Illusion

by Stephanie Elmas

  ‘Good old Cornelius.’

  ‘He’s still dancing a jig over his new boy; said he owed it to me.’ Walter paused. ‘They called the baby Walter you know.’

  ‘It is a fine name.’

  ‘Yes, I think so too. That’s why I chose it.’

  ‘You chose your name? I never knew. Why?’

  ‘Because I didn’t have one. It became irksome always being The Boy or That Skinny Runt all the time. So I stole it from the priest who used to visit us. He was always drunk so I didn’t think he had much need for it.’

  ‘And Balanchine? Where did you find that?’

  ‘A Mile End fishmonger; although he spelt it differently if I recall correctly. Now, this is one trick I will be performing for our Mr Hearst.’

  Walter opened a box to reveal an elegant revolver and placed it in Tom’s hand. ‘See these?’ he said, holding two bullets between his thumb and forefinger. ‘They’re made from wax.’ Tom examined the bullets carefully; they looked real enough to him. Walter wheeled a metal frame supporting a sheet of glass into the middle of the room. He loaded one of the bullets into the revolver and slotted the other between his right cheek and bottom teeth.

  ‘Now, I’m going to stand on one side of this glass here, like this. And you, you need to stand on the other side and shoot me through the glass with that gun,’ he said.

  ‘Shoot you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Tom felt the cool metal of the revolver grow warm in his hands.

  Walter looked amused. ‘You don’t have to worry. That bullet is only powerful enough to break the glass. It’ll dissolve on impact.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘You have my word.’

  Tom moved back a few paces behind the glass. He’d never held a gun before. The reality of it felt like the embodiment of ugliness in his hand; its elegance a cruel joke.

  ‘Ready?’

  ‘Ready.’

  The shot sounded realistic enough; so loud that it vibrated through the length of Tom’s arm and make his ears buzz. The glass came crashing down like a waterfall. Sinbad momentarily looked up from his rug, rolled over and went back to sleep. Tom was shaking. When he looked up at Walter, his friend’s face was deadly serious. He raised his bony hand to his chest, as if pressing down on a wound.

  ‘Walter? Walter, are you alright?’

  Walter lowered his hand again and widened his lips, revealing his teeth in a sort of grimace. Clenched between them was the bullet he’d been hiding in his mouth.

  ‘Caught it!’ he proclaimed triumphantly, spitting the bullet out.

  Tom took a long, deep breath. ‘Please don’t do that again.’

  ‘Impressive though, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, very.’

  ‘It’s an old one but the toffs will like it. They love guns, killing, wounding, all of that.’

  ‘How do you get away with it?’ Tom said, throwing himself back in an old chair.

  ‘With what?’

  ‘I don’t know, all these stunts of yours. All this … magic!’

  Walter pulled out his pipe. ‘Magic? There’s no such thing. Not in the literal sense anyway. Only illusion, my friend.’ He lit his pipe and puffed deeply on it, his face suddenly becoming quite wistful. ‘When I was travelling I met a man who said he could see into people’s souls. He said the soul lies at the core of a human being. It is the one true thing in us, a spiritual spine that holds us up. Everything else wrapped around it is illusion, fantasy, the stuff that makes it possible for us to want to stay alive. Like the protective bark of a tree. I became that man’s student, for a time.’

  ‘And did he manage to teach you? Can you see into people’s souls now?’

  Walter puffed dreamily into the air. ‘I’m getting closer I think. I’m learning, slowly.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘By watching, always watching everyone around me. By never missing a detail.’

  ‘Then you must be watching me, surely? What can you see inside my soul?’

  Walter blinked thoughtfully. ‘I see a brave man. Braver than he thinks.’

  Tom smiled and then his smile turned into a laugh. ‘Remember when we had to kill Gloria?’

  ‘The pig?’

  ‘Yes. God, I just couldn’t do it! I certainly wasn’t brave then. She was a sweet thing.’

  ‘And we were starving. I risked my life stealing that animal!’

  But then Walter’s face became serious again. He stared at Tom fixedly.

  ‘I see a man who shouldn’t marry a woman simply because she loves him,’ he said.

  For a moment there was silence and then it was broken by the loud thud of the door opening. Kayan trotted in, bringing a wave of cold air behind him. Sinbad rose up to say hello, pressing his muzzle into the boy’s leg.

  ‘Six hours until the show,’ said Walter, flipping out a pocket-watch. ‘Do you think we’re ready?’

  *

  Mr Hearst’s Mayfair home made the Gallop house seem humble. This was a different scale of wealth that Tom had never encountered before. It wasn’t full of swirling gold and stuffed furniture; it didn’t seem to need it. The vast marble entrance and columns spoke for themselves. Everything seemed pale and serene. There were great portraits on the walls, divided at equal intervals. None of the paintings seemed to be of family members but were mostly Roman and Grecian scenes: a lot of fat emperors flanked by slaves.

  They were ushered into the library, where they were told to wait for Mr Hearst. It was a panelled room with furniture upholstered in hard, green leather. Above the fireplace was an unsettling portrait of two boys. It seemed strange because although the boys posed together for the picture, they were alarmingly at odds. The older boy, or at least the larger of the two, seemed to have the face of an adult and was uncannily familiar. He stood slightly askew, as if he was hiding something from the painter, and he had a half angry smile on his slim mouth.

  The other boy was an invalid, sitting in an oversized bath-chair next to him. The size of the bath-chair seemed disproportionate with the picture and made the second boy look perhaps smaller than he really was and slightly hunched. The hunching wasn’t helped by the fact that the older boy had a hand resting on his shoulder. Instead of looking gentle and reassuring, the hand looked tense, as if it were almost pinching the boy beneath it. The bath-chair boy had a plumper face and slightly flushed cheeks. He wasn’t smiling. His faced looked very glum.

  The library door opened and a slim man walked in. His face came into the light.

  ‘Good Evening Gentlemen, I am Mr Hearst.’

  Tom knew him instantly. It was the same hawk-faced man who’d been in the company of Tamara and her Mother on the night of the party. His heart lurched. Could this mean that she might be here again, tonight? He felt his face break into a stupid grin.

  ‘Good Evening, Mr Hearst. I am Tom Winter and this is Walter Balanchine. We are at your service tonight.’

  Walter stepped forward. His costume was no less extraordinary than the one he had worn the last time he performed. He was wearing a suit this time, but made out of blood red velvet. Although it was tightly cut, it still, nevertheless, hung in folds around him. The ever present chain of charms rattled as he moved. Another new one had been added: a turquoise bead. ‘An eye to ward off all things evil,’ he’d explained.

  ‘What a pleasure to have you gentlemen here,’ said Mr Hearst. His voice was impossibly smooth, like oil. ‘I was most impressed by your performance last week. Not with all the disappearing nonsense and tricks of light. That’s all been done before of course. But I liked the hypnosis. Yes, yes that was rather good.’

  As he spoke, he ran the palm of his right hand over his balding skull. Walter watched this performance with intent, unblinking eyes, his mouth a perfect straight line. Tom knew this look very well indeed.

  ‘Yes,’ the man carried on. ‘We have a cripple in the house you see. His mood is rather out of sorts, especially in the miserable weather. Some of your hypnosis pranks m
ight be just the ticket, and you can do some of your other tricks as well of course.’

  He waved his hand dismissively and then ran it across his skull again in the same way. ‘I trust you have everything you need in this room? We’re a small party, ten of us or so. There are some chairs, as you see. We will enter in thirty minutes.’

  Walter said nothing in response. His eyes were still locked on the man in the deepest concentration.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Tom. ‘It will all be ready.’

  Walter did little to help as Tom and Kayan hastily set up the show. Instead he wandered about the room, opening drawers, fiddling with the ornaments, staring long and hard at the portrait of the two boys. Sinbad had not accompanied them tonight, although this was never something that Tom could be entirely certain of, and Cornelius had been unable to attend. He regretted having misjudged Cornelius initially; the man had been remarkable at their last performance. His absence now, along with Walter’s sudden detached mood, made Tom feel jittery. Added to this was the prospect of seeing Tamara again. Could she possibly be in this house, right now? He imagined her out in that hallway, shivering slightly in the midst of all the austere marble, and then entering the room: smiling at him as she did before and filling the air with all that almond eyed loveliness.

  When he finally heard the approaching voices of their gathering audience, Tom felt even more nervous. The set they’d created was far plainer than before, but he knew that the illusions would impress them; if only Walter could pull himself out of this strange mood.

  ‘I have a bad, bad feeling,’ Walter murmured.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I looked into that man’s soul.’

  ‘What, Mr Hearst?’

  Walter nodded.

  ‘What did you see?’

  ‘Darkness.’

  The door swung open and several men in smart evening dress entered, the aroma of cigars wafting with them into the room. Behind them was Tamara. Tamara. It was the first time in Tom’s life that he’d hoped madly for something and it had instantly come true; nothing short of miraculous. A charge of sheer elation surged through him.

  She really was there, standing across the room from him, dressed in a plain, sweeping gown of deep indigo. Again he was struck by how different she seemed from the other rich young women he’d come across. He remembered how she’d stood out before at the party; a dark pillar of elegance in the midst of all those flouncy, flowery girls. Her hair hung looser this time, falling in brown, snake-like tendrils down her back. How he longed to draw his fingers through them, to feel their texture and their richness.

  Their eyes found each other across the room; a moment of uncanny disbelief suspended between them. He saw the corner of her mouth twitch, as if she wanted to say something but then thought better of it. Like last time, he felt the same instinctive urge to move towards her, his heart drumming against his chest. If only a world existed where he could do such a thing; where all the shoddy backdrops of society could come crashing down and he could breathe and speak and act as he wished. He clenched his hands into fists instead.

  And yet she continued to return his gaze, her face now demure and serious. For a brief moment she swept the room with a nervous glance but then returned to him again. Her eyes were like liquid: so intense that they seemed to be almost speaking to him. No, not just speaking…confiding. He felt his own eyes narrow, trying to understand. But their exchange had lasted too long; the room was filling and she turned her face away as if telling him that he should do the same.

  Tom fumbled with chairs and pieces of scenery. He helped guests to their seats in a sort of dreamlike state, his insides turning somersaults. He fought desperately to prevent his eyes from finding Tamara again too soon, but caught glimpses nonetheless. When he turned around he found that Walter was watching him. The weight of his friend’s stare was almost solid.

  Then Tamara’s mother entered the room. She was alone: tall and elegant as he remembered her, but with a face so sour that she seemed no warmer or approachable than a statue. Her presence set his teeth on edge. He realised that she was, quite frankly, the most terrifying woman he’d ever laid eyes on. When considering the string of workhouse fishwives whose ‘care’ he’d had the misfortune of being thrust into during his boyhood, this revelation came to him as a shock. But it was her polarity to those screeching, free fisted women that truly unnerved him. It was Tamara’s mother’s silence; her stony, unengaging presence that made his spine cringe. And yet still, still, there was something of Tamara’s loveliness nestling in that face. It was no more than a shadow behind glass, but it was there.

  When the guests had finally settled in their seats, a hush descended on the room and Mr Hearst entered. He was accompanied by a taller, dark haired man, who walked with the aid of two sticks. The man had a youthful face but was dressed in an extraordinarily bulky and old-fashioned suit, which would have been far better suited to a man three times his age. He teetered quite pathetically on legs far too spindly to match the rest of his body. Or perhaps it was just the suit that made him look so disproportionate. Mr Hearst fretted over him, edging him along in the style of a nursemaid. Although Mr Hearst seemed to be the older of the two, he wore a far better fitting suit and his limbs were agile and almost graceful in comparison.

  With great solemnity Mr Hearst settled the man into a chair. ‘That’s it, boy,’ he murmured, moving the walking sticks out of the way. He arranged the man’s legs and even offered him a clean handkerchief. The rest of the audience sat in patient silence, allowing Mr Hearst to fret around the man for what seemed like a very long time. Tom was beginning to feel as if he and Walter and Kayan were fast becoming superfluous to this performance. It seemed wrong to judge their host so harshly; he was demonstrating extreme care and devotion to this man after all. But Tom couldn’t help but suspect that Mr Hearst was rather enjoying himself as well. His grand gestures: the way he brushed the creases out of the man’s jacket, adjusted his chair again and again, were performed with a vigour and relish that any actor might be proud of.

  When Mr Hearst was finally happy with his arrangements, he moved to his chair, momentarily squeezing the invalid’s shoulder first. But it wasn’t a gentle, reassuring squeeze; Tom could tell that from the flicker of pain that darted across the younger man’s face. No, it was exactly the same as the action Tom had spotted in the portrait of the two boys. And these men were undoubtedly the same grown versions of those models. Brothers, he presumed, although why would Mr Hearst refer to his brother as ‘boy’?

  At last Walter stepped forward and drew breath to speak. But before he had even uttered a word, Mr Hearst stood up again.

  ‘We are all very pleased to have Mr Balanchine and his associate Mr Winter here tonight,’ he began in his oily voice. ‘Our performers do not realise that I kept them as a secret from my guests until only a short time ago.’ There were a few appreciative grunts and murmurs from the assembled audience. ‘Might we begin with a little hypnosis to raise the mood? The boy will particularly delight in it, I am sure.’

  The younger man nodded and muttered his approval. But Walter didn’t move a muscle; his eyes seemed to be devouring everything that Mr Hearst and the ‘boy’ had to offer. A murmur of tension fluttered across the room.

  ‘Of course,’ Walter replied at last in a low voice. ‘Do we have any volunteers?’

  Tom exhaled deeply, warm relief running through him. For a moment he’d been convinced that Walter would refuse to perform anything at all.

  The group seemed hesitant. ‘You have my assurance that no harm will come to you,’ urged Walter. ‘Sir, would you mind joining me on the stage?’

  Walter had picked on a portly gentleman of middle age with great whiskers on the sides of his face that sloped down and then up again like the branches of a fir tree. The man gulped rather reluctantly but then stood up.

  ‘May I ask your name, sir?’

  ‘Mr Jeffries,’ boomed the man.

  ‘Then Mr Jeffries
, I would like you to look deeply into my eyes. Very deeply. And now the rest of this room is falling away. You are no longer in a house in London anymore. Oh no. You are now at the very summit of a great barren mountain. There are no caves to hide in, no trees to shelter under. And in the distance you see a shape approaching in the sky.’

  As if from nowhere Walter produced a small bird in his hand, a sweet little robin with his head cocked to one side. There were small cries of delight from the audience. Walter took several paces back and then raised the robin up high on his extended hand.

  ‘In a moment you will see an approaching shape in the sky, Mr Jeffries. It is a gigantic flying dragon, breathing fire at you from deep inside its lungs. As it swoops by you will throw yourself down in terror, clutching your head in fear of being caught by the flames!’

  With this, Walter let the robin go and it happily spread its small wings and swooped over the man’s head on the way to the inviting branch of a chandelier. Mr Jeffries threw himself to the floor, trembling and clutching at his whiskers.

  ‘Help! Help me, oh it’s burning!’

  The audience fell into an uproar of laughter. Tamara’s face had lit up and she covered her mouth with her hands. Mr Hearst was laughing raucously and the young man, the ‘boy’ next to him, tittered uncontrollably like a small child.

  ‘The boy likes it!’ boomed Mr Hearst, ‘Go on, more more!’

  The only person who didn’t seem to be amused by the display, was Tamara’s mother. She watched with steely concentration, one eyebrow raised almost into her hairline. And Tom noticed that, just like before, Mr Hearst was examining her reaction with an avid interest. He didn’t appear to be unsettled by his guest’s stony reaction. It fact, it almost seemed to spur his laughter on even more.

  Walter motioned to the robin and the bird swooped across the room again. This time Mr Jeffries bent down even lower, his forehead actually pressed against the floor.

  ‘Don’t touch me, get off!’ he cried.

  The audience roared.