Nights at the Circus Read Online Free

champagne.
    ‘When I was a baby, you could have distinguished me in a crowd of foundlings only by just this little bit of down, of yellow fluff, on my back, on top of both my shoulder blades. Just like the fluff on a chick, it was. And she who found me on the steps at Wapping, me in the laundry basket in which persons unknown left me, a little babe most lovingly packed up in new straw sweetly sleeping among a litter of broken eggshells, she who stumbled over this poor, abandoned creature clasped me at that moment in her arms out of the abundant goodness of her heart and took me in.
    ‘Where, indoors, unpacking me, unwrapping my shawl, witnessing the sleepy, milky, silky fledgling, all the girls said: “Looks like the little thing’s going to sprout Fevvers!” Ain’t that so, Lizzie,’ she appealed to her dresser.
    Hitherto, this woman had taken no part in the interview but stood stiffly beside the mirror holding a glass of wine like a weapon, eyeing Jack Walser as scrupulously as if she were attempting to assess to the last farthing just how much money he had in his wallet. Now Lizzie chimed in, in a dark brown voice and a curious accent, unfamiliar to Walser, that was, had he known it, that of London-born Italians, with its double-barrelled diphthongs and glottal stops.
    ‘That is so, indeed, sir, for wasn’t I myself the one that found her? “Fevvers”, we named her, and so she will be till the end of the chapter, though when we took her down to Clement Dane’s to have her christened, the vicar said he’d never heard of such a name as Fevvers, so Sophie suffices for her legal handle.
    ‘Let’s get your make-up off, love.’
    Lizzie was a tiny, wizened, gnome-like apparition who might have been any age between thirty and fifty; snapping, black eyes, sallow skin, an incipient moustache on the upper lip and a close-cropped frizzle of tri-coloured hair – bright grey at the roots, stark grey in between, burnt with henna at the tips. The shoulders of her skimpy, decent, black dress were white with dandruff. She had a brisk air of bristle, like a terrier bitch. There was ex-whore written all over her. Excavating a glass jar from the rubble on the dressing-table, she dug out a handful of cold cream with her crooked claw and slapped it, splat! on Fevvers’ face.
    ‘You ’ave a spot more wine, ducky, while you’re waiting,’ she offered Walser, scouring away at her charge with a wad of cotton wool. ‘It didn’t cost us nothing. Some jook give it you, didn’t ’e. There , darling . . .’ wiping off the cold cream, suddenly, disconcertingly, tenderly caressing the aerialiste with the endearment.
    ‘It was that French jook,’ said Fevvers, emerging beefsteak red and gleaming. ‘Only the one crate, the mean bastard. Have a drop more, for Gawd’s sake, young feller, we’re leaving you behind! Can’t have the ladies pissed on their lonesome, can we? What kind of a gent are you?’
    Extraordinarily raucous and metallic voice; clanging of contralto or even baritone dustbins. She submerged beneath another fistful of cold cream and there was a lengthy pause.
    Oddly enough, in spite of the mess, which resembled the aftermath of an explosion in a corsetière ’s Fevvers’ dressing-room was notable for its anonymity. Only the huge poster with the scrawled message in charcoal: Toujours, Toulouse , and that was only self-advertisement, a reminder to the visitor of that part of herself which, off-stage, she kept concealed. Apart from that, not even a framed photograph propped amongst the unguents on her dressing-table, just a bunch of Parma violets stuck in a jam-jar, presumably floral overspill from the mantelpiece. No lucky mascots, no black china cats nor pots of white heather. Neither personal luxuries such as armchairs or rugs. Nothing to give her away. A star’s dressing-room, mean as a kitchenmaid’s attic. The only bits of herself she’d impressed on her surroundings were those few blonde hairs