by Wesley Stace
“I’d like a look at it.” Donald stopped for a cigarette.
That evening, alone in the little square room that had obviously once been that of the Hartleys’ son, George read on. The writing hadn’t picked up, but the things Valentine could do! The control he had over his voice — the way he could ping it around any room, up a chimney, out of a moving carriage, imitate anyone or anything! It was simply astonishing: one of the most impressive things George had ever imagined, let alone read.
However, Valentine did not use his superpower particularly responsibly — he teased a hapless nurse by pretending to be a hidden child: what had the nurse done to deserve this? He continually disrupted a coach trip to London by throwing his voice so people believed a straggler was trying to catch up. He caused an opera to be stopped not once but four times, each time using a different trick: but what was the point? And what would Frankie have had to say about someone who continually disrupted Peter Pan? Valentine just liked to watch mayhem descend. It was all rather mean-spirited and self-congratulatory.
And there was one thing that troubled George above all else: Valentine’s skill, the very subject of this thick brick of a book — could it actually be done? He fell asleep with the book open on his chest and dreamed indistinctly of voices that called out to him but whose source was unknown.
Next morning, Don flicked through the book, taking particular note of the inscription, and lit a cigarette. When he’d finished, stubbing it out carefully in the pewter ashtray, he asked about the dedication: “Joe?”
“That was my grandpa. Died when my mum was very young.”
“Hmm.” A swig from his flask left a milky stain around Don’s lips. There was a long silence.
“Don? Can you throw your voice?”
“No.” Don laughed.
“No, I mean, can anyone throw their voice?”
“It’s a trick. People used to talk about it all the time. It was big when I was at school here.”
In his surprise, George forgot Valentine: “You were here?”
“Still am.”
“Did you ever leave?”
“A long time ago. Nineteen fifty. Went to public school — St. Catherine’s.”
“Was it good?”
“No.” Don shook his head. He spoke tersely, used to giving the truth in as unadorned a fashion as possible. “Didn’t like it. But that was just me. I wasn’t well. You’ll have a grand time.” He saw George eyeing the flask and offered it to him.
“I can’t have that!” said George.
“I know what you think, but it’s not booze. It’s soothing for my stomach.”
“I’ll get the book back off you tomorrow,” said George.
He walked back past the long-jump pit, trying to imagine getting his body even as far as the sand. Leaves crunched underfoot. It was getting dark early.
Don had given the matter some thought overnight.
“Your physics teacher would be able to explain it better than me,” he said, though George doubted whether Poole would have any opinion at all. “Look. Where is my voice coming from, then?”
“From your mouth,” said George. They were on some errands, standing on a messy patch of gravel outside a lawn mower shop.
“How can I make my voice come from over there?” Donald pointed into the distance behind George’s head. “I can’t, and I can’t persuade you I can, because you see my mouth moving and you hear sound coming from my mouth. Think about it. You can’t train your throat muscles to defy nature and produce a sound far over there without having it get there first, can you? Sound waves don’t work that way.”
“So the book is a load of rubbish.”
“The book is fascinating, but in the real world no one can do what he does. But, see over there. . . .” Again he pointed, but this time to the front door of the shop, and George followed with his eyes. As he did, he saw Donald’s lips move as he said: “Over here! . . . It’s called misdirection. The eye moves quicker than the ear and tells the ear where the noise is coming from. The ear follows the eye and believes what it’s told. After I tell you where it’s from, you look and think that’s where it is.”
“Wow,” said George, unconvinced by Donald’s lame attempt at illusion but grateful he had gone to the effort. George watched the mechanics unload the Upside lawn mower from the back of the school van. What Donald was saying made sense, but there was something missing. He couldn’t get it out of his head as they did their errands.
“Do you like comics?” Donald asked. George nodded. “The Superman kind or the Beano kind?” Both were illegal at school.
George understood that a voice could not logically be thrown — but a Fisher knew that you could persuade people of almost anything. And Donald had demonstrated the rudiments of the illusion. If you could harness that “power” — make people utterly believe that there was a voice coming from elsewhere — what could you use it for? How far could you go? Certainly the events in Valentine Vox were exaggerated, but would someone really have spent so long writing 512 pages, each filled with 700 words, if the whole thing could be dismissed just like that, as a kids’ book? Were people so very stupid whenever the book was written or was their willingness to believe in Valentine a longing for magic that George could exploit even today?
“I don’t know how,” he said when he’d been rewarded with two comics for helping load some plants from a nursery, “but I’m going to find out how to do it right.”
“Good for you,” said Donald, smiling, lighting a cigarette, and leaning up against the back of the van. And then he spoke while smoking for the first time ever. “Think of all the things you could do. But not just stupid stuff like Valentine . . . Do you know what ventriloquism means?”
“Making a dummy talk?”
“I looked it up: literally, ‘speaking with your stomach.’ And the book keeps harping on about abdominal intonation.”
“Is that how they do it?”
Don laughed. “That’s what they believed a long time ago. You can have a go, but you probably need a full stomach. Do you know where Mrs. Cakebread’s is?”
“Over there,” said George, as though he could throw his voice.
The rest of the Upsiders returned, full of themselves and life beyond. The corridors lost their ghostly echoes and were once more filled with bickering, with predictable family boasts and the arguments these provoked. George didn’t want to talk to anybody. Nobody wanted to talk to him.
That first night, a reading period was allotted after chapel. Everyone sat at his desk in supposed silence, flicking unwillingly through a book whose covers he had never previously opened. With spirits so high, the attempt was doomed. Commander Poole, even more irritable than usual, made his rounds. He marched between desks to inspect chosen reading material, confiscating anything inappropriate: only the Bible, Great Expectations, and Jane’s Fighting Ships seemed to pass muster. By the time he got to George, the Babel of prohibited titles rose high in his hands. “And what’s that?”
George said nothing, flipping the pages to reveal the cover.
“I see,” said Poole, who had no idea what he was being shown. “Library book, Mr. Librarian?” He made it clear that librarianship was an effeminate pastime that would have seen George drummed out of the navy.
“From home, sir.”
“Signature from the headmaster?”
George winced. His eyes stung suddenly, closing against his will.
“I’ll have that, thank you very much.”
And Valentine Vox was gone. Poole’s final words: “You can sit there and reflect. These are coming with me.”
Nothing else had riled George, not enforced games, not half-term on his own, but this was pettiness. Spite and stupidity had taken the book from him, the book that was a gift from Evie, that was all he had left of her, the book that kept her alive. Staring at a desk scarred and tattooed by years of previous inmates, George was furious for the first time since his arrival. He lifted the lid and felt for a pair of
compasses.
Something had changed over half-term. The others — his schoolmates, the staff — had all run off to their homes, but George had stayed. He felt a part of the school, of the building, of the grounds, as never before, but more alienated than ever from its inhabitants. The Hartleys, quiet Don, and George: these belonged. The rest were part-timers, tourists, even Patrick and his father, and he would keep them at arm’s length, forget them, boys and staff alike. He had more important things to consider. When Poole was gone, he dug the compasses deep into the underside of his desk.
That night, he found an appropriate substitute for the proscribed book in the most unlikely place of all: the library. He must have been in a daze, bored with cataloguing the endless pile of Bunters, to have missed it before: “Billy Bunter’s gifts were few,” confided the back cover of Bunter the Ventriloquist. “He was no good at games. He was no good in class. He was no good at anything in particular — with a single exception. There was one thing that Billy Bunter could do, and do remarkably well. He could ventriloquize!”
Whatever appeal Bunter, the fat owl of the remove, might have had for previous generations was lost on George. Nevertheless, he read until lights-out and beyond, immersing himself in the archaic yet sadly familiar world of Greyfriars, where beaks doled out impot and whops, while Bunter exclaimed, “Oh, my hat!” The plot, such as it was, concerned the fattest and laziest member of the community’s quest (for reasons of greed) to play on the school team. Ventriloquism was his sole means to this end.
At breakfast, George considered the book’s similarities to the confiscated Vox: both featured a teenager, older than George (he estimated Valentine to be eighteen and Bunter eternally fifteen), with the wild talent of ventriloquism and mimicry (in Bunter’s case unlearned and unexplained, in Vox’s achieved only after “a severe course of training”); both were well versed in misdirection. Valentine was essentially a puckish mischief maker who used his art only to baffle the world, to make people look stupid, then stood back and watched anarchy descend. Bunter, on the other hand, was an abused and greedy tub of lard, using his gift to try to get his way, to “avenge all those wrongs and injustices that had roused his indignation.” He made fools of his teachers — and didn’t Poole deserve the same treatment? — but also used his art to serve his own ends. And if Bunter could use ventriloquism to get into games, why couldn’t George use it to get out of them?
The opposing reactions to their talents summed up the difference: whereas Vox’s unwitting audiences became convulsed with mirth, Bunter’s turned on him and administered kicks or six of the best. At Upside it would undoubtedly be the latter — so, Best know your lines before you take the stage: an old Fisher maxim.
George was from a family of magicians — he would cultivate his own weird gift and avenge all those wrongs and injustices that had roused his indignation. His mind was made up on that point. He owed it to Evie and to Valentine.
The next day, his name couldn’t be found on any dangling disk. Was he so bad at sports that they had forgotten him altogether?
Not knowing what else to do, he changed into his normal games clothes and walked outside with everyone else. Mr. Morris approached him confidentially: “Donald needs a hand with the swimming-pool cover.”
George’s heart soared at this mundane piece of information. He didn’t know if it was for that day only or forever, and he didn’t care. All his scheming to get out of games, or simply his wish at Peter Pan, had done the trick. It was as if he had thrown his thoughts.
He found Donald by the pavilion, smoking, staring off into space.
“Can’t get rid of me that easily,” said George.
They walked slowly to the swimming pool, either side of them whistles, grunts, and the dull thwack of smacked leather. George felt gloriously immune; being Donald’s apprentice made him invisible. Donald set about the holes in the turquoise cover without asking for help.
“What shall I do?” asked George.
“Oh, this is pretty easy stuff,” said Donald. “Sit and read.”
“I don’t have anything. Poole confiscated Valentine.”
To George’s disappointment, Don hardly reacted. “Maybe there’s something in the cubicle.”
It was a long shot. The cubicle was a row of numbered metal hooks with a bench that ran its length beneath. In front of this was a strip of wood (that covered an average boy from knee to nipple) with saloon doors flapping at either end. Imagining the shivering goose pimples of cold early summer, George peered over the fence. There, a little farther down on the bench, was a tatty green book that he knew without further inspection was Valentine Vox. Beneath it, the two comics. George could barely contain himself. “Don! Thanks, Don! How did you get it?”
Donald tapped the side of his nose and winked, turning his attention to the smelly adhesive. “Read to me.”
George sat cross-legged on the concrete and opened the book to find Swish’s initials on the inside cover. “ ‘In one of the most ancient and populous boroughs in the country of Suffolk, there resided a genius named Jonathan Vox. . . .’ ”
“All done,” Don said finally, as he lit up. George knew he wasn’t going to get much out of him, so he idly opened one of the comics. He’d been a fan of these garish American imports ever since Des had brought one home from a business trip, though what he liked was embarrassingly beside the point. Forget the heroes and the superheroes, those mild-mannered Joes who became bats, spiders, or green giants — the real wonders, the real gifts, were on the back pages: the advertisements. These transported him to a different world beyond his wildest dreams: a world of spyglasses, sea monkeys, auto scare bombs, funny chatterboxes, and 250 Magic Tricks. For years he had endured Bazooka Joe bubblegum purely to look at the offer inside, but here, at the back of these comics, was an entire Cash and Carry of fascinating novelties. Normally, he would have dallied over the mysterious Ouija Talking Board, the vibrating matchbox, the see-o-scope and companion exaggeroscope, perhaps the live chameleons, but today he didn’t get beyond the very first ad.
“Don!” he shouted. “Don!”
Don turned around, cigarette hanging from his bottom lip. He pulled it off, smarting as he removed a strip of skin. “What?” It was the first time he had seen Don annoyed.
“Look!” George put the page in front of him, unable to resist jabbing his finger and reading aloud: “ ‘IMITATE RADIO FAVORITES! BOYS! Learn Ventriloquism and Apparently Throw Your Voice! Into a trunk, under the bed, under a table, back of the door, into a desk at school, or anywhere. Lots of fun fooling teacher, policeman, peddlers, or friends. THE VENTRILO, a little instrument, fits in the mouth out of sight. It is used in connection with the above, and with the aid of this wonderful DOUBLE THROAT or VENTRILO, you can imitate many kinds of birds, animals, etc. Anyone can use it. Seldom fails. Ventrilo & 32 Page Book. No. 3461. 10c.’ ” There was an accompanying cartoon — in front of a car, an angry cop; in the backseat, a naughty urchin with a cheeky grin throwing his voice so that the driver appeared to be yelling at the cop, “GET OUTA MY WAY, FAT HEAD BEFORE I PUNCH YOUR NOSE!”
“How much is ten c?” asked George, hyperventilating with excitement.
“About five pence.”
“Five pence! Is that all? I have five pence.”
“It’ll take some getting. It’s in America.”
“Look! You can throw your voice with it!”
“Seldom fails,” quoted Don dubiously, but George wasn’t listening. “I’ll look into it. If anyone asks, say you mended the pool cover.”
The bell rang. It was time for lessons. George was still in his games clothes at the swimming pool.
Two days later, he found a copy of the previous week’s Stage awaiting his daily visit to the pavilion.
“That’s your great-grandmother, then?”
“Yeah.”
“Read it to me.”
“OK.” He cleared his throat and read: “ ‘Some say ventriloquism died many years ago. Perhaps so. But the
y buried it today. Sadly, I suspect there can be few readers who saw Echo Endor in her heyday. The great, now late, Echo Endor was royalty in a bygone era of music hall and variety entertainment. Though this world, and the colossi that best rode its stages . . .’ ” (Don corrected him: “bestrode”) “ ‘. . . bestrode its stages, is largely forgotten, and though she is now less well known than several of her contemporaries who ventured into film and television, Echo Endor was the most successful of all female ventriloquistes and one of the last great stalwarts of the British variety stage. We shall not see her like again.’ ”
The lengthy obituary continued with the facts of her career, minutely recounted, before: “ ‘In 1910, her marriage to the great Wallace Fisher, the self-ordained “Tsar of Impresarios,” cemented her position at the top of her profession. They had but one child, Joe King Fisher, who also went into the family business, and whose wartime exploits with his dummy, Garrulous George “GC,” earned him the famous nickname “Death Wish” Fisher.
“ ‘The long span of her sixty-year career in music halls and variety saw her receive billing with, amongst others, Chaplin, Tommy Trinder, Danny Kaye, and even, at the end of her illustrious career, Cliff and the Shadows!
“ ‘She was voted Ventriloquist of the Year by her peers three years running, the only time a female has received this honour. In 1959, she was awarded the Medal of the Realm of Britain for her charity work, having raised a total of over £250,000, much of which went to Byng House, Essex, the home for retired variety performers. In 1961, she received the OBE for services to British Entertainment. In 1966, she was named one of the British Magic Greats at the British Museum of Magic, where Narcissus is still on display, in a ceremony officiated by Tom Tiddler and Ermintrude.
“ ‘Unfortunately, the microscope of television held no appeal for her, and she died with her mystery intact. Her absence from The Happiest Night of Your Life and other shows that continued to support the Good Old Days coincided (not coincidentally) with her running foul of one of the Grades, an unseemly resentment that saw her unwelcome on various of their shows, stages, and screens. Or perhaps her day, anyway, was gone.