‘I want to be a clown,’ I said, straight off.
‘Well, we all know you’re good at clowning around, G. But let’s wait and see what else you’re good at.’
‘I can tell stories,’ I said.
‘For sure,’ he said. ‘That’s how I found you, remember? You’re a little raconteur.’
‘Yessir,’ I said, puffing my chest.
In the evening we sat at the kitchen table, Mad and James drinking beer and smoking as they put together a timetable for me; clowning, acrobatics, animal keeping, animal training. When it got to maths and English I rolled dramatically on the floor as if I’d just been poisoned, but all they did was laugh at me and flick ash in my hair.
‘Goblin,’ Mad said, ‘the circus is a business and you need to chip in.’
‘I can read. I can write.’
‘You know all there is to know at age fourteen? What about your sums?’
I lay on the floor and recited my times table at the ceiling to show I knew it all already but all Mad did was say, ‘Well, aren’t we clever? We’ll need more advanced classes for you.’
I shut my mouth after that.
‘We’ll get the adoption process started. You just leave it to us.’
It was then I had to tell them about Miss Campbell as I knew that could cause all sorts of complications but they told me they’d handle it and not to worry.
‘You don’t need to call us mum and dad. You can go on calling us by our names if you want. We can’t ever replace your parents.’
‘I want you to,’ I said. ‘I want to call you mum and dad.’
They tried not to, but they both smiled at that.
I enjoyed being at school again, or a kind of school if that’s what you can call sitting in the kitchen with whatever teacher happened to be available. My timetable was fragmented at first, due to the war and my teachers’ availability. When Marv was on leave he’d teach me some clowning. ‘The trick is, G, it has to look effortless. But it’s not, it’s carefully choreographed. There’s a lot of work goes into looking clumsy and falling on your face. You seen any of those Chaplin films? You get yourself along to the cinema when they’re on – he’ll teach you a lot.’
Mum and her partner Matt taught me some acrobatics, though it was difficult without much space. We’d sometimes go to the park if the weather was good. They’d hook a rope up between two trees and I’d practice tightrope walking for weeks until I got it just right. A lot of the work I did was about timing, balance, discipline and focus. I didn’t think I’d have the patience but I loved it and worked every chance I got.
Leo, a writer, came round and taught me English. We did lots of boring work on grammar but we also read a lot of books and he gave me advice on writing stories. I started writing on everything I could get my hands on – in the margins of books, on the walls of my room, on dad’s handkerchief when it was the only thing to hand. My head was bubbling with stories and Leo taught me discipline; he taught me about structure, setting and character. When I gave him a mess of a story he’d give it back to me and say, ‘Edit. Edit, edit, edit. And tell me why you’re doing what you’re doing. Justify it.’ I’d groan and whine and say it’s fine as it is and he’d say, it isn’t. You know it isn’t. Dazzle me.
Dad told me about the history of the circus and showed me photos, posters and newspaper clippings of their heyday. I loved the photos of mum’s aerial act; a sparkling blur in the air, a triumphant pose in the ring. Her red hair was pinned up and crowned with feathers, her face a strange mask of make-up. One of my favourite photos was of the clowns, lined up like a class photo, looking serious in their eccentric costumes.
I was awed by the photos of the lions and elephants. When the war started mum and dad couldn’t afford to keep all the animals. Lord whatshisname, the one who slobbered all over Betsy, had estates all across the country and provided sanctuary for all the circus horses, chimps, elephants, lions, tigers, giraffes and camels. He didn’t charge rent, only for the food and the wages of the keepers. Even with the savings from the circus boom years it wasn’t easy for mum and dad. They’d pore over their finances and got me to help as part of my maths schooling. They made it work, mostly through the help of pre-war patrons, and the rest of the animals made it through the war.
Colin had been an animal trainer during the circus days, working mainly with elephants, horses and camels, and he travelled round that lord’s estates when he could, making sure all was well. Colin was a different person with the animals; awkward with humans, but at ease around any other creature. He took me to one of the estates to see Mitzi the elephant. We stayed for a couple of weeks and worked with the keepers, helping them look after her. I’d seen elephants before when Pigeon took me to the circus but I’d never seen them close-up. The enclosure smelled of shit and that warm musty animal smell, just like at Pigeon’s.
‘Hey girl, hey girl,’ Colin said, stroking Mitzi. She knew him, it was obvious. Her ears flapped and her trunk knocked into him, nudging him, almost pushing him over before wrapping around him and pulling him close to her.
‘Mitzi, this is Goblin. Goblin, this is Mitzi, one of our superstars. Eh, old girl?’
I looked up into her eyes and I stroked her. I loved the feel of her body. I ran my hand over the skin, feeling the tiny hairs and the busy lines. I tried to follow their trail with my finger and got lost in a myriad of folds.
‘They skinned them,’ I said to Colin.
‘What? What did you say?’
‘The demigods, the lizards down below, they skinned the elephants and scrunched up their skin like paper, then they clothed them again, and now they feel like this.’
He rolled his eyes and shook his head.
I helped Colin and the keepers muck out and feed Mitzi. Colin wasn’t much for talking so I talked on and on until I ran out of things to say. We worked in silence until Colin said, ‘When the war ends, we’ll bring the circus together again.’
I nodded, pleased he was talking to me. I decided to be quiet and maybe he’d talk some more but he was silent after that and I was bursting with things to say so I said, ‘When the war ends I’m going to be a clown and I’ll travel with you and all my new family, and I’ll find my brother and he’ll travel with us too, telling tales of pirates and mermaids. That’s what’ll happen when the war ends, everything will be right.’
London, 8 May 1945 (VE Day) – 2 September 1945 (VJ Day)
I made a crown like for a king but cardboard with trailing ribbons from old-ma’s old clothes and I dressed like a clown, painted my face white with a big red smile and black round my eyes with a tear at the side, just one tear for the lost the dead the forgotten, floating in the past in the ether down below. I fall into victory above, a tea party where the wine flows, I wear my crown like for a king but cardboard with trailing ribbons and I clutch my flag arm in arm with new-mum new-dad. Swept up in a Trafalgar Square ocean of people swaying back and forth and buffeted here and there, surging and waving, waiting for Churchill chanting and waiting for him to appear and tell us what we wanted to hear. We’d dip down sullen and silent just waiting with clutched white knuckles, flags drooping crumpled, my smile false and tired, drowning in the crowd, pulled out by mum and dad following a surge moving with the flow pushed up up up climbing Eros encased in concrete up up up perching waiting above the sea above the swarm and Churchill is there – victory in Europe! ‘Londoners, I love you all!’ and the ocean explodes a deafening thunderous stamping roar an explosion of flags and hats, a tide of V’s. Drinking late into the night on our street jam jars lit up shimmering flames flittering flies wine and rivers of V’s and hugs and kisses floating away from sadness, entranced by the fire in the street the piano in the street singing and dancing with the flames, fireworks in the sky, wine in my belly, the glow of the fire on my skin, drunken soldier kisses and laughter closed eyes closed eyes sway and listen and feel until dawn a flickering path of jam jar flies leading us home through the twilight, in bed with Adam curled close, Groo licking my hair. I rub my tear, smearing it gone, no more war, the certainty of bombs stripped away. I fell into sleep and woke above to liberated Nazi camps, the emaciated diseased. The Lizard King says, no love lost for jews, gypsies, commies, homos, but those Nazis are inhuman. Animals, those Nazi bastards, he says, animals. Corpses piled on corpses, buried in liberty, V for victory.