Leslie Hartley - The Complete Short Stories of L.P. Hartley

‘No, on someone else.’

‘Well done, I congratulate you. But you won’t find me hard—I shall be softer than silk, snow, swansdown, anything you can think of.’

The circus-manager was worried. Attendances had been falling off and such people as did come—children they were, mostly—sat about listlessly, munching sweets or sucking ices, sometimes talking to each other without so much as glancing at the show. Only the young or little girls, who came to see the ponies, betrayed any real interest. The clowns’ jokes fell flat, for they were the kind of jokes that used to raise a laugh before 1939, after which critical date people’s sense of humour seemed to have changed, along with many other things about them. The circus-manager had heard the word ‘corny’ flung about and didn’t like it. What did they want? Something that was, in his opinion, sillier and more pointless than the old jokes; not a bull’s-eye on the target of humour, but an outer or even a near-miss—something that brought in the element of futility and that could be laughed at as well as with: an unintentional joke against the joker. The clowns were quick enough with their patter but it just didn’t go down: there was too much sense in their nonsense for an up-to-date audience, too much articulateness. They would do better to talk gibberish, perhaps. Now they must change their style, and find out what really did make people laugh, if people could be made to; but he, the manager, was over fifty and never good himself at making jokes, even the old-fashioned kind. What was this word that everyone was using—‘sophisticated’ ? The audiences were too sophisticated, even the children were: they seemed to have seen and heard all this before, even when they were too young to have seen and heard it.

‘What shall we do?’ he asked his wife. They were standing under the Big Top, which had just been put up, and wondering how many of the empty seats would still be empty when they gave their first performance. ‘We shall have to do something, or it’s a bad look-out.’

‘I don’t see what we can do about the comic side,’ she said. ‘It may come right by itself. Fashions change, all sorts of old things have returned to favour, like old-time dances. But there’s something we could do.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Put on an act that’s dangerous, really dangerous. Audiences are never bored by that. I know you don’t like it, and no more do I, but when we had the Wall of Death——’

Her husband’s big chest-muscles twitched under his thin shirt.

‘You know what happened then.’

‘Yes, but it wasn’t our fault, we were in the clear.’

He shook his head.

‘Those things upset everyone. I know the public came after it happened—they came in shoals, they came to see the place where someone had been killed. But our people got the needle and didn’t give a good performance for I don’t know how long. If you’re proposing another Wall of Death I wouldn’t stand for it—besides, where will you find a man to do it?—especially with a lion on his bike, which is the great attraction.’

‘But other turns are dangerous too, as well as dangerous-looking. It’s being dangerous that is the draw.’

‘Then what do you suggest?’

Before she had time to answer a man came up to them.

‘I hope I don’t butt in,’ he said, ‘but there’s a man outside who wants to speak to you.’

‘What about?’

‘I think he’s looking for a job.’

‘Bring him in,’ said the manager.

The man appeared, led by his escort, who then went away. He was a tall, sandy-haired fellow with tawny leonine eyes and a straggling moustache. It wasn’t easy to tell his age—he might have been about thirty-five. He pulled off his old brown corduroy cap and waited.

‘I hear you want to take a job with us,’ the manager said, while his wife tried to size up the newcomer. ‘We’re pretty full up, you know. We don’t take on strangers as a rule. Have you any references?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Then I’m afraid we can’t help you. But just for form’s sake, what can you do?’

As if measuring its height the man cast up his eyes to the point where one of the two poles of the Big Top was embedded in the canvas.

‘I can dive sixty feet into a tank eight foot long by four foot wide by four foot deep.’

The manager stared at him.

‘Can you now?’ he said. ‘If so, you’re the very man we want. Are you prepared to let us see you do it?’

‘Yes,’ the man said.

‘And would you do it with petrol burning on the water?’

‘Yes.’

‘But have we got a tank?’ the manager’s wife asked.

‘There’s the old Mermaid’s tank. It’s just the thing. Get somebody to fetch it.’

While the tank was being brought the stranger looked about him.

‘Thinking better of it?’ said the manager.

‘No, sir,’ the man replied. ‘I was thinking I should want some bathing-trunks.’

‘We can soon fix you up with those,’ the manager said. ‘I’ll show you where to change.’

Leaving the stranger somewhere out of sight, he came back to his wife.

‘Do you think we ought to let him do it?’ she asked.

‘Well, it’s his funeral. You wanted us to have a dangerous act, and now we’ve got it.

‘Yes, I know, but——’ The rest was drowned by the rattle of the trolley bringing in the tank—a hollow, double cube like a sarcophagus. Mermaids in low relief sported on its leaden flanks. Grunting and muttering to each other the men slid it into position, a few feet from the pole. Then a length of hosepipe was fastened to a faucet, and soon they heard the sound of water swishing and gurgling in the tank.

‘He’s a long time changing,’ said the manager’s wife.

‘Perhaps he’s looking for a place to hide his money,’ laughed her husband, and added, ‘I think we’ll give the petrol a miss.’

At length the man emerged from behind a screen, and slowly walked towards them. How tall he was, lanky and muscular. The hair on his body stuck out as if it had been combed. Hands on hips he stood beside them, his skin pimpled by goose-flesh. A fit of yawning overtook him.

‘How do I get up?’ he asked.

The manager was surprised, and pointed to the ladder. ‘Unless you’d rather climb up, or be hauled up! You’ll find a platform just below the top, to give you a foot-hold.’

He had started to go up the chromium-plated ladder when the manager’s wife called after him: ‘Are you still sure you want to do it?’

‘Quite sure, madam.’

He was too tall to stand upright on the platform, the awning brushed his head. Crouching and swaying forty feet above them he swung his arms as though to test the air’s resistance. Then he pitched forward into space, unseen by the manager’s wife who looked the other way until she heard a splash and saw a thin sheet of bright water shooting up.

The man was standing breast-high in the tank. He swung himself over the edge and crossed the ring towards them, his body dripping, his wet feet caked with sawdust, his tawny eyes a little bloodshot.

‘Bravo!’ said the manager, taking his shiny hand. ‘It’s a first-rate act, that, and will put money in our pockets. What do you want for it, fifteen quid a week?’

The man shook his head. The water trickled from his matted hair on to his shoulders, oozed from his borrowed bathing-suit and made runnels down his sinewy thighs. A fine figure of a man: the women would like him.

‘Well, twenty then.’

Still the man shook his head.

‘Let’s make it twenty-five. That’s the most we give anyone.’

Except for the slow shaking of his head the man might not have heard. The circus-manager and his wife exchanged a rapid glance.