The moment the show came to an end, I led my father out of the tent. He was eager to get out quickly, as he was well aware that everybody was looking at him.
“There’s the man who was nearly sat on by the elephant!” people said, pointing to my father.
Once outside, we went straight to the corner of the field where the trailers were parked. There were at least twenty of them—brightly colored vehicles with curtains in the windows and small chimneys poking out through the top of their roofs.
I asked a boy standing outside the door of one of the trailers to show me which one belonged to Aunt Veronica. He pointed to a small trailer near the edge of the field.
When I knocked, Aunt Veronica opened the door immediately and stood before us, her arms wide open in a gesture of welcome. She gave my father a hug, then turned her attention to me.
“I’m so glad you’ve come,” she said enthusiastically. “I always wanted a niece, and now, presto, I find that I’ve had one all along!”
We went into the trailer and sat down at a table, which had just been laid for us. It was not a very large trailer, but it seemed very comfortable, with everything tidily stacked in its place. Aunt Veronica put a teakettle on a small gas stove in one corner and then took a large cake out of a cake tin.
Then, over a cup of steaming tea and a large slice of delicious fruitcake, we talked. My father had a lot to tell her, and she had a lot to tell him. Not all that much had happened in my life, so I just sat and listened to the two of them.
Finally, Aunt Veronica finished talking about herself and leaned back in her chair.
“What about the others?” she asked. “Have you heard from them?”
“The others?” asked my father.
“Majolica and Harmonica,” said Aunt Veronica. “And Japonica and Thessalonika.”
My father shook his head. “I’m afraid I don’t know where they are.” He paused. “Do you?”
Aunt Veronica sighed. “Only one of them,” she said. “Harmonica. I’m sure I know where she is.”
This was the signal for me to interrupt. “Oh, please, tell me,” I said. “I want to find them—all of them.”
Aunt Veronica looked at me thoughtfully. “Do you really want to find your aunts?” she said. “You’re not just saying that?”
“No,” I protested. “I mean, yes. I do want to find them.” I did not want to tell her about the painting, at least not yet.
She thought for a bit longer. Then, winking at me in a way which said, “I have a good idea,” she came up with her suggestion.
“Harold,” she said, turning to my father, “I think that you should leave Harriet with me for a few days. I’d like to find these sisters of mine myself, and I could do with a bit of help. I’m due a bit of vacation from the circus and now’s as good a time to take it as any.”
My father looked at me vaguely. “Would you like that?” he asked.
I could hardly contain my excitement. To stay with Aunt Veronica, in her trailer, and go in search of the other aunts sounded like the most magnificent idea.
“Of course I’d like that,” I said. “There’s nothing I’d like better.”
We waved good-bye to my father as he made his way out of the circus field. Then, closing the door behind us, Aunt Veronica showed me which bunk I could have. She pointed out a cupboard where I could keep my shoes and in another cupboard she found me a spare toothbrush and soap dish.
“I’ll get you some more clothes tomorrow,” she said. “One of the trapeze artists has a daughter just your size. She’ll lend us some clothes while you’re with me. Circus people always share.”
I looked around the trailer. It seemed to me the ideal place to live and travel. It had everything, or so I thought, until I noticed something strange. All the other trailers in the field were motorized, which meant that they had engines to drive them along. As far as I could make out, there was no space in this trailer for an engine. There was a driver’s seat, steering wheel, and something that looked like a brake. But that was all.
Aunt Veronica noticed me looking around and she must have guessed what was going through my mind.
“Come,” she said to me. “Let me show you a secret.”
She led me to the front of the trailer and opened a trapdoor immediately in front of the driver’s seat.
“There,” she said. “That’s how it works.”
I looked down. There, just below the level of the floor, was a large set of pedals, exactly like the pedals of a bicycle. I gasped with surprise.
“Do you mean to say this trailer is pedal-powered?” I asked disbelievingly.
“Yes,” said Aunt Veronica. “I find that it keeps my leg muscles in good shape, although sometimes it’s rather hard going on hills.”
I was completely astounded. Was there no end to the feats of strength of this utterly amazing aunt?
We got into our bunks, and Aunt Veronica turned the light out.
“Goodnight, Harriet,” she said into the darkness. “And thank you for finding me.”
I lay tucked warmly in my bunk, filled with happiness. For a while I listened to the sounds of the circus outside—the stamping of the horses’ feet in their pen as they settled for the night, the growl of a lion as it moved in its sleep. Then I drifted off to sleep myself, to dream that I was as strong as Aunt Veronica and could do everything, or almost everything, that she could do.
The next morning we sat and ate our breakfast on the steps of the trailer. The circus people got up very early and were bustling around, attending to the one-hundred-and-one morning tasks of a circus. From my seat on the steps, I watched the lion tamer, no longer wearing his splendid red lion-taming outfit but clad in a pair of scruffy pajamas. He took a large pail of meat to the edge of the lions’ cage and tossed their breakfast in to them.
Aunt Veronica ate a very large breakfast.
“I need it to keep my strength up,” she explained, as she dug into her fourteen-egg omelette. Then, when the eggs were finished, she ate seven or eight sausages, and followed them up with ten pieces of toast.
“We will set off this morning,” she said, wiping her lips on a red-checked napkin she had spread on her lap. “With any luck, we shall meet up with your Aunt Harmonica tonight.”
“But where is she?” I asked. “Do you know exactly where to find her?”
Aunt Veronica nodded. “I haven’t seen her for a year or two,” she said. “But I know where she works. There’s an opera house not all that far away. She has a job there.”
We got up and washed the breakfast dishes and stacked them away. Then Aunt Veronica left for a few minutes to tell the ringmaster that she was taking a vacation. I made my bunk in the trailer and swept the floor.
When Aunt Veronica came back, I watched in fascination as she settled herself in the driver’s seat of the trailer and opened the trapdoor that exposed the pedals.
“You sit in the back,” she said. “You’ll get a good view from the window.”
And with that, she lowered her feet through the trapdoor, took a deep breath, and began to pedal.
You would never have thought it possible. There we were in a trailer—not a big one, but a trailer nonetheless—and Aunt Veronica was making it move purely through her own effort. As we drove through the field, faces appeared at the windows of the other trailers. Word spreads quickly in the circus, and the other circus people already knew about Aunt Veronica’s vacation.
“Good luck!” somebody shouted. “Come back soon!”
Aunt Veronica tooted the trailer’s horn, a rubber bulb attached to a brass tube, and I waved from my window. Then we were out on the open road and the trailer began to pick up speed.
We had traveled for at least an hour before Aunt Veronica began to feel tired. During this time, we had moved at about the speed of a fast bicycle, which is not all that slow. We had overtaken one or two cars as well, and I had watched the expressions of surprise on the faces of the drivers as the trailer swept silently past them. I could imagine them saying to themselves, “I didn’t hear that behind me! What an amazingly quiet engine that trailer must have.”
As we neared a small roadside filling station. Aunt Veronica signaled that she was going to turn in. We stopped at the side of the station and went in to buy a bottle of lemonade and a large bar of chocolate for Aunt Veronica. After we had made our purchases, Aunt Veronica turned to me, winked, and spoke to the mechanic who ran the station.
“I think I have engine trouble in my trailer,” she said. “Could you take a look at it?”
The mechanic nodded, put on his greasy overalls, and walked with us back to the trailer. First he went to the front of the trailer, looked at it, and then went to the back. He opened the back door, looked at the floor, and scratched his head. Then he got down on his hands and knees and peered underneath.
“Excuse me,” he said after a while. “I can’t seem to find the engine. Do you know where it is?”
Aunt Veronica pretended to look puzzled. “It must be there somewhere,” she said. “But I’m afraid I don’t know where.”
The mechanic was now looking very mystified. He crouched down again and crawled underneath.
“It’s not here,” he called out. “There’s … there’s absolutely nothing!”
He scrambled out and looked at Aunt Veronica, his eyes wide with astonishment.
“Where do you put the gas in?” he demanded. “Maybe we can work it out from there.”
“Gas?” said Aunt Veronica, as if the word meant nothing to her. “Well, I don’t think I ever buy gas. Or at least I can’t actually remember ever putting any gas in.”
The mechanic’s jaw dropped. “You mean…,” he began to say. “You mean to say that you never put gas in?”
Aunt Veronica shook her head.
“In that case,” said the mechanic, “how did you get here? You tell me that!”
Aunt Veronica shrugged her shoulders.
“I get in and turn the engine on, and just drive,” she answered. “Look, I’ll show you.”
We both got back into the trailer and closed the door behind us. Trying not to laugh, I took up my place at the window while Aunt Veronica sat in the driver’s seat. Then, while the bemused mechanic stood back and watched, Aunt Veronica put her feet on the pedals and slowly we moved off.
“You see,” she called from her seat. “It works!”
“Good-bye!” I cried as we moved off.
The mechanic stood rooted to the spot. His face was a picture of puzzlement, and he looked just as if he had seen a flying saucer.
“He’ll never forget today,” joked Aunt Veronica. “He’ll tell all his friends about it. And do you know, I’m afraid that not one of them will ever believe him!”