by George

by Wesley Stace

  I was numb for the entire performance. I heard the introduction (“Ventriloquism without a safety net!”). I saw her conservative swoop. I heard the audience’s unabashed enthusiasm. I saw the bows and felt the rumble that demanded an encore, and then another. I didn’t see the standing ovation but heard it announced by the snapping of seats. Yes, all that: but I was numb.

  At the party afterwards, we sat in the corner, sulking amidst the popping merriment, unimpressed with the floor show. A lovely figure of a girl with delicate jaw and deep brown eyes, her black hair fashionably bobbed, flitted around the dressing room in a minuscule piece of chiffon over which a purple robe was sashed lazily at the front. She landed, as if by chance, on Joe and gave him the glad eye. After a few moments, Echo snatched her away: “You can’t monopolize him all night, Phyllis dear. Come hither and meet someone who can do your career some good. Joe,” she added in admonishment, “not your type!” before turning to greet the incoming “Nigel!” Echo had moved on since the matinée idol, though her new companion, a recent find, was almost his double, a coat flapping around him as though a great gale were whipping through the green room.

  “Soon as I could, darling, soon as I could!” said Nigel, before his exhalation bathed the room in a smoky Turkish haze.

  “You missed it!” said Echo, after he proffered his silver case. I had the horrid impression that she wasn’t referring to our début, but Nigel, to his credit, assumed otherwise.

  “How was it, Joe? How did it go, old man?” He clapped Joe on the back, holding his cigarette at an arm’s stretch away while luxuriating in his own emanations.

  “Very well, thank you. How was yours?”

  “My female lead, the dread Amelia . . . You’re the specialist, but it’s I that am acting with a dummy! Let me tell you . . .”

  “Tell me, Nigel,” said Echo as she bore him away.

  * * *

  There were four more shows that week. We opened the second night with off-the-cuff banter, as we had on the first. Although it went quite as well (in fact, better), Echo again reined us in with frantic mime, this time vacating her post stage left before our turn was done. Before the third show, she told Joe (in front of Tubby, when she could perfectly well have told him at luncheon that afternoon): “I don’t know what you’re trying at the beginning, but it makes the show look a trifle unprofessional. If you don’t mind. Thank you, darling.”

  Without comment, this most enjoyable part of the act was cut. The thought of regurgitating the same mediocre stuff night after night stuck in my craw. Seeing the week out would be agony. The third night was our own fault — we underperformed. Though we did not walk off to the sound of our own footsteps, the journey was inordinately lonely.

  “Going from strength to strength, Joey,” said Echo in the wings, barely having to raise her voice above the modest applause.

  “They loved you,” sneered Narcissus. I can imagine you get a little jaded in the Indian summer of your career, tired of a younger generation snapping at your heels, but there was no excuse for his behaviour; his spite unsettled me.

  Despite this, the first chords of “Say Her Name Once More” drew us magnetically to the stage every night, moths to its footlights. And every night, the same rigmarole: the trapeze, the jokes, the scrupulously well planned ad-libs. And every night, the applause, the ovation, the bouquets and bows.

  Oh, she deserved it. She gave herself entirely to her performance. She wrote herself on a huge canvas to be read by all. And he lived too. They drew breath as one.

  The end of the run found Joe hugely relieved, and his mood lightened. Back in his room amidst the comfort of his books, he withdrew into his writing, neglecting worldly ends. Although the Fol-de-Rols was over with until the Easter season, there was never a gap in Echo’s calendar, and we saw less of her than ever. Joe indicated her colourfully stamped postcard that spoke enthusiastically of spring in Blackpool and a summer season in Brighton, our participation taken for granted.

  “Spare us!” he begged no one.

  Perhaps another young man could have found salvation in a pal, a confidant, or a girl and a marriage, a family in which he could take refuge. But who would have this awkward, shy man? And how besides could he meet someone? Not at the Fol-de-Rols, that was certain. Green Room Phyllis would have eaten him alive.

  I saw it now. It was to be me against Narcissus, and Joe against Echo. We needed all the help we could get. We would never find our true voices if Joe was nothing but a pale imitation of his mother and I of her boy: we wouldn’t rise higher on the bill wearing their hand-me-downs. Echo offered him one hand and pushed him down with the other. She had him exactly where she wanted him.

  It had to end. At least he had enough rebellion in him to know that. It was time to fend for himself, without his mother, without the passport of the family name, without, even, me.

  I was abandoned in my box. For many months.

  Resuscitation came for an unlikely reason, from an unlikely source.

  There had been a crisis. Due to a shipping mishap, Narcissus would not arrive in time for Echo’s opening performance at Daly’s Theatre. The telegram had arrived too late for her to call up one of her ventriloquist friends (and they were few enough anyway), and Ogilvy & Son of Brighton were mourning the death of their senior partner and thus unable to offer an immediate replacement. Desperate times call for desperate measures and, as a last resort, Echo had come searching for me, believing that I would do.

  She brought an accomplice, a large woman, wearing a tent of a dress printed with huge violets, who looked me up and down as though I were standing in front of her in nothing but socks and garters. An attractive woman, the girl next door’s ample friend, she had large glasses, a big smile, and a vast, unconquerable range of bosom hidden in the flower show of her marquee. About thirty years old, she spoke with the trace of a West Country accent, and had come to London to stay with her cousin Diane the dresser with the thought of looking for work on or near the stage. She’d become a familiar face at Echo’s various London appearances over the past year. Originally, Diane had advised her to avoid the diva, even to avoid looking at her if possible, but Echo had taken a shine to this forthright, motherly woman who seemed more Echo’s age than her own. She was called Queenie.

  Two hours later, I found myself in Narcissus’s dressing room, faced with a travelling steamer trunk that housed a collection of his identical outfits. Various points of view were advanced as to whether I should be dressed like Narcissus, if the audience would silently accept such an extremely poor substitute, or whether, if we let me remain myself, jokes might be inserted to cover for the fact that I obviously wasn’t Narcissus. Given the nature of Echo’s act (as permanent as the Pyramids, possibly dating from the same era), it was decided that I should be disguised and presented without comment. It was demeaning to have to substitute for that Nasty Narcissus, grotesque to be dressed like him, to pretend to be him. And yet, and yet, I was out of that box! How could there not be some novel aspect to the whole situation that would save the day?

  Diane had to lavish far more time on me than she had predicted, which put Echo in a tetchy mood, and Queenie did double duty, assisting with any of the star’s other demands. The help chatted as they worked, conversations unhindered by the various hairgrips and cigarettes between their lips. When they were finished, the mirror revealed the horrifying transfiguration they had worked on me. I was grey, old, and miserable.

  “Poor little devil, covering him in all that stuff!” said Queenie.

  “Di!” Echo screeched.

  “Bit busy, ma’am!”

  “If you think you’re busy now . . . Look who’s here! Crisis averted!” A delivery boy rushed through the door, wheeling a large trunk with hotel stickers pasted willy-nilly over every surface and an unmissable red label: URGENT!

  “Crisis averted, my arm!” moaned Diane, as I was summarily plucked from the chair. “Twenty minutes to go and his bloody nibs turns up!”

  “I
’ll take him,” said Queenie, groping my innards for a handhold.

  “Set him here,” said Diane of Narcissus, very matter-of-fact. “Right, twenty minutes . . .”

  “And counting . . .” In came Echo, sporting little more than her underwear, a complicated system of wires, weights, and pulleys designed to smooth the surface of her dress. The delivery boy gasped and turned his back.

  “Put that on!” shouted a gruff unknown male voice from Echo’s room. She plucked a flying sarong from the air and shimmied within. Assured of Narcissus’s presence, she glanced at me and sniffed dismissively.

  “Valiant attempt, Di dear, but really . . . I suppose we’d better put him back as we found him. Queenie, would you mind?”

  “No, no, not at all.”

  My spine was completely out of alignment with her manhandling, my chin resting on my shoulder.

  “And do have a care of him, dear,” Echo said pointedly. “You wouldn’t want to upset you know who . . .”

  “No, quite,” said Queenie. “Leave it to me.” She peeled Narcissus’s pinstripes from me. Within seconds Echo was screaming for help. Di was brushing Narcissus’s hair with one hand, her other in his torso, where she was trying to staple his shirt to the inside of his back so it stopped rising behind his collar. “I’ll go,” said Queenie. As she got up, my head toppled out of my body, which flopped back onto the sofa. As my face hit the floor, a tiny chip of my nose broke off. “Oh, blow!”

  “Just go to her,” hissed Diane. “We’ll see to him later.”

  And so I stayed in two, face down in the dust, body marooned on the sofa, until Narcissus was ready.

  Was any further humiliation possible?

  Only one.

  Echo entered in her sea of blue to pick up Narcissus, the vampire with his black coat and overly rouged lips. She balanced him on her arm, administering final touches that did no good whatsoever. As he made his way to the stage, he threw me a look: “Nice try, kid. Better luck next time.”

  Queenie loved to tell the story: she had been out one night with a group of girlfriends when the blustery night forced an odd left turn away from Leicester Square. They found themselves sheltering beneath the sign of an out-of-the-way place called the Eclectic Room. Without their knocking, a turbaned man addressed them through a small panel in the door, demanding a password.

  “We don’t know no password,” said Renée, the ringleader, giggling.

  “Yield to the power of the mind,” he intoned. “The name of a town.”

  “I don’t know yer bleedin’ password!” said Renée, then, turning to the others, “Come on. They don’t want us in there, and I’m drenched.”

  “Don’t be frightened. Yield,” said the doorkeeper insistently, with a forceful hypnotic gaze.

  “Brighton!” said Queenie, just to prove a point.

  The heavy door opened smoothly for them.

  “That was never the word,” tutted Renée wearily, as they went through.

  “Madam,” said the doorkeeper, and pointed to a sign to their left: BRIGHTON.

  The bill at the Eclectic Room was a series of very respectable cabaret magic acts. Queenie loved a magic show, though her mind froze when she tried to work out how tricks were done. She wanted no more than to enjoy the retreat into illusion. It was the least-popular act of the night that caught her eye.

  Although this clean-cut young magician seemed barely old enough to be out, he and his immaculate tails belonged to a more elegant era. Performing in silhouette against the wall, he didn’t call attention to himself, preferring not to address the audience, and his tricks, though by no means spectacular, had a particular elegance in harmony with his entire presentation. The audience gave the Chinese rings their marginal approval, but his card tricks were less well received, and she noticed a slight trembling of his hands, a nervousness at odds with the rest of his performance. Renée and crew’s attention had drifted elsewhere, and they cast their eyes about to see who might stand them the next drink, but Queenie was still intrigued. For his climax, he faced the audience and spoke forthrightly: “Ladies and gentlemen . . .”

  It was then that the mayhem began. A voice called to him from the side of the stage. He pleaded that he was in the middle of his act. Then there was a heckler somewhere in the audience. And another, arguing with him. The house, adding to the general din, turned around to see who had been so rude as to shout.

  “Be quiet!” the magician finally yelled into the maelstrom. “All of you!”

  There was complete silence. The audience stopped shuffling, unsure where the disturbance had gone. The magician pulled back a curtain stage left: no one. Then, a disembodied voice was heard from stage right; again, there was revealed to be no one.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I am King Fisher. I am an illusionist, a ventriloquist. And I present for your amazement the unique power of vox humana.” He bowed, and he was gone.

  A smattering of applause mixed with baffled silence. The whole act had been a prelude to this bizarre climax, which had merely left the audience uneasy. The next turn picked up the pieces, but Queenie could think only of King Fisher. She assumed all the voices had been his, that that was the point, and wondered whether he was as lonely as he appeared on the stage. He had brought something out of her: that was how she put it. As the rest of the entertainment ground on, the happy faces in the Eclectic Club left her sad. There was no sign of the young man.

  The next day she went to visit her cousin at the Alhambra, dying for a chance to talk about her night out. Diane was only marginally interested until mention of the Fisher name, which caused her to dart into Echo’s dressing room and return brandishing an eight-by-ten, signed to his mother by the magician in question. Queenie could hardly believe her luck. He had gone off on his own, Diane said, and even Echo didn’t seem to know what he was up to; this raised him further in Queenie’s estimation.

  They hushed the moment Echo returned, but her beady eye noted the picture’s absence. She gathered clues and went on a slow offensive. Queenie, who was beginning to suspect, not to her displeasure, that she was being set up, finally gave in, confessing all on the trip to fetch me from Joe’s room that Echo had specifically engineered. She begged Miss Endor’s confidence.

  “Oh, rot. You’re just what this family needs. I thought so the moment I saw you. And please call me Echo. Queenie, listen.” It was Echo’s final word. “Every magician needs an assistant.”

  Three Parts for Fisher: Slave of the Ring

  The end of term was still three weeks away. Three weeks with Frankie flew by in a quick dissolve of high teas and curtain calls. These would last forever.

  Her run of Peter Pan was finally coming to an end, climaxing in a sold-out weekend in Plymouth. She then immediately went into rehearsals for her annual pantomime. Year in, year out, it was Once More unto the Breeches: her Christmases full of thigh slapping, fishnets, stubborn props, and “He’s behind yer!” — it mattered not which pantomime. Whether there was a beanstalk, a genie, a talking cat, or seven dwarves, there was always a dame (who did a striptease), a villain (who was hissed), a fairy godmother (who was a little boring), a cheeky chappie (who was hilarious, but rather morose backstage), a principal boy (who was Frankie), and some poor twit dressed up as an animal. This year, she was Aladdin at Wimbledon; the best, for all of them, was that she would be at home throughout, ferried back and forth by taxi.

  She sent a glossy postcard of the Wimbledon Empire: “Busy in rehearsal, but it’s lovely to be home. Reg has moved in as a lodger! Nice company for Mum. It’s going to be a lovely Christmas, and we’ll be spending a lot of time together (believe me!).”

  She had something up her sleeve.

  The return of Valentine Vox had not diminished George’s resentment. The school felt no less his, and certainly more his than theirs.

  The Ventrilo hadn’t yet made an appearance. Although George hadn’t become an overnight Vox or Bunter, the urge had taken root as certainly as he could picture the Ventrilo i
nside him. Don’s gift had been the Ventrilo itself, but it was the revelation of his true identity that had carried the Ventrilo down, lodged it deep inside. George knew about Echo, and his grandfather. He’d seen Queenie and Mikey, the puppet she used at the kids’ parties. He wouldn’t fail. It was in his blood: his mission.

  Work was an inconvenience, and George sought ways to reduce the burden without affecting his marks. Once he went so far as to experiment with cheating. He wrote a history essay in his free time, scribbled idly elsewhere in his exercise book for thirty minutes, and handed it in to the perenially stale-smelling Mr. Hessenthal. Next day, it was returned with the smile reserved for those who did exactly as they were told. This had saved George revision, time better spent on other business.

  After his initial success, cheating became a habit. It was so easy. The first rule: don’t look at the teacher. The second: don’t tell anyone — people were noticed only when they acted in groups, and George was alone. What else had he been doing in the library all that time, if not working, preparing for the essay or the test at which he had excelled? He plagiarized from books and encyclopaedias, rephrasing appropriately, barely noticing the facts as they were transcribed. Cheating was an art form, and he improvised. He favoured the subtle (tracing the formulas from a sheet below), the imaginative (writing the answers out and hiding them in a semi-opaque file left carelessly on the desk, invisible to all eyes but your own), and the adventurous (complaining about the noise in the class and asking to do your work in the library, where a previously written essay was waiting in the drawer of the desk — this was the fail-safe); he avoided anything risky or obvious (inking key dates on the palm of your hand or copying from somebody else’s work — bound to fail).

  A by-product was that it made people look stupid: particularly Poole, so pompous in his stand-alone “laboratory” a wet shuffle away from their form room. George was not remotely interested in physics, so he hardly felt that by cheating he was cheating himself — the old maxim. He was cheating Poole. It was revenge. He noted the high grade on the bottom of his essay, considered its inverse proportion to the effort he had made, and wondered if he should make less in future.