The Slightly Bruised Glory of Cedar B. Hartley (19 page)

Chapter 31

Inside, first there is a hallway lined with posters and photos, and then it opens up into a place with bright coloured benches. On one side there's an office and a kitchen, and on the other a yellow change room and toilets, but best of all is what's in front. To me it looks like a long, long, wide hall of heaven. Shiny wood floors covered in acromats, crash mats, trampets, vaults, unicycles, hoops. At the end there's a circus curtain, and coloured rectangles of brick on the walls, like the outside. Hanging in the air are cloud swings, trapezes, webs, hoops and other things I don't know the names of. And what's most exciting of all is the action: kids everywhere, climbing up ropes, swinging in the air, somersaulting off the mini-tramps, tossing batons and burning round on unicycles.

As we walk in, two small girls in purple T-shirts, silver sparkly top hats and moustaches and glasses rush up to Ruben, grinning.

‘Hi Ruben.'

‘Nice moustaches,' he says, and they giggle and rush back off.

‘They're all practising for the auditions,' he says to me. ‘Those two are doing a double act on the trapeze.'

‘Flying trapeze?' I say.

‘No, just hanging. Too young for flying. They're only nine or ten.'

He sits me on a bench so I can watch, and introduces me to a young man who walks by wearing a blue singlet and a pink tissue crown, and then Ruben goes into his office for a while.

As I install myself, I really feel like I'm looking at my idea of the best party in the world. I feel my legs twitching to get out there, but I hold myself on the bench and I watch.

Right near me there's a young girl spinning on the web, which is a long rope hanging from the ceiling, and it has a small padded loop on the end that you can hang from, either by your ankle or your hand. Underneath her there's a trainer: a young woman in a black T-shirt with long messy hair, lying on her back on the crash mat and using the end of the rope to spin the web. The trainer is yelling out instructions to the girl up on the web.

‘Hold your form, spin, don't use your hand, where's your hand spin? Don't you do it? There's room for it.'

Suddenly, some loud, heavy music comes on. There's a small red-headed boy in black trackies, fiddling with the CD player. He then gets on his unicycle and calls out to another boy who's older and who's juggling clubs.

‘Hey, Adrian, you ready? Watch this!' Adrian catches his clubs and watches as the small boy tries to do an advancing twist on the unicycle. When he falls, they both laugh and Adrian starts up with his juggling. Adrian is standing on the acromat. Behind him and above there is an Indian girl going through a series of positions on a hanging hoop. A young woman strides out of the trainers' room and yells out towards the back of the room. She has a face like a pixie, and short, spiky brown hair.

‘Rich, can you have a look at Guy's round-off somersaults? He's giving me a heart attack. They're this high!' She indicates with her hand. ‘Get him to use his hands, for God's sake.'

Rich, who's the trainer with the pink tissue crown on, nods and leaves the kids on the mini-tramp to watch an older boy who is up the back on a long acromat. I try to watch him too, but then a girl about my age enters the hall from a side room. She's wearing a full white leotard and a trailing white silky scarf, which she keeps twirling and flicking. She has straight, thick, glossy hair tied in pigtails and, horror of all horrors, she's carrying a hoop.

My heart leaps.

Lola?

I know it's her. She reminds me of a pony. A special, rare white pony in a field of horses. A pony who never stumbles or gets muddy. She holds the hoop above her head and then lets it slide down her body, catching it with spinning hips. Ruben taps me on the shoulder.

‘You all right here?'

‘I'm fine.'

Standing next to him is the pixie woman.

‘This is Sarah. She's our head trainer. She's one of the original Flying Fruit Flies.'

Sarah lets out a snort as if to say ‘big deal', and then she grins at me.

‘Hi, Cedar. I'm going to be auditioning you tonight, so Ruben thought I should just give you a rundown of what we'll be doing, and see if you have any questions.'

‘Okay.' I budge over and she sits down next to me on the bench. Ruben bounces away to sit on the red vault and watch the training. Sarah tells me it will be just her and another trainer there, and that after a warm-up she'll test my strength and flexibility and then acrobatics. I tell her I haven't done any trapeze and she says it doesn't matter. She asks me if I can hold a handstand. I nod.

‘You'll be fine.'

I note that everyone is telling me how I'll be fine. Maybe it's a clue, I think. I don't ask her any questions and after a while her attention drifts out to the hall, and she stands up and claps her hands at the girl on the cloud swing.

‘Hey, Alex, in between tricks you get like this.' She makes her body all floppy. ‘You have to be nice the whole way. Think about where your toes are. Keep your legs nice.'

Form, I think, that's what form is. When I can, I quickly turn my attention back to Lola, but she's disappeared, as all mysterious and alluring white ponies do. Instead, there's a girl on stilts with long shiny blue pants, twirling her arms to Kate Bush singing ‘Babushka'. Her arms, I'm thinking, as if I've suddenly become a trainer myself, aren't always ‘nice'. Sarah suddenly plonks herself down beside me again. She looks at her watch.

‘This session will end at twelve, and the next group don't arrive till after lunch, so, if you want to, you can go eat your lunch now and use the acromat during the break. Mish and Frankie might be in here with me for some trapeze, so I can supervise.'

She taps my leg and smiles. ‘Not that you need supervision, it's just the rules here. No one's allowed to train without a trainer on the floor.'

She hops up again and says, ‘Excuse me, that's Mr Lee's sister; she's a new trainer here.' She points to an old Chinese woman who has just entered.

I'm not quite ready to leave yet. For one thing, I want to wait and see if Lola appears, but also, I'm still watching and it's making me excited. Who needs lunch, I think, when you're sitting at the gates of heaven?

Chapter 32

I am still sitting there at lunchtime when Frankie (who turns out to be a girl with a boy's name) and Mish come in to run through audition pieces with Sarah. They're both about my age. Mish comes in wearing a white leotard with a short fluorescent pink skirt. She's small and compact, and she's stuffing some kind of muesli bar down her throat before she starts stretching out on the acromat. Frankie is laughing loudly and swinging her suntanned arms, which all at once seem strong and soft. She's got those kind of eyes that crinkle up and shine so her face gets taken over by cheek. She's wearing a bright bold blue singlet and knee-length black leggings. She flashes an inquiring grin at me.

‘I'm Frankie,' she says, sitting down opposite and taking off her sneakers.

‘I'm Cedar.'

‘Oh, you're Kite's friend?'

‘Yep.'

‘Well, we all love Kite here. Hey Mish, this is Cedar, Kite's friend.'

Mish lifts her head from the acromat and waves.

‘You're auditioning, aren't you?' says Frankie. She's pulling on some kind of leather pads over her ankles.

‘Yeah,' I blush a bit. I'm embarrassed to admit it. I feel like they might be scornful; they might think I'm an upstart.

‘It'd be great if you get in. Good luck,' she says, and her eyes are sparkling at me.

‘Thanks.' I feel shy in front of her because she seems entirely comfortable, like if she was a tree she'd be a very strong, shining, happy big one. Maybe she'd be that spreading elm tree on Punt Rd, the one I'd like to become.

‘How long have you been in the circus?' I say.

‘Since I was eight. Me and my friend Elsie joined at the same time. But lots of kids come in older. Have you met Matthew?' She nods her head in the direction of a tall, thin, freckly boy who's trying to balance a red bucket on his nose while juggling clubs.

‘Matt,' she yells at him, ‘come and meet Cedar.'

Matthew drops his head, lets the bucket fall into his hands and lifts his nose towards us, squinting. Then he nods and lopes over, with a club in each hand. He looks awkward.

‘Hi,' he says. Frankie takes over.

‘Tell her how you joined. She's auditioning. Tell her what a great family we are, so she feels welcome.' Frankie leans her head back and lets out that loud peal of laughter again as she wanders out to the mat to warm up.

Matthew is wearing a big baggy black T-shirt. He sticks a finger in his ear and scrunches up his face as if he's not sure what to do. So I start.

‘How long have you been in the circus?'

‘Two years. I was fourteen when I came.'

‘I'm thirteen.'

‘Yeah? Well it's great here. Changed my life.'

‘Are you a tumbler?'

‘Nah. They're trying to teach me. You have to learn it, but I'm so stiff. I'm a juggler. Taught myself in my bedroom while I was at school.'

‘Did you go to school in Melbourne?'

‘No, I'm from Sydney. But hated school. See, I had a lisp. So I was bullied. I found out about this circus, wrote to them, sent them a video, and now I board here with another family.'

‘Doesn't your mum mind?'

‘A bit. But she's glad because I'm happy. I'm much more confident now. I used to be shy of being myself. Now I am myself. 'Cause people here appreciate you. Back home, no one appreciated a bedroom juggler.'

‘Yeah, right. I can imagine. I was a closet cartwheeler.' He laughs at this, and because I've already asked too many questions I don't ask another, and since he doesn't ask me anything we both start watching Mish, who's on the flying trapeze. She's wearing a harness, and Sarah's holding the other end. She's swinging it high, and then she drops off backwards and hangs from her knees. I love the noise it makes, the whoosh and the thump when she drops. It's all so dramatic.

‘Oh, she's good!' I say.

‘Yeah. But you wait till you see Frankie. She's the best.'

Obviously, I think to myself, I'm not the only one to notice Frankie's star quality. Matthew picks up his clubs and wanders back over to pick up his bucket trick. I watch him for a minute, thinking how he looks like an ordinary guy but the thing is, he's not. He's doing something brave, and he's doing it himself. He's made his own decision and he' s determined. I watch that bucket fall off his nose three times and each time he catches it, props it back up and starts juggling again.

When Frankie climbs up the rope for her routine, I watch the whole thing. Matthew is right of course; she seems to fly higher, float longer and flow through tricks effortlessly. There's one crazy thing she does where she tries a huge upside-down twist in the air and the first time she falls, though the harness suspends her in mid-air and Sarah goes flying up because she's the weight on the other end of the rope. The second time, Sarah's yelling out, ‘Feet, feet,' but Frankie gets it. Mish claps. Someone else whistles.

‘Boy, what's that called?' I ask Mish.

‘It's a hocks, full twist to clicks. Clicks is where you hang from your feet.'

‘Looks hard.'

‘Only Frankie can do it.'

‘Doesn't it hurt, to catch yourself with your feet like that?'

‘Kills. But you get used to it.' She points to her feet and shins. They're bruised and red. I let out a sympathetic breath.

‘Ouch. Still, must be fun.'

‘It's the best. You'll love it.'

I smile at her. One thing's clear, I think, as I wander out to find some lunch, no one here seems to be one bit protective or exclusive, or even snobby. That sure makes me feel good. Though, I guess I haven't really met Lola yet.

Chapter 33

I decide I won't go back for the afternoon session. For one thing, I know that's when Kite will be training and I don't want to be there, gawking from the sidelines, watching him and Lola do their adagio. Also, I figure I need to just settle my mind down (it's all in a flap) and empty some of it out (it's a bit overloaded).

There's the river over the road and a big park with swirling paths lined with plane trees. I take my sandwich and lie down under a tree whose leaves are wiggling and fluttering in the air, just like my thoughts. Strangely, I find myself thinking about what Barnaby said in the car to Ada, about me being attracted to the glamour and not thinking our own circus is a real circus. I figure by then he knew I was there, so really he was saying it for my benefit. Immediately I want to say to him, ‘Bruised shins aren't glamorous.' But then I think to myself, in my eyes they are; there's nothing I want more than red ankles and bruised shins. I know they don't look good in a frock, but I like them because they're extreme. They're wounds gathered in the pursuit of something extraordinary – flying through the air. To me that's glamour. Or something special. And what's wrong with wanting that?