Carol Birch - Orphans of the Carnival

She laughed. ‘Who do they mean?’

‘They mean the show, the whole—’

‘No they don’t,’ she said, getting angry, ‘Weren’t you listening? This creature who is an insult to all good standards and decency. That’s me. This creature is me.’

‘Julia, please.’ Oh God, he wished he’d never shown her the damn thing.

‘Ugly, yes,’ she said. ‘Looks like a baboon. Yes. Oh yes, the nonpareil of ugliness, all of that, yes, true, true, but I am not indecent.’

‘Of course you’re not.’

She deflated visibly, sinking down on the bed. ‘What’s it all for?’ she demanded.

‘What?’

‘This. All this. I work very hard.’

‘I know you do.’

She wanted him to say that she was a talented dancer, a good singer. It doesn’t mean a thing to him, she thought. The music. I could be pulling pennies out of peoples’ ears for all he cares. I don’t think he’s got any musical appreciation at all. I could be telling fortunes or juggling. So what? He’s a manager, he doesn’t have to appreciate anything, he sees to all the stuff that makes my head ache. And he does it well.

He tapped his forehead. ‘Good brain, girl,’ he said. ‘That’s why you can succeed in this business. You could have stayed at home and been a skivvy forever, couldn’t you? But no, you’ve got more about you than that. You’re a performer. A natural. And because of that you’ll always make a living. You don’t have to worry about the naysayers. The more they see you, the more they’ll realise what you are.’

‘What I am?’

‘Yes?’

‘What am I? I’m the demon baby. The loup garou .’

He smiled. ‘You are Julia. And I have huge ambition for you. You have no idea. Huge ambition. You mustn’t let this upset you.’

‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous!’ She threw the paper down. ‘Of course it upsets me! What do you think I am? Stone?’ And then she did cry, sitting down in one of the armchairs in the alcove and hiding her face in her hands. ‘It’s like those children all over again,’ she said.

‘Those blasted children! Forget them! What d’you want to carry them around with you for?’

‘I don’t.’

‘Yes you do.’

‘Oh, shut up.’ She looked away.

Theo stood looking about awkwardly. Poor girl, of course she’ll cry. I would. Don’t these idiots think when they write these things there’s some poor girl on the other end of it? ‘Well, that’s that,’ he said. ‘We don’t need the French. Bastards put me in jail.’

She fumbled a handkerchief from somewhere and began dabbing at her face.

‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘it’s only one review. The French are like that. It’s their loss.’

She didn’t say anything. Her head was bowed, and he was momentarily touched. ‘Look at you,’ he said, ‘you and your dainty little hands.’

She muffled a sob. He put his hand lightly on her shoulder.

‘Come on, Julia,’ he said softly, ‘don’t let something as ridiculous as this spoil things for you.’

‘I won’t,’ she said into the handkerchief.

He went and sat down in the opposite chair. ‘This is nothing,’ he said. ‘Not even a setback. Things are going well for us, and they’ll get better and then better again, you’ll see. Oh, for heaven’s sake! Who cares about the fool that wrote that? Who is he? No one! No one. You’re the one they want to see. You’re the special one.’

‘But I’m not,’ she said wearily, drying her face. ‘That’s the funny thing. I’m not special at all, I’m just an ordinary person.’ She stood up and started walking about the room again.

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘tomorrow we’ll go to—’

‘Where’s Yatzi?’ she said sharply.

Theo sighed, suddenly very tired.

‘Where’s Yatzi?’ A rising note of panic had entered her voice.

‘Oh God,’ he whispered and set about finding the thing, and as he searched aimlessly she began crying again and stood biting her fingers like a child. He’d never seen her like this before.

‘Oh please, Julia,’ he said. ‘Perhaps the maid put it somewhere.’

‘Tonight of all nights!’ she cried, and started pulling open all the drawers. ‘Someone’s taken him!’

‘Julia.’ Theo closed his eyes. ‘Why would anyone want to take an old stick of wood with a rag wrapped round it?’

‘He’s not just an old stick of wood!’

She was in a terrible state by the time he found the doll wedged down the back of the bed a few minutes later. ‘Here,’ he said. My God, he thought. Look at it, suck marks on, disgusting. It had two large blots for eyes, a line for a nose and an upturned curve for a mouth. A ragged dress of flimsy green and red cloth was bound round and round it like a loose bandage. She grabbed it and calmed down at once, and he left her rocking in the alcove, holding onto that horrible old lump of wood.

Back in his own room, Theo stared angrily at the stupid incomprehensible French. I won’t have it, he thought. Ridiculous. Poor girl’s been measured and weighed and fingered and prodded inside and out, and taken it all. Of course she’s human. Bloody obvious. He’d been in the business all his life, and he knew. Human. All of them. But the rubes wanted monsters. And the medics, the professors, the scientists, all of them, they were rubes too. Tell you what, I’ll get her picture taken. On Piccadilly there’s a place, I’ll call in tomorrow and have a word.

Discreet. She’s just a hairy girl is all, with a weird face and a sticky-out mouth, a mouth you could hang your hat on. Nice eyes. Nice girl. Roll up roll up. And we’ll put the picture in the new booklet, and we’ll have new words. They’re not getting away with that.

And he sat down and composed a paragraph very quickly in his best florid high-minded style:

THE NONDESCRIPT, MISS JULIA PASTRANA, from Culiacán in Mexico. There is nothing in her appearance in the least calculated to offend the sensibilities of the most fastidious, whether viewed socially, morally or physically. A feeling of pity, rather than of repugnance or antipathy, is generally experienced in the bosom of all who pay her a visit. There is sufficient of the characteristics of her womanly nature to dispel anything allied to the revolting or disagreeable, and connected either with her personal appearance, or the manner in which her levees are conducted. Persons who visit her with an idea of seeing a wild beast in the cage of a menagerie will be disappointed. Those who go with the expectation of seeing some frightful monster will have such expectations changed to sentiments allied at once to awe and astonishment at the mysterious ways of Providence, while his philosophy will be puzzled amazingly to account for his share of the milk of human kindness, and the abundant juiciness of his own heart in view of the wonderful phenomenon that will irresistibly for the time being engross his attention.

He read it back to himself. Good God, man, you’ve got a way with words, he told himself.

‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘Absolutely not. You will not, you will not.’ Lying drunk and sleepy on the sofa, slightly tearful, playing about with that awful burnt thing, Tattoo, draping chains of silver and narrow thongs of black leather round what was left of its neck.

‘Never mind,’ said Adam, sighing and sitting down next to her, gazing around the room so he wouldn’t have to look at her. She was in something long and traily, faded violet, with her hair piled up in a big black bush of tortoiseshell combs on top of her head. Laurie had gone too far this time, she said. Who did he think he was? She’d caught him loading a massive cardboard box into the back of his car.