Free Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter

sprawling. I’m not tip-top where walking is concerned, sir, more tip-up. Any bird of my dimensions would have little short legs it could tuck up under itself and so make of itself a flying wedge to pierce the air, but old spindle-shanks here ain’t fitted out like neither bird nor woman down below.
    ‘Discussing this problem with Lizzie –’
    ‘– I suggested a Sunday afternoon trip to the Zoological Gardens, where we saw the storks, the cranes and the flamingoes –’
    ‘– and these long-stemmed creatures gave me the giddy promise of protracted flight, which I had thought was to be denied me. For the cranes cross continents, do they not; they winter in Africa and summer on the Baltic! I vowed I’d learn to swoop and soar, to emulate at last the albatross and glide with delighted glee on the Roaring Forties and Furious Fifties, those winds like the breath of hell that guard the white, southern pole! For, as my legs grew, so did my wing-span; and my ambition swelled to match both. I should never be content with short hops to Hackney Marshes. Cockney sparrow I might be by birth, but not by inclination. I saw my future as criss-crossing the globe for then I knew nothing of the constraints the world imposes; I only knew my body was the abode of limitless freedom.
    ‘For starters, needs must be content with small beginnings, sir. To climb on to the roof on moonless nights, nobody there to see, and take off for secret flights above the slumbering city. Some early tests we found we could conduct in our own front room as the vertical take-off.’
    Lizzie repeated, as if a lesson from a book: ‘When the bird wishes to soar upwards suddenly, it lowers its elbows after it has produced the impetus –’
    Fevvers pushed back her chair, rose up on tiptoe and lifted towards the ceiling a face which suddenly bore an expression of the most heavenly beatitude, face of an angel in a Sunday school picture-book, a remarkable transformation. She crossed her arms on her massive bust and the bulge in the back of her satin dressing-gown began to heave and bubble. Cracks appeared in the old satin. Everything appeared to be about to burst out and take off. But the loose curls quivering on top of her high-piled chignon already brushed a stray drifting cobweb from the smoke-discoloured ceiling and Lizzie warned:
    ‘Not enough room in ’ere, love. You’ll ’ave to leave it to ’is imagination. Nelson’s drawing-room was twice as ’igh as this rotten attic and our girlie wasn’t half as tall, then, as she is now; shot up like anything when you was seventeen, didn’t you, darling.’ Oh, the caress in her voice!
    Fevvers reluctantly subsided on her stool and a brooding shadow crossed her brow.
    ‘When I was seventeen, and then our bad years started, our years in the wilderness.’ She heaved another volcanic sigh. ‘Any of that fizz left, Liz?’
    Lizzie peeked behind the screen.
    ‘Would you believe, we’ve drunk the lot.’
    Abandoned bottles rolling underfoot among the foetid lingerie gave the room a debauched look.
    ‘Well, then, make us a cup of tea, there’s a love.’
    Lizzie ducked behind the screen and emerged with a tin kettle: ‘I’ll just trot off and fill it up at the tap in the corridor.’
    Alone with the marvellous giantess, Walser saw the undercurrent of suspicion towards himself she had partially concealed during the interview now come to the surface. Her geniality evaporated; she squinted at him beneath her thick pale lashes with almost hostility, seemed ill-at-ease, reached out to toy with her bunch of violets in a bored fashion. Something, somewhere, perhaps the tin lid of the tin kettle, rattled and clanged. She cocked her head. Then the chimes of Big Ben came drifting towards them once again on the soundless night and all at once she was imbued with vivacity.
    ‘Twelve o’clock already! How time does fly, when one is babbling on about oneself!’
    For the first time that night, Walser was seriously