No Stars at the Circus by Mary Finn

Author:Mary Finn [Finn, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781406355024
Publisher: Walker Books
Published: 2014-05-14T16:00:00+00:00

SUNDAY AFTERNOONS AT THE FAIR

When Papa said it was all right for me to go to the fair I started helping the Corrados every Sunday.

Well, nearly every Sunday. There was the time Nadia and I got the measles. I was much sicker than she was. Mama thought at first I must have picked it up at the circus but Giselle Bauer had the spots too and so did all the Kamynski girls on the first floor, so it was really their fault.

Papa had to sell another watch to pay for a doctor to come and see us. I don’t even remember the doctor. Mama said that was because of the fever. I nearly boiled over.

All the other Sundays I went to the fairground. Usually Alfredo called for me, but sometimes it was Signor Corrado. They both knew the quickest way to Nation but Alfredo walked so fast I couldn’t keep up with him. Just as well Mama didn’t know that, what with all the potato bug patrols going past with their guns and their mean faces.

One morning when I was trailing way behind Alfredo a soldier smiled at me and pretended he was ringing a handbell. I knew straight off he thought I was a proper Catholic altar boy like Jean-Paul, even though I didn’t have the dress he had. One time long ago Jean-Paul stole the handbell from his church and we played with it until Mama found out and made him take it back. Anyway, I made a really good-boy face right back to the German. Fooled him!

Most of the work I did Alfredo could have done, but he was lazy. I helped put out the chairs and arrange the sandbags and hang the flags up. La Giaconda told me that when I went around with the hat at the end of the show I got a lot more money than Alfredo did.

He didn’t care, he was so lazy. Anyway, he was in love with Violette, the woman who sold cigarettes at the kiosk up the road, the one the Germans used.

Violette had a lot of hair too.

Tommaso was out of hospital on the second Sunday I went. He was better again, they said, but I could see he was maybe a bit deaf. I knew that because of Nadia but I didn’t say it to anyone else in case they worried. I didn’t say it to him either but I taught him some of the signs we used at home with Nadia. I pretended it was a code. Which it is, really.

Tommaso wasn’t Jean-Paul, but he was all right when you got to know him. He was so glad to be home again he didn’t even mind me helping his parents out with the circus. What he really loved was football, so we usually kicked a ball around when everyone had gone home. Sometimes boys from the other vans came along and played too and it felt nearly like being in my schoolyard again. That was fun. We used the sandbags for goal posts.

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