Love, Let Me Not Hunger (8 page)

Then had come the only real break of his life when through that discovery of some mystery within him, the appeal to captive animals of all kinds, he had acquired a vocation, and was given a permanent job as beast man to the Marvel Circus.

It was then, too, now that he was formally connected with the show, that he adopted a Prince Albert or frock coat as a uniform commensurate with his new dignity. One of his former employers had once made him a gift of an out-moded, square-tailed black coat which somehow he had never sold or disposed of; this Mr. Albert now wore with a collarless shirt, a black string tie, and a black bowler hat.

The Mister which had grown as a permanent appendage to his name of Albert had come about through this same tatty tail coat, and which had misled Major Hoffmann to take him for some kind of gentleman gone to seed and to refer to him at first as Herr Albert. The ribald clowns quickly took to calling him Mr. Albert, and it had stuck.

There was something else that this late-in-life start promised Mr. Albert as well as something to love and be loved by, and this was permanency and a place to stay.

It was a home which under no circumstances could strictly be classified as one, since it had no four walls, exit or entrance, and was always on the move, and sometimes his bed was straw and sometimes the hard ground, or the bottom of a jolting wagon with the stink of monkeys in his nostrils, or squeezed in between the bars of two adjoining cat cages; yet home it was, for he belonged. He was a member of a group, a company; when they closed ranks against the jossers and chavvies of the world without, he was on the inside. Animals and circus people were his friends.

“And this here,” explained Mr. Albert, moving on to the next one, “is Number Three. They all work together in the ring.”

Number Three was a panther, sleek, silky, black as darkest night, gliding on silent feet from one side of the cage to the other with a little upward swing at the end of each run—then return to the other side—upward swing—back again—always in the same impatient rhythm. As they stopped before it, the panther stood stock-still for an instant, contemplating them, and then resumed its loping run.

“What’s her name?” Rose asked.

“Him,” Mr. Albert corrected. “It’s a he.” And then added, “Bagheera.”

“Bagheera! What does
that
mean?”

“I don’t know! It’s supposed to be something out of a book.”

Rose asked, “Do you pet him too?” And then added in a half-whisper, “I’d be afraid to.”

Mr. Albert regarded the black panther fondly and foolishly. “He thinks he’s a devil,” he said. “The major—that’s Major Hoffmann that was—said his heart was as black as his head, but don’t you believe it. Look here!” He said, “Hoi!” rolled up his sleeve and stuck his bare arm through the bars.

In a movement that was so quick the eye could hardly register it, the panther whipped about, dropped onto his side, and clamped both forepaws about the arm of the old man and lay holding it tightly while with his back legs he made jerky, kicking motions. But his claws were retracted, and at the same time he was rubbing his head and ears against the bony elbow of Mr. Albert.

The sight put Rose into a kind of an ecstasy of delight and yearning for some kind of contact with the beautiful cat. She said, “Kin I—couldn’t I touch him, just once?”

“Well, no,” replied Mr. Albert. “You could catch your sleeve like in a claw and that makes ’em frantic. You notice I rolled mine up first.” He freed his arm by pushing it still farther through the bars to create slack to the panther’s embrace and then gently withdrew it. “You never pull away quick from a cat,” he explained. “That makes ’em hold on. You kinda go with him, see?”

Rose was regarding Mr. Albert with marvel and admiration and the old man warmed to her and the glance.

“If you come around,” Mr. Albert said, “you want to be careful not to go too close to their cages, like we’ve got a sign up saying not to. They could get a claw into your sleeve or dress—see, it’s coloured like and moving, and they’re like children and they make a pass at it. And when they catch a claw or something they get scared. They don’t mean anything but when they’re frightened they just got no place to go like when they’re at home. See what I mean?”

Rose made no reply. Her lips were parted and there was a shining in her eyes almost to match those of the big cats.

“There was a woman last year in Alvington,” Mr. Albert continued, “pushed up against the bars calling him baby names. She had a bracelet with dangles that was shiny. Bags there struck at it and got a claw caught. So then he pulled her arm inside the cage and still couldn’t get it loose. It was awful.”

He paused now, realising that he had launched upon something grisly, perhaps not for a young girls ears. But she still stood silent, contemplating the animal which was lying on its side, its tail twitching.

“Well, it was terrible,” he repeated, and then thought how awful it would be if something like that happened to this girl and that it might be better to complete the warning. “It all came off like a glove,” he said, “—the flesh, I mean, before we could get her loose.”

But the girl was not as horrified as he had expected, for she had hardly been listening to him, and now she cried, “How could I get them to love me the way they love you?”

The old man understood her at once: the cry, the need, the well of loneliness from which it arose, the unspoken hunger which was so akin to his own. He replied, “By loving them, not just with a little of yourself, but with everything you’ve got, so they feel it. That’s what they haven’t got amongst themselves. Our kind of love like we can feel. They don’t know what it is, but they need it.” He stopped suddenly, embarrassed by his own words and vehemence, but it quickly vanished under the glow of radiance on the face of the girl and the tears that filled her eyes. From that moment on, their bond of friendship, understanding and companionship was established.

“What’s your name?” Mr. Albert asked.

“Rose.”

“You’re with Jackdaw, ain’t you?”

“Yes.”

Mr. Albert merely nodded and said, “You want to see the rest of the lot?”

“Oh, yes please!”

He took her upon a tour of the cages. In one there was a brown bear who sat up on his haunches and made clownish movements with his forepaws, his muzzle parted in such a silly grin that Rose burst into laughter.

“That’s Hans,” said Mr. Albert. “He roller-skates. You can do anything with him. Doesn’t half like sweets, he doesn’t. Now, we had a polar bear,” he continued, “before Mr. Marvel sent her off to the Chipperfields. They come from up around the North Pole and they got a heart like ice. Wouldn’t have seen me messing around with her. You want to know something? I was scared of her, that’s what.” Then he dropped his voice to a confidential whisper. “But I didn’t tell anybody. Nobody knew it but her and me, see?”

It seemed as though with this the old man had deliberately discarded some of the mystery which had surrounded him and acknowledged his humanity and simple mortality.

“Yes, I see,” said Rose, and the smile she turned upon him was filled with affection.

“Here’s Pockets,” said Mr. Albert, and showed her a small female kangaroo squatting in the straw. She had a long melancholy face and large doe’s eyes, and Rose was permitted to scratch her head.

“See her pouch?” Mr. Albert pointed out. “That’s why she’s called Pockets. That’s where they carry their young. She had a kid a year or so ago.”

“Oh!” Rose grieved. “What happened to it?”

“It died. They’re hard to bring up on the bottle.”

There was a fat old orangutan named Congo, with an alderman’s paunch, dewlaps, and protesting eyes who came over and made kissing mouths and noises at Mr. Albert. A pair of small red foxes kept moving in a perfect whirligig around their cages. There was a dwarf deer from Tanganyika, and an American coyote with a smart-alec expression about his muzzle. Rose inspected a torpid boa constrictor, a painted mandrill with a swollen behind as red as a sunset, and a cage full of ordinary rhesus monkeys. A llama with long eyelashes chewed contemplatively, and Rose was allowed to stroke her because she was gentle. There was a cage with an eagle who looked proud, fierce and untameable, but as meekly as a pet parrot lowered its head to have it scratched by the keeper.

One by one, Rose met all of Mr. Albert’s charges, learned their names, heard some little story about each, and found her heart overflowing at the conclusion of the tour which brought them back again before the cage of Rajah the tiger.

“Some day—some day,” she whispered, “I’m going to touch you.” But what she meant, what she thought, was of enfolding the head in her arms and stroking it as Mr. Albert said he had done; of bestowing upon it that which among themselves the animals did not know—the overwhelming, encompassing, and comforting warmth of human love.

“That’s right,” Mr. Albert was saying. “Of course you will. You just come around any time when I’m here and he’ll get to know you. You want to come when I’m feeding them, about six. You come at any time and I’ll help you.”

Rose said, “Thank you.” She leaned over and gave him a kiss on the white bristle of his greyish cheek, smiled at him once more, and turned and went from the barn.

C H A P T E R
6

S
hortly after her arrival at Chippenham Rose fell in love with Toby Walters.

He was so trim and appetising. Toby’s legs were long, his buttocks small and firm. Wide shoulders and trunk tapered to a flat, narrow waist. His skin was healthy; white teeth contrasted with the dark shining of hair.

The boy’s features were rugged but pleasant and youthfully mischievous, but what attracted Rose even more was his elegance and easy, happy, felicitous control over his body. Even when in the early weeks occasionally his timing was still off and he misjudged the distance and fell, it was never an ungainly collapse. He could even make a fall seem like something practised and amusing as he rolled himself quickly into a ball before hitting the ground, to somersault and come up laughing at himself.

From a distance Rose loved him longingly. Never before had her eyes been delighted by any man. For the first time she found her senses engaged by the glow of a body. The boys she had known, perforce from the same environment as she herself, were pasty, maggoty, undernourished, and the older men even worse—hairy and flabby, cold and ugly to the touch. Toby was firm, vibrant, alive, and above all, clean, clean, clean. His cleanliness drew her like a magnet and made her want to lie close to him and put her cheek to his breast.

For he was always immaculate, his rehearsal tights newly laundered, his person bathed. Ma Walters had taught her children to be scrupulously clean at all times, not alone due to living in the cramped quarters of their touring caravan, but because as a veteran show woman she was aware that if they and their costumes were always fresh and neat, this would communicate itself to the audience and add more glamour to their act.

Soon, watching Toby when he rehearsed became Rose’s secret joy.

She had been given work to do, and Jackdaw Williams had acquiesced in this. He himself was engaged in trying out routines with the three clowns and otherwise practising his juggling endlessly. It had been some time since he had presented a juggling act and, a perfectionist at his business, he would not tolerate the dropped ball or the missed catch.

It was understood that when they took to the road Rose would don a red coat and peaked circus jockey cap and make herself useful selling programmes, seating people in the star-backs, and dispensing sweets and drinks as well. But she had also been assigned to dress the Liberty act presented by Fred Deeter, and this called for rehearsal. Clad in a spangled evening gown dug out of Sam Marvel’s costume locker, her job would be to carry a whip and point to Deeter to milk applause at the end of each routine of the Liberty horses. This necessitated considerable agility and the learning of where she must be and when, not only to avoid being trampled underfoot but to make the best presentation of the trainer.

At first she spent most of her time trying to get out of the way of the horses, and since she had never had any physical training of any kind, she found this arduous and difficult, though she was not at all afraid of them. Deeter, who had never worked with anyone who was not of the circus, was impatient with her, shouting at her time and time again, “No, no, no! For Christ’s sake, sister, not there! Get your ass over here when they wheel!”

Yet he was pleased to have her. She was young and, if not a great beauty, had a certain appeal; and people would think that she was his girl, which flattered him. A kid dressing up an act like that could coax twice as much applause out of an audience as when he worked alone.

This with her housekeeping duties took up no more than three hours of her day. Thus, whenever Toby worked out in the ring with the family or by himself, leaping and bounding from ground to horse as he practised the turns and twists of
voltige
with his favourite mare, Sally, or in the time he devoted each day to putting Judy through her routine and getting her accustomed to her music cues, Rose managed to be there.

There was a tumble of props at one end of the rehearsal enclosure assembled there to be painted when the time drew near for departure—tubs, teeterboards, cradles, pedestals, paraphernalia—and in this Rose nestled herself to look upon this boy her heart desired, weave her dreams about him, and experience for the first time the pangs of another kind of hunger—love.

Toby was aware of her, for when he worked, whether in practise or performance, he would take note of all his surroundings, where everything was and what was going on, even to a loudly coloured hat or costume in the audience, so that some sudden movement or object intruding itself would not distract him and mar his timing. Rose was half concealed in the welter of gear, yet out of the corner of his eye Toby saw the blue of her cloth coat, her shapeless beret, and sometimes the floodlights picked up the red-gold of hair.

At first he was stimulated by her presence, for she was someone new, young, and attractive, and the family had not yet had time to loose the full impact of its disapproval. He was then not yet certain of who or what she was or her background, and boyishly he showed off, swaggering and adding little grace notes to his leaps, pirouettes and somersaults. But later, when he knew more about her and became aware of the intensity of his craving for her, her presence infuriated him. Yet she was so quiet and at such distance from him that he had no excuse for complaining or telling her to get out.