Free The Winter Ground by Catriona McPherson Page A

her lead and she went off without so much as a backward glance at her old friend of the last seven years.
    ‘Tis a waste of a kushty beast like yon, right enough, keeping it as a pet,’ Bill Wolf called to me by way of a greeting, nodding at Bunty’s departing back. His voice was a guttural rumble, with the now familiar mix of Irish and Eastern, pure circus as Mrs Cooke would say. ‘My Sallie there’s got a way with dogs.’
    ‘Oh, she’s yours, is she?’ I said.
    ‘Aye, my little rakly, and Tom Thumb here’s her twin,’ said Bill. He put down his sewing – it was a leather strap and he was attaching bells to it with an enormous needle threaded up with a bootlace – and ruffled the boy’s hair. ‘Just about five now, the two of them. Never mind autumn crocuses; more like Sarah and Abraham, eh, Ma?’ He raised his voice to a boom, and a woman appeared at the window of the wagon and leaned out.
    ‘But no Hagar!’ she said, laughing so that her face creased almost as much as Mrs Cooke’s and she showed every one of her dazzling china teeth. I tried not to look surprised. Why should not circus folk know their Bible, after all?
    I leaned up against the side of the wagon, taking their friendliness at face value and hoping that leaning on a living wagon was not some kind of dreadful faux pas like stepping unasked aboard a yacht.
    ‘I seen you yesterday, missus,’ said Mr Wolf. ‘Along with that Mrs Wilson from the house.’
    ‘You circus-daft too, like her, then?’ asked his wife. There was no insult in her words and so I did not take offence.
    ‘It is tremendously exciting to have you here,’ I answered, non-committally.
    ‘Surely,’ said Bill Wolf, not troubled by false modesty, I could see. ‘If it’s all new to you, it must seem so.’
    ‘Have you always been with the circus, then?’ I asked. Bill Wolf nodded.
    ‘All our lives,’ he said. ‘Lally there used to have an aerial act till Tom and Sal put paid to it for her.’
    ‘I’m not complaining,’ said Mrs Wolf and with a last grin disappeared inside again.
    ‘Then we thought to have a knife-throwing act,’ Bill went on. ‘Worked it up all the time Ma were carrying the nippers, should have been a treat.’ I could not agree; throwing knives at one’s pregnant wife seemed beyond barbarism to me. ‘But Tam Cooke’s no taste for it. Says it’s not right circus.’ Bill bent to chew off the end of a lace and then selected another bell and began stitching again. ‘Not so sure myself,’ he went on, spitting out some stray threads. ‘Reckon it’s more like he thinks it’s too much of the Wild West and he can’t like it, now his boys are over there without his say-so. Driv him potty, that did. Made him look bad.’
    ‘I thought,’ I began, newly careful now that it seemed there were circus acts and circus acts and the potential for offence among them, ‘I thought you were a strongman, Mr Wolf.’ Tom, leaning back against his father’s chest, giggled softly.
    ‘I was,’ said Bill. ‘I was. And now I’m a strong man for my age, maid. A strong man for sixty, but who’s going to roll up to see that? And it’s Bill, Pa or Wolfie. I’m no flatty, with your Mister.’
    ‘I beg your pardon … Bill,’ I said, smiling.
    ‘So I do fillers,’ he said. ‘Run-ins. And then I’ve got up a one-man band for before the show. Me and Ma Cooke between us, see. A crystal ball and a one-man band and maybe they’ll never notice there’s no menagerie if we’re lucky.’
    There was something ineffably sad about all of this, I thought. Cooke’s Circus shrinking as everyone in it grew old.
    ‘And shall you retire?’ I asked. ‘Or shall you always stay? Until …’
    ‘Until the black carriage comes for me?’ said Bill. ‘That I will. I must. And between you, me and who else is listening, maid’ – he dropped his voice – ‘I’ve an idea for a new turn. A proper spot again. If I can get everyone as needs to be talked around to it