by George

by Wesley Stace

  The new boy arrived to find himself in the first year. He sucked his pencil to make problems look difficult and showed his working. There was no need to cheat. His new label, egghead, gave him the perfect excuse for not bothering with games and not participating at break. A sense of humour saved him once or twice, and the cards were always handy.

  At home, progress on his grandfather’s books was slow. Since the first volumes, with their consistent tone of practical instruction, they had yielded little more of great interest and nothing at all on voice throwing. He hoped that he would turn a page to see a clear path ahead, but for the time being, they felt a little like homework.

  Queenie and Reg were always off, Reg happy to chauffeur her any distance to a waiting cheque, however small. Frankie had a frustrating summer: a tour of Exit, Pursued Bare (Ricky Mitchell’s suggestion) was a low. Farce was a genre that did not feature strong parts for women or principal boys, so Frankie spent much of act 1 waiting in a chest at the end of a bed, wearing nothing but the frilliest excuse for underwear. Her character, fully clothed, led the ensemble through the predictable close shaves and mistaken identities of act 2, but it was a far cry from Peter Pan. Where was the magic? George saw the show in Maidenhead in a characterless municipal theatre, a cinder-block Malcolm Collins. The poster featured a caricature of a barely covered Frankie, towel perched on an unrealistic bosom, chasing a vicar across the stage, herself pursued by a man in a bear suit. “Ribald! Hilarious! May the farce be with you!” proclaimed the Maidenhead Gazette. “Laugh? I nearly did!” said Frankie pointedly. Exit, Pursued Bare was an indignity she would never have suffered if Des had been alive. To his credit, however, Ricky (once he saw he could not talk her round) took her displeasure seriously and created a package around her for the following summer. His idea, in this case a good one (for which the evidence was a whirr of finger work on a calculator, then the triumphant display of a resulting total): a revival of the Fisher Fol-de-Rols.

  After the war, Echo had struggled on with this heirloom. Variety was dying a slow death, heading for the coast, where it could breathe easier in the carefree sea air, and by 1950 the show took its final bow. The modern equivalent was still the rule in pier theatres, but the seasonal nature of seaside entertainment meant a show could tour only three months, and perhaps at Easter. Even in variety’s prime constituency, down among the donkey rides, 99s, and mini golf, attendance was falling; the holiday camps made sure that Glamourous Granny and Knobbly Knee contests satisfied the punters’ cultural needs.

  It was Ricky’s suggestion that the Drolls, in its pure form, was ripe for rediscovery. He would tailor a classy piece of nostalgia for old-age pensioners who knew the name Fisher to be inseparable from Fol-de-Rols: a big-hearted good class summer show, as lush as they could manage — simultaneously a “thanks for the memories” and an introduction to the stars of tomorrow (who boasted Ricky’s representation). It would play Tuesday to Saturday and move on the Sunday, just like the good old days. Even without a major draw, the tour for the following summer was booked in less than a week. The calculator never lied.

  In a small registry office just after Christmas, the registrar pronounced Mr. Reg Fleet and Mrs. Queenie Fisher man and wife. When it was time to kiss the bride, Reg dipped her as far as he could and said, “I never thought I’d live to see this day,” and their twenty guests cheered. At the reception, in the pub next door, Reg gave a speech. He’d asked for help with the phrasing, but the thoughts were all his own. He would have waited a thousand years for Queenie; she had kept faith in him through the darkest hour, saved his life. Evie went unmentioned, though one note of sadness was allowed to intrude: “We have a daughter, and we wanted so very, very much for her to be here today. But she ain’t ready to make that step yet. Yet!” He repeated it with a brave smile before the toast: “To our girl — we weren’t here for you, but now we’re here whenever you need us.”

  “You’re the best man,” said Queenie after George’s speech, “but you might as well give me the first dance.” George led her around the floor at a stately pace. Reg tapped him on the shoulder, and George, at a loss how to withdraw gracefully, was cajoled into dancing with a blowsy woman who clasped him to her rippling bosom and repeatedly said he was too young for her.

  A Fleet car took Frankie to her evening performance in Luton, as the menfolk lamented the loss of this coveted dancing partner.

  The happy couple honeymooned on the Cornish Riviera. Though he was invited, George stayed in Cadogan Grove. He could have neglected the beginning of the spring term altogether, but a postcard arrived from Tintagel the day before he was due back: “Having a wonderful time. Remember to go to school. Back on Tuesday. Love to Frankie, Q and R.”

  Things changed at Cadogan Grove. He had pictured, after Evie’s death, a triumvirate of his mother, his grandmother, and he, but after their honeymoon, less and less was seen of Queenie and Reg as they enjoyed their newfound freedom. Reg treated her like the queen she was, always opening doors for his “old gal,” asking her what she wanted. No wonder she’d seemed so disinterested in men; she’d had one. “It’s so romantic,” Frankie said. “And soon you’ll have a girlfriend, and maybe even I’ll meet someone. Till then, we have each other.”

  * * *

  The Fishers’ brief flirtation with the education system came to an end after George’s first year at Malcolm Collins.

  “We’re hoping to send him to a public school,” Frankie lied when she called the headmaster in September, but public school didn’t come into it. George was running away to join the circus; more specifically, the Fol-de-Rols. Frankie was prepared to pass on all her knowledge until she could send him somewhere he would be welcome: perhaps even Franca DeLay, her alma mater.

  Touring was just as it had always been, with one crucial difference: George was put to work. He understudied, mixed drinks, attended prop school, sold programmes, and deputized on follow-spot. Life backstage was like it had been in Wimbledon, but the personnel had changed. Northern Bernie had been replaced by Northern Mack Wilson, the magician; Glyn, the stern dogsbody of drab SW19, was now Brenda, the colourful and unflappable touring stage manager, modelling daily from her stupendous collection of contemporary boutique-wear. And all were now in the employ of the Fishers. Frankie, Ricky, and, by extension, George were at the top of the ladder. Odd hours became normal: he ate late and slept later.

  He thought the busy summer had to end, as all runs must, that reality would intervene; but it didn’t. The Fol-de-Rols kept rolling, and George stayed on. It was he who reminded Frankie about Malcolm Collins, and his mother who said she couldn’t spare him and would make arrangements.

  Frankie and George took time off in the New Year, bidding farewell in Eastbourne with a party that was the scene of mild flirtation between George and Joanne, Wimbledon’s Slave of the Lamp, recently drafted in as a cast member. Despite her figure, he thought her young. Frankie and he arrived in London as the sun came up.

  Frankie fulfilled her normal commitments, accompanied by George, sometimes introduced as her son, sometimes as her bodyguard — at fourteen, he was taller than she — but most often as her manager. The Fol-de-Rols was already booking for April.

  The next run was not quite as successful as expected. Various reasons were put forward — “the weather” and “the mood of the country” elicited sympathetic nods — and the Drolls ended unexpectedly early, running out of steam three months earlier than the previous year. The party, which doubled as George’s fifteenth birthday celebration, was a modest affair. Of course, they’d all see one another next year.

  To his relief, George was almost at the end of his project with his grandfather’s books. What had begun a devotion was ending a chore.

  So much work had gone into the journals — every curve of the pen, every erasure, every emphatic three-line whip — but George had come to know virtually nothing about the man: he was invisible. The only thing that mattered was technique, its perfection. Though George would neve
r admit as much to Frankie, the books had not lived up to their initial promise: where they had started out as “how to” books (which he might have preferred, if anything, to be a little less cold and mechanical in tone), they had mutated into something, if possible, even less personal: abstruse speculation into “pure magic,” with pages of diagrams for illusions too elaborate to re-create. He got used to skimming, despairing of further detailed instruction.

  The seventh volume had ended with grand plans, all in the realm of Platonic speculation, about distant voice, but the eighth volume took a left turn into theoretical escapology, of no interest whatsoever. There was only one remaining volume, and George held out no great hopes, glad that he would be done. He liberated Echo’s scrapbooks from the trunk in the sitting room and flicked through the pages, the still-glossy programmes, and the postcards of seaside towns, black ink faded brown on their reverse. He tried to imagine Joe’s right hand writing the words on the pages of the notebooks. But in his photos, there was no right hand in view: it was always working his dummy.

  George wondered whether he shouldn’t spend his modest per diem on a modern guide. He pictured a book, more instruction manual than arcane volume of mystery, with diagrams as dull as those in How Sound Works. How Magic Works — it told him everything he needed to know in clear type.

  Frankie happened to run across Brenda, the Fol-de-Rols stage manager. A fortuitous meeting, Brenda said. Her family business was two people short in their busy season, and they needed a quick learner, someone smart. She wondered whether George was free for the winter, into Christmas. There’d be cash in hand and perhaps a little education.

  “You’ll enjoy it. Trust me,” said Frankie, who hadn’t been specific as to the nature of their trade.

  George liked Brenda, from whom each backstage crisis had elicited no more than a giggle and a shrug, so he set out with an address in the West End, just off D’Arblay Street. He rang the bell for Crystal Clear, wondering what sort of concern hid behind this unprepossessing exterior. Brenda herself opened the door. A little younger than Frankie, yet somehow immeasurably older, she was wearing one of her collection of gaudy dresses (part muumuu, part tent) as though it were a completely normal piece of clothing: this a psychedelic purple-and-green paisley that fell from her bosom, making infrequent contact with the rest of her body. She was a large woman without being fat, her lips exaggeratedly full, her cheekbones surprisingly well defined in her fleshy, friendly face, her hair uniquely frizzy. When she smiled, her eyes closed entirely, as if in ecstasy. She was a good person to make laugh.

  “Glad you’ve come,” whispered Brenda, and pointed downstairs. She beckoned him, treading lightly. The musty hallway led to an even danker basement. At one end sat a man at a console; most of his attention was turned to the climactic moment of a horror film in which someone was about to drive a stake into the heart of a vampire in his coffin. A red light shone above a door to their right. Brenda put her finger to her lips, smiled, pointed, and mouthed, My father. From the speakers above the console came the sound of crunching bone.

  “Not bad,” said the man at the desk. “But the timing’s gone for a Burton. Once more, Tim.” Brenda’s father sent the film backwards. Just as the vampire hunter lifted his hammer to plunge the stake home, a sneeze exploded through the speakers. “For crying out loud! Could you do that off mic?”

  “Sorry! Sorry!” broadcasted a stuffed nose over the sound system. The red light flickered and went off. A man emerged holding a large cabbage in which was embedded a hammer.

  “Dad, Tim,” said Brenda. “Frankie’s son, George, here to help.”

  “Thank Christ for that!” said the man behind the desk, as Tim passed on his way to the bathroom. “Hello, lad. I’m Roger. Done anything like this before?” Roger, who had the flattened features of a pugilist, laughed when George shook his head. “It’s time for a crash course. Can you do this?” He flicked a coin and grabbed it in midair. “Hand-eye coordination. You’ll get nowhere in this lark without it.” He flipped it at George, who caught it.

  “I can do this,” said George. He rolled the coin over the back of his fingers.

  “You, my lad,” said Roger the Boxer, “are just about to embark on a new career; a career for which you will get absolutely no credit at all, the height of your ambition for which will be not to be noticed, and in which if you are noticed, it will only be because you have made a complete cock-up.”

  “He always gives this speech,” Brenda said to George, as Tim sneezed again on his way by. “Just applaud when you think he’s finished.”

  “We have a hell of a backlog at the moment from Daedalus Studios. This masterpiece is Blood from the Vampire’s Tomb; next up, Satan’s Abacus, then Burn Sinner Burn and Sebastian DeVries’ Tales of Terror. Normally we have ten days a picture, give or take. . . . Well, we have one week for this whole lot.”

  “And we do the sound effects?” asked George. He liked everything about the place: its seedy atmosphere of industry and its subterranean seclusion. He particularly liked the still of the expiring vampire, which flickered over the recording console.

  “We’re footsteppers,” said Brenda.

  “The Yanks call it Foley,” interrupted her father. “There, we are Foley artistes, or Foley walkers, but here in dank Mother England, we are still footsteppers. But we don’t just do footsteps; we do bloody everything. Right. Let’s get cracking. Tim, you’re in no fit state to be behind a microphone. You’re going to show this live wire exactly what to do. Brenda, you’re going to help, but first the shopping list. Tim?”

  Tim produced a scribbled piece of paper from his back pocket. “OK. Erm. One-inch steaks, four, plenty of fresh onions, some sea salt, about five pounds of fresh carrots, celery, two head of lettuce, and a cabbage . . .” George was envisioning a particularly hearty stew when Tim added, “Not forgetting two packs of press-on nails, cotton wool, some marbles, and a thing of aspirin.”

  “Any size or shape jar?”

  “They’re for my cold.”

  “Right,” said Brenda.

  “Young man,” said Roger, rubbing his hands ghoulishly, “step inside my laboratory.”

  A large screen covered one wall, showing the same gruesome flickering still. A carpet was rolled back to reveal four different surfaces: pavement, sand, gravel, and a linoleum tile. There was a large tank filled with water, an oversize fridge, an echo chamber, and enough extra junk that the room could pass for a church hall on jumble day.

  “It was just one paving stone when I started,” said Roger, slipping into reverie. “And they expected you to give them Gone With the ruddy Wind!”

  Tim sniffed as he lit a cigarette. “Everything you see on the screen, except for the dialogue, is made in here. It’s up to us to put the right sound there at the right volume.”

  “And in the right mix. When the film gets to us, they’ve only recorded the dialogue, and they probably dubbed that after. All the other noise they try to get rid of.”

  “And then you put it back in,” said George.

  “Exactly!” said Roger, and clapped him on the back. “And that’s how a movie has dominion over sound. Ready? Right, let’s go back to those footsteps, that bugger we forgot in the bridge scene.” George rolled aside the carpet, and Tim showed him how to judge his timing by the actor’s shoulders.

  “You mostly can’t see their feet or they’re offscreen anyway,” he said. “And even if you can see them, the audience aren’t much looking.”

  “It doesn’t have to be perfect, then?” asked George.

  Tim laughed. “Look, when you go to a cinema, it’s not like the actors are speaking from the screen. Their voices are coming out of speakers somewhere, certainly not from their actual mouths, but you don’t care. Same as this. If it’s there or thereabouts, everyone’s happy.” He pointed to the screen. “Looks all right, doesn’t it?”

  Time flew by. George listened to Roger in his headphones and did whatever Tim and Brenda said: keep your eyes on
the screen, stand this far from the microphone, snap celery like this. Carrots were breaking bones; an umbrella was opened and closed for the swooping of bats; and when Dracula’s tomb door rolled away, they slid the top from an old toilet tank. The steaks were used for any kind of blow. Coconuts did not really sound like horses’ hooves, though a sheet of metal was a good substitute for thunder.

  “I’m just not buying the hammer in the cabbage for the stake,” said Roger, as they considered their day’s work. “It’s too clean.”

  “How about I bite into an apple?” George suggested off the top of his head.

  Roger’s eyes twinkled. When they watched the final reel of Blood from the Vampire’s Tomb again, George heard a film for the first time, and he felt a surge of pride as the stake made its appropriately gruesome plunge into the vampire’s heart. When the star put out a cigarette, the smouldering was no more than a thumb pressed into an ashtray full of dirt, and when the happy couple kissed before the credits rolled, it was merely a fifteen-year-old boy sucking the underside of his wet right forearm. By eleven, they were finally done. Brenda offered George a lift home and a heavily tenderized steak. “Perks of the trade,” she said. “One each.”

  Two teams worked around the clock, deadlines were successfully extended and met — the crisis was averted, and George was invited to stay on.

  Going to work was a pleasure, and George was too tired to notice returning, which he often did with Brenda, sometimes after a quick stop at the Monkey’s Head just around the corner, where he stuck to a shandy and a packet of crisps.

  “These crisps might be better for that avalanche than the cotton wool, Roger. Listen.”