Nicola Barker - Three Button Trick and Other Stories

There were nine acrobats and tumblers at the circus, all told.

‘The turnover of staff in this field has always been rapid.’ This was Alberto, circus ring master and manager.

Belinda stared at him, unsmiling. ‘I suppose that goes with the territory.’

Alberto nodded, not truly comprehending. Turnover, Belinda felt like saying, it’s a joke.

Alberto was introducing her to a new tumbler. He was tall, thickset, blond; physically unlike your average acrobat. Alberto said, ‘This is Marcus. He’s French.’

‘Hi.’ Belinda offered him her hand. He took it and squeezed it gratefully, but said nothing, only smiled. Belinda smiled back and said, ‘We usually all go out for a meal when a new acrobat joins. Pizza or something. It’s a tradition. Are you keen?’

He nodded eagerly.

‘OK, I’ll arrange it.’

The following evening, a large group of them were filling out a significant portion of a local brasserie. Belinda sat to Marcus’s left. On her left was Lenny, who in her opinion was a workaholic and a bore. He was analysing one of their routines. ‘The first set of tumbles,’ he said, his tone rigorous, ‘come from nowhere. It’s like the floor exercises in a gymnastic competition, lacking a certain fluidity, a certain finesse. I mean, there are no hard and fast rules in this business.’

Belinda looked at him, her blue eyes sombre and unblinking.

‘Anyway, the tempo’s all wrong.’

Choosing her moment carefully she said, ‘Lenny, let’s not talk about work all night, OK?’ She turned and took a glass from a tray that was being proffered by a waiter. ‘Pernod. Excellent.’

She focused on Marcus. ‘How’ve your first couple of days been? I haven’t seen you around much, apart from at practice and the show.’ She had seen him at practice in his slinky French lycra garments. At least a foot taller than any of the other men, but gratifyingly agile.

Marcus took so long to respond to her enquiry that she almost came to the conclusion that he spoke no English at all. But eventually he said, ‘It was … all fine.’ He spoke slowly and laboriously. The effort of it brought tiny specks of perspiration to his upper lip. Belinda stared at him, wide-eyed. He’s drunk, she thought, and it isn’t even an hour since the matinée.

The waiter moved over to Marcus and offered him the tray. Marcus selected a bottle of beer, glad of this distraction, and drank down a hurried swig of it. Belinda said coolly, ‘You’re unusually tall for a tumbler.’

He nodded. ‘Yes … I am.’ After an inordinately long pause he added, ‘Five foot … nine.’

He seemed to be relishing his words and observations with a drunk man’s delight. Belinda had been tipsy herself on several occasions and was well acquainted with the feeling of intense gratification that the performance of everyday feats accorded one while in this condition. The brain works so slowly, she thought, that opening a door or saying hello are transformed into tasks of terrible complexity.

Marcus put his beer down next to his plate and started to say something else, but before he could complete his sentence, she had turned away, towards Lenny, and had begun to discuss the rudiments of their early tumbling routine with him in some detail.

Later that night, when Belinda attempted to enter her trailer, the door wouldn’t slide back smoothly, but jammed when it was half open. She stopped herself from saying anything worse than ‘Darn!’ adding, ‘Needle and thread,’ for good measure. (The parrots were tucked up next door, covered for the night but ever vigilant.) She then groped around blindly in the doorway until her hand located a tortoise shell. You little swine! she thought, tucking the tortoise under her arm and reaching inside her pocket for a lighter to ignite one of the lamps.

Once the lamp was lit she kicked the door shut behind her. The tortoise was still under her arm, tucked snugly there, held dispassionately, like a newspaper or a clutch bag. His head and feet were completely drawn in.

This creature had once belonged to her grandmother and was called Smedley. Belinda dumped him down on to the floor again. He scuttled away instantly.

When Belinda had taken possession of Smedley, two years ago, she had been misguidedly under the impression that tortoises were no trouble. They hibernate, she was told. They’re one of those creatures that don’t need any attention. She couldn’t reconcile this description with her own particular specimen. He certainly didn’t seem to bother hibernating. In fact he appeared to have difficulty in sleeping at all. Most of his time was spent powering around inside her van, his head fully out, stretching on scaly elephant’s skin, his feet working ten to the dozen. He took no interest in things, only walked into them or over them. Even his food.

Belinda’s grandmother had owned Smedley for thirty-five years. He had lived in her garden during this time, as happy as Larry. Belinda had been given him, in accordance with the will, and a small financial sum concomitant in quantity with thirty-five more years of carrots and greens. Interest linked.

Twenty-four and thirty-five. She calculated these two numbers every time she caught a glimpse of the tortoise, scuttling from the kitchenette to her bedroom, emerging from under her sofabed. Fifty-nine. I’ll be fifty-nine years old, she thought desperately, when that bloody creature finally kicks the bucket. It was as if the tortoise had already stolen those years from her. I’ll be sixty, she thought, I’ll be retired. I won’t even have the parrots any more. I won’t be able to do back-flips or walk on my hands. Smedley had taken these things from her, had aged her prematurely, had, inexplicably, made her small trailer smell of Steradent and mothballs.

It had been ten thirty when she’d returned. At ten forty someone knocked at her door. She pushed her slippers on, pulled her dressing gown tightly around her and yanked the door open. It was Marcus.

‘What do you want?’

She stared into his face, slightly taller than him now, standing, as she was, on her top step. He said nothing, only handed her a note.

‘What?’ she asked again, taking it.

He bowed, low and formal, then walked off.

Belinda sat down on the top step and unfolded the note. It was written on onion paper. She always found onion paper quite peculiar. So light, so oniony. Very French.

The note said:

Good evening Belinda,

Eugenie told me that you thought I was drunk at dinner. Alas, no. I suffer from a speech impediment, a stammer, which in times of social tension can become terribly pronounced. I apologize if this minor problem irritated you in any way. I can assure you that it irritates me in many ways, but, as they say, such is life. N’est-ce pas?

Marcus

Although the tone of Marcus’s note, the night of the dinner out, had been anything but hostile, Belinda spent the following five days trying and failing to apologize to him and to worm her way back into his affections. She found it extremely difficult to talk things over with a person who was virtually monosyllabic.

Because Marcus spoke so very little, he gave the appearance of listening much harder than your average person. Did he listen? Belinda couldn’t decide. It felt like he did. She noticed how he became a kind of father confessor to all the tumblers, the acrobats, some of the clowns, the most beautiful tightrope walkers. He didn’t strike her as particularly French. His accent—the rare smatterings that she heard—didn’t sound especially Gallic.

In fact, both of Marcus’s parents were English. They were a couple who had taken advantage of the Eighties property slump in France and had emigrated when he was eight. He was now eighteen. His stammer in French was much less pronounced than in English, which struck him as rather strange.