No Stars at the Circus by Mary Finn Read Free Book Online

fingers but it didn’t work.
    The best thing about Papa going along the tracks was that sometimes he found little rough pieces of coal that had fallen from the train tenders.
    He used to bring a sack and scissors, and heavy gloves for the brambles. One day when the snow had gone I went with him.

THE DAY PAPA AND I WENT OUT TOGETHER
    Papa said he would bring me out with him because:
    No. 1 – I was getting too pasty being inside and
    No. 2 – I was giving Mama too much cheek.
    “I don’t mind that, Léo,” she said. “For heaven’s sake, leave the boy here where he’s safe.”
    “He has to learn,” said Papa. “He has to know what to do, just in case.”
    He didn’t say what just in case meant. But we all knew it would be something bad. Lots of French men were sent off to work in Germany because the German men were away fighting. If that happened to Papa…
    When we got up on the bike he folded his sack to make a kind of cushion on the crossbar. But I could still feel the cold on my bottom. My legs were frozen, even though Mama had done her best and knitted long socks for me and Nadia with wool from an old cardigan.
    Long ago Papa would put me on the crossbar and Nadia on the carrier, and we would whizz along the best boulevards until we spotted an ice cream van and then we’d stop. Chocolate for me, vanilla for Papa and Nadia.
    But when we left rue des Lions that day there was no whizzing, and you can bet there was no ice cream either. I could hear Papa puffing really hard, even though there was no Nadia. We had to stop a few times and wait until he got his breath back. He said he was out of practice having a passenger on board. He said I must have put on weight.
    “But only in your liver or some other hidden part of you because the rest of you is still as skinny as one of my old Auntie Gertrud’s chickens.”
    “If only you’d had some real coffee, you’d be like a racer, Papa,” I said.
    He made a face. “So, let’s go and see if there’s any wood left in the forest,” he said. That was meant to be a joke so I laughed. We got back on the bike.
    Papa’s plan that day was to head for the park at Vincennes, not to follow the train tracks. I was disappointed. I thought if we went along the tracks we just might get lucky and see a train being blown to bits by the train saboteurs. I didn’t say that, though.
    However, it was just as well we went the way we did. That’s for sure.
    We got to the big round space at Place de la Nation and Papa swung himself off the bike. There was more noise than I could believe. I don’t know where those people had got their petrol from, but there was a lot of traffic. It was mostly German army trucks, stuffed with potato bugs and their guns, but there were quite a few cars too. Some of them had funny gas tanks on the roof. There were motorbikes too, smelly and smoky. And lots of vélo taxis.
    One poor Citroën with a funny petrol tank, like a bottle stuck to the radiator, suddenly drifted to the side and halted, right in front of us. Papa stopped me staring at the people inside by pulling me away from the kerb.
    “Mind yourself, son!” he said, really loud. He was holding me so tight it hurt. Then, when we were well away from the car, he spoke with his teeth closed together. “Didn’t I warn you not to draw any attention to us?”
    I said I was sorry. But the car stopping wasn’t my fault.
    We crossed all the avenues. It took us ages to get to the big wide one called Cours de Vincennes. It has two statues standing on great tall columns on either side of the road. They look like Romans but Papa says they’re French kings. Anyway, when you see them you know you have arrived at the fairground, the Foire du Trône.
    And there was
still
a fair there, just where I remembered, from the time before the Germans. We used to come every summer.
    Maybe there weren’t as many stands or carousels as there used to be but there was a string of bunting between the trees, and some