the land. The air was an essence of all the people who’d ever passed through, and even though it was the middle of the night, the house had a faint hum of people doing things behind closed doors.
Rose went up to her flat at the top of the house. A waft of incense and dope greeted her when she opened the door. Inside was like an Arabian souk, all coloured hangings and cushions, mirrors, embroidery, long-fingered plants tumbling down deep purple walls. The room was full of stuff she’d brought home from skips and gutters and pavements, shelves full of things she felt sorry for. Old match-boxes and broken jewellery, bits of paper, sticks, fragments, remnants, residues, boxes, knick-knacks, broken things, the teeming leavings of the world.
‘Poor thing,’ she said, putting the maimed doll among her Indian cushions as if it were a cuddly toy, sitting back on her heels and looking into its round black face. The empty holes of the eyes and mouth conveyed an impression of sweetness.
‘Tattoo,’ she said.
Next morning Julia dressed quickly, drew back the curtain and crept silently through the room where the two girls were still asleep. A cockerel crowed in the dark, not too near. Another, closer, answered. Finding the latch, she lifted it silently and went out into the yard. Voices passed on the street. A light burned in the house. There was a movement over by the vegetable patch, and when she looked she saw the tall thin figure of a man walking backwards. With no hesitation, he passed along the side wall, turned and crossed the back of the house, momentarily dimming the light from the window, then disappeared round the corner into the leaf-hung walkway that led to the front. Though the light was coming, nothing but his shape and peculiar swift locomotion was clear. Diablo. There was no sound. He’s come for wicked children who won’t go to sleep. You don’t have to worry about that, Julia, the Sanchez boys used to joke, one look at you and he’ll run! Like the devil! When she was sure he wasn’t coming back, she walked down and used the privy, and by the time she was back Delia was up, sitting on her bed smoking a small cigar.
‘So,’ she said in a blunt throaty way, ‘your big show.’ Thick black pigtails hung either side of her face, and a red shawl was wrapped round her shoulders. Emerging from it, her forearms were tawny and muscled, thick-veined as a fighter’s.
‘The first,’ Julia said.
‘How long’s it been? Since you went on the road?’
‘I’m losing track. Two or three months.’
‘Ooh! So new. So how’s it all getting along with you?’ She waved one brown arm. ‘All this.’
‘Sometimes wonderful,’ said Julia, ‘sometimes frightening.’
‘Rates said you lived in a palace. Down in Mexico.’
‘A long time ago. My guardian was governor in Sinaloa, but I hardly remember it. Then we moved to the house I grew up in.’
‘He decent? Your guardian? Why you wanna leave?’
‘I was looking after an old lady,’ said Julia, ‘but then she died.’
‘An old lady?’
‘Old nurse lady.’
‘So was he decent?’
Don Pedro had always been fond of her in a distant way, as if she were a good old dog that had been with the family a long time. Sixteen years. ‘He was decent,’ Julia said.
Delia blew out a cloud of thick blue smoke, put her head back and gazed pensively at her. ‘Has Rates given you any money yet?’ she asked.
‘I have some money,’ said Julia, ‘a little. My guardian gave me some before I left. But Mr Rates has been buying everything, I haven’t had to . . .’
‘You made a deal?’
‘Of course. There’ll be money when we’ve done the shows.’
‘No, I mean a deal,’ said Delia impatiently, ‘a deal in writing.’
‘I haven’t signed anything.’
‘Oh but you must, you must.’ Delia jumped down from the bed onto her hands, cigar in mouth. ‘Don’t go a step further till you’ve got something in writing,’ she said, loping across the floor with strong arms and poking Myrtle in the backside. ‘Wake up, Myrt.’ Sinking down, the cigar wagging on her lip. ‘Listen to this, she hasn’t got a contract.’
Julia hated thinking about money. There’d always been enough. Other people provided, but she had to work. She could sweep and wash and light fires, or she could sing and dance and let them look. Singing and dancing won all hands down. Money made her head ache.
‘Myrt!’
Myrtle mumbled then turned over. When her eyes opened they were glazed for a while, unfocused, but suddenly they registered Julia and shot open. A brief hysterical indrawing of breath, quickly controlled, and she jerked up. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ she said, laughing awkwardly at herself.
‘She hasn’t got a contract!’
Myrtle closed her eyes again. ‘You should have had a lie-in,’ she said to Julia, ‘you’re supposed to.’
‘I always wake early.’
‘It can be a curse.’ Myrtle opened her eyes again but closed them immediately. Last night’s eye paint had bruised her pillow and lay encrusted across the top part of her cheeks. She looked both older and younger than the night before.
‘You have to get a contract.’ Delia sprang back onto the bed. ‘No word of mouth. Today. Before you sing another note. Tell him.’
Myrtle clenched her eyes and yawned till she shook. The sound of Cato’s swerving stumbling voice came in from the yard along with a faint, drainy smell of sewage.
‘Who is that?’ Julia asked. ‘That Cato. Where’s he from?’
‘He come from Alabama,’ said Delia.
‘With a banjo on his knee,’ said Myrtle, and they laughed.
‘True enough,’ Myrtle said, ‘he comes from Alabama. Off of a big plantation.’
‘Does he live here all the time?’
‘No one lives here all the time.’
‘He’s not with us,’ said Delia. ‘He’s with this kid Ezra.’
What does he do?’
‘Cato? Oh, people just like to see Cato. He don’t do much.’
‘He dances,’ Myrtle said. ‘Kind of.’
‘Yeah. Kind of. But mostly he just runs around.’
Myrtle burst out of bed in a flurry of white and went behind the screen. The sound of peeing trickled through the room.
‘Myrt, have you got my comb?’ Delia raised her voice. ‘The one with the fans?’
