the bearded lady

Wolfgang insisted that they were Indian elephants. He said they must be Indian elephants, because it was a Turkish carpet, and Turkey was half in Asia. Poppi thought their ears were too big, and their shoulders too high, to be Indian elephants. But there was no point arguing with Wolfgang.

The carpet looked well in their London flat, covering the bare boards in the living room. Red and orange silk, maroon and blue seas, and elephants marching tail to trunk around the border. On wet days, when Wolfgang was working, Poppi liked to lie on the carpet, surrounded by leafy houseplants, rain pattering on the tall empty windows. She traced over the elephants with her fingers. Turkish elephants, she had told Wolfgang, to put an end to the fight.

London was nicer in the rain, Poppi thought. There was something she liked about rain in big, old, dirties cities like this: the effect it had on the slate roofs and red bricks, intensifying colours, blurring the view through windows so it looked like a painting, half finished. She liked being inside, in the warm comfortable room, lying on her beautiful carpet, while outside it was wet and chill. Wolfgang would come home soon, shaking his umbrella and taking off his overcoat in the hall, and Poppi would kiss him and feel the cold rain on his face.

As she thought of this, something moved underneath Poppi’s body, a tremor or a shudder in the floorboards. It was an old house, the wooden floors forever expanding and contracting in the heat and cold, picking up vibrations and movements from the rooms upstairs and below. Nonetheless, Poppi shivered. It was time, anyway, to get up and do something. She hated it when Wolfgang caught her doing nothing, just daydreaming, whilst he had been out making a living. And he always asked her, what have you been doing all day?

Poppi sat up, and as she did so, the floor beneath her buckled. She turned, twisting herself onto her knees, and saw the carpet undulate, sensuously, gently rising through the fabric, lifting her like an ocean wave. White hot adrenalin shot through Poppi’s veins. Her heart hammered in her chest, pulsing at the back of her head. But she did not move. Do it again, she whispered.

The carpet flipped up at the end, sending a ripple through the silk fringe. A wave billowed along its length, lifting Poppi off the floor. She clutched at the silk, let go, put her hands up to her mouth. Breathe. The carpet rose from the floor, shivering upwards, carrying Poppi higher. They drifted towards the tall windows and Poppi leaned over and undid the catch, so the windows opened outwards, into the rain. The carpet reared up, then flew out of the windows, flapping upwards through the wet sky, like a giant, gentle manta ray.