Carol Birch - Orphans of the Carnival

The reporter didn’t look convinced. ‘It would be wonderful,’ he said, without hope, ‘if we could speak with your wife, Mr Lent.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Apologetic smile. ‘She never gives interviews.’

‘That’s a pity.’

‘Yes it is, but I’m afraid she’s adamant on that point.’ He stood up, brushed down his knees.

‘Thank you for your time, Mr Lent.’

‘It’s been a pleasure.’

Theo shook hands with the man, checked the front desk for messages and walked heavily back upstairs to their suite. He’d always been a thin man, a slight man, the years had never put any weight on him. There was no need to feel so heavy, yet he did.

Marie was sitting at the writing desk with a pile of playbills in front of her and a large sheet of paper on which she was scribbling rapidly.

‘No — no — no,’ she said as he came in, ‘this has all got to go. We really have got to update these, Theo, they’re terrible.’

She was always doing this. He was tired. ‘What’s the matter with them now?’

‘You know exactly what’s the matter with them. They’re old-fashioned.’ She was thirty years younger than him and was always telling him he had no idea what people wanted these days. Got to move with the times.

‘The way you write!’ she said. ‘It’s appalling. Listen to this — this uniquely singular wonder of the natural world — uniquely singular! Uniquely singular! That’s terrible.’

‘So change it.’

‘That’s what I’m doing.’

One side of his head felt funny. Another migraine.

‘I’m going for a lie-down,’ he said, stumbling slightly against the glass cabinet wedged in between the bedroom door and the writing desk. ‘Theo!’ said Marie. ‘Careful!’

‘Stupid place to put them,’ he mumbled.

Julia and Theo Junior had just got back from another stint in Vienna. Good. It was always nice when they came home. He went into the bedroom and got under the purple silk coverlet with all his clothes on, closed his eyes and tried to shut down his brain, but it wouldn’t stop. The door was slightly ajar, and he could hear Marie in the other room talking to herself in a semi-whisper as she crossed things out and jotted down phrases.

Deep down in his bones was an ache. Marie came bustling into the room. ‘I’ve got it all worked out,’ she said, ignoring the fact that he was trying to sleep.

He pretended he’d already nodded off.

‘Doesn’t do you any good lying about in bed all day,’ she said. ‘Best to get up. You’d feel better.’

He opened his eyes. ‘Marie. I’m getting a migraine.’ He closed them again. ‘I’m just going to lie here for a while.’

‘Suit yourself,’ she said, but carried on irritatingly doing things in the room, opening drawers and re-arranging things, messing about with her hair.

‘Marie!’ he said. ‘I’m trying to sleep.’

‘Won’t be a moment.’

He flounced over petulantly in the bed and pounded the pillow.

‘Misery guts,’ she said without malice, walking out of the room and closing the door behind her. Pain stabbed him in one eye. He could still hear her, singing to herself as she pottered about next door.

When he eventually emerged from the bedroom later that day in search of tea, the migraine having settled slightly, Marie had the cabinet open and was hauling out Theo Junior on his pole. ‘Look at the state of him,’ she said, ‘they’ve let moths get in. We’re not leaving them there again.’

‘Really? Moths?’

‘Look.’

‘They do pay well,’ Theo said, ‘Is there any tea?’

‘There’s a pot of coffee. There.’

Theo shambled over and started pouring. He’d got into his slippers and dressing-gown.

‘Good job we didn’t leave them there,’ Marie said. ‘Wish we could leave them there. You know the market’s slipping, don’t you?’

Here we go again.

‘Of course it isn’t.’

‘Of course it is.’

‘You’re always crying doom,’ he said.

‘I’m just realistic.’ She sat down, picking at the side of the small mummy with her dainty, long-nailed hands. He saw that the table was littered with pieces of old playbills and there were more in the bin. ‘Why are you tearing these up?’ he asked.

‘I’m throwing them away. I can’t stand them any longer.’

He put the fingers of one hand through the front of his hair and pushed it back, and was again surprised at how far it had receded. ‘They’re all right for now,’ he grumbled, ‘We don’t want to run out before the end of the season.’

‘Don’t worry,’ she said cheerfully, ‘it’s all under control. I’ve already sent a boy to the printer’s.’

‘Without showing me first?’

‘Oh for goodness sake, Theo, you know I’m better at this sort of thing than you.’

‘Marie,’ he said, ‘how do you think I managed all these years without you? I did all the playbills myself.’

‘Yes, and they were terrible. Mine are better.’

He stood drinking his coffee and sifting through the fragments on the table. He caught words and phrases, some of it in blue curly writing, some plain. Wonder of. Root-Digger. Culiacán where. Broadway and. Many an eminent.

‘We need to talk,’ she said.

‘Do we indeed?’ He flopped into a chair. ‘I’m rather tired, Marie.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but you always are, so we might as well talk now. Give me those scraps.’ She held out her hand without looking up from her minute examination of the baby’s hide. Theo gathered up a few bits of paper and handed them to her. ‘There’s an actual hole here,’ she said.

He yawned, put down his coffee and searched about for his cigars.

‘You left them on the dressing table,’ she said.

When he returned from the bedroom with a lit cigar in his mouth she was stuffing the bits of torn up playbill into a hole in Theo Junior’s side. ‘So much for the wonderful new method of embalming,’ she said, ‘it’s just sawdust in there.’

‘Is it?’ He leaned over, squinting down at her repair.

‘Look.’ She sounded indignant.

‘That’s probably just the top layer,’ he said. ‘What’s underneath is the real stuff. Obviously it’s a complicated process.’

He watched her tamp the paper inside with the tip of her little finger. ‘Now you know what we have to talk about, don’t you?’

‘I suppose so.’ He flopped down again.

‘Look at you,’ she said. ‘You’re not a well man. You’ve been on the road for forty years; it takes its toll. Go and see that doctor again.’ Briskly, she set about closing the hole in Theo Junior’s side with rapid, tiny stitches that she drew ever more tightly together. ‘You’re pushing sixty, face reality. You’ve earned your retirement.’

‘Retirement!’ he said, as if it was a curse.

‘You know what I said, right back at the beginning.’ She sewed diligently, ‘I said I’d do it for a few years and then settle somewhere nice.’

‘I know. That was always the plan.’

‘You know,’ she said, ‘we could afford somewhere really nice.’

‘Well, yes, that’s always been our plan,’ he repeated, ‘but it’s a matter of timing. The time has to be right.’

‘It’s never right with you,’ she said. She got up and fetched a saucer, took it to the fireplace and scraped a little soot into it.

‘What are you doing?’ he said.

‘Aha!’ She poured a drop of water from the jug onto the soot and started mixing it with her finger.

‘To be truthful,’ Marie said, ‘the thought of living with these two for the rest of my life is weighing me down. I never thought it would be years like this, you know I didn’t. Theo, you can’t say I haven’t been patient living with them all these years. How many women do you think would do that? Waking up and seeing her standing there. I’ve grown used to them but…’ She started rubbing soot and water over the bundle of stitches with her finger, shading it all in carefully. He stopped listening.