(2003) Overtaken Read Online Free Page A

a precise line. As I
said before I know my cars and trucks. I was a man who occasionally bought
magazines about vans and commercial vehicles to read in the lavatory, and these
seemed to be of several different makes that I’d never seen before. The trucks
were of the same basic sort, raised high off the ground on two or three axles
clad with big chunky black tyres: the phrase that came into my mind was ‘border
patrol’ but I wasn’t sure why. The vehicles had all been painted a uniform matt
grey with the word ‘cirKuss’ stencilled on the side in white; most of them had
box bodies with small slit windows cut in their sides and steps leading up to
stout metal doors. Set slightly apart was another truck that had a large
generator on its back and was clattering quietly away to itself; thick black
cables led from the generator across the gravel and under the canvas of the
tent.
    Round
the front of the canvas structure a string of lightbulbs ran either side of a
tiny avenue of sticky Astroturf that led up to the entrance of the cirKuss
tent; the doorway itself was a grinning mouth set in the leering
twenty-foot-high face of a demon. On the other side of the demon-head entrance
I noticed a sign embellished with a familiar blue and gold logo which read:
‘CirKuss acknowledges support from the EU fund for Strategic Vivication and Urbacity,
Lancashire Arts Council and the North Western Branches of Mr Tuffy Tune,
Exhaust Centres.’
    A few
other clumps of people, some holding the hands of children, were drifting up
the walkway and buying their tickets at a booth set just inside the mouth, like
a tooth with a person in it. We didn’t have to visit the tooth booth because
Loyd had already booked our tickets over the internet at a discount, so we went
straight inside.
    When
our gang went to see anything anywhere the six of us would invariably sit in
seats that were ten rows from the front to the left of the entrance; this was
compromise seating which had been agreed on after long and sometimes acrimonious
debate, because Colin, Kate and Sage Pasquale when left alone were
frontsitters, Loyd and Siggi were backsitters and myself, I was a middlesitter.
There were a couple of us who had asked why couldn’t we sit apart? where we
wanted? where we felt comfortable? but Sage Pasquale wouldn’t allow this.
Anyway the tent was so extraordinarily cramped that there were only five rows
of steeply raked seats inside it and we had to cram ourselves into the third
row with our knees drawn up like the gargoyles on Notre-Dame Cathedral.
    Facing
us was the usual circus ring carpeted with sawdust but perhaps a third of the
normal size. Looking up into the roof I saw amongst the lights, which were
already starting to microwave the audience, a tangle of ropes and swings.
    Directly
opposite the entrance, across the other side of the ring, there was a
proscenium arch about eight feet high and nine feet wide, red velvet curtains
drawn across it. Above the arch on to a tiny platform a trio of musicians
gingerly edged their way, the wooden scaffolding visibly swaying as they took
their places on rickety gilt chairs and began playing mournful music of some
Eastern European kind.
    With
the house lights still undimmed some movement to the side drew my attention to
a clown or possibly a ‘clown’ who had quietly slid out from the side of the red
velvet curtains and was working his way round the ring; his costume and the
state of his make-up implied that he had recently been involved in some sort of
explosion. His clothes were charred and blackened and hung in strips off his
body, his clown make-up was smeared and smudged across his face. Though
staggering when he walked, still the ragged man was gamely trying to keep up a
cheery pierrot-like demeanour. What he would do, the clown, was to attract the
attention of a member of the audience with furious mad waving then when they
were focused on him he would very obviously and slowly throw them an