That playbill aroused my curiosity. It was boldly printed in red, as follows:
!!! JOLLY JUMBO’S CARNIVAL !!!
!! THE ONE AND ONLY !!
COME AND SEE
!! GORGON, The Man Who Eats Bricks & Swallows Glass !!
!! THE HUMAN SKELETON !!
!! THE INDIA RUBBER BEAUTY –
She Can Put Her Legs Around Her Neck & Walk On Her Hands !!
!! A LIVE MERMAID !!
!! ALPHA, BETA, AND DOT. The World-Famous Tumblers
With The Educated Dog !!
! JOLLY JUMBO !
!! JOLLY JUMBO !!
I left early, because I like to look behind the scenes, and have a chat with a wandering freak or two. I remembered a good friend of mine who had been a Human Skeleton – six foot six and weighed a hundred pounds – ate five meals a day, and was as strong as a bull. He told good stories in that coffee-bar that is set up where the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Combined Circuses rest in Florida for the winter. I ‘tasted sawdust’, as the saying goes, and had a yearning to sit on the ground and hear strange stories. Not that I expected much of Wettendene. All the same the strangest people turn up at the unlikeliest places….
Then the rain came down, as it does in an English summer. The sky sagged, rumbled a borborygmic threat of thunderstorms, which seemed to tear open clouds like bags of water.
Knowing our English summer, I had come prepared with a mackintosh, which I put on as I ran for the shelter of the barn.
I was surprised to find it empty. The thunder was loud, now, and there were zigzags of lightning in the east; what time the pelting rain sounded on the meadow like a maracca. I took off my raincoat and lit a cigarette – and then, in the light of the match flame, I caught a glimpse of two red-and-green eyes watching me, in a far corner, about a foot away from the floor.
It was not yet night, but I felt in that moment such a pang of horror as comes only in the dark; but I am so constituted that, when frightened, I run forward. There was something unholy about Wagnall’s Barn, but I should have been ashamed not to face it, whatever it might be. So I advanced, with my walking-stick; but then there came a most melancholy whimper, and I knew that the eyes belonged to a dog.
I made a caressing noise and said: ‘Good dog, good doggie! Come on, doggo!’ – feeling grateful for his company. By the light of another match, I saw a grey poodle, neatly clipped in the French style. When he saw me, he stood up on his hindlegs and danced.
In the light of that same match I saw, also, a man squatting on his haunches with his head in his hands. He was dressed only in trousers and a tattered shirt. Beside him lay a girl. He had made a bed for her of his clothes and, the rain falling softer, I could hear her breathing, harsh and laborious. The clouds lifted. A little light came into the barn. The dog danced, barking, and the crouching man awoke, raising a haggard face.
‘Thank God you’ve come,’ he said. ‘She can’t breathe. She’s got an awful pain in the chest, and a cough. She can’t catch her breath, and she’s burning. Help her, Doctor – Jolly Jumbo has left us high and dry.’
‘What?’ I said. ‘Went on and left you here, all alone?’
‘Quite right, Doctor.’
I said: ‘I’m not a doctor.’
‘Jumbo promised to send a doctor from the village,’ the man said, with a laugh more unhappy than tears. ‘Jolly Jumbo promised! I might have known. I did know. Jolly Jumbo never kept his word. Jumbo lives for hisself. But he didn’t ought to leave us here in the rain, and Dolores in a bad fever. No, nobody’s got the right. No!’
I said: ‘You might have run down to Wettendene yourself, and got the doctor.’
‘“Might” is a long word, mister. I’ve broke my ankle and my left wrist. Look at the mud on me, and see if I haven’t tried…. Third time, working my way on my elbows – and I am an agile man – I fainted with the pain, and half drowned in the mud…. But Jumbo swore his Bible oath to send a physician for Dolores. Oh, dear me!’
At this the woman between short, agonised coughs, gasped: ‘Alma de mi corazan – heart of my soul – not leave? So cold, so hot, so cold. Please, not go?’
‘I’ll see myself damned first,’ the man said, ‘and so will Dot. Eh, Dot?’
At this the poodle barked and stood on its hindlegs, dancing.
The man said, drearily: ‘She’s a woman, do you see, sir. But one of the faithful kind. She come out of Mexico. That alma de mi corazan – she means it. Actually, it means “soul of my heart”. There’s nothing much more you can say to somebody you love, if you mean it…. So you’re not a doctor? More’s the pity! I’d hoped you was. But oh, sir, for the sake of Christian charity, perhaps you’ll give us a hand.
‘She and me, we’re not one of that rabble of layabouts, and gyppos, and what not. Believe me, sir, we’re artists of our kind. I know that a gentleman like you doesn’t regard us, because we live rough. But it would be an act of kindness for you to get a doctor up from Wettendene, because my wife is burning and coughing, and I’m helpless.
‘I’ll tell you something, guv’nor – poor little Dot, who understands more than the so-called Christians in these parts, she knew, she knew! She ran away. I called her: “Dot – Dot – Dot!” – but she run on. I’ll swear she went for a doctor, or something.
‘And in the meantime Jolly Jumbo has gone and left us high and dry. Low and wet is the better word, sir, and we haven’t eaten this last two days.’
The girl, gripping his wrist, sighed: ‘Please, not to go, not to leave?’
‘Set your heart at ease, sweetheart,’ the man said. ‘Me and Dot, we are with you. And here’s a gentleman who’ll get us a physician. Because, to deal plainly with you, my one-and-only, I’ve got a bad leg now and a bad arm, and I can’t make it through the mud to Wettendene. The dog tried and she come back with a bloody mouth where somebody kicked her …’
I said: ‘Come on, my friends, don’t lose heart. I’ll run down to Wettendene and get an ambulance, or at least a doctor. Meanwhile,’ I said, taking off my jacket, ‘peel off some of those damp clothes. Put this on her. At least it’s dry. Then I’ll run down and get you some help.’
He said: ‘All alone? It’s a dretful thing, to be all alone. Dot’ll go with you, if you will, God love you! But it’s no use, I’m afraid.’
He said this in a whisper, but the girl heard him, and said, quite clearly: ‘No use. Let him not go. Kind voice. Talk’ – this between rattling gasps.
He said: ‘All right, my sweet, he’ll go in a minute.’
The girl said: ‘Only a minute. Cold. Lonely ——’
‘What, Dolores, lonely with me and Dot?’
‘Lonely, lonely, lonely.’
So the man forced himself to talk. God grant that no circumstances may compel any of you who read this to talk in such a voice. He was trying to speak evenly; but from time to time, when some word touched his heart, his voice broke like a boy’s, and he tried to cover the break with a laugh that went inward, a sobbing laugh.
Holding the girl’s hand and talking for her comfort, interrupted from time to time by the whimpering of the poodle Dot, he went on:
They call me Alpha, you see, because my girl’s name is Beta. That is her real name – short for Beatrice Dolores. But my real name is Alfred, and I come from Hampshire.
They call us ‘tumblers’, sir, but Dolores is an artist. I can do the forward rolls and the triple back-somersaults; but Dolores is the genius. Dolores, and that dog, Dot, do you see?
It’s a hard life, sir, and it’s a rough life. I used to be a Joey – a kind of a clown – until I met Dolores in Southampton, where she’d been abandoned by a dago that ran a puppet show, with side-shows, as went broke and left Dolores high and dry. All our lives, from Durham to Land’s End, Carlisle to Brighton, north, south, east, west, I’ve been left high and dry when the rain came down and the money run out. Not an easy life, sir. A hard life, as a matter of fact. You earn your bit of bread, in this game.