Penny Whistle continued
I could never quite figure out why the clowns gave me so much joy. Perhaps it was the sadist in me who enjoyed to see another person's misfortune, be it a custard pie in the face or a rubber hammer to the back of the head. Or perhaps it was my relief as a child from the constant working. Training, excercising, balancing, swinging. They would make me laugh so hard my stomach would ache for days afterwards. Last month, sadly, one of the troop died. Harry lost his fight to cancer of the liver, hard on the moonshine right up to his final hours. We held a grand funeral and buried him by the side of the river, in his hometown. The place he would sit for hours and dream up new pranks. He was a huge Harry Lloyd fan, as was his father, who had named him after the comedian. In his place we got Danny, a young twenty-something, who fit in nicely with the other three, something that can prove very tricky. The auditions were pretty immense. So many wannabes who just didn't fit. Queues of clowns. Red noses, white faces, happy faces, sad faces, huge feet, big trousers, fuzzy wigs. A constant chatter. A fluttering, squeaking, clattering… barking dogs, costumed-dogs, balloon dogs. But in the end, whatever it was they were after, Danny had it and he joined their troupe immediately. I took a shine to him straight away.
There are some people who love the circus so much they will trail after it, become an entourage. Even though they see the same tricks night after night, they come back again and again, finding huge delight in the next seasons new performances, excited at the prospect of being the first witness. Often they will help out behind the scenes, the circus having all the glamour of rock and roll. To those not part of it anyway. I had my regulars and my suitors when I was 'Angel' the trapeze girl. I don't have so many now. In fact, I think I have only one. One man who I began to notice about three months ago. A man with thick black hair and soft kind eyes. He came every night. He sat in the tent and came to almost every show. There were three a night and if he was there for one, he was there for all. He sat in the same place if it wasn't too busy, right at the front, for the best view. Here I was Penny Whistle. Here I was Pierrot. Here I was right. A clown, a cripple and a slut. All of those offensive terms and more. Every night he would hold my gaze as the band played and I began to shed my clothes. He didn't join in the gasps as the wretched pink criss-crosses over my body were slowly exposed. He didn't lean forward with the rest of the audience who tried to make sense of me, to find the womanly curves, the small rounded tits missing the punctuation of nipples, the pubis without its hair. Sometimes he would smile, and it wasn't out of sympathy like the others who often caught sight of me outside. I felt he was attracted to me, in some strange animalistic way. And when I did my whistle act he remained silent as the others cheered and clapped.
It was never quite enough though, this attraction. There were still jeers and hoots and terrible, terrible insults. More than once I ran off the stage screaming. The physical and emotional pain was often unbearable. But it was all I had left and I was the star of the freak-show, winning over more audiences, in one way or another, than the conjoined twins and the mermaid girl put together, whose shows were much more erotic than my own. There was nothing subtle in my show. There was myself, my body, and the music I made.
So the clowns would come and entertain me. They dried my tears with rags or let me cry on the worn shoulders of their too-big overcoats. And then one night when dawn was teasing the horizon they left me to sleep beneath the blanket Robbie and I shared. They crept out of the van like thieves and I dreamt of birds without feet and horses with wings and when I awoke, there was Danny, looking down at me, his mouth pulled taut against his painted smile. He drew back the blanket and began to unbutton my shirt. 'You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen,' he said. And I did not protest. 'I have watched you perform every single night,' he said. And when he removed his top hat and his black hair sprung out at odd angles, I looked into his soft kind eyes and remembered him. I let him undress me as I had before in my dreams. When he took a pair of handcuffs from his top pocket I lay down still and let him cuff my wrists to the bedposts. As he brought out my walking cane from beneath the bed (no longer needed but a reminder of my recovery) my breathing shallowed and my body swelled. As he pulled out a string of handkerchiefs from his sleeves I opened my mouth wide to let him stuff them inside. And as he hit me hard across the face till I bled and bruised I felt whole and beautiful, and free as a bird.
END