The Lion Tamer’s Daughter (28 page)

“All right? Then you stay in your chair until everything's over. He'll ring the bell again for you to put the cover back on the mirror and fasten the buckles. You don't need to wait for him to ring three times. And that's apparently it. You can unlock the doors and we'll come up and check that the girls are all right.”

“Did he actually say girls? Two of them?” I said.

“No, he didn't. He's still going through this charade of pretending there's only going to be one of them. Right up to the point when you take the cover off he was talking about
les jeunes filles
, and from then on it's
la jeune fille
. I know it's nonsense, and I'm dead certain there's nothing he can do to make it happen, but it makes me bloody uneasy and I wish to hell I'd never got into this.”

After Eddie had gone we got through the day somehow. I just remember the heat, and the sweating tourists, and a cafe with air-conditioning where we had ice creams, and the way the sun slammed into us when we went outside again, and the stuck minutes. I don't think Melanie noticed anything at all. She was in a different kind of dream today, not soaring about, but sleepwalking round with us.

She actually managed to sleep after lunch. I just lay on my bed and sweated, and Mum read. By teatime I was too nervous to stay there anymore, so I decided to go out again, though it wasn't any cooler. Melanie woke up and said she was coming too, so we went back to the cafe and had Cokes. She seemed wide awake now, but very quiet and solemn, so I didn't try to chat. Time oozed by.

We were on our way back to the hotel when Melanie took my hand and said, “I've a thing to tell you, Keith. It came to me while I was asleep. But first you must promise me you won't say a word of it to Trish or Janice or Eddie.”

Once, after some mess I'd got myself into at school, Dad had told me what to do if somebody asks you this. You say, “If it's something I can promise.” But you don't, of course—certainly not if it's someone like Melanie who asks you.

“All right,” I said.

“I ken now why Papa sold his lions,” she said. “He didn't want this day to come. He couldn't just leave and go to another circus, because Monsieur Albert would find him there, easy. But he thought maybe if he crossed the sea … Edinburgh would be a good long way … But it was never enough … Papa loved his lions more than anything in the world. But he sold them for me.”

“I suppose that means he loved you more than the lions,” I said. She looked at me sideways and smiled. I knew why, because I'd heard the silly jealousy in my own voice.

“Why don't you want me to tell Mum and the others?” I said, to cover up.

“Because Eddie's right. You can't trust Monsieur Albert. He'll be trying something.”

“But what? I mean, if he does what we want without any cheating at all he's going to get a lot of money.”

“I dinna ken. But he'll be trying something yet.”

When we got back to the hotel we found that Eddie had been and left a sort of electronic gadget for me which Janice had found. I'm going to go on calling it the pager, though I don't know what it was really for. It looked like a pencil torch. There were two of them and Eddie was keeping the other one. They each had a button on them which you could press, and when you did the light on the other one lit up and it gave a buzz. Mum and Eddie had tested it, and it worked from the street outside up to our rooms in the hotel. I dug out a shirt with a breast pocket and put it in there with a couple of pens. It looked like the sort of thing a kid carries around anyway.

Then we had a bit over half an hour left before our taxi came. I felt extremely nervous again. Time went slower than ever and I kept swallowing and feeling sticky-chilly in spite of the heat, and getting up and walking around and sitting down again, and not being able to concentrate on anything for more than a couple of minutes. Mum read, and Melanie, in her yellow dress, lay on her bed with her eyes shut, but she wasn't asleep.

When the taxi came it took us a fair distance, right out of the touristy parts, past a lot of ugly modern flats, to a bit where the buildings were old again. I guessed this must have been a village right outside Arles, once, and then Arles had grown round it. We stopped in a grubby square with a church on one side and trees in the middle, where men were playing that game which is a bit like bowls, except that the balls are made of steel and you throw them through the air. The houses had heavy dark shutters and brown or orange plaster, peeling and soft-looking. The roadway was cobbles. Noisy little vans buzzed and bumped across them.

Round from the church the pavement was broad enough to hold a few tables, where men were playing dominoes and drinking beer or wine. The tables belonged to the hotel. It looked so shabby you couldn't imagine anyone wanting to stay there. Its name, Orangerie, was written in dark green paint across its front.

The men at the tables gave Mum the eye as she led the way in. Melanie drifted along in a kind of trance. I had to hold her elbow and steer her.

Eddie was waiting for us in the lobby. He led us along a corridor and up two flights of stairs to a landing, where he introduced us to the detective from Marseilles, who'd come to help. His name was Pierre.

“All set?” said Eddie. “We've still got about twenty minutes till kickoff, but Keith should go up straight away and meet our friend. Just give me a minute to get round to the other side, Keith, then carry on up these stairs and through the door at the top. You'll find yourself in a small room with another door on the far side. Knock, and wait till he tells you to come in. After that, carry on as we've arranged, and if he tells you anything different, you do what I said. Don't argue with him. Just do it. And if there are any problems, send for me. OK? Well, good luck. See you later.”

We counted sixty seconds on my watch, and then Mum kissed me and wished me luck. Melanie just smiled vaguely at me. I wasn't sure she even knew I was there.

I climbed the stairs with my heart hammering, opened the door at the top, and went through into a little square dusty room with one small window and not a scrap of furniture. I knocked on the door on the far side, waited until a voice said, “
Entrez,
” and went in.

For a moment I could hardly see. The room faced west, and the setting sun was blazing in through three tall windows which ran right down to the floor. The light from the middle one was straight in my eyes, dazzling after the darkness of the stairs, but hazy too, and the air was full of a horrible sweet oily smell. I bumped into a table and felt my way round out of the direct sun, where I could see.

The right-hand window was open and a man was standing there, looking out over the trees in the square and the jumbled roofs to watch the sun go down. He was smoking a funny short pipe with a tiny bowl. That was where the haze was coming from. It wasn't pot—I know what that smells like.

It was incredibly hot up there, in spite of the open window. It was right up under the roof and the sun had been beating down on the tiles all day. I thought I'd been sweating like a pig already, but now it really streamed off me. And the air was foul to breathe, too, with that sweet, sticky smoke mixed in with the dry, hot dust.

The man didn't move, so I took a look round. The room seemed pretty much like Eddie had told me, with the stack of chairs down at the bottom beside the far window, and the table on the corner where he'd drawn it. I took a special look at the tablecloth, which was a grubby old red thing with tassels at the corners. It hung only a little way down and I decided it must be the same one he'd seen.

He hadn't seen the mirror, but that was where he'd drawn it too, opposite the middle window. It was about as tall as I am, but all I could see of the mirror itself was a round stand of very dark wood, right at the bottom. The rest of it was covered by a sort of black leather sheath, very old and crackled, with two straps that buckled behind.

I opened the middle window and looked out. There was a tiny balcony—really it wasn't much more than a railing to stop people falling out—but there wasn't anyone hiding out there or on either of the other two, so I came back in and waited there, thankful for the outside air.

At last the man turned round and beckoned, and I went over. He looked at me for a while, so I looked back. He was short and square with big, trembling hands. He was half bald, and the rest of his hair was clipped short. His eyes seemed extra large, and soft, and deep. His face was brown but had a funny dead look to it, like your hands go when you've kept them a long time under water. (I'd seen a program about retired clowns once, and one of them had a skin like that. He said it was from the old-style makeup.)

After a bit he said, “
Bon. Eh bien, tu t'appelles Keet
?”

His voice was quiet and flat, and came a lot through his nose. He sounded tired and bored.

“
Oui, Keith,
” I said.

He nodded and took me through my instructions in French, in the same order as Eddie had done. I was shuddering with nerves inside, and I thought the easiest thing was to act a bit dumb. We looked into the two little rooms I was going to bring the girls through. The other one was no different from the one I'd already seen. He showed me where he wanted me to make the girls stand, and the signals he'd give me to take the blindfolds off and then to tell them to turn round. Then he took me behind the mirror and unfastened and refastened the top buckle, and made me do the same. He told me to wait and fetched a small handbell out of his bag. I think it may have been silver, but it was almost black.

“
Je sonne une fois,
” he said, and shook the bell, holding the clapper with his other hand so that it didn't actually ring. “
Tu défais la première boucle
.”

He mimed undoing the top buckle, and looked at me. I nodded. He shook the bell again.

“
Au deuxième coup, la deuxième boucle,
” he said, and mimed undoing the other strap. This time he waited a bit before he shook the bell.

“
Au troisième coup, tu ouvres l'envelope et tu l'enlèves
.”

He put the bell on the table, still making sure it didn't ring, and mimed sliding the cover off round the mirror from behind.

“
Exactement comme ça,
” he said, and made me stand where he'd stood and do what he'd done.

With his finger he drew an imaginary line from the corner of the table across the room behind the mirror.

“
Tu ne dépasses jamais cette ligne,
” he said, speaking even slower than he'd been doing. “
Et tu ne regardes jamais dans le miroir. Jamais, jamais, jamais
.”

“Right,” I said, miming it all again as I went through it. “The first time you ring the bell I undo the top strap. The second time I undo the bottom strap. The third time I take the cover off. I mustn't cross this line and I absolutely mustn't ever look in the mirror.”

“
Bon,
” he said, and went and fetched a chair from the stack and put it behind the mirror.

“
Alors,
” he said, “
tu plies l'envelope et le mets sur la table, et tu t'assieds ici. Puis tu ne bouges plus jusqu'à la fin
.”

I went and sat in the chair to check how much I could see. I wasn't slap up against the mirror, so the only bits of the room which were hidden were a wedge of space in front of the mirror and two narrow triangles round the corners on either side of me. But the chair where Monsieur Albert would be sitting was well in sight, and so were both the end windows, while I could just see the top of the middle one above the mirror. The windows themselves were double and opened inward, so even when the curtains were closed I didn't see how anyone could come in that way without moving them enough for me to notice.

“I get it,” I said. “I fold the cover and put it on the table, and then I come and sit in this chair and don't move till it's all over.”

“
Bon,
” he said, and went back to his window and his pipe. I got up and checked the back windows, including the two in the lobbies, but they didn't seem to open at all, so I went back to the chair and sat there looking round and trying to think if there was anything else I could do.

The sun was almost down and streaming flat across the room when Monsieur Albert knocked out his pipe on the window frame and came and closed the center window and drew the curtains, darkening all that part of the room but leaving the two shafts of light streaming in at either end, golden in the dusty, smoky air. I was all tensed up, peering for the slightest sign that he was trying to trick us, and I knew that something had bothered me, some other movement I'd seen out of the corner of my eye as he'd closed the curtains. Then I spotted what it must have been. He'd left his window open, and the far half of it was at an angle to the room with its dark curtain hanging behind it, so what I'd seen was the reflection of the central shaft of sunlight being blanked out. It wasn't important …

Yes it was—it might be! What I could mainly see was the reflection of the blaze of light across the other end of the room, striking the two walls of the lobby as far as the door on my left, but right at the edge of it was the beginnings of a dark shape which I realized was the very edge of the mirror. There was nothing else it could be. The reflection was a bit wavy because the glass was old, but the bit of the mirror was surprisingly clear against the brightness beyond. Please, please don't let him shut the window, I thought as he went back that way, and he didn't. He settled into his chair, opened his bag, checked through the stuff inside, and looked up.

“
On commence,
” he said. “
Fais entrer les deux filles. Uniquement les deux filles
.”

I went through the lobby on my right, opened the far door, and beckoned to Melanie. Mum kissed her and she climbed slowly up the stairs, looking calm and serious. I held the door for her and locked it behind us. She waited in the middle of the room and gave me a red scarf, which I folded into a loose roll and tied over her eyes.