‘Oh dear! Look what you’ve done. And my eyes aren’t what they were. Don’t fidget with the machine. Join the tennis club, did you say? I’m sure your dear daddy and mummy would never hear of it. You are much too small to be wandering about alone. I personally never have a minute’s peace while the twins are out. But you! Indeed no. Most unwise.’
Nicky, growing more dispirited every minute, went into the kitchen. Annie was washing dish-cloths. They smelt very nasty. She looked up.
‘Hallo! Look what the cat’s brought in. You’ve a face as long as a wet week. What’s the matter?’
She sounded friendly and nice. It was too much for Nicky. She burst into tears.
‘It’s the beastly tennis club. The others go all the time. There’s no one for me but David, and he sings all day and plays farms and——’
‘There.’ Annie came and knelt beside her. She put her arms round her. ‘It is dull for you, and that’s a fact. Why don’t you come in to me more? I might teach you a bit of cookin’.’
‘I don’t want to cook,’ Nicky wailed. ‘I’d rather do more juggling and patter dancing.’
‘Come on, then, let’s dance a breakdown. Nothing like it for raisin’ the spirits.’
Annie whistled. Then she began to dance. Presently Nicky joined in. They finished with a kind of cake-walk round the kitchen. When they had done they were both so out of breath they fell exhausted into two chairs.
‘You do that nice,’ Annie panted. ‘Funny kid, you are. You can do anything you put your mind to.’
‘I know that bit. Could you teach me some more, and some more juggling? Just me, while the others are at that club?’
Annie laughed. She got up and fetched basins and things to make cakes.
‘I’ve taught you most all of what I ever knew. ’Tisn’t like as if it was my own stuff. It’s only what I picked up from the other acts when I was a kid.’
Nicky eyed the basin hopefully.
‘Are you going to make cakes?’
Annie nodded.
‘Just a dripping one for your tea.’
Nicky helped herself to a little bit of dripping. She licked it off the end of her finger.
‘I suppose you learnt a lot of things from the other acts?’
Annie shook her head.
‘No. Not learnt. Just got a smattering. That’s very different. Learning’s what you’re doing out there with the doctor on Nobby’s wall. I like to hear your father. Keeps at it same as dad done to me. When I hear him going on at you to do the same thing over and over, I say to meself: “That’s the stuff.”’
Nicky sat on the table where she could watch the mixing better.
‘But you were learning to do it properly. That’s different.’
‘And what are you learning for? Fun? The doctor thinks different. Do it well if you’re goin’ to do it, he says, and I reckon he’s right.’
Nicky sighed.
‘It’s all right for Susan. She liked practising. Besides, daddy says she might play well. He never says that to me. He doesn’t even let me join a club.’
Annie stopped working. She leant on the table and put her face close to Nicky’s.
‘I tell you this, Nicky Heath. No matter what the doctor says, nor nobody else, you could do as well as Susan, and better, if you’d work. I seen it happen over and over again. All may start the same. All learn their stuff. But there’s one got something different. One you can’t hold back. That’s the one you’ll see at Olympia of a Christmas.’
Nicky looked puzzled.
‘Do you mean I play well?’
Annie sniffed.
‘No. Anyhow, I’ve never seen you. Judging by the trouble you take I should say you play like a foot. But what I do say is that if you did work, and knew your stuff backward, you got it in you to go right up. Trust me. I know.’
Nicky felt excited. Was Annie right? If she worked, could she? If she worked! There was the point. She thought work such a bore. Would she do it? She could. Why not? Secretly, so that no one would know. It would be nice if she was really good. Such a surprise for everybody.
‘I’d like to play well. Perhaps I’ll try.’
‘I should.’ Annie looked at the clock. ‘No time like the present. You take your racket. Pop along out and do a bit of practisin’. When you’ve finished I’ll have a cake for you, hot from the oven.’
Nicky had been the black sheep for so long she simply could not start being a white one. No one knew but Annie how hard she worked. If anybody came out she would lie down on her racket and pretend to be doing nothing. She got a kind of pleasure at getting things right all by herself. Of course, it was Annie who made her stick at it.
‘Now then, where’s all this tennis practisin’ we heard so much about?’
‘Well, I thought——’ Nicky would start to explain.
‘Whatever you was thinkin’ will keep,’ Annie would retort. ‘You go out and swing that bat.’
All the same, quarters of an hour practising tennis, walks with David and Agag, spending pennies with Mrs. Pettigrew, and gossips with Annie did not make very gay holidays. Nicky got crosser every day. Luckily for her something nice happened at the end of them.
One day after tea they had all been playing Lexicon, but Nicky was cross and David would talk to Agag, so they gave it up. Jim lay flat on his back and stared at the ceiling.
‘I wish we could go and see Annie’s father’s circus.’
‘One would have thought,’ said Nicky, ‘a boy who belonged to a tennis club, and who could go out alone, wouldn’t have wanted any more.’
‘Oh, shut up!’ Jim growled. ‘How you grumble! As a matter of fact, it was because of something I saw in a paper at our club. It was about a man in a circus who could walk on the ceiling like a fly, holding on upside-down.’
Susan sat beside him holding her knees.
‘He couldn’t really, could he? It must be some sort of trick.’
Jim rolled over.
‘There was a picture of him. I think it must be something in his boots.’
‘But flies don’t wear boots,’ Nicky objected. ‘How do they keep up?’
Jim looked scornful.
‘Suction, silly.’
David was building a house out of the Lexicon cards.
‘I’ve some ’formation.’
Nicky was drawing a picture on the window with lick.
‘What do you mean?’
‘The little fathead means he thinks he knows something,’ Jim explained; ‘but I bet he doesn’t.’
David carefully put another card on his house.
‘I’m going to sing at a concert——’
‘Stale news,’ Nicky interrupted.
‘An’ when I was practisin’ with Pinny this mornin’ daddy came in and told mummy somethin’.’
‘Well, what?’ Jim asked. ‘Do get on.’
David put another card on to his house.
‘I only heard part because I was singin’.’
Nicky turned round.
‘Nobody wants to know about your singing. What did daddy say?’
‘I like talking about my singin’.’ David’s house fell down. He carefully collected the cards and began rebuilding. ‘At the concert I’m going to sing The Camel’s Hump, and Pinny says Firs’ Frien’ as an encore.’
‘You probably won’t get an encore,’ Susan told him severely. ‘It’s very conceited to think you will. Tell us what daddy said.’
David stopped building.
‘He said he’d jus’ seen Annie and she’d had a letter from her father. I didn’t ac’ually hear what he said next. Then he said somethin’ about tickets.’
‘Tickets!’ They all spoke at once. They came and sat round David.
‘Didn’t you hear any more?’
‘Do you think they were for us?’
‘Do you think they were for Annie’s father’s circus?’
They were in the middle of trying to find out more when Mrs. Heath came in.
/> ‘Hallo, darlings! Just a minute while I take off my hat and coat. I’ve got a surprise for you all.’
Susan jumped up and put her arms round her mother’s waist.
‘Don’t take off your things. Tell us now.’
Nicky caught hold of her hand.
‘Mummy, is it a circus?’
Mrs. Heath looked at the eight eyes staring up at her. Then she just looked at David.
‘So you did hear. I wondered.’ She turned back to the others. ‘Yes, a circus. It’s Annie’s party. You’re going to Southend to see it. Her father’s invited you.’
They had a most wonderful day at Southend. They went quite early and spent the morning on the beach. They paddled. They took with them a picnic lunch which they ate on the beach. They had it early because, although the circus did not begin until two, Annie wanted to get them up to the ground before, so that they could see something of the fair.
Susan stood gaping at all the stalls and merry-go-rounds.
‘Oh, Annie, it’s lovely!’
‘Ah, you should see it at night,’ said Annie. ‘Lit up. You’re talking then.’
They had only a few pennies with them. The most exciting things cost sixpence to do. Luckily Annie knew the man who had the merry-go-round. She must have known him well, because she called him Alf.
‘Let’s have a ride, Alf.’
Alf proved to be an awfully nice man. He let them all ride. They each chose an animal. David a lion. Jim a horse. Susan an ostrich. Nicky rode on what she said was a rabbit. The others thought it was a sort of leopard.
After the first feeling of it being odd to keep going round had worn off, they enjoyed themselves tremendously. The organ in the middle screamed cheerful tunes. They screamed at each other. They had to scream or they could not hear. Just at first they waved at Annie and Alf each time they passed them. Then, as they went faster, they needed both hands to hold on and, anyhow, they were going so fast that Annie and Alf got blurred and looked almost like one person. Just as it seemed as if all the world were spinning, and if only they could spin a little faster they would go into a new world, the animals slowed down. Then they stopped. They got off very regretfully, if rather giddily. They found Annie and Alf.
‘Oh, thank you,’ they all gasped. ‘It was lovely.’
Alf grinned.
‘Enjoyed it? Then why did you get off?’
‘Do you mean’—Nicky caught hold of his hand—‘that you’d let us ride again?’
‘That’s right. Scram. They’ve just started.’
The second ride seemed almost better than the first. David expressed how they all felt when he said:
‘I didn’t feel I was me any more.’
The circus was quite perfect. There were all the things in it there ought to be at a circus. A very grand procession at the beginning. First the artists, then a whole collection of little dogs, who wore coats and trousers. Then the sea-lions, three of them carrying balls on their noses. Then the horses, six greys, six chestnuts, and a little piebald pony pulling a cart. Then came a chimpanzee riding a bicycle. Last of all, the clowns.
All circuses are exciting, but your first is your best, because you do not compare it with anything. The Heaths sat right in the front with their mouths dropping open with excitement. All the circus people either knew Annie, or knew who she was. So when the clowns came into the ring they directed most of their tricks at the children. They threw balls at them. One, who was dressed as a cat, came and stroked Susan’s face. Another one pretended he was going to throw a bucket of water at them, which made them all shrink back and the audience laugh. Nicky and David thought this the best part of the circus. They roared with laughter. David could not get over the goodness of the clowns in condescending to play with them.
‘He throwed that ball at me, Annie, delibra’ly.’
‘Yes, dear,’ Annie agreed. ‘It’s like George’s sauce to do a thing like that.’
Jim and Susan did not care for the clowns. They would have liked them, but they thought it was dreadful, the rest of the audience looking at them.
‘Annie, do tell the clowns to go away,’ Susan begged. ‘Everybody is looking at us.’
‘Well, it won’t make them blind,’ said Annie. ‘We aren’t doing anything we need be ashamed of, are we?’
From the twins’ point of view Nicky brought more shame on them than the clowns. One of them, dressed as a baby, was pushed by another, dressed as a nurse, in what looked like a pram, round the edge of the ring. Just before they reached the children the nurse tripped, and the baby was thrown out. Quick as lightning Nicky was out of her seat and helping to pick him up.
‘Goodness!’ she said when she reached him. ‘You’re a man!’ She looked so surprised that the audience laughed. The clown took Nicky’s hand and made her bow with him. Everybody clapped.
Jim and Susan attacked Nicky the moment she got back to her seat.
‘What a show you made of yourself,’ Jim growled.
‘Nicky, how could you,’ said Susan. ‘People must have thought it terribly queer.’
‘I don’t see why they should,’ Nicky objected. ‘I thought he was a real baby. If he was we’d have had to pick him up.’
‘You couldn’t have thought him a real baby,’ Jim argued. ‘It was a man in a baby’s bonnet. Any fool could see that.’
Nicky grinned.
‘Any fool, yes, but not Nicky Heath.’
‘But don’t you see——’ Susan broke in.
‘Ssh!’ said Nicky. ‘Don’t talk. Here come the sea-lions.’
The big moment for all of them was the appearance of Annie’s father. Having always been used to Annie in a cap and apron they were not prepared for the magnificence of her father. His face was perhaps rather lined, but a lot of pink and white paint hid it. The rest of him was very grand indeed. He wore pink tights all over, and with them silver-spangled shorts. On the programme he was not put down as George Smith, which was his name, but as ‘The Great Godolphin, the Flying Wonder.’ And in small letters underneath: ‘Assisted by Mademoiselle Leticia.’
Mademoiselle Leticia strained the children’s allegiance to Annie. They had come to the circus convinced that if only she had both arms nobody would have been as good as her. But when Mademoiselle Leticia came in they wavered. She was small. She had golden hair and blue eyes. She, too, wore pink fleshings, but instead of the spangled shorts she wore fluffy pink skirts. David was the only one to express what they all felt. He said in tones of frank disbelief:
‘Annie, did you ever look like that?’
Annie snorted contemptuously.
‘And better. That’s Lily Briggs. Known her since she was knee-high to a grasshopper. Her father was handy-man with an elephant we once had. Sniffy, peaky little thing she was.’
‘Was she?’ Susan tried not to sound too surprised. It looked as though she were doubting if Annie was speaking the truth.
While they were talking Annie’s father and Mademoiselle Leticia climbed up swinging ladders on to trapezes hung from the roof. The band played a waltz.
Unless it is an old-fashioned turn, such as seeing a ballerina jump off a horse’s back through a paper hoop, there is no more beautiful act of the circus than trapeze work. Actually Annie’s father was nowhere near first-class. Most of what he did was done in a hundred other circuses all over the world.
Naturally, as it was their first circus, the children did not know this. They thought what they saw was marvellous. They could only gasp. Owing to their tennis training they had just sufficient knowledge to appreciate what perfection of timing and control of the body even the simplest movement meant. When at last the two figures climbed to the ground and bowed, they clapped till they were almost black in the face.
Because the children knew that before she had broken her arm, whether she looked as nice as Mademoiselle Leticia or not, Annie had actually done this act, they could never look upon her quite the same again. It was all very well for Annie to pull out a strand of
toffee and show how a flying trapeze worked. Then it had all been part of a fairy story. Now they knew.
They met the Great Godolphin for a moment afterwards. In the air he had seemed like a god. In a dressing-gown he did not seem very important.
‘Well, Annie, my girl,’ he said. ‘Got good seats, I saw.’
‘These are the Masters and Miss Heaths, dad. This is Jim. Here’s his twin, Susan. This is Nicky. This here’s David.’
Annie’s father shook hands all round. Then he turned to Nicky.
‘It was you that went to pick old George up. Thought he was a baby, didn’t you? Said he laughed fit to bust.’
Annie nodded. Then she gave her father a wink.
‘We’re not backwards in coming forwards. Not this one.’
They had to go after that to catch the train back to London. All the way up in the train they asked Annie about trapezes. How she learnt. How much time she practised. If she earned much money. Annie answered all the questions.
‘It must have been a lovely life,’ said Susan enviously. ‘It does seem mean you have to live with us instead.’
‘Wonderful luck to have anywhere to live,’ Annie pointed out philosophically.
Jim sighed.
‘It seems such a waste after all the training you’ve done.’
‘There never could be no waste in training,’ Annie said firmly. ‘Makes me handy in getting about even now.’
David leant against her.
‘Annie, do you suppose that if he worked and worked Agag could be good enough for a circus?’
Annie laughed.
‘I don’t quite see him putting his back into it.’
‘I don’t see why not,’ David objected. ‘He’s got a lot of back.’
Nicky half lay down, so that her feet would reach the seat opposite.
‘I think I’d rather like to go into a circus.’
‘You’d be a fat lot of good,’ said Jim scornfully. ‘You’d never bother to learn anything.’
‘I wouldn’t be so sure of that, Jim.’ Annie collected the lunch-basket from the rack. ‘Many surprises in this world.’
Annie saying this amazed the twins. They had no time to answer, though, for at that moment they ran into Liverpool Street.
CHAPTER VIII