The Bill-Toppers

Pa Clifton is a former racing cyclist who decides, the day his daughter is born, that she will make the family’s name. By eight, Lily is touring New Zealand, Australia and India as the New Zealander on Wheels, a trick cyclist whose act her father keeps making harder. Settled in London, he recruits five slum girls through a newspaper advertisement, signs three-year contracts with their parents at a few pence a week, and drills them into a troupe. Castaigne, a French illustrator working in America, drew the pictures himself and wrote with a hard eye for what the billing costs. Lily grows into a resentful eighteen-year-old who marries badly to get out, and the applause she spent her childhood earning still ends up going to somebody else.