The horses came to a snorting halt and turned inwards towards him, a tail swishing right in front of Harry’s face. The loudspeaker whistled and crackled. ‘Signor Blondini is proud to present to you this evening his world famous travelling circus.’ Trumpets blared raucously and the show began.
Harry could see the ringmaster’s face. He expected him to be Signor Blondini but he wasn’t, he was sure of that. He was too tall, too young. As each act came and went he looked for Signor Blondini and Ocky, but very soon he became so absorbed in everything he saw, in the colour and the noise of it, that he forgot all about them. There were acrobats on horseback, somersaulting as they rode, jumping from horse to horse. There were sea lions tossing their footballs from tail to nose and twirling them in the air. There were elephants trooping around the ring, trunks entwined with tails, and dogs that danced on their hind legs. There were jugglers, trick cyclists, fire eaters and, in between every act, the clowns. No one on the front row escaped the soapy water. No one really wanted to – except Granny Wesley. Whenever the clowns came by with their buckets she shrank back in her seat. Harry thought she was trying to pretend she wasn’t there.
When Ocky did appear at last, Harry was taken completely by surprise. She was leading a white-faced clown into the centre of the ring. Harry nearly called out, he was so excited. The clown took a violin from under his arm and sat down on a white chair. The lights dimmed and he began to play a plaintive ringing tune that silenced at once all the buzz and the laughter in the audience. Ocky sat at his feet and picked at the sand, eating whatever it was that she found there while the clown played on. He was a sad, pathetic figure out there in the centre of the ring, somehow not in keeping with the brash, bombastic spectacle of the circus. Not for him the baggy trousers, the red braces, the outsize shoes and the grotesquely painted faces of the other clowns. He was dressed down to his red knee-length socks in a black costume covered in large yellow and red butterflies. When he played ‘The White Cliffs of Dover’ the audience joined in humming softly – some singing the words, but never too loud. And then suddenly the lights were up again and the clown-gang was back. They gathered round to mimic the butterfly clown as he played, but he took no notice. They danced idiotically, waltzing together and polka-ing together, tripping over each other; but the butterfly clown ignored them and played on. They picked up their buckets and were about to empty them on the butterfly clown, turning to the audience to ask if they should. ‘No! No!’ came the shout, and still the violin played on, a new tune now, a different tempo, faster and more rhythmic. Quite suddenly Ocky was on her feet clapping her hands. All the clowns froze where they were for just a moment, and then the butterfly clown began to sway in time to the music as he played. The clowns followed suit, no longer mocking him. They were becoming lost in the music, hypnotised by it. After a minute or two the butterfly clown stopped playing and laid the violin down on the chair behind him. He looked around the laughing audience, pointed to the still swaying clowns and put his finger to his lips to quieten the audience. Then he took several green balls out of his pockets and began to juggle with them expertly. The clowns did the same. They too dipped into their pockets and took out several green balls and they too began to juggle, throwing the balls higher and higher and then lower and lower, and in perfect time with the butterfly clown. When the butterfly clown finished, he put them back in his pocket, but he left one in his mouth. The clowns, mesmerised, did the same. It was the first and only act that Granny Wesley seemed to enjoy, and she laughed freely, a laugh Harry never knew she had in her. Whatever the butterfly clown did, the other clowns had to do, too. They could not help themselves. If he scratched his nose, they did. If he yawned, they did. If he stood on his head, they did. The audience howled for more, longing for the clown-gang to get more of their come-uppance. The butterfly clown bent down and whispered to Ocky, who ran off and fetched a bucket, a red one marked ‘OOZE’ in big letters. She dragged it back and left it at the butterfly clown’s feet. The butterfly clown bent down and whispered something to Ocky who clapped herself enthusiastically and then resumed her sitting position. All this time the clowns were duly following the butterfly clown’s every move, bending down and whispering to chimpanzees that weren’t there, and fetching their red buckets marked ‘OOZE’. And when the butterfly clown picked up the bucket Ocky had brought him, of course the clowns picked up their buckets, too. The butterfly clown, a wide grin on his face now, showed the audience that his bucket was empty. He turned round and round so that everyone could see. Everyone knew what he had in mind now and willed him on to do it. ‘Yes! Yes!’ they roared. ‘Yes! Yes!’ He didn’t need much persuasion, but he pretended he did until the audience had insisted loudly enough and long enough. Satisfied now that this was really what they wanted, he lifted the bucket up above his head and turned it upside down, and so did all the clowns around him, covering themselves in a white ooze that dribbled over their heads and down their shoulders. As the clowns wiped their faces the audience roared their approval. They stamped and they clapped, Harry as loudly as anyone. Ocky clapped her hands with everyone else, and then led the butterfly clown in a lap of triumph around the circus ring.
As she passed by, Harry called and called to her but to his great disappointment Ocky never even turned to look. Harry gazed up at the face of the butterfly clown and tried to catch his eye, but he seemed to be looking into the far distance almost as if he was in a trance. Harry waved at him but he never waved back. The man sitting next to Harry was shouting as he clapped, ‘That’s him. That’s Mr Nobody, I know it is.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ said Granny Wesley over Harry’s head. The man was shouting louder, clapping all the while and pointing.
‘Him, that clown, that’s Mr Nobody. I seen him do the very same thing before the war. Famous he is, Mr Nobody.’
‘How do you know it’s him?’ Harry asked.
‘Well you always know with the clowns, son. They all of them wear different costumes, different make-up. Like a sort of trademark. No two clowns are ever the same. It’s him, I know it is. No one else like him.’
The lap of triumph had become the grand parade, the finale. The horses came by, and the elephants, the acrobats and the dogs; and the clowns still scooping the white ooze off their faces and throwing it into the audience or at each other. In front of them all came Ocky leading Mr Nobody by the hand. They were coming past him again. ‘It’s him. I’m sure it is. That’s Mr Nobody,’ cried the man beside Harry, craning forward. ‘It is you, isn’t it, Mr Nobody?’ The butterfly clown heard, smiled and nodded, but he hardly turned his head. Then he seemed to stumble in the sawdust and clutched at the ringside to steady himself, his hand gripping the rail right in front of Harry’s seat. His hair grew only sparsely on the top of his head, but was long and bushy and red around his ears. Except for that his entire head down to his neck was chalk white. His startlingly red lips, the same colour as his hair, were painted where there were no lips, but the two black moles above and below his mouth looked real enough. As Harry looked at him their eyes met momentarily and Harry could see why he had stumbled. Mr Nobody’s eyes were full of dreams. He was like a man walking in his sleep. And then he was gone, the parade was all over, the magic was broken and they were all leaving.
At the bus stop outside there was a long queue and Peter Barker was there. ‘Smashing, wasn’t it?’ he said and Harry nodded. ‘Don’t you like your toffee apple?’ he said. Until then Harry hadn’t even realised he still had it. His hand was sticky with toffee down to his wrist. He began to lick his fingers.
‘Still hurting, is it?’ said Peter Barker.
‘What?’ said Harry, knowing quite well what he meant, but not wanting Granny Wesley to find out anything about it.
‘Your hand,’ said Peter Barker deliberately loudly.
‘What happened to your hand?’ asked Granny Wesley.
‘I fell over,’ Harry said, ‘in the playground. But it’s all right now.’ He looked darkly at Peter who was about to argue but stopped just in time to avoid getting his shin kicked.
There
