Gus raised shocked eyebrows.
‘How long you’ve been in a place has nothing to do with education. Don’t you two know the laws of the country? Every child must go to be educated.’
Considering that how they were educated had been one of Aunt Rebecca’s pet subjects of conversation, both Peter and Santa were a bit hurt at Gus’s assumption of their ignorance.
‘Of course we know that,’ Peter said. ‘Only it seems odd to find a school you like the minute you arrive, that’s all.’
‘Like!’ Gus looked puzzled. ‘Schools are all much the same, unless you take a scholarship, that is. You’ll find out what the one here’s like yourselves tomorrow.’
‘Will we?’ Santa was startled. ‘What school are you sending us to?’
Gus looked rather as though he were afraid his nephew and niece were weak in the head.
‘What school! Wherever it is, of course. There’ll be one up the street, I dare say.’
Peter flushed scarlet. He felt sure he would be a fool in a school.
‘But I mean to say – I’ve never been …! You see I was taught at home.’
Gus thumped his fist on the table.
‘Taught at home! School’s what you need. What was good enough for your grandfather, your father, and for me, if it comes to that, I reckon is good enough for you.’
‘But …’ Peter stammered. ‘I thought – I mean to say … I mean, Aunt Rebecca told us …’
Gus gave his head a despairing shake. Then he went on with his dinner. He spoke between mouthfuls.
‘Mustn’t speak ill of the dead, but it seems to me your poor aunt stuffed you two up with a pack of nonsense. I wonder now what Rebecca told you. Do you know what your grandfather was, for a start?’ The children shook their heads. ‘He was a gardener.’
Aunt Rebecca had never defined her position in the duchess’s household. Peter and Santa had never asked. They had heard the duchess continually quoted and had come to think of her as perhaps a distant relation. They were surprised and sounded it.
‘A gardener!’
Gus gave them a funny look.
‘No need to take that tone. We’ll be lucky if you turn out anything half as useful. Very good gardener your grandfather. Became head at Plyst. You’ll have heard your aunt speak of the place.’ Peter and Santa nodded. They had indeed heard of Plyst till the name made them yawn. ‘Your grandmother was in the kitchen there till she married.’
‘In the kitchen!’
Gus nodded.
‘I was telling you, Santa, that she was a good cook.’
Peter and Santa went on eating in silence. It is a very funny feeling to have your world turned upside down. They had after all spent a good many years being told they were too grand to mix with their neighbours. Now they found not only that they came from quite simple people, but that Gus was proud of it. It was muddling.
‘What did our father do?’ Santa asked at last.
‘Tom? He fancied horses. He went as groom to the duke. You see, my old dad, your grandfather, he always said: “Put your feet under another man’s table and you’ll be all right!”’
Santa looked puzzled.
‘What did he mean?’
Gus jerked his thumb at the table.
‘What’s usually on it?’
Santa looked round.
‘Food?’
‘That’s right. That’s what he meant. Go into service and you know where your food’s coming from. That’s what your dad did. They had everything found.’
Peter looked up.
‘Then why didn’t you go into service?’
‘Me!’ Gus laughed. ‘I started all right. I was always turning somersaults and flip-flaps and practising hand-stands, and though my old dad walloped me it didn’t cure me. So when I was just turned twelve he spoke for a place for me under him in the garden.’ He gave another chuckle. ‘Nice gardener’s boy I was. Standing on my head all day among the flower-pots. Then one day along comes his grace and sees me.’
‘Goodness,’ said Santa, ‘what did he do to you?’
Gus helped himself to some more stew.
‘I didn’t see him. So he stood there watching me for quite a time saying nothing. Getting a bit lame he was then, and always carried a stout stick to help him round. Suddenly he ups with this and lands me a wallop. My word, I was right side up in no time. “Is this the way you garden?” he says to me. Then he lands me another. Then he looks round. “Fetch Possit,” he says.’
‘Grandfather?’ asked Peter.
‘That’s right. Gus finished his stew thoughtfully. ‘Wonderful old chap, his grace. They don’t make them better. He had me up to the house that evening. Made me show him all I could do. And in spite of my dad, who was dead against it, had me apprenticed to Mr Cob.’
Santa collected the dirty plates.
‘Was he against it because your feet wouldn’t be under somebody else’s table?’
‘Partly it was. Mostly it was me being in the theatrical line. Never been anything like that in our family.’
Peter leaned forward.
‘Have you been with Mr Cob ever since?’
‘Off and on. Then war came and I joined up, and Mr Cob closed down.’
‘Why?’ Santa asked.
Gus got up and went to the cupboard. He took out bread, butter, and cheese.
‘On account of the feed mostly. You can’t keep six elephants and about forty horses and a lot of lions going when there’s a war on. So he pays everybody off, and stores most of his stuff.’
Santa looked, worried.
‘But what happened to the animals?’
Gus cut bread for them all.
‘They weren’t Mr Cob’s. He’d an interest in the horses but the rest were just acts he’d engaged.’
Peter took the piece of bread Gus handed him.
‘What happened when the war was over?’
Gus cut himself a bit of cheese.
‘I was all right. Travelled all over the place. Then one day I ran into Mr Cob. Leicester Square it was, just after Christmas. “What are you doing, Gus?” he says to me. Well, it just happened at that moment I wasn’t fixed, so I told him. “Right,” he says. “Come and sign on tomorrow. I’m tenting again.” You should have heard the way he said it. You see, he was born in the circus, and those war years when he wasn’t on the road hit him hard. “I’m tenting again.” He said it like a kid who finds what he wants in its stocking of a Christmas morning.’
Gus seemed to sink into memories of that day when he had met Mr Cob again, for he sat saying nothing. Santa wanted to hear the rest, so she said:
‘And did you sign on?’
Gus took a mouthful of bread and cheese.
‘Yes, and been with him ever since.’
Peter was still puzzling over their family history.
‘Who was our mother?’
Gus cut another bit of cheese.
‘Funny woman your Aunt Rebecca, never telling you anything about yourselves. Your mother was sort of nursery governess. An orphan she was.’ He spread some butter on his bread. ‘Funny how life turns out. There’s me doing the trapeze act, running risks all the time, you might say, and here I am enjoying my dinner. There was your mum and dad with a little home and living all safe and secure, and they go for a halfday’s shopping to the next town; something goes wrong with the train signal, and where are they? Gone.’
Santa helped herself to some more cheese.
‘And that’s when we came to Aunt Rebecca.’
‘That’s right. You see, there were five of us. Rebecca she was the eldest, and she works up to be personal maid to the old duchess,’ Gus went on. ‘Then there was me. Then there was Tom, your father. Then Sydney and Bert, they were killed in the war. Your dad going seemed to break my old father up. Then about two years later my old mother, your grandmother, went. The old duchess was dead by then, and she’d left your Aunt Rebecca a little annuity, so she said she’d take you two. Mind you, it was good of h
er for she hadn’t much. I wrote and offered to put up so much a week but she turned me down flat. She said she had learnt what was what while she had been with the duchess and she should bring you up how she thought right, and would I keep out of it. She didn’t want you to know there was anything so common in the family as a clown in a circus.’
Santa nodded at the kettle.
‘It’s boiling. Shall I start to wash up?’
Gus nodded.
‘The basin’s in the corner. You do it outside, it’s less messy. Peter can dry.’
Santa poured some water into the basin.
‘It hasn’t made much difference in the end. Aunt Rebecca not wanting us to know you, I mean. Because here we are.’
Gus sighed.
‘Poor Rebecca!’ Once more he raised his right hand to take off his hat, then remembering he had not one on put it down again. ‘What she’d say if she could see us now.’ There was a knock at the door. Gus got up. ‘Like as not that’s the reply from the reverend. You stay here.’
It was the reply. The children heard Gus go down the caravan steps. The noise of a tearing envelope. Then, ‘No answer.’ In the pause before he came back Santa whispered:
‘Do you want to stay here? I mean now you know about school and everything?’
Peter nodded.
‘Yes. I just feel muddled. Don’t you?’
Gus came back. The telegram was in his hand. He laid it on the table and smoothed it out.
‘The reverend says’ – then he read slowly: “Greatly relieved naturally decision as to future rests with you Stibbings.”’ He folded the telegram and put it back in his pocket. ‘Very right and proper.’
Santa came over to Gus. She carried the bowl of water.
‘Mr Stibbings is always right and proper, Gus dear. But what are you going to do with us?’
Gus looked first at her and then at Peter.
‘Would you like to stay with me for the rest of the tenting time?’
Peter looked at Santa.
‘You would, wouldn’t you?’
‘I think it would be heavenly.’
Gus gave a quick glance at Peter.
‘And you.’
‘I’d like it.’
‘Right.’ Gus put the telegram in his pocket. ‘That’s settled. Now we must get a move on. I’ve another bed to fix, Mr Cob to see. When you’ve done the washing-up you must write to the reverend to thank him, and to Mrs Ford to send on your things. We must hurry or we’ll never be through by five-thirty.’
‘Five-thirty?’ Peter stopped in the doorway. ‘What happens then?’
Gus looked shocked.
‘What happens! The show of course. What we’re here for, and the only thing that matters. And don’t you two forget it.’
6
In the Stables
It was wretchedly dull writing letters with so much going on outside. Peter and Santa simply could not give their minds to it. Every few minutes one of them would go to the caravan door and have a look out. All sorts of things were going on. Scattered groups came up from the town and paid sixpence to look at the animals. People brought the most exciting-looking clothes out from their caravans and hung them up to give them a brush. A smart-looking woman, with a very alive skin and black hair cut in a fringe, came and sat on the steps of her caravan and covered a small wooden ring with artificial roses. While she worked she talked to somebody inside the caravan. Santa, who was the first to hear her speak, looked very surprised and beckoned to Peter.
‘French! My goodness, doesn’t she do it well!’
Peter listened.
‘Perhaps she is French.’
Santa sat down again. Grudgingly she took up her pen. She gave the end of it an angry bite.
‘Why must we write letters? I’d like to watch her make that ring of roses. I wonder what it’s for? It’s too small to wear.’ She sighed and looked down at her letter. ‘You know I don’t know what to ask Mrs Ford to send. Gus said only useful things. I’ve written down “mackintosh”. That must be useful. But I can’t think of anything else. What have you put?’
Peter turned his page over.
‘I’ve said: “Please send all my pyjamas, even the old ones. Any pants and vests and socks you can find. My shirts and my ties. All my handkerchiefs. My other suit, and the old one that wants mending on the elbows.”’
Santa began to write furiously.
‘What a fool I am. Of course those are what we want. Pyjamas. All my vests and things. All my socks. As a matter of fact I’ve only got three good pairs, and one I’ve got on and one is in my case. Still, she may as well look, she might find some old ones. What next?’
Peter looked back at his list.
‘Shirts and ties. You don’t wear those. There’s your shoes and all your handkerchiefs.’
Santa nodded.
‘And my frock and coat and things. And my summer frocks, only they’ll be too short. And that’s all.’ She wrote quickly across the bottom, ‘Much love, Santa,’ then got up and went back to the door. ‘Oh, Peter, come and look. There’s a man climbing about on the top of the big top.’
Peter jumped up. It was perfectly true. There was a man right up at the top of one of the king-poles. They watched with enormous interest, wondering what on earth he could be doing. Suddenly they saw. He was fixing up a chain of coloured electric lights. They came back to the table again. Santa addressed an envelope to Mrs Ford and pushed it across to Peter to put his letter in. Peter drew a picture of a caravan on the blotting-paper.
‘I was wondering. Do you think we ought to write to Bill?’
Santa tried to think fairly. Of course they ought to write to Bill. He had been kinder than almost any one they had ever known. All the same the thought of writing yet another letter gave her a sinking feeling inside. Nobody could want to write three letters the first day they came to live in a circus. She made a ‘must we?’ face.
‘We’d have more to tell him tomorrow.’
Peter was just as glad of an excuse as she was.
‘That’s true.’ He threw an envelope across to Santa. ‘Shove yours to Mr Stibbings in there, and lick it up. I’ll do Mrs Ford’s.’ Suddenly he stopped with his tongue out ready to lick. ‘Doesn’t it seem funny how important they seemed. They don’t matter a bit now.’
Santa was licking so she could only say ‘Um’. But now she came to think, it was very odd. Mr Stibbings with his slowness and fussiness. Mrs Ford and her tears. Madame Tranchot with her black-bordered handkerchief and her hands thrown into the air. Miss Fane and her violin. All suddenly just gone away. It was as though they had been packed up and put in a box like the old ivory set of spillikins that had belonged to the duchess.
Peter had pushed Mrs Ford’s envelope into the middle of the table. Suddenly he pounced on it.
‘I say, we are fools. We never said where the things are to be sent to.’
Santa looked blank. Circuses seemed very come-and-go affairs, not at all the sort of places to have luggage sent to.
‘Well, where shall she send it? We’d better wait and ask Gus.’
Peter had managed to reopen the envelope without tearing it. He frowned at it.
‘I’d much rather not ask him. I think it’s the sort of thing he’d think we ought to know. I’d much rather find out for myself.’
‘How?’ said Santa.
Peter got up and went to the door. He was not exactly cross, but somehow since they had run away people were making him feel that they thought him stupid. Nobody ever had before. In fact Aunt Rebecca, Mr Stibbings, Mrs Ford, and Madame Tranchot had all in their way given him the idea he was rather bright. He knew that he was not stupid really. All the same, the way Gus said things made him feel a fool, which was just as bad as being one. If possible he did not mean to give him the chance to make him feel like that again.
Santa looked at him anxiously. She knew just what he meant about Gus. He was the sort of man who expected you to know everything straight off without be
ing told. She joined Peter at the door.
‘I can’t think why we didn’t tell Mr Stibbings we had an uncle.’
Peter gave an angry jerk of his shoulders.
‘You thought it was a good idea to run away. You said so.’
Santa sat on the caravan step.
‘Of course I did. What I mean is, it’s funny we both thought running away was the only thing to do. It would have been more sensible to say we had an uncle.’
Peter kicked at the caravan door.
‘I can’t think why Aunt Rebecca never told us about Gus, and why didn’t she say she was just maid to the duchess?’
Santa puzzled the question over in her mind.
‘As a matter of fact she never said she wasn’t. I mean she never said why she knew that awful duchess. Anyhow I’m quite glad. I always hated Lady Moira, Lady Marigold, and the Manliston girls. Now I needn’t be like them any more.’
Peter felt surprised and pleased.
‘And I needn’t do things like Lord Bronedin.’
Santa stretched out her legs.
‘We needn’t do anything like anybody. We’re just us.’ Suddenly she leant forward and gripped her knees excitedly. ‘I can cut off my hair.’
Peter was doubtful. Of course he knew Santa’s hair was a beast of a nuisance to her. All the same he was not sure he thought it a good idea to cut it off. It looked rather nice sometimes.
‘I shouldn’t. You’d probably look awful with it short.’ He stepped through the door on to the step on which Santa was sitting. ‘Look, there’s Alexsis. Let’s ask him about how luggage comes.’
Alexsis came and sat on the steps with them. It took him quite a time to grasp what it was they wanted to know. Peter and Santa kept prompting each other, and they spoke too fast for his bad English. When he did grasp what they were talking about he got up and ran down the steps.
‘I will ask my father. He understands this things.’ He turned and held up a finger. ‘You wait? Yes?’
Alexsis’s father, Maxim Petoff, was only in his caravan. Alexsis brought him back with him. He made a formal introduction.
‘This is my father, Maxim Petoff. He is equestrian director. He trains the horses. You understand? Yes?’
Neither Peter nor Santa did understand much. They had never seen a performing horse, so had no idea what training them meant. But they smiled politely as if they understood perfectly.