Airs Above The Ground Part 5

"No, it is not a good menagerie, I know. It is just a side show for the children."

I said: "What good English you speak."

"My mother was English. I still get plenty of practice, because a circus is a very mixed place, really international. We have just now all sorts: the clowns are French, and the high-wire act is Hungarian, and the trampoline artistes are j.a.panese, and there is a comic act with a donkey which is English, and an American juggler-besides the Germans and Austrians."

"United Nations," said Tim.

"Indeed." She dimpled at him. "And on the whole really united. We have to be."

"Have you an act yourself?" I asked.

"Yes. I help my father with the liberty horses . . . and there is a sort of rodeo act near the beginning. But my own act is a riding one. I have a Lipizzan stallion-"

"You have a what?" Timothy's interruption was robbed of rudeness by his obviously excited interest.

"A Lipizzan stallion. This is a breed of horse-"

"Yes, I know about them. I'm hoping to get to Piber to see the stud, and later on to see a performance in Vienna. But do you mean you have a trained stallion? I didn't think they ever sold them."

"He is trained, yes, but not at the School. My grandfather bought him as a four-year-old, and my uncle trained him . . . and me also."

"In high school work?"

She nodded.

"And you have a riding act of your own? You're a-a what is it?-an ecuyere?"

She had soared, I could see, in Timothy's estimation, from being "the subject" or "Lewis's blonde" to star billing in her own right. I realized that my own estimate of her had been right: a young woman who was capable of the concentrated skill and strength needed to put a high school stallion through his paces was about as fragile as pressed steel. "Gos.h.!.+" said Timothy, glowing with admiration.

She smiled. "Oh, not what you will see in Vienna, I a.s.sure you! None of the 'airs above the ground'

except the levade, and sometimes the croupade . . ." She turned to me. "This is a leap right off the ground where the horse keeps his legs curled up-is that the word?"

"Tucked under him," supplied Tim.

"His legs tucked under him, and lands again on the same spot. We tried to teach him the capriole, where he leaps in a croupade and then kicks the back legs straight out, but this is very difficult, and he cannot do it, so now I leave it alone. It is my fault, not his."

In view of the admiration in Timothy's eyes I half expected him to contradict this, but he didn't. He was, like her, dedicated enough to know that it is never the horse's fault.

She added: "But in the other exercises he is wonderful. He is one of the Maestoso line, Maestoso Leda, and he is so musical . . . but there is no need for me to tell you. You will see him for yourselves tonight, and if he is good tonight I will try the croupade, especially for you."

We murmured our thanks. Tim's eyes were s.h.i.+ning. I was going to have my work cut out to keep Annalisa as Suspect Number One in my Case of the Vanis.h.i.+ng Husband.

He was saying: "I can hardly wait. Was he with the other horses? I didn't see him."

"You were at the wrong end of the stable." She dimpled at him again, charmingly. "You should have trespa.s.sed first at the other end. Yes, he is there. Would you like to come round tonight after the show and see the horses? There will be time before we pull down."

"You bet I would!" Then recollecting himself, with a glance at me, "Vanessa?"

"I'd like to very much," I said. "How many have you?"

"Altogether twenty-seven, and then the ponies. The liberty horses are very good ones, you'll like them, Timothy, they are palominos, and we have twelve, very well matched. There will be only ten of them fit to work tonight, but it is still very beautiful to watch."

" 'Fit to work'?" I asked, wondering if she intended what the phrase implied, or if her English had its blind moments. "Is there something wrong with the others?"

"Not really, but they're so valuable that one must be extra careful. There was an accident last week, and some of the horses were hurt. One of the wagons caught fire in the night, quite near the stable lines, and some of the horses injured themselves, with fear, you understand." She added quietly: "But it was more serious than a few horses hurt. There were two men in the wagon, and they were killed, burnt to death."

"How very dreadful. How did that happen?"

"We are still not very sure." I thought she was going to stop there, but then she lifted her shoulders in a shrug and went on: "But if you are staying in the village you will hear all about it, everybody in Oberhausen talks about nothing else for a week. This is why the circus has had to stay here so long, because the police came and made inquiries." She made a little face. "That is what they call it, 'making inquiries'-hour after hour they asked questions and raked about and only today they say, 'Tomorrow you may go. It is over.' "

"I'm sorry. It must have been very distressing."

"It was a bad time for my father." The blue eyes lifted to mine. "The wagon belonged to Franzl Wagner, his cousin . . . my uncle Franzl. I always called him that, though really he was my second cousin ... I suppose he always seemed old to me. He joined us when I was a little girl."

I forgot all my preconceived feelings about her in a genuine rush of sympathy. "My dear Fraulein ... my dear Annalisa, I'm sorry. I hadn't realized it was a relative . . . that's awful. You must have had a terrible time."

She shrugged again, not uncaringly, but dismissively. "It is over."

"And the other man? There was another, you said?" .

"He was nothing to do with the circus. He must have met my uncle Franzl somewhere and gone back to his wagon for a drink-a talk, who knows? We did not know there was anyone else there with him. They pulled my uncle Franzl out....

He lived for a little, only a few minutes. But it was only when the wagon was nearly all burnt that they found the . . . the other one."

"I see." I was silent for a moment. Perhaps I ought not to press her, but though she had spoken somberly, the subject didn't appear to distress her unduly now. She must have repeated all this a hundred times during the past week. "But they did find out who the second man was?"

She nodded. "He was an Englishman. His name was Paul Denver, and he belonged to some British firm which has a branch in Vienna. ... I didn't understand what sort of work, but I think it was something to do with farming. My father had not heard of him, and we don't know how Uncle Franzl met him-we had only arrived that day in Oberhausen, you understand. We don't usually give a performance on a Sunday, so they think that Uncle Franzl went out that evening drinking somewhere, and met this man, and got talking to him, and then they came back together and . . . perhaps they talked late, and drank a little more . . . You can picture to yourself how it might be. . . ."

She paused, and I said: "Yes." I could picture it only too well. The wagon would burn like a torch. And beside it the stables, the plunging, panic-stricken horses, the screaming from the menagerie, the chaos of shouting.

"It was the lamp that fell," she said. "Afterwards they found the hook had broken that held it. It was the noise from the horses that gave the alarm. Then people began shouting that there was someone else in the wagon, but it was burning hard by that time; and then the other Englishman came running out of the dark and helped to pull him out. It turned out that he knew him; he had come to Oberhausen to meet him."

It was Timothy who said: "The other Englishman?"

"Yes. He works for the same firm, and he had just arrivedin Oberhausen, driving from Vienna, and he saw the fire and came to help."

It was still Timothy who asked: "And when did he leave?"

"Leave?" said Annalisa. "He is still here. He-" Then she stopped and smiled, and with the smile the strained look lifted and the sparkle came back. She was looking beyond me, to where someone had come in from the street. "Why, here he is," she said.

A man had just turned in from the street under the dappled shade of the chestnut trees. He paused there, looking towards our table. I believe I was already half out of my chair, regardless of what Annalisa might think. I heard Timothy say something, some question. And then the newcomer moved forward from the patch of shadow into the sunlight, and I met, full on, his indifferent, unrecognizing eyes and slight look of surprise.

I think I said: "No, no, it's not," to Timothy as I sank back into my chair.

Across me Annalisa was calling out: "Lee! Come and join us!"

Then the newcomer was standing over us and introductions were being made.

"Lee," said Annalisa, "this is Vanessa March. Vanessa, Mr. Elliot. . . . And this is Tim."

I murmured something, heaven knows what, and the two men greeted one another. Mr. Elliott pulled up a chair next to mine.

"I take it you must just have arrived here, or we'd have heard all about you long ago. In a place this size every movement is reported."

I managed to pull myself out of the turmoil into which the appearance of the "other Englishman" had plunged me, and answered him civilly, if slightly at random. "Oh, I can believe that. Yes, we've only been here an hour or so. We came from Vienna today by car."

"And what brings you to Oberhausen?"

"Oh, just. . . touring around." I caught Timothy's eye on me, worried and speculative even while he replied to some remark of Annalisa's, and made another effort. "Actually, we -I was expecting to meet my husband down here . . . that is, in Graz . . . but after we got there we heard that he couldn't make it after all. So we thought we might as well take a run out to see the countryside while we were here. . . .

It's very lovely, isn't it?"

"Very. You're staying in the village, then?"

"Only for the night. We're here, at the Edelweiss. We'll go back . . . that is, we'll go in the morning. Tim's got plans to visit Piber, you know, the Lipizzaner stud, so we'll probably go back that way. I can put in the time till I get a message from my husband."

Some fragment of what I was feeling must have shown through the carefully social mask I had put on. He said in a tone which seemed meant to sound comforting: "I'm sure that will be soon."

I managed a creditably bright smile. "I hope so! But meanwhile Tim and I intend to enjoy ourselves, starting with the circus tonight."

"Tim is your brother?" This was from Annalisa. "He didn't tell me his other name. Not March?"

"No, anyway that'd have made me a brother-in-law," said Timothy. "My name's Lacy. No relation. Just companion, chauffeur, and general dogsbody."

"Dog's body?" She made two words of it, puzzled. "Why do you call yourself that? To me, it sounds not at all polite."

"It isn't," I said. "He's trying to make out that he gets all the work to do organizing our trip. I must say I wouldn't have got far without his German. All right, dogsbody, organize a drink for Mr. Elliott, will you?"

"If you can do that in under twenty minutes," said Mr. Elliott, "you're worth your weight in platinum.

Good G.o.d!"

This as the waitress, obedient still to Timothy's lightest gesture, paused by our table. The three of them plunged into a discussion, Mr. Elliott in what sounded like, and probably was, flawless German.

As she sped away I turned to him, composed now.

He had taken a pipe out of his pocket and was lighting it. It made him look very English. Apart from this, in his nondescript and rather shabby clothes, he might have been anything, anybody, from anywhere. He was tallish, and toughly built, and when he moved, it was with a kind of springy precision that indicated strength and muscular control. But his voice and personality, while pleasant enough, struck me then as being singularly colourless. His hair was brown, his eyes of an indeterminate shade somewhere between blue and grey. His hands were good, but I could see a broken nail, and dirt ingrained in them as if he had been working hard at some dirty job. Since I had gathered from Annalisa that he was here as a representative of his firm, this hardly seemed in character, but perhaps he had been lending a kindly hand around the circus. His clothes bore this out; they looked like cheap holiday clothes which had recently had rough and even dirty wear.

I said: "And you? I understand from Fraulein Wagner that you're down here on business. I was very sorry to hear about the accident."

"She told you about that, did she? Yes, one of the men who died was a colleague of mine. He'd come down here on a project investigating farming methods and use of fertilizers, and I was actually on my way to meet him when it happened."

"I'm sorry." We exchanged a few commiserating phrases, then I asked: "What is your firm, Mr. Elliott?"

"Our Vienna connection is Kalkenbrunner Fertilizers."

"Oh? Perhaps you know my husband's firm, Pan-European Chemicals?"

"Of course, though I can't for the moment recall any of their people. Stewart, did he work for them?

Craig? I may have met your husband, but I don't remember, I'm afraid. Is he in Vienna often?"

"I haven't the faintest idea," I said, with perfect truth, though not perhaps with perfect civility. I was feeling the strain of this polite conversation about nothing. "Here's your drink. Have you been here ever since the accident happened?"

"Yes. The police inquiries went on rather a long time, and since my firm was willing to give me leave till things were cleared up, I stayed and gave a hand where it was needed." He smiled. "Not with the police, with the circus. There's your definition of a dogsbody, Annalisa . . . what I've been doing for the past week."

"You? You have been marvellous!" The look she gave him was almost as glowing as the one Timothy had given her. "Mrs. March, you've no idea ... I told you we were a small circus, and this means that everybody has to work hard. And after Uncle Franzl's death ... I think we had not realized how much he did. Perhaps this is always the way when someone dies? He was not a performer, you understand. He was a wonderful rider, but he would do no circus work-I mean, he would not work an act. . . . But he was in charge of the horses, and I told you, he trained Maestoso Leda, and taught me my act. . ."

It seemed to be some kind of release to her to talk, and we all listened quietly. Beside me, Mr. Elliott sat very still and relaxed, his eyes never leaving the girl.

"I remember it well," she said, "when he joined us. It was ten years ago, when I was eight, and my grandfather was still alive. We were near Wels, in Upper Austria, and my grandfather had just bought Maestoso Leda, and the Lipizzans themselves were staying in Wels at that time, and we went to see them. You can imagine"-this to Timothy-"how excited they made me! There was also a big horse fair in Wels, and this was the lucky thing, because my uncle Franzl happened to be there with a dealer he went with after he left the Czech circus where he had worked. I think before that he was in the Army. . . . He had not been close to the family, you understand. But he came to see my grandfather, and when we went north that night, into Bavaria, he went with us." She smiled. "Now, I can hardly remember the time when he was not part of our circus. I even forgot that his name was not Wagner. . . . My grandfather wished him to change it, and he did. He took charge of all the stable work, and the-what do you call the saddles and the bridles and things? Not harness . .."

"Tack?" suggested Timothy.

"Thank you, yes, that's it. He was also the vet-the doctor for the horses. So you can imagine what it has been like, with so many of the animals damaged with the panic on the night of the fire, and my father with so much to attend to. He had no time for the horses, and Rudi, that's the chief groom, broke his arm getting the horses out. ... So I've had to do it, and Lee has helped me. Of course some of the artistes have helped also, but they have to practice for themselves every day. ... It has not been easy."

"I'll say," said Mr. Elliott with feeling. "Who was it said that h.e.l.l was a paradise of horses?"

"n.o.body," I said dryly. "They said England was a paradise for horses and a h.e.l.l for women."

"Is it?" asked Annalisa, interested.

"It has its moments. Go on, Mr. Elliott. Are we to understand that you've been grooming twenty-seven horses for a week?" For the life of me I couldn't help glancing at his clothes.

He saw it and grinned. "I have indeed. I have ministered, you might say, to every detail of their toilet. The grooming's the easiest part, once you've discovered that the hair grows from bow to stern, and you have to brush that way; from the bite to the kick, you might say. The extraordinary thing is, they like it. At least, one gathers they do most of the time. I've only been bitten once."

"You poor thing," I said. "And I believe ponies are worse."

"A Hungarian gentleman did them. He has the advantage of only being three feet high himself. Oh, it's been a most instructive week, I shall be sorry to leave."

Annalisa said: "I wish you would not leave. We shall not know what to do without you."

"I must say it'll be a bit deadly to go back to the old routine," said Mr. Elliott. He glanced at his watch.

"Annalisa, I hate to break the party up, but I really think we should be going. All those beautiful horses to get ready for the show."

"Goodness, yes!" She got to her feet. The waitress appeared at Timothy's elbow as we all followed suit, and there was the inevitable polite wrangle between Timothy and Lee Elliott over the bill. Timothy-I would have backed him anywhere by now-won easily.

"Well, thanks very much," said Mr. Elliott.

"It's been lovely to meet you," said Annalisa, "and we shall see you later? When the show is finished, just ask anybody, they will tell you where to come." She laughed unaffectedly. "I shall feel like a prima donna with visitors coming to ask for me after the show. I hope you enjoy it. Kommst Du, Lee?"

They went. We sat down. I said: "I thought you'd have wanted to go and help."

"I thought I'd better stay with you," said Timothy. He looked at me. "Do you feel all right? You look awfully funny."

"Funny? How d'you mean?"