He spoke in a voice she’d never heard before, basso profundo, declaiming, ‘Ladies and gentlemen! Mesdames! Messieurs! I am proud to announce! The world debut! Of the most remarkable woman in the world! The greatest wonder of nature! From the wild mountains of Mexico! Perhaps – even – the Missing Link!’
A long breathless pause.
‘I give you! The only one of her kind, the truly incomparable – Julia! Pastrana!’
The curtain rose.
The theatre was a great gold cavern with a thrilling echo. The lights lit up faces, row after row after row, every one fixed on her. She smiled beneath her veil. Her lips had dried up so she tried to lick them but her tongue, too big at the best of times, had dried up too and seemed to have doubled in size. She swallowed. Sing to the people at the back, Rates had told her. The back was miles away. But first the band struck up the Minute Waltz. A little run on the tips of her toes then into the dance, keeping time with all the changes, twirl, pirouette, pique, turn. Slow down. Glissade, then into the Hungarian Dance, and from there to flamenco, swishing her skirts and stamping. The crowd cheered. When she stopped and curtseyed, they cheered more. Then Rates walked out and took her hand, holding it high to his lips and bowing to her as if she was a great lady.
‘Wonderful, Julia,’ he said quietly to her, then turned to face the audience. ‘And now it is time!’ he cried, ‘to reveal to you – one of the great wonders of our time, the only one of her kind – the nonpareil – the most remarkable being known to mankind – la-dees and gentlemen – Mesdames – Messieurs – I give you—’
They had rehearsed it time after time above Brady Childer’s grocery shop. She held herself ready, arranging her face into an easy yet dignified smile that would become more animated as the audience relaxed – and after all, as Delia had said, what more was this than what she’d been doing all her life one way or another?
‘—the one and only!—’
She stepped away from him and lifted one elegant white-gloved hand to the end of her veil.
‘—Miss JULIA PASTRANA!’
She unveiled.
There was a moment of absolute silence, a second or two at most, then a collective sucking like a hurricane drawing in its breath to blow. A few people shrieked. Julia walked towards the front of the stage. She heard a wag in the audience say, ‘It’s a chimpanzee in a dress!’
Someone shouted, ‘LOUP GAROU’. She laughed. Her eyes twinkled, her smile was genuine. Now that she was on, she didn’t feel so bad. I’m looking at you, she thought. You are looking at me. And you’re paying. The band played ‘La Llorona’. She’d sung it hundreds of times, it’s what she’d always done, and she sang it tonight with a certain lightness and spring that somehow accentuated its tragedy, walking up and down the front of the stage and peeling off her long white gloves, discarding them as she looked out into the sea of faces, meeting eyes boldly, as fascinated by them as they were by her. The crowd roared and waved its handkerchiefs, and it was such a glorious moment she thought she might faint.
The night before they left for New York there was cold ham and figs and a jug of wine, laid out on the table in the yard. Cato and Ezra Porter were heading for Knoxville in two more days, and other people were coming to stay in the shacks around the yard.
‘Going on a big train, Cato,’ Delia said, wafting the air with a palm fan.
Cato was sitting on the henhouse.
‘You and Cato,’ Julia asked Ezra, sipping her wine, ‘How did you come by each other?’
‘Found him near Pittsville, Alabama,’ Ezra said. ‘In a bar. Was with a man called Flynn who had fleas he used to feed on a big special vein he had running down the inside of his arm.‘
Cato’s bare heels drummed the side of the henhouse.
‘Cato, get down from there,’ said Ezra. ‘Poor stuff, it all was – you know – not even the midway, back of the midway, out of the midway, box on the sidewalk, tent thrown over three sticks, you know?’ He got up and traipsed over to the henhouse. ‘Someone brought Cato in the bar. This kid kind of pushed him in. Was scared, not like he is now. Me and Flynn sitting there and the bartender just staring, says, Jesus Christ, it’s some fucking freak. What the hell, get it out of here. And Flynn just about filling his pants. Didn’t bother me. They used to bring the freaks through every year where I grew up. I knew what he was.’
He took Cato’s hand. Cato pulled it away and walked along the ridge of the henhouse, arms outstretched.
‘Kid said he‘d been following him about like a lost dog and he didn’t know what to do. He’s been walking up and down all day just up the road, they shooed him away, and now he’s following me, he says, and I don’t know what to do. Look, he’s giving me the creeps. From the plantation most like, Bartender says. Better take him to the Sheriff. They don’t want him up there, the boy says. They put him out.’
Julia took her drink over to the swing, sat down and swung gently.
‘And I said, no,’ Ezra said, ‘people’d pay money to see him. And Flynn says I ain’t going anywhere with that thing.’
Loose-jointed, Cato jumped down and moved with his peculiar bent-kneed gait over to where Julia swayed under the apple tree.
‘So after that,’ said Ezra, ‘it was just me and Cato.’
‘Hoo-hah!’ Cato said, holding up his arms as if wanting to be picked up.
‘You want to swing?’ she said. ‘Shall I push you? You won’t scream, will you?’
He shook his head.
‘Come on then.’ She got down and put her drink on the ground and he clambered on with sounds of gobbled delight. As she pushed, he howled with joy and his thin bare feet kicked wildly.
‘Cato!’ she said, ‘You promised!’
Madame Soulie came out of the house carrying a banjo and sat down with the rest. ‘It’ll be very quiet around here tomorrow when you’re all gone,’ she said.
‘The new batch’ll be here before you know it,’ Rates said, peeling a fig.
Madame Soulie played ‘Rose of Alabamy’, slow at first.
‘I’m not pushing you, you’re too noisy.’ Julia said.
Cato got down.
‘I could play this once.’ Madame Soulie said, playing a little faster.
Cato lifted up his long skinny arms and swayed.
‘I will miss you, Cato,’ Julia said.
Duende, she thought. Goblin. I’m the loup garou. Jonsy’s a ghost. Arm in arm against a full moon sky, walking with the devil baby. ‘Dear little duende,’ she said, and was struck with a momentary sense of belonging.
Rose was reading about an island in Mexico, the last resting place of hundreds of dolls.
‘Trouble is,’ said Laurie, ‘for you it’d be like going to Battersea Dogs Home. You’d want to bring them all home with you.’
Adam, hovering uneasily about with a slightly sneery look on his face, was wondering if he should leave. He’d been drinking tea and talking to her about M.R. James when Laurie just walked in and slobbed down with her on the sofa, taking