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| Cressida's Transformations - art and photography |
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When she was young, Polly left home to become a bareback rider in a travelling circus. She loved the glamour and excitement of being a performer. She loved the applause as she entered the ring standing on a horse’s back, her hands high and her pink tutu wafting in the breeze. During the finale of a performance, while the band played and the ringmaster in all his regalia cracked his whip, the noise and jubilation suddenly faded. The audience gasped as they saw Polly fall from her horse onto the sawdust of the arena floor. The ringmaster had accidentally lashed one side of her face with his whip. She lost the sight of one eye and her career ended. Thereafter, she was a recluse. Her life ended dramatically - she died in a fire at her home.
As children, my sisters and I went with my father on frequent occasions to visit the old lady. She always welcomed my father and tolerated us. We would sit quietly 'like little ladies' on the settee in her drawing room. I would watch every movement of the frail looking lady with a patch over one eye and wait for her to say what she said to my father every time we visited her.
“Walter. It's nice to see you. You must excuse the patch over my eye. I’ve had to put it on because my eye’s a bit sore and I’ve been bathing it.”
She did not fool me. I knew there wasn’t an eye under the patch. I knew about her terrible accident. These visits were magical times for me. I looked beyond the old lady and what I saw was not a tiny lady dressed in black but a lovely girl dressed in a pink tutu. I had listened to my mother telling Polly's story many times. I knew it like the back of my hand yet as an eight-year-old, I would cajole my mother into telling it again. I had a morbid fascination for it.
"Tell me about Auntie Polly," I would say, begging her to sit down. She always replied impatiently, "You know the story off by heart, girl! Besides, she's your great auntie."
I would begin the story for her. "She ran away to join a travelling circus …"
At first, she would not answer. She had become a little bored with recounting the story but I would goad her into telling me yet again.
"Yes," my mother would say hesitantly, then with a grunt, "she-ran-away-to-join-a-travelling-circus."
"Why did she run away?" I would ask.
"Excitement, adventure, I suppose," she would say thoughtfully before going on, "She was so ungrateful, coming from a good family and all."
I would agree with her. (Inwardly I thought it was the most romantic thing any girl could do.)
Once she got into the story, my mother seemed to enjoy the re-telling.
"She learned to ride a horse, bareback. They say she used to look beautiful dressed in a pink tutu, standing up on the horse going round and round the ring, her arms in the air, her lovely long silken hair trailing behind her … the audience cheering and clapping …"
At this point, she would get a dreamy look on her face imagining the lovely sight that Polly was reputed to have made.
"People would come for miles just to see her," she would muse.
"Then she fell in love," I would say excitedly, urging her to move the story along. "Was he handsome? Rich?"
"So they say. He came to see the circus and fell in love with her."
After a pause my mother would continue.
"But he was a rotter." Her lips would curl while her head moved from side to side in a display of disgust as she reminded herself of the man.
"Why? What did he do?"
"Never you mind," would be her hurried reply before continuing with the story. "Then, one awful day, her life with the travelling circus came to a terrible end. The poor soul lost an eye."
She would lower her head for a moment's contemplation of the awful tragedy.
"How?" I would plead, "How?"
"Oh, too dreadful to think about - it was the ringmaster's whip … He didn't mean to do it but she lost an eye," she would say as she put her hands over her eyes as if shielding them from a similar fate.
In my imagination I saw the ringmaster's whip as a kind of serpent's tail with Polly's eye as its prey. The tail would grasp the eye then drop it, allowing it to fall into the sawdust on the arena floor.
"Someone must have found the eye," I once said to my mother.
"For goodness sake don't say such a thing!"
I wondered what I said that was so bad.
"The eye …" she tried to explain, "the eye … Oh! Never you mind. You wouldn't understand."
"Then forever and ever she's had to wear a patch over … the place …? I would tentatively touch my eye not wanting to offend her again.
"Yes," she would sigh.
"Now she never sees anyone … never goes anywhere … lives all by herself … poor Polly," I would say sympathetically as I thought of what happened to the young, beautiful girl.
"Auntie Polly to you! Anyway, she sees you. You seem to be one of her only visitors and that's because you persuade your father to take you - not that he needs much persuading. She gives him a large whiskey every time he goes there!" she would say, laughing at the reason for his visit.
Then, more seriously, she would say, "I can't think why you want to go and see a bitter old woman like her. She hasn't the slightest interest in you or in anything for that matter."
Slapping her knees, she would rise to her feet ending the story-telling session decisively and cheerfully. "That's it. There's nothing more to tell."
Once, as if oblivious to my presence she spoke her thoughts.
"For all intents and purposes she died that night in the circus ring. She's been in mourning for herself ever since."
