The Winter Ground Read Online Free PDF

crossed my eyes at Ina, quite at a loss on the question of flick-flacks and how mechanics might improve them.
    ‘Prebrezhensky!’ said Mr Cooke, and his wife tutted again. ‘Helps if you can even say it. I told them “Kukov” would be better for Cooke’s Circus. Clever, you know? But what say do I have these days? Or Romanov, if they must. Bit of class, bit of history and it would go with our “Anastasia” at least, but they’d have none of it. “What we have lost! What have we have left but our name?” they said to me. I don’t know. Changed days.’
    ‘When I did my voltige,’ Mrs Cooke said, ‘Mr Cooke used to ride the haute école.’ She pronounced it oaty coil , but I had an aunt with a passion for high-school Spanish dressage and so I caught her meaning. ‘And everyone in the ring was a Cooke or a Turvy or an Ilchenko on one side or both – all family.’ She sighed. ‘Now our boys are in America doing their act for a packet of pay and our girl’s married to a tobacconist and here’s me telling fortunes …’
    ‘Front-of-house show,’ corrected Mr Cooke, but the doldrums had conquered both of them now. ‘In the old days, you never needed no fortunes told to entertain them coming in. They’d look round the menagerie and be happy as sand boys. Sometimes I think we should hang the expense and get back to it, Ma. An elephant, a camel or two, some cats, wouldn’t you like that, eh? We could have a parade again – better than posting bills on lamp-posts any day.’
    ‘And beast wagons and show wagons and tent grooms and the ticket price so high to cover it we’d show to empty galleries like as not. We’re stretched flat taking on the new acts anyways. Them days is gone there, Tam. All gone.’
    They sounded exactly like Hugh and me.
    Ina and I excused ourselves shortly afterwards; Mr Cooke looked done in and I was sure he wanted to pull off his long boots and flop back on to his bed. We made our way across the ground to the big top – although I had noticed that Mrs Cooke called it simply the tent – pausing only to gape, stunned, at the not inconsiderable sight of Bunty sitting up on her haunches with her front paws crossed while Sallie, the tiny child who had led her away from the caravan, waved a biscuit slowly back and forth in front of her nose. Bunty, catching sight of me, whined and lowered one paw towards the grass, but the child said ‘Yat!’ and clicked her fingers and Bunty turned to face the biscuit again.
    ‘I cannot believe my eyes,’ I said to Ina. ‘Nothing the Bresh-whoevers might do in the way of juggling feet is going to top that.’
    Of course, I spoke too soon. We pulled aside the flaps under the canopy and stepped as discreetly as possible inside, into the canvas dome, into the smell of sawdust and oiled rope, into a place even more magical in its dim emptiness than it had been filled with music, lights and laughter and the sugary tang of toffee-covered apples when I was a child.
    The Prebrezhenskys turned out to be a large fair-haired man, a small dark woman like a pixie, two dark pixie girls of around eight, twins perhaps, and one of five or so with golden hair and fat pink cheeks, her father’s daughter. They nodded at us in a friendly way as we entered and I attempted a nonchalant nod in return as though I found them as unremarkable as they me. In fact, all five were dressed in britches and short leather coats with fur collars and the two bigger girls had harnesses around their waists, attached to ropes slung over a pair of high beams.
    ‘This is Mrs Gilver, a friend of mine,’ said Ina. ‘Now, Dandy, um …’
    ‘I say for you,’ the woman laughed, surveying her family with casual pride. ‘Nikolai Prebrezhensky.’ Her husband clicked his heels together and gave a curt bow, no more than a nod really. ‘And Rosaliya, Inessa and Akilina the baby. I am Zoya. Please to watch and please to excuse mechanic.’ She gestured to the harness and rope arrangement