Chance Developments: Unexpected Love Stories

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “I can make him disappear,” said Eddie. “You want to see?”

  “What do you need?”

  Eddie pointed to a stack of small empty crates nearby. “Those boxes—can I use those?”

  The manager nodded. “You make the dog disappear then. I’m watching.”

  Eddie arranged the boxes in a circle. Then he fetched the dog, who seemed not to object to having an upended crate put over him. From within a few barks could be heard—then silence.

  “Right,” said Eddie. “Tell me which box the dog is in.”

  The manager snorted. “The one you put him under.”

  “Yes, but which one is that?”

  The manager stepped forward and kicked at the crate. “That one. I saw you.”

  “Would you like to pick the box up?” said Eddie.

  The manager shrugged. “There’ll be a dog underneath it.”

  He reached forward and lifted the box. There was nothing underneath it. “Well, I’ll be darned,” he said. “How did that dog get out of there?”

  A bark came from underneath another crate. The manager walked over to it, lifted it up, and was greeted by the dog, who rushed forward to lick his hands.

  “There’s your dog,” said Eddie.

  The manager looked at him. “What else can you do?” he asked.

  “I can saw a woman in half,” said Eddie. “Not really, of course, but they’ll think I have.”

  “I seen that once,” said the manager. “Cut right through this dame and then she jumps up out of a suitcase. Amazing.” He paused. “You’ll need some stage clothes. I’ll take you to Ruby. She’ll fix you up.”

  —

  Ruby was a woman in her mid-thirties. She had a friendly, open expression and Eddie liked her from the moment he met her.

  “Ruby has a ventriloquism act,” explained the manager. “She’s the best ventriloquist in Western Canada.”

  “Oh, come on, George,” said Ruby. “You don’t want to be confusing this young man. I do my best, but I’m certainly not the best.”

  “In my book you are,” said the manager. “Anyway, Ruby, this young man is Eddie Beaulieu from Kingston, Ontario. He’s just joined us. He’s going to be doing a conjuring act and will need some clothes. Can you run something up for him?”

  Ruby moved Eddie into the centre of the small workroom in which they had found her. She looked at him appraisingly. “Shouldn’t be difficult,” she said. “We’ve got a jacket that’ll fit like a glove and I can take the trousers in a bit. Yes, I’ll fix him up.”

  The manager left. Ruby reached for a bag and took out a tape measure. She measured his waist, wrote some figures down in a notebook, and then looked at her watch. “I usually have a cup of tea at about this time. Over in my trailer. You can come and meet Frank.”

  “Is he your husband?” asked Eddie.

  “Gracious, no,” said Ruby. “I just make tea for Frank and some of the boys, if they happen to be around. I think the others have gone off to get some animal feed. It’ll just be Frank.”

  They walked round the side of the warehouse to where the trailers were parked. Ruby’s was painted green and had a set of polished metal steps outside it. She ushered Eddie in.

  Frank was sitting on a folding canvas chair. He was a man about the same age as Ruby, and had a large white hat balanced on one knee. Ruby introduced them.

  “Frank,” she said, “you tell Eddie what you do.”

  “I got a lion,” said Frank. “I show him. And I got a dwarf—a musical dwarf. I’m his agent. He can’t look after himself because he’s not quite…” He tapped his head.

  “He plays great music,” said Ruby. “He has a tuba which is a bit bigger than he is. He plays it real well.”

  “They like that,” said Frank. “They laugh fit to burst when Charles comes in. You should hear them.”

  Ruby lit the gas stove under the kettle. “Some people say that it’s cruel, but it isn’t, you know. Charles loves the attention.”

  “And he makes good money,” said Frank. “I take ten per cent—not a dollar more. And I look after him.”

  Ruby was at pains to confirm this. “Charles couldn’t do without Frank, Eddie. He gets into trouble with the cops, you see.”

  “We don’t talk about that, Ruby.” He turned to Eddie. “It doesn’t happen very often, but sometimes Charles gets a bit excited and we have to square it with the cops. He doesn’t really mean any harm.”

  “If it wasn’t for Frank,” said Ruby, “Charles could easily be in prison.” She paused. “Somebody said they’ve got a jail for dwarves up in the Yukon somewhere. You heard that, Frank?”

  “Could be,” said Frank.

  “Small cells,” said Ruby.

  Tea was poured. Eddie told them about the act he was hoping to do. He went on to say a little bit about Pelmanism.

  “Sounds interesting,” said Ruby, glancing at Frank.

  “I reckon so,” said Frank.

  Then Ruby said, “You’d better meet Harold.”

  “Yes,” said Frank. “Harold is a very important fellow. He’ll be dying to meet you.”

  Ruby went to a large cupboard and opened the door.

  “Here’s Harold,” she said.

  Harold was a ventriloquist’s doll of classic appearance—rosy-cheeked, wide-eyed, and wearing a smart morning suit. She sat down with Harold on her knee, her arm up the back of Harold’s jacket.

  “So who is this young man?” asked Harold, in a high-pitched voice.

  “This here is Eddie,” said Ruby.

  Harold’s eyes widened. Mechanically operated eyelashes fluttered. “Very pleased to meet you, young fellow,” he said. “You ever been kissed?”

  “Harold!” scolded Ruby.

  “I was only asking,” said Harold, his mechanical lips moving in time to his words. “A smart young fellow like him, all the girls going to want to kiss him!”

  “Yes, but you don’t have to spell it out,” said Frank.

  “You shut your trap!” snapped Harold.

  “Cupboard for you,” said Ruby, rising to her feet. She bundled Harold into the cupboard and closed the door.

  “That’s a great act,” Eddie complimented her. “I didn’t see your lips moving at all.”

  “That’s why she’s the best,” said Frank. “Everywhere we go, they love her. Edmonton, Calgary, down in Washington State. There isn’t a place that doesn’t love Ruby.”

  “You’re too kind to me,” said Ruby. “Why don’t you go and introduce Eddie to Mackenzie King?”

  “My lion,” said Frank. “Would you like to meet him, Eddie?”

  He saw the look of puzzlement on Eddie’s face. “Yes, same name as the Prime Minister. William Lyon Mackenzie King, except he—my lion—spells it William Lion Mackenzie King—Lion with an i.”

  Ruby broke out laughing. “Frank doesn’t give the audience the full name, you see—some of them might think it disrespectful. So he just introduces him as King, and nobody bats an eyelid.”

  Eddie smiled. “Great joke,” he said.

  “Well, I think so,” said Frank.

  —

  “He wouldn’t hurt a fly,” said Frank. “Look at him. Lazy piece of work.”

  Eddie approached the bars of the cage somewhat gingerly. The lion was lying on the floor of his cage, his eyes closed, his tail flicking at flies.

  “I brought him up from San Diego,” said Frank. “He’d lived there for four years. He was born in Texas, they said. Down in El Paso. They live up to twenty years in captivity, these creatures. Out in the wild they only get ten, twelve years maybe. Depends on their luck.”

  Eddie watched the lion. One of his eyes was opening now. It was a strange, tawny colour, thought Eddie: just the colour you would expect a lion’s eye to be.

  “I get him to jump on to a stool,” said Frank. “Then he leaps through a hoop. That’s about it, I suppose.” He paused. “I never use fire. Some guys use fire—but that terrifies them, you know. A lion hates
fire more than anything else. It’s cruel to make them jump through burning rings. I’ve got no time for that.”

  Eddie agreed. “That’s a great name you’ve given him. It suits him.”

  Frank smiled. “I never liked that fellow Mackenzie King,” he said. “Something about him. Don’t know what it is.”

  Eddie was silent.

  “And you?” asked Frank. “You like him back east?”

  Eddie hesitated. “I could tell you something,” he said.

  “Oh yes? What?”

  Eddie lowered his voice although they were alone. “He’s in touch with the other side.”

  Frank frowned. “With the Opposition? The Conservative Party? I guess the Liberals have to talk to them…”

  Eddie shook his head. “No, not the other political side…the other side. You know? When you die you go over to the other side. That other side.”

  “Oh, I see. You mean he’s a…what do you call them folks? A spiritualist?”

  “Yes,” said Eddie. “I’m not criticising him for it, of course. I don’t think you should close your mind to things like that.”

  Frank was suspicious. “How do you know? I never saw anything about that in the papers—at least not over here.”

  “There hasn’t been anything,” said Eddie. “I know because I’ve met the lady who tells his fortune.”

  Frank still looked doubtful. “Lots of people make things up, you know.”

  “Not her,” said Eddie. “I know her because she lives in Kingston. I met her at a fair—she was telling fortunes. She’s called Mrs. Bleaney. I asked her to teach me, and she did. I went to her place a lot and I learned all about fortune-telling. She called me her young disciple.”

  “And Mackenzie King goes there? To her place?”

  Eddie nodded. “She says that he comes in private. She tells him what to do.”

  Frank gasped. “Hold on—you’re telling me that this fortune-teller in Kingston tells the Prime Minister of Canada what to do?”

  “Yes,” said Eddie. He sounded defensive. “Except sometimes it doesn’t work out very well. Fortune-tellers can make mistakes—same as anyone else.”

  “And she did?”

  “Yes, she said to me that she had told Mackenzie King he’d win an election, and he didn’t.”

  Frank clapped his hands together with delight. “They don’t like that, those guys in Ottawa. They don’t like that, do they?”

  “She probably just misheard,” said Eddie. “Sometimes the people on the other side can be indistinct.”

  Frank’s eyes narrowed. “Really? You think that?”

  “Oh, there’s a lot of proof of that,” said Eddie.

  5

  They toured British Columbia for six weeks. Eddie’s act proved popular, eliciting gasps of astonishment from the audience as he made the human cannonball’s dog disappear and then reappear in a totally unexpected place. Occasionally he would do the same with a child, if there were a suitable volunteer from the audience, but the manager eventually vetoed that after a mother became distraught, believing her child really had dematerialised.

  After a month, Mr. Vink, who had returned to Toronto, wrote to Mr. Beaulieu and said that he would not be required to send any further money. “The report I have from my manager over there is that your boy is doing really well,” he said. “I shall take over the payment of his salary now and I shall wire back the sum you have just sent me. He is worth every cent, they tell me.” This was followed by some news of his stomach. “I’m feeling so much better, you’ll be pleased to hear. I can eat anything I fancy (not that I do, mind) and that acidic feeling I had is a thing of the past.”

  Mr. Beaulieu showed the letter to his wife. He found it difficult to believe, but it seemed that Eddie had found what he was looking for.

  “He’s obviously working hard,” Mrs. Beaulieu said. “But do you think he’s happy, Aristide?”

  Mr. Beaulieu shrugged. “What’s happiness?” he asked. “You ever found a good definition of it?”

  Had they asked Eddie that question, they would have had an uncomplicated answer. Happiness, he thought, was being able to do what you want to do—and what he was now doing was exactly what he had always wished to do. After each performance, with the audience’s applause ringing in his ears, he felt almost as if he had to pinch himself. This is me, he thought; they’re clapping me.

  The friends he had made right at the beginning, when he had first joined the circus in New Westminster, continued to be good friends. Frank only very occasionally asked for his help—mostly with collecting meat from the butcher for William Lion Mackenzie King—or occasionally with some small maintenance chore. As his conjuring act became more and more popular, the manager relieved him of his ticket collecting and clearing-up duties and assigned these, instead, to a boy whom they had engaged in Calgary—a sullen youth with an angry, pock-marked skin and shifty eyes.

  Eddie told this youth’s fortune for him. “You’re going to get into trouble,” he said, pointing to a line on the boy’s hand. “Big trouble, it seems.”

  “What’s new?” muttered the boy.

  He struck up a friendship with the dwarf, who also asked for his fortune to be told. “You’re going to be big,” said Eddie, hastily correcting himself. “I mean, your career will be big.”

  The dwarf looked at him reproachfully.

  “And rich,” said Eddie quickly. “Look at this fortune line. See that? That tells us everything we need to know. There’s big money coming your way.”

  Charles told Eddie something about himself. “I’ve been entertaining since I was ten,” he said. “My father left home and I had to earn money to keep my mother. She’s too small to work. Mind you, I’m not complaining. I have a good time. I get to laugh a lot and I make good money.” He paused, and pushed his hand back towards Eddie. “Do you see anything there about the police?” he asked.

  Eddie looked. “No, nothing.”

  “You darn sure?”

  “Yes, I’m darn sure. There’s nothing there about the police. Nothing.”

  “Good,” said Charles. “That’s the way I like it.” Then he said, “Ruby? What do you think of her, Eddie?”

  “I like her.”

  Charles nodded. “You think she likes you?”

  “I hope so,” said Eddie.

  “Well,” said the dwarf, “I can tell you something. Ruby thinks you’re great. She said as much to me. She said, ‘Eddie’s great.’ Those were her exact words.”

  Eddie beamed with pleasure. So Ruby thought highly of him? Well, the feeling was entirely reciprocated. He admired Ruby. He liked her cheerful expression; he liked her sense of humour. He liked the way she made up witty remarks for Harold, no matter what the context was. He admired her style.

  Was it possible, he wondered, that Ruby liked him in that way? He found the idea intriguing—and exciting. She was quite a bit older than him, of course, but he did not think that mattered. Older women were far more interesting than those vacuous girls of eighteen or nineteen. They were just interested in their appearance, he felt. They thought about their clothes and their complexion all the time; they never read anything about anything. They were a lost cause to Pelmanism—they wouldn’t have the sticking power. Useless girls. Useless.

  —

  Ruby and Frank discussed Eddie’s progress.

  “You know something, Rube?” Frank remarked one evening. “Young Eddie’s born for this particular life. He’s got circus written all over him. What do you think?”

  They were sitting in Ruby’s trailer, passing the hour or so before the show was due to begin in the drinking of tea and catching up on the day’s events. Ruby made sandwiches for these occasions, including the egg and cress sandwiches that were Frank’s one major weakness.

  “You’re right, Frank,” she said. “Some people have it—others don’t.”

  “You could probably say that about most jobs, of course,” said Frank. “Those folks over in Ottawa, for instance. T
hey need to be a certain type of person. Mackenzie King, for instance—not our Mackenzie King, of course—the Prime Minister. He must want to be Prime Minister. He must love it.”

  “He works hard enough to keep it,” said Ruby.

  “Poor fellow,” mused Frank. “He’s lost so many members of his family. He must be mighty lonely up there. Driven him to this spiritualism stuff, Eddie says.”

  “Eddie? What does he know about it?”

  “Apparently he knows this woman in Kingston who’s a medium of some sort. She says the Prime Minister comes to see her regularly. Gets his fortune told. Eddie’s interested in that stuff.”

  Ruby shook her head. “Leave well alone, I always say.”

  “I’m inclined to agree,” said Frank.

  “He needs to meet somebody, Frank. He needs to meet a girl. I’ve seen it so often, you know—a young man takes himself too seriously, goes on about something, and then he meets a girl and you don’t hear much more from him.”

  Frank wondered whether Pelmanism would be forgotten if Eddie met a girl. Was that what Ruby meant?

  “Yes,” she said. “Girls aren’t interested in Pelmanism, Frank. He’d learn pretty quickly not to talk about it if he met a nice girl.”

  Ruby lapsed into silence, prompting an enquiry from Frank: “You all right, Rube?”

  “Thinking,” she said, and then, “Jack’s got a niece, you know. Over in Saskatoon. She’s about Eddie’s age—maybe a bit younger. Jack tells me that her parents are keen to find a suitable young man for her. They haven’t had much luck up to now.”

  Jack was the human cannonball.

  “Do you think you could try to get them together?” Frank asked.

  “I don’t see why not,” said Ruby. “I’ll have a word with Jack. He likes Eddie, you know.”

  “I believe Eddie told him he had a great future,” Frank said. “Not that I’m suggesting that’s the reason why Jack likes him. But it helps, I think. Somebody comes along and tells you you’ve got a great future…well, it’s human nature, isn’t it?”

  Ruby laughed. “The other day he asked if he could tell my fortune.”

  “And?”

  She shrugged. “Well, I agreed. I don’t believe any of that. Gypsies and so on. Tarot cards.”