by Wesley Stace
Echo flitted through infrequently with a knitted offering “to placate the baby gods.” She cooed circumspectly without quite taking Frankie to her bosom, giving the impression that she would be willing to show the child more affection when it was old enough to have something to offer in exchange. She suggested that she pay for a nanny on the basis that no performer should be hampered by his offspring: it was unprofessional to be accompanied by baby, even if she travelled in a smart carry-cot bought for her at great expense by her grandmother. Queenie, however, was not prepared to sacrifice Frankie to the success of The King and Queenie Show, and a trial run revealed that Frankie slept quite soundly provided she could hear her mother’s voice. She snoozed next to me through many a show in the back of the silk cabinet, which seemed designed to hide boy and baby. She practically grew up there. Her first word, “wholemeal,” turned out, on further investigation, to be “old mill,” the picture that was the result of one of Queenie’s “tricks.”
The parties were our bread and butter. At first, I rather enjoyed the hustle and bustle, provided I remained at arm’s length from the audience. Ventriloquism was the centrepiece, but the act was infinitely adaptable. The night before an engagement, Queenie hummed to herself at the kitchen table as she picked adroitly from the menu, shuffling the programme until she was happy, always managing to magic up some appropriate doggerel for the final flourish.
And what were they paying for, these party-throwing parents? It was Queenie who delivered the rhyming prologue (“Let’s take a trip together / To the Land of Make Believe”), she who took charge of the children, and Joe, silent figure of mystery dressed in black tie, who showed them the effects. A typical programme included (in order of appearance) magic painting, Joe’s card tricks, monkey spelling and sewing, paper tearing, and then — the moment we’ve all been waiting for — ventriloquism, as performed by Joe and me, which brought the first half to a close (before I was put safely out of harm’s way). The interval (cake and the blowing out of candles) was followed by the silk cabinet, and then audience participation courtesy of Queenie and Pip Squeak, thrust into the fizzy lemon and limelight. It was bound to be a disaster following so closely the cutting of cake, and I was well out of it. The grand finale involved all four of us in a ventriloquial duel, on which the audience voted. Joe pulled out all the tricks (we both smoked, he drank, and I talked), but Queenie always won. It was exactly as Echo had predicted: the kids liked her more. Kids didn’t care about mistakes; they just wanted to be in on the joke. After a second helping of cake, an invoice and two guineas exchanged hands (Queenie was the business manager), and we were back in our boxes and carry-cots, and on our way.
Simple stuff, perhaps, and somewhat beneath me. But I didn’t complain. The King and Queenie Show was a group effort, and whatever the material, I was out in the world. At first, things seemed to be looking up. I was extra super during the first few parties, an added twinkle in my eye.
It couldn’t last. Though we enjoyed the occasional Rotarian or rest home engagement, our greatest success was among children. But the triumph was not Joe’s and mine. The kids wanted more tearing, more mess, more of their Auntie Queenie. Card tricks left them cold.
Joe was too good, his skill an irrelevance. Soon it was evident that Joe was an irrelevance too, and he knew it. One afternoon, an argument broke out in the middle of our routine. Queenie strode into the thick of it, but Joe and I simply continued with the act. Tempers frayed, cake flew, icing splattered; on we went regardless.
“This is stupid,” Joe said unexpectedly, though the row was such that I could barely hear him. “Shall we stop?”
“Would anyone notice?”
“We might as well not be here,” said Joe, as we returned to the script.
It was true.
Three Parts for Fisher: The Skin Part
The lone criminal could get away with anything.
That night, George felt the lump of the walkie-talkie beneath his pillow, waiting for Don to communicate.
The persistent wind announced a bracing morning walk. At break, he went far away from the all-weather pitch and turned the walkie-talkie up as loud as possible. There was nothing but static and a stray foreign radio station that wormed its way into his reception. What good is one walkie-talkie if the person with the other one isn’t talking to you?
After rehearsal, George went to the first-form garden and placed the walkie-talkie on the bench in front of him. The gadget sat lifeless on its stone seat. Perhaps he should ask a question?
Clasping the walkie-talkie in his right hand, his thumb poised, he closed his eyes and pushed the Talk button.
“Ventrilo to Don. Ventrilo to Don.” He overenunciated in the way that he felt was required of the walkie-talker. “Do-ah you-ah receive-ah me-ah?” He let the button go. Silence. “Ventrilo to Don? Ventrilo to Don?” Nothing. “Over and out.”
He left it where it was and paced the perimeter of the frostbitten garden, where, in better weather, the smaller boys grew watercress and runner beans. He was making his way slowly, measuring the boundary by foot, when the walkie-talkie burst into life. For one second, perhaps two, white noise blared into the garden. By the time George reached it, the walkie-talkie was as dead as before. He started another lap. When the miniature obelisk again started to belch, he ran towards it, but again the white noise stopped. George pushed the button. “Come in, Don. Don? Don? Is that you?” But there was nothing. Were they out of range? He ran to the woods at the side of the driveway. If that noise was interference, perhaps they were out of range by inches only. “Don? Don?”
Nothing: no message, no sign, no word at all.
The next day he strayed as near Don’s house as possible, within the legal means, but he felt monitored, assuming Hartley had warned the common room that the runaway might try a repeat performance. George ended up behind the squash courts, ankle deep in a rainbow of illegal sweet wrappers and crushed cans of Shandy Bass.
His monologue began as formally as before, as he kept to what he imagined was the walkie-talkie script, but soon he was pressing Talk at will, releasing it when he deserved a reply. In staccato sentences, he gave his report on the last few days: the deduction, the conclusion, the escape, and the capture. The gaps grew as he waited for a response with increasing pessimism. As he trudged to the afternoon’s rehearsal, he resorted to inflicting white noise on Don in short sharp bursts in the hope of provoking him into retaliation.
The next day, it was all or nothing. His half-holiday slowly vanished as the full cast run-through dragged tediously on. It was almost dark: another day gone without contact. Finally, with Bird’s desperate plea to learn their lines, they were dismissed. George found it easier to go unobserved in the half-light, and he allowed himself to talk into the transmitter long before he got to the squash courts, chatting about the play, his bargain with Bird, his lines. He walked past the new development, a medieval ruin in the late-afternoon gloom. “And what about the assembly hall? The foundations took my whole first term . . . then the two stories went up, and they closed them in just before Christmas and now they’ve just stopped! Did they run out of money?”
Giving Donald the chance to respond, George pictured himself walking down the path, acting exactly as he was acting now, speaking the same words into the air but without the excuse of a walkie-talkie. I keep talking, but I don’t even know if anyone is listening. I might as well be talking to myself. There was a boy called Fletcher who conducted a nonexistent orchestra, and a first-former who whispered conversations to his imaginary friend and asked for two plates at meals. And now there was George.
It was cold behind the squash courts, dark, though not quite time for dinner. George kicked at the rubbish and heard the echoing squeaks and grunts as two men smashed a ball around the walls. He picked his way through the debris using his key-ring flashlight. Something caught his eye: a shiny magazine, folded, called Wing. The cover revealed a partially naked woman, of Matron’s age and demeanour, shoehorned in
to a tight black rubber dress with a slit up the middle so she could possibly move her legs. He picked it up; the word wing became Swinger.
“It’s a right mess back here. There’s some real treasure. . . . Naked ladies . . . sweet wrappers . . . a rugby shirt . . . Anyway . . . here I am, broadcasting from my office again. . . . Ventrilo calling, Ventrilo calling Secret Friend. . . . I’m going to ask you something. . . . You don’t have to answer. . . . In fact, you won’t answer, will you? . . . Why are you still living at the end of the driveway but not doing your job? And why does Hartley say you’ve gone? That’s all I want to know . . . except that you’re OK. . . . I really don’t know why I’m standing behind this squash court. . . . It’s freezing and it’s totally dark now. . . . Nobody could see me if I was walking through the middle of the path. . . . So I’ll go. . . .” He took another idle glance at Swinger and pushed it between a couple of stray slats of corrugated iron, his should he ever want it. “No one would believe that I’m really talking to anybody anyway. . . . And I’m not, really, am I? Is there anybody there? I’m walking out in the open. . . . Anybody could see me if it wasn’t dark. . . . Is there anybody there?” George shouted up into the night sky without bothering to Push to Talk: “Why aren’t you listening?”
He hadn’t heard the bell, but he decided it was time for supper. He kept pushing the button, to rile anyone on the other end, but as he got nearer the school, he said: “I’ll recite some lines and that will be my last transmission, then the national anthem, then shutdown. . . . You can test me on my lines. . . .”
He walked up and down the path, reciting all the lines he could remember, imagining the other parts. He was finishing with a longer speech when the bell rang. There was no one around as he went through the griffin door into school, and he decided to put the walkie-talkie away in the secret compartment, this time forever.
Inside the tuck box room, there was a small crowd of the type that gathers in the hope that a scuffle will turn into a fight. However, far from baiting or teasing, this crowd was completely still. A forest of green and grey crouched around his tuck box.
“Shh!” said Beattie. “Listen. It’ll do it again. Shh!” George made a mental inventory of the box’s contents. There was nothing that could make noise.
“It must be a radio,” said a fat boy who, unable to get ringside, was anxious not to be impressed.
“Or an animal?” suggested another.
“Radios don’t turn themselves on and off,” said another. “Animals don’t talk: fact! I heard a voice.”
“Shh!” said Beattie, the High Priest of the Tuck Box, as he listened for further signs.
“It went on for ages just now,” said another. They had forgotten about the bell.
“What did it say?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Something about . . .”
“Just open it and find out!” Breaking into someone else’s box was a cardinal sin in a world where boxes were not to be locked, but they had to know.
“No,” said Beattie. “It’s not ours.”
No one had noticed the owner standing close by. George hit the Push to Talk button. Sure enough, audible static emanated from the tuck box. Beattie and the other initiates jumped as if electrically shocked.
“Jesus!” said Beattie. “You see?”
“That wasn’t a voice,” complained the obnoxious Fat Boy. “That was just a noise.”
“It was voices before.”
“Rubbish,” said Fat Boy. “Where’s Fisher? Let’s ask him.”
“Open it!” they all shouted, on the basis that whatever was in there certainly wasn’t legal and that it would be in the school’s best interests if it were reported, and surrendered, as soon as possible.
It had been worse than talking to himself, George thought. They had heard him reciting his lines and heaven knows how much else. Disguised by the crackle of reception, however, his voice had apparently not given him away. Above all, the walkie-talkie must remain a secret.
Just as Beattie was about to open the lid, George, who had weighed up the alternatives, retreated into the corridor and shouted into his walkie-talkie, “Thief! Thief!” There was a scream. Attention had now turned away from the tuck box to the medium, who appeared a little shaken. Everybody had heard.
“I didn’t even touch it!” said Beattie, who saw George reenter, having hidden his walkie-talkie. “Here’s the answer. What’s in there?”
“Open it! Open it!”
As the chant grew in ferocity, George clambered up onto the box and sat down, wondering who would be the first to dare lay a finger on him. Just as this looked a real threat, a voice bellowed, “Silence!” from the door, and the chant stopped. There stood Mr. Morris, arms folded. “What on earth is going on?” Everyone answered at once, those who had been there from the beginning and those who had been lured more recently by the communal chanting. “Silence. Didn’t you hear the bell? Beattie, you for one should know better.” Again, everybody spoke; only George remained silent. Once Morris had regained control, he said: “I am starting to lose my temper. Fisher, what is wrong here?”
“I came into the room and they were breaking into my box. They tried to get me to open it, but I didn’t want to.”
In his overexcitement, Beattie garbled a barely comprehensible explanation. “Sir, there were voices coming out of this room, but there was nobody here, so . . .”
“Fisher, get down now. Beattie, stay. Fisher, stay. Everybody else, go and wash your hands.” Disappointed to miss the denouement, the spectators traipsed to join the dinner parade. Morris moved towards the tuck box. “Is there a radio in here, Fisher?”
“No.” Partly a lie.
“Are there voices coming from this box?”
“I shouldn’t think so.”
“Open it, sir, you’ll see!” said Beattie.
“I don’t need any help from you. Can I look inside your box, Fisher?”
George thought it best to play it cool, though he realized the game was up. “Sure.”
With a degree of formality, and a look of concentration that suggested he was cracking a safe, Morris opened the lid. George peered inside with trepidation, knowing what he would see.
It wasn’t there.
Morris, a customs official by no means convinced that the victim of his random search is breaking the law, took a cursory look. “Empty it out.” George reached inside and removed the contents: two books (both vetted by the headmaster), two of his grandfather’s notebooks, a pack of stripper cards, a pack of normal cards, two marbles, three handkerchiefs, four pieces of rope (knotted).
“Do you have a top hat and a dove in there as well?”
“No, sir. That’s all.” George couldn’t believe his luck. But it wasn’t luck at all: it was Don’s good sense that had hidden the walkie-talkie in the secret compartment. And now Beattie was hearing voices. It reminded him of Gaslight, Evie’s favourite film of all time. It reminded him of Valentine Vox. He had thrown his voice without even knowing. The walkie-talkies had given a glimpse of their true potential.
“Satisfied, Beattie?” asked Morris.
Unconvinced, Beattie poked his nose in. “We all heard them, sir,” said Beattie weakly, looking around for any other possible source.
Morris replied with the resigned tone with which he conjugated the verb être: “They couldn’t have come from the box; there’s nothing in the box. Beattie, see me tomorrow. Fisher, put all this away. To dinner, both of you.”
Beattie glared as he departed. Alone again, George opened the secret compartment. There was the other walkie-talkie. Secured to it with a rubber band was a note. In Don’s trademark pencil, simply: “SORRY.”
That single word said Over and out. The chance of communication with Don disappeared with it; Don had moved on, abandoned him. George was no longer within the possible sphere of his influence. He pictured the empty house at the bottom of the driveway, the carousel spinning helplessly in the heavy winds, unencumbered by damp clothes.
Bird was wittering away about the costume shop as they drove off. At the end of the driveway, three removals men were enjoying a cigarette beside a large van. No sign of Don.
“Ah, moving day,” said Bird, interrupting his monologue to call out, “Dennis, erm, Mr. Blackstock.” So that’s how it was. Bird rolled down his window. Blackstock emerged from the house, mopping a sweating brow with a tea towel. “Everything OK?” chirped Bird. “Welcoming committee, et cetera. Can’t stop to give a hand now, on our way to Henley, but perhaps when we get back, if you need anything . . .”
“We’ll still be hard at it. Oi! You lot!” Blackstock shouted. “I’m not paying you to smoke!”
“Righto, then,” said Bird, rolling up the window. “Always nice to offer. So, were you listening to a word I was saying? About Romando’s.”
“Romando’s?” George knew he’d heard the name, perhaps on TV.
“I thought so. You were off in la-la land. Henley’s a bit of a haul, but the school has been getting costumes there for many years. The last performance of Androcles was before you were even born, so we’re going to look at those costumes and see if we can use them again.” George itched at the thought.
Romando’s Costumes sat in the grim grey corner of an industrial estate on the outskirts of town, looking as far removed from George’s idea of a theatrical costumier as possible. Those he’d frequented with Frankie were colourful places overflowing with linens and crinoline, smelling of carbolic and mothballs, presided over by meek bespectacled men with firm ideas on inside leg measurement and what read well from the gods. Bird led the way through a plain white door with the small sign: ROMANDO’S COSTUME COMPANY, SINCE 1878. A woman sat behind the counter, chewing gum.