In other circumstances Big Pete would have said something, perhaps even threatened to fire the clown, but here he has no choice, and the ringmaster watches him stumble about the ring without a word, his jaw bulging as he grits back his anger.

  ‘Bit early for you, isn’t it?’ he says, not glancing up. ‘Sun’s still up.’

  ‘Watch,’ Jethro says with a chuckle. ‘Magic!’

  He looks at the clown, who folds his arms and then unfolds them. From nowhere during this manoeuvre he produces two cans of beer. The clown holds one of them out to him. He shakes his head.

  ‘Suit yourself,’ shrugs the clown, pushing it into the pocket of his baggy jogging bottoms and opening the other can. He takes a slurp. ‘So . . . how’s life at the circus without the unicycle around to suck you off?’

  Without pausing to consider whether or not it is a good idea he lifts the hose and aims it full blast at the clown, who is so shocked as the rush of cold water hits him that he drops his beer can and topples back against the canvas, sliding down to a choking heap on the grass.

  ‘Arsehole!’

  It is impossible to tell from the way the clown convulses if he is outraged or laughing. He does not care anyway. Invigorated by his own action, he lifts the hose and attempts to blast the clown again. But this time the clown is too fast for him and catches the nozzle, forcing it back on him so that he gets a fountain in his own face. He takes a mouthful, coughs and knocks the hose away. Still grappling with Jethro, he falls forward on top of the clown.