Meridon (Wideacre Trilogy 3) (6 page)

I turned and looked at him in frank surprise.

‘Why?’ I said.

He shrugged, half moody, half wilful. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘You never look twice at me. You never have looked twice at me. All this morning you have been in my arms and you have clung to me to save yourself from falling. All this morning you have had your body pressed tight against mine and I was feeling you, aye – and wanting you! And then you strip your clothes off in front of me and get into the water as if I was nothing more than one of the horses!’

I stood up and pulled on my breeches. ‘D’you remember what your da said to Dandy our first evening?’ I asked. ‘I do. He warned her off you. He told her and he told me that he had a good marriage in mind for you and that if she ever became your lover he’d leave her on the road. She’s not looked at you since that evening, and neither have I.’

‘She!’ he said in the same voice as he had spoken of the village
girls. ‘She’d come fast enough to my whistle. I know that. But don’t tell me that you don’t think of me to please my da, because I don’t believe it.’

‘No’, I said truthfully, careless of vanity. ‘No, it’s not the reason. I don’t think of you because I have no interest in you. It’s true: I don’t think of you any more than I do the horses.’ I considered him for a moment, and then some spark of devilry prompted me to say, absolutely straight-faced, ‘Actually, I think I like Snow better.’

He stared at me incredulous for a moment, then with one graceful easy movement he jumped to his feet and walked away from me. ‘Gypsy brat,’ he said under his breath as he went away. I dropped back down on the bank and watched the sunshine on the ripples of the river and waited until he was well out of earshot before I laughed aloud.

He did not bear me a grudge for that insult, for the next day he held me as firmly and as fairly as he had done the day before. It was my fault that I fell more and more often, and my fault when he lost his balance and fell backwards off the horse, and fell hard too, and hit his head.

‘Clumsy wench!’ Robert had scolded me, and clouted me lightly on my ear which made my own head ring. ‘Why don’t you lean back and let Jack guide you like you were doing yesterday? He’s had the practice. He’s got the balance. Let him take you. Don’t keep trying to pull away and stand on your own!’

Jack was holding his head in his hands but he looked up at that and he smiled at me ruefully. ‘Is that what’s going wrong?’ he asked frankly. ‘You won’t lean back against me?’

I nodded. His black eyes smiled into my green ones.

‘Oh forget it!’ he said gently. ‘Forget I ever said it. I can’t go on falling off a horse all morning. Let’s just do the act, shall we?’

Robert looked from one to the other of us. ‘Have you two had a fight?’ he demanded.

We were both silent.

He took three steps away from us and then turned and came back. His face was stony. ‘Now look here, you two,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you this once, and it’s the only time. Whatever goes on outside the ring, or even behind the screen, once you are in the ring and up on the horse you are working. I don’t care if you take an axe to each other when your act is over. You can’t work for me unless you take this seriously. And you are not serious unless you forget everything – everything – but your act.’

We nodded. Robert could be very impressive when he chose. ‘Now have another try,’ he said, and cracked the whip and called to Bluebell to canter.

Jack vaulted up and went astride her and put his hand out to catch me and pull me up before him. He held the leather strap and got to his feet, his bare toes splayed out on Bluebell’s sweaty white and brown back. Then I felt his hard hand clutching in my armpit and I got up to my feet, gracelessly bow-legged, and then, while Robert shouted encouragement and abuse, I cautiously straightened my knees and leaned back towards Jack and let his body guide mine and his arm steady me. We did one whole circle without falling and then Jack let me jump down with a triumphant yell and somersaulted off himself.

‘Well done!’ Robert said. He was beaming at us with red-faced delight. ‘Well done you both. Same time tomorrow.’

We nodded and Jack clapped my shoulder with a friendly hand as I turned away and took Bluebell by the head collar to lead her around and cool her down.

‘Mamselle Meridon the Bareback Horse Dancer!’ Robert said to himself very low, as he walked past the screen out of the field. ‘See Her Breathtaking Leaps Through a Hoop of Blazing Fire!’

Dandy and I had not been raised as proper gypsy chawies. When the weather had grown colder and the caravan was so clammy that even the clothes we slept in were damp in the morning, Da would get work as an ostler or a porter or a market lad in any of the bigger towns where people were not particular whom they employed, and the Parish officers were slow and lazy and did not move us on. We had no idea of a rhythm of seasons which took you regularly from one place to another and then returned you safe every winter to familiar fields and hills. With Da often as not we were on the run from card partners, little cheats or bad business deals, with no planned route or tradition of travelling. He never knew where he was going, other than to follow his nose for gullible card players, fools and bad horses, wherever they might be gathered together.

Travelling with Gower’s Show was a different life. We never lingered in any one place because Robert had found a friend or had taken a fancy to a town. We moved fast and we moved regularly, every three days or sooner if the crowds showed any signs of slackening. We only stayed longer if we were working alongside a big fair which could pull crowds from miles and miles about. But at the end of October the season of the fairs was waning and the weather was getting colder. In the mornings I had to break the ice on the water buckets and the stallion had a blanket strapped on him at night.

‘Last week this week,’ Robert said when we stopped for dinner. Jack and I had been practising our bareback riding and for the first time I had stood without him holding me, though I still needed to keep a tight grip on the strap.

‘Last week for what?’ Dandy asked. She was slicing bread and she did not look up as she spoke.

‘Last week on the road,’ Robert said, as if everyone knew already. ‘We’ll go into winter quarters next week. Down at my house at Warminster. Then we’ll really start to work.’

‘Warminster?’ I said blankly. ‘I didn’t know you had a house at Warminster.’

‘Lots you don’t know,’ Robert said cordially through a hunk of bread and cheese. ‘You don’t know what you’ll be doing next season yet. Nor does she,’ he said indicating Dandy with a wave of bread and a wink to her. ‘Lots of ideas. Lots of plans.’

‘Is the barn ready?’ Jack asked him.

‘Aye,’ Robert said with satisfaction. ‘And the man is coming to teach us about the rigging and how the act is done. He says he’ll stay for two months, but I’ve got him on a bonus to teach the two of you quicker. He says two months are enough to start someone off if they’ve got the knack for it.’

‘For what?’ I demanded, unable to contain my curiosity.

‘Lots you don’t know,’ Robert said slyly. He took a great bite of bread and cheese. ‘Gower’s Amazing Aerial Show,’ he said muffled. ‘See the Horses and the Daring Bareback Riders! Thrill to the Dazzling Aerial Display! Laugh at the Pierrot and the Wonderhorse Dancing! See the Flying Ballerina! Gower’s Flying Riding Show – All the Elements in One Great Show!’

‘Elements?’ I queried.

‘Fire,’ he said, pointing the crust of bread at me. ‘That’s you, jumping through a blazing hoop. Air: that’s Dandy, she and Jack are going to train as a trapeze act. Earth is the horses and Water I don’t know yet. But I’ll think of something.’

‘A trapeze act!’ Dandy slumped down in her seat and I looked quickly at her. My own head was pounding in fright at the thought of her being up high and swinging from some perilous rope. But her eyes were shining. ‘And I get a short costume!’ she exclaimed.

‘One that shows your pretty legs!’ Robert confirmed, smiling at her. ‘Dandy, my girl, you were born a whore!’

‘With sequins,’ she stipulated.

‘Is it safe?’ I interrupted. ‘How will she ever learn to do it?’

‘We’ve got the act from Bristol coming to stay with us. He’ll
teach Dandy, and Jack as well, how it’s done. You’ll learn too, my girl, see if we can conquer that fear of yours. An act with two girls up on the swings would be grand.’

The mouthful I had just swallowed came up from my belly into my throat again and I choked and retched and then pushed away from the table and bolted for the door. I was sick outside, vomiting the bread and cheese under the front wheel. I waited until I was steady and then I came in again, white faced, to where they were waiting, staring at me in amazement.

‘Were you sick at the thought of it?’ Robert demanded. He was so stunned he had forgotten to eat and was still holding his bread in mid air. ‘Was that it, lass? Or are you ill?’

‘I am not ill,’ I said. The metalic slick in my mouth made me swallow and reach for my mug of small ale. ‘I’m not ill in myself,’ I said. ‘But the thought of having to go up high on one of those things does make me ill. I am sick with fright.’

Jack looked at me with interest. ‘Well that’s an odd thing,’ he said unsympathetically. ‘I’d never have thought Meridon was nervy. But she’s as missish as a lady.’

‘Leave her be,’ Dandy said calmly. ‘You leave her be, Robert. I’m happy to learn how to do it. And if I am doing the Aerial Act you’ll need Meridon to do the horses. She can’t do both.’

‘Maybe not,’ Robert said half convinced. ‘And if the worst comes to the worst I could always buy a poorhouse girl and have her trained.’

I gulped again, thinking of the girl straight out of the workhouse in conditions worse than a prison and up a ladder to swing on a trapeze. But I nodded to Robert. I had no sympathy to waste on a stranger. I had no tenderness to spare. There was only one person in the world for me, and she was happy.

‘Yes, you do that,’ I said. ‘You know I’d try anything with the horses. But I cannot go up a ladder.’

Robert smiled. ‘You’re to give it a try,’ he said firmly. ‘A fair try. No one will force you to go up high but you’ll wait and see the swing before you make up your mind, Meridon.’

‘I’ll have too much to do with the horses,’ I said defensively. ‘I can’t be a bareback rider and swing on a trapeze.’

‘Jack will,’ he said. ‘You can too. I give you my word, Meridon; I won’t force you, but you’re to give it a try. That’s fair.’

It was not fair, but I had reached the hard core in Robert where he would not be moved.

‘All right,’ I said sullenly. ‘I promise I’ll try, and you promise that if I can’t do it, you get someone else in.’

‘Good girl,’ he said as though I had agreed rather than been forced into it. ‘And you’ll have plenty of learning with the horses. I’ll have you dancing bareback, aye, and going through a hoop of fire before the next season.’

I thought that was ambitious and I glanced at Jack but he had never in his life spoken one word against his father.

‘Can I learn it that quick?’ I asked.

‘Going to have to, lass,’ Robert replied with finality. ‘I’m not housing you and feeding you all winter for love of your green eyes. You’re going to work for your living at Warminster as you do now. Training the horses, and learning a bareback act, and doing what the trapeze man tells you. And you, miss,’ he turned sharply to Dandy. ‘You will get yourself off to a wise woman in the village and have her tell you about how to avoid getting a belly on you. I’m not spending a fortune training you how to swing from a trapeze to see you up there fat with a whelp. And you keep away from the village lads, too, d’you hear? It’s a respectable village, Warminster, and I go there every winter. I want no trouble with my neighbours.’

We both nodded obediently. But Dandy caught my eye and winked at me in anticipation. I smiled back at her. I had never slept under a roof but always a wagon, always in a narrow bunk within touching distance of four other people. It would make me feel like Quality to get into my own bed. It would be like being a lady. It would be like being at Wide.

I took that thought with me to bed, after I had rubbed down the horses and eaten my supper nodding over my bowl with weariness. That thought took me in my dream to Wide.

I saw it so clearly that I could draw a map of it. The pale lovely sandstone house in the new style with a round turret at one end which makes a pretty rounded parlour in the west
corner. That room catches the sun in the evening and there are window seats upholstered with pink velvet where you can sit and watch the sun set over the high high green hills which surround the little valley. The house faces south, down a long winding avenue of tall beech trees which would have been old when my ma was young, even when her ma was young. At the bottom of the drive is a pair of great wrought-iron gates. They have rusted on their hinges and are left open. The family, my family, never wants them shut. For out of the drive and down the lane is the source of their wealth, or our wealth. The little village with a new-built church and a row of spanking new cottages one side of the only street; and a pretty vicarage and a cobbler and a smithy and a carter’s cottage and stable yard on the other side.

These are the people of Wide. These are my people, and this is where I belong. However much I might love the travelling life with the Gowers, I knew this was my home. And in my dream of Wide I knew – knew without a shadow of doubt – that I was not a gypsy’s brat. I was not Meridon Cox of Gower’s Amazing Equestrian Event. I was Sarah. Sarah of Wide. And one day I would be back there.

I awoke on that thought and stared at the ceiling of the wagon. This caravan was not damp like the other and there were no strange-shaped damp patches to make boggart faces and frighten me. I squeezed my finger into the hole in my straw mattress and felt for the scrap of cloth which I had twisted and hidden there. I hooked it out and unwrapped it, leaning on one elbow to hold it to the grey light filtering in through the sprigged curtains at the window. The string was grimy and old but the clasp was still shiny. It still said ‘Celia’ on one side and ‘John’ on the other, names of people I did not know. But they must have known me. Why else should I have all that was left of Celia’s necklace? And I heard a voice, not my own voice but a voice in my head, call longingly, but without hope of an answer: ‘Mama.’

The next day was our last day and we gave only one performance which was ill attended. It was too cold for people to relish sitting on the damp grass for long, the horses were surly and unwilling to work, and Jack was chilled in his shirtsleeves.

‘Time to move,’ Robert said counting the gate money in the swinging bag. ‘We’ll start now and stop at suppertime. Get the loading done, you three, I’m going to the village.’ He shrugged on his tweed jacket and pulled on his ordinary boots and set off down the lane. Dandy scowled at his back.

‘Aye, push off when there’s work to be done,’ she said softly. ‘Leave two girls and your son to do all the hard work.’ She looked at me. ‘The more money that man makes, the greedier and the lazier he becomes,’ she said.

‘Is he making money?’ I asked. I had noticed no great change, but Dandy kept the gate and knew as well as Robert how the money bag had been growing heavier.

‘Yes,’ she said shortly. ‘He is taking shillings and pounds every day and he pays us in pennies. Hi Jack!’ she called suddenly. ‘How much does your da pay you?’

Jack was folding up the costumes and putting them carefully in a great wooden chest bound with hoops which would slide under one of the bunks. The props and saddles and feed were strapped on top or slung alongside the wagon. He looked up at Dandy.

‘Why d’you want to know?’ he asked suspiciously.

‘Just curious,’ she replied. She undid the bolts which held the screen together and unhitched one of the panels. ‘He’s doing all right, isn’t he, your da?’ she said. ‘Doing all right for money. And this new show he’s planning for next season. That’ll be a big earner, won’t it?’

Jack slid a sideways glance at her, his eyes crinkled. ‘So what, Miss Dandy?’ he asked.

‘Well what d’you get?’ she asked reasonably. ‘Me and Meridon get pennies a week – depending what we do. If I knew how much you got, I’d know how much I ought to ask for the flying act.’

Jack straightened up. ‘You think you’re worth as much as me?’ he said derisively. ‘All you’ve got is a pretty face and nice legs. I work with the horses, I paint the screen, I plan the acts, I cry it up, I’m a bareback rider with a full riding act.’

Dandy stood her ground. ‘I’m worth three-quarters what you
are,’ she said stubbornly. ‘I never said I should have as much. But I should get at least three-quarters what you earn if I’m on the trapeze.’

Jack gave a triumphant shout of laughter and swung the heavy box up on to his shoulder. ‘Done!’ he said. ‘And may you never make a better deal! Done, you silly tart! Because he pays me nothing! And you’ve just bargained your way into three quarters of nothing.’

He marched towards the wagon, laughing loudly at Dandy’s mistake and swung the box down to the floor with a heavy crash. Dandy exchanged a look with me, lowered the wing of the screen gently to the grass and went to unbolt the other side.

‘That’s not right,’ she said to him when he came back to steady the screen for her. ‘That’s not fair. You said yourself how much work you do for him. It’s not right that he should pay you nothing. He treats us better and we are not even family.’

Jack lowered the centre section of the screen down to the ground and straightened up before he answered. Then he looked from Dandy to me as if he were wondering whether or no to tell us something.

‘You don’t know much, you two,’ he said finally. ‘You see the show and you hear about Da’s plans. But you don’t know much. We weren’t always show people. We weren’t always doing well. You see him now at his best, how he is when he has money in the sack under his bed and a string of horses behind the wagon. But when I was a little lad we were poor, deathly poor. And when he is poor he is a very hard man indeed.’

We were standing in a sheltered field in bright autumn sunshine but at Jack’s words I shivered as if the frost had got down my neck, his face was as dark as if there were snow clouds across the sun.

‘I’ll have the show when he is too old to travel,’ he said with confidence. ‘Every penny he saves now goes into the show, or goes into our savings. We’ll never be poor again. He’ll see to that. And anything he says I should do…I do. And anything he says he needs…I get. Because it was him and one bow-backed horse that earned us food when the whole village was
starving. No one else believed he could do it. Just me. So when he took the horse on the road I went with him. We didn’t even have a wagon then. We just walked at the horse’s head from village to village and did tricks for pennies. And he traded the horse for another, and another, and another. He is no fool, my da. I never go against him.’