Carol Birch - Orphans of the Carnival

‘Of course not.’ Theo got up and stood about uselessly. ‘Damn it, look at this curtain,’ he said.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I’ll think of something.’

‘I couldn’t help it.’

‘You were doing some sewing and your scissors fell against it.’

‘Sometimes I just…’ She wiped her face and pulled her shawl close. ‘I feel horrible,’ she said. ‘Horrible, horrible.’

‘I’ll have to pay her for it,’ he said.

‘HORRIBLE.’

He flinched. ‘Julia please, sit down,’ he said. ‘Take it easy this morning. Go back to bed if you like.’

‘I will,’ she said shortly, turning her back on him.

‘Good.’

He worked on his smile.

‘I’ll tell them to bring you your breakfast.’

She brushed her hair, embarrassed now, keeping her face vacant. She didn’t know him well enough to lose control.

‘Fine,’ she said.

‘You know,’ he said, ‘you’re not the only one who needs armour sometimes.’

She closed her eyes. She didn’t know him well enough for this either. ‘Let me tell you,’ he said, speaking quietly, as if someone else was in the room. ‘If it was possible to die of ridicule, I would have died in childhood.’

She wanted him to leave. She wanted to go back to bed and have a good long cry, then have breakfast. ‘It’s not the same,’ she said, laying down her brush, turning and eyeing the slightly tousled bed, calling there like a womb.

‘I didn’t say it was.’ Theo was at the door, his hand on the handle. ‘But think Julia, if every word that came out of your mouth, every move you made, every time you made a point or ventured an opinion or asked a question, you were greeted with absolute and utter ridicule, with laughter. Would you not need armour?’

‘Your cousins,’ she said, getting sick of waiting for him to go and climbing into bed anyway, still with the yellow shawl wrapped tightly round her shoulders.

His smile had not faltered.

‘Why were you staying at your uncle’s, Theo?’ She closed her eyes and all was calming.

‘I was at school up there,’ he said, opening the door, ‘after my mother died. My uncle thought I needed an education.’ His smile lost its glibness.

‘You’re falling asleep,’ he said. ‘It’s been a long journey.’

But as soon as she was alone, the restlessness returned, and she got up and sat down in front of the mirror and looked at herself. Same old face, following her through life. Now that it was over, she was more sorry for the girl than for herself. Hope she doesn’t get the sack, she thought. She wasn’t like those others, she didn’t mean harm. It must have been a shock. First, she’d have seen the back of my head. Pretty white nightie, black hair. Then the eyes, suddenly, so big and black, and the ape jaw. If they saw more of it, no one would notice, no one would stare or scream or faint. When you see it every day it’s nothing, you’re just Julia, always there, as you were in the Sanchez house. You face them. Hold the head up, meet it all straight on.

He wasn’t angry, she thought. Rates and Beach would have gone mad about a thing like this.

She took down the show dress and held it against herself in front of the mirror. Broad brown hairy shoulders. Short thick hairy neck. Full womanly breasts, covered in jet-black down. Why should they not wear pearls?

She got her sewing kit out of the drawer at the bottom of the wardrobe.

‘ You won’t stop me,’ she told the children gathering in the shadows.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Theo, coming in with her chocolate.

‘What I need, Theo,’ she said, wide awake, cutting away at the hem, ‘is something to lie just here,’ touching herself on the chest, ‘something very graceful, of the same colour as the bodice.’

‘This is the most wonderful chocolate,’ Theo said, ‘Where do you want it?’ He sat down. ‘Sorry, you were saying?’

‘Just here on the hollow. Something terribly elegant.’

‘Absolutely,’ he said, ‘I’ll sniff something out.’

‘Not just anything,’ she said, ‘I know what I want.’

‘Of course.’ Theo had a smile in the way that other people had an eye colour. ‘Isn’t that your show dress?’ he asked, realising what it was she was cutting.

‘I’m making it better.’

He frowned and smiled at the same time. ‘I very much hope so.’

‘You’ll see.’

‘Will it be ready in time?’ He nodded at the heap of cloth on her lap.

‘I think so,’ she said, ‘and if not I’ll wear the blue.’

‘Ah yes, the blue,’ he said, as if he had the slightest inkling what she was talking about.

London had the best freaks, always had. The Egyptian Hall, the Promenade of Wonders, the Siamese twins, pinheads, midgets, cannibals, giants, living skeletons, the fat, the hairy, the legless, the armless, the noseless, London had seen it all. In the Hall of Ugliness the competition was stiff. But no one had ever seen anything quite like Julia.

She was the Baboon Lady now, appearing apart from the mass in high style, at a gallery. She was the Grand and Novel Attraction, the Nondescript, the Wonder of the World, a scientific marvel. The little book with the drawing of her on the cover, the one done in New York, showed her poised and carefree, her wondrous wild hairy head adorned with a head-dress of feathers and white roses. Inside, Theo had quoted in full from her certificates: ‘ pronounced by the most eminent Naturalists and Physicians to be a true hybrid wherein the nature of woman presides over that of the brute.’ He had added: ‘ She is a perfect woman — a rational creature, endowed with speech which no monster has ever possessed.’

He’d done a marvellous job; the place was mobbed. Like a clerk he’d gathered all the information handed on to him by Rates and Beach, pored over dates, questioned her again about her early memories, which were so vague. The papers had blazoned the story he’d put together, and the crowds caused hold-ups on Regent Street to get a glimpse of the mysterious veiled figure, small as a child, who was rushed from the carriage to a side door by her manager while the bobbing hordes were kept at a distance. She had a small dressing room with oak walls and a smell of polish, where she got herself ready, following a practised routine. First she stripped down to her corset and jewellery then lightly dusted the cleavage of her large dusky breasts with orris root, so that the heady iris scent would rise into her nostrils as she danced. She put a drop of lemon juice in each eye for the brightness, then dressed. She’d cut her show dress to just below the knee so that she felt like a ballerina. When she’d showed Theo he’d laughed and clapped his hands.

‘Wonderful!’ he’d said. ‘This is exactly what they want. As much of you as possible, Julia.’ Her pearl cross lay at the hollow of her throat, and pearls twined through her hair, gleaming on the tight bodice. The dress was cut very wide and low, and she wasn’t sure if she trembled from nerves or the cold on her shoulders. It didn’t matter, because as soon as she stepped out onto the raised platform and the pianist began to play, she knew it would all be fine. A sixth sense told her. She sang ‘Ah, Perdona al Primo Affetto’ and ‘Voi Che Sapete’, and at the end of each, the audience first drew in a tiny collective breath, held it for a silent moment then exploded in a riot of applause that needed only fireworks to complete the sense of occasion. She danced the solo from ‘La Sylphide’, then went down among them, letting them shake her hand and stroke her whiskers.

‘Miss Pastrana,’ they asked her, ‘Are you happy?’

‘I am very happy,’ she replied.

‘Where did you learn to speak English?’