The Lion Tamer’s Daughter (20 page)

“Keith's alone in Edinburgh,” she told him. “He hasn't got anyone his own age to talk to. Will it be all right if Melanie sits with us when she isn't busy? I'm afraid Saturday's a bad time for that.”

“But of course,” he said. “Already these arrangements are made. She has just the two other tables she must attend.”

He poured her more champagne with a great flourish and went back to the bar. Melanie had to go to serve someone else. Mum waited for her to get out of earshot.

“Tell me something, Keith,” she said. (She never calls me Keith unless it's serious.) “I gather this story about Melanie being knocked down by a bicycle isn't true.”

“I'm afraid not,” I said.

“But you told me all this was aboveboard. It seems to me we're getting a free meal—and they've gone to a lot of trouble over it—on false pretenses. I hope we aren't. I wouldn't like that at all.”

This absolutely hadn't struck me, I'd been so swept along by the adventure. I couldn't think what to say.

“It wasn't like that, Mum. Honestly. Wait till I've … And anyway, he'd have beaten her up for being late. I mean beaten.”

I hadn't said it on purpose, but it's one of the things she really minds about. Anyway, it did the trick.

“I'm sorry to hear it,” she said. “I was finding him rather attractive.”

“Mum!”

“Champagne is wonderful stuff, darling,” she said, with a look that didn't let me guess whether she was teasing or not. Either way it would have been the first time since Dad died.

“Listen, Mum,” I said. “You're not to go cold on him. You've got to find things out. If he comes back, talk to him in French. Ask him how he got to Edinburgh, that sort of thing. Get as close as you can to when Melanie was born without letting him see that's what you're interested in. I'm not just being inquisitive. It's important. Listen. This is what really happened …”

I started to tell her about that morning, from me going down the steps and seeing what I thought was Melly coming up. Melanie came back and joined in two or three times, but she kept having to dash off and wait, so it was mostly me. I didn't finish till Melanie was clearing our main course away. Mum didn't say anything, so I asked her what she thought.

“I believe every word you've told me, darling,” she said. “And I don't understand it at all. But let's wait till Melanie comes back.”

It didn't work out like that. First, Melanie was too busy to talk, and then when we'd finished our sweet, M. Perrault came and asked Mum if she'd like brandy or liqueur. I've forgotten to say he'd given us red wine with the meal, which Mum said was pretty good, though I didn't like it much. When he came back he'd got a large glass of brandy for himself, and asked if he could join us. Mum said, “
Enchantée, Monsieur,
” and he was delighted and answered in French and she batted it back to him and they got going. She speaks pretty good French. She actually met my dad while she was au-pairing out there, so she didn't have any trouble keeping her end up. I speak a bit—better than most kids my age—but going that fast they lost me, so when Melanie came back we talked about the obvious things, mostly music. I knew she'd like Hole and P. J. Harvey, because Melly did. We didn't get any chance to talk without M. Perrault hearing, but when we were saying good-bye I looked at her and she gave a little nod to tell me the arrangement to meet next morning was still on.

We walked home. As soon as we were round the corner I said, “You see, they've got to be twins, haven't they?”

“I don't want to talk about it now,” said Mum, “not after all that wine. I suppose you're seeing her tomorrow?”

“Ten o'clock,” I said.

“Do you mind if I come too?” she said. “I'm sorry—I expect you want her for yourself, darling, but I've got things to tell her which I'd rather say directly to her. I can't stay long. I ought to be at the theater by half past ten. Is that all right?”

“Yes, of course,” I said, though it wasn't.

The place where we'd had the Coke didn't open till twelve on Sundays, but Melanie was waiting on the terrace, leaning on the railing and looking at the view. She was wearing a black skirt and a white lacy blouse and a black cardigan and no makeup. Oh, yes, and white socks and little shoes like dancing slippers. Apart from her hair she was a real Miss Prim. She didn't look at all disappointed to see I'd got Mum with me.

“Hello, Mrs. Robinson,” she said. “I'm like this because it wasn't worth going home after Mass.”

“Melly calls me Trish,” said Mum. “I can't stay long, but I've got something to tell you. Is there anywhere we can sit?”

We were lucky and found a bench in the sun.

“Is it OK if I smoke?” said Melly.

Mum made a face. She smokes a couple of fags a day but doesn't like to see kids doing it.

“I don't have to,” said Melanie, and stopped getting her pack out. Mum touched her arm.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “Please smoke if you want to. This may be hard going for you.”

“Thanks,” said Melanie, but she didn't light up.

“Last night I said to Keith that I believed every word of what you'd told me, both of you,” said Mum. “So the first thing to say is that there's no way you and Melly can be twins, Melanie. I'll tell you why in a moment. I thought you might be cousins. Suppose your father had a brother, possibly a twin brother, they might both be lion tamers—circuses are very family affairs, I believe. Then these extraordinary … visions you and Melly seem to have of each other—I'm assuming she has them too, because she does have these absent fits—they might make a sort of sense. But last night I got your father to tell me a bit about himself and he was quite open about it. The main thing is that until four years ago he lived and worked in a traveling circus based at Arles, in the south of France …”

“That's right,” said Melanie.

“Melly was born in a circus based in Arles,” said Mum. “Her birthday is the nineteenth of March. She was fourteen this year.”

“Me too,” said Melanie. “And you don't get two lion tamers in the one circus, no more than you get two circuses in the one town. And I'm dead sure Papa didn't have a brother, neither. Only this sister, Tante Sylvie, sold the tickets. She liked to talk. She'd have said.”

“Then we'll rule that out,” said Mum. “Now, about your not being twins. This is something Janice told me in confidence, but I think Melanie has a right to know.”

“Shall I clear off for a bit?” I said.

Mum hesitated.

“I don't think Janice has told Melly,” she said. “I don't know … It'll probably be simpler … Just don't talk about it to anyone. Is that all right with you, Melanie?”

“Course it is,” she said.

“Well,” said Mum. “I don't know if Keith told you that his father died last October.”

“I think maybe I was at the funeral,” said Melanie. “It was pissing down, and everyone had their brollies up and I cried like I was never going to stop.”

“Oh, God …,” said Mum. “Sorry … I'll be all right in a moment … Can you spare me a cigarette?”

They both lit up and Mum took a puff or two and stubbed hers out and tried again.

“I suppose we'll get used to this,” she said, “but there's something very uncomfortable about it … Well, I had a bad time after Mike died. Keith will tell you. I really went to pieces. I spent a lot of time weeping on people's shoulders, and of course Janice was one of them. I gather Keith's told you about Janice, so you'll have got it that she's rather … well, uptight and controlled, and perhaps not very good at emotions.”

“Keith tell you I thought you had to be my ma?” said Melanie. “She wasn't my idea of a ma, the other one.”

“She's been a very good friend to me, though,” said Mum. “She's the sort who sticks at it. A stupid emotional female sobbing her heart out over the coffee biscuits isn't her scene at all, but she must have read up what to do, and talked to professionals, and somehow I think she got the idea that it might be a help if she told me about something dreadful in her own life. So one evening she took a deep breath and screwed herself up and told me about what happened when Melly was born. She was twenty, and she was on a cycling holiday in the south of France with a couple of girlfriends, and one evening they were riding along—late, because they'd had a puncture that wouldn't mend—when they came across this circus camped out in the middle of nowhere, so they asked if they could put up their tent alongside them. They got chatting, and one of Janice's friends decided she fancied one of the acrobats, so they spent the rest of their holiday zigzagging around so as to meet up with the circus as often as possible. By the end of it they'd made quite a few friends in the circus, and they went home thinking they'd had an amusing holiday and that was it.

“So Janice just wasn't ready for it when a couple of weeks later she got a formal proposal of marriage from the lion tamer. The extraordinary thing, she said, was that she didn't think twice about it. As soon as she got over her surprise she knew she was going to say yes. It wasn't that she'd secretly fallen in love with him, or anything. Several of the men had tried to get somewhere with her, and one of her English friends had slept around a bit, but the lion tamer had been formal and gallant and serious, and he didn't speak much English, either. But Janice had found him rather attractive in his odd way, and after last night I can see why. Besides, winter was settling in, and the relationship she'd had for a couple of years had come apart that summer, and she was hating her job, so she went back to Arles and married him.

“She must have been crazy, she told me. It didn't work out at all. She didn't understand circus life, and the other circus people treated her now as an outsider, and her husband was madly jealous if he saw her say even a couple of words to another man, and he had an appalling temper. He didn't actually beat her, but when he got into one of his rages he could be absolutely terrifying.”

“That's right,” said Melanie. “Fact, it's better when he gets to hitting you. Annie's got him sorted out, mind. She won't stand for any of that.”

“On top of that, he was a Catholic,” said Mum, “and he wouldn't have any truck with contraception. Janice did her best not to get pregnant, but of course it happened in the end. As soon as he knew she was carrying his child he became very kind and considerate, and she thought it might be all right after all. And then the baby was born, a little girl, and he insisted on calling her Melanie, after his mother. He adored her. In fact, from what Janice told me, he was pretty well obsessed with her. He wanted to do everything for her himself. He even resented the fact that Janice could breast-feed her and he couldn't …”

“I'll buy that,” said Melanie. “That's Papa.”

“Yes, I got a bit of that impression last night,” said Mum. “Anyway, for Janice life became even worse than it had been before. Her husband didn't just revert to being madly jealous. He had this great ogress of a sister, and they both had desperately primitive ideas about child-rearing, really dangerous and unhygienic, some of them, but if she stepped out of line in the smallest detail they'd scream at her that she was trying to kill his child, and it wasn't long before Janice began to suspect that the sister was working on him to take the baby away from her and give it to one of the circus women to look after.

“So she decided to leave him. She'd got a little necklace and a bracelet and some other things which she sold secretly, and bought a railway ticket, and just as the circus was getting going one evening she slipped away with the baby. It was a local train and it took her only about twenty miles back to Arles. There wasn't a train out until the morning and she knew he'd come after her, so she went and hid in a little hotel in a back street, but somehow he found out where she was, because in the middle of the night he came to her room with half a dozen other circus people. When she started to scream they put a gag in her mouth and tied her up and took the baby away, but two of them stayed with her all next day. After a bit they untied her and took the gag out, but they told her that if she made a noise they'd use it again. Apart from that they wouldn't say a word to her. They offered her food but she was too frantic to eat. They stayed with her all next night, but next morning her husband's sister came and gave the baby back. The other two left, but the sister gave her some money and said, ‘If you try to find my brother again, your child will die. That is the truth. Now, go.' In case you're thinking it might have been some other baby they'd found somewhere, it wasn't. You know your child after the first half hour.”

“Anyway, they wouldn't look the same now,” I said.

We sat and tried to think about it. Melanie stubbed out her fag and blew out a long smoky breath and stood up and stretched. As she did so the sleeve of her cardigan slid up, so that I saw, halfway up the forearm on the inside, a white scar like an inside-out “N.” I grabbed her by the wrist and showed Mum.

“I don't know how much more of this I can take,” said Mum.

“What's up?” said Melanie. “Oh, that. Caught it on a nail one time we were loading the ponies. Papa was making me learn bareback.”

“Only Melly's is on her left arm, isn't it?” said Mum. “You're right-handed, aren't you, Melanie? I noticed when you were lighting your cigarette just now.”

“Right as right,” said Melanie. “Melly's left, is she? Mirror images, then? Don't you get that with twins?”

“Not always, I think,” said Mum. “And anyway, those scars … What's more, Melly caught her arm on a nail at some stables where she was having riding lessons. This is making me feel most peculiar.”