The Memory of Scent E-Book

Lisa Burkitt

• Herausgeber: THP Ireland
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Set against the backdrop of Paris in 1883, The Memory of Scent is the story of two French women, Fleur and Babette, and of how their lives diverge when the artist they both model for is found dead. For Fleur, hers is a life lived on the fringes of the Impressionist movement in a world of colour and music; Babette is not so lucky, and following the death of the artist, her life begins to quickly unravel on the streets of France. This is a novel of the senses, in which memory, love and loss are explored and examined, and where it appears the ties which hold us together can also pull us apart.

Leseprobe

For Charlie and for Neil and Ethan

CONTENTS

Title Page

Dedication

WOODY ORIENTAL

AIRY FLORAL

MUSKY OAK-MOSS

SWEET MEADOW MOIST

EARTHY DAMP

SMOKY LEATHER

SPICY INCENSE

DAMP LAVENDER

STALE TURPENTINE

FLORAL CITRUS

WARM VANILLA

SOURED MILK

CINNAMON CHOCOLATE

BOUQUET GARNI

JASMINE

FLORAL BOUQUET

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Copyright

WOODY ORIENTAL

The scent is patchouli. It took me a while to place it. Her head must also lean against this very cushion, must also watch as the painter strokes and separates the bristles of his brushes and runs his thumb through them one by one. My mother always wafted lavender. Her friends moved in drifts of irises and violets. But here, propped up against this prickly, horse-hair stuffed cushion, I can smell only patchouli.

Its mustiness coils through my nostrils and makes me think of old, battered leather or something woody like over-turned earth or the damp carpet of a forest after a spring shower, at first lush and seductive, then sweetly stabbing like walking barefoot on moss. It clouds behind my eyes until the sound of the painter crossing the parquet floor is nothing but a soft shuffle. I try not to clench my toes, because he likes me looking wistful and sensuous. ‘Like a Venus sprite’, he said. I don’t know what he means. My nakedness is a lumpen and mottled sheath, struggling to distinguish itself from the colours and textures around me. That small stove is not enough to heat this large vaulted space. I need to channel a Venus sprite, to somehow inhabit her, but my veins are throbbing like angry blue rivers and my pimpled flesh should be slapped on to a butcher’s counter ready for cleaving and not presented in a gilt-edged frame.

I am sure she knows instinctively how a Venus sprite should appear to him. I imagine, with her everything is delicate and nubile. Her hair probably naturally fans out on the pillow like silken rivulets. My frizzy tufts could instead be used to stuff this pillow that has been so heavily indented by my head. She passed close by on a few occasions. I knew it was her by her scent. And once, I held the door open for her as she made her way down the stairs just as I was arriving. I saw the buffed lace boots clip lightly down toward me, then the swish of the green velvet hem and the white scalloped underskirt as they grazed each step. Next the narrow leather belt and cinched-in waist came into view. As she neared the bottom, she adjusted her velvet hat with its little decorative bird peeping out from some netting, all fastened loosely at an angle under her chin in a thick ribbon. Her skin looked fresh and pink, her loose hair the blackest black under her broad-rimmed green velvet hat. As she passed through the doorway she dropped one of the white gloves she was pulling on. We both bent to pick it up at the same time. We smiled shyly. I could see why he would want to paint her. Her violet eyes would be just the kind of detail that a painter would get excited about. She walked as if bathed in a shimmer, while the beam of sunlight seemed only to amplify my blandness.

I have spent hours in this bare studio. Several of the canvases leaning against the wall remain blank and virginal, primed for the first lacerations of colour which he will build on stroke by stroke, curve by curve, nurturing and attentive until she is staring defiantly out at you, perhaps seductively, daring you to look for longer. Others are in rows against the wall and are a constant source of anxiety to me as I compare myself to the tangles of peach limbs, cascading hair and the coy over-the-shoulder glances.

I have to remind myself that he did choose me from among all those at the models’ market in Place Pigalle. Sunday after Sunday, I stamped my feet trying to keep warm, while I milled around with young laundry girls in grey muslin, all praying for a sitting, for a few francs, for the next meal, all standing for hours on end while newly urbanised painters weaved around us in search of alabaster. They were met instead with reddened skin, chapped hands and untamed hair. Where did he find her I wonder?

‘Fleur, drop that right shoulder just a little. The right shoulder’, he says, as if I’m just a collection of body parts.

My mother never actually told me why she named me Fleur, but I know that it was in the expectation that I would live a life of fragrant gracefulness. There were always flowers freshly picked and bunched in surprising places around the house. Her needlework was exquisite, her deportment refined. I took on the awkward gait of my father, probably out of mimicry, because I adored him so. He also gifted me with the unfortunate thicker wrists and ankles more becoming of a son.

I wonder does the patchouli girl open her thighs for him, this man who is only referred to as the ‘Spanish painter’. He does not look at me with any urgency, any tension. The patchouli is still strong, so maybe he is satiated. She cannot be long gone. Shafts of light peep through the olive-green shutters and lance little specks of dust. There is a plate of discarded bread and cheese and an almost empty bottle of red wine abandoned on a long, low wooden bench. There are two stained glasses on the floor and one chair. Did he straddle the bench while she sat on the chair? Did he take the glass from her before placing it on the floor? Did he turn towards her, his hands tracing her ankles then slowly hiking the gathered layers until he reached the top of her stockings? Did he begin to gently roll, downwards, silk tipped fingers …

‘… and then that will be sufficient.’

‘Pardon, Monsieur?’

‘Next Thursday afternoon. If I need you then after that, I will ask you. Are you still at Café Guerbois?’

He has finished with me. One more session. How did my friend Maria beguile a man forty years her senior so completely that he now pays a regular stipend to her, even though he no longer paints her? She never spoke of lovemaking, nor did I ever press her for the no doubt unpalatable details of his crêpe skin and angular bones covering her and prodding her. It would be like a crow alighting on a field of strawberries. She only ever spoke of the grandeur of his Neuilly studio. Hers is a stubbornness that defies convention; she sees no reason why she should not be as great a painter as any man.

I am dispatched. I slowly pad my way to the oriental screen and, even though I boldly turn to face him, he has already begun to divide his brushes into the different jars according to the thickness of their bristles. I slip on my chemise and tighten my corset so that my apron looks trim on me. My petticoat could do with some starch and I may as well not have bothered wearing my favourite puff-sleeved blouse for all the attention it garnered. To think I spent wasted moments wondering: broach or cravat, cravat or broach. To think I generously tipped the long glass neck of my mother’s jasmine scent on to my fingertips to dab some allure behind my ears and on to my neck. I don’t have too great a choice when it comes to skirts, though I am straining at the fastenings of this one. My mother can let it out again. I can see him through the hinges of the screen, removing his paint-spattered smock as I bend to pull up my stockings. I lace up my boots and drape my shawl over my shoulders.

‘I’ll be leaving now.’ But he waves indifferently over his shoulder without even rotating himself fully towards me. The steps are pockmarked from scores of women clicking their way up and down this stairwell. Some of the steps are so badly scuffed that you could trip quite easily if you were inattentive or distracted. I need both of my hands to pull open the front door and the lion’s head seems to wink at me as the sunlight catches its brass. I fall into the bustle of these narrow streets, treading carefully around clumps of horse manure and rotting slimy vegetables. Weaving through the street stalls, I have to hitch up my skirt or else the putrid-smelling seepage coursing down the cobbles would leech into my hems. I am aware that the lace of my boot is dragging along the ground but I don’t want to grab its sodden tip with an ungloved hand, so I ignore it. Gradually the grim littered doorways become fewer, the streets become wider, the strolling ladies better groomed and soon I am rounding the corner on to Rue Batignolles where the familiar row of canopies bulge and billow into view. I wave to the shop boy at the front of the colour merchant’s store as he sweeps its entrance clean.

‘You’re late.’ The patron of the café is angry with me.

‘Mademoiselle, I am getting tired of your excuses and your absences and your disappearances. There are a dozen other girls I could hire like that.’ He clicks his tobacco-stained fingers for emphasis. I know that he is right. I see them – young girls, perfectly pleasant and polite, knocking at the back door, asking to speak with him. But he likes me, and the customers seem to as well, and when I am here, I do work very, very hard – most of the time.

The patron has been in a bad mood since his wife left him for a clerk, a strange sullen man whose merits are mysterious. He seems to cast his own brooding shadow no matter how luminous the daylight. But many times, on the pretence of visiting her husband at his work, the patron’s wife would brush past the clerk’s table and linger with her back to him. An odd habit I always thought, until I caught a glimpse of his hands on her hips beneath her shawl, tugging her gently towards him. He briefly nuzzled his head towards the small of her back, one florid cheek resting on her bustle. It was why he always chose to sit in the far booth. These furtive cameos play out with the randomness of paint splattering. One vast moving canvas, these walls its frame.

Walrus had his own reasons for sitting with his back to everyone.

‘Psst … you’re late!’

I normally don’t mind being late, though I feign distress about it for the patron. But I do hate when I’m late and am immediately thrown into a flurry of busyness. Today is such a day. The café is filled with stragglers from the luncheon service, their hats still balancing on the wall hooks where they were tossed several hours earlier. Others are arriving in small groups, flicking up their frock coats to better arrange themselves on the metal chairs and around the small marble-topped tables. I stand in the middle and tie my apron at my waist as customers brush by me. With one extended sweep, I wipe a cloth over the bar counter which stretches along one wall of the café. I then bring my cloth over to the wood panelled booth where Walrus likes to sit, his thick arching moustache quivering at a point beneath his chin as he mocks my tardiness.

‘What was it this time? You saved a duck from being bashed on the head by a boatman’s pole?’

‘You, Sir, given the chance, would have deliberately bashed it in, only to serve it up on a platter. No, I had a sitting.’

‘Did you manage to prise his Catalonian fingers from his brushes long enough to stroke the back of your neck?’

Much to my annoyance, I feel my face flush. ‘No, of course not. Nothing would have interested me less.’

He is not the slightest bit convinced. He settles his large rear in café after café and restaurant after restaurant, ostensibly out of his love of food, but it is more because he is a gourmand of life, greedily ingesting all round him. He lives vicariously through observation and can unpick the pretences and restraints that people swathe themselves in for the sake of social order. With one raised eyebrow, he can shatter any carefully constructed tableau and cut straight to its sweaty underbelly.

‘Mademoiselle, you are annoyed that the handsome man from Catalan had reduced you to nothing more than brush strokes. You feel you could just as easily be a vase or a bowl of fruit, but you must know that a model is a mere vessel, nothing more. You can’t blame the artist for that.’

‘Yes, but when your toes and fingers are freezing and your skin has turned a shade of blue, don’t you think the painter should at least notice … should remember you are human and care just a little? Unless he wants to make love to you of course, yes, then he’ll recall you are flesh and blood and not just some … what did you call it? … some vessel.’

‘But he didn’t want to make love to you, am I right? And that my young lady, if I am not mistaken, is the source of your irritation. You are insulted that he didn’t even give you the right to refuse him.’

I snort slightly; an entirely affected attempt at being dismissive. Walrus taps his podgy hand on mine as I stack his plates with renewed efficiency.

‘Mademoiselle, I know for a fact that he is not a nice man. That young girl who was found dead in the alleyway just off Rue Notre Dame des Champs, she kept regular company with him. Granted, that street contains more studios than any street in Paris, but he did take her in. They were then evicted from their apartment because no rent was being paid. He just left her to fend for herself. She was a rural girl whose only real possession was her coat. She pawned it and died on the streets, probably of exposure. There were bruises on her body.’

Walrus is speaking quickly and in hushed tones so that I won’t appear to be dawdling during a busy service. Stories of lost girls are nothing new. It’s a sad world. I know that from my early days here. Walrus can be very dramatic. It keeps him from being bored. I can hear chef calling me from the kitchen. Walrus pats his moustache with a napkin, lifts his hat from the wall, and hefts his way out through and around the other customers. I know that by the time he reaches the front step, several small objects will have teetered and crashed to the floor. I go to fetch a small brush.

The Café Guerbois has its own rhythms, from the light luncheon clatter to the more animated evening sessions when the air becomes thick with the smoke which curls high around the paintings hanging on the wood panels while the young serveuses dart around taking orders and serving drinks. Artists corral themselves into one section and hold charged discussions on painting styles and the best moment to varnish. Poets and students idle in dark corners with watered-down beers in contemplation of life. I like to soak up the streams of café conversations as I would spilt wine – a dab here, a trickle there. Poverty is a recurring theme. I quietly scorn their notion that the more poverty you endure, the more noble a life you live. I once heard them speak in awe of an old friend who wrote ‘An Ode to Poverty’, and then died of starvation. So many of them spend all their time drinking on credit and avoiding actual work. Men do not realise what a rarefied life they lead in their industrious pursuit of leisure. Women must remain busy or all around them would crumble.

And here is George. There is something intriguing about him, from the way his long fingers tap the stem of his goblet to the way he smells, which is a mixture of lavender cologne and tobacco. He is almost as handsome as the Spaniard and has the casual air of entitlement that comes from being adored all of his life by governesses, elderly aunts, and a besotted mother, an endless parade of validation for his every utterance, his every bowel movement. I have learned that he dropped out of school before completing his Baccalauréat because he was fixated on becoming a painter. To the general agreement of those present, by even the loosest of standards, he was never going to be any good. So he turned to writing, at which he seems much more comfortable. He managed to get an essay published to much back-slapping relief.

I want to dislike him for his ease of passage through life, but he is unfailingly polite and respectful. He once even half stood up while I delivered his food to the table, before he realised what he was doing and sat back down, as was completely appropriate to our relative positions.

Circumstances shape people and some are more blessed than others. I try not to let my annoyance become too obvious that this world in which I am now anchored, through which I am dragging myself with cracked and dirty fingernails, is a mere source of adventure and new impressions for unmotivated students and untalented artists and writers. That really my friends and I are just bit parts in the fanciful montage of young men who come to Paris to earn their stripes and then be gone.

Where has the time gone? The hour of the ‘Green Fairy’ is soon here, and I must lay out more sugar cubes. If I was blindfolded, I could tell you the time of day it was simply by raising my nose in the air and sniffing. Mornings have the sizzling, buttery comfort of frying eggs; late mornings start to choke up with pungent cigarettes and coffee; then, my favourite, the steaming wafts of soup; before the dreaded hour where absinthe is ordered in enthusiastic rounds and then slowly, you can actually witness a palpable descent into sadness.

You see, here we are a safe-house from the visceral, gut punch of rejection by dealers, lovers, friends, publishers. Some handle it with table-thumping bravado and another round of vermouth, but the absinthe gently finger-tips others towards the edge. They think they are being soothed but as I serve up yet another glass of the iced, opal-green elixir, their shoulders slump a little further, their breathing sinks a little deeper, their eyes take on the flinty glaze of the browbeaten. Within a few hours, their demolition will be complete.

Today I will take my time walking home. I am tired and limp and these streets act like bellows, pumping vitality back into my lungs. I love the brutish pursuit of the aesthetic that is typical of Paris. To think that an administrator with Napoleonic ties could just decide, for the sake of the promenading upper middle class, to cut though and obliterate what was once a chaotic mess of narrow streets and transform them into great tree-lined avenues. People can now stroll to see and be seen. To then demolish medieval streets and alleys so that the noses of the better classes could be spared the stench of their foul-smelling subordinates? I can understand it. Why would you not want to annihilate things that are messy, smelly and complex and replace them instead with simplicity and refinement?

But here, as I begin to thread my way through the rabbit-warren of dirty streets which lead to my own front door at the top of Montmartre, my breathing becomes easier. It’s strange, as much as I love the scale and grandeur of the finer parts of the city, it is in Montmartre I find my comfort.

And of course, there’s young Joseph in his threadbare, old man’s coat. He is collecting horse dung. He balances his large basket on his hip and scoops up his ‘investment’ which he will later mix with straw and sell on to fertilise the finer gardens. He has been doing this since he was five years of age. The two prostitutes who have taken him in regularly take turns flinging buckets of cold water on him after his hard day’s work because of the stink. He can be heard cursing at them. He is a young man of twelve years of age now and is more precious about his nakedness than he used to be. I have tried to teach him to read, just a little, and he does, just a little.

‘Maman, I’m home.’

I go straight over to the small grate to poke the fire, trying to keep it spitting warmth, but its crackle is that of a winded old man. I feel overwhelmed with tenderness for my mother and I’m consumed by a ferocious urge to protect her. Our home is a jumble of rickety cast-off furnishings, shreds of matting on the bare floors, sagging mattresses and one large cracked mirror. Can lodgings ever really be considered home? My early days were spent in a place with climbing roses over a front door, with a parlour and proper bedrooms, a large kitchen and a laundry and a pantry. Here in this converted outbuilding, where our ceiling is somebody else’s floor and the chairs of upstairs lives can be heard scraping above us, I have two carefully placed, red velvet cushions. I plump them each morning and prop them against the frayed arms of the sofa. My pride is something sheathed and stitched in dimpled red velvet and delicately positioned for inspection. It is evident in few other places.

Though her fingers are pale and stiffening, my mother continues to sew with her sewing box resting on the blanket on her knees. She mends table linen for a few restaurants and hotels, making the threadbare look refined. It brings in a little money.

‘No word from Rue de la Paix yet then?’

‘None, Maman. I’m sure any day now, something will come up.’

When I picture Rue de la Paix in my mind I see one vast emporium of opulence. The very best milliners are concentrated on that one street. I have tried on many occasions to find my mother work there, but they prefer young girls, pretty girls, probably because the customers are free to wander about the shops, watching the girls at work. The idea seems to be that if you are trying to sell something well-crafted to a discerning customer, even the nimble-fingered hat maker has to be visually appealing. There are small and busy ateliers where the hats are crafted and assembled and there are vast parlours of indulgence where, when you step through the doors, you can feel the lush carpet through even the crudest of soles. The hats there are so exquisite that they are displayed on tall bronze stands so you can perambulate around them, admiring the elaborate confections of ostrich plumes and feathers, silk trims and ribbons, felt, velvet and lace.

I once dreamt that I was a lady in the mood for a purchase, and was led to a wide, marble table where I sat on a cushioned chair in front of an enormous gold-gilded mirror. The air was perfumed with freshly cut flowers, and an offertory of hats was presented to me, one by one, by slimly elegant young ladies. As I sipped Champagne from a sparkling, crystal flute, I waved them all away with one imperious white-gloved hand. I could never find work for my mother in a place like that and, much to her irritation, I don’t have my mother’s fine skills with a needle nor the required patience.

My mother, the once elegant Madame Delphy, knows that I had mentioned the possibility of her working with some master milliners. Her thoughts have become frail and loose and she seems to have no perception of time at all. Time has become a fluid and itinerant thing that her mind randomly plucks at. She harvests her memories as she would apples in an orchard, scooping up the healthy fruit, while discarding the bruised and damaged. She knows that her husband, my father, is dead, but has forgotten that he died leaving colossal debt. She knows that she had loved him, but forgets that he often disappeared down to Marseille under the guise of his engineering work where he would take up with prostitutes and find willing players for high-stake card games. She knows that she often doesn’t feel very well and that is the confusing thing for both of us as her mind and body seem in the interminable grip of a cloying melancholy. Sometimes she aimlessly picks at the wallpaper as she lies in her bed at night, creating a jagged gash that cruelly mocks me. ‘Your mother is ill,’ that wallpaper wound taunts me as the sun rises each day and blinks into darkness each night.

‘Yoo-hoo, ladies of the house?’

Maria waves from outside the window before she bursts through the door carrying a small posy of flowers and some bread. ‘These are for your mother.’

‘Ah how sweet. Let me put them in water. She is a little tired so is having a rest. I’ll make us some coffee.’

Maria pulls the chair that isn’t broken, towards me and whispers so that we are not heard. ‘How has she been?’

‘Very confused. Sometimes she wakes me at night with her moaning and I find she’s covered with sweat.’

The fact that we were both fatherless forged an immediate bond between Maria and I when we first met as young girls. However, while I have fond memories of a tall man tapping up the path with his silver-topped cane and then tossing his hat on to a bench, scooping me up, all in a tobacco-scented whirl, there was nothing for Maria. She would joke that she was, ‘Marie-Clémentine Valadon, Father-Unknown’, because that’s what is written on her birth certificate. Maria is fingering the wide blue ribbon of her bonnet.

‘Another new hat, Maria?’

‘It’s Henri. He spends far too much time going in and out of the milliners picking up hats for me. I tell him that it’s much cheaper to paint me in the nude, instead of in these creations. But what can I do?’ Her smile tells me that she wouldn’t be protesting too much about this.

‘Yesterday we went to that lovely wild garden behind the Boulevard de Clichy with the lemon trees and the lilac bushes. It was a slow day’s work, some painting, a little wine and pâté, and then more painting in that very crisp, sharp light. You didn’t make the party last night?’

‘I hadn’t the energy, so I just stayed home after work. How was it?’

‘The usual: noisy and lots of fun. It was in one of the dilapidated streets near the Louvre. Somebody painted three large banners with the words, ‘obligation’, ‘order’ and ‘responsibility’ in big dark letters. They were hung on the wall and the men had a spitting competition to find out how many of the banners they could hit. Heads flung back, and then ‘phwat’. There was one poor soul, a small timid writer who didn’t manage to reach any of them, so he was tumbled out onto the street where he was pelted with tomatoes and everyone shouted ‘traitor’ after him. Henri and I stayed far too late, of course.’

Henri is a bit of a night owl. I like him. I think his insecurities make him comfortable to be around and he is instantly recognisable, a little bearded man with the bulbous nose and checked trousers. He adores Maria, which is probably why he paints her so much. ‘Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’. His name has the ring of the nobility which he does indeed spring from, but I would say he is more at home among the girls of Montmartre. They all love him because he is the first with the gossip.

‘Did he hear anything about the girl in the alley, the one that was found dead? Walrus was talking about her earlier.’

‘Well, he didn’t know her. Very few did. She was often with that Spanish painter. I heard that she had pawned her coat so he went to the pawn shop to get it back after she was found, and then he and a few friends went to the Jardin des Tuileries to hold a farewell ceremony for the girl. They placed her coat on the ground, sprinkled petals on it, and set it on fire. They called it a ceremony of release and drank until dawn.’

‘They probably didn’t even remember her name by then.’ I can, in a way, see how he would easily show such a callous disregard for a young girl. But actual cruelty? That I can’t imagine. And yet, why couldn’t he have retrieved her coat for her while she was still alive? No doubt he would have if she had only asked. I’ll hold that thought.

‘Maria, I sat for him, the Spaniard, and he was absolutely fine. In fact I have another sitting next week.’ Or was he fine? When I think about it, there were moments where I felt a little frightened, but only because I was so anxious to please him and felt as though I was falling short. Being so talented must be a very consuming business and from such talented people we can’t expect the social niceties beloved of the terminally boring and vacuous. And then there was the cat. It innocently strolled in one afternoon, back arched in anticipation of exploring a new environment. Any distraction can be welcome when you are holding the same position for hours on end. He caught the side glance that was really just a reflex, and swung around to see the source of my brief flickering of focus. The cat purred its entitlement to be there and padded towards one of the jars of brushes sitting on the floor. With the palette firmly wedded to his left hand, he reached for the cat with his right hand and closed his fist around its neck, carrying it swinging and spitting to the top of the stairs. He must have flung it down because I could hear a few thuds and pitiful mewing. It actually didn’t take anything out of him as he just slowly closed the door and resumed painting. I was almost afraid to breathe. How safe was I really? What about the patchouli girl … is she safe?

* * *

The air always seems fresher here in the Bois de Boulogne than in most other parts of Paris, apart, of course, from the clean air of the Butte at the height of Montmartre. I have been promising Maria that I would come with her out here to the circus where once she spent time as an acrobat. She has left many old friends behind and the odd time I take a day trip out here, there seems to be a certain grace, a casual respectability where ladies with parasols and impeccable men with their walking sticks mingle and casually appraise the red-coated riders as they canter their horses through complicated routines. We pick our way behind the tiered stands, trying to avoid the still steaming clumps of horse manure. Maria looks sublimely happy, as if caught up in a mystical thrall.

‘Is that not the most wonderful smell in the entire world?’ I smile meekly because my only concern is to swat away the flies and to try and ignore the discomfort I am feeling as sullen groups of men work in industrious hives, some pulling ropes, others painting large planks of wood, while all around, calloused hands savagely groom glossy horse flesh with coarse bristled brushes.

‘Uncle.’ I turn in time to see Maria clasping her hat to her head and running towards a large man perched on a very small wooden stool and tending to a horse’s hoof. I watch, charmed, as a broad grin creases his weather-worn face the minute he realises it is Maria. He releases the horse’s hoof from between his knees and stands up, his bulky, scarred forearms gripping Maria in the briefest of hugs. This man, whom one second ago I looked on with misgivings and suspicion, tentatively stepping around him as if proximity would bring me harm, is now bathed in benevolence and awkward charm.

‘My little Marie-Clémentine, look at you. You don’t look like a girl who has come to do some tumbling.’

‘This is my good friend Fleur, and this is my uncle.’

I know he is not really her uncle, but she always speaks so fondly of him because he took care of her. Everyone should have at least one person to look out for them.

‘This little creature was the most fearless acrobat ever to climb up on a horse’s back. There were plenty bigger, but none bolder. And your trapeze work …’

‘Yes, well, my boldness cost me months in bed and my future in the circus.’

‘Oh that was a nasty fall you took, but look at you now, haven’t you grown into the proper young lady.’

I am intruding on this affectionate reunion so I decide to take a look around. I don’t even like circuses. They always seem pompous and artificial and I hate being condescended to, all that manipulation of the audiences’ reactions. All that, ‘Oooooh, he almost fell to his death there.’ ‘Ahhhhh, that elephant nearly crushed his body there.’ Leave me in peace to look at a painting, or walk in a beautiful garden, or eat an exquisitely cooked meal. I much prefer to be a passive observer, than a sawdust-caked participant.

Maria was very happy here so I am happy for her. As I stroll around, I can see how a very strong bond would form between all those involved in this little capsule of existence. They must have to truly trust each other. They must learn to read each others rhythms when their very life could depend on something as tenuous as another’s wrist clasp as they fly through the air. They must know what ropes to haul, what animals to soothe, what smiles to flash, what has to be hammered here and fastened there. It must all come as second nature, as intricate and tuned as the workings of a clock. There is a large trapeze net and a man springing up and down with a rope tied to his waist as two men each hold one end of it. I pull back a canvas flap as I can hear voices inside. It is a huge space with one long bar area where three young women dry glasses while others flatten out sand heaps underfoot. They barely look up at me, even though they must know, must sense, that I am not of this place. Back outside again, a strong man holds two women aloft, one in each arm. His muscles are slathered in something; his vanity is clearly outstripping the women’s safety for I feel sure they will slide off the glistening and sinewy bulges. His manhood is tucked into folds of cloth, resembling something you would swaddle a baby in, his chest broad and bare.

I feel more inclined now to brazenly lift the various canvas flaps as if peeping through a picture book. There is a whimpering sound coming from somewhere. I slowly step my way towards the source of it, which appears to be behind a wooden screen. There, standing naked with little skinny arms crossed in front of her, is a young girl of about fourteen or fifteen, head bowed with her dark hair falling forward. A man is walking around her as if he is inspecting merchandise. I remember hearing recently that the circus owner likes to stage side-show cabarets for select bands of gentlemen where they are entertained by nude girls. I hear myself shouting.

‘What the hell are you doing?’

The man’s eyes meet mine with a steely gaze. ‘And who, might I ask, are you?’

I am emboldened and move to grab the wrist of the young girl but an unkempt elderly woman sitting on a small stool in the shadows startles me as she presses down hard on her haunches and rears up like an angry beast.

‘Leave my granddaughter alone. Don’t you go near her.’

The woman has a walking stick, and she raises it to hit me but I step back. I feel contempt for this woman rising biliously from deep in my stomach. The man throws a blanket at the young girl.

‘Look, the customers here are high class. This is not some brawling absinthe-soaked hovel. Anyway, I would never hire her: she is far too young and far too skinny. All of you just get out of here immediately and good riddance.’ Then, with a swipe of his forearm, he bursts out through the flap and into the afternoon air. The young girl starts to cry.

‘I am sorry, grand-mère.’ She begins to dress herself with the weariness of an eighty-year-old. The woman turns to me with flinty eyes and hisses at me.

‘Why would you do this? Who do you think you are?’

The woman suddenly slumps back on to her stool as if broken. She wipes her eyes, then stands up and limps over to the girl to help her dress. She tenderly smoothes out the girl’s long hair.

‘Don’t worry sweetheart. Your grand-mère will find something.’

I slowly back away, knowing that neither the woman nor the girl would even notice. I ease my way out to look for Maria. I want to leave immediately.

* * *