by Wesley Stace
And there, finally, the only mention of his dummy: the last word of the final sentence.
Why had the books stopped for nine years after the description? He asked Queenie if Joe had ever done his great act. No, she said, and nothing like. Evie had scared it out of him: a shame, though Evie was probably right. He did a bit here and there, but audiences never really took to it, and his greatest successes were with George. She read the postscript too, shaking her head. “He was a lonely soul. You just couldn’t get through to him. I suppose he’s in a better world now.”
That “Great Act” had stayed on the page, unrealized. George’s work with the books should have been done. How he had longed to file them away, put them back on the shelf where they could rest forever. But that was impossible now: these books passed a baton with their very last word, and George couldn’t rest until he found the dummy. It was the sheer relief of having a quest to take his mind off more pressing business, a quest that took him away from himself, that did not require his family. In what way could a dummy tell him everything?
He couldn’t even remember where the dummy was. Flicking through the scrapbooks, he saw him in his initial splendour at the Imperial War Museum — there were numerous clippings of him on display, sporting a large George Cross, saluting the various onlookers. Churchill himself had promised to visit the convalescent, reported The Herald. There were rather fewer clippings of the return of the dummy to the Fisher family. And then there was the dummy, still in his Tommy uniform, back behind glass again, after his sale to the Armed Forces Museum in Clapham. A brochure for this poor relation of the Imperial War proclaimed it an independently run museum dedicated to the “artefacts and memorabilia of war.”
George couldn’t help laughing. Could the dummy possibly be as near as Clapham?
What little information the brochure gave was years out of date: Clapham 82 looked more like a bus route than a telephone number. George was surprised to find an up-to-date one in the yellow pages. Getting through to the museum, however, was another matter. He tried for three days and gave up. The only thing to do was visit in person.
The door opened only a crack, as far as the safety chain would allow. Old eyes peered round the corner.
“Are you open today?” asked George politely.
“Well, I’m here, if that’s what you mean,” whistled through false teeth.
“Are you open, though, for visitors?”
“I can be.”
Museum was an exaggeration; it was no more than a collection of curios in the dusty terrace house of a retired brigadier, Edwin Coffin, VC, who tore tickets, gave guided tours, sold faded postcards at the end of the visit, and lived in the basement, three floors of motley memorabilia piled above him.
“No, delighted,” he said, as he shook George’s hand after grappling with the safety chain. His moustache appeared stuck on, and George wondered if he had woken Coffin up. “Always a pleasure to show a youngster around. School project?”
“Personal interest.”
“Well, we open just mornings three days a week now. A few visitors here and there, but quite spotty, I’m afraid, ever since the wife died. . . .” He glanced at his watch. “Oh, my lord. We should be open now anyway. Needs a younger man, I’d say.” Coffin sized George up as a possible applicant. “A guided tour will be fifty of your new English pence.”
It would have been mean-spirited, however specialized George’s interest, not to feign curiosity about the rest of the collection. Coffin led the way, reciting the history of the museum. He unlocked the door to every room and locked it with equal care as they made their way. The floorboards creaked; even the guided tour, which Coffin hadn’t been overly keen to dust off, was in need of a thorough oiling. Coffin himself could hardly be bothered with it, preferring to point out individual items of particular interest. His presentation was peppered with gloomy asides about the uncertain future of the collection.
George finally caught sight of his namesake in a rather dirty glass case in the front parlour of the second floor. He had expected Coffin to give the exhibit pride of place, but despite the centrality of the large display, it would have gone unmentioned had George not enquired.
“Oh yes, well, he really is interesting, actually. He was at the Imperial War Museum just after the war,” said Coffin, suddenly a promoter boasting that his main draw had previously headlined the Theatre Royal. “That’s George Fisher, the ventriloquist dummy and constant companion of famous ENSA star Joe ‘Death Wish’ Fisher. Probably before your time,” he added with a sigh.
Immediately, George was making plans. So long ago, on his trip to Romando’s with Bird, the man had mentioned a room full of dummies. Perhaps he could get a substitute, a dummy dummy, make it up exactly, smuggle it into the museum on his next trip, and substitute one for the other when Coffin’s back was turned.
Coffin continued: “Spent a pretty penny on him, probably over the odds, but hindsight’s a wonderful thing. And besides, I had a good offer for him not so long ago, so . . .”
George was enumerating the various ways he could wrest control of the dummy, but he was overelaborating; the thing was there right in front of him. Coffin clearly needed the money. He should make an offer.
“It was at Montebianco, August ’44,” said Coffin, warming to his theme as he narrated a rather overegged version of Joe’s death, concluding: “They were both legends by then anyway, stars throughout the theatre of war. And George Fisher here was the first and only ventriloquist dummy to be given the George Cross.”
“Honorary,” said George.
“Yes, honorary,” confirmed Coffin, tetchy at the correction.
“Can we get him out of the case?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I wondered if I could touch him.”
Coffin bristled. “It hasn’t been out of the case for years. I can’t just open the case like that.”
“Why not? How much do you want for him?” said George.
“Sorry?”
“Can I make an offer for him?”
“This is a museum, not a flea market!” George was surprised at the vehemence of Coffin’s offence. “I can’t just open it for any Tom, Dick, or Harry as asks me. Besides,” said Coffin, relenting somewhat, “I have no idea where the key is.”
“Brigadier,” said George respectfully, “my name is also George Fisher. Death Wish Fisher was my grandfather.”
“No, he wasn’t.”
“My mother is Frankie Fisher. And I am named George Fisher after . . .” He gestured at the case. Coffin was having none of it. “I have spent my entire life looking at the two George Crosses framed together above our fireplace.”
This domestic detail clinched it; Coffin beamed. “Well, why ever didn’t you say? That’s wonderful. Worth a spread in the local rag.”
“Yes, I suppose so, but what I want is to hold George, to work him a little. We are related.”
“He’s very fragile.”
“I’ll be very careful.”
Coffin’s right eye twitched. “Only if you promise. This is my pension. I’ll pop and see if I can find the key.”
George circled this piece of family history: Joe’s dummy that would tell him everything. What did he want to know? Three sides and the top of the case in which the dummy sat were glass; behind him was a poorly rendered backdrop of an army settlement in which nothing was to scale, complete with huge sandbags, tiny military vehicles, and a squadron of planes dwarfed by their pilots. The dummy sported his Tommy uniform, familiar from the clippings, with a pair of opera glasses, presumably meant to be binoculars, around his neck. The floor of the case had been carpeted with unconvincing fake grass.
The creaking stairs announced Coffin. George stood back, anxious not to appear too eager, though it took all his patience to watch the old man’s spindly fingers fumbling with the keys and the lock. It was the back of the case that opened, but Coffin was thoughtlessly trying to work his fingers along the edge to prise off the top.
“Here,” said George. He opened the back, putting his hand into the case to stop the dummy falling backwards. “Out you come.”
“Easy does it,” warned Coffin. “He’ll have to go back exactly as we found him.”
George sat down, placing the dummy on his lap. What was he expecting to find? Something physical? Or was it merely the concept that held the key? No, Joe had been a keeper of secrets, a shy, lonely man, a hoarder of fragments of poetry and arcane diagrams — the books had led to the dummy. George awaited further instructions.
“What an interesting afternoon.” Coffin chuckled.
“Well, if you have anything else to do . . .”
“No, no . . . I’ll stay . . . er . . .” There was no immediate prospect of a resolution to this polite standoff, so George slipped his hand inside the dummy and began a sly exploration. “Do you do any, erm, ventriloquizing yourself?” asked Coffin politely. There was silence as George groped blindly inside the torso. “How long did you have in mind?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Out of the case . . . You know.”
George didn’t know whether to bore Coffin with feigned ventriloquial practice in the hope that he would leave of his own accord, or to ask him to go. The latter seemed less time consuming. “Well, I was hoping for a little privacy with my ancestor. Just a few minutes.”
Coffin bowed solemnly and left, indicating that he would be right outside. The moment he was gone, George laid the dummy on the floor and opened up his back as best he could. He could feel the metal and wood of the mechanism but nothing else. Perhaps there was something written on the inside of the dummy. He could sense Coffin’s presence beyond the door, desperate for admission.
He removed the dummy’s jacket and rolled up the back of the shirt so he could peer inside the torso. He held the dummy up to the light, where he could make out a set of characters: a code of some kind, but nothing more than the date of manufacture (he presumed) in Roman numerals. He memorized it. Behind the nape of the neck, just below an ugly join in the papier-mâché, another code: Romando G-28/7 #3 head. This wasn’t a message from the dead but an innocent reference number. George was looking for more.
Inside, he found nothing. He started to undo the boy’s trousers. Thinking better of it, he rolled up the trouser legs. He had never considered the makeup of a dummy’s legs: these were solid blocks of wood, joined at the knee with a beautifully crafted bracket. But nothing else. There was only one chance left.
“Everything OK?” Coffin called in.
“Yes, done in a moment.”
George started to strip the dummy. He removed the musty clothes as carefully as he could. The dummy was naked before him on the floor, a mess of metal, wood, and string.
Announcing himself with the swiftest of coughs, Coffin opened the door. He stood in the doorway, quivering with indignation. “That does it. I’m calling the police.” He slammed the door, locked it from the outside, and creaked down the stairs.
The police, thought George, wasn’t good — escape was out of the question — but it did buy him time. He searched the dummy from head to toe, disappointed to find nothing out of the ordinary. Perhaps he was years after the fact, and whatever had been there was there no longer — of course. Satisfied that further scrutiny would yield nothing, he dressed the dummy, replaced the opera glasses round his neck, and positioned him next to the sandbags exactly as he had first seen him. He secured the back of the case and sat down to await his arrest. Everything was just as it had been when he entered the room; perhaps improved. The inside of the case had been aired and dusted for the first time in years.
After half an hour, there was a cautious knock on the door. “We’re coming in.” A uniformed policeman, whose amused expression put George at ease, followed him.
“Sir, this gentleman accuses you of attacking one of the exhibits.”
“He claims to be the grandson of Death Wish Fisher,” interrupted Coffin. “An obvious fabrication.”
“Death Wish Fisher?” asked the policeman ironically.
“A war hero, my grandfather,” said George.
“Name, sir?”
“George Fisher.”
“Age and address?”
There was an explanation to be given but no charge to answer. To Coffin’s disappointment, George left a free man, uncuffed; to George’s disappointment, the policeman rang Queenie, informing her of George’s involvement in a disturbance at a museum involving a ventriloquist dummy. He advised her that her grandson henceforth stay away from the Armed Forces Museum on Locke Lane.
George offered to make himself available for any newspaper coverage that might help the museum, but Coffin would not meet his eye.
“What on earth were you doing?” said Queenie.
“Did they file a report?” asked Reg earnestly. “Don’t want a silly thing like that going on your record, messing things up for later.”
“No, nothing like that. The owner was a bit of an old woman, that’s all,” said George. “I went to see my namesake, grandfather’s dummy, George Fisher.”
“And he’s there?” said Reg. “In a museum?” George could just as well let Queenie give the explanation, but she was curiously silent. “And so you went to have a look at him, I get it, but why the police?”
“Well,” said George, “I wanted to see how he worked, so I got him out and took his clothes off. . . . I couldn’t resist.”
“Well, you’re loopy.” Reg laughed, making the cuckoo sign with his index finger. “You can’t go round . . .”
“Did you find out, then?” asked Queenie, breaking her silence with a nervous laugh.
“How he worked?” asked George.
“No, did you find out? You’re a clever boy.”
“Find out what?”
“That isn’t George at all,” said Queenie blithely.
“You’re both dotty!” Reg sat back in his chair in exasperation. “I thought he was in the museum!”
“Well, we sold him to the museum,” said Queenie. “But at the last moment Evie got sentimental and didn’t want to see him go. And they’d be none the wiser, so we changed his clothes with my old dummy Pip Squeak’s, and . . .”
George stood up without having meant to. “So that isn’t George at the Armed Forces Museum?” Queenie shook her head in silence. “It’s Pip Squeak?”
“In George’s soldier clothes,” confirmed Queenie quietly.
“So I went to the Armed Forces Museum and nearly got arrested, and it wasn’t even George?” He wasn’t used to raising his voice.
“Well, you didn’t ask! We didn’t know!” she said firmly. “It wouldn’t have been a secret from you, Georgie!”
“But why are there secrets at all?” George shouted, unable to stop himself. “And if that’s the other one, where is George?”
“Now, now, George,” said Reg, massaging Queenie’s shoulder. “This is your grandmother you’re talking to.”
“He’s in the attic!” she shouted back, her voice trembling. “Where he’s always been!”
Half an hour later, George was on his knees in his bedroom, the door locked.
In front of him lay his second victim of the day, facedown, naked but for his trousers. The rest of the uniform — cap, white shirt, striped tie, forest green blazer — was scattered across the floor.
George had found him in the attic wrapped in a tartan blanket, just as Queenie had said, hidden in a turquoise valise beneath a tower of forgotten suitcases. Despite the pungent smell of camphor, frail silken threads clung to his blazer, the cuffs and the lapel of which were partly eaten away.
This boy weighed less than the other. George turned him over.
“Speak to me.”
The tattooed date was where he expected, and there were tiny silver welts around the boy’s heart: on closer inspection, pieces of embedded shot. George pulled the trousers down slowly. Whereas the other boy’s legs had been entirely wood, elegantly hinged, these were different. Be
neath each knee, a metal tube was attached with wire to the wooden thigh above and the shoe below.
“Sorry,” George said as he took his pliers to the wire beneath the right knee. A leather shoe dangled from the bottom of the newly amputated metal shin. He put the tube to his eye, telescope-style, but found his view blocked by something he couldn’t shake from its hiding place. He coaxed the contents towards the opening with his little finger until he was able to pinch their top edge and pull them out. It was a rolled document, tied with string. George performed the same surgery on the left leg to find a matching manuscript, rolled tighter.
At first, he simply stared. Then he undid the string on the first, expecting the pages to spring forth in celebration of their new freedom, but the brittle paper had been too long in confinement.
He unrolled the scroll from the right leg. On the first page was written “The Memoirs of George Fisher.”
9
Letters to B.
AUGUST 8TH, 1943
I have decided to write, though there is nowhere to send a letter. Writing is all that I have. It keeps me alive, as it always has. It is how we imagine not being lonely.
We are no longer in the desert. Our final contribution was a Farewell to Africa extravaganza in an antique amphitheatre where the quietest whisper reached the farthest row. And now we’re on the move, waves lapping against the prow, back on the ocean but this time quite healthy. The word is Italy — and what a change that will make from the sores and the scorpions — but I’ll believe it when I see it; when I see it as clearly as that shell, glowing red as it streaks across the sky.
Where are you?
I will never see you again. I must face the fact. But not yet.
