by Graham Swift
Less than a year ago, one October morning, she’d done the simplest, most obvious thing—steeling herself to do it, all the same. She’d gone out into the garden and stood under the crab-apple tree that Jack, with much actorly ceremony, had planted as a sapling, and she’d scattered the ashes there. She hadn’t offered much ceremony herself. It was not like the never-ending unendurable funeral. There was nobody else but her. She’d upturned the jar. It was all very simple, like applying some gardening product. And if they had to be scattered somewhere, then let it be close. The garden, of course.
And then, when it was too late, when she’d even thumped the bottom of the jar to get the last bits out, she’d had the thought: In the sea, in the sea, from the end of Brighton pier even. Was it Jack suddenly, mischievously intervening? Or someone else?
* * *
—
So what, then, might she have done today? She had a driver she could call at any time, Vijay, Jack’s former driver, though really the company’s driver. She might have said, ‘Vijay, I’d like you to drive me to Brighton.’ She might have sat in the back in stately silence, while Vijay, keeping understandingly silent too, just drove. She might have said when they got there, ‘Give me half an hour, Vijay, then pick me up again here.’ Then she might have strolled up and down the pier, where of course there was no longer any theatre, but there were still the railings and still that very spot. The ring, and then the ashes.
She might have leant for a while and looked at the waves and even whispered words. Then turned around and gone back to where Vijay was waiting. ‘Okay, now drive me home please.’
Instead she’d stood in her dressing gown, like some batty old crone, seemingly speaking to a tree. The tree had looked down on her. Then she’d come inside, shivering, and got back into bed and sobbed like a punished child.
But it had been kind of George to remember, he was a considerate man. And how else would she have spent this whole day? So some time later she’d got up again, not a sobbing child but a seventy-five-year-old woman, and prepared herself slowly to meet George. She’d put on her face. The cream blouse, the straight black skirt, the little black jacket, the pearls. Her small clutch bag. She’d gone downstairs. It was twelve-thirty. She’d felt a little dizzy and strange, she’d felt a little not herself.
Then Vijay had called anyway, as arranged. He’d said, ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Robbins.’ She was really ‘Evie’ or ‘Evie White’ or ‘Ms White’, but she’d learnt—in almost fifty years—to accept the frequently conferred title without fuss. And perhaps today it was the right title, and perhaps Vijay meant it (did he remember?) in that way. She’d smiled and confirmed the name of the restaurant. And twenty minutes later she’d followed the maître d’ to the usual corner table, and there was George, rising from his seat as soon as he saw her.
‘Princess, you look lovely as ever.’
She couldn’t act?
‘Princess’—at seventy-five? Only because Jack had always been the prince, or because (and George had better not forget it) she was controlling director of Rainbow Productions?
But this was not one of their business lunches. Polka-dotted silk had flopped from George’s breast pocket as they sat. Two glasses of champagne were instantly poured. ‘Well here’s to him,’ he had said.
Then, with the fish of the day—she couldn’t afterwards remember which fish it was, but she’d definitely wanted fish—more glasses, of white burgundy. George had tasted, squeezed his lips and sagaciously approved. ‘Bony but creamy,’ he’d said.
For a moment she’d thought he’d meant her.
It was not a business lunch, but there was the ongoing issue of the biography, which George was not inclined to abandon. Several months ago she had said, ‘Not on your nelly, George. Tell your literary-agent friend to go away.’ But perhaps in order to work round to it again, or just because of the nature of the day, he had got biographical anyway.
‘So tell me, Evie—all these years and I’ve never really known. How did you and Jack, how did you first really ...?’
He didn’t know? Such innocence. For over thirty years Jack’s agent? All those lunches with him. Wouldn’t he have got the story anyway, or Jack’s version of it? And now she was going to be put in the position of saying something that conflicted with it? Not on your nelly either, George. Did he think that because a year of her widowhood had respectfully passed, everything might now be up for grabs? He’d be saying next, ‘So tell me, Evie, what happened, what really happened with that magician chap? I forget his name.’
She took a swallow of her wine. She was glad she had already done her sorrow and weeping, but she still might fall back, if needed, on excusing grief. The batty old woman in the garden and the bawling infant had turned into a princess sitting in a Mayfair restaurant, and now she was going to have to play her part, in honourable repayment of George’s kindness, all through what might be a long and challenging lunch. It could hardly be a quick and casual one, given its purpose. And anyway she’d welcomed the means of passing the dreadful hours.
So she had performed her best. And after several glasses of burgundy she couldn’t be sure what she had or hadn’t said.
She had returned in the mellow sunlight of the waning afternoon. Vijay had actually touched his forehead. ‘Have a good evening, Mrs Robbins.’ So the house had entombed her again. Yet there was nowhere, for all the silenced voices, where she would rather be entombed. And the wine had done its work. Now she sat at her dressing table, wondering whether to remove her make-up and half expecting to see in the mirror Jack standing behind her, placing his hands softly on her shoulders.
‘Exhausted, darling? That’s George for you. I know how you feel. I’d take a little nap if I were you.’
But it wasn’t Jack that she saw. It was too brief a glimpse for every detail, but he was in his stage outfit, the last thing she’d seen him in, and she’d recognise those eyes anywhere.
* * *
—
The show must go on. But must it? Who says? When are you allowed to say the show is over now, there’s no more show any more? And anyway the show was always just what it was, a flickering summer concoction at the end of a pier. Jack had said it had had its day, it was all going out with the tide beneath them. He’d put his arm round her.
And in any case it must finish in September. And even in August, high season, you could feel it, the turning of the year, the shortening evenings, autumn lurking over the horizon. There comes a sad point in any holiday when you start to think: Only so much more of this left now, then back to the real world. But if you’re in show business do you have to care about that? Isn’t life a perpetual holiday? Up there on the stage isn’t it all just a breeze, a doddle, a dream? Or that’s what they all believe. Jack used to say, laughing it off, in interviews, ‘One long holiday.’ As if they thought there was no work in it. As if anyone could do it, get up there and do it.
But he was also known to say about his life in the theatre, and fortunately not in interviews, ‘Fuck the real world. Who needs that?’
It was Evie who you might say chose to live in the real world, when she gave up the stage, where she’d disported and dazzled like the best of them, to become Jack Robbins’ wife and, as it proved, rather more than that. What a big gamble that was, and what a big mistake it might have turned out to be. But look how it had paid off. Just look at her now. And all when she might have had her ongoing stage career, not to say marriage to Ronnie Deane, who had even become the ‘Great Pablo’.
But who has heard of the Great Pablo now? That magician chap. Whatever became of him? And Jack never became the Great Jack, or even Sir Jack. But life is unfair, you do or you don’t have your moment, and if the show must come to an end then there’s always the sound theatrical argument: save the best till last.
* * *
—
Ronnie hadn’t said anything.
He’d just looked into Evie’s eyes. Did it need a magician? And he saw that Evie saw that he saw. So what was to be said or done? It was confession time? Accusation time? Or time to carry on in a state of pretence—merciless or merciful pretence, which one would it be?
He had been to see his mother, who’d been there and not there. There was in each dissembling situation that had faced him one after the other a feeling of the world’s having revealed its underlying falsity, as if the two confrontations might have been the same.
He might have turned the tables. He might have unmagicked the magic. He might have really stuck those swords through Evie, truly have sawn her in half. Or just let the thought of such an expedient turn every performance into a possible execution. That scream—was it real?
But of course not. How could he have done this to Evie? And all that stuff with the swords and the saw and the boxes, he’d been wanting to dispense with it for some time. It was just toys. It was just kids’ stuff. It was not real magic.
This was to be the time anyway—when everything was falling apart—when their act really took off and Ronnie Deane, otherwise known as Pablo, but now not just that, even acquired greatness. All in the space of a few summer weeks.
And what might Eric Lawrence, who in his unseen but crucial way had made it all happen, have thought? He might have smiled, and been a little rueful even as he smiled. He’d never been known as the Great Lorenzo.
And what might his mother have thought? Silly question. ‘You come to see your dead mother, Ronnie, and then you go away and call yourself the Great Pablo!’
And Evie? Still just ‘Eve’, only ‘Eve’. Wasn’t that a kind of demotion, a punishment? No. Wouldn’t ‘Eve’ always have its immaculate ring? First of women. And did the world need to be told, to have it confirmed, that for him she would always be the great Eve, the wonderful Eve. And, if only for a little while, his Eve.
‘And now, folks, I want you to meet a friend of mine. I used to call him Pablo, but now I’m going to call him the Great Pablo. You heard what I said, folks, and I mean what I said and you’ll see why in a moment. I want you to give a big hand to the Great Pablo! And I want you to give a big hand too—and I know some of you gents would be only too glad to—to the Great Pablo’s one and only helper—the one and only, the delightful, the delicious, the delorable Eve!’
* * *
—
The moment would come. There would be a pause, a hush, a tingle. Even the audience would know it—‘Come and See with Your Own Eyes!’ Everything else had been a preliminary. This was the famous finale.
How many times, Evie thinks now, did they perform it in that last month or so? No more than thirty. But enough times for it to become legendary and spoken of, even to be named on the billboards. And each time—she could vouch for it—more amazing and (literally) more glowing than the last.
And how was it done? She would never tell, of course she wouldn’t. And for a simple reason. She merely took part in it, she ‘assisted’. She simply did what he told her to do. Well she would, now, wouldn’t she? What else could she do? She had her legs, her famous legs, but she no longer had a leg to stand on.
Ronnie would have the lights dimmed. He was the Great Pablo, so could command such things. Only dimmed and only briefly. Illusions, he was known to say, should always be done in good clear light, otherwise people might suspect it was all just—trickery.
The dimness was just a signal, an anticipation. You might hear a general whisper. Then down in the pit the drummer (he was called Arthur Higgs) would start his own little whispery scuffling. A little gathering shimmer on the cymbals. Then the lights would come up. They were seeing only what they were seeing.
From the wings Ronnie would bring the small round table and place it centre stage, and she would bring the glass of water and—with the customary lift of her knee and flurry of her feathers—place it on the table. Then she would step—pirouette—to one side. It was her role now simply to watch, and the audience might watch him or they might watch her, it was their choice, but in a little while they would be watching neither him nor her, but something, you might say, using the exact word for the situation, that transcended both of them, even, you might say, transcended them all.
He would pick up the glass of water and take a sip, just to show that it was only that, a simple tumbler of water. He would put it back on the table. He would pull from his breast pocket his big white shiny handkerchief. Nothing unusual so far. He would give the audience one of his stares. You think so, you think so—nothing unusual? Then he would drape the handkerchief over the glass and you’d see the handkerchief move, twitch by itself. That was because the glass had turned into a white dove.
Not so unusual either (though try it yourself).
Then he’d lift off the handkerchief, pick up the dove, let it perch for a moment on his fingers before tossing it, fluttering, over the heads of the audience. And it would be gone. It would not be there. How? Had they really seen it in the first place?
But all this was nothing.
He would take the white handkerchief and hold it by the corners between his hands and pass it in front of the table (it was such slick actions that made Evie think of a toreador) and then there would be the glass of water again. He would pick it up and drink, all of it this time, then put the glass back on the table.
Then it would seem that something was nudging, struggling inside his mouth, trying to get out. He’d pull at it. Something white. The white dove? Surely not. The white handkerchief? No, that was back in his pocket. It was the end of a white rope, a thin white rope, just the start. He’d pull out a bit more. Then some more. That’s when she would stop watching and step forward—not without pausing to cock a knee and shake her plumes—and take the end of the rope and carry on the pulling.
Or rather she didn’t pull so much as walk backwards across the stage—some stops again to shimmy and smile as if she knew something the audience didn’t—holding the end of the rope while it still kept coming, more and more, out of Ronnie’s mouth, while Ronnie himself stepped back to his side of the stage as if to make room for this white tongue of rope.
Evie might have said to him, while they were rehearsing—but ‘rehearsing’ by those days was hardly the right word—‘Bloody hell, Ronnie, how do you get so much rope in your mouth?’ But did she dare ask any such silly questions now?
The strange thing was that the rope wasn’t wet or slimy, it was a soft silky thin white rope, white as her own name was Evie White. She would remember the look and the feel of it even half a century later as she sat at a dressing table removing a pearl necklace, letting it slither over her fingers. And the strange thing was that it was like so many things that appeared now in their act. She never saw where they had been beforehand, where they were kept. They just appeared. Like the white dove. Or was there more than one of them? Was there a new one every night?
But the white dove was nothing.
With his mouth full of rope, Ronnie could hardly have answered that question of hers anyway. He just made a gesture with his eyes that she should keep on pulling and walking. It was what he said in any case before they started rehearsing. ‘All you have to do is pull and walk away.’ It seemed like some strange surrendering statement of fact, not just an instruction, so that when she started pulling and the rope just kept coming she had the peculiar and uncomfortable feeling that she was pulling the very stuffing, the very life out of him, and he was letting her do it.
Well, she had let him saw her in half.
All you have to do, Evie, is just pull and walk away. So, every night, she just kept on pulling.
Down in the pit, as the rope kept coming, the drummer would have started up again, with a slow crescendo, his wait-and-see whisking and thrumming. Ronnie would be on the other side of the stage and there would be a stage-width of rope between them before Ronnie finally took his end (s
o it had an end) out of his mouth and held it. Then a strange thing would happen. They’d each hold their end of the rope and start to swing it forward and back, and then to whirl it round and round, faster and faster, like an enormous skipping rope. And the drummer would be doing his stuff, louder and louder. And then—
Then the rope would just disappear, it wouldn’t be there any more, but between them, arching between them, there would be a rainbow. A rainbow, there wasn’t anything else to call it. Stretching right across the stage: a rainbow. The drummer would have stopped, as if himself struck dumb. You could hear the silence, the sound of amazement. And then from somewhere out of the back of the stage would come—was it? Yes, it was—the white dove, flying under the rainbow, and it would land on the rim of the glass, looking a bit dazed and as if it could do with a drink. Then there would be a big drum crash (Ronnie must have had a word with Arthur, he must have bought him a pint or two) and all would go black. No rainbow. End of act.
Except for the bows of course, when the lights came up again—Ronnie standing still and just solemnly dipping his head, but she’d be scissoring with her knees and throwing up her white-gloved arms and generally prancing and cavorting round him and egging the audience on in their applause, as if he really might be the Wizard of Oz.
And perhaps he was.
Was there ever applause like it—they had all seen a rainbow—and could there ever have been such a heralding of a career, a life in magic?
Top billing. And for those last two or three weeks the billboards actually said, ‘Come and See the Famous Rainbow Trick!’ Ronnie let the word ‘trick’ pass. It was the common word. And did he, really, have anything to complain about?
