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‘Yes, but …’
‘Then you know the drill. Dramatics R Us. Ladies and Gentlemen, announcing the arrival all the way from deepest, darkest, Venezuela, the Amazing Mischka …’ Can you do that? Of course you can. Grandpa’s coat, hat and cane … a spot of make-up to stop you disappearing under the lights … Surely that’s not so scary for a Bond.’ She smiled but her insides were jelly. He had to agree. ‘Mr Bond, we have a tent full of excited kids. Even a banker wouldn’t want them to be turfed out without a show.’
‘I’m no circus master,’ he snapped.
‘You hurt my grandfather,’ she snapped back. ‘You owe us.’
‘I’m sorry, but I owe you nothing and this is none of my business.’
‘It is. You said you’re foreclosing on the circus.’ She was forcing her shocked mind to think this through. ‘I have no idea of the rights and wrongs of it, but if you are then it’s your circus. Your circus, Mr Bond, with an audience waiting and no ringmaster.’
‘I don’t get involved with operational affairs.’
‘You just did,’ she snapped. ‘The minute you scared Grandpa. Are you going to do this or am I going to march into the big top right now and announce Bond’s Bank have foreclosed and the head of Bond’s Bank is kicking everyone out right now?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘I’m not being ridiculous,’ she said, standing right in front of him and glaring with every ounce of glare she could muster. ‘I’m telling you exactly what I’m going to do if you don’t help. You caused this; you fix it.’
‘I have no idea …’
‘You don’t have to have an idea,’ she said. She’d heard the hesitation in his voice and she knew she had him. No bank would want the sort of publicity she’d just threatened. ‘You wear Grandpa’s hat and jacket and say what I tell you to say and there’s no skill involved at all.’
‘Hey,’ Henry said weakly from his stretcher and Allie caught herself and conceded a smile. To her grandpa, not to the banker.
‘Okay, of course there’s skill in being a ringmaster,’ she admitted. ‘This guy won’t be a patch on you, Grandpa, but he’s all we have. We’ll feed him his lines and keep the circus running. We’ll do it, I promise. Off you go to hospital,’ she said and she bent and kissed him. ‘Mathew Bond and I are off to run the circus.’
‘If you agree to my requirements,’ Mathew said in a goaded voice. ‘We’re foreclosing; you’ll accede quietly without a fuss.’
‘Fine,’ Allie said, just as goaded. ‘Anything you like, as long as this afternoon’s show goes on.’
How had that happened?
He couldn’t think of any circumstances—any circumstances—that’d turn him into a ringmaster.
He was about to be a ringmaster.
But in truth the sight of the old man crumpling onto the dirt had shocked him to the core. For a couple of appalling moments he’d thought he was dead.
He shouldn’t be here. Calling in debts at such a ground roots level wasn’t something he’d done in the past and he wasn’t likely to do again.
What had his grandfather been thinking to lend money to these people? Bond’s Bank was an illustrious private bank, arranging finance for huge corporations here and abroad. If things got messy, yes, Matt stepped in, but he was accustomed to dealing with corporate high-flyers. Almost always the financial mess had been caused by administrative mismanagement. Occasionally fraud took a hand, but the men and women he dealt with almost always had their private assets protected.
He was therefore not accustomed to old men collapsing into the mud as their world shattered.
Nevertheless, his news had definitely caused the old man to collapse. He watched the ambulance depart with a still protesting Henry and his white-faced wife, and he turned to find he was facing a ball of pink and silver fury.
Seemingly Allie’s shock was coalescing into anger.
‘He’ll be okay,’ Allie said through gritted teeth, and he thought her words were as much to reassure herself as they were to reassure him. ‘He’s had angina before, but he’s had a rotten cold and it’ll be the two combined. But you … I don’t care what bank you come from or what the rights and wrongs are of this absurd story you’re telling me, but you tell him two minutes before a performance that you’re about to foreclose? Of all the stupid, cruel timing … This has to be a farce. I know Grandpa’s finances inside out. We’re fine. But meanwhile I have two hundred kids and mums and dads sitting in the big top. I’d like to kick you, but instead I need to get you into costume. Let’s go.’
‘This is indeed a farce.’
‘One you’re involved in up to your neck,’ she snapped. ‘Grandpa’s obsessive about his role—he’s written it all down ever since he introduced the camels instead of the ponies last year. You’ll have a script and gold-embossed clipboard. We have two minutes to get you dressed and made up and into the ring. We have two hundred kids and parents waiting. Let’s get them satisfied and I’ll do my kicking later.’
‘It’ll be me who does the kicking,’ he said grimly. ‘I’m not used to being pushed around, especially by those who owe my bank money.’
‘Fine,’ she snapped. ‘All out war. But war starts after the show. For now we have a circus to run.’
Which explained why, five minutes later, Mathew Bond, corporate banker, was standing in the middle of the big tent of Sparkles Circus, wearing tails, top hat and gold brocade waistcoat, and intoning in his best—worst?—ringmaster voice …
‘Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the one, the only, the stupendous, marvellous, exciting, magical once-in-a-lifetime experience that is Sparkles Circus. One hundred and forty years of history, ladies and gentlemen, unfolding before your very eyes. Sit back, but don’t relax for a moment. Prepare to be mesmerised.’
To his astonishment, once he got over shock and anger, he even found he was enjoying himself.
He did have some grounding. After his parents’ death, Matt had spent every summer holiday in Fort Neptune with his beloved Great-Aunt Margot. Margot was the great-aunt of every child’s dreams. Her sweetheart had died in the war and she’d refused to think of replacing him, but it didn’t stop her enjoying life. She owned a cute cottage on the waterfront and a tiny dinghy she kept moored in the harbour, and she always had a dog at her heels. She’d been a schoolteacher, but in summer school had been out for both of them. Child and great-aunt and dog had fished, explored the bay, swum and soaked up the beach.
He’d loved it. In this tiny seaside town where no one knew him, he was free of the high standards expected of the heir to the Bond Banking dynasty. He could be a kid—and at the end of every summer holiday Margot had taken him to Sparkles Circus as a goodbye treat.
Margot always managed to get front row seats. He remembered eating popcorn and hot dogs, getting his clothes messy and no one cared, watching in awe as spangly ladies flew overhead, as men ate fire, as tightrope walkers performed the impossible, as clowns tumbled and as elephants made their stately way around the ring.
There were no elephants now—or lions or any other wild animals, for that matter. That was at the heart of the circus’s problems, he thought—but now wasn’t the time to think about finance.
Now was the time to concentrate on the clipboard Allie had handed him.
‘Here it is, word for word, and if you could ham it up for us, we’d be grateful.’
The look she’d cast him was anything but grateful, but two hundred mums and dads and kids were looking at him as if he was the ringmaster—and a man had to do what a man had to do.
He was standing to the side of the ring now, still on show as the ringmaster was expected to be, as he watched Bernardo the Breathtaking walk on stilts along a rather high tightrope.
It had seemed higher when he was a kid, he thought, and there hadn’t been a safety net underneath—or maybe there had, he just hadn’t noticed.
Bernardo was good. Very good. He was juggling as he was balancing. Once he faltered and dropped one of his juggling sticks. A ringmaster would fetch it, Matt thought, so he strode out and retrieved it, then stood underneath Bernardo, waited for his imperceptible nod, then tossed it up to him. When Bernardo caught it and went on seamlessly juggling he felt inordinately pleased with himself.
He glanced into the wings and saw a lady in pink sequins relax imperceptibly. She gave him a faint smile and a thumbs-up, but he could tell the smile was forced.
She was doing what was needed to get through this show, he thought, but that faint smile signalled more confrontation to come.
Did she really not know her grandparents’ financial position? Was she living in a dream world?
Bernardo the Breathtaking was finished, tossing his juggling sticks down to one of the clowns who Matt realised were the fill-in acts, the links between one act and another. Fluffy and Fizz. They were good, he thought, but not great. A bit long in the tooth? They fell and tumbled and did mock acrobatics, but at a guess they were in their sixties or even older and it showed.
Even Bernardo the Breathtaking was looking a little bit faded.
But then …
‘Ladies and gentlemen …’ He couldn’t believe he was doing this, intoning the words with all the theatrical flourish the child Mathew had obviously noted and memorised. ‘Here she is, all the way from deepest, darkest Venezuela, the woman who now will amaze us with her uncanny, incredible, awesome …’ how many adjectives did this script run to? ‘… the one, the only, the fabulous Miss Mischka Veronuschka …’
And she was in the ring. Allie.
Her act included three ponies, two camels and two dogs. The animals were putty in her hands. The dogs were identical Jack Russell terriers, nondescript, ordinary, but with tricks that turned them into the extraordinary. She flitted among her animals—her pets, he thought, for there was no hint of coercion here. She was a pink and gold butterfly, whispering into ears, touching noses, smiling and praising, and, he thought, they’d do anything for her.
He understood why. The audience was mesmerised, and so was he.
She had the camels lying down, the ponies jumping over the camels, the dogs jumping over the ponies, and then the dogs were riding the ponies as the ponies jumped the camels. The dogs’ tails were wagging like rotor blades and their excitement was infectious.
Allie rode one of the camels while the ponies weaved in and out of the camels’ legs, and the little dogs weaved through and through the ponies’ legs. The dogs practically beamed as they followed her every whispered command.
Matt thought of stories of old, of animal cruelty in circuses, and he looked at these bouncing dogs, the camels benignly following instructions as if they were doing Allie a personal favour, at the ponies prancing around the dogs—and he looked at the girl who knew them from the inside out and he thought … he thought …
He thought suddenly that he’d better think nothing.
This was a lady in pink spangles. She was the granddaughter of a client. Where were his thoughts taking him? Wherever, they’d better get back where they belonged right now.
He didn’t get involved. Not personally. The appalling sudden deaths of his parents and his sister had smashed something inside him so deep, so huge, that he’d spent the rest of his life forming armour against ever feeling that sort of hurt again.
He’d looked at Allie’s face as she’d seen her grandfather collapse and he’d seen a glimpse of that hurt. It should be reinforcing that armour, yet here he was, looking at a girl in pink spangles …
And then, thankfully, she was gone. The clowns swooped in again, making a game of the pan and shovel they needed—the camels were clearly not house trained—and the show was ready to move on.
He needed to focus on his next introduction.
‘Ladies and Gentlemen …’ he said, and the circus proceeded.
Interval.
Since when did standing in a circus ring make you sweat? He felt wiped. He headed out through the pink and gold curtains—and was struck by the sheer incongruity of the difference between front and behind the curtains.
The ring was all gold and glitter—a fantasy. Back here was industry. Men and women were half in and out of costumes, hauling steel rods and ropes and shackles, lining up equipment so it could be carried out neatly as needed.
Allie was back in her boots again, heaving like the best of the men. She had a denim jacket over her sequins.
‘Time for you to change, Allie, love,’ a very large lady yelled. ‘Fizz’s selling popcorn instead of Bella. We’re cool. Allie, dressing room, now.’
‘Someone give Mathew the words for the next half,’ Allie yelled and shoved the last iron bar into place and disappeared.
He watched her go and he felt the slight change in atmosphere among the women and men behind the scenes.
She was the boss, he thought.
Henry was the boss.
Henry was seventy-six years old.
Matt had thought he was coming to deal with an elderly ringmaster, to tell him it was time to close down. It seemed, however, that now he’d be dealing with Allie, and something told him dealing with Allie would be a very different proposition altogether.
He pretty much had things down pat by the second half.
He introduced acts. He was also there as general pick-up guy—and also … set-up guy for the clowns?
‘The gag’s on page three of the cheat sheet,’ Fizz had growled at him at half-time. ‘Henry sets it up for us so you’ll need to do it. It’ll be weird you reading it but it’s the best we can do.’
Right now the Exotic Yan Yan—Jenny Higgs, wife of Bernardo, or Bernie Higgs, according to the staff sheet he’d read ‘… fresh from the wilds of the remotest parts of Tukanizstan’— was there such a place?—was doing impossible things with her body. She was bending over backwards—like really backwards. Her head was touching her heels! Matt was appalled and fascinated—and for some weird reason he was thinking he was glad it wasn’t Allie doing the contorting.
He glanced ahead at the feed lines for the gag and thought … he could do this better if he stopped looking at the Exotic Yan Yan.
And he could do this better if he stopped thinking about Allie?
Do it. He read it twice, three times and he had it.
Yan Yan unknotted and disappeared to thunderous applause. Out came the clowns. It was time to take centre stage himself.
Deep breath. Remember the first line.
‘Fluffy, I have a present for you,’ he called in a Here Kitty, nice Kitty voice, and set the clipboard down, preparing—against all odds—to play the ham. ‘It’s your birthday, Fluffy, and I’ve bought you a lovely big cannon.’
‘A cannon?’ Fluffy squeaked, somersaulting with astonishment.
The clowns responded with practised gusto and foolishness as the great fake cannon was wheeled in. The joke went seamlessly, water went everywhere and the audience roared their appreciation.
Exit stage left, two dripping clowns with cannon.
Matt headed back to the sidelines for his clipboard as the ropes and pulleys and shackles were heading out at a run.
Allie, dressed now in brilliant hot pink, with her trademark tiger stripes making her look spectacular, was in the wings and she was staring at him with incredulity.
‘You memorised it?’
‘I had time.’
‘You had two minutes.’
‘Plenty of time,’ he said and felt a little smug. Banker Makes Good. He motioned to the bars, ropes, pulleys and shackles, set up in well drilled order. ‘Let’s get this show moving.’ He picked up his clipboard and strode out again.
And then Allie was flying in from the outer, twisting and clinging to a rope that looked like the sort of rope you’d hang over a river. She swung to the middle, seized another rope, changed direction—and swung herself up to a bar far up in the high reaches of the big top.
There was a guy up there waiting, steadying her.
It was his turn again.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, hold onto your hats. From the wilds of outer Mongolia, from the great, wild warrior hunting grounds of the Eastern nations, ladies and gentlemen, the great Valentino, to be catcher for our very own Mischka. Watch with bated breath while Mischka places life and limb in his hands and see if he lets her down.’
He didn’t let her down.
Mathew had watched this act when he was six years old and he’d been convinced the spangly lady would fall at any moment. In fact he’d remembered hiding under his seat, peeping through his hands, afraid to come out until the gorgeous creature flying through the air was safely on the ground.
He didn’t watch with quite the same sense of dread now. For a start, he’d seen how big, quiet and competent ‘Valentino’—alias Greg—was. He was six feet eight at least, and pure muscle. He hung upside down and swung back and forth, steady and unfaltering, as Allie somersaulted and dived.
