Genius
Page 64
CHAPTER 64
Afterwards, the presenters and crew disagreed about whether that was the point at which a perfect TV show had started to go wrong.
Janice thought so; she blamed Rachel Hicks. All right, so the boy genius looked slightly bored and, according to Rachel's preliminary researches, had been performing below par but it was hardly the end of the world. If Rachel had left well alone and not tried to get Eldred more interested, then Eldred would not have suggested involving the other kids and she, Janice, would not have been put in the embarrassing situation of having to point out that letting the little disabled guy ask some of the questions was slowing the whole process down and he would have to be left out.
It wasn't her fault that the other two damn kids had then gone on strike, or that Simon had had to step in and say that neither Lulubelle nor Keith would take part in calling out the numbers and signs but that the computer would flash them up on the screen. This had been accepted by everyone, so no one could say that the show had really begun to go downhill at that point, but there was a slight damper on the atmosphere. We lost the dramatic tension, Janice thought.
The show must go on, Lulubelle had said pacifically, settling back in her seat and taking Keith's hand; after all, it was Eldred's act. She and Keith would stay in the background and give moral support. Eldred had accepted this. The run-through had reached its conclusion smoothly.
The studio audience had filed in. Keith had another snack. Eldred was escorted to the toilet by Mildred, even though he didn't need it, 'in case he wanted to go at the wrong time.' Lulubelle was subjected to further adjustments to her make-up by Lucinda and emerged with sparkling wings to each eye, which caused Mildred to click her tongue disapprovingly and Eldred to tell Lulubelle she looked wonderful.
The studio audience warm-up had gone well. Keith was on form to do his whole interview again in front of the audience and they responded to him as wholeheartedly as the crew had.
Lulubelle's performance had been faultless. Agreed, there was a slight hitch when Keith, after his involvement in her spectacular entrance, couldn't stop laughing. It had been funny at first, his mirth infecting the audience, who renewed their laughter each time Lulubelle threw herself into a new contortion or rang the bells on her ears with her toes. Keith had been a real godsend, they thought at first; no need for a prompt to the audience, with Keith acting as cheerleader, always the first to start the laughter and the last to stop.
But he couldn't stop. At intervals during Lulubelle's chat with the presenters, and answering questions from the audience - all of which she handled very professionally, the crew agreed - Keith's chuckle would ring out and it would set Lulubelle off, so she forgot the question and started giggling at Keith instead. They had to cut the filming several times, which was never good news with a studio audience; they got restive if asked to make too many allowances.
Pete thought the show was okay up till then, even with the previous hitches. None of it was serious, he said. His heart only started to miss beats when Eldred came on from the wings while Lulubelle was talking about her circus career and said, loudly and unannounced, 'I've been thinking about this and I don't think she should say which circus she's with.’
The boy had no sense of professionalism at all, which was understandable since he was unused to public performance in the way that Lulubelle was, but the worst thing was the way that the two amateurs, Eldred and Keith, unsettled the real star of the show. It was a mistake, some of the crew said, to attempt to have three children on at once. They should have kept them separate.
Janice was blamed for this. She was the one who had talked about interaction between the children. Lulubelle would never have giggled like that if Keith hadn't set her off. And she wouldn't have gone into that long, uninterruptable discussion with Eldred and Keith, in front of a live audience, about whether it was wise for her to risk letting some unspecified person (described by Eldred in a whisper in Keith's ear) find out her whereabouts.
That wasn't the end of it, even when Lulubelle finally gave way to Keith and Eldred's united pressure and asked Simon to cut the part out where she mentioned the name of the circus that currently employed her and her mother. The question was re-worded, Lulubelle gave a more general answer about her field of work, the interview resumed and the audience's attention was regained.
No, the worst part - definitely the worst - began when Eldred, having shone in all his computer tests and impressed the audience by answering a whole range of maths problems and general knowledge questions thrown at him at random, was asked in his interview to talk about his experience of being a bright child in an average school.
Janice (and again, it wasn't my fault, thought Janice resentfully; it was one of the questions proposed by that Rachel Hicks) prompted Eldred to tell the audience what happened at school when he came top of the class too often. And when Eldred, after a moment's uncertain silence, said his teacher altered the marks or marked his correct answers as errors, Keith had a major fit.