The Winter Ground

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I would like to thank:

Alex Bonham, Linda Clifford and all at Kellie Castle, Katie Davison, Louise Kelly, Antigone Konstantinidou, Catherine and Olivier Lepreux (for the man-eating tiger), Neil McRoberts, Lisa Moylett, Chris Silas Neal, Imogen Olsen and Bronwen Salter-Murison.

Twelve black horses spanned the ring, nodding and snorting, six to either side, with their master a splash of blood red and ink black at the centre where the whip kept cracking. Just beyond its reach, the Risley man lay back on his trestle bench, knees working like pistons and satin straining across his thighs as he threw the little girls in their tutus up into the air and caught them again. The girls flashed their eyes and snapped their arms at each cymbal crash, each landing. The clowns, in their spots and stripes and checks, racing along on the ring fence, held high the paper hoops, and the grey horse cantering hard around the edge ducked its head as the girl on its back leapt clear, broke through and landed again, her powdered feet curling on to her horse’s broad rump, her arms floating outwards as gently as her feathers, her smile serene. The spangled figure high in the dome swung and spun, plummeting downwards as the coils around her body unfurled, her toes pointed, the arch of her neck elegant and the tilt of her chin as delicate as a child’s.

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