The Misadventures of Margaret Finch, page 24
‘There’s a lot to do. On your own … What happened to Mr Crankshaw?’ It’s the question she has long wanted to ask. But now she has said it, she fears she may have caused pain. Or embarrassment. And she wishes she could take the words back. ‘I’m sorry … I—’
‘Oh, it’s all right, love. Simple answer is – he were no good,’ she says, pinching her lips together so tightly that the colour drains from them. ‘Walked out one day soon after we were married. Never seen him since. Another woman I shouldn’t wonder.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Margaret says. And she means it. She’s grown fond of Maude in her own way.
‘Better off without him. And I don’t have it so bad do I?’ She looks around the room. ‘At least I don’t have to look after a man on top of all this. No use moping on what I can’t change.’ She puts the slice of bread on a plate and places it in front of Margaret, wiping the crumbs from her fingers onto her house-coat. ‘What about you, then? That young man who was here last week … He seemed like a good ’un. Quiet, but that’s not a bad thing. Them as loves theirselves tend to love every woman an’ all.’
‘That’s James. I work with him. He’s the one I’m going to Skegness with today.’
‘Is that right?’ She grins. ‘And do you like him? You know, like that?’ She mouths the last words as though they are being overheard.
‘Yes.’ Margaret considers this admission, her cup halted halfway between table and mouth. ‘Yes, I think I might.’ There’s something about forming the words that gives substance to her thoughts. As if the act of acknowledging has made them true for the first time. ‘I do like him, yes!’
‘Oh, I am glad,’ Maude says.
And so is Margaret. In that moment, she is giddy with relief. With the thrill of having deciphered a riddle. And surely now she has drawn a line around this emotion, and labelled it, she can understand it. Can know she is capable of feeling it.
‘I’ll keep my fingers crossed that it happens for you,’ says Maude. But, for Margaret, just sitting with the feeling is enough. Can’t she just enjoy it without expectation? Without James asking anything of her, or her of him. Without complication. She puts her cup down again without taking a sip.
‘Never had children myself but I like to see you all settled,’ Maude says. ‘Don’t rush into it mind. That’s what I did. Married the first one that came along.’
‘No, no, I’m not … We’re just friends. I—’
‘Getting ahead of myself, aren’t I? Think I’d have learnt my lesson by now. But I’m a proper romantic!’
James is waiting outside the entrance to the station, wearing clothes she has never seen him in before: a flannel shirt in light blue with an open collar. He spots her from a distance, watches her walk towards him, and the knowledge that his eyes are on her makes her mind stall momentarily. She fears she has forgotten how to move; the action of putting one foot in front of the other seems suddenly complicated, the voice inside her head telling her that she is doing it all wrong. But somehow her body carries on regardless and before she knows it, she is by his side.
‘For you,’ he says, thrusting a bag into her hand before she has had a chance to say hello. The paper is greasy and the contents warm. ‘Scratchings from the butcher, fresh this morning.’ Margaret is unsure how to respond. ‘For the journey,’ he says. ‘I thought we could share them.’
‘Thank you, that’s very … thoughtful.’ She smiles and he looks relieved.
‘Shall I hold onto them for now?’
‘Yes please. Shall we wait on the platform?’
‘Let’s.’
The conversation is easy and rarely falters. James reads from the timetable, lists the places the service will stop en route; they speculate about the weather that will greet them on arrival in Skegness. When their train steams into the station, he holds out his hand to help her step up into the carriage. The first compartment is empty and, though several people look through the glass and contemplate joining them, they do not come in and take a seat.
‘I think we’ve got the place to ourselves,’ says James, immediately blushing.
‘Yes. People don’t like to disturb a young couple. I mean … they’ll assume that’s what we are …’ She is making it worse. She can feel the heat rising to her own face.
‘Easy assumption to make,’ James says. ‘A man and a woman together. They don’t know …’
‘… that we work together,’ she says.
‘Exactly.’
She looks up at the tilted mirror beneath the luggage rack above him. From this angle she can see the hair on the top of his head. It is starting to thin very slightly on the crown. She wonders if he knows this.
‘No talk of work today though,’ he says, his voice unnaturally bright. ‘We’re here to have fun.’ He gives her a smile and she returns it eagerly, as the train pulls away from the station.
They remain alone for the majority of the journey, joined only briefly between two stops by a mother with a small child asleep on her shoulder. James spends a great deal of time looking around: watching the changing countryside through the window, standing up to study the prints of the Pennines decorating the walls on either side of the compartment. She has never known him to be so quiet but she senses no discomfort on his part. He still pipes up with facts when they pop into his head, but he seems less frantic as the journey goes on. They begin to talk more about themselves, about apparently frivolous matters like foods they dislike. She tells him about steak and kidney pies resembling baby’s heads. When he hands her the open bag of pork scratchings, she declines, and he does not appear offended, munching his way through them himself.
‘I could do with a cup of tea,’ he says, after finishing the bag. ‘Shall we walk up to the dining car?’
‘We are nearly there now, aren’t we?’ Her watch confirms it.
‘Well, that’s flown by!’
They find a tearoom close to the station instead and, on her way to the loo, Margaret takes the opportunity to enquire with a waitress exactly where and when they might see Davidson’s show. But they do not dally over refreshments; both are keen to explore the town, the weather having exceeded expectations and greeted them with unbroken sunshine and a pleasant breeze.
Skegness has many of the same attractions as Blackpool: the beach of course, the stalls and rides. They walk along to the Fairy Dell, a landscaped garden of man-made streams that meander beneath bridges. While James wanders off to look more closely at a fountain, Margaret sits on a bench, and takes off her shoes and stockings. James turns back just in time to see her step barefoot into the shallow stream.
‘Aren’t you coming in?’ she says, her voice cracking. The water is freezing and makes the new skin of her healed blisters sting. But it is something else that snatches her breath: she is proud of herself, amused at how horrified Other Margaret would be.
James scrambles to roll up his trousers and follows her, holding his shoes, the socks inside them stuffed in so hastily that one of them falls into the water. But he doesn’t notice. She bends and retrieves it for him, wringing it out. Strange to think this fabric has been nestling against his skin. Most people’s feet have very little to recommend them – bulbous toes, tufts of hair, rough soles – and she can’t imagine his are any better. But she holds the sock in her hand a little longer before giving it back.
Small children rush past them, splashing their legs. ‘We’ll have to dry off before we go to the show,’ she says, bending to shake the water from the hem of her dress. She looks up again to find him standing completely still.
‘You still want to go then?’ he says.
‘Yes – that’s why we’re here, isn’t it?’ That came out wrong. They came to spend time together too. ‘What I mean is – I want to see what the trick is. I still don’t believe all this nonsense that he is performing with lions. They’ll be puppets or something. Clockwork. He wouldn’t do it.’
She cannot tell him that this is something she has to do. That she wants to move on with her own life now. That she must face up to what she has done.
37
The Pavilion-by-the-Sea looks like any of the amusements they might see in Blackpool. Margaret thinks its name is misleading. The building is unremarkable, flat-roofed and almost totally windowless, its only decoration the dozens of advertisement boards that shout about the wonders within. Davidson’s next show is not due to start for another half an hour.
‘My treat,’ James says, thrusting sixpence for their admission through the ticket hatch.
‘Well, you can ask for your money back when we see it is just a sham,’ she says. ‘Then you can give it to me, because I’ll have won the bet.’
A red-headed woman behind the counter hands them two tickets: ‘There’s no refunds!’
‘But your advert clearly says Mr Davidson is performing with real lions,’ Margaret says, ‘and you and I both know that is not the case.’
‘I can assure you it is!’ she says. ‘What would you know of it?’
‘My companion used to know him,’ James cuts in. ‘When he was in Blackpool.’
‘Did she now?’ the woman says. ‘One of his “nieces” I expect. Suppose you’ll want me to pass on the message that you are here. As if I’m his secretary.’
‘If you would,’ says Margaret, angry with her tone and her implication. ‘I’m Miss Finch.’ The words are out before she has had time to consider them.
James has been noticeably quieter since he put on his socks (one dry, one wet) and laced up his shoes at the paddling fountain. He said very little during their early supper at a fish and chip shop on the seafront, and now he is saying nothing. Margaret is glad of the silence. She wouldn’t be able to concentrate on conversation anyway; she can feel the anticipation building inside her: the same hunger and repulsion that she felt when she’d stood at the bar in Soho. Even if Davidson gets the message she is here, he may not agree to see her. And then there will be no opportunity to make this time different.
The wooden benches are uncomfortable but at least, in coming this early, they’ve got the best seats. There are very few people here yet, but making a quick calculation, Margaret estimates there’s room for 80 to 100. They are so close to the front that she can reach out and touch the dark green curtain that is covering the small stage. It’s only around 15 feet across, raised a foot or so from the ground. Checking there are no sideshow staff to witness it, she lifts the bottom of the fabric and sees the thick bars of a cage. She can smell something animal, so strong it is almost sweet: the ammonia of stale urine and the musk of damp fur.
‘Are you Miss Finch?’
She drops the curtain. A man in dirty overalls is walking down the aisle between the benches.
‘Yes.’
‘Rector says he’ll see you. Follow me.’
James moves to come with her, but the man raises a hand: ‘He didn’t mention a fella.’
‘You keep our seats, James,’ she says, relieved that he will have to stay behind. She has long thought of him as James in her head, but it is the first time she has called him by his first name, and she sees him register the change. ‘I won’t be long.’ She has to go. Has to do this. But she wants him to wait here for her. She wants to find him sitting in this same spot when she gets back.
Following the stranger through a side door, she is led through a corridor and outside again. She can hear the sea just the other side of a high fence that has been built to cordon off the back of the building. There’s a large covered trailer and various wooden sheds. ‘Over there,’ the man in the overalls says, nodding to the far corner. Margaret sees a figure sitting on an upturned crate. If it wasn’t for the fact he is smoking a cigar, she might mistake him for a child, his body hunched over, staring so intently at the ground that he doesn’t notice as she walks up beside him.
‘Margaret,’ he says, looking up. ‘How delightful to see you! What a lovely surprise.’ His smile looks too heavy for his face. ‘I suppose you’ve come to find out what Skegness makes of my new act?’ He brings his cigar to his lips and she sees it shaking in his hands. Clamping his teeth around it only exaggerates the tremor.
‘I came to find out if it was true.’
‘What?’
‘That you are risking your life in a cage of lions!’ He forces a laugh but she doesn’t join him, and he looks surprised. ‘Or whether it’s just another … performance.’
‘Think of it,’ he says, straightening his back and raising his voice, ‘as another test from God. He has sent many obstacles, but still I cleave to Him.’
She hasn’t come to hear another of his sermons. She wants to know why he left so suddenly. She wants to know if it was what she did. If she doesn’t ask now, she fears she will change her mind. ‘The last time I saw you … I was—’
‘The Lord saved Daniel from the lions and he does the same for me. Three shows daily. It’s the perfect analogy for my trial, don’t you see?’
‘That night. I was upset and, yes, I’d had too much to drink—’
He waves his hand, shooing her words away, and continues on his own subject. ‘I had … objections … at first. Concerns about the lions, of course I did. But I decided to trust in God.’ He is talking very quickly now, not pausing to exhale the smoke before he speaks again. He draws on the cigar in sharp bursts as though gasping for air. She can hear the click of his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth. ‘Besides, as you know, people are fickle. They constantly want something new. Otherwise, they’ll stop coming. They’ll forget.’ His eyes are wide and he spreads the fingers of his hands then curls them into fists, laying the knuckles on the rough-hewn wood of the crate either side of him. She has come all this way to prove something to him. To herself. But he has not given her a second thought since they last met; her humiliation is so unimportant to him that either he does not remember or he does not care. He is not even prepared to listen.
‘I could get you a good spot,’ he says, snatching the cigar from his mouth again. ‘If you want to listen in to what they are saying for your report. Perhaps you could stay on in Skegness for a while. Find out what they make of me. And my lions.’
He is still pretending they are real. ‘Can I see them?’ she says.
‘The lions?’
‘Yes.’
‘If you must.’ He nods to the covered trailer parked close to the fence. ‘It’s always the lions – I sometimes wonder if people come to see me at all.’
‘Aren’t you going to show me?’
‘They don’t like the smoke from the cigars. I’ll stay and finish this one. You’ll be all right. Just around the back there.’
Margaret approaches the trailer cautiously, braced for some trick or other. It is claret red, paint peeling on the edges, bubbles of rust on the overhang of the roof. As she reaches the back, she can see light shining through it: the bars of a cage.
She doesn’t need to see them to know they are there. A smell so aggressively masculine that it makes her throat tighten. She can hear movement, a brief rattle of metal, and can feel a shift in the air around her, as the trailer shakes. There’s the sound of breathing, which she realises is her own; short gasps which feel as if they make it no further than her back teeth. But beneath this is something deeper, louder. She can hear them sniffing the air, can feel them testing her scent in a quickening rhythm. There’s a long, slow growl, so low that it is pure sensation: a rumble that passes through her body like the motion of a train. She takes another step and can see a mass of fur. The bars are spaced widely enough that she could reach through and run her fingers through it. The possibility makes her doubt herself. What if her arm moved unbidden; what if she couldn’t stop it?
The lion knows she is there. It doesn’t need to move, to stand, to turn. It doesn’t need to see her. Another low growl. A warning. She should step back but she wants to go on. Moving sideways along the length of the trailer, past a tail that flicks from side to side, she can see the mane, the back of its head. And behind it, lighter fur spread out across the floor, a chin resting on a paw. A second lion. A pair of eyes that open and look straight at her. It springs to its feet so suddenly that Margaret staggers backwards. Then it turns from her and rubs its cheek against the planks of wood that line the solid back wall of the cage. This one’s a lioness. No mane. A chiselled muzzle.
‘What are you doing back here?’ A girl emerges around the front corner of the trailer, struggling to carry two buckets. ‘You can’t just—’
‘I’m here with Harold … Mr Davidson.’
‘Of course you are.’ The girl sighs, dropping the buckets heavily to the ground. ‘Where is he?’
‘Sitting over there.’
‘Sounds about right. I’ve told him, this is not a zoo. I need to keep them calm before a show.’
Up close Margaret can see that the girl can’t be much older than fifteen or sixteen. She has not yet lost the freckles of youth or gained the curves of adulthood, and is wearing what looks like a man’s shirt, sand-coloured, the hem at the back hanging midway between her knees and bottom. Her brown hair is worn simply, just below her chin with a fringe that makes her look even more child-like.
‘I didn’t realise …’
‘It’s not your fault. He doesn’t listen,’ she says. ‘Can’t blame you for wanting to see them. They are magnificent aren’t they?’
Margaret thinks the girl is pretty magnificent herself, as she watches her climb the small set of steps at the back of the trailer and retrieve a key that is hanging on a chain around her neck. ‘I didn’t believe it. I thought they’d be … But they are real.’
‘Every inch of them – especially their teeth.’
‘And you look after them?’
‘I’m in training to be a tamer.’ Unlocking a padlock which secures the cage door, she turns to the animals. ‘Right, you two. Let’s get you ready for the show.’ She does not hesitate in pulling back the bolt, opening the door and stepping inside. ‘Freddie, for goodness’ sake, you’ve got half your dinner around your mouth!’ The lion looks up and slowly gets to his feet, lumbering over and rubbing the length of his body along her legs. Margaret can only just see the very top of the girl’s head. Even on all fours the lion is almost as tall as she is. She calls down: ‘What’s your name?’
