‘A pound!’ said Fifi. ‘But that is magnificent. Gus can have a beautiful fête.’
‘Yes, but what shall we do?’ Santa asked.
Hans counted on his fingers.
‘Next week is Cardiff. That is one week. Then Bath. That is two weeks. Then it is Taunton. That is three weeks. Then Exeter. That is four weeks. Which day is the birthday?’
‘Wednesday,’ said Peter.
‘One month and three days before the birthday we have,’ Fritzi announced.
Santa gave her a look. Of course they had asked everybody’s advice as to the best way of keeping a birthday, but that did not mean that they wanted Fritzi to take it on as if it was the birthday of her uncle. The way she said ‘we’ sounded very much as if she would.
‘We must sing,’ Hans suggested. ‘A song for his birthday we must write. Very early outside the caravan will we it sing.’
Peter looked doubtful.
‘Gus doesn’t like to be woken early.’
Fritzi dismissed the suggestion.
‘On his birthday he will not mind.’
Olga stood on her head. She leant against the nearest chair.
‘Your mother will make a beautiful cake, Fritzi.’
‘Maman will make some little ones,’ Fifi broke in, ‘the same as she made for your birthdays.’ She nodded at the twins.
‘Then,’ said Olga, ‘we will have a lovely picnic. We will make a fire. My mother has a samovar. Perhaps she’ll lend it.’
Sasha hopped about with excitement.
‘And after we’ve eaten we will give Gus a concert. Each of us will perform.’
‘Except Peter and Santa,’ Fritzi reminded them. ‘They can nothing do.’
‘But naturally not,’ Fifi agreed. ‘That is understood.’
‘Could we—’ Sasha was so pleased with his idea he lost his voice. ‘Could we spend the pound on fireworks?’
‘Certainly,’ said Fritzi approvingly. ‘That was a very good idea, Sasha. We will fireworks have.’
‘Feu d’artifice!’ Fifi gasped, carried away by the glory of the idea.
‘But—’ said Peter.
‘What will you do at the concert, Fifi?’ Sasha asked.
Fifi got up.
‘I will practise. I will work out some little thing.’
Fritzi turned to Hans.
‘We will together work.’
‘So,’ Hans agreed. ‘And our father shall write the song.’
Olga, who had been walking on her hands, suddenly sprang the right way up.
‘Come, Sasha. You remember that floor show we did at Christmas for the charity for children? We’ll do that.’
Sasha was enchanted. He dashed down to the ring.
‘Come on then. Let’s practise.’
Peter and Santa, left alone, stared at each other.
‘I think a pound is an awful lot to spend on fireworks, don’t you?’ Santa suggested.
Peter nodded. Then he sat down and took out a piece of paper from his pocket.
‘Let them get on with the singing and the picnic and the concert. Here’s a list of things I thought of.’
Santa looked over his shoulder. She read:
Mascot for car. To fix over the radiator cap.
A pipe.
New driving gloves.
Ties.
Thermos flask.
‘I think the new driving gloves.’
Peter put the list back in his pocket.
‘So do I.’
‘We’ll have to spend some money on things to eat at the picnic.’
Peter looked worried.
‘I know. I wish we hadn’t asked them. I believe Gus will hate that sort of fuss.’
15
Gus’s Birthday
The weather grew nicer and nicer. Of course there were wet days, but they sank into the background, and the sunny ones stood out. Gus bought a tent and Santa slept in it. Just at the beginning she was a little nervous. She thought: ‘Suppose the lions should escape,’ or: ‘Suppose a burglar should come. Would Gus hear?’ But after a day or two she got to love it. It was like having a house of her own. She got fussy about how it looked. She tied a picture up, and put flowers in a vase. The hot days they had all their meals outside. So did everybody else. The tables were set between the caravans, and the most enchanting smells of other people’s dinners floated up the line, as did cheerful conversations in various languages. When the children came back from afternoon school they would find everybody resting in the sun. Of course the shows came first, and nobody forgot that was what they were there for. All the same, tenting began to feel more and more like a never-ending picnic.
Peter and Santa were busy. Peter, of course, had his riding lessons before school. He was getting on well, and there was not a horse trained to a saddle that he had not been on. Nor one of the more difficult ones he had not fallen off. Ben liked people to fall off now and again.
‘It’s like life,’ he said. ‘You goes along all confident thinkin’ all’s going nice. Then one day somethin’ happens and you fall on your nose. When you gets up you’re careful for a time. Watch where you’re goin’ so you don’t trip. It’s the same with ’osses. You get so easy you gets careless. Then the ’oss stumbles or rears a bit at something and off you come. I never could abide a rider what treated a ’oss like he was a bed. Somethin’ just to go to sleep on.’
Santa had her exercises to do for Ted Kenet. She meant to do those before breakfast. She did for a bit, and then slacked off. People were always passing when she was going to work. It was more fun gossiping with the milkman or the postman, or helping somebody clean a car, than limbering up. Besides, she had got far more supple since she had occasional lessons from Ted Kenet, so she did not really think there was need for her to work.
Both Peter and Santa had less and less free time. Even the bit from after school to bed was partly filled up. Now they were at seaside towns Gus was having them taught to swim. He employed one of the ring-hands called Syd to teach them. Syd took Gus’s commission very seriously. For three days at Carmarthen, a week each at Cardiff, Bristol, and Bath, he had them for half an hour, lying balanced on upturned wooden boxes, practising their strokes.
‘Half an hour has to do for now,’ he said. ‘What with your school, and me bein’ wanted in the top, we ’aven’t more time. But I reckon on the first two weeks in August at Exeter and Taunton when you ’ave holidays to get you into fine trim. So when we gets to Torquay it won’t take more’n a couple of lessons to have you like fishes.’
Peter and Santa did not say anything to Syd, but away from him they groaned. Learning to swim in the sea is all very well. Swimming week after week on a wooden box is a terrible bore. The thought that they were to do more of it when the holidays began was unbearable.
Both Peter and Santa hoped that if they said no more about it the plans for Gus’s birthday would die. But they were reckoning without Fritzi. Fritzi was not the sort of person who believed in plans dying. Almost every day, either going or coming from school, she mentioned them.
‘How was your practice, Fifi?’
‘Such children as you, Olga and Sasha, must hard work. It most unsuitable is that work that is careless should before Gus be done.’
‘Mine mother will buy the icing sugar for the cake of Gus to make.’
She never mentioned the fireworks again, but Peter and Santa expected every day that she would.
‘I wish we could just buy the driving gloves, and then if they ask for money for the fireworks, say it’s gone,’ said Santa.
Peter did not bother to answer. Although after nearly four months of living in a circus they were getting more confidence, they still had not enough to risk annoying all the other children. There had been some short-lived quarrels that they had seen, and they knew how quickly other people who had nothing to do with the original row took sides. If the Petoffs and the Schmidts and Fifi Moulin managed to persuade their families they had been badly treated over the fireworks,
it was possible a whole lot of other people would side with them, and that would mean that they would be ostracized for quite a time, and perhaps Gus too, a situation too awful to be contemplated.
The school holidays began while they were at Bath. Santa met Ted Kenet as she was coming back from the last day of school.
‘Holidays start tomorrow, don’t they?’ he asked.
Santa skipped along beside him. She was so pleased it was holidays her feet simply would not walk.
‘Yes.’
‘What are you kids going to do with yourselves?’
‘Well, Syd’s teaching Peter and me to swim; he’s going to give us extra swimming on a box so when we get to Torquay we’ll be able to go straight in and swim.’
Ted laughed. He took his bag of sweets out of his pocket. He handed them to Santa.
‘Bet you don’t.’
Santa took a sweet.
‘So do I. But that’s what he says. We hope we’ll be able to soon, because until we can we mayn’t go on the beach except for a swimming lesson.’
Ted sucked thoughtfully.
‘How’s my exercises going?’
Santa stooped and pretended to do up her sandal while she thought of a good answer to that. After all, she reasoned, even if she could not say she had worked hard, she could say they were going well. If they were not, how was she so much more supple than she had been?
‘Very nicely, thank you.’
‘Practising every day?’
Santa took a deep breath.
‘Well, of course, I can’t always. You see, there’s school, and then we wash up for Gus, and there’s my tent to tidy, and—’
‘You haven’t been working?’ Ted interrupted.
‘Oh, I have sometimes, but not every day.’
‘I see. How long since your last lesson?’
Santa considered.
‘The Sunday at Tenby.’
Ted thought a moment.
‘Tenby and Carmarthen, Cardiff, Bristol. That’s a month next Sunday. Come in the big top tomorrow round about half past eleven. We’ll see how you’ve been getting on.’
Santa practised twice before her lesson. Before she went to bed that night, and before breakfast. She could catch hold of her heels now and raise her legs above her head like all the others did. It was true her knees still had a bit of bend in them, but she did not think it showed much. She could sit on the ground and hold her ankles and almost knock her forehead on her knees. She could bend down and without bending her knees put first her palms and then the backs of her hands on the ground. She could lie on the ground and raise herself on her arms while she raised her legs, and almost touch the back of her head with the soles of her feet, but not quite. She could stand in a hoop with the palms of her hands and the soles of her feet on the ground, but only for a second; she could not hold the position. In fact, she was beginning to do a lot of things she had not been able to do when she came to the circus. She was beginning to think herself something of an acrobat.
Ted was waiting for her in the morning when she got to the big top. He and Gus were working every morning now for something new they were planning for Christmas. He was in his practice things and dressing-gown. He was drinking sarsaparilla. He tapped his glass.
‘You ought to see Gus has some of this. Do him good.’
Santa stepped over the ring fence. She made a mark in the sawdust with her toe.
‘Does his blood need cooling?’
Ted took a gulp of drink.
‘Must do. ’Tisn’t natural it shouldn’t this hot weather.’ He put down his glass and came and sat on the ring fence. ‘Now then, off you go. We haven’t much time, the Elgins are coming to work at twelve. Do your exercise routine. Then the back-bends.’
Usually Santa had to work somewhere outside. Only the artistes had the right to work in the ring, though nobody minded the children using it if it were not wanted. Santa loved practising in the ring. It made her feel like a real acrobat. She liked the circus smell of animals and sawdust. As she bent backwards she could see the tiers and tiers of seats. Anybody in a proper practice dress lying in the ring trying to make the soles of her feet touch the back of her head would have been able to imagine crowds of people watching. Santa imagined it so hard that when she got up she took a slight skip forward and held her palms upward. Almost as she did it she could hear the roars of applause.
‘What’s that for?’ asked Ted.
Santa came down to earth with a bump. She turned red.
‘I don’t know. It’s how the others end their practice.’
Ted got up. He wrapped his dressing-gown round him.
‘Well, so long.’
Santa stared at him.
‘Aren’t you going to teach me a new exercise?’
Ted walked towards the artistes’ entrance.
‘No. I’m not bothering no more.’
Santa jumped over the ring fence. She ran after him and caught him by the arm.
‘But why, Ted?’
Ted stopped.
‘When I said I’d show you how to tumble I thought you really wanted to know. I didn’t know you only wanted to fool around.’
‘But I don’t. I want to learn frightfully.’
Ted moved off again.
‘Funny way of showing it.’
Santa gripped hold of his dressing-gown.
‘Do stand still. You might tell me what you mean.’
Ted hesitated. Then he came back. He climbed under the barrier and sat down. He patted the chair next to him.
‘All right.’ He handed Santa his sweets and took one himself. ‘I’m a pro., see. I told you how I was born in my grand-dad’s circus. I learnt to walk pushing one of those big balls, we use clowning, round the ring. There was never a time when I fooled around learning to do anything, and I don’t figure to start doing it now.’
‘If you mean I’m fooling around,’ said Santa indignantly, ‘you’re wrong.’
‘Maybe, from the way you look at it,’ Ted agreed mildly. ‘But me, I don’t understand bothering with anything unless you mean to work at it.’
‘I have worked.’
‘Worked!’ Ted’s voice was full of scorn. ‘You don’t know what work is. From what Gus tells me it isn’t your fault. You were brought up all wrong. He says you two came here supposing you’d just be fed and looked after until you were older and then jobs found for you.’
‘Well, what else can children do?’
‘Work. Time I was your age I had it all clear what I was going to do.’
‘But you were born in a circus. You were trained by the time you were little.’
‘That’s right; but if I hadn’t been I’d have known what I was about. You take Peter. He’ll be old enough to be on his own soon. What’s he going to do?’
Santa wriggled on her chair.
‘I don’t know. I suppose Gus’ll find him something.’
‘Well, what? You’re neither of you any good at your schooling from what I hear.’
Santa sighed.
‘No, we’re not. We’re very bad, both of us.’
Ted sucked his sweet a moment without speaking.
‘You know, I don’t understand you kids. If I wasn’t any good at my books, I’d start practising up for something I could do. I wouldn’t want to be pushed into some job just because I hadn’t worked at anything special.’
‘Everybody can’t be good at something.’
‘Yes, they could. Now supposing you thought you’d like to be a cook. Your grandmother was, wasn’t she?’ Santa nodded. ‘Is there any reason why you shouldn’t be a good one?’
‘Gus does the cooking. He doesn’t like me doing it much.’
‘I bet if you said to him you wanted to do it on account you hoped to be a cook some day he’d let you fast enough. But he won’t want you fooling at it. That’s what I mean about this tumbling. You say you’d like to learn now. I say: “Right, I’ll show you.” Well, there’s a chance for you. I know what I’m
doing. You got a good chance to learn to do it first class. I don’t say it’ll be any good to you. But they have people to teach exercises in these schools. Might come in handy. Anyway, no good wasting my time fooling at it.’
‘I’m not,’ said Santa.
Ted handed her his bag of sweets.
‘Take another, and don’t talk so foolish. If you’d practised even half an hour every other day you’d show it. You haven’t.’ He looked at her. ‘Have you?’
Santa looked at her sandals.
‘No.’
‘All right. No need to look ashamed about it. It’s just a game to you. No need why you should work. But if it’s a game no point in me troubling to show you how. The other kids can do that.’
Santa looked at him out of the corner of her eye.
‘I don’t want it to be a game. I want to learn to do it properly.’
‘Enough to practise half an hour?’
‘Yes.’
Ted got up.
‘Right. Come outside and let’s see you touch your feet a dozen times.’
After her lesson Santa went to look for Peter. She knew she would find him in the stables. He spent all his spare time there. He was leaning against one of the tent props watching Nobby clean some harness. Santa came and stood beside him.
‘What d’you want?’ said Peter.
‘I just thought you might walk round with me a bit.’
Peter gave her a look. If she said a thing like that she must want to talk about something. He followed her outside.
They skipped over the guy-ropes. They went between the forage tent and the men’s kitchen. They sat down on the ground at the back of the staff wagons.
‘Have you thought what you’re going to do when you leave school?’ Santa asked. To her surprise he did not say at once ‘No’ and ‘Why should I?’ and then change the subject. Instead he said:
‘Why?’
She told him about her talk with Ted. She found it a relief telling Peter because, of course, with him she did not have to pretend she had worked. He knew quite well she had not. Peter did not answer at once. Then he put his arms round one of his knees. His voice was embarrassed, as though she were dragging a secret from him.