Circus Shoes (6 page)

Ted nodded gloomily

“Or worse. That’s why I take sulphur sweets. That and a nice drink of sarsaparilla keeps the blood cool.

Gus took hold of Peter by his coat.

“Every artiste in the circus puts up and takes his own stuff. Pork and beans, where’d he be if didn’t!”

“Dead,” said Ted. He looked at his watch. “Dinner-time. So long.”

“So long,” Gus replied. Then he jerked his head ward the tent exit. “Dinner-time for us, too. Come on.”

Gus’s caravan looked quite small from the outside but inside it had a surprising lot of room. It was divided in half by a partition which made two rooms. In one half, into which the door opened, there were stove, various shelves and cupboards, a flap table which let down from the wall, and seats which did the same. It was in fact a dining-room-kitchen. A very good smelling steam was coming from a pot on the stove.

The other room was a bedroom. There were two bunks in it. One had bedclothes and was obviously Gus’s bed. Peter and Santa tried not to stare too obviously at the second bunk, but they could not help wondering where the one who did not have it would sleep.

Gus did not give them much time to look around.

‘Table wants laying, Santa.” He showed her where the tablecloth and the knives and forks were kept.

Santa thought he must be a very neat man, for everything was clean and had its special place. Gus seemed to guess what she was thinking.

“Must be shipshape in a caravan. No room for a mess. Besides, my old mother, your grandmother, brought us up right.” He passed a jug to Peter. “Fetch some water. Tap’s by the men’s mess-tent.”

While Peter was gone, and Santa laid the table, Gus stirred what was in the pot. He took a deep sniff. “Beautiful. Always have a stew of a Sunday, and a Thursday.”

Santa took some forks out of their drawer. “Why Sundays and Thursdays specially?”

Gus put three plates to warm on the rack of the stove.

“On account of the build-up. Cut up my meat. Slice my veg. Fix my stew. Put it on a low heat to simmer. Fix my stuff in the big top. Come back and dinner’s ready.”

Santa found the salt cellar and the pepper and mustard pots in the cupboard.

“Imagine you being able to cook. I never knew men could. But then of course I’ve only known one man and that was Mr. Stibbings.”

Gus gave the stew a final stir.

“The reverend may not have had the chances to learn I had. You never knew your grandma. Termagant she was, bless her. ‘Them as can’t work can’t eat,’ she always said.”

Santa looked at the table carefully to see if she’d forgotten anything.

“What, even when you were little?”

“Time I was four. Not cooking I wasn’t, not then, But doing my bit toward preparing the dinner. And she was right. Many’s the time I’ve blessed her since.”

Peter came back with the water. Gus held out the kettle.

“Fill that ready for the washing up, then stand the rest outside. We’ll set the kettle on now, then it’ll have boiled by the time we want it.” He took a large spoon and put helpings of stew on each plate. “There you are, sit down and eat hearty. Oughtn’t to be a bit of carrot to scrape out of the pot in this lovely air.”

Peter filled the kettle and put it on the stove, stood the jug outside, and came and sat at the table. He turned to Santa.

“When I was getting the water I met Olga and Sasha and a lot more children. D’you know, they’d been to school.”

Gus tasted a mouthful of stew; he nodded at his head approvingly.

“Beautiful!”

“To school?” asked Santa. “They only got here this morning.”

Gus raised shocked eyebrows.

“How long you’ve been in a place has nothing to do with education. Don’t you two know the laws of the country? Every child must go to be educated till he or she is fourteen.”

Considering that how they were educated had been one of Aunt Rebecca’s pet subjects of conversation, both Peter and Santa were a bit hurt at Gus’s assumption of their ignorance.

“Of course we know that,” Peter said. “Only it seems odd to find a decent school the minute you arrive, that’s all.”

“Decent?” Gus looked puzzled. “Schools are all much the same. If you stay with me you’ll find out what it’s like yourselves tomorrow.”

“Will we?” Santa was startled. “What school are you sending us to? “

Gus looked as though he were afraid his nephew and niece were weak in the head.

“What school! Wherever it is, course. There’ll one up the street, I dare say.”

Peter turned scarlet.

“Well-but I mean to say-I’ve never been-I had a tutor-“

Gus thumped his fist on the table.

“Who do you think you are? First place, if I had my way every child in the land would be educated same, rich or poor. Second place, what was good enough for your grandfather, your father, and for me, if comes to that, I reckon is good enough for you.”

“But-“ Peter stammered. “I thought-I mean say-“

Gus gave his head a despairing shake. Then he went on with his dinner. He spoke between mouthfuls. “Mustn’t speak ill of the dead, but it seems to me your poor aunt stuffed you two up with a pack of nonsense. Do you know what your grandfather was?” The children shook their heads. “He was a gardener.”

Aunt Rebecca had never defined her position in the duchess’s household. Peter and Santa had never asked, if hey had heard the duchess continually quoted and had come to think of her as perhaps a distant relation.

“A gardener!”

Gus gave Peter an odd look.

“No need to take that tone. We’ll be lucky if you turn out anything half as useful. Very good gardener, your grandfather. Became head at Plyst. You’ll have heard your aunt speak of the place.” Peter and Santa nodded. They had indeed heard of Plyst till the name made them yawn. “Your grandmother was in the kitchen there till she married.”

“In the kitchen!”

Gus nodded.

“I was telling you, Santa, that she was a good cook.”

Peter and Santa went on eating in silence. It is a very strange feeling to have your world turned upside down. They had after all spent a good many years thinking told they were too good to mix with anybody. Now they found not only that they came from quite simple people, but that Gus was proud of it. It was muddling.

“What did our father do?” Santa asked at last.

“Tom? He fancied horses. He went as groom the duke. You see, my old dad, your grandfather, he always said, ‘Put your feet under another man’s table and you’ll be all right!’”

Santa looked puzzled. “What did he mean?”

Gus jerked his thumb at the table.

“What’s usually on it?” Santa looked round. “Food?”

“That’s right. That’s what he meant. Go into service and you know where your food coming from. That’s what your dad did.”

Peter looked up.

“Why didn’t you go into service?”

“Me!” Gus laughed. “I started all right. I was always turning somersaults and flip-flaps and practicing hand-stands, and though my old dad walloped me it didn’t cure me. So when I was just turned twelve he spoke for a place for me under him in the garden.” He gave another chuckle. “Nice gardener’s boy I was. Standing on my head all day among the flower-pot. Then one day along comes His Grace and sees me.”

“Goodness,” said Santa, “what did he do to you?”

Gus helped himself to more stew.

“I didn’t see him. He must have stood there watching me for a long time. Getting a bit lame he was then, and always carried a stout stick to help him round. Suddenly he ups with this and lands me a wallop. My word, I was right side up in no time. ‘Is this the way you garden?’ he says to me. Then he lands me another. Then he looks round. ‘Fetch Possit,’ he says.”

“Grandfather?” asked Peter.

“That’s right.” Gus finished his stew thoughtfully. “Wonderful old chap, His Grace. They don’t make them better. He had me up to the house that evening. Made me show him all I could do. And in spite of my dad, who was dead against it, he had me apprenticed to Mr. Cob.”

Santa collected the dirty plates.

“Was he against it because your feet wouldn’t be under somebody else’s table?”

“Partly it was. Mostly it was me being in the theatrical line. Never been anything like that in our family.”

Peter leaned forward.

“Have you been with Mr. Cob ever since?”

“No. After I’d been with him a matter of ten years, the War came. We kept going for a bit, then I joined up and Mr. Cob had to close down.”

Santa sat down again. “Why?”

Gus got up and went to the cupboard. He took out bread, butter, and cheese.

“On account of the feed mostly. You can’t keep six elephants and about forty horses and a lot of lions going when there’s war on. So he pays everybody off, stores his stuff, and joins an army remount depot.”

Santa looked worried.

“But what happened to the animals?”

Gus cut bread for them all.

“They weren’t Mr. Cob’s. He had an interest in the horses but the rest were just acts he’d engaged. The army took most of the horses.”

Peter took the piece of bread Gus handed him.

“What happened when the War was over?” Gus cut himself a bit of cheese.

“I was all right. Traveled all over the place. Then one day I ran into Mr. Cob. Leicester Square it was, just after Christmas. ‘What you doing, Gus?’ he say to me. Well, it just happened at that moment I wasn’t fixed, so I told him. ‘Right,’ he says. ‘Come and sign on tomorrow. I’m tenting again.’ You should have heard the way he said it. You see, he was born in the circus, and those war years when he wasn’t on the road hit him hard. ‘I’m tenting again.’ He said it like a kid who finds what it wants in its stocking of a Christmas morning.”

Gus seemed to sink into memories of that day when he had met Mr. Cob again, for he sat saying nothing. Santa wanted to hear the rest, so she said, “And did you sign on?”

Gus took a mouthful of bread and cheese. “Yes, and been with him ever since.”

Peter was still puzzling over their family history. He could not help feeling that Gus must be wrong about some things. Surely there must have been some reason for all the fuss Aunt Rebecca had made about hem.

“Who was our mother?”

Gus cut another bit of cheese.

“Funny woman your Aunt Rebecca, never telling you anything about yourselves. Your mother was a nursery governess. An orphan she was.” He spread me butter on his bread. “Funny how life turns our. There’s me doing the trapeze act, running risks all the time you might say, and here I am enjoying my dinner. There was your mum and dad with a little home and living all safe and secure, and they go for a half-day’s shopping to the next town; something goes wrong with the train signal, and where are they? Gone.”

Santa helped herself to more cheese.

“And that’s when we came to Aunt Rebecca.”

“That’s right. Rebecca was the eldest, and she works up to be personal maid to the old duchess,” Gus went on. “Then there was me. Then there was Tom your father. Then Sydney and Bert. Sydney was killed and Bert was drowned in the War. The War seemed to break my old father up and he died before Syd was killed. Then about two years later my old mother, your grandmother, went. So when your dad and mum was killed there was only your Aunt Rebecca and me. Now the old duchess was dead by then, and she’d left your aunt a little annuity, so she said she’d take you two. Mind you, it was good of her for she hadn’t much. I wrote and offered to put up so much a week but she turned me down flat. She said she had learned what was what while she had been with the duchess and she would bring you up ladies and gentlemen, and would I keep right out of it. She didn’t want you to know there was anything so common in the family as a clown in a circus.”

Santa nodded at the kettle.

“It’s boiling. Shall I start to wash up?” Gus nodded.

“The basin’s in the corner. You do it outside, it’s less messy. Peter can dry.”

Santa poured some water into the basin.

“It hasn’t made much difference in the end. Aunt Rebecca not wanting us to know you, I mean. Because here we are.”

Gus sighed.

“Poor Rebecca!” Once more he raised his right hand to take off his hat, then remembering he did not have one on, put it down again. “What she’d say if she could see us now.” There was a knock at the door. Gus got up. “Like as not that’s the reply from the reverend. You stay here.”

It was the reply. The children heard Gus go down he caravan steps. The noise of a tearing envelope. Then, “No answer.” In the pause before he came back.

Santa whispered, “Do you want to stay here? I mean now you know about school and everything?”

Peter nodded.

“Yes. I just feel muddled. Don’t you?”

Gus came back. The telegram was in his hand. He laid it on the table and smoothed it out.

“The reverend says”-then he read slowly: “ ‘Greatly relieved naturally decision as to future rests with you Stibbings.’” He folded the telegram and put it back in his pocket. “Very right and proper.”