Send In The Clowns Part two of our great serial

Part 2: Lolly has an energetic new ring partner in trapeze artist Russell and has met up with an old friend in Sean…

“Old friend? BIT MORE than that,” she BREATHED, looking at the CLOSED DOOR

You look a lot older in your photo!” Lolly joked as she and Russell stood at the entrance to the pier in front of a huge poster for Circus On The Sea, starring Lolly and Pop!

The picture had been taken long before anyone knew that Russell, the young circus school graduate, would be standing in at the last minute for Pop. It showed Lolly and her father, Mike Sullivan, wearing pearly grins and matching stripy pirate shirts. Her short blonde hair was gelled into pointy tufts and his greying brown locks were largely hidden by a pirate hat with a skull and crossed bones on the front.

Lolly felt a little fraudulent about the poster’s boast, As Seen On TV! She’d been a baby in a cradle in the dressing room the last time Mike was a favourite guest on shows like Noel’s House Party. Her mum had been the original Lolly in those days.

It hurt her to think that since her parents had split up, her mum had hardly spoken to her. And now her dad was off work recovering from a heart bypass.

It made her wonder if the days of Lolly and Pop were coming to an end.

“I just hope I can fill a quarter of his shoes,” said Russell, who had trained as a trapeze artiste, not a clown.

“Well, they are clown shoes!” Lolly joked, holding her hands a yard apart.

As seagulls screeched in the blustery blue sky above them, Russell whipped a phone from the back pocket of his jeans and said, “This calls for a selfie!”

He pulled her in close and they put on their goofy Lolly and Pop grins as they posed in front of the poster. Lolly relished the feel of his muscular arm around her shoulder and the brief kiss of his smooth cheek against hers.

“Come on, let’s go and meet the others!” she sang giddily as she grabbed his hand and tugged him towards the pier.

The past two weeks had been draining. When Lolly had first seen Mike after his emergency operation he’d looked so much older and frailer than his fifty years that she’d burst out crying as she hugged him. But now that he was safely convalescing, it felt liberating to be skipping down the sunny pier with Russell.

She realised it was the first time in her twenty years that she’d arrived at a venue without her dad. It was like being on holiday – or a romantic break by the sea, she thought, as she took a sly sideways glance at the handsome trapeze artist.

Not that there would be anything like that going on with Russell, she reminded herself, firmly. But it was exciting to be with him anyway.

They burst into the foyer of the theatre at the end of the pier and Lolly exchanged screams and hugs with a couple of girl dancers and a keyboard player who were standing by their cases and rucksacks. She hadn’t seen them for a couple of years, but the circus was a small world where old friendships were quickly remade.

She discovered how small the business really was when she went through to the auditorium and saw the slim young man juggling with four clubs on the stage.

“Lolly! Long time!” he called in the familiar Belfast brogue that had always done strange things to her. He caught his

clubs and jumped off the stage.

“Sean!” Lolly gasped as he bounded up the aisle. “What are you doing here?” “Last-minute addition to the bill!” There was an awkward moment when he didn’t look sure whether to kiss her lips or her cheek or embrace her. She guessed it was because he could see from her face that she wasn’t sure whether she wanted him to do any of those things.

They managed a clumsy arms-length peck that didn’t quite reach her cheek.

Lolly found it hard to believe that the last time they’d met their lips might have been glued together, their arms wrapped so tightly around each other that no one could part them a moment sooner than they had to, to let Sean catch his ferry.

That was before he’d broken the news by text that a long-distance relationship wasn’t for him after all.

But that was supposed to be long behind them, wasn’t it? Lolly noticed the wary glances exchanged by Sean and Russell, before the Irishman regained his usual smooth composure.

“I was sorry to hear about your daddy. How’s he doing?”

“Bearing up. He’s spending six weeks at Auntie Mim’s guest house until he recovers fully.”

“Ah, sure, Auntie Mim will feed him up!” Sean grinned.

“Russell’s standing in for him,” Lolly explained. Sean sized up the muscular trapeze artist.

“You’ll have your work cut out. Mike’s the best in the business – Lolly, too.” “I’ll try my best,” Russell smiled. “Well, I’ll catch you guys later. I’ve just got to…” Sean pointed vaguely as he squeezed between them.

“Old friend?” Russell asked, as the Irishman disappeared into the foyer.

“Bit more than that,” Lolly breathed as she gazed at the closed door. Sean had been her first adult boyfriend. For a summer she’d thought it was going to be forever. “Long time ago!” She flashed Russell a grin. “We’re just friends now.”

Russell grinned back and she wondered if she saw relief in his eyes. She hoped so.

Russell may not have been a comic genius – only Mike could have written Lolly and Pop’s routines – but the 21-year-old brought an energy to the act that Mike had lacked for a long time.

From the moment he and Lolly cartwheeled onto the stage in their matching red and green harlequin suits, he matched her in the cartoonish dance moves, tumbles and back flips her dad normally left to Lolly.

Lolly knew she was being unfair and disloyal, knowing now how ill her dad had been and how bravely he’d hidden it, but as she and Russell bounced around in the spotlight she realised how much she’d been carrying the show for the past year and what a strain it had been. She

felt a weight had been lifted off her back.

Instead of the dad and daughter jokes about Mike’s age, they reverted to the flirty fun of the act in her mum’s day.

“Aw, girls, ain’t he sweet?” Lolly tickled Russell’s chin and ruffled his hair when he fluffed a line and turned pillar box red.

“You’ll be seeing more of Pop’s special talents later. But not as much as I will,” she winked at the mums in the stalls. “We’re sharing a dressing room!”

Can I buy you a drink, there, Lolly?” Sean asked her. She was in the foyer in her glittery golden tail coat and silver bowler hat, waving off the last of the audience. The opening weekend had been a blast. Five full houses and a standing ovation every time. As her adrenalin subsided, she was already wishing she had more than a six-week summer season with Russell.

Everyone in the cast was her age and for once she felt like part of the gang instead of being slightly apart from it as part of an older, famous act. As much as she loved her dad, going back to work with a 50-year-old partner just wasn’t going to be the same.

She turned at the sound of Sean’s voice and was momentarily taken aback by his sky-blue sequined stage waistcoat, shiny silk shirt sleeves and bow tie. He looked as suave as the day she’d fallen for him.

For a moment, she hesitated to accept his offer. Seeing him again had stirred up a lot of hurt. But she’d spent a long time telling herself that he’d been right to end their relationship – at eighteen they’d been too young to wait for each other while they worked at far ends of the country. Surely it was time to call their summer together a pleasant memory? “Sure,” she said, joining him at the bar. The circus trucks and trailers were parked on a patch of private land on the edge of town. A minibus would take all the performers back together later, so she had time to kill.

As she pushed herself onto a bar stool in her hot pants and high boots, the knee of her tights brushed his velvet trouser leg.

“So,” he asked, as she sipped the house white, “are you and the big fella…?” “No!” She blushed. “We’re just friends.” She noticed he was wearing the same brand of cologne that had lingered in her memory long after they’d parted.

“Good,” Sean smiled. “Because I’ve been thinking…”

“I thought I could smell burning,” Lolly quipped nervously.

“Thinking it used to be pretty good between us.” He grinned. “Since we’re both free and single, do you think we should pick up where we left off?”

His hand on her knee made Lolly’s heart pound – but not for the reason it used to.

“What? Just till the end of the season?” she challenged him, peeling his hand off.

She expected him to deny it. Instead, he gave her a smile that she could barely stop herself slapping. “Well, I can’t promise any more…” “In that case, then – no,” she answered hotly. “In fact – no anyway.”

She knew she should leave it there, but couldn’t stop herself saying, “I really thought you… cared for me.” “I did, Lolly. I do…” “Yeah. As much as you cared for Zizzi on your next show.” She knew she should have stopped following his social media. “And Clare on the one after that!”

Slamming down her glass, she stepped off her bar stool and was startled when she almost knocked into Russell. “Can I buy you two a round?” he asked. “Not for me, big guy.” Sean slid off his stool. As he left, he tapped Russell on the arm and winked. “She’s all yours, matey.” “What was that about?” Russell asked. “Nothing.” “Are you OK?” “Fine. Look, the minibus driver’s here.”

Dodging past him, she fought to keep the tears from her eyes. For two years, she’d consoled herself that Sean had at least loved her in the months they were together. Finally seeing that for him it had been just a calculated fling all along, was just too much.

That night, as she curled up in her pyjamas with a hot chocolate, Lolly felt the emptiness of the forty-foot trailer that had always been her home. Usually she at least had her dad for company. With him miles away at Auntie Mim’s she felt properly alone for the first time in her life.

Russell was only yards away in his own little caravan, but she dared not get closer to him in case it ended as it had with Sean.

She knew from the Facebook statuses of distant friends that season-long romances were the norm for travelling entertainers. It was the only thing that worked, unless you married and travelled as a family act. But even that didn’t guarantee contentment, she thought, as she gazed tearfully at the old pictures of her mum and dad.

Since his divorce, Mike had had no more luck romantically than his daughter. Thankfully he knew he was too old for a fling with a showgirl – he’d spared Lolly the embarrassment of a mid-life crisis – but they never stayed in one town long enough for him to meet anyone more suitable.

Lolly wondered if it would be just her and him, a pair of sad old clowns trudging from stage to circus tent for the rest of their lives.

As cleaners dragged bin bags between the rows of velvet seats, Lolly was flying in a low circle above the stage. With Russell gripping one of her wrists and one of her ankles, she hung like a star from his powerful arms as he swung upside down by his knees from a spiralling trapeze bar. “OK… feet!” he grunted, red-faced. He released her wrist and she swung upside down as he caught her other ankle.

They didn’t have much height to rehearse in and her tufty blonde hair was only a foot or so above the stage. She had a harness to stop her falling, but she would have trusted Russell’s grip with her life.

“Now to me!” he called.

He swung by his KNEES, she hung like a STAR from his POWERFUL ARMS

Lolly took a deep breath and tensed her steely stomach muscles to bend herself upwards. She gripped his thick wrists and he released her ankles so she was hanging upright as they spun.

“And down!” Russell rolled his knees off the bar and dropped down, catching the trapeze ropes with his feet.

Lolly’s bare feet hit the stage and she ran in half a circle until she stopped the trapeze bar and Russell from rotating.

Giddy and breathless, she grinned at his gorgeous upside-down face as he hung there like a bat, blond hair drenched with sweat. She couldn’t stop herself grabbing his head and pressing her lips to his.

“Sorry!” She pirouetted away from him and did a little dance, as if they were still Lolly and Pop, larking about on stage.

“Don’t apologise!” Russell chuckled as he swung himself down from the trapeze. “We should put that in the act. I mean, it’s the characters, isn’t it? The two lovers.”

“Yeah, the characters! That’s what I was thinking.” Lolly glanced over her shoulder at him and tried not to notice what a chiselled hunk of muscle he was as he stood barefoot in only trackie bottoms, glowing and exhilarated.

For the trapeze artists Lolly had met in the big top, everything was about showy tricks in sparkly costumes but Russell, coming from circus school, had been taught to see it in a different way. He wanted to use gymnastic feats more like ballet postures, and they were trying to create a routine that told a story.

It was a process that fascinated Lolly. For after all, what were she and her dad but actors and storytellers, really?

“How’s the new act going?” called Sean as he came into the auditorium with one of the dancers. The girl had short blonde hair – Sean’s type, Lolly noted with narrowed eyes – and from the speed with which the two had hooked up, Lolly reckoned the hoofer knew the score.

Well, if that was the way they wanted to live, she decided, good luck to them.

“I reckon we’ll be ready for a spot in the show in the last week,” Russell called back. “Lolly’s a natural.”

“Isn’t she just!” Sean vaulted onto the stage. “Hey, Lolly, can you still do this?” He tossed her a trio of clubs and she started juggling effortlessly with them as he did the same with another set.

She grinned at him as they began tossing the clubs to each other in a cascading blur that got faster and faster. As her dad had always taught her, life was too short for hard feelings.

Hey, those are really good!” said Lolly as she carried two roast chicken dinners to the trailer dining table where Russell was sketching costumes for their trapeze routine.

Ever since her mum had left, Lolly had been the trailer’s chef while her dad looked after the act’s business, writing scripts and booking shows. She enjoyed feeding Russell on their weekly day off. It was a little taste of the travelling married life she dreamed of having one day.

“I didn’t know you could draw,” she marvelled, peering at the page.

“Oh, I have many attributes you haven’t seen yet,” he teased.

“You’re forgetting the day I walked in the dressing room and saw you getting out of the shower.”

She hadn’t really, she just liked to keep her ad-lib reflex in condition for the show – but she liked the way it made him blush.

The colour of his cheeks deepened as he toyed with his food and said shyly, “You know what, Lolly? We should do the trapeze thing for more than just a week.” “Oh, I’d love to, but…” “We could start our own company.” He grinned eagerly. “You and me. We could try and get some funding and produce a proper show. Make some really modern and artistic circus…”

The light in his eyes caught her heart like a hook, but she found herself leaning back, alarm bells beginning to ring.

“You’re forgetting.” She forced a grin, indicating the framed photos all around. “I’m part of Lolly and Pop. Dad’s getting better. We’ll be back on the road soon.”

“You said you wanted to do other things one day,” Russell reminded her.

“I do… one day. But I couldn’t leave Dad. Not now. He needs me.”

“What about your needs?” Russell asked softly. “Lolly, your dad’s heart scare may be a warning that he shouldn’t be doing the act forever. He’s fifty and should be slowing down. You’re twenty and just starting out. Perhaps it’s time you both thought of doing something different.”

Lolly sighed. “You’re right, and I really would like to do more work with you. I just don’t know how I could ever tell Dad. The act is his life.”

The trailer was suddenly filled with jangly circus music: Dum-dum-dummy-dummy-dum-dum-da-da.

Lolly answered her phone. “Hey, Dad, we were just talking about you!”

“It’s all lies, whatever they said!” Mike quipped immediately. “How are you feeling?” “Like a man with a new heart!” he declared. “Mim says I’ll be well enough to come and see the show next week.”

“That’s great. You’ll be able to see the new act Russell and I are doing.”

“I can’t wait. And I haven’t been idle, either. I’ve booked us a holiday camp tour all autumn, and panto at Christmas! I’ve written loads of new material. When we get back on those boards, Lolly and Pop are gonna be bigger than ever!”

Lolly gazed wistfully at Russell and wondered if the end of the season would be the last time she ever saw him.

“Sounds great, Dad,” she said in a deflated voice.

“You’re FORGETTING. Dad’s getting BETTER. We’ll be back on the ROAD”