Extract from: The

Collector of Remarkable Stories

2014 Corrinne Garstang. All rights reserved.

Grandma Doyle plonked herself down between Mary and Margie and started telling the gang the story of her own days as a circus freak. Everyone in the gang seemed to have heard the story a thousand times before, but were happy to hear it again. "Used to be called Ginger Beard," announced Grandma Doyle nodding happily at the memory. "Won competitions and everything. Elephant and Castle Bearded Lady Champion, 1923, 1924 and 1925!" she announced proudly. "But nothing compared to my mothers mother mind you! Now she was known as Black Beardy. One of the biggest selling attractions at the Barnacle Reilly Circus, along with Mary Mungo the Human Midge, Lawrence the Lion Boy, Roland Rangoon the Rock Eater, and Brigadier Big the Tenby Giant." As the fire crackled and the evening drew in, Grandma Doyle told everyone the story of how Black Beardy came to fall in love with Patrick de Lattre the Human Caterpillar. "Patrick de Lattre was one of the most famous acts in the entire world because he had no arms or legs and crawled about on his belly like a caterpillar. Even so, anything you could do, he could do better. He could even sign his name and roll a cigarette. Now, aside from the fact that Patrick was just a torso and a head, he was the best looking man this side of the moon. It was said he could make a woman fall in love with him just by getting them to gaze into his eyes. And he never had a shortage of that. Day in and day out he had woman falling down at his . . . well, his bottom I suppose. In any case," continued Grandma Doyle, "he only had eyes for one woman, and that was my grandmother. Head over heels he was. When he found out she liked violet poppies, he got everyone he knew, old and young, to go out and collect them from fields up and down the country. He collected so many of them poppies that they became extinct. My grandmother, on the other hand, only had eyes for Lucky Sam the Lion Tamer. Lucky Sam was every bit as glamorous as a silver screen star with his film noir looks. His big trick - the one that always got the crowds going - was that he could put his head inside a lions mouth. Two of em, one after the other. But not just any old lions, hungry lions. Starve em he would, for three days before every show. Then hed have em jumping through hoops and dancing around on their hind legs like they was a pair of poodles. Then one day Lucky Sams luck ran out. He put his head inside the mouth of Babar Sher, a small shabby looking lion what had just been shipped in from Africa, and the lions jaw snapped s hut. Just like that. Now the audience, they aint never seen anything like it. They all think its part of the show. So, as his headless body collapses to the floor, blood spurting everywhere, the crowd begins to applaud. And theyre clapping and laughing and cheering and stamping their feet. Even the gargoyles which overlooked the entrance to the cage seemed to be laughing. They aint never seen such a spectacular magic trick. Before long, people from all over the circus starts gathering round the lion tent to see what all the commotion was about, including my grandmother. And you can imagine what happened when she saw Sams decapitated corpse twitching on the floor. And the satiated lion lying in a puddle of blood, its mangy muzzle resting on its mangy paws, peaceful as an old donkey.

In the twinkling of an eye she went from sanity to insanity. For months, she lay curled up on a pile of cushions in her caravan, staring out of the window. Immovable. In complete desolation. Never uttering a sound. Not even when she sneezed. She was haunted by visions of her darling Sam, pleading desperately from behind giant lions teeth, as though he was trapped in some Hellish prison. Then, the lion would roar and Sam would scramble through the gap between the top and bottom jaw in an attempt to escape. But before he could get all the way out, the lion would snap its mouth shut like a bear-trap -- CRACK -- and Sam would be cut in half like a magicians assistant. And poor grandmother would cry out in her sleep, louder and more wretched than any wounded animal, and the entire circus would wake up and shake their heads and whisper to each other: oh, that poor, unfortunate Beardy! Through all of this Patrick de Lattre, the Human Caterpillar, refused to budge from her side, singing to her, and feeding her, and dabbing her forehead with a cool sponge whenever she dreamt of the hapless Sam. The weeks turned into months, and even though he was falling more and more in love with my grandmother, this limb-deficient Romeo was also getting a bit fed up with the one-way conversation. Finally, after several more months, he shook my grandmother awake and said: Enough is enough. Pull yourself together! And she did. And they got married. Had six children. And lived happily ever after." "I love that story," said Mary. "Heard it a thousand times but I never get bored of it." "Right," said Grandma Doyle to Margie, "what are we going to do with you?" Margie had no idea what Grandma Doyle meant. "Stretch told me that you have quite a talent," she said, with a cheeky wink. Margie threw a look at The Giant which made it clear she wasnt happy.