Airs Above the Ground (12 page)

Annalisa said suddenly: ‘No! It is I who ask! After all this talk, it is I! I had forgotten! This was Uncle Franzl’s horse, so now it is mine . . .’ She swung round on her father, hands spread in what was almost a parody of his own gesture. ‘Is this not so, father? Did not Uncle Franzl leave me all his things . . . all that were saved, the pictures, and his flute, and the parrot . . . and old Piebald, too? So if he is mine, and I ask Vanessa to look after him . . . and if he can go to the train . . .?’

She finished back on the note of pleading, but her father was already laughing, his square brown face lit up and rayed with wrinkles.

‘
So
. . . you see how she rules me, this child of mine? Always a reason she finds to have her way – like her mother she is, very the same as her mother. Oh, yes, it is true that Franzl wished you to have everything . . . it is true perhaps that the horse is yours . . .’ He gave his great ringmaster’s laugh, so that the sleeping horses stirred in their stalls, and the chains jingled and rang. ‘All right, all right, if you wish, if you wish, children all of you. What do you need,
gnädige Frau
?’

‘The instruments Annalisa said she had. Hot water.
Nylon suturing material. I’ll have to give an anti-tetanus injection; have you got the stuff? Good. And more light. I don’t want to move him, I’d rather do it in his own stall, it’ll upset him less, but I must have some sort of spotlight.’

‘I have a good flashlight,’ said Annalisa. ‘It’s in my wagon. And Sandor has one, too. Will you get it, Sandor, please?’

‘
Natürlich
.’ It was as if a puppet had spoken – or rather, a creature from the ballet stage, so remote from us had that black-clad, graceful figure been in the shadows of the end stall. His voice was curiously light and hard. He spoke pleasantly enough, without emphasis, and had turned to go, when I stopped him.

‘No, please . . . Thank you all the same, but it doesn’t matter. A flashlight won’t be enough. I wondered if someone could rig a light down here off a long flex? You know, a wire.’

‘That is easy to do,’ said Herr Wagner, adding in German, ‘Sandor, would you be good enough to do this for them? You know where to find the flex and all the things you need. Don’t lumber yourself with that saddle, just leave it here. Annalisa won’t mind if it stays here for the night for once.’

‘I was going to take it to my own wagon to mend it. I see some stitching is loose.’

Tim translated in my ear: ‘It’s all right. He’s only taking the saddle to dump in his own wagon, and then he’s going to get a flex and rig the light. I say, I’m sure he was going to have the old horse put down.’

‘I thought so, too.’

‘Is this a bad operation?’

‘Not at all. Have you never seen this kind of thing before?’

‘No, only the usual minor things, fomentations and so on. I’m afraid I shan’t be much help, but I’ll do my best if you want.’

‘Herr Wagner probably knows all about it, but thanks all the same. I’d a lot sooner have you than the boy friend, anyway.’

‘Him? You don’t think he is, do you?’

I laughed. ‘No, only that he’d like to be. He doesn’t look the type to run errands for girls otherwise. And what else did he come here for? Just to carry her saddle away for her? He didn’t look too pleased to be co-opted as lighting expert.’

‘If it comes to that,’ said Tim, ‘he offered to stitch it up for her, or something, if I got it right. His German’s a lot worse than his English.’

‘Well, there you are,’ I said, vaguely, then forgot about Sandor Balog. What mattered now was the horse.

Once Herr Wagner had made up his mind to let me operate, he was helpfulness itself. The stablemen had all gone off duty; they had the early start to face, and were getting their sleep. But Herr Wagner and Annalisa stayed, and we had a surprise helper in the shape of the dwarf who was the clowns’ butt in the
entrée
. His name was Elemer, and like Sandor Balog he was a Hungarian, being, I supposed, the ‘Hungarian gentleman’ who ‘had the advantage of only being three feet
high’ and who had been helping Mr Elliott with the stable work in the recent emergency. He certainly seemed to know where everything was, unlike Balog, who did bring flex and tools as requested, but thereafter restricted his help to watching the dwarf and lifting him to reach the light socket – this last with some comment in Hungarian which made the little man flush angrily and compress his lips. And when the light was finally rigged, the
Star-Attraktion
retired gracefully into the shadows of the next stall to watch the performance, while the dwarf bustled to help Annalisa and Timothy.

They had conjured up a Primus stove from somewhere, and on it had managed to bring a large enamel bucket full of water to the boil while the light was being rigged and I, with Herr Wagner watching, checked over the contents of the dead Franzl’s instrument case.

It held everything I could want, scalpel, knife, dressing and artery forceps, suturing material, cotton-wool galore. All these went into the bucket to boil, while Annalisa and Timothy went off to her wagon for another pan for me to wash in.

In a quarter of an hour or so all was ready. The light was rigged and steady, the boiling water drained off the sterile instruments, and I had washed up and started work.

I noticed that Herr Wagner was watching closely. Even if he did not value the horse, he was too good a horseman to hand over the animal to someone and then leave him unsupervised. He said nothing, but
washed up himself and then stood near me, obviously constituting himself my assistant.

I clipped the horse’s leg and cleaned the area with surgical spirit, then reached for the hypodermic. As Herr Wagner put it into my hand, I caught sight of Tim’s face, taut and anxious, watching across the horse’s neck. There was nothing for him to do, so he stood by the animal’s head and spoke to him gently from time to time, but in fact the boy seemed much more disturbed by the operation than the patient, and looked so anxious at the sight of the needle that I gave him a reassuring grin.

‘I’m going to give him a local, Tim, don’t worry. He won’t feel a thing, and twenty minutes from now he’ll be doing a
capriole
.’

‘What d’you give him?’

‘Procaine. It goes by some German trade name here, but that’s what it is. That’s it between the vaseline and that brown tube labelled “Koloston”. I’m going to infiltrate the procaine right round the area. Now watch. You run the needle in under the skin, near the swelling . . . There, he never blinked, and that’s the only prick he’ll feel. Then you put it in again, at the end of the anaesthetised bit . . . see? He doesn’t feel that . . . and run it along the second side of your square. This way, you deaden the whole area. Then the third side . . . and the last. Now, give it time, and when I incise the haematoma he won’t feel a thing.’

The beam of light shifted, sending the shadows tilting. I glanced up quickly, before I remembered that it was the dwarf Elemer who was holding the wooden batten to which the lamp had been hooked.

‘That is better now?’ His deep guttural came from elbow height, and I glanced down, self-conscious now and hating myself for showing it. He was in deep shadow behind the bright bulb, and I couldn’t see the misshapen body or the tiny arms that clutched the batten, but the light reflected on his upturned face, which was the face made familiar by so many of the old tales that take deformity for granted,
Snow White, Rumpelstiltskin
, and the rest. Only the eyes were unexpected; they were dark, the iris as dark as the pupil, big eyes fringed with thick short lashes; eyes where thoughts could not be read but only guessed at. Not for the first time I reflected that the normal, let alone the privileged, have a burden of guilt laid automatically on them from the cradle.

I said: ‘Thank you, it’s fine.’ In spite of myself, I spoke just a shade too heartily. I saw him smile, but it was a kind smile. I turned quickly back to the job.

‘Scalpel, please,’ I said, and reached out a wet hand. Herr Wagner put the scalpel into it. The beam of light was steady on the haematoma. I bent forward to cut.

The cut was about four inches long. The swelling cut as cleanly as an orange, and, as cleanly almost as orange juice, the serum flooded out of it and down the horse’s leg, followed sluggishly by the blood, which, in a week, had formed a sizeable, stringy clot. You could almost feel the relief as the thing split and the pressure was lifted. Old Piebald’s ears moved, and Tim whispered something into one of them.

‘Forceps,’ I said.

I don’t know whether Herr Wagner knew the English
words, but he obviously knew the drill; as he handed me the dressing forceps I saw from the corner of my eye that he also had the artery forceps ready in case of any seepage from my cutting. And when I had pulled away the clotted blood with the forceps, the cotton-wool was ready to my hand without my having to speak.

In a short time the wound was clean. I dusted it generously with sterile penicillin powder, and reached silently for the suturing needle. It was there. Six blanket sutures, and the thing was done, and Herr Wagner had ready the pad of dry cotton-wool rolled in bandage, to put over the wound for protection.

I smiled up at Timothy, who still watched rather tautly across Piebald’s unmoving (and you would have sworn indifferent) head.

I said: ‘That’s that. He’s survived, and he hasn’t bitten me – yet. You see this pad Herr Wagner’s made for me? We call that a dolly. I stitch it on now—’

‘You
stitch
it on? You mean you stitch it to the
horse
?’

‘Where else? Only to the skin – and he won’t feel it any more than he’s felt the rest. Watch.’

I laid the dolly – the size and shape of a generously filled sausage – along the line of the stitched cut, then knotted the nylon suturing thread in the skin to one side of it, carried the thread close across the dolly, and knotted another stitch in. It took four stitches, then the dry pad lay snugly over the wound.

‘Won’t he worry at it and pull it off?’ asked Tim.

‘Not unless the wound’s infected, and starts to itch or hurt him, but it looked beautifully clean to me. It’s
my guess he’ll never even know the dolly’s there. It can come off in three or four days time. Now, there’s just his anti-tetanus shot and penicillin, and that will be that. Pull his mane across, will you, Tim, I’ll put this in the neck . . . There you are, old darling, that’s you . . .’ I smoothed my hand down the drooping neck. ‘I think you’ll live.’

‘Yes,’ said Herr Wagner, behind me, ‘thanks to you,
gnädige Frau
, he will live.’

There was something in his voice that made it more than just a phrase. Timothy’s eyes met mine, and his face broke into a grin. Old Piebald rolled a big dark eye back at me, and said nothing.

‘You’ll have some coffee now?’ said Annalisa.

It was not so much a question as an order, and I didn’t protest as she led the way to her wagon. I was suddenly very tired, and longing for the day to be over, but in the pre-dawn chill the thought of coffee was irresistible.

Behind us, in the stable, Elemer and Herr Wagner were settling Piebald for what was left of the night. Sandor Balog came with us. I gathered that it had been kind, even condescending, of an artiste of his calibre to have helped so far.

It seemed that this kindness – or his interest in Annalisa – didn’t impel him to anything more domestic. He settled with me on the bench at the table in her wagon, and allowed her to serve the coffee alone. Timothy did offer help, but was refused, and sat down beside Sandor, looking round him with frank pleasure.

The living-wagon was – just at present – very untidy, but still rather attractive. Though it was a newish caravan, the pattern of circus life with its century-old traditions had modified its streamlined modernity to give it the authentic old gypsy wagon flavour. The stove near the door was of white enamel, and burned bottled gas, but the lamp swinging over it looked like an old converted storm lantern, and the little table was covered with a brilliant red cloth with a fringe, for all the world like a gypsy’s shawl. A faded striped curtain hung over the forward doorway through which could be glimpsed the corner of a tumbled bunk covered with clothes; the light caught the edge of the blue velvet riding costume, and glittered off the jewelled handle of a whip. On a hook near one window hung the hussar’s cap with all its amethysts and diamonds and its osprey plume which wavered and tossed a little in the warm draught from the stove. Between window and stove was the dressing-shelf, with candles stuck to either side of a square mirror with a chipped corner. The candles had guttered down into big blobs of grey wax and the shelf itself was smeared heavily with red and carmine and the white of powder. There was a splash of pink liquid powder across the looking-glass. A wicker cage, swinging from a hook and shrouded with a green kerchief, completed the gypsy picture. Our voices roused the inmate to a sort of sleepy croak, and I remembered Annalisa’s saying something about Uncle Franzl’s parrot.

‘But this is terrific, it really is!’ Timothy was enthusiastic, and very wide awake still. ‘It’s just how I’ve
always imagined it. Aren’t you lucky? Gosh, fancy living in a house when you could have a wagon, and move on every day or so!’

She laughed. ‘I wonder if you would say the same thing at five o’clock in the morning? Sugar, Vanessa?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘This is yours, Sandor. Sugar, Tim?’

‘Yes, please.’

I curved my hands round the hot blue cup. The coffee was delicious, fragrant and strong, and through the coffee-scent came, seductively, another even more delicious – the smell of hot, freshly baked bread. Annalisa put a dish on the table;
croissants
, flaky and rich, flat buns shining with sugared tops and still steaming, fresh sweet bread with new butter melting on it.

‘
Gotterdämmerung
,’ said Timothy reverently, if inappropriately. ‘Did you make them?’

She laughed. ‘No, no! They come from the village bakery. Lee brought them.’

Sandor looked up. ‘He is here still?’

‘He goes back tomorrow. Oh, you mean is he here, in the circus? No. He came down to the stables while Vanessa was busy with the horse, but only for a minute.’