Frozen Billy

by Anne Fine

  But sometimes, if the audience had applauded too thinly at the afternoon matinée, his mood was darker. I might frown at him for lolling his muddy boots on my polished fender, and he would make a face. ‘Little Miss Disapproval,’ he’d chide me. On days like these, he’d scowl at the burning coals till it was time to hurry back to the music hall for the evening show.

  Will and I didn’t fret. We knew all about Uncle Len’s moods from whispers we had overheard. Father always said they happened when his act didn’t go well. Uncle Len feared he’d lose his place at the Alhambra Music Hall and end up where he’d begun, singing and telling old jokes in clubs while the working men pelted him with nut shells; or strumming his banjo at the end of the pier, rolling calf eyes at ladies he hoped might take pity and toss a few coins into his frayed cap.

  And that would have been such a waste. Because, from the day he’d found Frozen Billy hanging on the back of that shop door and badgered Father into lending him the money to buy it, Uncle Len had worked so hard. He’d made good his promise to learn the art of ‘throwing his voice’ from scratch. He’d practised every day, and even risked the odd beating by sneaking into theatres without the price of a ticket, to watch other illusionists and pick up tips.

  And soon he was a brilliant ventriloquist. He might lie abed for hours. (‘Don’t give me that fish-eyed look, Clarrie. You know I think the streets aren’t properly aired till noon.’) But the moment he lifted Frozen Billy from the box, his face took on a glow. He seemed to grow taller, and his eyes darted and shone. He was so skilled that he could keep the dangling wooden dummy blinking and shrugging and tipping his head to one side without anyone noticing his busy, busy fingers.

  Even the theatre manager admitted it. One day, when we ran across her in the street, Madame Terrazini said, ‘You have the makings of a great act there, Len.’

  Uncle Len preened himself. And I knew why, because I’ve heard him saying it to Father often enough: ‘Once Madame Terrazini takes you under her wing, you’re set fair for fortune.’

  ‘So I’ll be moving up the bill, will I?’ Uncle Len dared to ask.

  Madame Terrazini didn’t answer. She just kept smiling, and made to move on down the street.

  ‘Soon?’ Uncle Len persisted. ‘A whole twenty minutes in the top half of the show?’

  Madame Terrazini shook her head. ‘I said “the makings” of a great act, Len. You have a thing or two to straighten yet.’

  Again, she made to move on.

  Stubbornly, Uncle Len grasped me tighter, to keep us all in her path. ‘What things?’

  Madame Terrazini met my eye. I knew she was uneasy about criticizing Uncle Len in front of Will and me. But, then again, I sensed she wasn’t prepared to be bullied out of saying what she truly thought, just because he was holding us hostages to listen.

  ‘Well,’ she admitted finally, ‘there is your terrible affection for the beer, Len. And though it’s true I never see your lips move, night after night that dismal old patter lets your act fall flat.’

  We knew about the fondness for the drink. We had heard Mother and Father speak sharply to him often enough. (He’d only laugh. ‘Beer is the best broom for troubles,’ he would say.)

  But later, at home that night, Will dared to ask him, ‘Uncle Len, what’s “patter”?’

  ‘The chat,’ said Uncle Len. ‘You know. What I say to the dummy, and what the dummy says back.’

  Will was puzzled. ‘What’s wrong with your patter?’

  Uncle Len scowled. ‘Madame Terrazini thinks it’s not witty enough. She says that it’s dull and the audience gets restless.’

  ‘Can’t you go round the other music halls?’ Will asked. ‘Find the ventriloquist with the smartest patter, then copy it exactly.’

  Uncle Len roared with laughter. ‘Steal it, you mean? What, and have to look over my shoulder till the night that I find myself kicked in the gutter?’

  Will shrugged. ‘Invent a fresh patter of your own, then.’

  ‘Easy for you to say! Talk pours out of you. Your mother says you could get a butcher talking about the price of herrings.’

  I held my breath. Still, sometimes, talk of Mother had poor Will in tears. But that night he took it bravely. ‘And I’ve a mouth as wide as Frozen Billy’s, she says, that clacks open and shut just as often!’

  I shuddered, glad it wasn’t true for fear I would be haunted by my own brother. I watched as, sighing, Uncle Len laid Frozen Billy back in the long pine carrying box that looks like a coffin. (Oh, how I wished it were!) It was the dummy’s face that haunted me. His cold dead staring eyes. They clicked shut the moment Frozen Billy was laid out flat. But sometimes, if I knocked the edge of his carrying box with my broom, they opened to stare. That’s why, when Uncle Len went out, leaving the box lid open, I’d run to cover the dummy’s face with the tablecloth from the cupboard. Mostly, when I heard Uncle Len’s boots on the stair, I’d have time to whip it off again.

  Sometimes I didn’t.

  ‘You’ve wrapped poor Billy in his shroud again, I see.’

  ‘I was sweeping, Uncle Len. I thought it would keep the dust off.’

  ‘You’re a good girl, Clarrie.’

  Everyone said that to me. The teachers, when I was at school. The vicar, when he gave me a prize (for ‘Endeavour’). Mrs Trimble and Miss Foy. All, ‘You’re a good girl, Clarrie,’ as if I were folded up, all clean and neat, like a handkerchief in a pile. No trailing edges. No bits sticking out.

  But that’s not how I felt. No. Somewhere deep inside, there was an explosion waiting to happen. I had the strangest dreams. I’d lie (all neat and tidy) in my bed. But in my mind’s eye I was holding hands with Father. We strode together over huge dry plains. Brilliant sunsets blinded us. Hot winds blew in my face.

  ‘Look at it!’ Father would be saying. ‘A country as wide as a world. A place in which you can do anything. This is a land for fresh starts and brave people!’

  My heart turned over and I could not wait.

  I keep my dreams a secret. Will tells his. Like everything to do with Will and words, they are a conjuring trick, a razzle-dazzle. You’re not sure if the picture rising in your brain is right, exactly; but you can see it, clear as paint.

  He can write letters too. When I sat down to pen my lines to Mother, the words flew out of my head. How could I tell her how I spent the days after I left school to fill the place she left? I couldn’t write of selling thimbles and cottons, then trailing home to black the grate and darn the stockings and scrub and clean and cook. How would it interest her to read of something that she knew so well? Who’d want to look at a picture of the back of their own hand?

  So, though I never went to school again after the telegram came, and should have done my best to keep up with my learning, instead it was Will I set down every Sunday – and, if he was restless, some nights in between – to write to Mother.

  Words rush to Will. He’d pick up the pen, stare at the wall for a moment, and then he’d be off, like a hare round the race track.

  Today, Clarissa put on her best hat to go out, and Uncle Len chucked her under the chin. ‘Clarrie,’ he told her. ‘You’re such a beauty, you’d look at home under a silk parasol!’

  Then Uncle Len stuck out his elbow. Clarrie rested her hand on his arm just like a lady, and they tripped down the stairs.

  ‘It wasn’t like that,’ I reminded Will. ‘What Uncle Len did say was, “Who do you think you are, prancing about in that fine hat? Lady Muck-on-Toast?” ’

  Will didn’t even raise his head. ‘Why should I worry Mother with Uncle Len’s bad moods?’

  His pen scratched on, leaving a trail of blots across the paper.

  I couldn’t help it. The words burst out of me. ‘His moods are almost every day now. And they’re getting worse.’

  Will kept on writing, but he answered me. ‘That’s because things are going badly again at the theatre.’

  ‘But he makes Frozen Billy move and talk like a real boy. And no one sees h
is lips move.’

  My brother shook his head. ‘It’s what Madame Terrazini said. It’s the patter.’

  I pointed to the letter Will was writing. ‘That’s all made up. You can write anything. Can’t you help Uncle Len invent a new patter?’

  He shrugged me off. ‘How would I know what people want to hear? I’ve never even been in a music hall.’

  ‘You could always make Mother and Father laugh. And me. And Uncle Len.’

  ‘That’s different. That’s easy.’

  ‘But you could try. And then perhaps I wouldn’t have to be called Lady Muck-on-Toast simply for tying on my own hat!’

  And I burst into tears.

  Will shifted from his chair to the one at my side, and patted my arm. ‘Now, now,’ he soothed, the very same way Father used to do whenever I cried.

  It made the tears fall faster. So you could say that everything that followed was my fault. If I’d not wept so hard, my loving brother would have simply kept on with his letter. I would have blacked the grate. And none of the rest of the story would be worth telling.

  But I sat and cried.

  The Third Notebook

  So that’s how it came about that Uncle Len pushed open the door that night after another restless, cat-calling audience at the theatre, and caught me dashing tears from my eyes.

  Tears of amusement.

  For Will had perched himself on the chair at the end of the table. He sat stiffly, tipping his head from one side to the other in the same way that Uncle Len makes Frozen Billy’s head move when he’s asking him a question. And Will had somehow made his mouth look big and square, and his eyes round and marble hard, like the dummy’s. And he’d been telling me, in the strange, cocky voice we think of as Frozen Billy’s, what that rapscallion Will had been up to at school today.

  Waving a stiff hand, he welcomed Uncle Len into the room. ‘Step in. Step in and warm yourself beside the fire while Miss Clarissa here makes you a reviving mug of finest cocoa.’

  Uncle Len fell in the spirit of things right away. ‘Good evening, young Billy. And what’s new with you?’

  ‘New? New? What would I know about new? Is this a new jacket?’ Without unstiffening his fingers, Will made a plucking move towards his other sleeve, just like the dummy would. ‘Are these new trousers? Did you buy me a new cap? No. It seems the only new thing I’m going to get is a new patter. And that’s free.’

  Uncle Len hooted with amusement, then tapped me on the arm. ‘Don’t miss this, Clarrie!’ He turned back to Will. ‘So it’s a complaint I’m hearing, is it?’

  ‘It most certainly is,’ Will said in Frozen Billy’s voice. ‘In fact, if you don’t treat me better, I’m going to run away.’

  ‘Run away, little man? Where to?’

  Will cocked his head on one side, as though thinking. ‘Let me see . . .’

  And off they went again, with Uncle Len as glad as Will to keep the game going. He knew better than anyone how much time Will and I had spent over the years, watching him and listening to him practise. But still he seemed astonished that Will was able to ape Frozen Billy’s voice with such swift skill.

  ‘So you’ll be a whole lot kinder to me in future?’

  ‘I most certainly will, young Billy.’

  ‘Cross your heart and hope to die?’

  ‘Cross my heart and hope to die!’

  ‘Stick a needle in your eye?’

  ‘Stick a needle in my eye.’

  ‘Jam a dagger in your thigh?’

  ‘Eat a horse manure pie!’

  Even Will’s laughter sounded like Frozen Billy’s. Maybe the mimic’s art is one that lies in blood, and can be passed down, father to son, or uncle to nephew. Will had the voice so right. When I shut my eyes, it truly was like hearing the dummy speak through Uncle Len.

  And clearly Uncle Len thought so too. ‘Either you’ve taken pains to practise, or you’re a born performer!’ He turned to me. ‘Is this how your brother has been spending the evenings, Clarrie? Pushing his schoolbooks aside in order to take my place?’

  ‘No, Uncle Len,’ I assured him. ‘Will does his lessons as he knows he should. This is the first time I’ve ever heard him speak in Frozen Billy’s voice.’

  ‘Is that the truth?’ Uncle Len turned back to Will. ‘That’s hard to believe. To my ears, you’re as good as an echo!’

  And then, as if the very word had given him an idea, he went to the carrying box and flipped up the catches. As he pulled out the dummy, its spindly-trousered legs fell straight, giving Frozen Billy the look of jumping to attention. The eyelids clicked open.

  Frozen Billy stared.

  ‘Well, who is this?’ Uncle Len made Frozen Billy say.

  ‘Me? I’m your brother!’ Will said in a matching voice.

  Frozen Billy blinked. ‘I knew I had a sister. Poor dear Still Lucy, missing these many years. But not a brother.’

  ‘Not just a brother,’ crowed Will. ‘I am your long-lost twin!’

  So you could argue it was Will, too, who fetched the sky down on our heads. There is no doubt it was his boast that sparked the idea that followed.

  ‘Up on my knee!’ said Uncle Len.

  Will shifted off the chair onto the leg that Uncle Len stretched his way.

  ‘Let your legs dangle. Looser. Looser.’

  Will, being younger, isn’t as tall as I am. And, though I’d never realized it before, once he is sitting on a knee, he’s much the same height as the dummy.

  Uncle Len winked. ‘Now, Will. Think of something to ask Frozen Billy.’

  Will pondered. ‘How did things go at the Alhambra tonight?’

  Frozen Billy cocked his head to one side. ‘Not very well, I’m afraid.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘I did my best. But still the audience sat woodenly in their seats.’

  ‘Like skittles on a shelf, perhaps? Not bowled over by your wit?’

  Frozen Billy blinked to cover the moment Uncle Len’s lips were tempted by a smile. My eyes were widening too. To watch, that first time, was the strangest thing. Soon, I thought nothing of seeing my brother engage in lively argument with a few cleverly carved rods of wood. On that first night, it seemed as if, because my brother was speaking back to it, the dummy truly had come to life.

  I look back now and wonder why it took even the short while it did for Uncle Len to come to his decision: ‘Will! This is too good to miss. You must join me.’

  ‘Join you?’

  ‘At the Alhambra!’ He snapped his fingers. ‘We’ll do the act together. I’ll get you fitted with clothes that suit.’ His eyes gleamed more and more brightly and, tipping my brother off his knee, he rose from his chair and started striding up and down the little room. ‘We’ll work up a new patter, and show it to Madame Terrazini. She’ll give me double the time on stage. The audience will love it!’

  No point, I thought, in letting Will get caught up in Uncle Len’s wild dreams. It was a merry enough idea to cheer an evening, but no way to live a life. I didn’t dare come out with, ‘And what do you think Mother will say when she comes home?’ for fear that, tempted, Uncle Len might let drop how long that wait could be, and send my brother’s good spirits tumbling again.

  Instead I asked, ‘And what about Will’s schoolwork?’

  Uncle Len made a face. ‘What about it, Clarrie?’

  I spread my hands. ‘I mean, when is he to sleep? Over his books in school? The twenty-minute act is always the last of the evening, after all. We’ve heard you saying it often enough: “Top of the Bill – End of the Show!” ’

  Perhaps I did make the words sound a little too close to his own tones. In any event, he shot me a very irritated look. ‘Perhaps there’s one mimic too many in this family, Clarrie.’

  I didn’t let him scold me into quiet. ‘Will’s schoolwork must come first.’

  Uncle Len snorted. ‘Clarrie, his books can wait. Even old men can learn lessons, but how long will your brother look the same age and be the same height as Fro
zen Billy? Not for much longer. No, this is our chance, and we must snatch it!’

  But I persisted. He’d talked of snatching things, so I snatched Mother’s last letter off the table and read the lines at the end. ‘And, Clarrie my dearest, I hope the time we’re so unjustly kept apart will not be wasted. Keep to your books, my darling. And be sure to keep your brother to his. Then, when I step off the boat and hurry home, there will be time for all the hugs and kisses we are missing.’

  I swear I saw a sneer cross Uncle Len’s face. ‘Hugs and kisses! Clarrie, I’m talking double money. Don’t you think we could all do with more in our purses?’

  Will pricked up his ears. ‘All?’

  Uncle Len saw his advantage. ‘Half the act earns half the money. Don’t you believe that I’d deal with you fairly?’

  Will sat bolt upright, staring.

  ‘There’s nothing fair,’ I scolded Uncle Len, ‘about dangling in front of someone who’s never had a shilling of his own the promise of loud applause and easy money.’

  And that was that. Two careless words had cost me the argument.

  ‘“Easy money”, eh, Clarrie? You think I come back here at midnight as fresh as a spring daisy?’

  I could have said, as Mother might have done, that, since the Alhambra emptied at ten, it must be the nearby alehouse, and not work, that kept him out so late. But Will had already leaped off his chair and thrown his arms around him.

  ‘I can do it, Uncle Len! I know I can. I can work every evening, and trade a beating at school each Thursday for slipping out to Wednesday matinées. And if Clarrie helps, I can keep up with my book work.’ He shot a sly look my way. ‘I won’t end up leaving school as she has. And we can earn a whole lot more than she does, selling thimbles! Mother will be so pleased when she comes home. And Father so proud.’

  That’s when I lost the argument with myself. Will said the words ‘And Father so proud’, and suddenly a vision rose, startlingly clear. Will and I stood in a pool of coins and Father scooped us in his arms and said, ‘All of this? Ours? Why, with all this we can make every dream come true at last!’