The Aerialists

Katie Munnik

• Publisher: The Borough Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9780008473235
• eBook ISBN:
  9780008473211
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

*WATERSTONES WELSH BOOK OF THE MONTH*

Paris, 1891 Laura is living on the streets, far from the American Prairies where she was born. When rescued by the entrancing aerialists, Ena and Auguste Gaudron, she soon finds herself ensconced in the family hot air balloon business, and offered the chance to learn how to fly.

Cardiff, 1896 The Gaudrons accept an invitation to be part of the Cardiff Fine Art, Industrial and Maritime Exhibition, presenting a daring show of balloon ascents and parachute descents.

Then late one night, a young girl, Grace, knocks on the Gaudrons' door. She is desperate to fly, whatever the cost.
As Grace's dreams begin to take wing, can Laura be the one to keep her grounded? Or will both girls risk it all for one dazzling moment of flight?

'A heady and stylish read that had me swept away from the first page. Munnik has captured a fascinating world of daring with both beauty and heart' MAHSUDA SNAITH

'Vivid and meticulous, Katie Munnik's The Aerialists captures the tangled desires of people living on the thin air of their own daring – a glorious vision of a time, a place, a welter of human manipulations and hopes, and ultimately, their tragic effects. A really fine read' JOAN BARFOOT

'Based on a true story, this rich novel will capture your imagination' BEST magazine

SUMMER

London: 1896

1 /

IF IT WAS A NEWSPAPER, I MIGHT IGNORE IT. NOT MY business. Just something the wind snatched up and tossed high. I looked out the open window at that scrap of white caught against the factory chimney, trying to decide what to do. It might be nothing, but probably it was drawers.

I’d been drying laundry that morning, all the small bits I could wash in a tub, and I laid them out on the flat roof under my window, weighing everything down with pebbles like always, only maybe the wind was stronger than I thought. It seemed a perfect day to get things dry. The sky was clear, a morning that asked for more with no clouds at all, and my room felt fresh and breezy.

I reached out to feel the closest chemise and it was dry already, so I gathered up the pebbles to use again, folded each chemise, then counted the pairs of drawers. One was definitely missing. Oh dear.

So, that was it. I’d have to climb out the window. I couldn’t just leave them there because every time I looked outside, I’d see them, looking at me. I had to get them. My window wasn’t far from the ridgeline and looking out, I could see a manageable valley sloping up from my flat bit of roof. If I took off my shoes and socks, I could get a good grip on the shingles. And once at the ridge, the chimney wasn’t far along, really – only six or seven steps. Twelve or fourteen, if I counted there and back.

The pebbles in my pocket tinked against each other as I sat on the sill and swung my legs out into the sunshine. The shingles were warm, almost hot to the touch, and, climbing hand and foot, I was up to the ridge quick enough, trying not to think about what I was doing. I’d learned to be fine with heights and it wouldn’t do to waste perfectly good clothing. Next time I did laundry, I’d be more careful.

At the top, I was glad to see the smooth tiles along the ridge. Fine for sitting and they’d be easy enough to walk on when I got to my feet. I hoped no one was looking up. That was the trouble with cities; there were always people watching. Sure, you might be anonymous, but you were likely to be witnessed, too. But no helping that now. I couldn’t think about that up here or I’d worry and throw myself off balance. I stood up slowly, held my arms out for balance, and then, one foot in front of another, stepped out carefully. One, two, three – pause – four slower, five, six don’t look at the birds now, seven and my hand now flat on the red brick chimney. There. I could breathe again.

In the courtyard below, a cab arrived. I saw Ena step out, lift little Marina down and set her on uncertain feet. From up here, they both looked tiny, and I wished I was brick-coloured. If only I’d thought to change into flight clothes, I might be mistaken for a man up here doing some work rather than a conspicuous girl out on a limb. But Ena didn’t glance up.

I shifted my feet closer to the chimney and looked around, feeling stupid. What a mad idea this was. Not exactly clever problem-solving and where were those drawers, anyway? How high had they been? From the window, it had been hard to tell and now, up close, I wasn’t even sure which way to look. Far below, I could hear Ena laughing, but when I glanced, she was only looking at Marina, clapping her hands about something.

And then relief, because from the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of white, and looking up, there they were, those fly-away drawers close above my head after all, caught on a ridged bit of brickwork. With one hand steady on the chimney, I reached up, then stretched taller and hoped and there! I managed to hook one finger in the waistband and pulled to get a better hold, only just then a crow flew close, black and cawing, and maybe it distracted me or the wind gusted right then, but off they went. My white drawers flapping away.

I suspected they were the new ones Ena had given me. Wide-legged and flared, and she called them fashionable. A kind gift, really, and they were a comfortable pair. I liked the lacework above the hems. And now, gone.

The factory was quiet, with most of the balloons out away from London, making money. Auguste was in the West Country at fetes and festivals in Taunton, Exeter, Redruth, all the industrial towns down there, and Alma travelled with him to draw the crowds. Ena had said she wasn’t interested in funfairs, and, besides, she liked London in the summer, the heat and the different pace. She brought Marina to the factory most days, and she and I kept up our experiments, making miniature balloons and parachutes in new designs, making use of the slow days and the empty factory.

I tried to imagine what it would be like packing up and travelling on, country fair after country fair, all those posters and printed banners. Glitz and glamour or a bit of a trudge? Hard to say from this distance. In London, Redruth felt flat, a thing of paper, printed words in a newspaper cut up for the clippings book or to make jointed puppets to amuse Marina, papercut shapes glued to rolled paper straws with fancy paper clothes watercolour-pale. He flies through the air with the greatest of ease, I sang, making the puppet dance, and the little girl sang with me. The daring young man on the flying trapeze. She liked the song, but I wasn’t being fair because before they left, there’d been an almighty argument. Ena was furious that Auguste took the trapeze along. The same old argument about science and performance and business and, as always, Auguste won because of the money. That didn’t make it better. Alma stood to the side, smiling, which was maddening, particularly because she, too, argued money with Auguste. After they left, Ena spent three days fuming and then we settled down to quieter times. Cornwall was miles away, and London was hot.

We read the newspapers each morning, hoping for news from the West Country fairs but finding little. Only that the crowds were very large, the factories’ owners concerned at the lateness of the fair’s operating hours, a tiger escaped from the menagerie, was missing all night, but was found in St Ives in the morning in a fish shed. Nothing about our aeronauts.

‘We should consider that lucky,’ Ena said. ‘The papers report happenings which ten to one mean bad news. I’d rather not hear about Auguste and Alma in the papers, thank you very much.’

Auguste sent postcards home, polychrome seasides with very few words. I wanted to imagine he was the kind of husband who sent his wife fat love letters, overflowing with poetry. He had the perfect handwriting for that kind of thing, and I’d seen it frequently enough on balloon sketches, but the postcards were brief and lacked even technical detail. Flight went well. Good crowds. Fair wind. Coastal weather. All flat as the sea and no mention at all of trapezes.

Ena said she’d paste the postcards in her clippings book, and she rather hoped he’d enjoy Redruth and work to make connections whilst he was there. It was a town known for development. Plenty of mining and the investment associated with that, but also inventors, she said. William Murdock had lived in Redruth, the one who developed coal gas lighting, and she showed me she had a clipping in her book about that, too. One hundred years of clean gas lighting: Murdock remembered. The clipping next to it was a death announcement for Mrs Garnett of Vernon, near Crewe who died aged 105. She had been a member of the Wesleyan Methodist body for 90 years. On her farm, there is now living a labourer who had been working on the farm for over 80 years. Mrs Garnett retained all her faculties to the last. In blue ink, Ena had added 1789: Wilberforce, Mutiny on the Bounty, Herschel discovers Saturn’s moons.

When I got my shoes back on and myself down to the factory floor, I found Harry sitting with his left leg propped up on a stool. He’d twisted his ankle earlier in the summer from a wonky balloon landing and was still convalescing. In front of him, there was a stack of company record books, and Ena was standing posed at the door, waving something white with a look of triumph on her face. For a brief moment, I froze, electrified, but then I saw it was an envelope.

Harry didn’t turn to see me at all, just kept laughing at his sister as she put on a show.

‘Are you going to show me at all or simply use it as a flag?’ he asked.

‘It is a grand moment in the history of this grand company. You will see. Something entirely new! Or at least, on a grander sort of scale altogether.’

She took the letter from its envelope and unfolded it carefully, looking at her brother with twinkling eyes, as I sat down and surreptitiously tied my shoelaces.

‘Listen to this. The Cardiff Fine Art, Industrial and Maritime Exhibition under the patronage of Her Majesty Queen Victoria. Now, that’s a mouthful, isn’t it? And they want an aerialist. Isn’t that grand and advantageous! Of course, Vicky won’t be there herself, but I read in the papers there was a royal visit to the Exhibition earlier this month. The Prince of Wales himself and his lovely wife Princess Alexandra. And the Marquess of Bute is in Cardiff, too, of course. A crowd to be associated with, don’t you think?’

‘Bound to be a good purse in it. I’m surprised they didn’t contact Percy,’ Harry said.

‘But they wouldn’t. It’s Cardiff. They won’t want the Spencer name in Cardiff. Not after Stanley and the Horticultural Society. Disaster.’

‘Hardly a disaster. A captive ascent, wasn’t it, and the winch jammed whilst pulling them back to earth.’

‘And a strong wind crashed the balloon into a nearby tree. The whole show committee had to jump ship and climb down the tree to safety.’

‘Well, I’d still say disaster is a strong word. We’ve had worse. Mishap, perhaps.’ He leaned back in his chair and adjusted his foot on the stool. ‘But I can understand why they’ve asked Auguste this time around. Brothers-in-law are useful. Maybe we should find some more.’

‘Julia would never agree.’

‘No, I don’t suppose she would. She’s still in a snit Auguste didn’t take her to Cornwall. As if Redruth was Paris herself.’ He fanned himself with one of the record books, pulling a face like a grand lady.

‘Julia just wants adventure.’

‘And Auguste doesn’t want to pay for two girls. I can’t blame him. These numbers, I tell you. But you should send that invitation on to him. He’ll want this opportunity.’

‘Of course he will. I want this opportunity. Much better publicity for investors than country funfairs.’ She looked over the letter again. ‘A Royal Exhibition. It’d be a chance to meet people, too. The right people. Of course we’re going. And what about you, Harry?’

‘Only if you put me in a wheelbarrow.’

She laughed and swatted him with the letter. ‘Well, I’ll want Laura there, at least,’ she said, smiling at me. ‘With your sewing machine, of course, and your fine eye on hand, and to help with Marina, too. She dotes on you.’

Ena sat down, and when she’d finished writing a note to Auguste, she asked if I’d like to come to the post office and then for a walk with her and Marina.

‘Need a bit of fresh air, don’t we? And a chance to run on the grass. We’ll go up to Highgate and have a walk on the Heath before the day heats up too much. Sound good?’

An omnibus up Holloway Road, up Highgate Hill to St Michael’s Church and Ena said she wanted to go in. There wasn’t a service or anything and she said I could wait outside with Marina. I thought of the posts on main streets in Wyoming, the way men tied up horses when they stopped in at a saloon. No posts here, and no gravestones either, but then they were behind the church, hidden away in the great cemetery there. Marina wanted to pick daisies and I didn’t let her. I held her hand tightly, told her we needed to keep our feet on the path, our dresses clean. Waiting felt dusty, dried out and flat.

Two jackdaws circled the spire, calling, and I thought their black wings must be hot in this weather, though maybe it was cooler higher up. I watched them perch on the cross-topped spire, take flight, then land again and in another moment, Ena came back out through the red doors, looking calmer. Marina ran towards her, and she bent to catch the girl, gathered her up and spun her around in a circle which made Marina laugh and the jackdaws fly away.

‘Now then,’ Ena said. ‘A walk in the cemetery, I think, and a run on the Heath. The vicar says he’ll let us in through the gate here, so we don’t have to circle back to Swain’s Lane.’ She set Marina down on her feet and held her hand and both their faces were happy.

‘We could just go to the Heath, couldn’t we?’ I asked. ‘We don’t need to go near the graves.’

Ena smiled like I hadn’t understood.

‘My father’s here,’ she said. ‘It isn’t far.’

The cemetery was overhung with trees, the neat grass divided up by tidy paths. I followed Ena and wished Marina wanted to hold my hand. I tried not to look at anything. Ahead of us there were stairs and below, a sunken corridor curved round in a ring. Closed tombs with heavy doors like a street of silent houses, and everywhere stone, iron, ivy and carvings. In the centre, one tree stood tall, an ancient cedar like in the Bible, with flat, reaching branches dark against the hot sky, an impossible tree.

‘He isn’t in this section,’ Ena said. ‘These are rather grand and expensive, aren’t they? I’m not sure he’d have liked it if we’d planted him here.’

I followed her down the path and out to where the graves looked humbler. Crosses, veiled urns, angels with lowered eyes.

‘All this stone,’ I said. ‘It makes me f...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Prologue
• Spring: Paris: 1891
• Summer: London: 1896
• Fall: Cardiff: July 21st, 1896
• Winter
• A Note about Historical References and Many Thanks
• About the Author
• Also by Katie Munnik
• About the Publisher