I decide I won’t go back for the afternoon session. For one thing, I know that’s when Kite will be training and I don’t want to be there, gawking from the sidelines, watching him and Lola do their adagio. Also, I figure I need to just settle my mind down (it’s all in a flap) and empty some of it out (it’s a bit overloaded).
There’s the river over the road and a big park with swirling paths lined with plane trees. I take my sandwich and lie down under a tree whose leaves are wiggling and fluttering in the air, just like my thoughts. Strangely, I find myself thinking about what Barnaby said in the car to Ada, about me being attracted to the glamour and not thinking our own circus is a real circus. I figure by then he knew I was there, so really he was saying it for my benefit. Immediately I want to say to him, ‘Bruised shins aren’t glamorous.’ But then I think to myself, in my eyes they are; there’s nothing I want more than red ankles and bruised shins. I know they don’t look good in a frock, but I like them because they’re extreme. They’re wounds gathered in the pursuit of something extraordinary – flying through the air. To me that’s glamour. Or something special. And what’s wrong with wanting that?
I don’t answer that thought because I’m thinking about The Acrobrats. I’m thinking about Oscar and Caramella, and Inisiya and Nidal, and even Mohammed with his sad, serious face. Then I think, that’s the dirt. It’s real. It’s like earth, it’s not shining or wrapped up or stunning. It’s different from flying in the air. It’s about making something on the ground, slowly, undramatically, quietly, like a builder builds a house, like a beetle carrying one crumb back to his beetle house.
I close my eyes and try to clear both feelings from my head, because they’re tugging at each other. There’s one thing I know for sure and it’s that I have to grab this opportunity to fly, because if I don’t I’ll forever and forever regret it. I don’t think regret would suit me, not one bit. So I open my eyes, stare up at the leaves and ask the blue heavens to let me be as fine as everyone says I’ll be.