lifted her off him. He handed Harry back his cap.
‘She like to play games, don’t you Ocky?’ he said. ‘You’re a thief, a terrible thief. That’s no way to treat a friend. Now you take me ’ome, Ocky; we got to catch the bus. We got a show tonight, remember.’
‘A show?’
‘Circus, Blondini’s Circus. You never been to the circus before, ’Arry?’
‘No,’ said Harry.
‘So you come, eh? We have all the animals, it’s like Noah’s Ark. We got the horses, we got the dogs, we got the sea lions, we got the elephants and we got the clowns. We got lots of clowns. You like the clowns ’Arry? But best of all we got Ocky – she’s the big star, aren’t you Ocky?’ The chimpanzee reached out again for Harry’s cap but Harry ducked away smartly. ‘You come, eh, bambino? I, Signor Blondini, invite you personally to my circus, and you bring along your friends. You got plenty of friends, eh? I got to go now.’ He coughed and patted his chest. ‘I don’t like this fog, is bad for me. You can’t see so well in it either, but that don’t make no difference to us, does it Ocky? We got each other, eh? We find our way ’ome all right. Look, ’Arry, she’s giving you her cigarette packet. Special present from the wastepaper bin. She like you. She like everyone who is nice to her, all of the animals at the circus, too; but not the dogs. She don’t like the dogs. I don’t know why, but she go crazy when she see the dogs.’
Harry took the offered cigarette packet and then held out his hand slowly. ‘Thanks, Ocky,’ he said. Ocky reached out and touched his hand gently. Then she smelt his fingers, looking all the while into Harry’s eyes, a deep, penetrating stare that forced Harry to look away.
‘Arrivederci, bambino,’ said Signor Blondini lifting his hat. Harry saw then that his hair was silver white. He was a lot older than Harry had imagined from his voice. ‘Andiamo, Ocky, let’s go.’ Ocky took his hand and they walked away together. The chimpanzee turned to look back at him once over her shoulder and Harry saw that she had a cigarette card in her hand. Then they were swallowed in the dark of the smog. Harry looked down at the cigarette pack in his hand and opened it. It was empty.
When he got home Bill and Granny Wesley were sitting in the kitchen. He took his coat off. His tea was waiting for him on the oven, corned beef hash. He hated corned beef hash and said so.
‘Always fussy, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘Spoilt, that’s the trouble with you. There’ll be no bread-and-butter pudding until you finish it.’
‘Can I see Mum first?’ he said.
‘The doctor’s with her now, Harry,’ Bill said. ‘You can see her later.’
‘I just want to see her, that’s all.’
‘Later,’ said Bill, an edge to his voice. ‘I’m not even allowed up there now, no one is. Now eat your tea like Granny says, there’s a good lad.’ Harry looked from one to the other. Something was wrong, very wrong. For a start there was no lecture about being late. No one had noticed the tear in his trousers, and Granny Wesley hadn’t even told him to wash his hands before he ate his tea. Perhaps this was a good time to hand over the letter from Miss Hardcastle, he thought.
‘The teacher said I was to give you this,’ he said, taking it out of his pocket and pushing it across the table towards Bill.
‘What is it?’ Bill asked. There were dark, deep rings under his eyes magnified by his glasses.
‘Just a letter,’ said Harry, shrugging. Bill looked down at the envelope but didn’t seem in the slightest bit interested in opening it.
‘Eat up, eat up,’ said Granny Wesley, clapping her hands. Harry ate in silence, glancing from time to time at Bill who kept taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes, and then at Granny Wesley who was knitting. She was always knitting, her needles clicking interminably, sometimes in unison with the tick of the kitchen clock.
He was half way through his bread and butter pudding when they heard voices from the room above them. A door shut. Footsteps were coming down the stairs.
Granny Wesley put down her knitting. ‘You stay here and you eat every last bit of it, and don’t forget your orange juice,’ she said as she opened the door into the front hall. Bill went after her, closing the door behind him. The whispering in the front hall was tantalizingly just inaudible. Harry crept to the door and put his ear to the keyhole. He could still hear no better, so he looked instead. The doctor was in his shirtsleeves and braces and was standing at the foot of the stairs. Bill was listening, head lowered, and Granny Wesley was nodding and looking at her watch. After a few moments she turned away and came back towards the kitchen door. Harry scuttled back to the table and bolted down the last of his bread-and-butter pudding. The whispering was louder now and he could just make out what they were saying. It was Bill’s voice.
‘I don’t care what you do with him . . . I want him out of here . . . for as long as possible.’ Then the door opened and Granny Wesley came in alone.
‘Can’t I see her now?’ Harry asked. ‘Is she all right?’
‘I have a nice surprise for you, young man,’ said Granny Wesley. She often called him ‘young man’ and that made Harry feel very old. ‘You and me, we’re going out,’ she said.
‘Why?’ said Harry. She’d never taken him out anywhere before.
‘Why? Because there’s something I want you to see.’
‘What?’
‘How would you like to go to the circus, young man? I saw the notice on the way back from the shops today. There’s elephants, sea lions, clowns. I haven’t been to the circus – oooh – since I don’t know when, since before the war certainly. Half past six it starts. We can be there in a quarter of an hour if we hurry.’
Harry didn’t argue. He had his coat and scarf on in a flash. Bill saw them out. ‘Don’t worry about your mother, Harry,’ he said. ‘She’ll be all right.’
Harry loved everything about buses, the race up the winding stairs to get to the top before the bus lurched forward, the ping of the bell as the conductor called out, ‘Hold very tight please’. He liked the seat at the front, so that he could hang on to the white rail in front of him and steer the bus round the corners. It was only a few stops, but to Harry’s great delight it took an age in the smog. Granny Wesley let him give the money to the bus conductor. Harry watched eagerly as he picked out the tickets, punched them and handed them over. ‘You can keep them,’ said Granny Wesley. She was being unusually kind to him, and for a moment Harry wondered why; but then they were on the pavement and caught up in a flood of people and carried along with them towards the light of a great tent with coloured lights flickering all around and music blaring from loudspeakers. Granny Wesley guided him from behind into a ringside seat and gave him a toffee apple. He tried to bite through the outside of it and failed. He couldn’t open his teeth wide enough.
He was still licking at the toffee when the lights went down, the audience hushed and the drums rolled to a crashing crescendo. A spotlight picked out a white horse, neck arched, walking out into the ring, and then behind came another, and then another, and another and another, until the ring was circled with identical horses. Harry was so close to them that he could smell them as they passed by. The sawdust from their feet flew up and landed on his coat. It was too close for comfort for Granny Wesley who held her handkerchief up to her mouth. She was to keep it there all through the
