Circus Shoes (21 page)

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.”

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. At first she was a
little
nervous. She thought “Suppose the lions should escape,” or “Suppose a
b
urglar should come.
Would Gus
hear?” But after a day or two she came to love it. It was like having a house of her own. She became fu
ssy
about how it looked. She tied a picture up, and put flowers in a vase. On hot days they had
all
their
meals
.
S
o did everybody else. The
tables
were set between the caravans, and the
most
enchanting
smells
of other peo
ple’s
dinners
floate
d 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 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 that had not fallen off. Ben liked people to fall off now and again.

“It’s like life,” he said. “You go along confidently thinkin’ all’s going nicely. Then one day somethin’ happens and you fall on your nose. When you get 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 get careless. Then the ‘oss stumbles or rears a but at something and off you come. I never could abide a rider who 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 while, and then lacked 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 become far more supple since she had 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. Now that they were at seaside towns
Gus
was having them taught to swim. He
empl
oyed one of the ring-hands called Syd to teach them. S
yd
took
Gus’s com
mission very serio
usly.
F
or three days at Carmarthen, a week each at Cardiff, Bristol, and Bath, he had them for half an hour, l
ying b
alanced on upturned boxes, practicing their strokes.

“Half an hour has to do for now,” he said. “What with your
school,
and me
being
wanted in the top, we ‘aven’t more time. But I reckon 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. Learn
ing
to swim in the sea is all very
well. S
wimming 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
S
anta hoped that if they said no more about it the plans for Gus’s birthday
would
die.
B
ut they were reckoning without Fritzi. Fritzi was not the kind of person who believed in plans dying.
Almost eve
ry 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 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 lot of other people would side with them, and that would mean that they, and perhaps Gus too, would be ostracized for some time, 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 the last day of school.

“Holidays start tomorrow, don’t they?” he asked. Santa skipped along beside him. She was so pleased it was holiday time 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 candy out of his pocket. He handed
it
to Santa.

“Bet you don’t.”

Santa took a
piece
of candy.

“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
be
fixing 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.”

“Practicing every day?”

“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-?”

Ted interrupted.

“You haven’t been working.”

“Oh, I have sometimes, but not everyday.”

“I see. How long since your last lesson?”

Santa considered.

“The Sunday at Tenby.”

Ted thought a moment.

“Tenby and Carmathen, 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 practiced 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 the way the others did. It was true her knees still had a 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 on 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 that
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. ‘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 where outside. Only the artistes had the right work in the ring, though nobody minded the children’s using it if it were not wanted. Santa loved practicing in the ring. It made her feel like a real acrobat. She liked the circus smell of animals and sawdust. As she bent backward she could see the and tiers of seats. Anybody in a 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 step forward and held her palms upward. As she did it she could almost 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 toward the artistes’ entrance.

“I’m not bothering any 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 now you only wanted to fool around.”

“But I don’t I really an truly want to learn.”

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 candy and took a piece himself. “I’m a pro., see. I told you how I was born in my granddad’s circus. I learned 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 next year. What’s he going to do?”

Santa wriggled on her chair.

“I don’t know. I suppose Gus’ll find him something.”

“Well, w
hat? 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 candy a moment without speaking.

:”Yu know, I don t understand you kids. If I wasn’t any good at my books, I’d start practicing 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 don’t want you fooling at it. That’s what I mean about this tumbling. You say you’d like to learn how. I say, ‘Right,
I’ll s
how you.’ Well, there’s a chance for you. I know what I’m doing. You’ve 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.”