Breaking Light (28 page)

Gabriel looked at him in astonishment, forgetting the stage for a moment. And, just then, he recognised the boy in the shiny green suit who had smiled at him as he emerged from the hall of mirrors.

‘You!' he gasped. ‘You were there …'

But Rey ignored him, continuing his lecture. ‘You know, this show is merely a shadow of its former glory. This used to be one of the greatest. That was back when freaks were worthy of
display. Back then, people thought we were a significant cultural institution.' Rey laughed gaily at this point, but his voice was serious as he continued. ‘People like us helped the rest of society explore itself. That society felt good about itself when it could distinguish between “us” and “them” – that's how they created meaning in their world … But there are very few
real
freaks around these days; the ones that look particularly offensive to the world are all kept hidden away in institutions. The authorities insist it's for our own good.'

‘Why?' Gabriel kept most of his attention on the stage, where the two women were dancing to a melancholy song now and singing in turns in deeper, huskier voices. He was not sure whether Rey saw himself as belonging to the world of freaks or that other world.

‘Because it's considered bad taste to ogle “others” – we must not be
tempted
.'

‘But – we could just look away.'

‘Ha!' Rey gave a short, dry laugh and continued watching the show in silence.

Gabriel too turned his full attention to the stage, just as the Maryanne sisters unfastened their gowns at their shoulders and let them drop to the ground. There were whistles and catcalls from the audience. Gabriel felt hot all over; his throat was thick with excitement and dread as he stared at the young women who pranced on the stage, wearing only black bodices with frilly red lace around the hips and fishnet stockings. From behind the curtain, somebody handed them a tall hat and a cane each. Smiling widely, they started doing a slow cabaret dance, their legs kicking the air in unison. The men in the audience kept whistling and calling and Gabriel wished they would stop.
He felt a tightening in his neck and the rushing of blood in his ears.

Rey leant closer to Gabriel. ‘This is their final number,' he whispered softly, as if he could feel the anguish in Gabriel's body. The music ended and the sisters bowed to the audience before taking their leave, shaking their bums provocatively so that the red frill shuddered as they went. The lights were turned on abruptly and people started to spill out of the tent.

Gabriel wanted to get out, too; he needed to clear his head – breathe some fresh air – but Rey stayed seated. ‘After the last two wars,' Rey said in a sinister voice, ‘the disabled have started to be distinguished from the cripples and the freaks. You see,
they
sacrificed themselves for King and country –
dulce et decorum
and all that – so they were entitled to a good pension and medical care.'

Gabriel did not know what to say, but he listened intently.

‘Nowadays, governments no longer find it desirable or appropriate to have aliens of
that
kind –' he nodded towards the empty stage where Mary and Anne had been only a moment ago – ‘drifting around their countries, so the fairs and sideshows have been much diminished in favour of zoos and aquariums. We travel in the periphery, in the margins of the map, these days.'

‘But is the distinction between “us” and “them” not important anymore?' Gabriel asked. It was, after all, how he had structured his own life, although never quite knowing to which side he belonged.

‘Horror movies have taken over from the freaks of nature, and all in the name of moral progress or – as they call it these days – civil rights. But, if you ask me, we will always want to look at people who are different, whether it's a glamorous actress or a man without arms and legs. There's nothing more fascinating
to humans than the human other – or the unknown, for that matter.'

‘What, like a mystery?'

‘A
mystery
?' Rey said, thoughtfully. ‘Yes, I suppose so … At least the unknown keeps the rumour of mystery alive. That's all we can live by.'

‘Yes,' Gabriel confirmed in a childish voice. ‘I want there to be mysteries so that I can find things out. That's the whole point, surely?'

Rey looked at him closely for a moment. ‘No, Gabe. It's the other way round. Exploration is the
whole point
 – not what you may or may not find.' He slapped his knees and stood up. ‘Enough of that; I've got some stuff to be getting on with.'

Gabriel turned to follow his friend but, to his surprise, Rey was gone.

*

All through that night, Gabriel travelled the world of wonder. As he moved through the fair, the calliope music guiding his step, the night was an open door and, when the last of the punters had tired of the magic and gone home to bed, it was time for the fair to move on; the roustabout gang began their shift.

They started by dismantling the grandstand, row by row, and carrying it outside to put into a pile, which was shifted by another gang on to a lorry. Compelled by the precision and symmetry of their labour, Gabriel joined in their work. He just walked up to a group of them and held out his hands in a silent gesture. The men stopped and looked at him for a moment, then one of them nodded and Gabriel fell in to the rhythm of the night crew.

Shoulder to shoulder with those silent men whose muscles stretched and ached under the hard, backbreaking labour,
Gabriel felt, for the first time, that he wanted to learn what the body can do – he wanted skill.

After the grandstand had been pulled down, they dismantled the stage, pulling it apart section by section. The rigging, lighting and sound equipment came down before the side wall sections could be detached and folded away on to another truck. The lot was full of men stripped to the waist. In the headlights from the trucks, they looked like Cretan bull leapers, bending and writhing in the night. One by one, the trailers of the performers left the lot to move on to the next site, a few miles up the coast. But the prop gang worked on and took no notice of their departure. It was three in the morning when they started pulling down the big top. The adrenaline was flowing through their blood now, washing away the evening's alcohol and fatigue. Handling the huge tarpaulin was like hoisting the mainsail of a man-of-war. The men gathered around the perimeter of the tent and each took hold of one of the thick ropes used to attach the tarpaulin to the ground. On a given signal, they walked forward, each holding back on his rope, so that the great, heavy tarpaulin was lowered slowly to the ground on the six main poles. As Gabriel's whole body strained against his rope, he imagined what it would be like doing the job in a strong wind.

Once the lot was cleared and all the trucks were loaded, the prop gang set off on to the road, travelling east. Gabriel couldn't find Rey's caravan and, too exhausted to care, he climbed on to the flatbed of a truck carrying scaffolding. Settling down amongst the metal pipes, he realised that the flatbed was crowded with men, some of them already asleep. Gabriel felt his muscles relaxing, falling away into a mass of arms and legs. The night was cool, their shared sweat steaming. Gabriel fell asleep to the
roaring of the old engines and slept on as the truck came to a halt on another muddy field, much the same as the previous site.

*

He was woken up by Rey, who had climbed into the flatbed to find him. Gabriel stretched his aching back and pulled a leg from under a heavy weight. ‘What?' he said, irritably.

‘I brought you some coffee; thought you might need it before we start again,' Rey said, his voice forming an image, an outline, in the dark. Light still only revealed itself in patches: a flash of teeth, a jacket opening on to a cotton shirt.

‘What? You must be kidding! We are not building the site now, are we?'

‘You bet we are.'

‘Shit.'

‘Quite.'

‘Where are we, anyway?'

He could sense Rey shrugging. ‘Does it matter?'

‘No, I suppose not.'

‘Come on, then.'

Rey jumped down from the truck and Gabriel followed, fumbling for a moment to get his bearings. They stood silently, side by side, drinking the hot coffee as the grey light of dawn rose out of the ground and made the shadows stand up straight. Then, suddenly, there was birdsong on the air. It was not as if one bird started and the others joined in – it all happened at once, as when the needle is dropped on to a turning record.

Gabriel listened for a moment, warm inside from the coffee and a sense of satisfaction. Then he walked stiffly through the armada of parked trucks into a nearby meadow to urinate. By now, the landscape revealed itself. The pale blue sky seemed to have
risen from a horizon bruised in violet and pink. A thin breeze, no more than a breath, rose over the downs and combed through the yellowing grass in gentle strokes – a mother's hand – softly. He stood for a moment, as if he was part of the field, straight and thin like a stalk, swaying slowly under the caressing wind.

Back at the new lot, everything had shifted into deliberate activity. The same men, who, only a few hours ago, had sweated in the moonless night, had been granted new energy by dawn and were currently busy pulling the folded tarpaulin and canvas off the trucks and raising the rigging again. Gabriel sighed. He was hungry and every part of him ached. Looking around for a hint of what to do next, he walked over to a group of men who were standing on makeshift scaffolding, driving rigging poles into the ground with sledgehammers.

Amazingly, the whole lot was resurrected within a few hours. The people of this village would wake in morning to colour and music, whereas the people of the previous village would wake and see it gone.

The morning was still glittering with dew as the roustabout gang set off for the cook shack. The cook was a huge man with a tattoo snaking out of the neck of his shirt and on to the back of his shaved head. His big-jawed face had a growth of dark stubble around it. Rey sidled up to Gabriel in the queue. For a moment, Gabriel felt a rising sense of irritation. Where had Rey been while they had all been working hard? What made him think that he could just come and go like that?

‘That's Dido,' Rey said, indicating the cook. ‘He doubles as the Iron Man. You'd better stay on his right side …'

‘Why, what does he do?' Gabriel asked, peering anxiously at the monster cook. He was no longer irritated.

‘Oh, no, no, nothing like that.' Rey laughed. ‘He's the kindest soul. I just meant that he will feed you better, if you stay sweet with him.'

The fabric of Dido's cotton shirt strained over his muscles as he loaded eggs and rashers on to plates. A woman appeared from the back of the van, carrying a large thermos flask in each hand. Her hair was peroxide blond and done up in an extraordinary beehive. It seemed to be leaning a bit to the left, as if she had been sleeping on one side. Her make-up was smudged, but there was a certain strong beauty to her features. She wore shorts and a red and white polka-dot shirt, tied around her midriff. She did not seem to be wearing a bra and her breasts swung riotously inside the loose fabric as she put the coffee flasks on the counter with a bang. Placing her large hands on her hips, she shouted in a surprisingly deep voice, ‘All right, ye bastards, come and get it!'

There was laughter and whistling from the queue, and some coarse shouting too. But silence and order soon settled over the trestle tables and benches on the dusty ground around the van, as the exhausted men gorged on their breakfast.

‘So, how do you like our Circassian beauty, eh? Magnificent, don't you think?'

‘Yeah, she's quite something. What does she do?'

‘Zilda? Oh, you know … a bit of dancing, and she's in this double act with Dido – knife throwing, or something of that sort. That's what she does on set … In her own free time, she has a whole other business going.'

‘What sort of business?' Gabriel wondered with elusive interest whilst chewing his bacon.

Rey looked at him with a strange smile on his face.

‘What?'

‘What do you know of women, Gabe?'

‘Well, you know … this and that.' He reddened.

‘Have you ever delved into womanhood, rummaged through its secret passages, tasted its ripe flesh and drunk its forbidden juices?'

‘No; I mean, that is …'

‘And the smell … Ah, I tell you, the smell is divine – at once fresh and sweetly dirty. It's like nothing else in the universe.'

‘I see,' Gabriel mumbled and stared glumly down at his plate. He thought of that night on the beach and tried to remember any particular smell associated with the quickening noises of the lovemaking couple. But another smell surfaced in his mind – a smell of young bulls – the smell of threat. A sudden fear gripped his heart.

‘Are you okay?' Rey looked at him with concern. ‘I didn't mean to embarrass you, or anything … You do know there's nothing
wrong
with it, don't you?'

He nodded, but uncertainly, wishing Rey would look away. But the older youth did not flinch.

‘You know, Gabe, good and evil are sometimes so close that one can overshadow the other,' he said. ‘That's why fear is our worst enemy.'

As if he didn't know.

‘You must learn not to fear the erotic – or love, for that matter.'

‘Yeah, all right,' Gabriel muttered.

Rey finally shifted his gaze from Gabriel's face and lit a cigarette. He leant back his head and blew the smoke up into the air. ‘Anyway, back to the wonder of women. My real passion doesn't lie in the erotic, but in the very essence of its being –' he leant
closer to Gabriel, his free hand gripping the edge of the table – ‘the core of womanhood.'

Gabriel had stooped chewing, suddenly interested. ‘And you know all that … ?' He hesitated, not quite getting it. ‘You got all that from Zilda?'