I was about to walk over to the livery stables, where she sometimes went to talk to Old Henry, when I heard Elijah’s bell. Wilkes’s high-pitched laughter rang from the saloon accompanied by a low and silken chuckle that I guessed must belong to D’Orleans. Everyone was having a bully time and I longed to hear what was going on. But Elijah had summoned me and I must go. I could have taken the back stairs but instead, I fished my book from my coat pocket and hastened into the saloon, heading for the main staircase. Mr D’Orleans arrested my progress. ‘And where might you be going in such an all-fired hurry? Won’t you sit with us awhile?’
‘Sit down, boy, you might learn something of the world,’ said Wilkes.
‘I have to attend on Mr Putnam,’ I said to Merriweather, showing him the book.
Merriweather exploded. ‘Putnam be damned!’ he said. ‘Our guests have requested your presence. You’ll stay here.’ Elijah’s bell rang once more and so used was I to obeying its call that sitting there while it jangled seemed next to unnatural.
But how mightily pleased I was to join the company and hear Wilkes and Mr D’Orleans entertaining the entire saloon with astounding accounts of Mr Barnum’s Travelling World’s Fair. Mr Barnum was truly an amazing man. He had built himself a palace and called it Iranistan. He took to farming at Iranistan but he didn’t use horses, not he. Mr Barnum’s ploughs were pulled by elephants! He had built his own city. He had the greatest show on earth – a circus, menagerie and marvellous museum all rolled into one – and when it came here, which it would, as soon as Mr D’Orleans sent word that all was satisfactory, we’d see the miracles wrought by P.T. Barnum for ourselves.
Mr D’Orleans said that he’d taken a liking to me and would escort me personally through the menagerie where I’d see wolves and bears and leopards and tigers. And he would take me to the kraal, where we could watch the bareback riders and sharpshooters practising. There’d be dwarves and giants, wire-walkers and acrobats, bear-tamers and lion-slayers. He told Merriweather that it befitted the dignity of the circus to have the best seats occupied by the dignitaries of the town and he would be honoured if the hotel owner would accept the first two complimentary tickets for such seats. Merriweather took the proffered red-coloured tickets while D’Orleans presented a handful of yellow ones to the assembled company. ‘Tell your friends,’ he told them.
‘Don’t let ’em miss the day P.T. Barnum came to town!’
While the crowd was taking up their tickets and talking up P.T. Barnum, Mr D’Orleans said to me, ‘I have quite taken a shine to you, Billy. You’ll help us pave the way for the circus, won’t you? I need someone I can count on.’
‘Oh, I sure will!’ I exclaimed.
‘I’m glad. You can show us a place we can erect the tents and pavilions? And put up signs advertising the coming?’
I could, for sure.
‘And maybe you could also help us with the tickets. Mr Wilkes?’
Wilkes, who had been exchanging a quiet word with Merriweather, gave D’Orleans his ear.
‘I had just been thinking of how matters might be expedited if we were to sell the tickets in advance of the show, as we have sometimes done before. It’s really not too troublesome and it would save much time later.’
‘Well, I suppose we could …’
‘Good, then I shall arrange with Mr Merriweather how we may proceed with sales of the tickets on the morrow.’
I basked in the glow of his attention and had it not been for my mother’s recalcitrance, I should surely have followed the dream that was born then, of slipping away with this circus and never seeing Merriweather nor the Particular again. Here was I, Billy Talbot, who had never been anything and had never looked like amounting to anything, called to assist the most famous showman on earth. What with all the excitement, the merriment and the two glasses of beer I’d just had, I couldn’t help voicing the question that was on the minds of everyone present.
‘Are you Mr Barnum?’ I asked and there was a perceptible hush.
No one could have been surprised at my question, only at my presumption in asking it. In his velveteen suit and silver watch chain, with his chest thrown out and his head back, he had the poise and the stature we would have expected of a legend. But he only laughed loudly and said, ‘Barnum indeed!’
The hotelier laughed with his favoured guest and clapped him on the back. ‘Barnum indeed!’ he echoed.
I was thinking I never had enjoyed a night at the Particular so much. It was an occasion I should remember for ever, I was sure of that. Our guests seemed to think I was capital company and even Merriweather was casting me approving looks. Mr D’Orleans excused himself – he was tired and would have a long day of it tomorrow. He left Wilkes to tell us of how they had to build great water tanks to hold the rhinoceroses, which they called rhinonosceri, on account of there being so many of them and of how he’d questioned his own wisdom in calling his shooting gallery the ‘John Wilkes’s Booth’. I was ready to be entertained but Merriweather was looking about for someone to be confidential with and could find only me.
‘Now this is more like it,’ he said, rubbing his palms.
‘Ain’t it, though?’ I said, glowing with pleasure. ‘I did right, didn’t I?’ I think by then I actually believed I had been instrumental in bringing Barnum to town, when all I had really done was to gallop on ahead, waving an arm and hollering ‘Barnum’s a-coming, Barnum’s a-coming!’
He too left the room shortly after and I gorged myself on tales of far-off lands, of adventures beyond the scope of my imagination and I congratulated myself that such wonderful people would actually stoop to take an interest in my poor self. Maybe the world wasn’t what I had taken it for, after all.
Then Merriweather reappeared in advance of something pink and shimmering. But for the drink inside me, I would have been more shocked. Even so, the vision of my mother, the drab, stained and work-worn hermit of the wash-house, transformed by a quality taffeta dress, with her hair washed and combed and piled up upon her head and cheeks modestly rouged and powdered, sent a tremor through my frame. She was suddenly beautiful. I tried to say something to her but either the words never escaped my lips or she didn’t hear me.
The rouge on her cheeks seemed of a stronger colour as she stopped by my chair. Wilkes said, ‘You’ll have to excuse me, Billy,’ and got up and took her hand and together they walked down the saloon and I cannot tell you how I felt when she hoisted the hem of her dress and mounted the stairs.
I
I WAS NOT feeling special bright when I awoke, on account of having discovered a hitherto-unsuspected fondness for whisky. In the period between my mother’s ghastly ascension to Wilkes’s room and my own unsteady flight to my eyrie in the eves I made my first acquaintance with hard liquor. I tried to rise but encountered a problem. How and when I was overcome by the villain who had trussed me up tightly and who even now was perhaps returning to finish me off, I did not know but tied fast I was.
That I had put up a fight before being overpowered by the gang there could be no doubt. The room was much changed. The chair on which I was used to hang my clothes was upturned, as was the rough bookcase, whose contents lay spread and damaged about the attic floor. The crudely-executed portrait of the man in the bearskin coat, by Elijah’s brother, was newly cracked and hanging askew upon the wall.
Then I noticed my left boot, which circumstantially must have been the instrument of the damage; it lay immediately below and it came to me that its brother had escaped at speed through the window, the culmination of a mortal struggle between he and me, over the right to stay in