Part 6 (1/2)
”Well, when he came you went as white as a sheet. I suppose you were expecting your husband.”
I nodded.
”So was I. When she said 'the other Englishman' was here, I thought we were home and dry.”
I shook my head. ”No. When she heard my name was March, she never reacted. If a Mr. March were here in the village-”
”Dash it, how stupid can one be? I'd forgotten that!” Then he frowned. ”But that was at the very start . . .
before the Elliott chap turned up. Why did you still think it could be Mr. March, when she said, 'Here he is'?”
”I didn't. I thought it was. There's a difference. . . . Listen, Tim-” I found I was clutching a fold of the tablecloth so tightly that my nails had gone through the thin material. I let it go and began to smooth out the crushed fabric. ”I-I've made a dreadful mistake. When I saw Mr. Elliott first, I thought for a moment that it was Lewis. When he came nearer, into the light, I saw I was wrong. Now do you see what I've done?”
He did indeed. He was ahead of me. ”You mean he-this Elliott chap-was the chap you saw with Annalisa on the newsreel, not your husband at all? That he's enough like him for you to-that he's a sort of double of your husband? Gos.h.!.+” For the life of him he couldn't quite suppress a gleam of pleased excitement, but this faded abruptly as he took in the further implications of what I had said. ”Gos.h.!.+” It was a different intonation this time. ”You mean that you've come all this way to Austria, and all the time he is in Stockholm, just where he said he was?”
”Just exactly that,” I said.
There was a silence, so full of comment that it sizzled.
”It's ... a bit complicated, isn't it?” he said.
”That, my dear, is the understatement of the year.”
”What are you going to do?”
I said: ”What would you do, chum?”
”Well, eat, to start with,” said Timothy unhesitatingly, and looked round for the waitress.
CHAPTER SIX.
To see a fine lady upon a white horse.
NURSERY RHYME.
Understandably, there was something a little depressed about the Circus Wagner that evening. Normally, as Timothy pointed out, a small travelling circus stays only for one night in a place like Oberhausen, but the Circus Wagner had been obliged to stand for a week. I gathered that there had been no performance on the week nights following the disaster of the fire, but the normal two Sat.u.r.day performances had been permitted, and now with the Sunday show the circus was attempting to recoup some of its losses; but since most of the local people and those from the nearby villages had already been to yesterday's performances, attendance was thin, and Timothy had had no difficulty in getting what he called ”star-back” seats for us. These, the best seats, were rather comfortable portable chairs upholstered in red plush, right at the ringside. As we sat down I saw that the place was half full of children, many of them in the ringside seats. It turned out that Herr Wagner had reduced prices all round for today, and the children from this and the surrounding villages were perfectly happy to fill the places and see the same show over again for the price. It was a good move; it brought in a little money and saved the performers from the depressing echoes of an empty house.
A dwarf in a scarlet baggy costume sold us our programme and ushered us into our chairs. The tent was filled with music from some vast amplifier: as always in Austria, the music was pleasant; even in a small village circus we were expected to listen to Offenbach and Suppe and Strauss. The tent was not a big one, but the floodlights on the poles at the four ”corners” of the ring threw so much brilliance down into the ring that above them the top of the tent seemed a vast, floating darkness, and very high. Caught by a flicker of light, the high wire glittered like a thread. On their platforms near the tops of the poles the electricians crouched behind their lights, waiting. There was the circus smell, which is a mingling of sharp animal sweat and trampled gra.s.s, and with this the curiously pungent smell of Continental tobacco.
The big lights moved, the music changed, and a march blared out. The curtains at the back of the ring were pulled open and the procession began.
For a small circus, the standard of performance was remarkably good. Herr Wagner himself was the ringmaster, a short stocky man who, even in the frock coat and top hat of his calling, looked every inch a horseman. The ”rodeo,” which followed the procession, was an exciting stampede of horses-real old-fas.h.i.+oned ”circus” horses, piebald and dun-coloured and spotted-supporting a Wild West act with some clever rope work and voltige riding. Annalisa appeared only briefly, barely recognizable as a cowgirl eclipsed by a ten-gallon hat, and riding a hideous spotted horse with a pink muzzle and pink-rimmed eyes, which looked as clumsy as a hippo and was as clever on its feet as the Maltese Cat.
Then came a comic act with a donkey, and after it Herr Wagner again, with his liberty horses.
These were beautiful, every one a star, ten well-matched palominos with coats the colour of wild silk, and manes and tails of creamy floss. They wheeled in under the lights, plumes tossing, manes flying, breaking and re-forming their circles, rearing one after the other in line, so that the plumes and the floss-silk manes tossed up like the crest of a breaking wave. Rods and shafts of limelight, falling from above, wove and crisscrossed in patterns of golden light, following the golden horses. Light ran and glittered on them. They were sun horses, bridled and plumed with gold, obedient, you would have sworn, to the pull of those rods of light, as the white horses of the wave crests are to the pull of the moon.
Then the tossing plumes subsided, the flying hoofs met the ground again, the music stopped, and they were just ten self-satisfied horses, queuing at Herr Wagner's pockets for sugar.
Timothy said in my ear: ”You can't tell me those pampered darlings ever bit anyone.”
I laughed. ”You mean Mr. Elliott, our horse expert? He did a good job of grooming on them, anyway.
They looked wonderful.”
”If he's as green about it as he makes out, he's a hero to take on this lot. Funny sort of chap, didn't you think?”
”In what way, funny?”
”Odd. If he's an executive type you wouldn't expect him to stay on here and get down to a job of hard work like that. Bit of a mystery about it, I thought.”
”Perhaps he's keen on Annalisa.”
”He's too old-” indignantly.
”No man's too old till they hammer down the coffin lid.”
”They screw down coffin lids.”
”Goodness, the things you know. Come to that, he's no older than Lewis. Do you see him anywhere?”
”Who?”
”Mr. Elliott.”
”No,” said Timothy. ”He'll be out the back madly brus.h.i.+ng Maestoso Leda from bow to stern and combing out his rudder. Did you mind coming tonight?”
”Mind? Why should I?”
”Well, you must be beastly worried. I must say you're taking it marvellously.”
”What else can I do? If you want the truth I feel a bit punch drunk; it's a right pig's ear, as they'd say at home. In any case, there's nothing I can do till tomorrow, so we may as well enjoy ourselves while we can.”
Timothy said: ”It occurred to me, if you cabled Stockholm-”
But here, with a deafening crash of bra.s.s and a wild cheer, the clowns came tumbling in, and Timothy, clutching his programme and rocking with laughter, took a dive straight back into childhood. And so, to be fair, did I. It was an act which needed no interpreting, predictable to the last laugh, being a version of the old water act, and the wettest one I had ever seen, with a grand finale involving a very old elephant who routed the whole gaggle of clowns with a water-spouting act of her own which-to judge by the gleam in her clever piggy eye-she much enjoyed.
After the clowns a couple of girls dancing on a tightrope with pink parasols. Then a troupe of performing dogs. And then Timothy took his finger out of his programme, turned and grinned at me, and whispered, ”Wait for it.”
The trumpets brayed, the ringmaster made his announcement, the red curtains parted, and a white horse broke from the shadows behind the ring and cantered into the limelight. On his back, looking prettier than ever, serene and competent, and tough as a whiplash in a dark blue version of a hussar's uniform, was Annalisa. This horse was not plumed and harnessed as the liberty horses had been; he was dressed for business, but the bridle was a magnificent affair of scarlet studded with gold, and his saddlecloth glittered and flashed with colour as if every jewel that had ever been discovered was st.i.tched into its silk.
”Oh boy,” said Tim reverently.