by George

by Wesley Stace

  Advent calendars appeared. Frankie had sent George the classic model: a glitter-flecked Nativity scene whose daily doors opened to reveal Germanic wooden toys undesirable since the beginning of the century. By Christmas, however, the calendars would be forgotten, jettisoned in school desks, to become sad January reminders of holidays recently past. The big day for Upsiders was the seventeenth, the end of term.

  As George popped the doors open one by one, school petered out in a jumble of festive games and carol services. His name appeared on a list of performers for the Christmas entertainment. The bare minimum was more than his audience deserved, but when George spotted Don leaning against the wall bars, the Fisher in him triumphed. He laid into “Li-Fang-Fu,” complete with theatrical mime, as if Christmas itself depended on it. For this recitation, the staff rewarded him with an encore, for which he dusted off his old standby “Albert and the Lion.” It inspired Hartley to make reference to the Lent term’s school play — coincidentally not “Albert” but Androcles and the Lion.

  “Very good,” said Don the next day. “Get that from your mum, do you?”

  “Yeah. And my grandma, and Evie. And my Auntie Sylvia. All of my family.”

  Groundsman and apprentice had given up on Valentine Vox, in which situations had begun to repeat themselves monotonously. Instead, Don and George had been reading together from the Ventrilo booklet, which proved most informative, though exceedingly cynical about any mystical aspects of voice throwing. Don allowed himself a rare joke when George admitted the Ventrilo’s current location: “Maybe you can keep your mouth closed and talk through your arse — that’d fool people.”

  Don was Hartley’s son; his the young face George had seen in the photos, his the room that George had slept in, surrounded by his old books. But George said nothing. Clearly he was not meant to know or Don would have told him: standard practice in the Fisher family. His silence repaid Don’s kindness. Now, however, it felt as if he was keeping a secret from Don. This made for a little self-consciousness; it was as if Don knew.

  On the bright, crisp morning before term ended, he entertained the idea that this was his last day at Upside and decided to tell his only confidant.

  He found Don cowering in the corner of the unlit pavilion. George had seen Don quiet and less quiet, but never so wretched. The groundsman made no attempt to look up, his cigarette burning deeper orange as he inhaled in the darkness.

  “I think this may be my last day here,” said George after consideration. There was the soft electric crackle of tobacco. He continued as though Don had asked why. “Well, I just think it’s silly me being here. I don’t fit in. I don’t play games. I’m not much like the others, am I? My family’s nothing like theirs. I don’t hardly even talk to anyone else. I like being in the library, and with you.” Don’s face was obscured in the gloom. “I mean, I don’t do a lot of work,” George continued, electing to omit mention of the cheating. “I don’t like the food . . . or the rules . . . or the teachers. I don’t have any friends. I miss my family and I’d rather be home. I think everything they do here is stupid.”

  These were just statements of fact. He wasn’t worked up. He hadn’t even started on the uniform or the name of the school when he realized that Don was crying, his head in his hands, sobbing to himself. The Fishers cried at the drop of a hat, at the end of almost any movie, at a suggestive piano chord, at the slightest piece of bad (or sometimes good) news. It was the way they were. But as easily as they cried, they knew it was equally hard for others, and George had never seen a man in tears. He didn’t know what he should do, but he knew what Queenie would do. He put his arm around Don’s shoulder.

  “Sorry!” said Don, through some undignified gulps. He reached over his shoulder and clasped George’s hand. It came to George in a flash. It was time to break his vow of silence.

  “Don, I do know, you know.” There was no answer. “I know who you are.” Don didn’t speak. His eyes were bloodshot, lids trembling. “I worked it out . . . from the leavers’ board. You’re his son.” Don turned away. “OK?” asked George. “It’s OK, right? I won’t tell anyone, OK?”

  Don started crying again but was able to say OK.

  Cool winter light flooded the pavilion as Potter barged in. George looked up with the surprise of someone caught cheating.

  “I’m afraid Donald is . . . ,” he began.

  “Donald,” said Potter, all concern as he twitched his moustache like a rabbit. “All right, old man?”

  “Migraine,” mumbled Donald, and shaded his eyes from the light. “Close the door.”

  “I think you’d better run along, Fisher. Go to Matron and tell her that Donald is poorly.”

  “Yes, sir,” said George. “Bye, Donald.”

  “Bye,” said Donald, though it was little more than a groan.

  Matron sniffed unsympathetically, making no secret of her unwillingness to walk an aspirin down three flights of stairs and all the way to the pavilion, and not willing to entrust George with this simplest of tasks.

  That night, there was Christmas pudding. One lucky boy waved a ten-pence piece around triumphantly. George paid no attention, playing with rather than eating his dessert, idly flicking currants around the plate until it was removed. He hoped Don knew his secret was safe. Similar worries nagged at him through prep, but by lights-out the thrill of going home took hold, and by morning all else was forgotten.

  In rolled the Royces and Rovers after chapel, the front lawn a fortress of trunks and tuck boxes. Among the approaching fleet came a large black taxi, or perhaps a hearse — at any rate, a swollen and luxurious motor — bouncing with dignity over the sleeping policemen. Out stepped Reg, in his chauffeur ensemble, to open the door for Queenie, who declined to emerge, waving imperiously at the headmaster as she ordered Reg to fetch the trunk.

  “Yes, milady,” said Reg, and came over to George. “You wouldn’t believe it,” he whispered. “She’s drove the whole way here, but she’s made me stop at the bottom of the drive so she’d be in the back all regal. And she slipped and she’s covered in mud, so she’s staying put.”

  George laughed and shouted, “And be quick about it, my man!” as other parents observed the poor little rich boy’s high-handed treatment of the family butler. Reg doffed his cap agreeably, and the Quicke-Johnsons regarded him with curiosity. The headmaster called George over.

  “I wondered if, rather than going home, you’d like to stay with us over Christmas. . . . Joke, boy, joke!” George reached out to shake Hartley’s leathery paw, imagining it the last time they would ever meet.

  “Thank you for half-term, sir. That was very kind. Will you please wish Donald a merry Christmas for me?”

  “Run along now,” said Hartley, banging his pipe on the sole of his shoe. Scanning the immediate vicinity, he picked a random parent for scrutiny. “Sterling work, Mr. Morgan; bend from the knees!”

  George got into the car and kissed Queenie.

  “Hello, love,” she said. “Mud everywhere. It’s like the Somme back here.” She settled back in the seat, pulled her spattered fur around her neck, and called to the front in her best House of Windsor: “Wimbledon. Centre Court.”

  * * *

  A big surprise, was how Queenie described it, that would make up for half-term. They were going straight to the Empire and would be just in time for the first matinée of Aladdin.

  “Are we going to stay for the evening too?” asked George, who had not made the mistake of looking behind him as they drove away.

  “You wait,” said Queenie.

  George had rarely known Frankie at home around Christmas (though always on Christmas Day itself), and like many children, he couldn’t imagine Christmas without a pantomime. But George had grown up with a different perspective. He had been neither paying customer nor player, rather an intermediate with carte blanche when he ventured among the punters. Not for him the family outing, the proscenium arch, and a chair where he slumped with a box of chocolates and a magic wan
d; his view had always been from the wings or “any free seat” via the pass door. He had known all the in-jokes and precisely how long till the interval. He was able to spot any deviation from the script immediately.

  “Georgie!” Frankie exclaimed. They had arrived in plenty of time but seemed to rush backstage. “How you’ve grown.” Tears welled in her eyes. As they hugged, he felt her signalling over his shoulder. He tried to extricate himself to see what was going on, but she held him even tighter: “No, no, no . . . not till we’re quite . . .” And then she turned him round, her hand in front of his eyes. She whipped it away with the standard fanfare — “Ta da!” — that accompanied the unwrapping of any gift, the arrival of any main course.

  From a cocked finger, Reg dangled a clothes hanger: there hung a grey waistcoat festooned with fake jewels, a white frilly shirt, a pair of shimmering green pantaloons, a silver-sprayed wooden scimitar, and the yellow beehive of a turban.

  “Happy Christmas, O Slave of the Ring!” said Frankie. “This Christmas, your stage début.”

  “What?”

  “Scout’s honour,” said Frankie, waving a programme in front of him, his name printed clearly among the cast. “No time for rehearsal: here are your lines, get your clobber on.”

  Frankie had had a contretemps — this was the nearest she ever got to admitting to an argument — with the director over the previous Slave of the Ring, who’d done everything except say his lines on cue: the culprit was demoted to the chorus. A sweep of local children’s dancing and acting academies yielded no suitable replacement, and Frankie had the bright idea of casting a boy she knew to be more than capable of putting himself over, and what is more, a boy on holiday from school who wanted to be with his mother.

  The Slave of the Ring was a small but essential cameo, under no circumstances to be confused with the Slave of the Lamp, played by a pleasant, well-developed older girl, Joanne. The Slave of the Ring saved the day and granted a wish to Aladdin (Frankie); his mum, Widow Twankey (Bernie, a gruff but kindly northern comedian); and his brother, Wishee Washee (Dennis, the host of a children’s show George had never seen). He then stuck around to help Aladdin fight off Abanazar. At the successful resolution, he took his bow with Joanne.

  Mercifully, the Slave of the Ring did not appear till the last act, and this gave Queenie time to refit George’s costume while he learned his lines:

  O spirits of the wind and sky,

  Off to Peking! Make them fly!

  Speed through the air like an arrow true —

  Aladdin, Widow Twankey, and Wishee Washee too!

  As she rushed by between entrances, Frankie said, “If you forget a line, just make sure the next one rhymes and you’re fine. Besides, I’m up there with you. And don’t mask anyone.” She said she forgot lines all the time, but he knew she didn’t. Her every corpse and fluff was scrupulously rehearsed. Spontaneity was reserved only for her interaction with the children, and they loved it.

  By George’s entrance, the auditorium was littered with sweet wrappers (purchased in the foyer or hurled from the stage by Widow Twankey) and anxious parents wondered whether to encourage their tired toddlers to volunteer. As he waited backstage for his cue (the end of Abanazar’s version of “All Shook Up”), George wondered how close he and Frankie would be on stage: he was used to watching her from a safe distance, and he knew the feelings this summoned within him. The only surprise when he hit his mark, however, was the accompanying pyrotechnical flash and the heat of the follow-spot on his forehead. His mother smiled her brightest smile, and George, standing with his arms folded as he had been told, declaimed, “I am the Slave of the Ring.”

  “I’ve read Lord of the Rings,” said Dennis to the audience. “But I’ve never heard of this one.”

  “Oooh,” said Bernie. “Nice sword — it’s all curvy!”

  “Scimitar,” corrected Dennis.

  “What to?”

  “No, that’s what it’s called. Scimitar!”

  “Scimitar to what?”

  “I give up.”

  “And I come to grant you all a wish!” said George, seizing his moment, gesturing expansively with his left arm.

  “A wish! A wish! I’ll have a million pounds!” said Bernie.

  “No, Mum,” said Frankie, stamping her foot so flecks of dust swarmed in the footlights. “That’s what got us into trouble in the first place. We want to go home.”

  It was at this point that evil Abanazar emerged and the fight ensued. For this scene, choreographed to a piece of classical music, Frankie had advised George to look interested and stay out of the way. Abanazar, vanquished and hissed from the stage, returned briefly to deliver his valedictory change of heart (“I’ll make amends, I’ll be astute, I’ll join the women’s institute”), and the trio sang a victorious chorus of “Take Me Home, Country Roads” before George recited his magical quatrain and off they all went. The curtain call went off without incident, and George’s début was adjudged a triumph.

  “Phew!” said breathless Frankie, who never took off her makeup between performances, only applying a second mask on top. “And the Oscar goes to . . . !” She handed him a box of After Eights. “You’d better have these, then.”

  George made tea as Reg hurried Queenie off to her party in Hammersmith. It was hard to believe, amidst all the hurly-burly backstage, that only a few hours ago he had been at Upside, that he was removed by no more than a car ride. He had left school far behind, forgotten it already like a dream, and woken into a grown-up world where he was treated as an equal. No one told him what to do. He didn’t have to be anywhere, except on cue in the wings. He could eat whatever he wanted. He could read whatever he wanted. It was truly going to be the best Christmas of all time.

  Pantomime was a mysterious upside-down world where old men played ugly women, beautiful women played handsome young men, and George thought it quite normal to be sitting backstage at nine learning poker from a bearded man in a dress. Bernie reminded him of what Hartley might have been if he hadn’t gone into headmastering.

  There were rules, some as strict, arbitrary, and unfathomable as those at Upside. Whistling was forbidden, certain words unmentionable. At school, you had to wear green; backstage, green was forbidden.

  “Why?” George asked Bernie. “There’s a green room.”

  “But it isn’t green, is it?” said Bernie, as he tried to squeeze his breasts into acceptable curves.

  “Why are you called Widow Twankey?”

  “’Cos it’s the name of the part!”

  “Yes, but why is it always Twankey?”

  “Jaysus, I don’t know, son. Ask your fuckin’ teacher.”

  One rule was never to be forgotten, and it had stayed with George ever since he was a small boy. There was a strict pecking order at the pantomime: the principal boy was at the top (that went without saying, though it was often said), and at the bottom, the very bottom, was the skin part. Whether it was Tommy the cat, tap-dancing his way to London in Dick Whittington, Priscilla laying golden eggs in Mother Goose, the magic cow in Jack and the Beanstalk, or even Nana in Peter Pan, the skin part never said a word or sang a note, only mimed. It was quite normal to look down on the skin “actors,” these sad masochists happy to swelter in silence, doomed never to reveal their faces. Though these performers could bring a lifeless fur suit gloriously to life, and though the younger half of the audience might even consider them the star of the show, the skin part was the lowest of the low. George was polite to the man who played the giant panda, but no more.

  “It won’t be just his species that’s endangered if he sniffs around my room,” said Bernie.

  There were other children milling about, the villagers of Old Peking (including the disaffected ex–Slave of the Ring) and some dancing cave rats, who shared a noisy dressing room as far from the stage as possible, but George stayed with Frankie, and that was just as he wanted it.

  She started to complain that the orchestra was messing her about; she wouldn’t b
e specific. Bernie, who found this more interesting than the backstage lore, was prepared to be forthright in the privacy of his own dressing room: “They’re trying to take a peek up your mum’s tunic, sonny. And so would you too, if you were playing that crap night after night. Now pop next door and bring us back a Rich Tea biscuit.”

  Frankie had banished George while she performed an annual ritual: wrapping Christmas presents, which she laid on the floor as she sat on her knees with rolls of wrapping paper and some Scotch tape. So he went to the green room, where there was always a rather mouldy pile of biscuits and some lukewarm tea.

  “They’re a bit stale, Bernie.”

  “I’ll dunk ’em.”

  “Ever done any ventriloquism?” the Slave of the Ring asked of Widow Twankey.

  “Bugger me, no. Gottle o’ geer? Not on your nelly!” He cursed again as the dunked biscuit belly flopped into his tea and disintegrated as it sank to the bottom. “Hand us a strainer, son,” said Bernie, who then strained the contents into another cup, flicking the soggy remains of the biscuit into the bin. He sipped his tea. “Lovely,” he said, and his mood improved. “So, d’ye do any acting at school, son?”

  “Not yet. I’ll be in the play next term, though, unless I decide not to go back.”

  Bernie laughed. “Mum know about that, does she?”

  “Yes,” said George confidently. She didn’t, but he assumed that everything he, Frankie, and Queenie wanted was in perfect sync.

  “Georgie,” shouted the principal boy. “Will you come and do me up?”

  “I’ll come and do you right up, love,” said Bernie.

  She was standing at the door with her tunic clasped at the neck. “You, Bernie Mills, are a dirty old man. Georgie, he’s a bad influence. Come out of there.”