Page 1 of The Ringmaster’s Daughter

Part One: Summer

Between the dusk of a summer night

And the dawn of a summer day,

We caught at a mood as it passed in flight,

And we bade it stoop and stay.

And what with the dawn of night began

With the dusk of day was done;

For that is the way of woman and man,

When a hazard has made them one.

‘Between the Dusk of a Summer Night’, William Ernest Henley

One

Paris

The streets of Paris wound their way around Michel Bonnet as he walked to his small apartment in the 14th arrondissement. The evening sun was reluctant to descend, and the early summer heat clogged the air along with exhaust fumes, dust and garbage. The Seine was a deep green, and Michel stood on the bridge of Pont Neuf, watching it snake its way out of the city.

Small boats sluggishly cut a path through the water, as if it had thickened to soup, and people ambled along embankments, unaware of their watcher from above.

On one such embankment stood a husband and wife with their small daughter at their heels. Michel watched as the father picked up the child and held her high to see the river and beyond. Suddenly, the child waved, and Michel waved back until the family were out of sight. Michel leaned against the stone of the bridge, still warm from the day’s heat, feeling the chill of the river reaching him from the depths beneath, as dragonflies hummed and skipped over the heavy water, cooling themselves.

The broad blue sky was streaked with thin clouds and held no promise of rain. Michel hitched his bag further up his shoulder and continued his journey home, every now and then wiping the sweat away from the back of his neck with his red handkerchief.

The warm winds stirred up the dust on the pavements into mini tornadoes that raced towards his shoes, encasing them with a thin layer of city soot, reminding Michel of summers spent in the countryside as a child, when he would chase the dust as it danced down tracks edged with neatly ploughed soil and tall sunflowers. The winds stirred something in Michel too; a feeling akin to when his maman died, which had changed everything so deeply and quickly that Michel had still not realised the full force of it. Michel whispered to the wind to take his love to his mother, to say hello, and that he missed her. Yet the wind whipped by Michel, capturing only a few of his words, so that he was left wondering just what it was his maman would hear.

The city should have been busier this time of year – when schoolchildren usually clogged the pavements with their chatter and glee to be free for the summer, and tourists sat politely at cafés sipping iced drinks – yet the city was as dead as if August had come early and its occupants had sought holidays away from the oppressive heat. Michel noticed that the bars usually frequented by many a rich gentleman were empty, the lone bartender left to wipe away imaginary watermarks from the mahogany bar. Maître d’s stood with waiters, talking, and shaking their heads at the lack of wealthy customers, whilst the awnings of red, blue and yellow fluttered relentlessly in the breeze above them.

The bombs that had fallen just four days earlier had sent a ripple of fear across the city and now shop windows were taped and boarded up, air raid shelters were being stocked with provisions, and all around there was quiet – too much quiet.

Sandbags had arrived quickly to shore up doorways, and every now and then the hum of a military aircraft would drone overhead, causing those left in Paris to turn their faces to the sky to see if it was all really about to happen – would the City of Light really be taken from them? Michel stopped now and watched as another plane flew low through the skies. Behind him, two waiters ceased polishing already clean glasses.

‘I hear they crossed the River Meuse in only one day,’ one waiter said.

‘They have webbed feet; it’s no wonder they crossed that quickly,’ the other answered.

‘Webbed feet?’

‘How can they be human and get here so quickly? Must be webbed feet.’

‘You’re mad.’

‘They say a school was hit, you know. They killed schoolchildren.’

‘They kill everyone. Children. Old people. Everyone. They don’t care.’

‘There’s still smoke in the sky from those buildings – almost like it can’t escape Paris.’

‘It can’t. We can’t either.’

Michel turned away from the expensive restaurants and towards home, where coffee shops were still busy as people huddled close to radios to listen to the latest news. Soon he turned down a small cobbled lane where shops and small cafés sat cramped together in harmony; the flowers from one hanging basket escaping and joining the next, tables and chairs so cluttered that you were not sure which café you were sitting at, yet no one cared. Men sat and drank thick tumblers of beer, and women wore red lipstick and drank house wine, all of them talking about the bombs, about the time they had left.