was her turn.
The music swelled and the spotlights swooped up to expose her to the audience at last. Valentina struck a pose: one hand raised in a flourish above her head, the other grasping the wooden bar of the trapeze. And then, without hesitation, she leapt.
She flew out into mid-air and then felt the jerk of the trapeze snatching her back again. The spotlight followed Valentina as she swung back and forth like a pendulum. When she reached the highest point of her arc she suddenly let go of the wooden bar. She twisted her whole body high in the air so that her hands now gripped the bar facing the other way. Then, with her elbows locked into position, she executed a half-pike, turning and flipping her knees over the bar to dangle upside down.
As she felt the blood rush to her head the music changed to a familiar tune that signalled the arrival of the clowns.
Valentina could never figure out why people liked clowns. She found their white greasepaint faces and gigantic red lipstick smiles disturbing. What was funny about the way they charged around like idiots, pushing each other and falling over their own feet?
Yet their antics instantly brought on gales of laughter from the audience. The clowns ran into the ring below her, leaping up on top of each other’s shoulders to make a human pyramid, juggling batons and knocking each other off stilts, and all the while Valentina swung high above them, waiting for her moment.
The spotlights suddenly flew skywards and Valentina grasped the bar and performed a double-flip, pushing up so that she was almost doing a handstand. She twisted round and round, somersaulting in mid-air, and on the third twist her hands suddenly slipped loose from the bar.
There was a horrified gasp from the crowd. Valentina looked down as the ground came hurtling up to meet her and automatically braced, going into a tumble roll. In the ring below, the clowns sprang into position, forming a circle and pulling the firemen’s net taut between them.
She landed smack in the centre, curling like a ball on impact and rebounding up into the air. As she flew upwards she did a knee tuck like a diver on a high board, and then, with an easy grace, she reached up to grasp the red silk sash dangling from the rooftop.
The crowd, now realising the fall had been a part of the act, began to clap enthusiastically. Valentina wrapped herself in the sash and started to twirl, rotating one way and then the other, unwinding like a spinning top. She did the splits, throwing her head back and arching her spine, as if being held by an invisible tango partner. The silver spangles on her costume sparkled like a mirror ball in the spotlight and then, in a flash, there were three more spotlights, their beams illuminating the ring below. The clowns had disappeared and the lights traced patterns on the empty space. The drumroll quickened, the lights circled faster and then the velvet curtains were flung to one side as Sasha made his grand entrance.
So far tonight the audience had witnessed a snarling ambush of golden tigers, a bear on a unicycle, and monkeys in waistcoats and top hats riding dogs in tutus. All the same, when a pink horse came cantering into the ring, they truly thought their eyes were deceiving them. Surely the strange colour must have been a trick of the light? But as the spotlights cast their beam on the horse it became clear that he really was pink – the softest, most delicate shade of rose, with a silvery mane and tail.
Despite his pretty colour, Sasha was clearly a stallion, with a heavy crested neck, broad chest and powerful shoulders. Standing at almost seventeen hands, he seemed even taller due to the silver plume he wore that stood straight up in a stiff crown between his ears. On his back he wore a matching silver saddle blanket, surcingled round his belly with two vaulting handles attached on either side of his withers.
The extraordinary horse cantered straight into the ring and immediately settled into a big loping stride, circling the perimeter. Above him, Valentina began to swing from the red silk sash in circles matching the circuits of the horse below, manoeuvring herself into position. Then she let go once more and plummeted down.
She landed on Sasha’s back with feline grace, gripped the handles on the vaulting pad and pushed herself into a handstand. She held the pose for an entire lap of the ring as the crowd applauded loudly. Then she dropped back down, put her feet on Sasha’s rump and straightened up, so that she was standing on the hindquarters of the horse as he continued his steady canter.
With a backward flip Valentina dismounted and did two brisk cartwheels, bounding across the sand to meet Sasha on the other side of the ring and vault back up again. This time she swung herself up into the saddle so that she was sitting back to front, facing his tail. She stood up with her hands above her head and leapt into the air, doing sideways splits before landing with her feet on the horse’s broad rump and sliding down his tail to hit the ground running.
The crowd were cheering her on, and with every backflip and somersault Valentina and Sasha won them over.
As the pink horse reared up on his hind legs and pirouetted in a circle as if he were dancing in time with the music the big top audience went wild with applause. Valentina leapt down to take a bow and the audience roared with delighted laughter as Sasha nodded and then bowed beside her, dropping down to his knees, one foreleg outstretched, head lowered in reverence. Then the horse and the girl were on their feet again, Valentina smiling and waving goodbye as they ran from the ring and into the wings.
“Valentina!” Sergei the ringmaster was waiting for her. It had been a pitch-perfect performance tonight – their act had been utterly faultless.
She smiled at the ringmaster. “Yes, Sergei?”
“There is elephant dung by the caravans,” Sergei said. “Clean it up before you feed the tigers.”
Valentina felt her cheeks flush pink with shame. Had she really been stupid enough to think he was going to praise her? The ringmaster never had a kind word for anyone, least of all his star trapeze artist and her pink horse.
Sergei was a tiny man, short and squat, not much bigger than the circus dwarves, with a downturned grouper mouth and pale rheumy eyes. He had been Valentina’s guardian ever since her mother died.
“I could have left you on the orphanage steps,” he liked to remind her. “A snot-nosed gypsy girl like you should be grateful I gave her such a home.”
Three performances a day including matinees: that was the price of Valentina’s “home” at the Moscow Spectacular. For this she received no pay, but she had bed and board in a dilapidated caravan that she shared with the contortionist, Irina. She had nothing in the world of her own. No clothes apart from her leotards and a dirty old tracksuit that she wore while she cleaned out the animal trailers. No toys and no dolls and no books. She had never been taught to read or add or subtract. Valentina was not allowed to go to school.
“A circus is never in one place long enough,” Sergei had dismissed her pleas. “Besides, a girl like you has no need for education.”
Valentina knew nothing about art, history or the countries of the world. She wouldn’t even have been able to locate Moscow on a map. She was thirteen and she could barely scrawl her own name.
And yet her talent and abilities shone as bright as the spangled costumes she wore for her performances. She had a photographic memory and would only need to run through a routine once before it was imprinted in her mind so that she would never forget it. Compared to the other circus kids – Irina the contortionist, or Magda the fortune-teller’s brood of sallow-skinned, dark-eyed children, the lantern-jawed offspring of the strong man and his fierce red-faced wife – Valentina stood out as clever, brave and resilient, able to tumble from the trapeze to the nets and bounce back up
