The Circus Affair

Chapter 1-1

CHAPTER ONE

After collecting their luggage from the carousel, they stacked it onto a wonky trolley and Sarah tried to coax it towards the exit doors. Once outside, they found a tall, dark-skinned, black-haired Adonis holding up a battered piece of card with four names hastily scribbled on it. Each one was vaguely reminiscent of their own.

“I think that’s supposed to be us,” Sara said, pointing in the catwalk model’s direction. “Meloosa, Windy, Sana, and Liza.”

The quartet broke into laughter; a mix of nervous, coquettish, flirty titters as they waved at the stunning example of the male species standing in front of them.

Adonis smiled and waved back. They stopped, watching his approach as he strode towards them. His shoulder-length hair rippling behind him as though a gentle breeze had chosen to accompany him.

He came to a stop beside Wendy and took her holdall. Sara proffered her bag for his other hand. Lisa and Melissa were left to carry their own. Adonis turned, hitched the two bags onto his shoulders and strode away, pushing the trolley as all their eyes fell to his tight buttocks.

“Oh my God!” Sarah pretended to fan herself with her free hands. “If all the men in this country look like him, I think we just might be able to pull off Wendy’s pact after all!”

“Let’s hope so,” Lisa grinned.

They followed Adonis outside to the car park then sat in relative silence as the car left Campo de Marte airport and headed into the centre of Sao Paulo, where the circus tent was situated.

As they were driven along, the girls discovered that there was a gradual progression of habitable dwellings, from the poorest of the poor to the very rich. Living virtually side by side, the slums led to crumbling old buildings covered in graffiti and adorned with washing lines hung with grey coloured clothing. Later, these progressed to become tall apartment blocks that dwarfed the houses below them. These gave way to decent-sized abodes with private grounds, manicured gardens, and high fences.

Eventually, Adonis slowed the car to a gentle stop and the girls stared at the huge, white tent with raised points that rose towards the sun like peaked meringues. Thin, red stripes fell down the sides, reminding Lisa of strawberry sauce on a swirling ice-cream and she breathed a sigh of contentment.

Adonis grabbed a suitcase from the pile and with his other hand, beckoned them to follow him, then he strode off at speed as the girls tried to keep up.

“Don’t look now, but we’re being watched,” Sara muttered conspiratorially. The girls walked towards the entrance, lugging their bags and suitcases past the box office situated off to the right. Three pairs of narrowed eyes peered at them from behind the glass windows, examining them with expressions of angry revulsion as though the dancers had crawled out of the nearest sewer.

“Bloody hell, you can literally feel the hatred emanating towards us!” Wendy said, expressing what they were all thinking.

“Yeah, I can feel it too. Why is that?” Lisa asked.

“As I said on the plane, we’re competition,” Wendy replied.

“Competition?” Lisa frowned. Confused, she glanced in Melissa’s direction for an explanation.

“They think we are possible contenders to take their husbands away,” Melissa explained.

“But they don’t know the first thing about us!”

“That doesn’t appear to matter,” Sarah replied.

In the distance, Adonis dropped the suitcase in front of the biggest trailer on the site, waved good-bye and left.

“Ah! Girls, you have arrived!” A booming male voice shouted from across the field. Standing on the veranda, surrounded by hanging plants, garden furniture and an awning, he held his arms open as though he expected the girls to run into them for a hug - he would be gravely disappointed. The chances of that happening were nil. The girls came to a complete standstill and took in his jovial face, his rotund balloon-like body, and his hair scraped back into a straggly ponytail that almost reached his waist.

“What the f**k is that?” Lisa muttered as they stood like startled sheep, huddling together for comfort.

Wendy stifled a giggle.

“Look around you. We appear to be on display,” Sarah said. She turned her head slowly from left to right at the weird conglomeration of humans that were slowly emerging from their caravans or opening windows to get a better view.

“Has time stood still or what?” Melissa replied as the members of the circus came to a complete standstill. They stood gawping as though the dancers had just stepped out of an alien spaceship.

“Curtains are twitching all around us too. Look,” Lisa replied.

Without realising it, the girls were returning the curious looks of bewilderment as they witnessed the circus folk now going about their daily routines. As Wendy had stated, there was nothing circus-like about these people. In fact, apart from the lines of caravans behind the tent, reminding them all where they were, they could have been anywhere. No painted clown faces or artists in lycra leotards practising acrobatic routines were in sight. These were ordinary people doing ordinary things: hanging out washing, sitting in fold-up chairs smoking, reading the newspaper or enjoying the sunshine.

The rotund guy with the straggly long hair, who appeared to be the boss, dropped his arms and resorted to beckoning them towards him. They shuffled forwards, feeling more than a little uncomfortable knowing that all eyes were on them. They were centre stage as they tried to maintain equilibrium and juggle their abundance of bags and suitcases. The boss adopted a hands-on-hips position, his legs open and his head held high.

“He’s either the boss or considers himself to be some sort of superhero,” Melissa whispered as the girls approached.

“Superman,” Wendy sang as they reached their destination with sniggers etched across their faces.

“Hello!” their host oozed confidence. “My name is Edwaldo. Welcome to my circus. Circus Felicidade. Come, come.” He climbed the two steps to the terrace of his large caravan and turned to face the girls. “Put your bags here. Come inside.”

The quartet entered a huge, immaculately clean trailer. A large open kitchen/living room area with a wall of mirrored wardrobes met their eyes. Plush sofas positioned at strategic angles, a display cabinet and various pieces of art completed the interior design. Edwaldo approached a large wooden desk by the door. It was covered in piles of papers, receipts, circus posters, tickets, and a host of stationery products which looked as though someone had inverted a pen holder and emptied it all over the desk.

Edwaldo plonked himself into his old office chair that groaned under his weight and leaned precariously to the left. He eyed the group like a farmer who had just bought four heifers. They stood before him – due to the absence of chairs- feeling more than a little uncomfortable.

“So, my four dancers from England!” (He pronounced it `In-ger-land.´) Welcome to Circo Felicidade!” he said again, waving his arms as though he was directing an orchestra.

Melissa quickly looked around, she was waiting for a group of strolling musicians to appear from the other rooms and serenade them or, at least, an explosion of music to burst through the caravan speakers. Nothing happened, and the whole thing seemed rather lacking. A total anti-climax.

Seeing that the girls were unimpressed by his exultant display of enthusiasm for their arrival, Edwaldo picked up his mobile, gabbled something in Portuguese and then sat back grinning at the girls again. “Now you meet my wife. She is the single trapeze star of our show and also the choreographer.”

No sooner had he spoken than a tall, slim woman with striking, long, blonde hair strolled into the caravan.

“Ah! Mi Amor!” Edwaldo grinned at his wife, but a reciprocal welcome was not forthcoming. “Girls, this is my wife, Sienna,” he told them.

Sienna refrained from looking in her husband’s direction. She gave the girls a weak smile; a greeting which did not quite reach her eyes. She folded her arms across her ample chest with one hand resting on her chin as though she was doing an impression of the `think´ emoji. Then, she looked at the girls from head to toe, assessing them in an openly contentious manner. “Here we work two shows a day. Four shows at the weekends. I will take you to your caravan. I warn you. This is not a big van but enough for you.”

At her scathing remark, the girls cast furtive glances at each other.

“Come, come!” Sienna bustled them out of the caravan and wafted her fingers towards the luggage. “Bring your bags.” She sauntered seductively down the two caravan steps – a movement spoilt by the bright, yellow clogs that adorned her feet - and strode towards the amalgam of caravans, trailers, and converted vehicles that constituted the circus artists’ homes.

The girls picked up their belongings and followed after her. Juggling bags, suitcases and holdalls, they broke into an occasional skip or run to try and keep up with Sienna’s long legs.

Moments later, the five came to a stop outside a caravan that was approximately 14 feet long. The once-white painted trailer was a peeling hunk of splotches and rust stains. One small window in the middle of the van was held together by two large strips of masking tape. The front door had a hole drilled through it which held a sturdy length of chain. This ran through a second hole drilled into the wall and was fastened together with a thick padlock. The tiny lock below the rickety handle had not been sufficient for the previous inhabitants.

“Bloody hell!” Wendy exclaimed. “What did they keep in here? A wild animal?”

“You stay here,” Sienna announced.

“You don’t say!” Wendy’s sarcasm was lost on Sienna, who fumbled with the padlock and opened the creaking door with such care, the girls were sure it was about to snap off the hinges.

Sienna stood back for them to peer inside the gloomy interior.

“Home sweet home!” Sarah said sarcastically.

Lisa refrained from comment and scrunched her nose up in disgust.

“I will leave you to organise. Tomorrow, at ten o’clock you start rehearsals. Come to the foyer tent.” Sienna turned and walked away.

Melissa peered inside again. “How the hell are four of us supposed to live in this rabbit hutch of a caravan? There isn’t room to sling a bloody cat!”

“Or a rabbit,” Wendy quipped.

“And it smells,” Lisa added.

Two double beds at either end of the caravan made up with the cushions and bolsters that could convert both beds into seating dominated the majority of the floor space. A tiny kitchen ran down the middle of the van, and opposite was a slim wardrobe with an even tinier bathroom beside it.

“Well, girls, it doesn’t like we’ll be given anything else, so we might as well make the most of it.” Melissa clambered inside and put her bags on the nearest bed.

Lisa joined her, then fingered one of two curtains that hung at the edge of the two beds. She pulled it across and back again. “Why would anyone want curtains pulled across their bed?”

“For a bit of privacy,” Melissa explained.

Lisa frowned, “How do you mean?”

“Well, imagine if you brought a boyfriend back. You wouldn’t want everyone watching what you were doing, would you?”

“No…” Lisa replied. “But even if I pulled the curtain, they’d still hear me, wouldn’t they?”

Wendy laughed. “Yeah, and feel the caravan moving! What’s that sign they usually put on vans…? `If this caravan should start a rocking, please don’t come knocking,´ or something like that.”

The others laughed.

“I don’t think we should have any amorous encounters in here, there just isn’t any room!” Sarah said.

“Deal!” Wendy replied. She looked across at the other two who nodded in assent.

“May I make another suggestion?” Sarah asked. “Can we also agree to turn our mobiles off at night so they won’t disturb other people who want to sleep? On my last contract, it drove me crazy. I don’t want another six months like that.”

“But, what if there’s an emergency? People need to be able to get in touch with us,” Lisa replied.

“Well, let’s compromise. Everyone must put their phone on vibrate, that way it shouldn’t be too annoying,” Melissa suggested.

“Okay,” Sarah agreed. The others nodded.

They looked around at the dirty caravan and their dumped luggage and sighed.

“So, what’s next?” Lisa put her hand on the tiny kitchen worktop and then pulled it away. She screwed up her nose in disgust.

“This has to be the smallest accommodation I’ve ever had the displeasure of living in!” Wendy sniffed.

“It smells like an animal has crawled up and died in here. This is the pits!” Lisa replied.

“Okay, well, let’s try to be positive,” Melissa said, with an air of authority. “Obviously, the first thing we need to do is clean it. Once we’ve done that, it will feel better. And we can make it feel homelier with a few of our photos and things dotted about.”

“But, where the hell are we going to put all the bloody suitcases?” Sara asked.

“Yeah, and all the clothes inside the suitcases?” Lisa added.

Wendy stood up. “Caravans are deceptive little units. It’s surprising how much stuff you can manage to hide away under the seats and inside the cupboards.”

The other three cast dubious glances at one another and around the van that would be their home for the next six months.

“It will eventually feel like home,” Wendy added. “Honestly!”

“Home sweet home.” Lisa’s sarcastic tone was not lost on the other three.

“Our own little rust bucket!” Sarah said, equally sarcastically.