Read Online Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter - Free Book Online
Authors: Angela Carter
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guttering and – oh! and, ah! the guttering gave way beneath me! The old lead parted company with the eaves with a groaning sigh and there I dangled, all complete woman, again, my wings having seized up in perfect terror of a human fate –’
‘– but I reached out and grips her by the arms. Only love, great love, could have given me such strength, sir, to permit me to haul her in onto the roof against the pull of gravity as you might haul in, against the tide, a drowning person.’
‘And there we huddled on the roof in one another’s arms, sobbing together with mingled joy and relief, as dawn rose over London and gilded the great dome of St Paul’s until it looked like the divine pap of the city which, for want of any other, I needs must call my natural mother.
‘London, with the one breast, the Amazon queen.’
She fell silent. Some object within the room, perhaps the hot-water pipes, gave out a metallic tinkle. Lizzie, on her creaking handbag, shifted from one buttock to the other and coughed. Fevvers remained sunk in introspection for a while and the wind blew Big Ben, striking midnight, so lost, so lonely a sound it seemed to Walser the clock might be striking in a deserted city and they the only inhabitants left alive. Although he was not an imaginative man, even he was sensitive to that aghast time of the night when the dark dwarfs us.
The final reverberation of the chimes died away. Fevvers heaved a sigh that rocked the surface of her satin bosom, and came out of her lapse of vivacity.
‘Let me tell you a little more about my working life at this time – what it was I got up to when I was not flitting about the sky like a bat, sir! You will recall how I stood in for the Winged Victory each night in the parlour and may have wondered how this might have been, since I have arms –’ and she stretched them out, spanning half the dressing-room in the process ‘– and the Winged Victory has none.’
‘Well, Ma Nelson put it out that I was the perfection of, the original of, the very model for that statue which, in its broken and incomplete state, has teased the imagination of a brace of millennia with its promise of perfect, active beauty that has been, as it were, mutilated by history. Ma Nelson, contemplating the existence of my two arms, all complete, now puts her mind to the question: what might the Winged Victory have been holding in ’em when the forgotten master first released her from the marble that had contained her inexhaustible spirit? And Ma Nelson soon came up with the answer: a sword.
‘So she equipped me with the very gilt ceremonial sword that come with her Admiral’s uniform, that she used to wear at her side, and sometimes use as a staff with which to conduct the revels – her wand, like Prospero’s. And now I grasped that sword in my right hand, with the point downwards, to show I meant no harm unless provoked, whilst my left hand hung loosely at my side, the fist clenched.
‘How was I costumed for my part? My hair was powdered white with chalk and tied up with a ribbon and my wings were powdered white, too, so I let out a puff if touched. My face and the top half of my body was spread with the wet white that clowns use in the circus and I had white drapes from my navel to my knee but my shins and feet were dipped in wet white, too.’
‘And very lovely she looked,’ cried loyal Lizzie. Fevvers modestly lowered her eyelashes.
‘Lovely or not, Ma Nelson always expressed complete satisfaction with my turnout and soon took to calling me, not her “Winged Victory” but her “Victory with Wings”, the spiritual flagship of her fleet, as if a virgin with a weapon was the fittest guardian angel for a houseful of whores. Yet it may be that a large woman with a sword is not the best advertisement for a brothel. For, slow but sure, trade fell off from my fourteenth birthday on.
‘Not so much that of our faithfullest clients, those old rakes who, perhaps, Ma Nelson had
‘– but I reached out and grips her by the arms. Only love, great love, could have given me such strength, sir, to permit me to haul her in onto the roof against the pull of gravity as you might haul in, against the tide, a drowning person.’
‘And there we huddled on the roof in one another’s arms, sobbing together with mingled joy and relief, as dawn rose over London and gilded the great dome of St Paul’s until it looked like the divine pap of the city which, for want of any other, I needs must call my natural mother.
‘London, with the one breast, the Amazon queen.’
She fell silent. Some object within the room, perhaps the hot-water pipes, gave out a metallic tinkle. Lizzie, on her creaking handbag, shifted from one buttock to the other and coughed. Fevvers remained sunk in introspection for a while and the wind blew Big Ben, striking midnight, so lost, so lonely a sound it seemed to Walser the clock might be striking in a deserted city and they the only inhabitants left alive. Although he was not an imaginative man, even he was sensitive to that aghast time of the night when the dark dwarfs us.
The final reverberation of the chimes died away. Fevvers heaved a sigh that rocked the surface of her satin bosom, and came out of her lapse of vivacity.
‘Let me tell you a little more about my working life at this time – what it was I got up to when I was not flitting about the sky like a bat, sir! You will recall how I stood in for the Winged Victory each night in the parlour and may have wondered how this might have been, since I have arms –’ and she stretched them out, spanning half the dressing-room in the process ‘– and the Winged Victory has none.’
‘Well, Ma Nelson put it out that I was the perfection of, the original of, the very model for that statue which, in its broken and incomplete state, has teased the imagination of a brace of millennia with its promise of perfect, active beauty that has been, as it were, mutilated by history. Ma Nelson, contemplating the existence of my two arms, all complete, now puts her mind to the question: what might the Winged Victory have been holding in ’em when the forgotten master first released her from the marble that had contained her inexhaustible spirit? And Ma Nelson soon came up with the answer: a sword.
‘So she equipped me with the very gilt ceremonial sword that come with her Admiral’s uniform, that she used to wear at her side, and sometimes use as a staff with which to conduct the revels – her wand, like Prospero’s. And now I grasped that sword in my right hand, with the point downwards, to show I meant no harm unless provoked, whilst my left hand hung loosely at my side, the fist clenched.
‘How was I costumed for my part? My hair was powdered white with chalk and tied up with a ribbon and my wings were powdered white, too, so I let out a puff if touched. My face and the top half of my body was spread with the wet white that clowns use in the circus and I had white drapes from my navel to my knee but my shins and feet were dipped in wet white, too.’
‘And very lovely she looked,’ cried loyal Lizzie. Fevvers modestly lowered her eyelashes.
‘Lovely or not, Ma Nelson always expressed complete satisfaction with my turnout and soon took to calling me, not her “Winged Victory” but her “Victory with Wings”, the spiritual flagship of her fleet, as if a virgin with a weapon was the fittest guardian angel for a houseful of whores. Yet it may be that a large woman with a sword is not the best advertisement for a brothel. For, slow but sure, trade fell off from my fourteenth birthday on.
‘Not so much that of our faithfullest clients, those old rakes who, perhaps, Ma Nelson had
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