wearing a red and white striped satin dress with a tight bodice and a flared skirt. She swung back and forth on the rope as if it were a swing, then wrapped one part of the rope casually around her leg.
Maggie poked Jem and Maisie. ‘That’s Miss Laura Devine,’ she whispered. ‘She’s from Scotland, and is the finest slack-rope dancer in Europe.’
At a signal, the men stepped away from each other, pulling the rope taut and making Miss Devine turn a graceful somersault, which revealed several layers of red and white petticoats. The crowd roared, and she did it again, twice this time, then three times, and then she turned constant somersaults, twirling round and round the rope so that her petticoats were a flashing blur of red and white.
‘That’s called Pig on a Spit,’ Maggie announced.
Then the men stepped towards each other, and Miss Devine came out of the last somersault into a long swing up into the sky, smiling as she did.
Anne Kellaway stared at Miss Devine, expecting to see her crash to the ground as her son Tommy had from the pear tree, reaching for that pear that was always – and now always would be – just out of his reach. But Miss Devine did not fall; indeed, she seemed incapable of it. For the first time in the weeks since her son’s death, Anne Kellaway felt the shard of grief lodged in her heart stop biting. She craned her neck to watch her even as Miss Devine moved far down the bridge and could barely be seen, even when there were other spectacles right in front of her – a monkey on a pony, a man riding his horse backwards and picking up dropped handkerchiefs without leaving his saddle, a troupe of dancers in oriental costume turning pirouettes.
‘Jem, what’ve you done with those tickets?’ Anne Kellaway demanded suddenly.
‘Here, Ma.’ Jem pulled them from his pocket.
‘Keep ’em.’
Maisie clapped her hands and jumped up and down.
Maggie hissed, ‘Put ’em away!’ Already those around them had turned to look.
‘Them for the pit?’ the meat pie man asked, leaning over Anne Kellaway to see.
Jem began to put the tickets back in his pocket.
‘Not there!’ Maggie cried. ‘They’ll have ’em off you in a trice if you keep ’em there.’
‘Who?’
‘Them rascals.’ Maggie jerked her head at a pair of young boys who had miraculously squeezed through the crush to appear at his side. ‘They’re faster’n you, though not faster’n me. See?’ She snatched the tickets from Jem, and with a grin began to tuck them down the front of her dress.
‘I can keep them,’ Maisie suggested. ‘You haven’t got the stays.’
Maggie stopped smiling.
‘I’ll keep them,’ Anne Kellaway announced, and held out her hand. Maggie grimaced but handed over the tickets. Anne Kellaway carefully tucked them into her stays, then wrapped her shawl tightly over her bosom. The stern, triumphant look on her face was armour enough to keep away any rogue fingers.
The musicians were passing them now, and behind them three men brought up the rear of the parade waving red, yellow and white flags that read ASTLEY’S CIRCUS.
‘What’ll we do now?’ Jem asked when they had passed. ‘Go on to the Abbey?’
He could have been speaking to a family of mutes, oblivious to the surging crowd around them. Maisie was staring after John Astley, who by now had become just a flash of blue coat over winking horse flanks. Anne Kellaway had her eye on the amphitheatre in the distance, contemplating the unexpected evening ahead. Thomas Kellaway was peering over the bridge’s balustrade at a boat piled high with wood being rowed along the thin line of water towards the bridge.
‘C’mon. They’ll follow.’ Maggie took Jem’s arm and pulled him towards the apex of the bridge, sidestepping the traffic of carriages and carts that had begun to cross it again, and making their way towards the Abbey.
Westminster Abbey was the tallest, grandest building in that part of London. It was the sort of building the Kellaways had expected to see plenty of in the city – substantial, ornate, important. Indeed, they had been disappointed by the shabbiness of Lambeth, even if they had not yet seen the rest of London. The filth, the crowds, the noise, the indifferent, casual, neglected buildings – none of it matched the pictures they’d conjured of London back in Dorsetshire. At least the Abbey, with its pair of impressive square towers, its busy detail of narrow windows, filigreed arches, jutting buttresses and tiny spires, satisfied their expectations. It was the second time in the weeks they had been in Lambeth that Anne Kellaway thought, ‘There is a reason for us to be in London’ – the first time being only half an hour before, when she saw Miss Laura Devine performing the Pig on a Spit.
Just inside the arched entrance between the two towers, the Kellaways stopped, causing those behind them to grumble and push past. Maggie, who had continued on into the Abbey, turned around and blew through her lips. ‘Look at those country fools,’ she muttered, as the four Kellaways stood in a row, eyes up, heads tilted at the same angle. She couldn’t blame them, however. Although she had visited the Abbey many times, she too found it an astonishing sight on first entering and, indeed, throughout the building. At every turning, every chapel and tomb contained marble to be admired, carving to be fingered, elegance and opulence to be dazzled by.
For the Kellaways the sheer size was what pulled them up short. None had ever been in a place where the ceiling arched so high over their heads. They could not take their eyes off it.
Finally Maggie lost patience. ‘There’s more to the Abbey than the ceiling,’ she advised Jem. ‘And there’s better ceilings than this too. Wait till you see the Lady Chapel!’
Feeling responsible for their first proper taste of what London could offer, she led them through archways and in and out of small side chapels, casually throwing out the names of people buried there that she remembered from her father’s guided tour of the place: Lord Hunsdon, the Countess of Sussex, Lord Bourchier, Edward I, Henry III. The string of names meant little to Jem; nor, once he grew accustomed to the size and lavishness of the place, did he really care for all of the stone. He and his father worked in wood, and he found stone cold and unforgiving. Still, he couldn’t help marvelling at the elaborate tombs, with the carved effigies in tan and beige marble of their inhabitants lying on top, at the brass reliefs of men on other slabs, at the black-and-white pillars ornamenting the headstones.
By the time they reached Henry VII’s Lady Chapel at the other end of the Abbey, and Maggie triumphantly announced, ‘Queen Elizabeth,’ Jem had stopped listening to her altogether and openly gaped. He had never imagined a place could be so ornate.
‘Oh, Jem, look at that ceiling,’ Maisie breathed, gazing up at the fan vaulting, carved of stone so delicate it looked like lace spun by spiders, touched in several places with gold leaf.
Jem was not studying the ceiling, however, but the rows of carved seats for members of the royal court along both sides of the chapel. Over each seat was an eight-foot-high ornamental tower of patinated oak filigree. The towers were of such a complicated interlocking pattern that it would not have been a surprise
