Meridon

‘Do you want to climb down?’ David called.

I opened my mouth to tell him that I did not dare climb. That I did not dare swing. I had lost my voice. All I could do was croak like a fear-struck frog.

‘Get out of it,’ Dandy said, careless of my deep terror. ‘Grab hold of the trapeze and swing down and drop into the net, Meridon. It’s the quickest way. Then you’ll never have to come up again.’

I could not turn my head to look for her. I was clamped rigid by my fear. With one lithe movement she was up beside me on the pedestal and had unhooked the trapeze. She drew it towards me and took my arm and wrested it from its grip on the upright pole. I grabbed at the trapeze bar as if it might save me. It pulled me a little near the edge with its weight and I gasped a little in fright. It was dragging me off. I had not known that it would pull me so. I was midway between falling and clinging on. I did not have the strength to pull back, and my fist was clenched so tight I was not able to drop the trapeze and let it swing away.

With one swift, callous movement Dandy reached behind my back and snatched my left hand from the supporting pole. At once the weight of the trapeze dragged me forward and off the pedestal board into the void of space. In panic I grabbed at the trapeze with my free hand as a drowning man grabs at a twig in his despair. I clutched it and cried for help as I swooped down the lurching black valley of the swing in a blank haze of screaming terror.

It was like falling in dreams, in those dreadful nightmares when you seem to fall and fall for ever and the terror of them is so bad that you wake screaming. I swooped downwards clinging to the trapeze and then felt the drag as it swung up the hill of the other side of the swing. Then I was falling backwards, which was even worse, swinging back towards the pedestal and I was yelling in terror that I was going to hit the pedestal and knock Dandy off it.

‘It’s all right!’ I heard her call from close behind me. ‘Just swing, Merry! Like you do on the practice trapeze.’

The brown of the tarry string of the catch net leapt into vision as I swung down towards it again and then it fell away from me as I crested the swing. I hung like a brace of pheasants in a larder. But inside my limp hopeless body I was weeping with terror.

Three more times the swing rocked backwards and forwards with me a white doll tossed about underneath it. Then it slowed and slowed and finally stopped and I hung still above the catch-net.

‘Drop down,’ David called. ‘You’re safe now, Meridon. Drop down into the net. Keep your legs up as you drop and you’ll land softly on your back. Just let go the bar, Meridon.’

I was frozen. My hands were locked tight on the bar. I looked down and there between my feet was the catch-net and, beneath it, the gleaming white of the wood shavings. Safety, solid ground. I willed myself to let the bar go.

It was no use. It was as if I had forgotten the skill to open my hands, to release my fingers. I was clenching the bar as if it were the only thing which would save me from tumbling head first into a precipice.

‘Let go!’ David called, his voice more urgent. ‘Meridon! Listen to me! Just let go the bar and we’ll have you down!’

I looked towards him and he saw the mute terror in my face. He went over to the A-frame where the catcher straddles, ready to swing the flyer forwards and back up to the trapeze. He climbed up Jack’s ladder swiftly until he was parallel with me, his face on a level with my own. But too distant to reach me.

‘Come on, girl,’ he said, his voice soft and warmed with his Welsh accent. ‘Just let your hands go and you’ll drop gently in the net and we can all go and have a rest. You’ve worked hard this morning, you’ll be ready for your dinner.’

I could feel the tears coming into my eyes and then running down my cheeks but I did not cry out. His voice was warmer.

‘Come on, Merry,’ he said sweetly. ‘Just lift your legs up a little and lie back and you’ll be down as snug as if you were laid in bed. You’ve seen Dandy do it a hundred times. Just lift your legs a little and let go.’

I opened my mouth to speak, but still no voice came. I took a deep breath and my overstrained back muscles shuddered. I gripped tighter with my fingers in fear of falling.

‘I … can’t,’ I said.

‘Course you can,’ David said instantly. ‘There’s not the least difficulty in the world, little Merry. Lift your legs up towards me and shut your eyes and think of nothing. You’ll be down in a second.’

I obeyed him, as I could, as well as I could. I did as I was bid. I lifted my legs so that when I dropped I would fall backwards into the catch net. I shut my eyes. I took a deep breath.

It was no good. My fingers were locked as if they were the latches on a door. I could not will them to open. I was clinging, like a baby monkey to its mother’s back, in pure instinctive terror. I could not let go.

I did not let go.

Minutes I hung there while David talked to me gently, ordered me, begged me. Minutes while Dandy climbed up the ladder in his place and smiled at me and asked me to let go and come down to her. Her smile was strained, I could see the fright in her eyes and, despite myself, my grip tightened.

The tears poured down my cheeks, I was torn between my longing for this nightmare to be over and to be on safe ground again, and my absolute blank and helpless terror which had locked my grip so that I could not let go.

‘Meridon, please!’ Jack said from ground level. ‘You’re so brave, Meridon! Please do as David says!’

My clenched muscles around my chin and throat struggled to open. ‘I … can’t,’ I said.

David climbed up the catcher’s frame again. ‘Meridon,’ he said softly. ‘Your grip is going to go soon and you will fall. You can’t stop that. As you feel yourself going I want you to lift your legs so that your weight goes backwards. Then you will land on your back. If you fall straight down you will hurt yourself a little. I want you to land soft. When you feel your grip slipping get your legs up.’

I heard him. But I was far beyond obeying him. All I could feel was the singing continuous pain in my back and my shoulders and my arms and my chest. My bones felt as if they were being dragged from the sockets. My hands were like claws. But I could not tighten their grip. And though I was squeezing them harder and harder I could feel them begin to loosen and slip.

‘No!’ I wailed.

‘Legs up!’ yelled David. But I could not hear him in my panic. My fingernails clawed at the bar, my hands grasped at air. I fell like a dagger into the ground, feet first, into the catch net.

At once it threw me back up. It was stretched taut to catch Dandy falling softly on her back, not a feet-first dive. My legs doubled up, my knees cracked me in the face, my stomach lurched as the net threw me up and I fell, as helpless as a baby bird from a nest, down to the swinging merciless blow again. Four or five times I bounced, hopelessly out of control, until the last time when the fear and the shock were too much for me, and everything went blank.

Chapter 10

When I came to, I was in bed; not in my own bed but in the pretty lime-washed room at the back of Robert Gower’s fine house. When my eyelids quivered I could hear Robert’s voice telling me in a muted whisper that I was safe in his house. He knew I could not open my eyes to see for myself. I was stone blind.

Robert Gower sat with me. He ordered Jack and Dandy back to work at once, as soon as they had carried me into the parlour and William had gone at a gallop for the Salisbury surgeon. Robert would not trust the Warminster barber. Dandy had sworn at him and said she would not leave my side but Robert had pushed her out of the room and said she might come and sit with me but not until she had swung on the high trapeze and done every single trick she had already learned.

I wanted to cry out that Dandy should not go up there, that it was too terrifying, too high for anyone, especially my beloved sister. But my throat was wracked with pain, the only noise I could make was a helpless rasping sob, and the hot tears squeezed out of my swollen eyes and stung as they ran down my scraped cheeks.

‘It’s for her good,’ Robert said softly. I could tell from his voice that he was standing beside me. ‘She’s to go up at once or she’ll brood over your fall and lose her nerve, Meridon. I’m not being cruel to her, or to you. David said the same.’

I would have nodded my head, but the very sinews of my neck felt as if they had been ripped out. I lay in silence, in my blind blackness, and I felt the sofa underneath me roll and shift as I lost consciousness again. ‘And who will look after Dandy when I am dead?’ I thought as the world slid away from me.

She was back beside me when the surgeon arrived, but she was crying too hard to be of any help to him; easy, sorrowful tears while she washed the blood off my face with a cloth which stung as if it were on fire. I felt for her in my private darkness and whispered: ‘Dandy, am I going to die?’

It was Robert Gower who held me gently so that the skilled man could feel all around my fiery neck. He had gentle hands, and I could feel him taking care not to hurt me. But every part of my neck and shoulders and throat, even the skin of my scalp, was searing with pain. It was Robert Gower who laid me back on the pillow and unbuttoned the shirt so that the man could feel my ribs. Each touch was like a burning brand but I did not cry out. Not from bravery! My throat was locked so tight I could make no sound.

‘She’s bad,’ the surgeon said at last. ‘Broken nose, contusion of the head, concussion, ricked neck, dislocated shoulder, cracked rib.’

‘She’ll be well again?’ Robert asked.

‘It will be nigh on a month at least,’ the voice replied. ‘Unless she takes a fever, or an ague from shock. But she seems tough enough, she should survive it. I can set the shoulder now.’

He leaned towards me; in my pain-filled darkness I could feel his breath on my cheek.

‘I have to twist your arm so that it fits back into the socket of your shoulder, miss. It will hurt, but it will be better for you when it is done.’

I could say neither yes nor no. If I could have spoken I would have begged him to leave me alone.

‘Best go out, Dandy,’ Robert said. I was glad he was thinking of her.

I listened intently and I heard her footstep go to the door and the click of the latch. The surgeon took hold of my hand; my fist was clenched against the pain, and Robert took hold of my aching shoulders. They twisted hard with sudden force and the pain and the shock of it made me scream aloud until the darkness swallowed me up and everything was gone again.

Next time when I awoke I knew where I was. My eyes were still bruised tight shut but I could smell the lavender scent on the sheets, and I could feel the lightness of the room on my swollen eyelids. In the garden I could hear a solitary robin singing a rippling dancing tune. Some of the pain had gone. The shoulder felt better, as he had promised me it would. The eyes were eased with pads of something cool and wet. My head ached as if it had been pounded like a drum; but in the middle of my pain I smiled. I was alive.

I had truly thought that I was going to die. Yet here I was, under sweet-smelling linen sheets, with winter sunlight on my closed eyelids. Alive – able to care for Dandy, to keep her safe. Able to smell the clear scent of lavender. I felt my bruised face turn upwards in a little smile.

‘Don’t know what you’ve got to smile about.’ Robert Gower spoke gruffly, he was sitting somewhere at my head. He had been so quiet I had thought myself in the room alone.

‘I’m alive,’ I said. It came out as a rasping croak, but I could at least speak.

‘You are,’ he said. ‘You’re the luckiest little kitten which ever escaped a drowning, Meridon. I thought you were dead when I saw David bringing you into the kitchen with blood everywhere and your arm hanging as if it were broken. Mrs Greaves shrieking, Dandy crying and hollering at David. David cursing himself and all of us for not listening to you! The whole thing was a damned nightmare, and now here you are looking like a wagon drove over you, and smiling as if you are happy!’

My smile stretched a little broader at that, but broke off in a wince as my neck hurt me. ‘I am happy,’ I said hoarsely. ‘Is Dandy all right?’

Robert made a little ‘tsk’ noise of impatience. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘She’s down in the kitchen eating her dinner. I said I’d sit with you while they ate.’

I said nothing, and we sat in silence for long minutes while the robin sang outside in the garden and the shadows on my eyelids grew darker.

Then I felt a gentle touch, as soft as a robin’s feather on the clenched fingers of my hand.

‘I am sorry, Meridon,’ Robert said softly. ‘I would not have had you hurt for the world. We’re all sorry that you went up. You need never go up again. I’ll get a poorhouse girl tomorrow to start training. You can stick with the horses.’

I shut my eyes on that thought and started the slide into sleep where my bruises would not hurt me and the smell of lavender might make me dream of Wide. I heard, as if from a long way away, Robert whisper: ‘Good-night, my brave little Merry.’ Then I thought I felt – but I must have been mistaken – the featherlight touch of lips on my clenched fist.

He was as good as his word and I heard from David and from Dandy that the workhouse girl started the next day. She was chosen because she had been a farm worker in wheat country – a lifetime of heaving stooks had given her hard muscles in her belly and arms. David also told me (though Dandy, notably, did not) that she looked ravishing up high on the pedestal. She had long blonde hair which she let fly free behind her. She had no fear of heights and no nerves, and though she started a whole month behind the other two she was swinging from the high trapeze and doing the simplest of tricks into the net within a few weeks.

The surgeon had ordered me to rest and I was glad to lie still. My face was awful. I had two black eyes which closed so tight that for the first three or four days I was fully stone blind. I had broken my nose when my knees cracked up into my face, and for the rest of my life it would be slightly skewed.

It was many days before I was able to walk down across the field to see them working. I passed the horses on the way and saw Sea in the far corner of the field, his coat a deep grey shimmer. Robert had promised me that no one would touch him while I was ill. He might grow a little wilder, but he would have no fresh memories of rough handling. He was fed with the other horses, and brought indoors when nights were cold. But while Robert trained them and taught them their new tricks, Sea was left out in the field.

There was a hard frost on the ground, it looked as if it might snow for Christmas. I cared little either way. Da and Zima had never celebrated Christmas in our dirty little caravan and my only memory of the festival was that it was a good time for Dandy to pick pockets while the mummers went around, and a good time for selling horses for spoilt children. Our birthday fell some time after Christmas. This year we would be sixteen. We never paid no mind to either Christmas nor our birthday – whenever it was.

‘Cold,’ Robert said. He was walking with me, his hand under my elbow to help me over the frozen molehills and hard tussocks of grass.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Will you bring the horses in all day if it snows?’

‘Nay,’ he said. ‘I can’t afford to make them soft. The time will come when we do shows all the year round. I’ve already turned down work at a Goose fair outside Bath over the Christmas holidays. If you’d been well I’d have taken at least you and Jack to work the fair. I’ll let it go this year, but next year we’ll lay off in October, work for December and the Twelfth Night fairs, and then lay off again until Shrove Tuesday.’

He looked at the barn as if he were staring into the future.

‘I’ll take a complete show out on the road. The horses will open the show and do the first half, and then during the interval we’ll rig up the net and the frames. When I can get a barn we’ll take it and do evening shows by lamplight as well.’ He looked beyond the barn, to where the afternoon sun was red on the horizon. ‘There’s more and more places which stay open all year round,’ he said longingly. ‘Where they’ve built a hall with the ring in the middle, aye, and a stage behind for singing and dancing. A few good years on the road, and maybe I could build my own place with the rigging up high and the ring underneath, and we would not need to travel from fair to villages – the audience would come to us.’

I nodded. ‘You could do that,’ I said with a little smile, looking at his rapt face. ‘It might work. A big enough town, with lots of people travelling through, and wealthy people who would come again and again. It might work.’

He glanced down at me. ‘You believe in me,’ he said.

‘Aye,’ I said simply. ‘I always have.’

There was a little silence then, between us.

‘Now,’ he said. ‘You see how your sister is doing!’

He flung open the door to the barn and we went in. They were losing the light inside and were doing the last tricks of the day before stopping work. The poorhouse girl, Katie, was on the ladder. Dandy was on the pedestal. Jack was standing astride on the catcher’s frame.

I felt my throat grow dry and I swallowed at the sight of Dandy looking so small and up so high.

‘Right!’ David called. He was on the ground below the flyers’ ladder. ‘Last trick of the day, and we have an audience so let’s show what we can do! Dandy! Let’s have that trick again.’

Dandy climbed two paces up an extra ladder above the pedestal to give herself more height and took the trapeze in both hands. Jack checked the buckles which held the thick leather belt at his waist, and rubbed his hands together, scowling and looking upwards. I hardly saw him. I was watching Dandy like a fieldmouse watches a circling hawk far above him. I saw her smile. She was happy enough.

I looked back to Jack. He was watching Dandy’s swing build up until she came so close that if he reached out he could tap her on the feet. He shifted a little, as if to ready himself and then he called, ‘Pret!’ in the way David had taught him. Dandy beat with her legs and swung a little harder, then Jack shouted, ‘Hup!’ and Dandy stretched her feet out towards him as far as she could.

For a moment she seemed to hang in space, quite motionless. Then Jack reached out and we heard the firm slap of his hands on her ankles. At that moment Dandy let go the trapeze and swung, head down, arms trailing, through Jack’s legs, through the A-frame, while Jack bent low to swing her.

She crested the swing on the other side and Jack let her swing back underneath him just as the trapeze swung back towards them. Then, with a scowl of concentration, Jack twisted his arms and Dandy half turned so she slewed around, still travelling in the air to face the trapeze as it came towards her, reached out her hands to it and took a firm grip as Jack released her feet. Dandy swooped upwards, clinging to her trapeze, and then back to the pedestal. Katie at the top reached out and caught her round the waist and helped her up. Dandy turned around and shrieked, ‘Bravo!’ to herself, Robert, and me, and we burst into spontaneous clapping.

‘Well done!’ Robert called up. ‘That is wonderful, Dandy! Well done Jack and well done David! That’s grand! Is there any more?’

Again they readied themselves. Dandy built up the swing and then put her legs back and looped them around the bar of the trapeze. Jack watched her, called, ‘Pret!’ to Dandy to warn her he was ready for her on the next swing. Then we heard him shout, ‘Hup!’ This time she had further to reach and there was almost a second when she released the safe lock of her legs on the trapeze before we heard the slap of his hands on her wrists. He swung her forwards and then back and Dandy flew from his hands, turning a languid elegant somersault before bouncing safely into the net.

I was sorry that I was such a fool with the ladder and the height that I could not be up there beside her. I should have liked to have been close to Dandy when she was swinging. I should have liked it to have been me who grabbed her around her slim waist and hauled her in. I would have liked to have helped her back on to the pedestal from the sickening drop beneath her.

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