“Welcoming sort of place.” observed Josie.
“Let’s go in.” from Potkin. Josie put on his sternest look, and Potkin became sheepish.
“Only kidding. We’ll skirt round, there's a pathway down here.”
They wound gently down hill until they entered onto a sunken track. A bank and high hedge hemmed them in on their left, to their right was an ancient wall. The brickwork was chipped and stained and overhung with ivy, several disused gateways were sealed with bricks barely younger than the wall itself. Out of the corner of his eye Josie really did seem to see a door in one of them - and why had they not noticed the sign? It was a flickering neon, which read TY FAIR, though it may once have been longer and more informative. A slim tortishell cat in a ballet tutu and holding an umbrella was standing before the portal,
“Would you like to come in? Entry is free and there’s a circus as well as the market. We can sell you everything a cat could want.”
Potkin stopped so suddenly that Josie stood on his tail. It flicked crossly. The tortie smelled a customer, “An umbrella for when the sky falls in?”
“Is the sky going to fall in?” asked Josie nervously.
“Best be prepared.” she smiled.
The pair peeped round the doorway. The space beyond was packed with trestle tables and barrows covered in old and weary bric-a-brac and in the distance a shabby, candy striped marquee with flags of Greater Europe, faded to fawn and fluttering from its poles. A bundle of rags by the nearest table looked up at them. It contained an ageing and apparently moth eaten ginger tom.
“Boots to protect you from the eclipse?”
“What eclipse?” Potkin enquired.
“There’s bound to be one sometime and the terrible gravitational forces will pluck the unwary from the planet’s surface. These boots will keep you firmly anchored to the ground.”
Potkin was inspecting one of the tiny little lead diver’s boots that were arranged by size in groups of four. He failed in his attempt to lift it.
“Are they bolted to the table?”
“They wouldn’t work if they weren’t heavy.”
“I’m not sure how safe I’d feel in something that kept me routed to one spot.” observed Josie.
“Especially if we had a long wait for the eclipse.” added Potkin. “It’s getting late and will be tea-time soon. Perhaps we should go.”
The black and tan cat had not given up.
“You can eat a… Be careful, Snowdrop’s coming through!” Josie leaped onto the trestle table, but Potkin turning nonchalantly to see what she was on about, was all but knocked off his feet by a blur of fur and chrome. A white and black cat was pedalling furiously and jerkily as she balanced on a shiny unicycle. Snowdrop was concentrating so hard on the three mice she was juggling that she seemed unaware of her surroundings. The mice squeaked as they flew, or sang in a squeaky sort of way, the unicycle squeaked too and snowdrop chortled jubilantly, " ...a mouse! Where? There on the stair! Where on the stair? Right there! A little mouse with clogs on, well I declare! Going clip-clippety-clop on the stair." Cat and mice sped by, weaving between the stalls and disappeared into the big top. There was a dull thud and sharp crash.
“As I was saying, you can eat at Ratter’s Barbecue stall.” Tortie indicated a rickety costermonger’s barrow, grey and riddled with rot. It was piled high with wire cages and an iron pot hung from a hook. Yet another dubious character, wild eyed and sporting huge Gypsy earrings, obviously Ratter, moved towards them bearing a staff from which charred objects hung by string-like tails. Josie was bolting in the direction of the marquee. “I’ll have one of our sandwiches later.”
“Let’s find out what happened to your friend Snowdrop.” Potkin grasped the tortishell by a front paw and dragged her after Josie. Reunited outside the circus tent the trio gingerly lifted a flap in one of the canvas panels. They slipped in as the last of the debris was being cleared away. At the far end of the interior was a stage, a baroque affair decorated in chipped and tired guilt, crimson and ultramarine. A sign declaring “Sox’s Varieties” was supported on fluted, balsa wood Corinthian pillars. In the auditorium there had been round tables and gold painted chairs, but most of these, along with any potential audience, had been removed after the crash.
A master of ceremonies appeared on the boards, the very Sox himself. He was a dapper black cat with white bib and mittens and an otter grey bowler hat. He stared out at the adventurers and began to annunciate:
“Monsignors et Mesdames, et chattes touts, today and for one day only, we, L’entrepreneur Sox, bring you, straight from an extended tour in those Younited States of Aam-erica, the most famous of twins, the incomparable Henry Special and his beautiful assistant, Wizz!”
Jerkily the curtain rose to reveal a pair of short, rotund blotched tabbies. Wizz had pulled her yashmac down under her chin to better vent her spleen on her crestfallen brother who quietly drooped under a maroon fez.
“For once just do what I told you, don’t improvise, don’t think, don’t invent, don’t try to be clever and we might just get by.”
She looked round, saw Josie and Potkin looking up and flinging her arms out struck a dramatic pose.
“Tarraa!”
Henry Special froze for a moment and then went into his act. He began with a number of tricks where he picked cards from a pack, put them back and then failed to find them. Wizz struck another pose. Next he poured a glass of milk into a cardboard tube and made it disappear. That is, the tube disappeared except for some soggy bits, the milk collapsed into a pool on the trestle table that held their props. Throughout the rest of the performance it dribbled onto the stage. Snowdrop had shakily emerged from under an upturned remnant of furniture, looking little the worse for her accident. She applauded. Henry pulled a flag from his mouth and handed it to Wizz. The beautiful assistant continued to draw out the flags of all nations, barely moth-eaten and tied together at the corners. This was a very long trick as there are many nations. Snowdrop went wild, jumping up and down and wolf whistling. Josie was quite impressed too.
“Where do you think he had all those hidden?” he asked Potkin.
“Under his fez, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“And now,” announced Henry Special, “I shall saw my beautiful assistant in half!”
“I don’t think so.” cut in Wizz with a frown. There was a prolonged hiatus whilst Henry fiddled indecisively with the chinstrap of his hat. Then as one cat they gave a deep and exaggerated bow to their dumbstruck audience and the curtain dropped with a thud. A cloud of dust rose from the boards and the limelights flickered. Snowdrop rushed to the back of stage to try and meet her heroes.
Potkin and Josie looked at each other in puzzled silence. Rather shiftily they left the tent accompanied by their guide.
Back out in the fairground Tortie still hankered after a visit to Ratter’s fast food stall.
“Sorry. We really do have to go.” Potkin apologised, “But have a rat for us.” He put an arm round Josie, they both waved and strode towards the door in the wall. The tortishell cat waved back with a lace handkerchief that was only lightly soiled. Outside all was in shadow and the doorway had disappeared. Wisps of smoke rose from the hearths of the thatch and turf hovels that hugged the old wall.
After a short, yet brisk walk, checking regularly that they were not being pursued by an entrepreneurial cat in a tutu, the pair emerged from the twitchel into the courtyard of an inn. A flaking sign hung ominously by one hinge from a gallows and bore the fading image of a lonely lighthouse, on the end of a promontory protruding into an empty sea, beneath a sullen sky. Tarnished gold script proclaimed, "The World's End."
The bleak tavern stood isolated and run down in the twilight, at the very edge of civilisation.
