High Wire

 

Chapter 2

Reprisal

 

Autumn settled on the city like a crow on a choice piece of carrion, and flapped its chilly wings in anticipation as the season loosed a death rattle.  The circus was coming to the end of its summer tour in London and, within the next few days, would be retiring to the Midlands for the winter season, shutting down most of its operations and hibernating through the dark half of the year.  For the moment, though, the crowds were still coming.

 

Daniel folded back the heavy canvas of the marquee and slipped inside, allowing his eyes to adjust to the relative gloom before he moved on.  This small atrium contained nothing more than the ticket desk, which stood abandoned right now; the first show would not begin for another two hours.

 

Ducking under the chain that hung across the far door, he found himself in the cavernous hall of the marquee itself, lit with the warm, yellow fireside glow of the bulbs that had been strung up around its walls.  The ring was just as somnolent as the ticket desk, a fresh coat of sawdust spread out upon it, the safety net suspended some distance above.

 

He raised his head now and saw, with the slightest twitch of happiness, that he was not as alone as he’d thought.  Atop the platform, more than twenty feet overhead, two bejewelled figures watched him like birds of paradise surprised in their nest by some itinerant, ground-dwelling predator.

 

Julia wrapped her arm around Cathy’s shoulders to steady her.  The girl was progressing nicely enough as a high wire walker, she admitted, but had yet to conquer a tendency to disregard one or two basic principles of safety when she found something or other to distract her.  Of course, the safety net existed for just this reason, and there’d been time enough in the last few months that she’d watched Cathy drop into it with a vibrant bounce and a yelp of alarm, but there was still a fundamental principle at work that escaped the girl; one took no more risks than was necessary for the act, and one most certainly took no such risks during practice.

 

Distractions, those were Cathy’s abiding problem, Julia knew.  Distractions like…well, like this one.  In a closed circle like this, it was difficult to ignore the gossip and the subtext and the suggestion of their social structure, and Julia was perfectly well aware that Cathy harboured a continuing crush on Daniel, a crush that had only bloomed all the larger through his apparent obliviousness to it.

 

Now, the girl was waving a timid hand at the young man from their precarious perch and, Julia thought with an unaccustomed stab of cynicism, if Cathy wasn’t the ingénue she appeared to be, then she was certainly a very talented actress.

 

“How goes it, ladies?” Daniel called up, one thumb hooked into his pocket.  Cathy propped one hand on a hip that was barely there in any case, and grinned at him from their crows’ nest outlook.

 

“Not so bad, not so bad,” she purred.  “Come in here for a free show, ‘ave yer?”

 

Contrary to Julia’s suspicions, Daniel was indeed very much aware of Cathy’s only mostly subtle attempts to pursue him, and for the main part, he found himself perfectly able to disregard them, although very occasionally – like now – she found the method and the means to make him blush.  It was only a mercy that she’d be unable to see it from her vantage point.  One day, he knew, he’d have to set her straight, although this was a task he’d found ample excuse not to undertake so far, given that Cathy seemed to be perfectly at ease with his indifference to her.

 

“Of course I have, sweetheart,” he replied, with the verbal clash and ring of sabres.  “I’ll just sit over here, be nice and quiet and ogle you two, if that’s all right?”

 

Julia snorted with suppressed laughter, but said nothing.  Instead, she delivered a soft slap to Cathy’s shoulder, urging her out onto the wire.

 

“All right,” she said, as the girl placed one hesitant foot on the rope and stopped dead, “remember what I told you?  Curl your toes, keep your knees straight, arms out but not too stiff, you’ll need to make constant adjustment.  Give it another go.”

 

As Cathy inched and trembled out across the wire, Daniel found himself a seat on one of the front benches and opened the book he’d brought with him; it was a battered paperback of Steppenwolf that he’d found in a charity shop in Acton the previous weekend.  Michael had eyeballed his friend curiously when he’d seen what he had returned home with, but then again, he’d never known Michael to read much beyond the occasional copy of Freedom that he was able to lay hands on.

 

Daniel had been taught to read and, furthermore, to love reading by his stepfather.  His mother, though a consummately kind and generous woman, was not a remotely literary type.  Frank had been the only father figure that Daniel had ever known; his real father, whoever he might be, had taken to his heels when Daniel was fourteen months old, and not a hide nor hair had been seen of him ever since.

 

He divided his attention between the figures on the rope and the words he was studying.  The text wasn’t easily ensnared, and he paused, one finger marking his place, as he watched Cathy vibrate uncertainly, high above him.  Julia stepped forward behind the girl, placing restraining hands on her shoulders and then running them out along her arms to restore her equilibrium.  Daniel suppressed a smile.  He’d watched Julia perform effortless backflips up there before now; at Cathy’s rate of progress, she could expect to be doing the same in about another thirty years.  He returned to Steppenwolf.

 

“The Bourgeois is consequently by nature a creature of weak impulses, anxious, fearful of giving himself away and easy to rule. Therefore, he has substituted majority for power, law for force, and the polling booth for responsibility.

 

“It is clear that this weak and anxious being, in whatever numbers he exists, cannot maintain himself, and that qualities such as his can play no other role in the world than that of a herd of sheep among free roving wolves.”

 

The passage struck a chord in Daniel’s memory, and he considered that maybe Michael might find considerable source of inspiration – or perhaps argument – within the pages of this book, after all.

 

Michael had once tried to explain the nature of anarchism to his friend, but with a variant degree of success, and Daniel had formed the sneaking suspicion that Michael himself, in spite of good intentions, was a trifle hazy on the details and taking rather a glossy view of the matter.

 

Nevertheless, he’d proceeded to explain things in what Daniel thought of as his declamatory voice, which was measured and hypnotic but also, Daniel considered, slightly pompous at times.

 

“Anarchism,” he had said, brown eyes glinting, habitual cigarette perched between his knuckles, “centres on the concept of complete self-determination, and the premise that humanity does not require an artificially enforced governmental edifice and, in fact, has suffered greatly because of it.”

 

It had sounded like a direct quotation, and probably was.  Daniel, however, had no inclination to indicate his thoughts on the matter, if for no other reason than that in spite of the guy’s highbrow tone and inflection on such occasions, he liked hearing Michael’s pronouncements.  He’d listened further, and eventually formed the slightly moody conclusion that like every other political process human minds had devised through the ages; it worked well enough on paper, but faltered horribly when applied to everyday life and times.

 

His train of thought was derailed as he heard a familiar shriek, and only glanced up when Cathy landed in the net, bouncing hard.  Her momentum carried her out over the edge, and she landed in an ungainly pile in the sawdust, shaking her head like a Suffolk Punch with a fly in its ear.  Daniel gaped, put the book down on the bench and vaulted the barrier, running to help the girl to her feet.  She grabbed his hand and clambered up, brushing her fingers through her hair as she did so, her movements sharp and irritable.

 

“Are you all right?” he asked, the model of solicitousness, even though some small and rather wicked part of him was cackling at her sudden state of disarrangement.  She collected herself, regained enough composure to realise that she ought to let go of Daniel’s hand now, and grinned weakly.

 

Julia watched this scene from her lofty perch, stood heel-to-toe on the rope, her hips and shoulders canted to keep her balance.  Cathy’s face turned up to her, all contrition.

 

“Sorry, Jules,” she shouted, rather more loudly than necessary, “I won’t try that again.”

 

“I know you won’t, you silly cow,” Julia shot back, although she smirked as she said it.  “Mainly because if you do, I’ll chuck you off myself.  Now get back up here, please.”

 

Cathy pouted theatrically at Daniel, made a reasonable attempt to bat her eyelashes, then trotted back to the ladder at the foot of the platform and began to haul her way up it once more.

 

Daniel had, it seemed, only just returned to his book when the tent flap was flipped aside and Michael entered the marquee, his steps light but hasty.  He gave the women on the high wire the merest shady glance, then spotted Daniel and hopped over the edge of the ring to join him on the bench.

 

“You were right,” he said by way of a greeting and, pulling something from beneath his arm, flipped it onto Daniel’s lap, covering his book.

 

It was a copy of the Sun.  Even as he studied the garish headline, Daniel was well aware that his friend must have picked this up from one of the other members of the troupe; mostly because he would, in all probability, much rather roll naked in hot coals than spend one penny of his money on this publication.

 

Daniel ran his eye down the rest of the article, which was printed in the Sun’s usual cheapjack verbiage.  A series of heavily armed raids had been executed on mosques all across London; in Enfield, Southwark, Stockwell, Whitechapel – where there were reports of crossfire – and Chiswick.

 

“Raiding mosques,” Michael said, his voice bedecked with seed pearls of venom, as if Daniel couldn’t see for himself.  “They’ve got no fucking grounds for this whatsoever, you realise that?”

 

He did indeed, but the larger part of Daniel’s brain was firmly tap-rooted in pessimism, and he knew perfectly well that for the last fifteen years, the people of Britain had been growing more and more disenchanted with the main political parties.  The National Front had made disturbing progress in the inner cities in the last decade, even gaining several seats in Tower Hamlets, and it struck Daniel with a terrible, free-falling sense of apprehension that things might only start to get better once they’d got as bad as they possibly could.

 

“I know it, Mike,” Daniel murmured, finally folding the newspaper up and setting it down across his knees.  “But I did tell you, they’re gonna do whatever they think is best, and who’s going to stop them?”

 

“This isn’t over, believe you me,” Michael observed, ominously.  “Anyway,” he went on, his manner brightening with bewildering rapidity, “quick question.  What are you doing for the winter?”

 

If he was honest – and he was – Daniel would have to admit that he hadn’t given the matter much thought.  He did have the option of staying with the circus, as reduced as it was, due to the fact that there was always work to do, if only cleaning and porterage.  On the other hand, he realised with a sudden rush of blood to the head, that would mean spending the whole season in much closer quarters with Julia and her bloody husband than ever before.

 

Last winter, it hadn’t mattered.  Last winter, he’d been no more than grateful for the chance to work with the troupe; Julia had not figured in his scheme of things back then.  Now, however, the prospect of enduring seven months under Bryan’s nose, keeping his turbulent feelings firmly in check, was infinitely galling.

 

“I’ll probably go home and find something to tide me over,” he said, referring to his parents’ house in Rickmansworth.  He knew they’d be more than welcoming.  “What about you?”

 

Michael smiled, slightly conspiratorially, and pulled a postcard out of his pocket, uncreasing it, handing it over.  The front carried an intricate watercolour portrait of the city of Perugia, although Daniel only identified this because the name was stamped in the corner.  He turned the card over in his fingers.  The stamp bore the face of Guglielmo Marconi, but that was as far as Daniel’s powers of recognition would carry him; the postcard itself was written in dense, spidery Italian.  He waved it, at a loss.

 

“Bit of help here, mate?”  he asked, plaintively.  Michael grinned like Casanova in a convent, and took the postcard back.

 

“It’s from my granddad.  He retired this summer, and he’s just bought a vineyard in Umbria.  He says he’s going to need some cheap labour while he gets set up and so I,” Michael sighed, with a light veneer of pathos, “have offered my services.  I wondered if you wanted to come along.”

 

It was a sorely tempting offer, Daniel had to confess to himself, although if he were to take it up, he’d have to square things with his mother as to why he probably wouldn’t be at home for Christmas for the first time in his entire life. He fixed Michael with a forthright look.

 

“I’ll have to have a think about it, my old mucker,” he said, at length.  “When do we pack up here?”

 

“Thursday evening.  The whole caboodle will be off on the road to perdition at dawn on Friday.  Well,” Michael added, lowering his voice, “probably not dawn, as we both know that our esteemed employer doesn’t generally surface from his grape-and-grain fuelled slumbers that easily…”  Daniel glanced up at the figures on the platform, but they were well out of earshot.  He chuckled broadly.

 

“Correct, as usual.  Anyway, I’ll let you know one way or the other by then, okay?”

 

“Okey dokey, mate,” Michael offered, heaving himself off the bench and brushing himself down.  Daniel remembered the newspaper on his lap, and held it out, but Michael pulled a face and shook his head, curtly.

 

“No thanks,” he said, “you keep it.  I’ve got enough toilet paper.”

 

The two spent the rest of the day tending to various menial tasks about the camp and then, when they finally found their services exhausted, Michael announced that he was going to rest before the second show; it was his turn to man the ticket desk.

 

Daniel declined the offer, although he headed back to the caravan with Michael to collect his knives.  He’d been throwing since he was thirteen years old, although it was only in the last couple of years that he felt he’d achieved any shadow of real proficiency.  His stepfather had given him his most prized possession when he was sixteen; a set of six gleaming, double edged knives with nine-inch blades, downcurved cross guards and twisted black leather grips embellished with rounded, silver-plated pommels.

 

Daniel’s mother had subjected her husband to a mighty screaming fit when she discovered this, but beyond that, there was little she’d been able to do, knowing from the cast in his eye that the boy would put up a battle royal rather than surrender the weapons.

 

He treasured these knives and didn’t often throw with them but, today, something slightly perverse had been stirred in his soul, and he felt the need for a little high drama about his practice.  He fished the case out of his wardrobe, bade Michael a vaguely distracted farewell, and headed over to the targets.

 

The day had been tepid, at best; the afternoon was growing colder step by step, and there was an insistent cross-breeze that Daniel knew he was going to have to take careful account of.  He rounded the last caravan and found the area where the bullseyes had been set up, but immediately noticed that he wasn’t the first arrival of the day.

 

The circus already had its indentured knife-thrower on board, which was why Daniel was well aware that for the time being, this was nothing more than an idle hobby of his.  That said, however, he’d learned more in his past twelve months here than he’d managed in several years spent aiming and squinting at the dartboard Frank had hung on the shed door for him.

 

Rosemarie turned as Daniel approached, and gave him a companionable smile.  She was almost fifty now, and had been working for the circus for twenty-five years, since long before Bryan had taken over the management, and there was seldom an expression of real surprise to be seen passing across her weathered face these days.  Daniel always got the impression that the lady had lived an extremely arcane and adventurous life to date, and since she’d been in show business of one form or another since the day she was born, he assumed she probably had, at that.

 

She was dropping her hand now, halted in mid-throw by Daniel’s arrival.

 

“Hello, young’un,” she smiled.  Daniel didn’t flinch at this; he knew that in some indefinable way, Rosemarie had more than earned it.  Besides, since he was in effect her protégé, he supposed he ought to be grateful she didn’t call him ‘Grasshopper’.

 

“How’s life, Rosie?”

 

“Ah, not too bad,” she responded, slotting the knife she’d been holding back into its scabbard on her belt.  “Just came down for a bit of a workout before the show.  You?”

 

“Could be better, could be worse,” Daniel replied, enigmatically, but Rosemarie didn’t press him any further, for which he was grateful.  “Anyway, I wanted to show you something,” he went on, and held out the leather pouch he’d tucked inside his jacket.  Rosemarie closed her fingers around it, and untied the front flap.  When her eye lit upon the contents, she whistled softly.

 

“Good grief, young’un,” she said, engaged in a minute study of the long, tapered knives in their neat holsters, “I haven’t seen any as grand as these in a long time.  Where’d you get them?”

 

“My stepdad gave them to me, years ago.  I know,” he held up a conciliatory hand, “I should have shown them to you before, but better late than never, eh?”  At this, Rosemarie directed a slightly beady stare in his direction.

 

“Possibly, possibly,” she conceded, at last, although not without abundant good humour.  “Mind if I have a go with ‘em?”

 

Daniel experienced a genuine moment of dichotomy at that point.  On one hand, he was aware that no living soul had even laid a hand on these blades in the past six years, much less used them.  On the other, if there was any other human being in the world who could be guaranteed to take profound care of them, it was the lady in whose hands they now rested.  He pursed his lips, and nodded.

 

Rosemarie withdrew three of the daggers from their sheaths with one economical slide of her hand, tucking the pommels into her palm and fanning the blades out.  She passed the case back to Daniel and then turned, narrowing her eyes at the middle of the three targets before her.  He stepped back several paces to allow her space to work, then focused his attention carefully, wanting to take notes and, also, knowing that she would more than do this little act justice.

 

With a nod at nothing in particular, Rosemarie lifted her arm in a blur, and without undue ceremony, the knives were spun up into the air over her head.  She half-turned on one foot to catch the first in one hand, pivoted again to snare the second in the other, and then launched them like steel dice at the target.  While these two were still in flight, she performed a full turn and grabbed the third knife, this time by the blade, then sent that one screaming through the air, too.

 

Within a snapshot of a second, the three daggers were shuddering to a standstill, points buried firmly in the centre of the bullseye, a red paper circle less than three inches in diameter.

 

Rosemarie, as he’d long since known, wasn’t one to stand on her pride; it was sufficient for her to know that she’d put on a good show.  She winked at Daniel and then crossed the clearing to retrieve the knives from the target, tugging slightly at them to free their blades from the tightly-packed straw.

 

Returning, she laid the daggers across her forearm in a rare touch of theatre, and nodded at the target.

 

“Your turn,” she said, simply.  “Go on, I know you like to show off.  Don’t deny it,” she added, craftily, seeing Daniel flush slightly.  He gripped the knives carefully, but then Rosemarie must have seen him hesitate, because she cocked her head to one side and regarded him carefully.

 

“Maybe you need some incentive,” she put forth, and tugged the newspaper from beneath his elbow.  He’d quite forgotten about it.  She opened it, and spotted a photograph of the Undersecretary of Defence, Adam Sutler.  He heard her mutter, “…gormless mummy’s boy…” and then she tore the picture from the page with one savage jerk.  Striding back to the target, she pinned it unceremoniously with one of her own blades, and left it stirring slightly.

 

When she came back, she nodded sharply at the modified target and indicated, in her habitual timesaving manner, that he ought to proceed.

 

Daniel had started laughing at her snappy little remark, and hadn’t quite stopped yet.  However, he replaced two of the knives in their sheaths, and held the last up before his eyes, locked his gaze on it, and tried to concentrate.  He turned his back on the bullseye and exhaled, slowly and smoothly, still engaged in contemplating what lay in front of his nose.  He heard Rosemarie speak, quite clearly, almost as if she were whispering in his ear.

 

“Right between the eyes ought to do it,” she commented, casually, and at that he spun around, his arm curling gracefully, letting fly at the apex of this swing and sending his handful of tempered steel across the intervening space in almost complete and total silence.

 

He heard the dull thwack of impact, but didn’t see it strike; no matter, his companion was already trotting over to the picture to retrieve it for him.  She yanked out both blades, and when she was back by Daniel’s side she handed the torn shred of paper to him.  Sutler, though still smirking beneficently, now sported a neat, guillotine-edged hole in the centre of his forehead.

 

Rosemarie left the clearing shortly afterward, excusing herself graciously to go and get ready for the show.  Daniel, feeling that his stepfather’s knives had been vindicated, stowed them carefully away and continued his exercises with the plain carbon blades he customarily used.

 

He was preparing to pack up and go back home when Julia, looking over her shoulder all the while, approached him from behind.  He jumped just a little when she spoke, and then swung around.

 

“Danny?”

 

“Oh, hi, Jules.  You frightened the life out of me,” he said, managing half a smile.  She tilted her head in apology, and once more, he was struck by her looks and the way she held her expression as if it were made of bone china.  It wasn’t the remote beauty of a spotless catwalk princess she wore, for sure; it was the far more preferable and precious beauty of simple, flawed humanity.

 

“I was wondering if you wanted to speak to me.  Earlier, you know, while I was teaching Cathy,” she went on.  “You rushed off with Mike, and I haven’t had a chance to see you since then.”  Daniel frowned, although only internally.

 

“No, I didn’t really, I…” he began, but Julia continued, somehow relentless.

 

“You’ve never come to see my rehearsals before,” she said, and now she wasn’t looking even vaguely in his direction.  Her small chin was uplifted, and she was staring at the horizon while a rough breeze ruffled its way through her hair. He found time to envy it that, and then set the random thought aside.  What was she trying to say?  Was this a reproach?  A gnomic, leading hint at something else?  What?

 

Julia turned back to him, at last.  He watched, helpless, as her eyes searched his face, and then she set her lips into a tight little line.

 

“Julia, God…I just wanted to…” he began, haltingly, but now her face crumpled, and she reached out one small, soft hand and pressed her fingers to his lips, keeping them there while she spoke, picking her words even more carefully than she might walk the tightrope.  All the while, though, Daniel felt her touch on his skin, for the first time, and could only grieve that it had taken place under this dreadful circumstance.

 

“Danny,” she was saying, a slight quaver in her voice, “I know.  I’ve known for a long time.  I have eyes and ears.  But I also have a husband, Danny, a husband.  You may not think that he treats me very well, and you’re right, but I am still married.”

 

At this point, she could no longer hold her head up, and she dropped her gaze between them while her small, sad voice went on in the same monotone.

 

“I don’t know if there’s anything else I should say to you, or anything I can say to you that wouldn’t just go and make all of this a hundred times worse, but I think you’re owed the truth.”  Now, she withdrew her hand and slipped her arms tight around her own body as if, in lieu of anyone else’s comforting arms, she might hug herself and make all of this go away.

 

“The truth is that under different circumstances, I believe I could love you.  I do believe that.  But that’s not something I can let happen, not here, not now, you understand?”

 

“Jules…” Danny managed at last, the word little more than a strangled croak, but she raised her hand desperately between them, shielding, already turning away from him.

 

“No more, Danny,” she said, her words now barely raised above the rising wind that circled them both.  “No more.  Please be my friend.  I need a friend.”

 

With that, she swung around and lowered her head and walked away.  Every fibre of Daniel’s body screamed at him to follow her, but he held himself as still as an icon instead, suffused with gouts of bewilderment, anger and misery in perfectly equal measure.  He watched Julia disappear between the caravans, and even though he knew very much better, he hoped against hope that she might turn back to look at him before she was lost to view.

 

She didn’t.

 

Daniel swiped furiously at the one warm tear that had just loosed itself and run down his cheek, profoundly grateful that he was now quite alone.  His fingers tightened in a reflexive grip, and it wasn’t until his knuckles whitened and his palm shrieked with pain that he remembered the knife he’d been holding throughout that awful confrontation.

 

He uncurled his hand and held it up, staring at the blade as if he’d never seen such a thing before in his life.  To any observer, his expression would seem to have changed with the flicker of a photon, to have morphed from its twist of shame and fury into a waxen mask of sheer serenity.  He flicked the knife up in a short curve, turning it once in the air, catching it by the handle again, as deft as ever.

 

Then, his heart breaking as sharply as glass, he spun around and threw the knife at the target so hard that it was buried to the hilt.

 

 

Chapter 1

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

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