As if it were one person, the crowd rose to its feet in applause.
“Bravo!” they shouted. “Well done!”
My father, looking a bit shaken, but otherwise none the worse for his experience, was led back to his seat by Aunt Veronica.
“You must be my niece,” she said, smiling at me in a very friendly way. “Just look after your father for the rest of the show and then we’ll meet in my trailer when it’s all over.”
She smiled again and then, with applause still thundering to the very top of the tent, she bounded out of the ring and was gone.
Aunt Veronica’s Trailer
The moment the show came to an end, I led my father out of the tent. He was eager to get out quickly, as he was well aware that everybody was looking at him.
“There’s the man who was nearly sat on by the elephant!” people said, pointing to my father.
Once outside, we went straight to the corner of the field where the trailers were parked. There were at least twenty of them—brightly colored vehicles with curtains in the windows and small chimneys poking out through the top of their roofs.
I asked a boy standing outside the door of one of the trailers to show me which one belonged to Aunt Veronica. He pointed to a small trailer near the edge of the field.
When I knocked, Aunt Veronica opened the door immediately and stood before us, her arms wide open in a gesture of welcome. She gave my father a hug, then turned her attention to me.
“I’m so glad you’ve come,” she said enthusiastically. “I always wanted a niece, and now, presto, I find that I’ve had one all along!”
We went into the trailer and sat down at a table, which had just been laid for us. It was not a very large trailer, but it seemed very comfortable, with everything tidily stacked in its place. Aunt Veronica put a teakettle on a small gas stove in one corner and then took a large cake out of a cake tin.
Then, over a cup of steaming tea and a large slice of delicious fruitcake, we talked. My father had a lot to tell her, and she had a lot to tell him. Not all that much had happened in my life, so I just sat and listened to the two of them.
Finally, Aunt Veronica finished talking about herself and leaned back in her chair.
“What about the others?” she asked. “Have you heard from them?”
“The others?” asked my father.
“Majolica and Harmonica,” said Aunt Veronica. “And Japonica and Thessalonika.”
My father shook his head. “I’m afraid I don’t know where they are.” He paused. “Do you?”
Aunt Veronica sighed. “Only one of them,” she said. “Harmonica. I’m sure I know where she is.”
This was the signal for me to interrupt. “Oh, please, tell me,” I said. “I want to find them—all of them.”
Aunt Veronica looked at me thoughtfully. “Do you really want to find your aunts?” she said. “You’re not just saying that?”
“No,” I protested. “I mean, yes. I do want to find them.” I did not want to tell her about the painting, at least not yet.
She thought for a bit longer. Then, winking at me in a way which said, “I have a good idea,” she came up with her suggestion.
“Harold,” she said, turning to my father, “I think that you should leave Harriet with me for a few days. I’d like to find these sisters of mine myself, and I could do with a bit of help. I’m due a bit of vacation from the circus and now’s as good a time to take it as any.”
My father looked at me vaguely. “Would you like that?” he asked.
I could hardly contain my excitement. To stay with Aunt Veronica, in her trailer, and go in search of the other aunts sounded like the most magnificent idea.
“Of course I’d like that,” I said. “There’s nothing I’d like better.”
We waved good-bye to my father as he made his way out of the circus field. Then, closing the door behind us, Aunt Veronica showed me which bunk I could have. She pointed out a cupboard where I could keep my shoes and in another cupboard she found me a spare toothbrush and soap dish.
“I’ll get you some more clothes tomorrow,” she said. “One of the trapeze artists has a daughter just your size. She’ll lend us some clothes while you’re with me. Circus people always share.”
I looked around the trailer. It seemed to me the ideal place to live and travel. It had everything, or so I thought, until I noticed something strange. All the other trailers in the field were motorized, which meant that they had engines to drive them along. As far as I could make out, there was no space in this trailer for an engine. There was a driver’s seat, steering wheel, and something that looked like a brake. But that was all.
Aunt Veronica noticed me looking around and she must have guessed what was going through my mind.
“Come,” she said to me. “Let me show you a secret.”
She led me to the front of the trailer and opened a trapdoor immediately in front of the driver’s seat.
“There,” she said. “That’s how it works.”
I looked down. There, just below the level of the floor, was a large set of pedals, exactly like the pedals of a bicycle. I gasped with surprise.
“Do you mean to say this trailer is pedal-powered?” I asked disbelievingly.
“Yes,” said Aunt Veronica. “I find that it keeps my leg muscles in good shape, although sometimes it’s rather hard going on hills.”
I was completely astounded. Was there no end to the feats of strength of this utterly amazing aunt?
We got into our bunks, and Aunt Veronica turned the light out.
“Goodnight, Harriet,” she said into the darkness. “And thank you for finding me.”
I lay tucked warmly in my bunk, filled with happiness. For a while I listened to the sounds of the circus outside—the stamping of the horses’ feet in their pen as they settled for the night, the growl of a lion as it moved in its sleep. Then I drifted off to sleep myself, to dream that I was as strong as Aunt Veronica and could do everything, or almost everything, that she could do.
The next morning we sat and ate our breakfast on the steps of the trailer. The circus people got up very early and were bustling around, attending to the one-hundred-and-one morning tasks of a circus. From my seat on the steps, I watched the lion tamer, no longer wearing his splendid red lion-taming outfit but clad in a pair of scruffy pajamas. He took a large pail of meat to the edge of the lions’ cage and tossed their breakfast in to them.
Aunt Veronica ate a very large breakfast.
“I need it to keep my strength up,” she explained, as she dug into her fourteen-egg omelette. Then, when the eggs were finished, she ate seven or eight sausages, and followed them up with ten pieces of toast.
“We will set off this morning,” she said, wiping her lips on a red-checked napkin she had spread on her lap. “With any luck, we shall meet up with your Aunt Harmonica tonight.”
“But where is she?” I asked. “Do you know exactly where to find her?”
Aunt Veronica nodded. “I haven’t seen her for a year or two,” she said. “But I know where she works. There’s an opera house not all that far away. She has a job there.”
We got up and washed the breakfast dishes and stacked them away. Then Aunt Veronica left for a few minutes to tell the ringmaster that she was taking a vacation. I made my bunk in the trailer and swept the floor.
When Aunt Veronica came back, I watched in fascination as she settled herself in the driver’s seat of the trailer and opened the trapdoor that exposed the pedals.
“You sit in the back,” she said. “You’ll get a good view from the window.”
And with that, she lowered her feet through the trapdoor, took a deep breath, and began to pedal.
You would never have thought it possible. There we were in a trailer—not a big one, but a trailer nonetheless—and Aunt Veronica was making it move purely through her own effort. As we drove through the field, faces appeared at the windows of the other trailers. Word spreads quickly in the circus, and t
he other circus people already knew about Aunt Veronica’s vacation.
“Good luck!” somebody shouted. “Come back soon!”
Aunt Veronica tooted the trailer’s horn, a rubber bulb attached to a brass tube, and I waved from my window. Then we were out on the open road and the trailer began to pick up speed.
We had traveled for at least an hour before Aunt Veronica began to feel tired. During this time, we had moved at about the speed of a fast bicycle, which is not all that slow. We had overtaken one or two cars as well, and I had watched the expressions of surprise on the faces of the drivers as the trailer swept silently past them. I could imagine them saying to themselves, “I didn’t hear that behind me! What an amazingly quiet engine that trailer must have.”
As we neared a small roadside filling station. Aunt Veronica signaled that she was going to turn in. We stopped at the side of the station and went in to buy a bottle of lemonade and a large bar of chocolate for Aunt Veronica. After we had made our purchases, Aunt Veronica turned to me, winked, and spoke to the mechanic who ran the station.
“I think I have engine trouble in my trailer,” she said. “Could you take a look at it?”
The mechanic nodded, put on his greasy overalls, and walked with us back to the trailer. First he went to the front of the trailer, looked at it, and then went to the back. He opened the back door, looked at the floor, and scratched his head. Then he got down on his hands and knees and peered underneath.
“Excuse me,” he said after a while. “I can’t seem to find the engine. Do you know where it is?”
Aunt Veronica pretended to look puzzled. “It must be there somewhere,” she said. “But I’m afraid I don’t know where.”
The mechanic was now looking very mystified. He crouched down again and crawled underneath.
“It’s not here,” he called out. “There’s … there’s absolutely nothing!”
He scrambled out and looked at Aunt Veronica, his eyes wide with astonishment.
“Where do you put the gas in?” he demanded. “Maybe we can work it out from there.”
“Gas?” said Aunt Veronica, as if the word meant nothing to her. “Well, I don’t think I ever buy gas. Or at least I can’t actually remember ever putting any gas in.”
The mechanic’s jaw dropped. “You mean…,” he began to say. “You mean to say that you never put gas in?”
Aunt Veronica shook her head.
“In that case,” said the mechanic, “how did you get here? You tell me that!”
Aunt Veronica shrugged her shoulders.
“I get in and turn the engine on, and just drive,” she answered. “Look, I’ll show you.”
We both got back into the trailer and closed the door behind us. Trying not to laugh, I took up my place at the window while Aunt Veronica sat in the driver’s seat. Then, while the bemused mechanic stood back and watched, Aunt Veronica put her feet on the pedals and slowly we moved off.
“You see,” she called from her seat. “It works!”
“Good-bye!” I cried as we moved off.
The mechanic stood rooted to the spot. His face was a picture of puzzlement, and he looked just as if he had seen a flying saucer.
“He’ll never forget today,” joked Aunt Veronica. “He’ll tell all his friends about it. And do you know, I’m afraid that not one of them will ever believe him!”
The Strangest Incident in the History of Opera
The opera house stood on the top of a hill, on the outskirts of town. It was a beautiful building, as an opera house should be, with a sweep of stone steps leading up to the doors and a high roof of shining copper. We parked the trailer at the back and made our way to the stage door.
“Now, ladies,” said an attendant in a blue and gold uniform, barring our way. “This door is only for the singers and musicians.”
Aunt Veronica explained to him that we wished to see one of the singers.
“She’s my sister,” she went on. “And this is her niece.”
At the mention of Aunt Harmonica’s name, the attendant smiled.
“Well, well!” he said. “Now that you mention it, I can see the resemblance, although I must say you seem a bit … a bit more …”
“Muscular?” interrupted Aunt Veronica.
The attendant blushed. “Yes,” he said. “You see, she’s so much more … so much more …”
“Large?” suggested Aunt Veronica.
The attendant blushed even further.
“Er, yes,” he said feebly. “I suppose that’s true.”
He motioned us to follow him and we began down a dark corridor that seemed to bore into the very heart of the opera house. It was a lovely corridor, with doors opening off into brightly lit dressing rooms and dark, cluttered storerooms. At last the attendant pointed to a half-open door and nodded his head.
“That’s where she’ll be,” he said. “But make sure you don’t distract her too much. The performance starts in less than fifteen minutes.”
• • •
“You go in first,” whispered Aunt Veronica. “Let’s give her a surprise.”
I was reluctant to do this, but I was given a good shove by Aunt Veronica and soon found myself standing in a dressing room. There were several glittery dresses hanging on a wardrobe door and a bright mirror surrounded by bulbs. On a stool before the mirror, a comfortable-looking woman was applying lipstick to her fleshy red lips. I cleared my throat to attract her attention.
I think I must have given her a bit of a fright, as she spun around sharply and looked at me with complete surprise.
“What do you want?” she asked. Then, tossing the lipstick onto the dressing table, she asked me who I was.
I drew in my breath to give my answer, but suddenly she stopped.
“Don’t tell me,” she said, rising to her feet to peer more closely at me. “There’s something very familiar about your face.”
She bent down and stared into my face from a distance of no more than a few inches. Then she drew back and narrowed her eyes. “You don’t have a father called Harold, do you?” she asked.
It was at this point that Aunt Veronica popped her head round the door.
“Yes, she does,” she said.
When she saw Aunt Veronica, Aunt Harmonica burst out with a peal of triumphant laughter.
“I knew it!” she crowed. “I could tell that she was my niece.”
Then she hugged me, pressing me against her vast shape, making me feel as if I had been swallowed by a giant pudding. I struggled for breath and eventually broke away from her embrace. Aunt Harmonica was crying with emotion.
“Oh, what a marvelous day this is turning out to be!” she crooned. “First, the chance to sing a lovely part tonight, and then the visit from you!”
She sat down, weeping with excitement and emotion. Aunt Veronica helped her dry her eyes and then assisted her to squeeze into her dress. As Aunt Harmonica dressed, she told us about her job.
“I would have liked to be the leading lady in operas,” she said wistfully. “And I could sing well enough for that, couldn’t I, Veronica?”
Aunt Veronica nodded her agreement and Aunt Harmonica went on.
“But when they discovered I could throw my voice, they wanted me to do something else. They gave me a job as an understudy.”
She paused, looking at me. “You may not know what an understudy is, Harriet. An understudy is the person who’s ready to take over if a singer gets a sore throat and can’t sing. The show has to go on, as you know, and it’s the understudy who steps in and sings. Anyway, they realized that an understudy who could throw her voice was one in a million. This meant that the first singer could go on the stage as usual and just pretend to sing. She’d just open her mouth, though, and I would throw my voice from the wings. The singers loved this. They got all the cheers and flowers at the end, while I did all the work!”
I felt sorry for Aunt Harmonica as she told me her story. It must have been terrible to have to watch others getting a
ll the praise for her singing.
She dabbed a handkerchief at the corner of her eyes.
“Still,” she went on, “there’s no point in complaining about our lot in life. It’s my job and … good heavens! Look at the time! I’m going to have to sing in five minutes. The leading lady has quite lost her voice and I’m to do her singing. So, come along, you can stand beside me and see how it’s done.”
I was thrilled to be able to stand beside Aunt Harmonica and watch the preparation on the stage. Everybody was in position now, including the opera star who had lost her voice. Down in the orchestra pit, the orchestra was playing the overture, and on the other side of the stage they were preparing to raise the curtain. Aunt Harmonica looked at me, smiled, and reached into her bag for a throat lozenge.
“I always suck one of these quickly before I sing,” she whispered. “It lubricates my vocal cords.”
The curtain began to rise and the chorus of opera singers standing at the back of the stage burst into song. Aunt Harmonica was following what was going on very carefully, ready to begin her part when her cue came.
Suddenly I noticed that there was something wrong with Aunt Harmonica. She had raised her hands to her throat and was clutching at it frantically. Her face was beginning to turn purple—more or less the color my father had turned when the elephant had coiled its trunk around him.
I realized almost immediately what had happened. The throat lozenge which Aunt Harmonica had been sucking must have stuck in her throat and now she was not only breathless but voiceless. I turned to Aunt Veronica and tugged at her arm.
“Oh my goodness!” muttered Aunt Veronica, slapping her sister on the back. “There’s something stuck in her throat.”
She gave her a few more slaps on the back, but it did not seem to do any good. Aunt Veronica then did something which seemed very strange at the time but which was obviously the right thing to do. Reaching down, she picked Aunt Harmonica up by her legs and held her upside down. There was a strange wheezing sound and then a gasp. The lozenge had moved.