by Anne Fine
So that was that. I had become a co-conspirator, and Uncle Len and I were friends again.
The Fourth Notebook
After that, it was all work. First, Uncle Len and Will spent hour after hour perfecting the patter.
Will came up with the ideas – mostly for knockabout misunderstandings and fights between two brothers. Then, like a man who has no skills as a cook himself, but knows which of the pies in front of him is likely to taste best, Uncle Len would pounce.
‘Yes! That’ll make them laugh to split their waistcoats. We’ll work up that one, Will. That’ll be a winner.’
They’d go over the lines together like two instruments trying to get more and more finely in tune.
‘Which makes you laugh more? This . . . ?’
Uncle Len would direct Will with a finger. Keeping his jaw square and wide, my brother would spill out the words, then snap his bottom lip up like a trap.
‘Or this?’
They ran through the joke again, slightly differently. ‘Is it better that way?’
Finally, they turned to me. ‘Hey, Clarrie. Which amuses you more?’
I broke off pulling pans out of the cupboard under the sink and watched. ‘The way you did it first.’
‘Well, what about this?’
When they were sure they’d chosen right, they went over it again, while I reached into the cupboard with the cloth. Under my fingers, suddenly, I felt a piece of board wobble. Dropping the cloth, I poked my head in further, just like Mother used to do. Behind the square of board under my hand was a place my fingertips fitted easily.
I pulled a little and the board came up. Underneath, beside the floor joist, lay a few coins, a pair of earrings I recognized, and Mother’s wedding lines. I knew Mother wouldn’t thank me for spilling the secret of her hiding place – especially to Uncle Len, who’s so accomplished at ‘borrowing’ money when he feels in the mood for one more tankard of ale.
I let the board drop and shifted the pots and pans back on top.
‘Give over with your endless clattering, Clarrie,’ called Uncle Len. ‘Come here and listen to us run through it all again.’
When they were sure the skit was at its best, they practised it over and over. Of course Will fell behind with his schoolwork. At first, I’d rouse him early and send him off – often with all his exercises done in my imitation of his hand, complete with ink blots, to save him from yet another thrashing. But after a few days I couldn’t bear to pull him, still grey with the need for more sleep, out from beneath the covers. Promising myself (and the shade of Mother) that I would teach him better on Sunday to make up, I let him be.
And then, when Sunday came round, they’d be busy with the patter.
Until the day when Uncle Len declared: ‘That’s it, Will. Time to show Madame Terrazini what we can do.’ He dropped a hand on my head. ‘You’ll have to come as well, Clarrie. You are a part of this as much as we are.’
I broke off laboriously penning my lies to our father – ‘This morning, Mother said she might take us to the zoo on Sunday, if we are good. We hope to see some of the strange animals you write of so often’ – and tried to wriggle out of going with them.
‘Not me! What have I got to say to Madame Terrazini in an empty theatre?’
Uncle Len laughed. ‘No empty theatres round here at seven o’clock, Clarrie!’
I stared. ‘You’re going to do it without speaking to her first? You’re just going to step on stage and try the new show? In front of everyone?’
Was it my vehemence that made Will turn pale? Or did he have an inkling of bad times to come?
That first night, though.
Magic!
A few weeks later, everything about the Alhambra seemed almost commonplace. I knew all the acts backwards. In my sleep I could watch the contortionist twist himself into knots, and hear the ringing crescendo as the xylophonist whipped his balled sticks across the tin bars before tossing them in the air and catching them with a one-handed flourish.
I could tell which of the dancing belles had been snarling and snapping at one another in the dressing rooms even before they swarmed down the glittering staircase waving their feather fans, to start their high kicks and swirls. I knew the words of all the sing-along favourites, and how some of the magician’s tricks worked (though I could never work out others).
But that first night!
Madame Terrazini found me where Uncle Len had left me to stand and watch, behind the stalls.
‘Stage-struck, young lady? In love with my glorious Italian tenor? But here at the Alhambra, I’m afraid, the rule is, “No ticket, no show”.’ She bent closer. ‘Wait a moment. Don’t I know your face?’
I suppose I was frightened she might raise her voice and, even as the lights dimmed and the curtain rose, people might turn and stare. So mine wasn’t the cleverest answer. ‘I am Uncle Len’s.’
‘Uncle Le—? Oh, you mean Len!’ She took me by the elbow. ‘You’ve come to watch the show! And why not? Only a churl would ask a devoted niece to pay for a seat to see her own uncle.’
By now, she’d steered me through a tiny green felt-screened door I hadn’t even noticed was behind us, along a narrow carpeted corridor and up a flight of stairs, soothing me all the way with her chatter. ‘Especially when that same niece goes to the trouble of cooking Len’s supper every night – and excellent it is too, if we’re to take his word for it.’
I realized she knew my mother was away, and, guessing she knew the whole – and worst – of it, felt the tears rise and spill.
We stopped before another green baize-covered door. Resting her hand in the small of my back, she gave me a little push.
‘Stay hidden behind the drapes,’ was her last whispered warning before she left, ‘or you’ll have everyone craning to see why such a lovely girl sits all alone.’
I knew what she meant to tell me was, ‘Here, you can stay out of sight. No one will see your tears, and no one will come to wonder how someone in such drab clothes can have a seat in the most expensive theatre box.’
So I sat well back, hidden by folds of velvet curtain, and in an instant all my tears were dried. It was like stepping into another world. The music! Colour! Lights! Laughter and warmth and magic. I was entranced by the dancers. Nothing, I thought, longing to drape myself over the curved shelf in front of me just to be closer, nothing could be more bewitching, more beautiful, more splendid than dance.
The girls swept off. On rushed a troupe of acrobats who flirted with danger and defied the air. No one, I thought, no one could impress me more than these men of India rubber and steel.
On came a singer whose soaring melodies stirred the air around me. Never, I thought, have I felt my heart swell so close to bursting – and never shall again, till I see Mother and Father in one another’s arms, with me and Will beside them.
And then, startling because the Alhambra had become another world, onto the stage stepped Uncle Len.
I heard the rustle of silk skirts as Madame Terrazini slipped in beside me.
‘I’ve come to keep you company.’ Lowering her bulk onto a chair, she leaned forward to nod to one or two of the audience I took to be nodding back at her, then settled to the show.
By the time the rush of blood through my ears had stilled enough for me to listen, Uncle Len had already introduced himself and Frozen Billy to the audience and settled the dummy on his knee.
‘And what did you do today, my brave little young man?’
Frozen Billy’s head tipped to one side, as if he were trying to remember. ‘Today I went off to school—’
Uncle Len put on a startled look. ‘I didn’t know you went to school, Billy.’
The wooden hand shot up to touch the school cap. The tiny click it made could only have been heard by those with sharp ears in the expensive seats – and my poor brother, waiting nervously in the wings.
‘Oh, yes!’ The wooden mouth dropped open and clacked shut in time with the words. ‘I’ve been to sc
hool for three whole weeks.’
The wooden head waggled. Uncle Len somehow tipped the school cap till it seemed to be slipping over one of Frozen Billy’s eyes. (‘Keep the audience watching the doll,’ Uncle Len says. ‘As long as they’re watching the doll’s face, they won’t be watching yours.’)
‘Met any new little friends yet?’
‘Yes.’
‘Got a special friend?’
‘Yes.’
‘Boy or girl?’
Even to me, who knows his painted face better than I know my own, Frozen Billy appeared to bridle. ‘Boy, of course!’
That’s when I first noticed Madame Terrazini’s sharp eyes move from the stage towards the audience, and realized I was hearing a ripple of amusement, no louder than a wave on sand, run through the theatre.
‘Are you going to tell me about this little friend, Billy?’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘Going to tell the audience?’
‘No.’
‘Not even a clue?’
‘No.’
And then, as if he were conducting an orchestra, from so soft I could scarcely hear to so loud I thought the roof might crack, Uncle Len whipped the audience into a frenzy.
‘Do we all want to meet Billy’s new friend?’
‘Yes!’
‘All of us?’
The roar was still rising. ‘Yes! Yes!’
There was a bit more sparring to raise laughs, with Frozen Billy acting coy, then shy, then cross, then sulky.
‘I don’t believe you have a little friend at all!’ cried Uncle Len. ‘I think you made him up. I don’t believe he’s real.’
He turned to the audience and winked. ‘Do you believe in Billy’s little friend?’
‘No!’ they all bellowed.
‘You don’t think he’s real?’
‘No! He’s not real!’
And that was Will’s cue. That’s when he had to step out from the wings and sidle on the stage. The audience howled with amusement to see him dressed exactly like Frozen Billy. His make-up even mirrored the paint on the dummy’s face.
Will had to climb up onto Uncle Len’s other knee. Then he and Billy had a friendly chat that turned into a blazing quarrel. Madame Terrazini barely glanced at the stage. The minutes passed, but she spent all the time studying the audience as the two painted schoolboys bantered on.
Frozen Billy got the best of the argument. Poor Will was made to look more and more of a fool, until the moment he slipped off Uncle Len’s knee and stood, deeply dejected, with his head down and his hands in his short trouser pockets.
The audience roared with laughter.
Then, with each step he took towards the wings, Will somehow made himself look stiffer and stiffer. He let his lower arms dangle from his elbows, and lifted his upper legs high in order to take shaky steps that made his knees look as if they were hanging on strings.
He left the stage. The audience was applauding wildly, and shouting for more. Madame Terrazini was smiling.
Maybe I should have been delighted too. Maybe I’m mean in spirit: a bad niece. But I was furious with Uncle Len – furious that he could take my brother’s generosity and cleverness and use it to turn the world so upside down that three hundred people could laugh and gasp, stamp and clap, and shout out, plain as anything, answers that would have you believe that the horrid grinning thing on his knee was quite real, and my real living brother was a stupid wooden dummy.
The Fifth Notebook
And you can guess what happened next. Uncle Len and Will were such a success that, inside a week, there was a flurry at the theatre. The glorious tenor stormed back to Italy in a grand huff, and Madame Terrazini gave Uncle Len the ‘Top of the Bill’.
Next morning, Uncle Len tossed me a cloak he’d found in a pawnbroker’s window. It was shabby, with a torn red silk lining. ‘Here, Clarrie. Cut this to size so your brother can cover his braces and knickerbockers on the way to the theatre.’
I darned it and hemmed it round (missing our mother terribly as I put on her thimble). Night after night Will snatched it up and swirled it round him with a theatrical villain’s flourish. He’d ram Uncle Len’s wide-brimmed hat down on his head to hide the cream and red pastes that turned his face into the mirror image of Frozen Billy’s.
‘Off I go, Clarrie! Off to help make our fortune!’
He said it with such cheer. Sometimes I leaned from the window to watch him prance down the street beside Uncle Len, turning each few steps to blow me yet another ‘one last kiss’.
Later, much later, they’d startle me from sleep as the door creaked and in they came, hooting with merriment, reminding one another of the pleasures of the evening.
‘Oh, Uncle Len! Wasn’t it fine when that man in the balcony sneezed so loud I thought the chandelier might crack, and you made Frozen Billy say, “Bless you!” ’
‘But, Will, when you stumbled on your way off the stage, then made as if a string in your back had tugged you upright. That was masterly! Masterly!’
Sometimes I’d rise to make my brother a cup of cocoa to soothe him towards sleep. But sometimes, after long days of fetching and carrying heavy rolls of silks and trays of cottons, I’d stay curled beneath the coverlet pretending I hadn’t woken, and hope their excitement would pass, and they would soon fall in their beds.
As often as not, Will was already yawning, half asleep. But Uncle Len would sigh, and stretch, then mutter something under his breath about seeing ‘a man about a horse’ before morning.
I’d hear the floorboards creak, and then the door latch softly click. And I’d know he’d slipped out again, to go carousing.
The days went by. I wouldn’t let Will say a word about the new act in his letter to Mother.
‘She’ll worry. And blame Uncle Len for keeping you from school.’
‘No. She’ll be glad I’ve worked as hard and earned as much as he has. And not spent most of it on gambling debts and ale!’
Mostly I kept my worries from my brother. But it popped out. ‘He was never so bad when Mother was with us. Sometimes I think that only she and Father can keep Uncle Len in check.’
Will stirred the ink with his pen nib. ‘Madame Terrazini said Len is so weak-willed, he’d spend the money for his own mother’s funeral on beer and horses.’
‘She said that to you?’
He shook his head. ‘No. The dancers were talking while I was waiting in the wings. Mavis told Anastasia, and she just laughed and said, “The sooner their mother comes home and puts Len back in harness, the better.” ’
I sighed. Weeks had gone by. In every letter Mother said that each footfall ringing down the corridor, each rap on the cell door, set her hoping the prison governor had finally sent for her. Perhaps the lady who’d told the policeman, ‘Yes, that’s the woman!’ had seen the real thief in the street and realized her mistake. Or woken in the night, murmuring, ‘Now I remember! Her hair was fair, not brown. I was in error.’ Any small hope, said Mother, to help her pace out each endless day in gaol, not even knowing if her quiet ways might earn her an early release.
I was trying to comfort myself as much as my brother. ‘Perhaps it won’t be too long now.’
Will gave me a long, unblinking gaze. Then, swivelling his eyes in their sockets, he clapped his mouth open and shut like Frozen Billy’s. ‘And won’t Mother be astonished to see how her little boy has turned to wood!’
It never failed to make me shiver when my brother so imperceptibly made his body stiffen, and set his face as still as a porcelain doll’s. He filled even Uncle Len with wonder.
‘Will, you get better and better at playing the dummy. The life drains from your face like water falling through a crack in a basin.’
Sometimes, though, Uncle Len seemed less at ease with Will’s growing skill at ridding his face of all feeling.
‘Don’t stare at me in that cool fashion, please. It sets my nerves on edge.’
‘Practice makes perfect, Uncle.’
‘Your skills grow daily, Will. You have no need to hone them over supper.’
And it did seem to me there was a deal of truth in this remark. Each day, Will fell into the part with less of an effort. Even the time it took to ready himself for the show at the theatre grew shorter and shorter. And every night my brother needed less and less of that foul-smelling paste to turn his face dead pale.
There was a reason for this. Though it was weeks since he had risen early to go to school, bone tiredness did half the work. And I must have been tired too – too tired to see that weariness wasn’t the only reason my brother no longer called out so cheerily, ‘Off to make our fortune!’ each time he left the house.
One night, I said it for him. The sharpest look came over his face, though he said nothing. But that night, when the two of them came back from the theatre, I overheard my brother asking Uncle Len if he were sure there’d be a share coming his way. ‘I work as hard as you,’ said Will. ‘And longer hours. You simply wear your own clothes and pat on a little powder to face the audience. I spend an age before each show painting myself to match Frozen Billy.’
Uncle Len tried to make light of it. ‘So you’d be handsomely paid, would you, Will, for what any girl would do to her face for free? Be sure that, on the day I finally find Still Lucy, I will be offering your job to Clarrie!’
‘Half the act earns half the money,’ Will reminded him. ‘Those were your own words.’
‘I would be fair with you,’ said Uncle Len, ‘but half the money never seems to come.’
‘What do you mean? Madame Terrazini pays you. I’ve seen her.’
‘Oh, she pays me. The worry is, she pays me barely more than she did before. Certainly not enough to pay you.’
‘But—’
I heard the chair legs scrape across the floor. ‘Not now, Will. I have a man to meet in the Soldier at Arms, to talk about business.’
‘Business!’ scoffed Will. ‘I see there’s still money enough for beer in the Soldier at Arms, and a bet on the horses. Just not enough to pay your partner on the stage.’
