Philippa Gregory - Meridon

He looked at the barn as if he were staring into the future.

‘I’ll take a complete show out on the road. The horses will open the show and do the first half, and then during the interval we’ll rig up the net and the frames. When I can get a barn we’ll take it and do evening shows by lamplight as well.’ He looked beyond the barn, to where the afternoon sun was red on the horizon. ‘There’s more and more places which stay open all year round,’ he said longingly. ‘Where they’ve built a hall with the ring in the middle, aye, and a stage behind for singing and dancing. A few good years on the road, and maybe I could build my own place with the rigging up high and the ring underneath, and we would not need to travel from fair to villages – the audience would come to us.’

I nodded. ‘You could do that,’ I said with a little smile, looking at his rapt face. ‘It might work. A big enough town, with lots of people travelling through, and wealthy people who would come again and again. It might work.’

He glanced down at me. ‘You believe in me,’ he said.

‘Aye,’ I said simply. ‘I always have.’

There was a little silence then, between us.

‘Now,’ he said. ‘You see how your sister is doing!’

He flung open the door to the barn and we went in. They were losing the light inside and were doing the last tricks of the day before stopping work. The poorhouse girl, Katie, was on the ladder. Dandy was on the pedestal. Jack was standing astride on the catcher’s frame.

I felt my throat grow dry and I swallowed at the sight of Dandy looking so small and up so high.

‘Right!’ David called. He was on the ground below the flyers’ ladder. ‘Last trick of the day, and we have an audience so let’s show what we can do! Dandy! Let’s have that trick again.’

Dandy climbed two paces up an extra ladder above the pedestal to give herself more height and took the trapeze in both hands. Jack checked the buckles which held the thick leather belt at his waist, and rubbed his hands together, scowling and looking upwards. I hardly saw him. I was watching Dandy like a fieldmouse watches a circling hawk far above him. I saw her smile. She was happy enough.

I looked back to Jack. He was watching Dandy’s swing build up until she came so close that if he reached out he could tap her on the feet. He shifted a little, as if to ready himself and then he called, ‘Pret!’ in the way David had taught him. Dandy beat with her legs and swung a little harder, then Jack shouted, ‘Hup!’ and Dandy stretched her feet out towards him as far as she could.

For a moment she seemed to hang in space, quite motionless. Then Jack reached out and we heard the firm slap of his hands on her ankles. At that moment Dandy let go the trapeze and swung, head down, arms trailing, through Jack’s legs, through the A-frame, while Jack bent low to swing her.

She crested the swing on the other side and Jack let her swing back underneath him just as the trapeze swung back towards them. Then, with a scowl of concentration, Jack twisted his arms and Dandy half turned so she slewed around, still travelling in the air to face the trapeze as it came towards her, reached out her hands to it and took a firm grip as Jack released her feet. Dandy swooped upwards, clinging to her trapeze, and then back to the pedestal. Katie at the top reached out and caught her round the waist and helped her up. Dandy turned around and shrieked, ‘Bravo!’ to herself, Robert, and me, and we burst into spontaneous clapping.

‘Well done!’ Robert called up. ‘That is wonderful, Dandy! Well done Jack and well done David! That’s grand! Is there any more?’

Again they readied themselves. Dandy built up the swing and then put her legs back and looped them around the bar of the trapeze. Jack watched her, called, ‘Pret!’ to Dandy to warn her he was ready for her on the next swing. Then we heard him shout, ‘Hup!’ This time she had further to reach and there was almost a second when she released the safe lock of her legs on the trapeze before we heard the slap of his hands on her wrists. He swung her forwards and then back and Dandy flew from his hands, turning a languid elegant somersault before bouncing safely into the net.

I was sorry that I was such a fool with the ladder and the height that I could not be up there beside her. I should have liked to have been close to Dandy when she was swinging. I should have liked it to have been me who grabbed her around her slim waist and hauled her in. I would have liked to have helped her back on to the pedestal from the sickening drop beneath her.

‘What can Katie do?’ Robert called to David.

‘She’s not being caught yet,’ David called back. ‘The idea is that she does the trick and she and Jack just touch – so that they learn where each other is. She’s not ready to finish the trick yet.’

Robert nodded and we watched as Katie swooped across, and Jack slapped her ankles with a sound which echoed around the frosty air and she dropped into the net, turning up her feet and falling on her back.

‘Good work,’ Robert said. He took David by the shoulder and led him out of the barn, pausing only to damp down the stove.

Katie climbed out of the net and smiled at me. We had already met – Dandy had brought her up to the spare bedroom to meet me when she started work for Robert – but we had hardly spoken.

‘Well done!’ I said. ‘You are far ahead of me, and I had a month’s full practice.’

‘I had a good teacher,’ she said with a sly little smile. I thought for a moment that she had meant David, but then I saw that she was looking towards Jack as he came down the ladder hand over hand, his legs and feet held clear to one side.

Katie pushed back her mass of yellow hair. ‘You slapped me hard enough today,’ she said to Jack. Her voice, heavy with the Dorset burr, had a provocative little lilt to it. ‘My wrists is all red.’

She held her arms out to him, palms up so that he should see the red marks. I shot a look at Dandy. She was staring at Katie as if she had never seen her before.

‘That’s nothing,’ David said baldly. ‘Hello, Merry. Are you walking all right?’

‘I’m stiff,’ I confessed, ‘and a bit unsteady. But I feel well enough now.’

Jack’s smile was openly warm. ‘I missed you,’ he said frankly. ‘It’s good to see you in here again. What did you think of Dandy?’

He drew me towards him and put an arm around my waist to support me as we walked towards the door. I let him help me over the hard ground, as I had let his father guide me before. I did not flinch from the touch of the Gowers. Father and son, I had come to trust them. And Jack’s touch on my waist was warm, I could feel the roughness of his hand through the linen shirt.

Katie popped up on his other side, took his arm.

‘What did you think of the act, Meridon?’ she asked. ‘Isn’t Jack fine? I feel so brave when I hears him calling the swing. I just jumps when he tells me!’

I hesitated. I felt as if during my illness a whole world had shifted slightly so that everything was out of frame. I looked past Jack at Dandy. She was blank-faced too.

‘It was fine,’ I said neutrally. ‘Robert was pleased.’

‘Robert!’ The poorhouse girl gave a little affected scream. ‘I calls him Mr Gower. I’d never dare call him Robert!’ She seemed to cling a little closer to Jack. ‘I really do respects your da,’ she assured him.

Jack turned his head to me and gave me one of his slow provocative winks.

‘So you should,’ he said. ‘Merry and my father are old friends. He gave her the right to call him by his given name. And Dandy. Everything is different when we’re working all together on the road.’

‘I can’t wait!’ she exclaimed. ‘I can’t wait to get away from this horrid little village where everyone looks at me and points at me. I can’t wait to get away to do shows every night, and me and Dandy wear our pretty short skirts!’