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High Wire
Chapter 1
Outrage
Julia turned her head to the right, casting a sidelong glance into the mirror, studying the fading bruise on her neck with more concern than it now merited. It was almost a week old already, and should be relatively easy to disguise.
With a fragile sigh, she picked up her cosmetic bag and pulled out paint and powder; craning her head once again into the mirror as she dabbed at the ugly blotch on her skin. She realised that it probably looked worse in the light of day than it would tonight, by moonlight or lamp light, but Julia was and always would be her very own worst critic.
She stood now and, trying to make the best of the mirror, turned side to side and back again, studying her demure blue dress in it, picking at a stray thread here and stroking a crease there. Perfect? She barked a small laugh at her reflection. Far from it, but the very best she could hope to achieve and, given the rarity of her being allowed out by herself for the night, perhaps more than she’d ever expected.
She ran her hands through her short, punkish dark hair, tweaking it where necessary, pulling a strand idly between her fingernails for a second as she considered her face. She’d never admit to her own beauty, or permit compliment from others. Her nose was a little too pointed, her chin a touch too weak. Her skin was soft enough, but deathly pale, and made all the worse by contrast with her eyes, which were such a deep shade of brown that they appeared all but black.
She’d ignored the rest of the contents of her cosmetic bag; a few hours off the lead was one thing, but if Bryan even suspected she’d gone out painted and tarted up, he’d blow a fuse quicker than he could think and, indeed, would find it considerably easier.
Julia was reaching for her mobile phone when the door of the caravan banged and shivered in its frame. She yelped, horribly aware in one shamefully lucid moment of how easily she jumped at the slightest noise these days, and how quick she was to assume the worst of anything. She dropped her bag on the tiny kitchen counter and, kicking off her shoes, went to the door and swung it outward.
The evening outside was freshening up considerably; it had been a fierce, late summer boiler of a day in London, but now, with the sunset well past and the sky turning the colour of lapis lazuli, a playful breeze was rustling in the weeping willows behind the caravans.
No-one about. Julia flicked her head from side to side but, she realised, almost everyone else was up at the show. She picked her way down the stairs in stockinged feet, hoping to avoid splinters, and stood in the dust at the bottom, hands planted on her hips and her mouth twisted in puzzlement. Only when she turned back over her shoulder did she notice the elegant, long-bladed throwing knife that had been driven into the door.
She scowled now, all doubt removed, the culprit clearly identified. Pushing herself up on tiptoe, she wrenched the knife from the cheap plywood and hefted it, her long fingers curling around the grip. The blade caught the twilight as she turned towards the willows and called out.
“Daniel Gibson, you come here right now! I swear on my bloody life that if you don’t come and get this yourself, I’ll find you and give it back to you point first!”
After a heartbeat, two figures peered at her from behind a rhododendron bush at the edge of the trees, nervous grins painted across their faces. Julia curled a finger at them, the knife still weighted in one hand, and they slipped out of the shadows of the foliage and approached her, still smirking.
Both young men towered over Julia, but she frowned heavily and jabbed the knife at both of them in turn to emphasise her point as she harangued them, and they backed off in the face of her ire.
She knew them both very well, of course; there were no strangers within the bounds of the circus. Michael, the younger of the two, was a slim and gangling twenty year old whose thick dark curls and dark, deep-set eyes betrayed his Italian parentage.
Daniel was twenty-two, both taller and heavier than his friend, but he was painfully shy sometimes, Julia suddenly recalled. While Michael continued to eyeball her with a mixture of playful belligerence and respect, Daniel was staring fixedly at the packed earth between his feet. His long, sandy hair, normally kept tied back, was now loose and unbound, and hung over his eyes. He swiped at it, and then raised his head.
“Sorry, Jules,” he said, finally, a fine pink blush spreading beneath his freckles. “It was an accident, really.”
“An accident?” Julia repeated, scornfully. “Danny, the targets are over there,” she said, pointing to the straw bullseyes on the other side of the clearing.
“We were just…” he began, but Julia cut him off.
“You were pissing about, is what you were ‘just’ doing,” she spat. “I know you two. Honestly, you’re going to really hurt someone one of these days. Now stop showing off and practice properly, okay?”
Julia softened her expression at last, and turned the knife around, proffering the handle to Daniel. He took it without meeting her gaze, but there was a brief, light contact between their fingers for a moment, and only then did he show her those misty blue eyes. Then the weapon was gone, slipped into the palm of Daniel’s hand, and he blushed once more.
“You look gorgeous, Jules,” Michael commented, dodging a sudden swipe from his friend. “Going out?”
“Yes,” she volunteered, “if certain people around here will leave me alone to finish getting ready, that is. Now bugger off, the pair of you.”
Daniel lifted the knife that Julia had returned to him, cast a calculating glance at the targets, thirty feet away, and then flipped the blade straight into the air. It scythed over and over, flashing like a salmon in midstream and, when he caught it on the downward arc, Daniel’s arm was already moving. The knife whistled through the air and smacked to a halt in the centre of the bullseye, quivering gently.
“Practice? We don’t need no stinking practice,” Michael observed, smoothly.
The caravan park was all but sepulchral by the time Julia returned, although she could hear a radio somewhere in the darkness, chirping out an unidentifiable song. She passed the main tent, almost twisted her ankle on a sudden hummock and, swearing softly, slipped out of her shoes and carried them the rest of the way to her caravan.
As she approached, she could see that there was a light on in the
rear window, and she loosed a soft, inward groan. If
She twitched, and turned to see Daniel leaning against the next caravan, arms folded and hands wrapped around his elbows. He smiled brightly but nervously, and ducked his head as she studied him.
“Had a good evening?” he asked, sotto voce. Julia nodded, and then watched him incline his head toward the lighted window of her home.
“Are you…gonna be all right?” he went on, still in that same gentle whisper. Julia threw a wary glance over her shoulder, but there was no movement from within, and she took a couple of steps toward Daniel.
“I’ll be all right,” she confirmed, knowing that she was trying to reassure them both at once, “but there’s nothing you can do even if I won’t. I wish you’d understand that, Danny.”
Daniel’s face was, all at once, unreachable and unreadable. He looked, just for a second, as if he were about to stretch out and touch her, but instead, he merely tightened his arms across his chest.
“I can’t understand it, Julia,” he told her. He always used her full name when he was particularly troubled. “And I can do a lot, as it happens. I can always feed him to the lions, though I’m not sure that wouldn’t be cruelty to animals.”
“You’re probably right, kiddo, but I’d better get inside now. Sleep tight,” she added, and padded up the steps to unlock the door. Daniel remained just where he was, his mouth set into a tight line, until the door had latched behind her, and then he shook his head viciously, and stalked away into the night.
She stood for a moment on the horns of a dilemma. Waking
Electing to wake him and get him to bed, though God knew her last set of bruises were still hanging around and she didn’t need another set right now – or ever – she pressed her hand to Bryan’s shoulder and shook him as gently as she could.
Daniel kept his gaze turned down as he headed back to his own caravan. The ground was as dry as blotting paper after a long, insidious summer, and his boots raised a soft pall of dust as he walked.
Kiddo.
That word, from Julia’s lips, was a deadweight millstone around his neck. She was only six years older than he, but when she spoke in that fashion, he felt every single day of those years quite acutely. He was aware, too, that the physical age gap wasn’t the worst of it. Julia had lived a life, through the past few years of marriage to an ignorant, bullying drunkard that, by contrast, cast Daniel quite firmly in the role of callow, carefree youth. He forgave her the use of the term because of this, but it still stung, and likely always would.
Michael was still awake and reclining on the bench seat when his friend banged irritably through the door and slammed it behind him. He eyed Daniel, caught the distant cast to his expression, and elected to say nothing, and certainly nothing along the lines of the witty banter he’d been preparing. Instead, he reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew a joint and a dented Zippo lighter.
Lighting up, he sucked down the pungent smoke, held it for a second, and then allowed it to spiral lazily towards the low ceiling. After a moment’s thought, he waved the joint vaguely in Daniel’s direction.
“No thanks,” was the short response.
Daniel decided that he couldn’t face any company at that point, not even his closest friend. He muttered a brief “goodnight”, then slipped into his bedroom, dragged off his t-shirt and stood for a moment with his back to the door, the wood cool against his sticky, sweat-lathered skin. Outside the room, he heard Michael turn the CD player on, and then adjust the volume so that it wouldn’t disturb his roommate.
The less-than-mellow strains of Cyberpunk filtered through the caravan as Daniel stripped naked and stretched out on his bed in the semi-darkness, his body painted by the stripes of sodium light edging through the blinds, his face turned up to the ceiling. The tiny room was sweltering, even at midnight, and even after the cool of the evening; these places always hung onto their store of accrued heat.
It was a long time before sleep snared him.
The next day found Daniel and Michael working with the lions. Well, Daniel considered as they worked, the word ‘with’ was, perhaps, something of a glorification. They were, in fact, cleaning the animals’ travelling boxes out. There were no grounds for complaint about this, they both knew; the circus, like any other organisation, had its jacks of all trades, its gophers, pushers, shovers and fetchers, and right here and now, that was the two of them. Always room in the circus for a fit young body who knows which end of a shovel is which.
Michael did, indeed, know which end of a shovel was which. He was also muttering gently about this as he flung an unfragrant heap of lion dung aside, almost hitting Daniel, who stepped smartly over a similar pile and cuffed his friend on the back of the head by way of reproach.
“Watch where you’re flinging it, you arsehole,” he said, amiably. Under normal circumstances, Michael might have retaliated by wrestling Daniel to the ground in a headlock but, in their current location, that was not even to be thought of. He contented himself with a raised finger and a sardonic smile, and went on mucking.
Presently, their work was interrupted by the thump of feet on the ramp, and a girl flung herself into the box. Daniel recognised her as Cathy, the sword-swallower’s daughter, a skinny, intense young woman who was currently working with Julia, learning how to walk the high wire. Michael had directed a few unrequited attentions towards her in the past, once remarking quietly to Daniel that if the girl had inherited her father’s talents, she would be a hell of a lot of fun.
Right now, though, she was even more intense than usual; her long hair had whipped across her face as she ran, and she found herself having to clear it away before she could speak. When she did so, the words tumbled out in a flood.
“You two, come ‘ere, we’ve got the radio on. There’s been a bombing on a plane at Heathrow…” With that, she darted out again, leaving the two men to down their shovels and follow her.
The portable radio was parked on the table outside the caravan that Cathy shared with her father, Eric, a burly man who had been the driving force behind Michael’s recent and very sudden lack of interest in the girl. He’d been wiping his swords down with oil, but now had laid them all down beside the radio and turned the volume up. Julia had also been summoned, and now she and Cathy stood close together, dividing their attention between the breaking news broadcast and the others who were sharing it with them.
Eric shot Michael a poisonous glare as he approached, but said nothing. Daniel and Michael focused their attention on the radio.
“...appears that the British
Airways 747 was preparing for takeoff when the device was detonated, although
we have no confirmation of this at present.
Early reports indicate that there are no survivors and it is believed
that more than three hundred and fifty people have been killed.
“An anonymous message has been received from a group calling themselves the Black Jihad, claiming responsibility for...”
Daniel held a distracted hand to the back of his neck as he listened, his brow creased, his thoughts similarly knotted. The afternoon was bright, glimmering like a pearl, and the pleasantry of the day only lent a particularly peculiar shade to the cruel news that flowed over him.
Daniel had grown up amidst Islamic extremist violence in his city; there had been a coordinated suicide bomb attack on the Underground when he was seven, and it had been more or less downhill from there. These days, the entire network was fitted with scanner portals and suffered regular patrols by armed units with sniffer dogs, although he’d often had pause to consider just what little use all this might be in deterring anyone sufficiently determined to wreak chaos and devastation.
Through all of this, however, it filtered through to him that Michael was speaking.
“Can’t say I’m surprised,” he was saying, gloomily. “This is rotten, sure, but it isn’t a big
shock, is it? We ought to have left the
“Oh, shut the fuck up, Mike,” Daniel snapped at his friend, tainted with a surge of fury. “You might have a point and you might not, but this isn’t the time. Have a heart!”
The two men had been fast friends since they’d joined the circus, almost simultaneously, a year ago. They were something of a conundrum to others; it appeared at first as if the cocky, confident Michael was the dominant half of the pairing, but as in so many things, appearances led with a lie. Michael rubbed at his face and he adopted a look of shame.
“Sorry. Sorry, mate. Didn’t mean to be disrespectful.” Daniel nodded slowly, and punched him on the shoulder.
“Forget about it, it’s okay.”
Daniel met Julia’s eye as they listened to the rest of the broadcast. She shared a sorrowing glance with him, but didn’t speak. His eyes shifted, and he noticed a fresh, red contusion on her arm; but just then she pulled self-consciously at her sleeve, and it was lost to view.
The newsreader eventually began to repeat himself, and Julia turned and walked away without a word. Daniel caught up with her by the fortune-teller’s tent. He wanted to take her arm to stop her. He had touched her many times in his imagination since they’d first met, touched her in far more intimate ways than that. But in the world outside his head, he knew that nothing within the scope of his courage would permit him to make any contact with her at all.
It wasn’t propriety. He knew that she was married to his employer, of course, but as he’d stated last night, for two pins Daniel would chop that worthless bastard up and feed him to the animals. What kept his hands eternally clear of Julia’s skin was far more complex; it was the suspicion that husband or no husband, age gap or no age gap, Julia would never prove open to him, and that any attempt on his part was sure to meet with a kind but nevertheless agonising refusal.
Still, for this one moment, she was favouring him with an expression that ran his heart through. Her hair was awry, and her eyes were lined with pink, either from lack of sleep or from the emotional punch of what they had just heard. He suspected a little of both. No matter at all; she was beautiful if sorrowful in the pale gold afternoon sun.
“You okay?” he was asking, moving as close as he dared. The disparity in their heights forced her to turn her chin up to meet his gaze.
“Not really,” she sighed, “but I think I just had my own problems put into perspective, at least.”
“Jules, that’s not fair.” Her eyes crinkled in bewilderment.
“No?” she asked. Daniel shook his head. “No, it’s not,” he went on. “It’s not fair on you. The world is always going to be a crappy place, you know that, but it doesn’t mean your troubles are any easier, does it?”
Julia started to say something in response, but then she turned away
from him, and he saw her eyes widen in dismay.
“Julia,” said
Julia darted off, dodging around her husband with every expectation
of a blow or a kick, but as vicious as
“Oh, and kid?” he said, voice pitched low and velvet, “You keep away from my missus in future, clear?”
Daniel’s stomach burned with acid, but he knew better than to
attempt a clever retort against a man who could at the very least see him out
of a job. He settled for dropping one
hand behind his back and crossing his fingers there, while his mouth simply
said, “Yes. Okay.”
When Daniel returned to his friend, he received a brief update. A second device had gone off in the terminal building itself although, in this event, the area had already been evacuated and the loss of life was believed to be minimal. Daniel absorbed this report in sober silence then, tugging absently on his ponytail, he informed Michael that they’d better get back to work.
Much as he liked and trusted Michael, Daniel had not shared and would not share his thoughts about Julia with his friend. He was at a loss to say exactly why, or what he suspected might transpire if he did. So the two of them worked on in near silence for the rest of the afternoon, finally finishing up at half past four and heading back home to get a couple of hours’ rest before the last show finished, at which point they’d have to dismantle the tents, hitch the wagons and head for Clapham Common.
Neither of the two felt like napping, though. Michael lay in his habitual sprawl on the bench seat, a bottle of Bacardi perched on his chest, and a stuffed cheetah under his head to act as a pillow. He’d had the cheetah as long as Daniel had known him, and Daniel had never thought to make a point of mentioning it. Some waters, he’d long since decided, were too deep to ford, and in the circumstances there were far worse people he could be sharing accommodations with than a bloke who still had a soft toy.
Daniel himself sat across the table, elbows angled, chin in his hand, thinking hard. With his free hand, he toyed with one of his throwing knives. It was an old one, a small carbon steel blade that had once been part of the first set he’d ever bought, when he was a teenager. The afternoon’s events had perturbed him deeply but, as much as he wanted to discuss them, he wasn’t sure if Michael was the right debating foil for his current mood. However, it was Michael himself who broke the silence.
“Dan?”
“Yeah?” Daniel responded, after a pause.
“What d’you think’s going to happen now?”
“Regarding what?”
“The government. What’re they going to do about all this shit?”
A thoughtful silence descended over the cramped caravan, which Daniel used to make some time and space to think. He hadn’t thought for several hours, not through the horror of it all. He’d switched on the small television for a while after returning, but had had no stomach for it. The first visual images of the Heathrow blast were being circulated: shaky, disconcerting images that looked very much as if they’d been captured on someone’s camcorder. The footage was all the worse for its amateurishness; the shrieks of horror from the invisible bystanders, though muffled, were none the less piercing for that.
Now, he brushed a fine strand of damp hair away from his face and, head still turned to stare out of the window, responded at last.
“Your guess is as good as mine, mate,” he said, softly, “but they’re not going to sit around, if you ask me. Someone’s going to get it in the neck.”
“Who, though? This looks very much like a suicide bombing, and why the hell not, that’s the usual tactic, isn’t it? Take it from me, these buggers are dead. Who’s to arrest?” Michael took a generous swig from the bottle, then heaved himself up and passed it over the table to his friend. Daniel stared at it for a moment, and then downed a draught himself and slid the bottle back over the greasy surface. He wouldn’t normally drink before sunset, and especially not on a warm day like this, when it could be guaranteed to go straight to his head, but what the hell.
Michael lay back down again, disappearing behind the edge of the table. Daniel heard the click of a cigarette being lit, and watched a curl of smoke rise into view. The general effect was slightly eerie, he considered, and despite his mood, he smiled about this thought. A disembodied hand appeared over the table, only briefly, to grab the ashtray.
“Dan, I meant what I said earlier, by the way. I’m not gonna pretend I didn’t. Nobody deserves what just happened, but on the other hand, anyone who keeps kicking a dog has got to expect to get bitten, am I right?” Daniel sighed, but nodded.
“I know. And look, we’ve been mates for a while. If I didn’t like you just the way you are, bloody political spiels and all, I’d have said so by now.”
“Cheers,” came the chirpy retort, as that hand came into view once more, thumb raised in salute.
“There’s going to be hell to pay from now on, for the Muslims,” Daniel volunteered, after another few minutes’ silence. This roused Michael from his cogitation; he sat bolt upright, placing the ashtray back on the table and crushing his cigarette out into it. With one hand on the neck of the Bacardi bottle, as if for moral support, he raised an eyebrow.
“Sorry? Isn’t it my job to have nasty, cynical little thoughts like that?” he inquired, somewhat archly.
“No, not really. It’s obvious. It’s the only thing left to do. They’ve seen that nothing else is working.”
Michael paused, and lit a second cigarette. He always smoked more when he was deliberating. He gesticulated vigorously with it for a second while he shaped his thoughts; this was a legacy of his father, a first-generation Neapolitan immigrant. The cigarette left matrices of smoke in the air as it passed, like a sparkler.
“But,” he managed at last, “how are the sods going to get away with it on the feeble pretext they’ve got right now?”
“They’ll find another pretext, believe you me, but in the end, they’ll get away with it because of the golden rule,” Daniel replied, evenly, reaching out for the bottle once more. “He who has the gold makes the rules.”
“I suppose you’re right, but it’s still a load of complete and utter toilet seats,” Michael observed, with every appearance of tenor and gravity. This turn of phrase and its deadpan delivery mushroomed in Daniel’s mind until he burst out laughing; since he had a mouthful of Bacardi at that point, he endured a precarious struggle to avoid either choking or spitting it out, and eventually triumphed. Michael regarded his friend’s flushed face with mock seriousness and genuine wry amusement.
“Was it something I said?” he asked.
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