Displaced Page 22

  Maybe if he’d been a trapeze artist Bela had broken his back or his legs. That could explain why he was in bed.

  ‘Stupid kid thinks she can fly too,’ David continued. ‘And he encourages her.’

  ‘Dangerous, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah. Which is why I don’t like her doing it. Listening to him all her life has given her ideas she shouldn’t have. I’ve told her, you have to grow up in the circus to be a flier. Old Bela was born into it. Amber was born here in the fair. It’s a different thing. Anyway,’ he said, ‘this is their van.’

  ‘The Twins’?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  He knocked on the door. ‘Oi! Ping and Pong, it’s David; open up!’ He smiled at Lee. ‘They understand a knock,’ he said.

  And they may well have done, but no one came to the door. David walked around the caravan trying to look into its windows.

  ‘Got the curtains drawn,’ he said. ‘Could be hiding in there, could be out. Who knows.’

  ‘Could your daughter be with them?’ Lee asked.

  He shrugged. Then he said, ‘If she is, I’ll give her what for. After last night’s shenanigans.’

  ‘What happened last night?’ Lee asked.

  ‘Me and the missus let her and some mates go up Camden,’ he said. ‘They never got back until the middle of the night. Kids, eh?’

  One of them showed her, while the other one held onto the end of the rope. Just in case. The rig was, as far as Amber could see, securely attached to the bar across the top of the old Big Swing set. It had been a long time since oversized swings were fairground staples, but this was one of the attractions her father was looking to bring back into service.

  The Twin not holding the rope swung and then let his backside slip over the trapeze, then he let go. Although he was only four feet from the ground, Amber gasped.

  He slipped fast, but he stopped abruptly, his feet breaking his fall as they caught the ropes and held his body. The Twin’s head, only at most a foot from the ground, miraculously retained its satin ‘Thai’ style cap.

  Amber clapped. She couldn’t do that move anywhere near as quickly as either of the Twins and they were ancient. But she’d get there in the end.

  All she wanted was to be a flier like Nagyapa. She’d do it even if it killed her.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Mumtaz felt slightly awkward. She could tell from the expression on Lee’s face that he wasn’t easy with what Irving was telling them. And although she knew he didn’t pooh-pooh psychological explanations out of hand – he’d employed her, in part, because of her psychological knowledge – such things were hard for him to accept.

  ‘I know what I saw was just in my head,’ Irving said as he placed teapot, cups and milk jug down on the coffee table. ‘But to see my mother as a young woman is odd, isn’t it?’

  ‘Maybe you were remembering happier times,’ Mumtaz said.

  ‘Happier times?’ He sat down. ‘When? I can’t say I had an abusive childhood; I didn’t. But my mother was quite indifferent to me. She wasn’t a warm person. Maybe the loss of Miriam made her feel as if it was too dangerous to love anyone in case she lost them? My childhood was spent listening to my parents fighting. Not that it ever got physical, unless she threw something at him …’

  ‘What I mean is that when your mother was young, so were you,’ Mumtaz said. ‘You weren’t ill. The mind doesn’t always present us with the most obvious symbol of its distress. These few weeks have been hard for you. The strain of going to Germany and, in some ways, the disappointment you had to bear …’

  ‘And yet we have those results from Herr Beltz now and so maybe something will come of that,’ he said. ‘Maybe I am related to a man who was once a spy.’

  He smiled.

  Mumtaz smiled back. But she couldn’t help feeling that was a remote possibility.

  ‘You don’t have to come to the fair again this evening,’ she said. ‘We can postpone until tomorrow or …’

  ‘Perhaps you did see someone who looked like your mother,’ Lee said. ‘We’re assuming it was in your head, but maybe it wasn’t.’

  ‘My mother is dead, Lee,’ Irving said.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘And maybe you did see some sort of hallucination, I dunno. But then isn’t it said that every one of us has a double somewhere …’

  ‘A doppelgänger?’

  ‘Why not?’ he said.

  But then Mumtaz saw what she thought was something cross his mind. It wafted briefly over his face like a veil.

  ‘That ain’t the biggest big wheel in the world,’ Grace said. ‘London Eye’s, like, twice the size.’

  ‘Maybe they mean the biggest one in a fairground,’ Shazia said as she looked up at the big wheel.

  Like the London Eye, the BigO’s passengers were transported in pods rather than on precariously swinging seats. And although it went faster than the Eye, the girls could see that the pods were shabby. When people got on, the doors were manual as opposed to automatic and, as the girls looked up at the attraction, they saw a woman pull her little boy’s pants down and encourage him to piss on the floor.

  ‘Oh! What?’

  ‘Look,’ Shazia said. ‘There’s no law that says we have to go on it.’

  Grace popped a small piece of candyfloss into her mouth. ‘Yeah, but everything else here is so lame,’ she said.

  ‘No it’s not. There’s a massive great waltzer …’

  ‘So I’ll throw my guts up, yeah. Next?’

  ‘Helter-skelter?’

  ‘Going down a slide so the world can see my pants?’ Grace shook her head.

  Shazia looked at her friend and smiled. Grace always looked sensational. But she didn’t know how to do casual and, while Shazia wore skinny jeans and a jumper, Grace was hampered by thigh boots, a leather mini dress and fishnet tights.

  ‘So what do you want to do?’ Shazia asked.

  ‘You’re the one going to uni, innit,’ Grace said. ‘What you wanna do?’

  Shazia thought for a moment and then she said, ‘Dodgems.’

  Grace looked up into the darkening night sky and shook her head. ‘Man,’ she said, ‘we could be on the pull and you want to go riding in a likkle car with no brakes!’

  Shazia laughed and took her arm. ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘it’ll be a laugh!’

  Eva ignored the girl. David had caught her out with the Twins that afternoon, attempting to fly, and now she was confined to the van. But Eva did pay attention to the old man.

  Speaking in Hungarian so the girl couldn’t understand, she said, ‘What’s the use of my telling the girl she must behave when you don’t?’

  Bela said nothing. Stupid old fool.

  ‘Telling some stranger our business!’ she said.

  ‘What do you mean?’ He sat up in his bed. ‘The disappearance of that child didn’t have anything to do with us. I told him what I remembered.’

  ‘Did you? Did you really?’

  Amber said, ‘What are you talking about?’

  When the girl spoke, he smiled. His little ‘angel’!

  Eva said, ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You sound so angry,’ Amber said.

  Bela stroked the girl’s face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Our language makes us sound angry. But we are not.’

  ‘Everyone’s always angry with me,’ Amber said.

  This was too much for Eva. ‘Oh, don’t whine!’ she said. ‘You always end up getting your own way!’

  ‘No, I don’t!’

  ‘You do!’

  ‘I don’t!

  ‘You—’

  ‘Stop behaving like children!’ the old man said. ‘Eva, for God’s sake, you are a grown-up!’

  Infuriated, Eva returned to Hungarian.

  ‘I am, but you’re not!’ she said. ‘You, who give her everything, who lets her do whatever she wants!’

  The way he looked at her, just for a moment, made Eva feel fear. But she managed to squash that down.

  ‘And I know why,’ s
he said as she loomed over him.

  Bela said nothing.

  It was then that Eva noticed that Amber had gone.

  ‘Christ!’ she said.

  Perhaps it was because more people tended to visit fairgrounds in the evening, but they always smelt more ‘fairgroundy’ at night. Quite what made up that distinctive odour was complex and could be highly individual. For Mumtaz the smell of sugar from the doughnut and candyfloss stalls was dominant. But for Lee this was overlaid with the tang of frying onions, engine oil from the vehicles and also the odd waft of cannabis.

  Then there was the noise. Screams of excitement, tinny, fairground music from some of the older attractions, the pounding beat of Beyoncé’s ‘Crazy in Love’ played so loud it was distorted and that characteristic whizzing noise that always seemed to accompany fairground and British seafront activities.

  Irving, clearly discomforted by the sounds around him, said, ‘You know, when I was a child I’m sure all this wasn’t so noisy or bright.’

  ‘Nobody had glow sticks in those days,’ Lee said. Back in his ‘day’, fairgrounds had been lit by very basic coloured bulbs, when they worked, and all the boys operating the rides had looked like David Essex. Now most of the blokes on the rides looked like washed-up boxers. And there were women.

  ‘Irving,’ Mumtaz said, ‘do you think it might help if you could look down on the site?’

  So far, only the discovery of the old freak show van had even begun to activate Irving’s memory. And, to Lee’s way of thinking, nothing new was going to occur to him now.

  ‘I’m not going on that thing that is winched up and then dropped to the ground,’ Irving said.

  ‘The Sky Drop? No,’ Mumtaz said. ‘I wouldn’t go on that myself. I was thinking about the big wheel.’

  He looked up at the BigO and said, ‘Maybe later. I think I’ll just walk around now, and on my own.’ He patted Mumtaz’s hand. ‘You understand, don’t you, my dear?’

  Lee knew that Mumtaz wouldn’t like this. She had, right from the start, cosseted the diamond cutter. He was dying and vulnerable – why shouldn’t she? Lee felt ashamed that he felt jealous.

  Mumtaz squeezed Irving’s hand and said, ‘Alright. But I’ll wait here for you, in case you need me.’

  He smiled.

  Amber ran. Ping and Pong would be in their van. Her grandmother would know that’s where she’d go, but if she was quick, she could get inside the van and hide until the old girl went away.

  Knocking on the door, she yelled, ‘It’s me! Amber! Open up!’

  They must have seen her because the door opened immediately and she jumped inside. People said the Twins didn’t understand English, but Amber knew that they did.

  ‘You have to hide me!’ she said. ‘Nanny Eva wants to keep me prisoner and she’s coming!’

  Not many people ever entered the Twins’ van, but Amber knew it well. As a child she’d loved the wild profusion of stuff they hoarded. There was always something strange and fascinating to find in their van, which was less like a home and more like an enclosed car-boot sale.

  Without saying a word, one twin took a large box out from underneath a bed and opened the lid. It was dark brown, looked a bit like a coffin and smelt of camphor.

  ‘You want me to get in there?’ Amber said.

  And it was dirty.

  The Twin nodded.

  Amber held her nose and got inside. Once the lid was closed she felt the whole thing move backwards and then she heard what sounded like things being piled on top of the lid. Then she heard her grandmother’s voice and a lot of knocking. In the utter blackness of the box, she closed her eyes.

  Then more of that furious Hungarian. Her grandmother shouting, the Twins mainly silent, interjecting just the odd word. They might have the same face, but they had different voices. It was the one with the high-pitched voice who did what passed for most of the talking.

  Something that felt like an earthquake followed. Her grandmother opening cupboards and hurling blankets, clothes, crockery, everything – looking for her. Amber began to sweat. If she found her, she’d thrash her. She did that. Apparently, her mother had been a wicked old woman and it seemed that Eva had taken after her.

  But if she didn’t find her, Amber knew that her nagyapa would be pleased. He really wanted her to fly, in spite of what he told her mum and her grandma. He wanted her to follow in his footsteps. It was only those bitches who didn’t and that was because neither of them had ever been pretty enough to fly. Men had to be handsome, as Nagyapa had been when he was young, but girls who flew were meant to be beautiful. And Amber knew she was beautiful because her nagyapa had told her she was all her life.

  ‘He’ll be alright,’ Lee said.

  ‘He’s so alone,’ Mumtaz said.

  She didn’t look at him. Her eyes were still fixed on the point between a row of sideshows where she’d finally lost sight of Irving Levy.

  ‘I have my family,’ she continued, ‘and my friends.’

  Lee couldn’t help himself. He said, ‘Am I one of your friends?’

  Now she looked at him, her dark-green eyes turned emerald by the pulsing fairground lights.

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Your friendship is really important to me and to Shazia.’

  ‘But not my love?’

  She stood, open-mouthed in front of him.

  ‘This is not the time to be talking—’

  ‘So when is the time?’ Lee said. ‘Eh?’

  She turned away, then she looked up at the biggest big wheel in the world and tried to concentrate on the people inside the slowly moving perspex pods.

  Lee, infuriated, pulled her round to face him. He heard Mumtaz gasp. But he didn’t care.

  ‘I am in love with you,’ he said. ‘I always have been, since the first moment I saw you! And you know it!’

  His breath was laboured now and he knew his face had drained of all colour. He’d held this in for far too long and now he was coming on to her like some sort of scary nutcase.

  She shook her head.

  ‘So tell me you don’t feel the same?’ Lee said. ‘Tell me! That night, Mumtaz, I made love to you and you made love to me. Tell me what I felt from you was just desperation or a sudden rush of lust and I’ll sod off and leave you alone, but …’

  ‘It’s not right!’ she said. ‘We are different!’

  There were tears in her eyes.

  ‘Oh the “you’re a Muslim and I’m not” thing? I don’t care about that!’ he said.

  ‘I do!’ She glanced around nervously. ‘People are watching!’

  ‘I don’t give a shit!’ he said. ‘If you love me, I’ll change me religion! If you don’t … But I don’t believe that you don’t love me! I don’t! Maybe I’m being arrogant, but …’

  Now he was sweating and he knew his face had probably gone from white to red. He probably looked like some sort of oily old perv, watching a woman whose arm he held tremble in front of him.

  She was about to speak when suddenly a familiar voice broke whatever spell had existed between them.

  ‘Amma! Lee!’ Shazia said. ‘Didn’t think I’d actually see you here!’

  The last sideshow was a shooting gallery where, if you were fortunate, for these things depended on nothing but blind luck, you could win a fluffy Sesame Street soft toy. But that didn’t happen often, as the stained and tired-looking toys at the back of the attraction showed.

  Beyond the shooting gallery was a defunct carousel – complete with some headless, some tailless prancing horses – and then a lone caravan. A woman stood outside ranting in a language Irving couldn’t understand. He felt his skin crawl. In spite of the fact he knew that Romany Gypsies, as well as Jews, had been sent to concentration camps by the Nazis, he found them hard to like. He didn’t even know if this woman was a Gypsy, but she looked like one and that was enough for him. And she was staring.

  Gypsies or not, people did sometimes stare at Irving. Even though he didn’t have the side-locks den
oting a member of the ultra-Orthodox Haredi sect, he knew he looked like a religious Jew, which was what he had always been. But that didn’t mean he was comfortable with starers. He wasn’t, and this woman, this Gypsy, was giving him the creeps.

  Irving turned his back on her and went off around the back of the fair, towards the old boating lake.

  ‘We’re three girls all on our own; we need a man to look after us!’ Shazia said with her tongue very firmly in her cheek.

  Grace, who didn’t always do irony, said, ‘Man, I know you’re old enough to be me dad, but you’re fit, right? And I need something to look at.’

  Lee had to smile. The girls were sweet; he was fond of them.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Me and your mum are waiting for someone.’

  ‘Ah. Work stuff?’ Shazia said.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Grace nudged her. ‘I told you we should’ve gone with those sorts from Dalston. They would’ve paid and that!’

  Mumtaz raised an eyebrow. She didn’t like the idea of the girls going on rides with boys they didn’t know. ‘If money’s the issue, I will pay,’ she said. ‘Or maybe …’ She looked at Lee. ‘I can wait for Mr Levy …’

  He sighed. He liked Shazia and her mate, but they had spoilt his chance of getting the truth out of Mumtaz. It had taken him months to work up enough courage to do that. But it was what it was.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’ll take you on …’

  Both girls jumped up and down squealing.

  Lee, smiling in spite of himself, shook his head. ‘Provided you don’t do violence on me ear’oles by squeaking,’ he said.

  Both girls put their hands over their mouths, still squeaking behind their fingers.

  ‘Good!’

  Mumtaz tried to give Lee money, but he wouldn’t take it.

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake!’ he said as he pushed her away. Then bending down to whisper, he added, ‘Whatever you feel for me, I love you.’