Fearsome Magics

by Jonathan Strahan

  She took a deep breath. “All right. I guess I—”

  He stood. “Splendid. That’s just splendid.” He leaned down and gave her a peck on the cheek. “You know how proud your mother would’ve been, seeing you in the act?”

  Polly felt herself blush. She could not remember the last time her mother had been mentioned. Or that her father had kissed her. It felt both comforting and utterly alien. “I don’t know what to say.” That was the absolute truth.

  “Say you’ll come with me today, if only to have a look around. I’ll give you a tour, show you the basics, then later I’ll take you to supper at the Criterion, just the two of us.” He gave her shoulder a squeeze and stepped back. “Well?”

  “That sounds like a perfect day,” Polly said, lying as convincingly as any actress. “Thank you, father.”

  THE ST. JAMES Theatre was in the heart of the West End, just off Piccadilly Circus, the streets clogged with black taxis and red buses. Every building was bedizened with electric-light signs and billboards as tall as houses.

  The taxi dropped them in front of the ornate lobby doors. On either side were alarmingly large posters of her father—of Vardo!—dramatically backlit, hair and teeth gleaming, his hands cupped around an object invisible to the viewer.

  In the middle of the day, the theatre was closed. Her father steered her around the corner into an alley. A man sat outside the stage door on a stool, smoking a cigarette.

  He stood. “Afternoon, sir.”

  “Hullo, Alf. My daughter’s down from school for the summer. I’m hoping she’ll be a regular face around here.”

  “Anything you need, miss.” He touched the brim of his cap and held the door open for them.

  It took a moment for Polly’s eyes to adjust from the brightness of a summer day to the dim corridor. Backstage, the theater had none of the glamour of its public spaces. It was a dark-walled warren of cramped passageways with worn wooden floors and exposed brick walls, hung with wiring and massive loops of rope. Ladders and stairs canted off at every angle. She tipped her head back until her neck creaked and still could not see the ceiling, obscured by forty vertical feet of catwalks, pulleys, lights, and hanging canvas.

  “Down here,” her father said, pointing to narrow wooden stairs. She followed him to a low-ceilinged basement. Wooden beams were strung with bare electric bulbs; painted flats and discarded props and scenery lined the unfinished walls.

  Polly had seen a few of her father’s shows from the audience, the flash and the dazzle, the polished lacquered tables with gleaming brass fittings, the silks and velvet drapes. This place bore no relation to that stage, as far as she could tell. Yet when he turned, she saw that his face was alight with excitement, like a small boy with a new toy.

  “My workshop.” He opened an unvarnished wooden door and gestured her inside. “This is where the real magic happens.”

  The room was long and reasonably wide, lined on one side by workbenches covered with tools and pieces of metal and what looked like laboratory equipment. Large machines stood in the middle of the space—enormous saws and lathes and drills, the floor beneath them covered in sawdust.

  Her father took off his jacket and hung it on a rack by the door. “It occurred to me that you know very little about my work,” he said, rolling up his shirtsleeves. “I suspect that you’ll find it rather interesting.”

  Polly had her doubts, but her father looked more casual and relaxed than she could remember, and it had already been a day of surprises. She recalled an adage from one of her textbooks: The first job of a scientist is to keep an open mind. “Lay on, MacDuff,” she said.

  They walked slowly around the room. He showed her boxes with hidden panels that opened and shut with levers and pulleys; pistons that raised and lowered vases and other props; mirror-lined boxes that, when turned at an angle, would appear to be empty. With each object, he gave a concise explanation of the mechanics, and how it affected what the audience saw—or didn’t see.

  Another table held tins of pigments and binders, liquid rubber, cans of turpentine and pungent solvents. He demonstrated paints that glowed in the dark, or were such a matte black they rendered an object almost invisible in dim light.

  Next was a sort of chemistry lab, jars of powders and crystals, beakers and glass rods, Bunsen burners, all familiar friends to Polly. She picked up a jar marked KClO3. “Potassium chlorate,” she said. “What do you do with it?” At school they used it to produce pure oxygen, but there wasn’t much to see.

  “I’ll show you.” He spooned a little bit of the white powder onto a square of paper, then ran a finger across the shelf of chemicals until he found the jar marked SULFUR. He carefully sifted some of that yellow powder onto the white and covered it all with a second square of paper. “Stand back,” he said.

  Polly took a step away from the table.

  He picked up a hammer and gave the paper a sharp blow.

  BANG!

  Polly jumped several feet.

  “Effective, isn’t it?” He wiped his hands on a rag. “The least bit of impact sets it off. I can dust an ordinary object with one, my wand with the other, tap once and—Hey, Presto!” he said in his booming, on-stage voice.

  He leaned back against the table. “I don’t suppose they’ve gotten to that part in your chemistry course.”

  Polly shook her head. “I have blown up a few beakers, though.”

  “Collateral damage. Part of many experiments.” He replaced the two jars. “One of these days, I’d like to try and create an explosive paint. I have all the texts, I just haven’t found the time.” He pointed to a bookshelf in a dim corner. “Perhaps you could help with that. Your aunt says you’re quite the scientist.”

  “You and Aunt Emma correspond?” This was news to Polly.

  “Of course.” He took out his pipe and lit it. “After your mother died, I’m afraid I just threw myself into my work, and distance became a habit.” He smiled sadly through the smoke. “But never for a moment think that I don’t care about you.”

  Polly felt her eyes prickle, and was at a loss for words.

  “You’re my daughter, Polly. More like me than you might imagine.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, you probably think that magicians create illusions,” he said, crossing his arms. “But we don’t. We study the same scientific principles you do, and use them to create a reality that supports belief in illusions. Like this.”

  He picked up a piece of mirrored glass and, began to show her how the angles and lines of sight changed what she saw. Polly was so fascinated that she did not hear the outer door open.

  “Hey, boss,” a red-haired man in coveralls said. “We got another one of those crank letters.” He held up an envelope. “No return—” He stopped. “Who’s the young chap? New hand?”

  “In a manner of speaking. This chap is my daughter, Polly. Polly, meet Archie Mason, my right-hand man and chief engineer. I stole him away from the eggheads when he graduated from Oxford.”

  “You went to Oxford?” Polly stared. “And you’re working here?”

  “Didn’t take much persuasion. This is loads more interesting than calculating bridge capacities.” He pointed to a table with a metal base. “I invented that, by way of illustration.”

  Polly didn’t think it was particularly impressive, but the man sounded awfully proud of it. The table’s top was a wooden disc about half a meter in diameter and as thick as a manhole cover. It was mounted on a center post affixed to the floor. She smiled politely. “It looks quite—sturdy.”

  “It held Valinda,” Archie said.

  “That was the idea.” The magician saw the puzzled look on his daughter’s face. “Would you like a demonstration?”

  “All right.” Not much to demonstrate about a table, was there?

  “Splendid. Climb aboard.” He pointed to a step stool next to it.

  “Aboard the table?”

  “The table? Ah, I see. No, my dear. It’s a piston-drive
n platform.”

  Polly shrugged and climbed up onto the disc. “Now what?”

  “Look up.”

  She did, and saw a neat circle cut in the workroom ceiling. “Is that the stage?”

  “It is indeed. Now stand very straight, hold your arms tight to your sides, and tuck in your elbows.” He turned to Archie. “I’ll run up top. Usual signal.”

  “Two raps. Right-o.”

  “See you in a moment my dear,” her father said, giving her hand a squeeze, and then he dashed out the door. She heard his footsteps clatter on the wooden stairs, then silence.

  “Is this—?”

  “Safe as houses.” Archie stepped over to a square metal box mounted on a support pillar a foot from the platform. He looked over at Polly, winked, and rested his hand on the lever protruding from its front.

  A moment later, from right above her head, Polly heard two sharp knocks.

  “That’s the cue,” Archie said. “Arms in tight, now.” He pushed the lever up.

  Beneath her feet, Polly felt the ‘table’ begin to rise, as if she were in an elevator with no walls or surrounding cage. Her stomach churned as it did on carnival rides, as the disc went up, rapidly and smoothly and without a sound.

  She counted under her breath and before she had reached three her head was going through the ceiling. Suddenly, the theater was spread out in front of her, a vast bowl of gilt and velvet, rows of empty chairs stretching back and back into the dim reaches of the farthest balcony. In another second, the top of the disc reached the level of the stage floor and she felt it click into place, again without a sound.

  “Bravo!” her father said from the wings. He began to clap. “Well done!” He gazed at her as if she were a rare treasure.

  Polly stepped off onto the boards, her body a-tingle with the excitement of the ride, her cheeks flushed with the unaccustomed praise. She glanced down at the disc, its wooden top now nearly invisible amid the floorboards. “Is that what you wanted my help rehearsing?” she asked.

  “Yes. What did you think? You looked like a natural.”

  Polly wasn’t sure what she felt. This was not her world. But standing there in his shirtsleeves, a smear of dust across one cheek, hair hanging over one eye, her father looked happier than she had seen him in years. She wanted the chance to know that man better.

  “I’ll do it,” she said.

  POLLY HAD THE mornings to herself. She breakfasted with tea and scones and a book, so content in her solitude that for the first few days, rehearsals seemed like an interruption and she doubted her decision. Then she got caught up in the rhythm of the workroom, the flow of ideas, the easy conversations peppered with jargon that soon became second nature, like learning another language.

  Each day she found herself more eager to get to the theater and work alongside her father—Hugh—and Archie. She was pleased to find that, although they had vastly more experience than she did in every facet of the work, they treated her as an equal when it came to solving the myriad small problems that came up in the creation of the show.

  “The Lady Vanishes is a superb title for Polly’s bit,” Hugh said.

  “It is,” Archie agreed. “That’s why Mr. Hitchcock used it for his latest film. And why we can’t. The audience will think it’s a publicity stunt.”

  “I suppose you have something better?”

  “Not yet,” Archie shrugged. “But we have a week to decide before—”

  “La Femme Perdu,” Polly said from atop the props trunk.

  Both men turned.

  “Huh?” Archie said.

  “Didn’t they teach French at Oxford?”

  “I’m an engineer. Latin and German. What’s it mean?”

  “The Lost Woman.”

  “La Femme Perdu,” Hugh repeated, rolling the words out. “It’s good. It’s better. Lost has such a melancholy mystery to it.” He snapped his fingers. “We’ll use it. Good work, my dear.”

  Polly nodded, pleased. “Thanks.”

  They began to rehearse the illusion on stage the next week. The set-up was simple: A woman in a gown and a man in a smoking jacket and fez are in a drawing room with flowered wallpaper, having cocktails. On stage is a drinks cabinet with six-inch wheels. Off-stage a shot rings out. “It is your husband!” the man shouts. “Hide in here.” He opens the cabinet doors, she curls inside, he closes them, leaving one slightly ajar. The husband rushes in. The men argue loudly. The husband shoots. There is a puff of smoke—the other man disappears! The husband looks around, sees the cabinet, flings it open. The woman is gone! All that remains inside is the man’s red fez.

  At school, Polly had diligently attended cricket practice, and memorized logarithm tables and irregular French verbs, but nothing had prepared her for the repetition and endless detail of building an illusion. Everything was timed to the second. A single misstep would spoil it all.

  The drinks cart had to be positioned precisely on the stage—over the lift and at an exact angle.

  “I understand why it’s over the lift,” Polly said at the first rehearsal. “But that’s a circle, so why is the angle so important?”

  “Sit down in the audience,” her father said. Polly went and sat in the second row. “What do you see?”

  “The drinks cart.”

  “Anything between it and the floor?”

  “No.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “Yes. I can see between the wheels, see the wallpaper behind it.”

  “So no one could possibly get out through the bottom of the cabinet without being seen?”

  “No.” Polly frowned. “But isn’t that how I—?” She stared at the drinks cart.

  “It is.” Her father turned the cart at an angle. “Now what do you see?”

  “The wallpaper behind it has gone all wonky.”

  He laughed. “Come back up and take a close look.”

  Polly did. Kneeling in front of the drinks cart, she could see a false front between the two wheels, painted so that it matched the wallpaper, but only at a particular distance and perspective. Hidden behind the frontpiece, the bottom of the cabinet extended down, flush with the floor. Inside was a sliding panel that opened over the disc of the lift.

  “What about the fez?”

  “Collapsible. It folds up and hooks into the roof of the chamber, invisible from the audience.”

  “That’s ingenious,” she said with real admiration.

  “It’s what I do,” he said. “And why I want no one sneaking in to take a closer look.”

  Polly learned by trial and error. She had to wait to give Archie the pre-arranged signal—two sharp raps—until the men began to argue and their shouts masked the sound of her knuckles. She lay curled on her side in the cabinet for an hour at a time, practicing and practicing her exit, a five-part ballet: slide the panel; climb onto the lift; unhook the fez; place it on the panel; and slide that shut again from below as she descended into the basement. Every single movement was choreographed.

  Fortunately, La Femme Perdu was her only role. The other illusions were performed solo by her father, or with the help of Chaz Manning, his stage assistant, who also played the part of the jealous husband. After a week of rehearsal, she began to feel more comfortable with her part, although she doubted that performing would ever be her first choice. Upstairs required presence and flamboyance; downstairs, preparation and ingenuity.

  When she had rehearsed to the point of exhaustion, she was excused to the workroom, curling up in a battered armchair with a text from the bookshelf, an eclectic mix of technical manuals and histories of magic. Archie often fetched them supper—meat pies and ale, a lemon squash for her—and she spent her evenings eating, reading, and making notes when interesting bits caught her eye.

  Some afternoons, when the men were working on other parts of the show, Polly had quiet time to try out some of her ideas. She discovered that it was a very well-stocked workshop, more comprehensive than any of the school labs, and soon her table was
covered with experiments-in-progress. Two weeks in, she abandoned her morning reading in order to get to the theatre early, to work before rehearsals.

  The day before the show opened, she thought she had solved one of her conundrums. After many failed attempts—and two blistered fingers—she had finally calculated the correct proportions to make a dark sludge, the consistency of thin pudding, of potassium chlorate, sulfur, and a binding agent called British gum, mixed with a bit of water and some lampblack. She painted it onto a dinged-up wooden ball, one of several she’d found in a parts box of discarded props from previous shows. She gingerly set it on a square of oiled paper to dry.

  “La Femme, you’re needed up top,” Archie said, coming in the doorway. He peered over her shoulder. “What’s that? Looks like a little cannonball.”

  “Close enough. I think I’ve created an exploding paint. I’ll know once it’s dry.”

  “Hugh will be dead chuffed. If it works, you should get him to take it to the Magic Circle next month. Ought to be a big hit.”

  “If it works, I’ll take it myself.”

  “Not unless you go in disguise. It’s blokes only.”

  “Figures,” Polly huffed, then grabbed the silky dress that was her costume. “I need to change.”

  “Fly, mein fraulein. Last rehearsal. Mustn’t keep Himself waiting.”

  The lift was in its up position so she took the stairs to the dressing room. Once dressed, Polly observed her father from the wings. He was running through his patter for the first act, speaking to an imaginary audience. It was a full dress rehearsal—top hat, tailcoat, white tie — and the man on stage was no longer Hugh, but Vardo! His rich voice was so well-modulated that even his whispers carried to the back rows. He moved across the stage, waving his wand, his movements fluid but precise.

  A few minutes later he stepped off for a glass of water.

  “Why do you bother with a wand?” she asked. “Isn’t that a bit of a cliché these days?” The tailcoat and hat, she now knew, were not just a costume, but were tools themselves, full of extra pockets and secret compartments that he used for his sleights.