Jones’s real name was Diccory Bellever. In his heyday and before he put on weight, he was famous all over Europe as an escapologist and wire-walker. The name Jones came from Davy Jones’s Locker, and the near-miss Jones had had in his twenties when one of his routines had gone wrong and he sank to the bottom of the Solent, wrapped in half a hundredweight of steel chains.
“Can she do anything?” Jones said. “I mean, can she work?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I doubt it. She’s just a kid.”
Jones sighed. “You know how I feel about carrying dead wood. The last thing we need is the cops on our backs if she’s run off from somewhere. How old did you say she is?”
“About fifteen,” I said. “I didn’t really get a proper look at her.” Actually I thought she was younger, but I didn’t want Jones blowing a fuse. It was Piet I was thinking of, how he might react if Jones read him the riot act.
“Can you handle this for me, Marek? God knows I’ve got enough on my plate.” Jones sighed again and folded his sinewy, still-muscular arms around the vast barrel of his stomach.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll sort it.” I wandered around the outfield for a bit then ambled over to Piet’s trailer. There was no sign of Piet but I could smell cooking so I guessed he was inside making supper. The girl was sitting on the trailer steps under the awning. She was wearing one of Piet’s vests and a pair of his corduroys. The trousers were too short for her and the shirt too big. The armholes gaped open, revealing the hollows of her armpits, matted with tawny hair, and her saucer-sized breasts. In front of her was a deep-sided bowl containing a generous helping of Boston beans and the paprika-seasoned potato cakes that were Piet’s speciality. She was shovelling beans into her mouth with a spoon, her head bent low and her hair almost dragging in the food. She looked up at my approach and put both arms around the bowl as if she were afraid I might try and take it away from her. There was a crusting of potato on her upper lip.
A moment later Piet appeared in the doorway. He had a tea towel around his waist, and was holding a potato masher.
“Mark,” he said. I am Marek Platonov, the knife-thrower. My father, Grigor Platonov, was a champion fire-eater. Mae and Piet have always called me Mark. “Would you like some latkes? There’s plenty to go round.”
“No thanks, Piet,” I said. “I’ll have my supper later, with Mae.”
I wondered how Piet had managed to persuade the girl to remove her dress. Once when we were both drunk I asked Piet what he did for sex. He told me there was a woman he saw in London from time to time. I had assumed he meant a prostitute. Now I wondered if he saw Leonie Pickering as her replacement. The idea worried me – the girl looked so young – but I didn’t see what I could do about it.
I chatted with Piet for a while then went to get changed. By the time I arrived backstage Ruby was already waiting.
“You’re late,” she said. “What’s all this about a runaway?”
Ruby Castle and I are astrological twins. We were born on the same night but to different mothers, just fifteen minutes apart. We were inseparable as children and spent most of our teenage years thinking we were in love. But life doesn’t always go the way you think it will. Ruby hooked up with Tolley and then I met Mae. Things were difficult for a while, but I don’t think either of us ever considered breaking up our act. We had a connection on stage that was close to telepathic. You don’t throw something like that away. What you do is bury the past the best you can.
“Just some weird kid,” I said. “Piet’s looking after her.”
She gave me a look, as if she suspected me of not telling her the whole story. I shrugged my shoulders in silent denial and then it was time for us to go on.
It was a full house and a good crowd, and I was soon lost in the danger and the excitement of the strange craft that earned me my living. When I got back to the trailer I found Mae already in bed. She was reading The Aspern Papers. I could never understand Mae’s addiction to Henry James. I had tried reading him, for her sake, but had found his writing turgid and deeply dull.
“In bed with another man again, I see,” I said.
“Oh, Henry’s the perfect gentleman,” she said, smiling up at me. “All we ever do is sit and talk.”
I took the book from her hands and laid it aside. She was wearing a pale silk slip that clung to her breasts and pooled in her lap like spilled milk. I undressed quickly and lay down beside her, sliding my hand up under the slip and between her legs. I caressed her until she came, and then I raised myself on my knees and entered her, climaxing almost at once.
We slept where we lay, in the warmth and salt-stickiness of our lovemaking. I woke once in the night, and pulled the sheet up over us. Mae’s hair lay scattered across the pillow, turned silver by the moonlight creeping in between the curtains. In the instant before I fell asleep again I glimpsed in my mind the face of Leonie Pickering, her narrow lips drawn back from her discoloured teeth in a silent snarl.
* * *
After Cirencester came Stroud, then Tetbury and Malmesbury and Frome. Each time we arrived at a new ground the girl would jump down from the cab and run about like a child that disliked being shut indoors. She made no attempt to help us set up, but would sidle up to us as we worked, standing close by with her hands behind her back as if we were some fascinating new species of animal and she was afraid she might scare us away. It was unnerving at first but we soon grew used to her. For the first couple of days she was more or less mute, then suddenly she wouldn’t shut up, though it was often difficult to make out what she was saying. Every now and then something would startle her and she would dash to find Piet.
She seemed devoted to Piet, yet she teased him too, pulling faces behind his back. Once I saw her dart out from behind some bushes and begin jeering at him in her high, excited sing-song voice, cupping her hands around her mouth to make a loud-hailer:
“Come on, Piet-Piet, you old slowcoach, you old monster!”
She leapt up on the fence, gripping the top bar with those extraordinary long toes of hers. She seemed light as dust, with all the natural balance and poise of a trained wire-walker. The spikes of her elbows cut V-shapes in the clear July air, and her top rode up, exposing a stripe of her flat dirt-brown stomach. I felt a rush of desire in spite of myself. Usually she gave me the creeps.
Piet bought her things, clothes mostly, but also the bright, gaudy trinkets she seemed to have a passion for: silver-backed brushes and mirrors, gilt snuffboxes, crystal animals. They must have cost a bit, some of them anyway, but what else did Piet have to spend his money on? Leonie guarded these presents jealously, counting and recounting them, glowering from under her eyebrows at anyone who came near.
Piet referred to her as “the kid” or “the hoodlum” and tried to make light of his attachment to her. He insisted he was only looking out for her because she’d had a tough life and deserved some TLC, but within a matter of days it was obvious not just to me but to everyone in the company that he was in love with her.
“The kid’s special, Mark,” he said to me. “She has talent. You’ll see.”
I dismissed his words, believing they were just another aspect of his infatuation, but in fact he turned out to be right. Leonie Pickering was special. She possessed the kind of talent you see once in a lifetime. She reminded each of us, in her way, of who we were.