The Palace of Curiosities. Rosie Garland

accompanied by the gasps and moans of the crowd, for she plays so close to the brink of letting go. The whole time her grin is as broad as the street outside. My mother bites her lip: She smiled at me.

      Then the acrobat climbs the rope, hand over glittering hand, wrapping it around her leg and dangling upside down, spinning like a whipped top. She spreads her arms; she falls. Mama is deafened by shrieks of dismay, only to hear them transformed into cheers of astonishment as one ankle is caught in the cord, cleverly twisted. The signorina swings, a gemstone on the end of a chain.

      In the intermission, Bert buys her a penny twist of coloured sugar; she licks a finger and sticks it into the sweetness. She remembers she must not appear selfish, and offers him the paper cone, waiting for him to push his finger into the dint she has made. Instead, he grabs her hand, presses his lips around her fingertip and sucks.

      ‘You’re sweet enough for me,’ he says.

      She feels herself colour up like rhubarb and wishes she could be one of those nicely brought-up girls who blush delicately. As she turns to hide her embarrassment, a new lady steps into the light, wearing a tight dress that shows off most of her titties. She sings a song about her sailor boy, and it is a good song, and many voices accompany her during the chorus.

      As she trills up and down the scales, a number of low stools are carried out and placed in a circle around her. The painted gentleman appears from the side and bows her off, to whistles and shouts.

      ‘Ah yes! The Fair Clara!’ he simpers. ‘The Most Dainty of Girls, lately from her Mother!’

      The crowd roar once more.

      ‘Be assured she will return. But now, it is time for stronger meat. Ladies and gentlemen! I require of you to engage your sternest courage! I ask you boldly: are you prepared to be petrified?’

      ‘Yes,’ they cry.

      ‘Are there any amongst you of fragile disposition?’

      ‘No,’ they declare.

      ‘No cowards?’

      ‘No!’

      ‘Brave men and true?’

      ‘Yes!’

      ‘Are you stout enough to come to the aid of any delicate creature who may faint and fall gasping into your lap?’

      At this, there is howl of laughter Mama does not quite understand.

      ‘Yes, indeed!’

      ‘Can you view the most monstrous potentate of the animal kingdom without fear?’

      ‘Yes, oh yes!’

      ‘I present to you, brought in at great expense from the Savage Heart of Africa! A Monster Forged in the Heat of a Merciless Sun! Gentlemen! I call upon you now to protect your lady companions!’

      ‘Hurrah!’

      ‘Behold then, the Fearsome King of the Beasts, the Ethiopian Sovereign, Djambo! And his Master, that most courageous of men, Mr Edwin Phillips!’

      As the crowd applauds, a lion is hauled out on a chain and padlocked to one of the stools. It has been beaten bald as an old carpet. Its face is swiped with ancient scratches and one flank sports a hand’s-breadth of dull pink skin. Mr Phillips cracks the long tail of his whip and Djambo staggers on to the seat. He slashes again, adding a fresh welt to the tip of the great cat’s nose.

      ‘Ho!’ shouts Mr Phillips.

      Djambo yawns. Mama is close enough to hear the lion-tamer hissing, ‘Move, you scabby bastard, or I’ll make a rug out of you.’

      Djambo opens his eyes and looks directly at my mother. She feels like a package of pork, wrapped in brown paper. Mr Phillips is sweating. A moustache of dirt creeps across his top lip.

      ‘Ho, Djambo!’ he cries, bringing down the lash.

      Very slowly, the lion moves his gaze from my mother to Mr Phillips.

      ‘Now! I command you! Jump!’

      ‘Yeah! Jump, why don’t you!’ bawls someone at the back.

      ‘Hey, Puss! Didn’t get your saucer of milk this morning?’ chirps another wag, to great amusement.

      ‘Boo!’ says Bert, and a few pick it up.

      The lion ignores them all and opens his mouth wide, gusting Mama with a reeking gale of dead breath. She claps her hand over her nose, but it is too late. Deep in her belly, the clot of blood that will be me in under an hour has smelled it, too. Mr Phillips whispers, ‘Move, for Christ’s sake, or I’m finished,’ and they’re the last words she does hear him say. He lifts his arm, flogging the beast again and again with the leather strap. The straggle of catcalls gains strength.

      Mama is sure she hears Djambo sigh, just before he leaps. The chain rattles, tightens, but stretches far enough. The lion peers into the eyes of its torturer, and grins. For a moment the candles around the circle burn as bright as the hot bronze of an African sky; the baying of the audience is translated into the filthy laughter of hyenas. Then Djambo opens his jaws and closes them tight. The hyenas start to scream like women, and the sky flickers back into black.

      The lion shakes his head from side to side, and Mr Phillips swings also. Three men with clubs race into the circle and wallop the beast until he lets go of the dying man, who slumps to the floor, a cat-o’-nine-tails of blood spurting from his neck and lashing the air. Djambo turns up his muzzle to catch the crimson rain beating down and lets loose a roar. Mama feels her face speckled with a spray as fine as drizzle. The lion’s cry thunders down her throat; a raging tide of blood carries its essence into her womb and I stir.

      She sits quiet, still. She has never felt so calm. But around her, the world is going mad. The mob is on its feet, and everyone’s feet are in the way of everyone else’s; the air is raw with screaming at the sight of a man’s head bitten off. Bert is gone from her side. Mama stands, spies him a way in front of her and panics into movement, afraid of losing him, tonight of all nights. She races after his shining head, bright as a billiard ball on the tide of terrified bodies.

      The wave spills her on to the street. She doubles over at the sudden stitch in her stomach as I dig in my claws and take root. She falls on to all fours, fingers squeezing the safety of the gutter muck. Dirt, she knows. Dirt, she understands. But just now she needs something more than dirt, something to swill away this new pain I am causing her. She crawls into a side-alley and hugs the wall, panting.

      Bert appears, towering above her. She looks up, wondering how he found her, for it seems a very long time since she saw him last. There is such an uproar at the bottom of her belly, such a storm. He pats her on the back, very gently.

      ‘Here, girl, here,’ he says. ‘You all right?’

      She lurches to her feet, grabs his wrist, pulls him towards her. Now she understands why he is there: she needs him to flush me out.

      ‘Bert,’ she says. ‘Now, Bert. Do me now.’

      He makes a show of pulling away, but his heart quivers. He flicks his eyes left, right, but the alley is empty enough for no-one to take notice.

      ‘Oh Bert. Help me, Bert.’

      She drags his hand up her skirt, points the way up the road he didn’t think to find so easy; she pulls at his buttons and he’s hard already, for doesn’t he know women change their minds in a second? He pokes between her legs and finds the soft ready core of her. They rock me in the cradle of their rutting.

      Not that I need the swim of his seed: I am already made. I am nothing to do with him and everything to do with snips and snails and lion’s tails. I hunker down for my nine-month wait. He’s done quickly; looks to see if he read this right but she’s smiling, wider than she’s ever smiled.

      ‘Oh Bert,’ she says, and will not let go of his hand. Her eyes are inky with pleasure.

      ‘You all right, Maggie love?’ he says.