cherry tree. I thought the show was over, but Lily knew better. “It’s only the interval,” she said bitterly, with revived resentment. Just then the red-haired fellow, the one who had grinned at me from the back step of his trailer, appeared from around the side of the tent. Over his red shirt and clown’s trousers he wore a rusty black tailcoat now, and a dented top hat was fixed somehow at an impossible angle to the back of his head. I realised who it was he reminded me of: George Goodfellow, an affable fox, the villain in a cartoon strip in the newspapers long ago, who sported a slender cigarette holder and just such a stovepipe hat, and whose brush protruded cheekily between the split tails of his moth-eaten coat. When he saw us the fellow hesitated, and that knowing smirk crossed his face again. Before I could stop her—and why should I have tried to?—Lily went forward eagerly and spoke to him. He had been about to slip inside the tent, and now stood half turned away from her, holding open the canvas flap and looking down at her over his shoulder with an expression of mock alarm. He listened for a moment, then laughed, and glanced at me, and said something briefly, and then with another glance in my direction slipped nimbly into the darkness of the tent.
“We can go in,” Lily said breathlessly, “for the second half.”
She stood before me in quivering stillness, like a colt waiting to be loosed from the reins, hands clasped at her back and looking intently at the toe of her sandal.
“Who is that fellow?” I said. “What did you say to him?”
She gave herself an impatient shake.
“He’s just one of them,” she said, gesturing toward the caravans and the tethered horses. “He said we could go in.”
The smell inside the tent struck me with a familiar smack: greasepaint, sweat, dust, and, underneath all, a heavy wet warm musky something that was as old as Nero’s Rome. Benches were set out in rows, as in a church, facing a makeshift trestle stage at the far end. There was the unmistakable atmosphere of a matinee, jaded, restless, faintly violent. People were promenading in the aisles, hands in pockets, nodding to their friends and shouting jocular insults. A gang of youths at the back, whooping and whistling, was hurling abuse and apple cores at a rival gang nearby. One of the circus folk, in singlet and tights and espadrilles—it was the Lothario with greasy curls and the nostril stud whom Lily had spoken to in the morning—loitered at the edge of the stage, absent- mindedly picking his nose. I was looking about for Goodfellow when he came bustling in from the left, carrying a piano accordion in one hand and a chair in the other. At sight of him there was a smattering of ironic applause, at which he stopped in his tracks and gave a great start, peering about with exaggerated astonishment, as if an audience were the last thing he had expected. Then he put on a blissful smile of acknowledgement, closing his eyes, and bowed deeply, to a chorus of jeers; his top hat fell off and rolled in a half circle around his feet, and carelessly he snatched it up and clapped it on again, and proceeded gaily toward the front of the stage, the accordion hanging down at his side with the bellows at full stretch and emitting tortured squeaks and wheezes. At every other step he would pause, pretending not to know where these cat-call sounds were coming from, and would peer over his shoulder, or glare suspiciously at the people in the front row, and once even twisted himself into a corkscrew shape to stare down in stern admonishment past his shoulder at his own behind. When the laughter had subsided, and after essaying a few experimental runs on the keyboard, head inclined and gaze turned soulfully inward, like a virtuoso testing the tone of his Stradivarius, he threw himself back on the chair with a violent movement of the shoulders and began to play and sing raucously. He sang in a reedy falsetto, with many sobs and gasps and cracked notes, swaying from side to side on the chair and passionately casting up his eyes, so that a rim of yellowish white was visible below the pupils. After a handful of rackety numbers—“O Sole Mio” was one, and “South of the Border”—he ended with a broad flourish by letting the accordion fall open flabbily across his knees, producing from it a wounded roar, and immediately slammed it shut again. After that for a long moment he sat motionless, with the instrument shut in his lap, stricken-faced, staring before him with bulging eyes, then rose, wincing, and scuttled off at a knock-kneed run, a hand clutched to his crotch.
Lily thought all this was wonderful, and laughed and laughed, leaning her head weakly against my shoulder. We were seated near the front, where the crowd was densest. The atmosphere under the soaked canvas was heavy and humid; it was like being trapped inside a blown-up balloon, and my head had begun to ache. Until it started up I did not notice the band, down at the side of the stage, a three-piece ensemble of trumpet, drums, and an amplified keyboard on a sort of stand. The trumpet, unexpectedly, was played by a large and no longer young woman, heavily made up and wearing a blonde wig, who on the high notes would go into a crouch and screw shut her eyes, as if she could not bear the intensity of the brassy music she was making. The drummer, a bored young man with sideburns and an oiled quiff, smoked a cigarette with negligent ease all the while that he was playing, shifting it expertly from one corner of his mouth to the other and letting the smoke dribble out at his nostrils. The player at the keyboard was old, and wore braces; a wispy fan of hair was combed flat across the bald dome of his skull. Preceded by a rattle on the kettledrum, Goodfellow reappeared, bounding into the middle of the stage, kissing bunched fingers at us and opening wide his arms in a gesture of swooning gratitude, as if it were wild applause that was being showered on him, instead of howls and lip-farts. Then the band went into an oily, drunken tango and he began to dance, sashaying and slithering about the stage on legs that might have been made of rubber, his arms wrapped about himself in a lascivious embrace. Each time he passed her by the trumpet player blew a loud, discordant squeal and thrust the bell of her instrument lewdly in the direction of his skinny loins. He pretended to ignore her, and pranced on, with a disdainful waggle of his backside. At the close he did a pirouette, twisting himself into that corkscrew shape again, coat-tails flying and his arms lifted and fingers daintily touching high above his head, then leapt into the air and executed a scissors-kick, and finished in the splits, landing with a thump loud enough to be heard over the music and bringing delighted shrieks of mock agony from the laughing youths at the back. His top hat had stayed in place throughout, and now he skipped nimbly to his feet and snatched it off and made another low bow, the hat pressed to his breast and an arm upswept behind him with rigid index finger pointing aloft. Lily, laughing, said into my ear in a whispered wail that she was sure she was going to wet herself.
The next act was a juggler; it took me a moment to recognise Lothario, got up in a loose red silk shirt open on a perfectly hairless chest. He kept dropping an Indian club and picking it up with forced and scowling insouciance. After him came a magician, even clumsier than he, wearing a crumpled evening suit too long in the leg, and a celluloid dicky that had a habit of snapping up like a roller-blind when he was about to complete a trick. He too was familiar, and sure enough, when I looked to the keyboard it was unattended. The magic feats he performed were old and obvious. When they went wrong and the audience guffawed he would smile shyly, showing the tip of his tongue, and smooth a small plump hand across the oiled hair plastered to his pate. Presently he summoned his assistant—the trumpeter, of course, quick-changed now into a crimson corset affair and fishnet tights and wearing a lustrous black wig that seemed made of plastic—and proceeded laboriously to saw her in half. After that he shuffled off, to derisory applause, while the trumpeter remained behind and did a perfunctory sword-swallowing act. Striking a heroic stance, stout legs braced and back arched, she lowered the blade deftly and daintily down her throat as if it were a long, gleaming silver fish, winning a storm of wolf-whistles from the rear of the tent.
Now Goodfellow came on to the stage yet again, hatless this time, and wearing a spangled waistcoat. I studied him with anxious scrutiny, wondering what it was about him that alarmed me so strangely. His face was stark and waxy white, as if there were no skin at all, just the skull set with a moving mouth and those two darting eyes. He swaggered back and forth before us, chanting in a high, singsong voice a patter he had obviously delivered so often that the words had taken on a rhythm of their own, independent of any sense. He was calling for a volunteer, some stout soul from amongst us brave enough, he said, smirking, to enter into a contest of wills with him. The crowd was quieter now. He cast his dark glance over us with contemptuous enjoyment. Lily sat with a fist clenched in her lap and her legs coiled, one ankle hooked behind the other, her face lifted to the stage in an attitude of awed solemnity, like that of one of the women at the foot of the cross. I could feel the tiny tremors of excitement running through her. Then all at once she was out of her seat and racing forward, fleet as a maenad, and with one skip leapt on to the stage and stopped, and stood, teetering a little, her mouth open in a silent exclamation of surprise and sudden misgiving.
At first, Goodfellow did not look at her at all, but pretended to be unaware of her presence; then, slowly, still keeping his eye on us, he began to circle around her, in a strange, high-stepping, stealthy prowl, approaching a little nearer to her at each pass, until he was close enough to lay a hand lightly on her shoulder. Still he continued to circle about her, gently turning her with him, so that she became the revolving axis around which he moved. Her expression was growing ever more uncertain, and a worried smile kept flickering on and off her face like the light of a faltering bulb.
