Carol Birch - Orphans of the Carnival

‘I don’t mind him,’ Julia said.

‘Ezra Porter, Ma’am.’ He offered a large fleshy hand. ‘Just you tell him if he’s in the way, he won’t mind. Come on now, Cato, you leave the lady alone.’

‘But I really don’t mind.’

Fascinated, she and Cato stared at each other.

‘Listen,’ Ezra Porter said, ‘if you’re sure you don’t mind…’

Breakfast was over and people were dispersing. The girls went off to the rehearsal room and everyone else drifted away, till there was just Julia and Cato smiling at each other, and Ezra Porter shuffling about with the look of a giant well-fed toddler, saying nervously in his irritating voice, ‘You know I–I have one or two things I really need to do. If you really don’t mind watching him for a while I’d be obliged… But don’t let him go out in the street.’

‘We’ll play on the swing,’ she said, ‘won’t we, Cato?’

Cato dashed for the swing, and Ezra Porter nipped smartly away.

‘Ready?’ she said. ‘How high do you like to go?’

But of course she couldn’t understand a word he said.

The back of his head was like a coconut, and his hands on the ropes were clenched and eager. She started pushing him, but as soon as his feet lifted from the ground he shrieked so loudly she had to stop.

‘Ssh! It’s all right. You’re on the ground.’

He wouldn’t get off the swing and started shaking the ropes.

‘I’m not pushing you if you’re going to scream,’ she said.

She tried again but it was hopeless.

‘Come, you can play my guitar,’ she said, but as she led him across the yard he became distracted by the white cat, and followed it round to the front of the house, hooting excitedly. She ran after him. The front yard was cool and shady and Madame Soulie was bending over watering her azaleas.

‘Why are you up front, Cato?’ she said, getting up. ‘You go back now. Go on. Good boy.’

‘He’s after the cat,’ Julia said.

Madame Soulie put down her can. The cat leapt up the fence and dropped down into the street. ‘Go back now, Cato. Are you looking after him?’

‘Yes.’

‘What? He’s left you in charge, has he?’

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t let Ezra take advantage.’

‘I don’t mind,’ she said.

‘Well, perhaps you should. Anyway, keep him back there. Gate’s closed but they look through the fence. Go on, boy. Best you stay back there too, Julia.’

‘Yes.’

‘He was taken for the devil baby once,’ Madame Soulie said, ‘and it could’ve turned nasty.’

‘The devil baby?’

‘The devil baby.’ Madame Soulie brushed her apron down, advancing on them with her bulky height, sweeping them back down the walkway and following after. ‘Did you never hear about that?’

‘I never did.’

‘It was this woman across the lake who had too many girl babies and she wanted a boy. She got so sick of all these girls she said, goddamn I’d rather the devil than another girl. Well, she got what she asked for. A big bouncing boy with horns and a tail and hoofs and teeth, standing upright and talking straight away.’

She made sure they were well shepherded as far as the benches outside the kitchen. Cato ran back to the swing.

‘Poor mother died of fear when she saw him,’ said Madame Soulie, ‘and he ran away down into the street and up over the roofs. They tried to kill him, but he won’t be killed. ‘

‘I heard a baby crying last night,’ Julia said.

‘Oh, you’d know it if you’d heard him. I heard him once. Never saw him, wouldn’t want to, but I heard him.’ She shuddered. ‘Dreadful sound. Never leaves you.’

‘What was it like?’

‘Not like any ordinary baby. Not even like a cat.’ She shuddered again, more visibly this time. ‘Anyway, this boy here gets out one day and walks down the street and someone screams: The Devil Baby! Look! Ezra had to run out, good job he’s so big, Ezra. You’ve got to be careful, believe me. Look, you want me to go get Ezra?’

‘Oh no. We’ll stay in back,’ said Julia, ‘won’t we, Cato?’

Madame Soulie returned to her watering, and they went back to Julia’s cabin. He was hopeless trying to play the guitar and soon lost interest. ‘You dance then,’ she said, ‘I know you can dance.’

She played her guitar and he danced, with knees cracking and no vestige of grace, his smile eerily oversized, till he grew tired very suddenly and fell asleep on Myrtle’s bed with a look of surprise on his face. Strangest face she’d ever seen.

Poor devil baby, she thought, playing on. Crying for mama. Because mama took one look at him, screamed her head off and died.

Brady Childer’s grocery and coal yard stood on the corner past a shoemaker’s and a couple more cottages. Upstairs was a room, oddly shaped because of the way the store had been built at an oblique angle on the corner, with a piano and a couple of old sofas pushed up against the walls, and a balcony running along two sides. Long windows were open for the air, but they were always covered by several gauzy layers of drapes. Couldn’t have the people across the way getting a free show. When Julia arrived with Mr Rates, Michael was playing a jaunty ‘Rose of Alabamy’ at the piano while the girls danced. What a sight! Delia danced on her hands, strong square shoulders and lean hips wiggling in time. She wore a plain grey dress and a red tignon , and her eyes were closed. Myrtle hoofed it energetically by her side, the frills of her sleeves flapping up and down and occasionally revealing smooth pink stumps. Perfectly in time, the girls sidestepped each other, changing places. Julia threw back her veil. When they finished, she clapped her hands and shouted ‘Bravo!’

‘Water!’ Myrtle said, ‘I’m dying.’

‘You’re so clever!’ Julia took off her shawl and threw it on one of the sofas.

‘Merci,’ said Delia, swinging herself across the floor and jumping up onto the sofa. She lay back in one corner with her arms thrown over her head.

‘We’ve been doing it a long time,’ said Myrtle, swigging from a bottle. A fine sheen of sweat shone on her forehead.

‘Has Michael got my music?’ Julia asked.

‘I should hope so.’ Rates was fanning himself in the heavy air seeping in through a gap in the gauze.

‘I’m out of practice,’ Julia said, nervous, stepping into the centre of the room.

‘Poor old Michael,’ said Michael, ‘he doesn’t get a break.’

‘Soon enough,’ Rates said.

Michael bent low over the keyboard.

‘So much space to dance,’ she said. The girls sat side by side waiting for her to begin. She wanted to run. Fool. Nowhere to practise on the journey. You’ve come this far, she told herself sternly.

‘You ready?’ he asked.

You’ve done it a million times. She nodded.

It was horrible at first. He played her Spanish tunes clumsily but with gusto, too fast, and she lost the rhythm a couple of times. But then she did what she always did at home, danced as if no one was there. It was the only way. Once she got into her stride and he’d slowed down a bit, they were fine. In fact it began to be fun, and she sensed appreciation but didn’t dare look at anyone in case the luck broke. She’d been doing this from childhood. The story went that Don Pedro had noticed her sitting still as a stone to listen in the doorway as he played the piano one day. ‘Hello, little Julia,’ he’d said. ‘Do you like the music? Is it pretty?’

Doña Inés happened to be passing at that moment.

‘She should learn the violin,’ she’d said, ‘I should like that.’

The violin didn’t work, but the old red guitar that was lying out on the stone bench on the gallery had become hers, and someone must have given her the green harmonica, she couldn’t remember, and the boys’ music teacher showed her how to sing scales and tap out rhythms. She’d learned the schottische, the polka and the highland fling. Songs came in with Solana, in her old cloak coming in from the marketplace, in her good cloak coming back from mass. Most of them were desperately sad because sadness made better songs. These days she danced more ballet. It was hard but she was getting better, and when she was tired she could slip back so easily into the old Spanish steps, turning, stamping, clapping her hands. In the lovely wide space of the room above Brady Childer’s, she began to whirl.