Chapter Twenty-Five #2
“Be prepared and all that jazz,” I murmur, even though I think that might be the Scouts’ motto rather than the Guides’.
I’m hazy on the details; I’ve no idea what Girl Guides actually say, because the thought of being a Girl Guide was about as appealing to me as homework or church on a Sunday when I was a kid.
I’m a Bittersweet: We see things with our magic eyes, convention has little place in our unconventional lives.
I glance at my phone. Eleven forty-nine.
The ballroom is transformed by the flickering candlelight from dark to atmospheric and portentous.
It’s different in here tonight: The room has been set out by the caterers for tomorrow’s spectacle.
Round tables laden with tall vases of trailing fresh flowers and silver cutlery surround the parquet dance floor, which has been buffed and polished to a mellow golden hue.
Spindly gilt chairs surround the tables, and glittering crystal glassware awaits the pop of champagne corks and telltale red lipstick marks.
The whole place smells of summertime gardens and of anticipation and dreamy excitement, a stage set for laughter and dancing and merriment.
It strikes me how perfect a setting it is for tonight’s performance too; it’s entirely fitting that Britannia Lovell’s final show should be surrounded by beauty and fragrance and light.
I haven’t briefed her on the full details of my plan either.
I don’t know if it’s because I don’t want to get her hopes up or because I don’t trust myself enough to feel certain it’s going to work.
But all I’ve asked of her is that she makes sure that Bohemia and Goliath are present for the midnight performance too.
It’s not a difficult task for her; he’s there most nights anyway to watch the woman he loves.
On cue, a now-familiar prickle of cold fear runs down my spine and I hear the low, intimidating growl that heralds the lion’s arrival. That’s good, I tell myself, because it means that Bohemia can’t be far behind him.
Our attention is drawn upward, because the quiet ballroom is suddenly no longer empty and serene.
I can almost smell the circus, the sawdust and greasepaint, and I can almost hear the slide of a big band trumpet.
Britannia and Dino have arrived bang on time.
I’m so bloody nervous I can barely swallow, and I glance over at Leo to see how he’s doing.
He’s stripped off his jacket and has his top button open and his shirt sleeves rolled back, a cross between a politician and a tango dancer as the candlelight plays off his glossy raven hair.
He’s a movie-star-handsome sort of man, and right now he’s about to step up and play the part of his life.
I watch him for a moment. He only has eyes for Britannia, and his hand lies flat over his heart as he watches her performance begin.
She’s more beautiful than ever thanks to the atmospheric candlelight, her flight all the more effortless and joyously free.
It isn’t difficult to see how all three men in this room have fallen under her spell; I’m halfway there myself because she is so intoxicating.
As she steps into her hoop and begins to spin, I take Leo by the arm and steer him to the center of the dance floor.
He looks down at me, surprised, as if he’d forgotten I was even in the room, and when his eyes question me, I quietly remind him he’s agreed to trust me.
We are beneath her now, and across the room, I watch Dino prepare to send the fateful swing across to her outstretched arms. Those ropes; how did he not spot the deliberate cut?
Perhaps if she’d have survived her attempt to end her own life, it would have been enough to strengthen her resolve to find another way out of her desperate situation.
“I can’t bear to watch her die again.” Leo’s quiet anguish fills me with fear that this won’t work. “What do I do, Melody?”
“Catch her,” I whisper as Dino releases the swing with a flourish. “You just need to catch her, Leo.”
I hear his sharp intake of breath as he understands what I’m asking of him, and his murmured, panicked mantra of oh-my-God-oh-my-God-oh-my-God reaches my ears as she holds her hands out toward the bar.
“Please let this work,” I whisper, my hands clamped flat against the sides of my face in pure breathless, heart-clenching fear. “Please.”
And then it begins. Britannia reaches out to catch the trapeze, and as always, the tattered rope cannot stand her weight and slips sickeningly from her fingertips as if coated in grease.
She cries out, a hideous, keening sound, and then she is once more tumbling from the high ornate ceiling like a beautiful rag doll in freefall.
Oh God. It’s not going to work. What was I thinking? How could I have imagined it would? I can barely look. Leo stands, riveted, doesn’t take his eyes from her as he yells her name, an anguished roar as he holds out his arms.
And there, right there in front of my eyes, the most beautiful, spectacular thing I’ve ever seen happens.
She’s real. She’s flesh and blood and bone.
I know she is, because she isn’t in a crumpled heap on the floor this time around. She’s cradled safely in Leo’s arms and she looks perfectly alive. In fact, she looks more alive than anyone else, because there is a faint glow around her, an aura that only adds to her outlandish beauty.
Somehow, miraculously, my plan has worked. They’re staring at each other in absolute, silent wonder, and then she reaches out her shaking hand and lays it on his cheek.
“You saved me, Leo,” she breathes, and cut-glass crystal teardrops shimmer on her lashes. “After all of these years, you saved me.”
He is as shocked as she is and I catch my breath as he lowers his face to hers and kisses her lips for a few tender moments.
It is as if Sleeping Beauty has finally been kissed by her prince and awoken from her long, long sleep.
Leo’s chest heaves as he gathers her in protectively close before setting her carefully down on her feet in front of him.
I’m aware of movement on the periphery of my vision, and then both Dino and Bohemia close in on them. They’re staring at her and she is staring at her hands, turning them in front of her as if they are the most amazing things she’s ever seen.
“How?” Dino cries, falling to his knees at her feet. “How can this be? It was I who should have saved you.” He’s a man given to dramatics, and to be fair to him, this is quite a dramatic turn of events.
Bohemia steps forward, staring at his wife. “Britannia?”
Leo places a hand on her shoulder and a tear rolls down her cheek as she covers his fingers with her own.
“How did you…?” Bohemia says. He’s gaping at Leo. “How can you touch her?”
Leo glances momentarily toward me on the edge of the dance floor, and then uncertainly back toward Britannia. He falters, as if unsure what to say, and Britannia herself decides to speak up instead.
“Dino, I’m so sorry. I should never have allowed anything to happen between us. Performing with you set my blood on fire, but I never loved you as you loved me.”
Dino reacts as if this is news to him, as if he’s sustained himself over the many decades on hope alone.
He scrabbles at her ankles as he releases a string of tearful Italian that even Marina would have a tough time deciphering.
It doesn’t matter; I don’t need to understand his words to know he’s begging.
It’s undignified, and Britannia bends to lay a hand on him, but of course it passes through him and she withdraws it again slowly.
He lifts his head, his face a picture of grief, and then he is surrounded by blue light, as if an ambulance has arrived to ferry him away because he is so overwrought.
It hasn’t, of course, but nonetheless, he is leaving us.
The blue haze around him intensifies as he begins to fade, and Britannia covers her mouth in shock and reaches out instinctively for him.
“Let him go,” I say softly, and tears roll freely down her face as she watches Dino fade from her eyes and from her very long life.
They all look at me then, because they are suddenly aware of how this is going to play out.
Britannia turns to her husband, a statue beside her, the huge lion silent at his side.
“I’m sorry, Bohemia,” she says, holding out her hands toward her husband. “I tried to love you. I honestly did.”
I watch as the circus master’s shoulders fall and he bows his head. Even though Britannia’s words can’t truly have come as a shock, they must have been a crushing blow.
“It was always you, for me,” he said. “My heart has no purpose without yours.”
In front of us, his scarlet coat fades to gray, as if the loss of his love has leeched all color from his soul. He lays a hand on Goliath’s head, and the huge animal turns its fearsome face up to gaze sorrowfully at his master.
“Time for us to go, old friend,” he says, and the lion seems to understand the gravity, because he lays his velvet head against his master’s jacket.
And so that is how they leave us, an image of man and beast that fades slowly from color to black and white, and finally, to nothing, as if someone turned off an old TV set.
That’s how it appears to me anyway. I’ve seen ghosts depart in many ways, all of them individual and fitting of the person leaving us.
Some leave the earth in an angry, ugly burst of fragmented red energy and I’ve watched pure souls leave in a beautiful rainbow shimmer.
Britannia covers her face with her slender fingers and Leo’s arms move to hold her to him.
His eyes meet mine over the top of her head and I see questions there I know he isn’t going to like the answers to.
But there’s nothing I can do now. The wheels are in motion, I cannot change things any more than I already have. Britannia’s timeline must end tonight.
“How long?” he mouths.