ACT ONE

Sand, grit, all through my white silk gown and underthings, and sweat and flyspecks and squashed-bug marks, and my shawl tattered beyond repair, and not even a pitcher of water to wash myself. She used all the water, then went out with her man for a promenade, while I skulk and scratch in the parlour. No chance to change, of course. I have closetfuls of gowns back home; they burst out from the doors. I could wear a different ensemble every day for a month, a princess wouldn’t have such a wardrobe.

But how come inside every gown I’m still a little farm girl?

There’s nothing wrong with me, you know. Even the doctor didn’t actually say there was anything wrong with me. When I was little, I mean really little, he came to see me, even though I wasn’t sick. Mother said not to be afraid, it was the same man who had come to see Lavinia, years before. He said to lie down, there’s a good girl. He blocked out the light when he stood over me, but he had a soft voice and clean hands and a smell of peppermint. He peered at my arms and legs and tapped them with a mysterious hammer. He murmured to Mother and she put her face in one hand, peering out through her fingers. I laughed. I thought she was playing peekaboo. I didn’t realise until many years later that she had not wanted me to see her tears.

I used to follow Lavinia round the house, into the farmyard, back into the house with my muddy footprints. She ran, but I always caught her up. She hid, but I always found her. I don’t think she was really cross about it. I asked her if I would be little like her, when I grew up.

‘Would you like that?’ she said.

I could think of nothing better, but I pretended to consider. I said I wanted to reach the cookie jar all by myself.

‘Then you’d get roly poly from too many cookies. Anyway, if you can’t reach, you can share the steps that Father made for me.’

Mother stood behind us in the kitchen, one hand holding a wooden spoon, the other hand over her mouth.

‘Being little isn’t so bad,’ said Lavinia. ‘You just have to act big.’

But I never thought being little was bad, not then.

Sometimes Lavinia would tell me we should not feel alone, for there were plenty of people like ourselves in the world. She had made a study of it in the schoolbooks. A Russian emperor had kept a whole court of dwarves and had built a palace of ice for them. It was said that somewhere in the deserts of Africa there was a race of miniature Hottentots.

‘Then we will both have husbands,’ I said with delight, ‘and we can choose whether to live in ice or desert.’

She laughed. ‘Minnie, only you would think of marrying a Hottentot.’

Father carved all our heights and dates into the wall by the barn door. George, James, Sylvanus and Benjamin had notches all climbing a steady hill to six feet. Caroline Delia had a gentler hill to five feet. Lavinia’s hill began to flatten off into a plateau on October 31, 1845, when she turned four. By the time she was ten, the plateau at its highest point was twenty-four inches. My plateau was slightly lower. For years, Father piled bales of hay in front of the plateaus. But after Mr Barnum had taken up both of us, Father took the hay away and joined up the notches with a flourish of his finest whitewashing brush.

At the age of fourteen, on February 10, 1863, I made my debut in society in the most dazzling way possible. And yet I was not the centre of attention: I was still following my sister, down the aisle of Grace Church, New York, on her wedding day. Two thousand of the city’s grandest folk, summoned by invitation only, filled the church to bursting. It had taken hours for their carriages to queue up and drop them off. When we four little people walked in, the worshippers craned their necks and aahed and oohed, and there was so much jostling and shoving you would never think you were somewhere holy.

As I walked beside Commodore George Nutt, my fellow little person and best man, I rested my right arm on his left arm. Just for a moment, I felt faint. Then he placed his right hand on mine and gave me a little wan smile, the kind of smile a man gives from his sickbed, and I wondered if he felt faint too.

We came to a stop at the altar, and I stood breathing in the scent from my bouquet of pink rosebuds and another sweet, mysterious smell that made me feel sick — or was it just my nerves? The clergyman stood over us and blocked out the light. His voice swooped and dived and thundered. Everything was echo.

Lavinia stood in front of me, a cherub wrapped in a starry white cloud. I’d helped her dress and I knew exactly what was in that cloud. White satin, embroidered with arabesques of beads and pearls. A crown of orange blossom, holding her lace veil in place. White kid gloves, white satin slippers with rosettes of lace and pearls. A point-lace handkerchief. The General’s gift: a necklace with pendants, brooches, a star brooch, earrings, star hairpins for her veil. In all, two hundred and fifty-six diamonds.

I was trying so hard to see through that cloud, to the girl who had trudged just ahead of me through the muck of the cow yard, chewing grass stems until her tongue was green, her hair twisted up into daisy chains. Even then, she knew how to wear a crown. My daisies always fell into the cowpats.

Then I looked at the groom, so handsome in his black dress suit and blue vest and white gloves. He had a slight frown and his lips were pressed together tight. I didn’t know him yet but I would call him Charlie, my brother, and I was determined to think well of someone so clearly in love with my sister. Everyone was in love with her, of course. But I knew where the happy couple’s thoughts were. Not with the ceremony, not with the reception, not with the meeting with two thousand of New York’s finest, not with cutting the cake topped by the Angel of Fame. No, their thoughts were with that moment at last when they would be alone together, when the Act of Love would take place.

For all my questioning, I had never succeeded in finding out what the Act of Love was, but I knew it was something very wonderful, not at all like the cock covering the hen or the bull mounting the cow or all the other shenanigans we’d seen constantly on the farm. Under my crinoline, I squeezed my thighs together. I had done this ever since I was a child. First, it was comforting, and then, it was invigorating. So invigorating, I wanted to do it all the time, and could not understand why Mother slapped me. I looked down at my puffed tulle and pink rosebuds and thought of the moment when I had first put on this bridesmaid’s disguise, the time alone in front of the looking glass, trying to push my tiny breasts up and together. But all I had seen was a roly poly doll.

‘Let us pray,’ said the Reverend Taylor. I bowed my head. Lord, let my sister be happy. Let her have many children. Let her marriage be long and prosperous and filled with the Act of Love. Let her perform and travel, and when I am just a little older, let me perform and travel with her. I’m not greedy, am I, Lord? Let me have just one diamond. Let my hair be less wild. Let me have a bosom and a waist and shapely ankles and no pimples. Let the people admire me. Let me marry. Let me know my own Act of Love.

The teasing I had had, already. How well I looked with the Commodore. How it would not be long before another Fairy Wedding. And we did look well together: he was not quite as handsome as Charlie, but he had farmboy cheeks and a manly bearing and curly hair that floated when he ran. I had thought he liked me, but something was wrong with him. He was always a funny fellow, but he had been morose and silent these past few weeks. And there was that moment just before, as we walked down the aisle, that wan sickbed smile.

The prayers were over, the Reverend Taylor was asking the couple the questions that would bind them for life. Their replies were steady and calm. I looked over, beyond General Tom Thumb and my sister, to where George stood stiff in his pink vest. He took the ring from his pocket, fumbled with it for a moment, then placed it on a velvet cushion and passed it to Charlie. He watched to a chorus of oohs and aahs as Charlie removed Lavinia’s glove and placed the ring on her finger.

Then I watched George’s gaze travel slowly from Lavinia’s hand, over the diamond bracelets, up the satin arm, across her décolletage, over her necklace with pendants, up to her face, just as Charlie lifted her veil and kissed her. How my thighs tingled. And I felt for a moment as if I could see with George’s eyes, hear with George’s ears: the rustles and sighs of the congregation, Lavinia’s catch of breath. I smelled again the orange blossom and roses and that underlying odour that made me faint and sick. Like an icy breeze, the knowledge of what that odour was, where it came from.

George held himself as if his whole body was in a cast. I longed to go take his hand, but I knew he’d never feel my touch. And then suddenly I didn’t want to touch him. Maybe I would catch the contagion.

That man is not for me, I thought. Maybe there is no man for me, not anywhere in the world. No Russian dwarf, no Hottentot. And then, a stab of feeling that left me breathless. How dare she? I squeezed my hands tight so that the thorns in my bouquet jabbed at me and I wished I had my old school memorandum book and pencil and a pin; I would write it down and slap it onto her oh-so-straight back so that, when she turned and walked down the aisle with her brand new husband, everyone would see what she was.

But she won’t keep me down any longer, not now. Even though I’m so tired, I kick up my heels, like I want to gallop around the dunes. I’ve brushed out most of the sand, but my white silk still clings, drags. Always littler, always younger, and my gorgeous dresses always just a bit longer than I’d like.