‘It won’t finish until after his bedtime,’ his wife protested. ‘And he’ll be bad-tempered tomorrow.’
But the journalist insisted, and as it had been years since she had been to a circus, his wife agreed.
‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ John announced when they were settled in their seats. His son was clutching a balloon, staring solemnly at the empty ring ahead.
Sawdust and bright lights, with a hint of tiger musk. John slipped out. The caravans’ entrances were obscured from view. When he tried to push past the barrier, he was stopped. His press pass was useless against the wall of hostility he encountered. He slipped back into his seat just as the drum rolled.
‘What are you up to?’ his wife hissed.
John shook his head, placing a finger on his lips.
‘Sshh!’ he mumbled as the show began.
The applause was deafening. No one heard the scream. No one inside the tent, anyway. By the time the story was out, it was too late; the show was over, the trapeze artist had folded himself down to the ground, the sawdust was soiled with sweat and the tent had emptied. John Ashby, freelance journalist for the Suffolk Echo, heard nothing until the next morning when his editor informed him of the event.
A circus woman in her mid to late thirties had been attacked in her caravan. A kitchen knife had been held to her throat and the threat of rape whispered in her ear. She had not seen the man’s face but his hands were dark-skinned. Later, she told the police that all her travel documents, including her British passport, had been stolen.
Table of Contents
I REMEMBER IT WAS TOWARDS THE middle of August. Thursday the eighteenth, in fact. That I remember so clearly, so painfully still, tells me that I have never for one instant truly forgotten what happened. Great waves of tenderness sweep over me even now, and I am still able to feel within myself the faint, dreadful stirring of what so overwhelmingly and completely engulfed me then. That night the heat held me in a stranglehold. I remember swallowing it in huge gulps and sighs as I listened to the soft gasp of the river. A vast yearning, an unknown expectation was poised to grip me, so that some time later I thought my heart itself would burst. But first came the beginning.
Towards midnight on that evening I woke with a start to the crackle and dance of white static on the television screen. I think I must have fallen asleep with my fingers wrapped around the remote control. It was stiflingly hot, unusual for East Anglia. I remember I wiped small beads of perspiration from my face with the back of my hand, thinking how unlike Britain this was, to feel so hot. I must have been disorientated, confused rather than frightened. No, I wasn’t frightened at all on this perfectly ordinary summer night. Car headlights swept up and down the length of the garden like giant eyelids lighting up parts of the river, dipping into wetland mud before vanishing. The summer renters from Italy had returned after an evening out. I heard them slamming doors in a reckless way, laughing, happy.
‘Si, va bene,’ one of them said, faintly. ‘Capisco, capisco!’ and then they went inside.
I switched off the television without moving from my chair and the surface of the night appeared once more as an undisturbed skin. Except for a small liquid sound, quickly suppressed. So small was it that I continued to sit, glasses in hand, straining my ears, still half asleep, only half listening.