Airs Above The Ground Part 11

"Only who you are. He thinks it's some mysterious business mission for P.E.C. May I tell him you asked me to keep in touch with the circus?"

"I don't see why not. Tell him the firm may want more details about Denver's death, and I may have to come back, so meantime I've asked you to stick around. That's nothing but the truth, after all. You can refer any other questions to me."

"I doubt if he'll ask them. Tim's all right." It was a measure of what had happened in the last two days that I knew that the phrase-and all it implied-was true. "When do you go?"

"I'm on my way now. You all right?"

"Fine. We're just setting off for Hohenwald, but Tim was afraid of starving on the way. Have you got a car here?"

He nodded to one which stood under the trees nearby, a shabby fawn-coloured Volvo which nevertheless looked powerful. He was decently dressed this morning, I noticed, though still not recognizably Lewis March, my husband. This was still the anonymous and professionally insignificant Lee Elliott. I could see now that his very ability to melt into apparent insignificance was one of the tools of his trade, but nothing, I thought, could take from Lewis the precision and grace of movement which spoke always of strength and self-command, and could sometimes-when he allowed it-give him elegance.

He lifted his head, narrowing his eyes against the morning sun. "What's the boy stocking up with food for? You haven't a great way to go . . ." And then, very softly: "Stop looking at me like that, for goodness' sake, my dear girl. You look as if you were bringing me gold and frankincense."

"And why not? I has my rights too, Mr. M." I added aloud: 'Exactly how far is Hohenwald, anyway?

How far does a circus normally go in a day?"

"About thirty or forty miles. It's roughly fifty kilometers to Hohenwald; you should have a lovely run. The gradients aren't bad, and there's some beautiful country. Have lunch at Lindenbaum, and take your time."

When Timothy emerged from the shop with his arms alarmingly full of packages, Mr. Elliott was giving me directions for a pleasant day's drive, with a map drawn on the back of an old envelope. I noticed that the envelope was addressed to "Lee Elliott, Esq., % Kalkenbrunner Fertilizer Company, Meerstra.s.se, Vienna."

"Well," I said, "we'll go. Have a good journey."

"And you," said Lewis. "Enjoy yourselves. . . . Auf Wiedersehen, then, and remember me to Annalisa."

As we drove off, Timothy shot a sideways glance at me. "Was that just a crack?"

I laughed. "No. In any case, you're a fine one to talk about making cracks. I may tell you, Lewis knows."

He looked startled, then grinned, "Oh, you just told him? You mean he knows I know?"

"Yes, and leave it at that, will you, before I get muddled. All is now in the clear . . . and thank goodness we can talk."

This was the first chance we had had of private conversation since our daybreak meeting on the verandah. Breakfast had been a more or less public function in the Gasthof, with Timothy's devoted waitress watching our every move, but now, as we left the village behind us, we had not only the road but the whole countryside, seemingly, to ourselves.

The road was, as Lewis had promised, idyllic. The morning sun cast long, fresh blue shadows, and the hedges were thick, and full of honeysuckle and white convolvulus. A haycart had been that way, and the wisps of hay were hanging golden from the hedge in the still morning.

I began to explain to Timothy what Lewis had asked me to do, indicating merely that Lewis and his firm were not satisfied with the verdict of "accident" on Paul Denver and were still curious to know what connection-if any-the latter had had with the circus people, and if he could have incurred any enmities which might have led directly to his death.

"All he wants me to do," I said at length, "is keep in touch with the circus, as veterinary surgeon if they need me, or just as a friend. He's very emphatic that no questions are to be asked or detective work done . . . there's no room for your Archie Goodwin act, Timothy. In fact I don't know whether you want to stay in on this or not? It chimes in exactly with what I'd like to do myself-I mean, if I can't join Lewis straight away, then I'm quite happy to stooge around here till he comes back, and maybe be of a bit of help to him at the same time. And I do want to keep an eye on the old horse. But if you'd rather cut loose here and now, and go to Piber-"

"No, not a bit. Gosh, no, I'd love to stay, if you'd have me. ..."

His protestations were almost violently convincing, and only faded into silence when we caught up with the haycart. This was enormous, and topheavily laden, creaking along on its wooden wheels behind two plodding sorrel horses. The road was narrow, overhung with high hedges, and with ditches to either side.

"If you're sure you could do with me?" finished Timothy, as we negotiated the haycart with three centimeters to spare on either side, and buzzed happily on up the next incline.

"I'm beginning to think I can't do without you," I said.

"That settles it then. Hohenwald it is."

The village of Hohenwald was much smaller than Oberhausen. It lay a mile or so behind the main road, in a pretty hanging valley, and was little more than a cl.u.s.ter of houses grouped round its church whose tower rose, crowned with a bell of grey-green s.h.i.+ngles, above splayed roofs and gables of red tile. An arched stone bridge spanned a narrow mountain river and led what traffic it could into the cobbled square. To south and west the land fell away in smiling orchards and fields of corn, some of them cut, golden among the greens; while to north and east the mountains lifted their stepped ramparts of pine forests. The verges of the gravel road were white with dust.

The sense of loss we had felt in leaving Oberhausen was cancelled here, even before we reached the village, by the sight of the now familiar posters wrapped round trees and gateposts, and then by the Circus Wagner itself, settled in a field beside the river. It seemed odd to see, in this completely different setting, the same tents and wagons and big top, the whole build-up of the circus so exactly the same. It was indeed as if some genie's hand had picked it up complete and set it down again here, some thirty miles away.

It was midafternoon when we arrived, and the first performance would not start till five, but already children were crowding in a noisy and excited mob round the gate of the field. I saw the dwarf, Elemer, sitting on the gate and talking to the children, and making them laugh. He looked up and saw us as the car went by, and smiled and lifted his small hand in a wave of welcome. So the news would go before us.

There was some coming and going of tourists in the village, but for all that we got beds easily enough at another small and scrupulously clean Gasthof beside the church. Shortly after four we walked back to the circus field.

As we pa.s.sed the big top I paused and looked inside.

The gra.s.s was fresh, the ring strewn with fresh sawdust, and on the platforms that crowned the enormous king poles, electricians were busy putting the last touches to the wiring. The top itself, with its floating s.p.a.ces, looked different, lit now from above with the curiously unreal diffused light of suns.h.i.+ne through canvas. The whole s.p.a.ce echoed to the sound of hammering and shouting as the tent men put up the last of the wooden tiers of scaffolding and arranged the benches on them. Someone on a high ladder was hanging the rear curtains in place, the crimson drapes through which the horses would come. A couple of clowns, already in costume but without their makeup, stood talking very seriously in the center aisle.

In spite of the differences, it was hauntingly the same as last night, and though at the moment this was only a tent enclosing an alien air, I got the strongest feeling that it was full and echoing with the hundreds of past performances, the music of past songs and dances and laughter.

As we emerged again into the sunlight and I saw the strange gate, the strange village, the strange bell-shaped roof of the church tower against its backdrop of pines, I found myself experiencing a sudden sharp sense of loss-which I hadn't felt that morning-to realize that Lewis was not here. He was possibly already in Vienna. Last night's episode might have been a dream, gone to join the flickering unreality of that almost forgotten newsreel.

Annalisa was expecting us and, to my relief, seemed pleased that we had come, and very eager that I should take another look at the piebald horse.

"But of course you are welcome! I wish I could ask you both in now, but I am dressing, as you see." All we had in fact seen of her so far was a face peering past the curtain that hung over the doorway of her sleeping wagon. In spite of her welcoming smile and obviously real pleasure, I thought she looked pale-the gaiety and sparkle had gone. I wondered if she had had any sleep at all last night. "But you will come afterwards again and have coffee? You'll go to the performance, yes?"

"Timothy's going to see the show again, and if I know him, he'll see your act twice," I said, "but I don't think I will, thank you. I'll just go round to the stables. How's the patient?"

"Better, much better. He's a different horse already. He hardly limps at all, just a little, as if he was stiff . .

. not a real limp at all."

"We call it 'going short,' " I said. "Is he eating?"

"Not much . . . but he really does look better. I am so grateful to you."

"Think nothing of it. I take it you'll keep him now?"

I smiled as I spoke, and she responded, but (I thought) with a rather wintry charm, and said merely: "Then I shall see you later? Also gut! If you want to come in here and use my wagon, please do so, it's never shut. Come in and make coffee if you want it, anything. Just what you wish." The smile again, better this time, and the head vanished.

"She looks tired," I said. "I hope she manages her act all right. Well, see you later, Tim."

The stables, too, were uncannily the same. There was the same smell, the same rows of horses' rumps and idly swis.h.i.+ng tails, but the sun was white on the canvas, and the air of sleepy peace was gone. The liberty horses were being prepared for the show. The rugs had been stripped off them, and their skins gleamed in the light. Half a dozen were already wearing their harness. Men hurried to and fro carrying rugs, surcingles, plumed bridles. The Shetland ponies, some of them getting excited, were beginning to fuss, nibbling one another's necks and switching their long tails. The Lipizzan stallion in his stall near the door stood placidly, head down, ears relaxed, taking no notice of the fuss and bustle. It was difficult to realize that in less than an hour's time he would be in the ring, magnificent in the spotlights, clothed with gold and jewels and flying through the air. Here in his dim corner he looked ancient and heavy with wisdom, and as earthbound as a horse of white stone.

Opposite him the piebald stood with drooping head, but as I approached his eye rolled back and he moved an ear in greeting. What I had taken to be a boy was hunched in the next stall, busy over a piece of harness, but when he spoke I realized that it was the dwarf Elemer.

"So you are back to see the suffering one." I don't know where the dwarf had learnt his English; it was guttural and stilted, but the vowels were cultured. His voice was deep and pleasant.

"Yes. He looks a lot better."

"He has eaten a little. Not enough. But he will mend. . . ."

I went into the stall to look at the horse. "So Annalisa was saying."

". . . For what it is worth," the dwarf said. He lifted the jewelled saddle off its trestle and began to hump it rather painfully across to the white stallion's stall. It almost hid him from sight, and the girth was trailing, but I thought I knew better than to offer help.

I turned my attention to the horse. The dolly was still in place, the swelling had vanished, and he accepted my hands without wincing. I moved him back a pace in his stall and saw that he was putting the leg to the ground with more confidence already. The coat still stared, but his eye was brighter and his general countenance very much better than last night.

I straightened up. " 'For what it is worth'?" I wasn't quite sure if I had heard the guttural murmur aright.

"Do you mean they won't keep him?"

He shrugged. The effect, with the tiny short arms and the big shoulders, was awful. I had to exert sharp control to stop myself from looking away. "Who knows?" was all he would say, and set one of those shoulders to the white stallion's hock to make him move over.

Then all of a sudden, it seemed, the show was on us. The horses went streaming out for the first act. I saw the "cowboys" swing up into their saddles, and the "Entry of the Gladiators" came thudding from the big top. The groom Rudi hurried into the Lipizzan's stall and, taking the saddle from Elemer, heaved it one-armed onto the stallion's back. I had been wrong about the dwarf's susceptibilities; the groom cracked some joke in German which, from the accompanying gesture, had some reference to Elemer's height, but the latter only laughed and went scuttling under the stallion's belly to fasten the girth. I straightened up from my examination of the piebald's leg and stood fondling his ears, while I watched the white stallion putting on, jewel by jewel, his royal dress. Then the dwarf came across to me.

"They are starting. Are you going in to see the show again?"

I shook my head. "I was wondering ... I suppose this old chap won't have had any exercise at all since the fire? Has he even been out to gra.s.s? I thought not. You know, a bit of gentle walking would do him a world of good, and a bit of grazing would do even more. I wondered if there was anywhere I could take him? Do you think the verge of the road? Would it be allowed?"

"Of course," said the dwarf, "you must do as you wish, you know what is best. But do not take him to the road; there is too much dust. Go the other way." The little arm gestured towards the far door of the stable. "Behind this field there is a wood, but it is not a big wood, just a-what do you say?-a belt of trees, perhaps twenty meters wide. There is a gate, and a path up through the trees, and above them is a little alp; it is common land, and there is good gra.s.s there. n.o.body will stop you."

"Can I leave him grazing there till the pulldown?"

"Of course. You will not want to hobble him, no? Then if you wait one moment I will get you the tether and a peg."

It was easy enough to find the place. At the far side of the field the ground lifted sharply away from the flat land where the tents stood, and the late sun gilded the young fir cones with amber and threw into deep shadow the path that wound upwards through the trees. The wood of the gate was damp, and it creaked a little as I opened it and led the old horse through. We went slowly. He put his off fore to the ground perhaps a little tenderly, but he was by no means lame; at most his gait was stiff, and as we made our way gently up the mossy track between the pines he seemed to go better with every step. He lifted his head, and his ears p.r.i.c.ked with the first sign of interest he had shown. Even I, with my poor human senses, could smell the rich scents of that summer's evening.

Above the belt of pines lay the alp the dwarf had told me of, a long terrace of flat green, dotted here and there with bushes, and walled on every side by the dark firs. Someone had scythed down the long meadow gra.s.s, and the hay lay drying here and there in little piles; where it had been shorn the new gra.s.s was fresh and tender green, and full of flowers. The air smelt of honey.

The horse shouldered his way past me into the sunlight, dropped his head, and began to graze. I left him to it and, carrying the slack of the tether, took the peg into the middle of the meadow and drove it in, then moved a little way off and sat down.

The ground was warm with the day's sun. Faintly from below the belt of pines came the circus music, muted and made more musical by the distance. I sat listening, enjoying the last of the suns.h.i.+ne, while I contentedly watched the now greedy grazing of the old stallion. The gra.s.s was thick with familiar meadow flowers-harebells, thyme, eyebright, and, where the scythe had not yet pa.s.sed, the foaming white and yellow of parsley and b.u.t.tercups. What was not so familiar was the fluttering, rustling life of the meadow: the whole surface of the field seemed moving with b.u.t.terflies-meadow browns, blues, sulphurs, fritillaries, and a few of my own Vanessas, the red admirals and tortoise-sh.e.l.ls. Their colours flickered among the flowers, each vanis.h.i.+ng momentarily as it clung and folded, then opening to its own bright colour as it fluttered on. Even the green roots of the gra.s.s were alive, as countless gra.s.shoppers hopped and fiddled there. The air droned with bees, all zooming past me, I noticed, on the same purposeful track, as if on some apian autobahn of their own. They were all making for a little hut, the size of a small summerhouse, chalet-style and beautifully built of pine, and as full of tiny windows as a dovecote. It was, in fact, a beehouse, a sort of collective hive for several swarms, each one with its own tiny bee-door, behind which it made its honey in candle-shaped combs. Amused and interested, I watched the laden bees aiming like bullets each for its own door, remembering how, even a few years ago, in my own childhood, the English meadows, too, had been alive with wings, and how quiet now was the poisoned countryside.

From beyond the pines, sounding surprisingly remote, the cracked bell of the little church chimed six.

There had been an interval of silence from the circus. I supposed it was the clowns' act, or the performing dogs: now, faintly and sweetly, but quite distinctly in the still clear air, the music started again. I heard the fanfare and recognized it; it was the entrance of Annalisa and her white stallion. The trumpets cut through the air, silver, clear, and commanding. Old Piebald stopped grazing and lifted his head with his ears c.o.c.ked, as one imagines a war horse might at the smell of battle and the trumpets. Then the music changed, sweet, lilting, and golden, as the orchestra stole into the waltz from The Rosenkavalier.

There was some enchantment in hearing it at that distance on that lovely evening in the Alpine meadow. I settled my back comfortably against one of the little soft hayc.o.c.ks and prepared to enjoy the concert; but then something about the old horse caught my attention and I sat up to watch.

He had not lowered his head again to graze but was standing with neck arched and ears p.r.i.c.ked, in a sort of mimicry of the white stallion's proud posture. Then, like the white stallion's, his head moved, not in an ordinary equine toss, but with a graceful, almost ceremonial movement of conscious beauty. A forefoot lifted, pointed, pawed twice at the soft ground; then slowly, all by himself, bowing his head to his shadow on the turf, he began to dance. He was old and stiff, and he was going short on the off fore, but he moved to the music like a professional.

I sat among the lengthening shadows of the lonely meadow, watching him, somehow infinitely touched. In this way, I supposed, all old circus horses felt when they heard the music of their youth: the bowing, ceremonious dance of the liberty horse was something which, once learned, could never be forgotten.

And then I realized that this was not the movement of a liberty horse. It was not dancing as the palominos had "danced"; this was a version, stiff but true, of the severely disciplined figures of the high school: first the Spanish Walk, shouldering-in in a smooth skimming diagonal; then the difficult pirouette, bringing him round sharply to present him sideways to his audience; then as I watched he broke into a form of the piaffe. It was a travesty, a sick old horse's travesty, of the standing trot which the Lipizzaner had performed with such precision and fire, but you could see it was a memory in him, still burning and alive, of the real thing perfectly executed. In the distance the music changed: the Lipizzaner down in the ring would be rising into the levade, the first of the "airs above the ground." And in the high Alpine meadow, with only me for audience, old Piebald settled his hind hoofs, arched his crest and tail, and, lame forefoot clear of the ground, lifted into and held the same royal and beautiful levade.

And this, it seemed, had been enough. He came down to all four feet, shook his head, dropped his muzzle to the gra.s.s, and all at once was just an old tired piebald horse pegged out to graze in a green meadow.

CHAPTER TEN.

This is the att.i.tude in which artists depict the horses on which G.o.ds and heroes ride.

xenophon: The Art of Horsemans.h.i.+p

"Tim," I said, "you're not proposing to sit through the whole of the second house too, are you?"

"No, I wasn't, though I'd have liked to see Annalisa ride again. Why, did you want me?"

"Yes, and I want you to skip Annalisa too, if you will. I've got something to show you, and it's something you won't want to miss. No"-in response to a quick, inquiring look from him-"nothing to do with that.

Something purely personal. Will you come with me?"

"Well, of course. Where?"

"Away up the hill behind the field. I'm not going to tell you anything about it, I want you to see for yourself."

It was dark now, but the moon was coming up clear of the mountains and the trees. The air was very still, and the bats were out. The horse had moved on a little, grazing quietly.

"Oh, you've got old Piebald here," said Timothy. "Goodness, he looks a different creature. He's eating like a horse, as they say."

"Exactly like a horse. But how n.o.ble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! . . . the beauty of the world! The paragon of animals!"

"What on earth's that?"

"Hamlet, with a dash of Noel Coward. Look, come over here. The gra.s.s is damp now, but there's a log; we can sit on that."

"What were you going to show me?"

"You'll have to wait for it. It's something that happened, and I hope it'll happen again. Here, sit down.

Listen how clearly you can hear the music."

"Mm. That's the liberty act, isn't it? There, that's the end. Now it'll be the clowns. What is it, Vanessa?

You sounded sort of excited."

"I am a bit. Wait and see. It may not happen, I-I simply don't know, and I may have been wrong. I can't help feeling now that it was all my imagination, but if it wasn't, perhaps you'll see it too."