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High Wire
Chapter 3
Retreat
The falsetto scream of a fox woke Daniel shortly before dawn, and he broke from a mired and tempestuous dream, still tasting Julia’s fingertips on his lips even as he surfaced.
He shifted slightly then, aware that he had knotted the blankets around his legs as he’d thrashed and turned in his sleep, reached down to readjust them before sinking back onto his pillow with a shaky sigh. The dream had replayed every torturous moment of his shameful unmasking, had emphasised every point of pressure, and had even concocted some new torments, instilling Julia’s words with a frightening bitterness that she’d not herself presented to him.
Daniel reached over and pressed a switch on his bedside clock, activating the light behind the dial. 6.50 a.m. He wiped a hand down his face and elected to get up, trying to shed the remnants of the dream as he dressed.
The caravan was in darkness, although the steady approach of sunrise was spilling a soft, hazy wash of light through the windows. Daniel filled a glass of water from the tap, but it wasn’t until he’d drained it and was halfway through another that the small reading light over the table was clicked on, and Michael stared evenly at his friend through eyes rimmed with solemnity.
“Morning,” was all he said, for the time being. Daniel hesitated, and lowered the glass, running his fingers through his tangled hair.
“Bloody hell, Mike,” he ventured, hoarsely. “What are you doing up?”
“Well, I’m not the lightest of sleepers, you know me, I could sleep through an earthquake, but,” Michael continued, smiling somewhat relentlessly, “I find things get a bit tricky when someone’s screaming like a fornicating baboon in the room next door, don’t you?”
“Ah...”
“Ah, indeed. Now, is there something you’d like to get off your chest?” said Michael, indicating the seat opposite with a flap of his hand.
There was an extraordinarily stilted moment that hung between the two of them like a corpse from a gibbet. Daniel had no idea what he’d been calling out in his sleep, although he could hazard a fairly accurate guess. There were several ways that he could escape having to offer an explanation of his behaviour although, he realised, none which wouldn’t deal a significant amount of insult to his good friend.
Instead, he abandoned all hope of circumvention and sank onto the seat, dropping his chin into his palm and sighing massively.
“All right,” he asked, wearily, “and I’m sorry I woke you up. What was I shouting about?”
“I didn’t hear it all, but I heard Jules’s name a few times, a couple of appeals to the Almighty, that sort of thing. Are you in love with her?”
Talk about a direct question, Daniel thought, but he supposed he should be used to Michael’s conversational ricochets by now. The guy treated discussion the way he might have treated a sword-fight where, if you spotted the slightest opening, you jabbed at it. On light hearted occasions, this was a challenging and enjoyable way to pass the time. When Daniel was feeling fragile or run down, it could be daunting. Nevertheless, he rallied as best he could as he watched Michael light up a cigarette.
“I really don’t know, mate,” he volunteered and then, on impulse, reached for the cigarette pack himself. He’d given up smoking over a year ago but if anything merited one wholly forgivable lapse, he felt, this did. He received a curious eyebrow lift from his friend, but no more than that, and he coughed fitfully for a second as he inhaled the now-unfamiliar smoke.
“You don’t know?”
“No,” Daniel reiterated. “I don’t. This could be a lot of things. I do know that right now I’d like nothing more in the world than to cut that bastard husband of hers in half.” Michael grinned hugely at this, and gesticulated grandly once more.
“So would I,” he responded, “but then again, he’s my boss as well as being a shithead, so it’s only natural. You, on the other hand, have something else going on in your brain, but you don’t know what it is. So what are you going to do about all this?”
Yes, what are you going to do about all this? Daniel’s brain echoed. He’d not given himself any time to think over the last few days. In fact, he’d forcibly prevented himself from thought. He’d stayed as far away from Julia as his job permitted which, to his tentative relief, had turned out to be quite some distance; although by extension this development indicated, in no uncertain terms, just how far he’d been going in the past to make time to see her. He felt a loathsome pang of self-pity, and tried to choke it back down.
“What I’m going to do is go to
“Ask a silly question, you pazzo, of course it still stands. Be pleased to have you along. But how’s that going to sort out this business with Jules in the long term?”
“I have no idea, but all I can do for the moment is get my arse as far away from her as I can. You don’t think that’ll help?”
Michael subjected this question to a long, vaguely mournful period of consideration as he finished his cigarette, the lingering smoke as opaque as damask in the growing glow of the window.
“I think it’ll certainly help Jules,” he said, at long last, “but you? Not noticeably. Still,” he went on, grinning amicably, “it’ll be great having you tag along. All I’d have to look forward to left alone with my granddad would be six months of complaining about my dress sense.”
Daniel laughed, although he was forced to admit that the old man would have had some justification for any criticism he levelled. Michael’s favoured attire generally consisted of various t-shirts on various themes which nevertheless shared one overriding characteristic; namely, that they were guaranteed to offend large segments of the general public in one stroke. That, plus his four earrings and the mildly pornographic tattoo on his shoulder, were not aspects that a conservative grandparent would ever look too kindly on.
“Settled, then,” Daniel said, firmly, “although I’ll have to explain things to my mum and dad as to why I’ll be away for Christmas. When are you heading off?”
“This evening. I thought I might stay until tomorrow morning to help get the show on the road but then I thought, fuck it, why rattle my tin cup if the organ grinder gets all the money?”
“Good spot. Okay, I’ll get
everything sorted by tonight. I don’t
know what
He thought, slowly and carefully, while he was cooking the eggs. If he was going to take this trip – and granted, it was a split-second decision, in every literal sense – then he owed it to his mother and stepfather to see them in person before setting off; it had been over two months since he’d been home for any reason at all, come to think of it.
Of course, as he’d pointed out himself, their employer was going to summon hellfire when he heard this news; but as far as Daniel was concerned, one day’s pay was more than ample recompense for the chance to infuriate the man.
‘Infuriated’ turned out, in fact, to be the wrong word. ‘Incandescent’ was a much more descriptive label for Bryan’s mood as he stood in his caravan and listened to Daniel’s explanation of circumstances although, to give the bastard credit, Daniel noted, he appeared to be withholding it very well. He slapped irritably at the back of his neck as he spoke, though, like a man with a significant mosquito problem.
“If you hadn’t just quit,” he snapped, “I’d bloody well fire you, you little git. You couldn’t possibly manage another twenty-four hours?” he added, sarcasm decorating his words like dew.
No, because a lot can happen in twenty-four hours, mate, Daniel thought, venomously. For example, me tying you to one of the targets and leaving you looking like Saint Sebastian.
“No,” he elected to say, instead, “I have to get home and see my parents before I leave. Sorry.”
His eyes turned ever so slightly.
Julia was watching all of this from the bedroom door, her composure that
of a doe watching two wolves barring their teeth at one another. His stomach churned violently; he realised
that in annoying
His other thought, underlying all of this and, in a sense, complementing it, was that she had never looked more childlike or more haunting. Daniel quickly shut that thought away. It was of no use to him, and pricked at him like a poisoned thorn.
“All right, I can’t stop you, can I?”
“There you are. Now go on, piss off, and be grateful you’re not on the toe of my boot.”
Daniel stowed the cheque away quickly, almost as if he expected
The journey to Rickmansworth was, at least, simple enough, if rather tedious. The circus had been cooling its heels in Bounds Green for the last ten days, so he took the Underground to King’s Cross and, from there, the Metropolitan line.
Despite having been born, nursed and raised in the belly of the
beast that was
His parents’ house was less than ten minutes’ walk from the
station. And as he opened the front
gate, he heard the familiar and now, sadly, breathless yaps of Orlando, his mother’s Yorkshire terrier. Daniel and the dog had been friendly enough
foes whilst growing up, but
Sandra Gibson opened the door on her son even as
Many people, asked to summarise the pair, would remark that Sandra had given Daniel everything but his height. Sandra herself was barely five feet tall. Other than that, they shared the same soft blue eyes, fair, freckled complexion, rebellious strawberry blonde hair and slightly lopsided smile.
“Your dad’s in the garden,” Sandra explained, as she led him through to the sitting room. “I’ll go and call him. Want some tea?”
“Yes, thanks,” Daniel responded, kicking his shoes off and settling down in front of the television, where the news was showing a fairly gruelling live report from Atlanta, where pitched battles continued to rage. He watched this for a while, his stare fixed, as the sounds of busyness filtered through from the kitchen. The city looked like a motorway pile-up in Purgatory, and even the normally unflappable BBC newshound was looking noticeably tense and harried in his current situation.
Sandra returned with tea, her husband behind her. Frank winked at his stepson, and then threw himself down on the sofa with a slight grunt of effort. He was sixty years old, having married relatively late in his life, although with never the faintest shadow of apprehension about taking on a woman with a young child. He’d loved the boy then, and still did. If he were honest, he’d admit that it troubled him sometimes that he and Sandra had never been able to have a child of their own, but that trouble was small enough in his mind.
“How’s life, lad?” Frank was asking, his
“Not bad,” Daniel responded, automatically, although he found a
moment to ponder the incongruity of this: that of all the questions in the
entire world, ‘How are you?’ was the one which was most often answered with a
lie of some magnitude or other. He
collected himself, accepted a cup of tea, and plodded on. “Actually, there’s something I need to tell
you about, get it out of the way. I’m
off to
“The whole winter?” Sandra put in, sharply. “But you’ll be home for Christmas?”
“I’ll really try to be, Mum, but it depends. I am sorry about this, but I need to get away for a while.”
Sandra looked to be on the verge of preparing another pointed question, but out of the blue, Frank stood up and angled his head at Daniel, thoughtfully. He then cast a short glance at his wife; Daniel tried to read this, but it seemed that a lot of information passed between his parents in this space of a second or two, and he lost it. Frank nodded at the door.
“Want to see the garden?” he asked, perfectly placidly.
There wasn’t much to see in the garden in the dead half of the year. Frank grew gloriously tangled red roses everywhere he’d been able to, but right now they were dull and dormant and looked like thickets of blackened barbed wire stretched across the muddied fields of Passchendaele.
Frank closed the back door, gently but firmly, on his wife, and then plodded out onto the lawn with Daniel at his side. After what seemed like an age, he stared levelly at the overcast sky and said, “Okay. What’s the matter, lad? Knowing you, it’s woman trouble. Right?”
There was no gainsay to be had, none at all. Daniel merely nodded, soberly.
“Yep, it is, but I’d rather not talk about it right now. It’ll sort itself out in the end.” He hesitated, thought for one crowded second, and added, “I haven’t got anyone pregnant, if that’s what you’re afraid of. I just need some time away. See a different landscape, clear my head a bit. I love Mum, but she’ll worry. Can you talk to her?”
Frank clapped one weathered hand onto Daniel’s shoulder and squeezed roughly.
“Not a problem, though I don’t know what makes you think she pays much more mind to me than she does t’you,” he laughed, easily, as they made their way back to the warmth of the house.
In the end, and with the quiet encouragement of her husband, Sandra formed an uneasy alliance with the idea of her son’s sabbatical, although she continued to turn the screw regarding the matter of Christmas. Daniel recognised that this was nothing more than the gift that nature seemed to give to all mothers, and merely kept nodding and placating.
The last show of the season was already in progress by the time
Daniel returned to the park. He made his
way along the back of the open field, beside a short and meandering river,
while
He was gratified – and, truth be told, more than a little amazed – to find that Michael had packed his things for him in his absence. Michael was generally about as organised as the Keystone Kops. Nevertheless, there he sat, perched on their suitcases, one ankle hooked gracelessly over his knee, putting the finishing touches to a tightly-rolled joint with all the single-mindedness of a nesting dove. The whole tableau reminded Daniel very much of a Gypsy tinker, an image that Michael’s swarthy, bejewelled insouciance only served to strengthen. At length, Michael raised his head from his endeavours and flashed a maniacal grin.
“All ready?” he asked, getting up from the suitcases with an elfin bounce in his movements and slipping the joint into his pocket for later. “Everything’s packed, and I already said a fond goodbye to Cathy. For some reason, she tried to punch me in the bollocks,” he said, his tenor still a model of amiability.
Daniel couldn’t find it in himself to be the least bit surprised at this revelation. Knowing Michael as he did, he assumed that his ‘fond goodbye’ had included, at the very least, an attempt to secure an intimate audience with Cathy’s backside…such as it was, his hindbrain added, cruelly.
“Yeah, I’m ready, but…” he stopped with a jolt in his tracks, unsure whether or not to continue, then allowed his momentum to carry him forward, “…but is Jules working tonight?” He knew he’d made a mistake as soon as Michael’s brow folded elegantly, but it was far too late to back down now.
“Don’t do it, mate,” he commented, evenly. “Where’s it going to get you?”
“Nowhere, but neither is running away with you,” Daniel sighed, spending all his breath in one heartfelt exhalation. “You said so yourself. Have I got anything to lose now? You get the bags, I’ll meet you by the gate.”
“Dan…” Michael began, trying again, but Daniel raised a hand between the two of them.
“No more argument. Someone once told me that it’s better to regret something you did, than something you didn’t do.”
“Yes. It was the Butthole Surfers,” Michael snorted, derisively, “and right now, the biggest butthole around here is you. Don’t do this to yourself.”
“It’s already done,” said Daniel, his voice flat and dead, already turning toward the door. “See you at the gate. I won’t be long.”
The noise from the marquee was overwhelming as he stalked past; judging by the sound of it, Rosemarie was in full flow. The measured thumps of her knives were punctuated with strident, appreciative roars from the crowd. Daniel found the time to regret that he wouldn’t garner any more of her experience, since he had no further intention of returning to the circus. In fact, if he had a bigger regret, it was that he would also miss Rosemarie’s companionship very sorely indeed.
That said, though, he knew that if he were to raise the subject with her, she would look him up and down, just once, and remind him that it was about time he set out on his own and that he needed a sight more faith in his own talents.
Julia’s caravan was just ahead, now, although his feet brought him up short as he approached, and Michael’s words darted through his head. He stared at the lighted window, and as he did, a pair of swans carved a low path through the cobalt twilight above his head, wings throbbing mournfully, heading for the river.
Any other day, he thought, instinctively, he would have taken this as a sign. It would have been enough to stop him in his action and remind him that, just maybe, his dignity and his self-possession lay anywhere else but behind the door in front of him…but not tonight. For reasons he couldn’t quite identify, he pulled at his hair, freeing it, letting it fall to his shoulders in thick tangles. Then he stepped up and knocked gently on the door.
Julia’s face shifted instantly as soon as she saw who was on her doorstep. Daniel sensed, without a trace of a doubt, that this grieving expression was no unhappier that the one it had just replaced. He stepped up, uncertain whether Julia would even allow him inside, but after a struggle with herself, she moved back to allow him access, and then retired to the far side of the living space with her hands clasped painfully in front of her.
“What do you want, Danny?” she asked. Daniel heard the small, tight vibrato in her voice well enough. He moved toward her.
“I wanted to say goodbye, Julia. I’m leaving in a few minutes, and I won’t be coming back to the circus. Ever. I…also wanted to say that I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable. I hope this makes it better for you.”
He’d avoided her gaze during this faltering speech, fearing that no matter what he saw there, it would break his nerve and prevent him from saying what needed to be said. Now he raised his head again, battling against every cowardly instinct that thrummed inside him.
Julia was hugging herself like a small girl, her dark eyes wide and ghostly, although she was either unwilling or unable to look at him as she spoke, so softly that he had to hold his breath so as not to drown out her words.
“No, Danny. It doesn’t make it any better, because all this does is remind me of how things might be in a different life. A better one,” she finished, her throat all at once dry and scratchy.
Daniel heard a lion roar, low and primitive. It might have been the animals in the show, or the sound might have been summoned from somewhere down in his guts. Either way, something shattered inside him. He ran his hands down his face, distractedly, then moved forward without thought or decision and took Julia’s face in his hands as she finally began to weep.
“It’s up to you, Jules, all up to you,” he whispered, and pressed his lips to hers.
Perhaps there was the briefest fight in her, but it was born of nothing but reflex, and her hand fell away from his chest just as swiftly as she’d raised it. Then her arms were slipping around his neck, her warm body tight to his own, her lips parting and her tongue moving.
His hands were buried in her hair, not wanting anything to come between them, not wanting to surrender this kiss to anything but death. He made the smallest sound in his throat, a sound so primitive that there were no words to describe it, and he was only tentatively aware that his body had given up all conscious control and he was now fully hard against her.
Julia felt this, and gasped, breaking contact and stepping back, her cheek blooming and her breath coming high and fast. Daniel backed away, too, but as desperately as he wanted to believe otherwise, he knew the moment was lost forever, and there was nothing he could say to repair the damage. Nothing at all.
He saw Julia bury her face in her hands and begin to sob, and that was the end of everything. He stumbled blindly out of the door, picked up his pace and ran through the deepening shadows, hardly even understanding he was going, only wanting to flee.
Michael was waiting by the park gates, a deeper shadow still in his long black overcoat. His expression was both glum and expectant as he saw his friend’s approach, and he shoved his hands deep into his pockets, shrugging gnomically as he did so.
“What happened?” he inquired, as gently as he could. Daniel merely halted, turned his face up to the night and said not one word in response. Then he grabbed his suitcase and stalked out through the gate, his head low and his eyes burning brightly with shame.
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