Abracadaver (11 page)

In a ferment of scandalised confusion, he reeled to the wings and took his place at the handle, beside another of the heavy contingent.

‘All right. She comes down about fifteen turns of the handle till she’s nice and central,’ explained his companion. ‘When I release the catch I want you to take the strain. Hold on as if it’s your own mother up there. Right?’

Thackeray nodded. The catch was released. He braced and gripped the handle grimly. The seam down the back of his jacket began to part under the strain. By Jove, it was harder work letting Albert’s mother down gently than winching her up. Even before the fifteen turns were made, Harry in the fly-gallery pulled on his guy-rope to produce a lateral swing on the balloon-car. At the same time the curtain went up, the band played and the lime-boys directed a brilliant blue light on to the gauze-cloth suspended across the stage.

Albert’s mother, soon oscillating convincingly against an azure background, launched powerfully into Nellie Power’s song.

‘Up in a Balloon, girls, up in a Balloon,

Sailing through the air on a summer afternoon.

Up in a Balloon, girls, up in a Balloon,

What a happy place, now, to spend your honeymoon.’

Unfortunately either the pendulum motion or the awfulness of the lyric had upset the second passenger. As a pianissimo passage sought to convey the airy delights of ballooning, a dismal whining was plainly audible from above. Beaconsfield’s face peered dolefully over the rim of the car.

‘She’s secure now,’ said Thackeray’s companion. ‘You can help with the scene-removing. There’s no sitting about when the transformation scene’s on, you know.’

Behind the gauze-cloth an exotic scene was almost mounted. A drop decorated with a crudely painted skyline of cupolas and minarets was already in place and a border representing Eastern arches had been flown from the grid. Thackeray joined two men struggling with a profile flat, a piece of shaped scenery representing a section of wall surmounted by palm trees. On the other side of the gauze-cloth Albert’s mother gamely started the fourth verse of ‘Up in a Balloon’.

‘That’s safely home,’ said one of the men, addressing Thackeray. ‘Just secure it, will you, while me and my mate get the small props in place? There’s all them potted plants to go yet.’

He found himself standing alone behind two pieces of scenery with a length of sashcord in his hand, attached to the left-hand flat. It was a long time since he had felt so inadequate.

‘Why, if it ain’t the feller with the beaver again,’ said a voice behind him. ‘Having trouble, are you, Dad?’

It was difficult to look round when one was providing the only support for a large piece of scenery, but he thought he recognised the voice of the red-headed chorus girl. Unless she had found some more clothes he was not inclined to conduct a conversation with that young woman anyway.

‘You don’t know what you’re about, do you?’ she continued. ‘Here. Give the throwline to me.’ She wedged herself in front of him, took it from his hand and tossed it neatly over a cleat, high on the right-hand flat. Then she brought the line back across the join and fastened it below, over two cleats, one on either flat. ‘You tie it with a slippery-hitch like this, so as it’s easy to break when you need to strike the scene.’

‘I’m obliged to you.’

‘You can step away now. It won’t fall down. That is, unless you’ve a mind to remain here pressing yourself against me.’

The very idea! He backed away like a horse from the halter. He could now see her red hair and a good deal more of her besides. She was dressed in a sequinned waistcoat and diaphanous harem trousers. ‘I think I may be wanted on the winch,’ he said.

‘About time,’ said his companion testily, when he got there. ‘I can’t turn this blooming thing on my own, you know.’

Ahead of them, the swinging motion of the balloon-car had stopped and Albert’s mother was completing her final chorus. As the applause—there was not much of it—died away, the blue lights went out and the scene behind the gauze cloth was illuminated. Albert’s mother leaned precariously over the edge of the car.

‘Gentlemen, just look at what my gas-balloon has caught on—

A palm-tree in Morocco in the harem of a sultan!’

‘Right. Lift her clear. Fifteen turns!’ said the man on the winch.

As Albert’s mother ascended into the flies so did the gauze-cloth. Five young women, dressed like the one Thackeray had seen, performed what passed for an Arabesque dance among the props and scenery. Now that the initial shock was over, he could bring himself to look at the scene. The audience, from what he could hear, actually seemed quite friendly-disposed towards the dancers. He supposed that if one had a well-developed imagination—and people of that class unquestionably would have—one might even make a mental journey to Morocco and observe the performance without reference to British standards of decorum. If he tried hard, even a man of his upbringing might manage it. But a nudge in the ribs brought him firmly back to London.

‘Unwind her slowly now.’

Albert’s mother descended, and so did the gauze. Thackeray remained firmly at the winch; others could change this scene. Unbelievably soon, it was time for another couplet:

‘Sometimes, you know, the weather is a menace.

A powerful breeze has blown me over—Venice!’

‘Marvellous!’ exclaimed Thackeray, as the floating city was revealed, complete with moving gondolas.

‘Just turn the handle, mate, or they won’t see anything of it. Blimey, if you think that’s a scene, you ought to go to Drury Lane. They run everything from race-horses to railway-engines across that stage.’

‘It was the transformation that surprised me,’ panted Thackeray, when the fifteen turns were made.

His companion sniffed. ‘Falling flaps. Get a good man up there on the catwalk and you can change a common lodging-house to Buckingham Palace in ten seconds, if you’ve a mind to. Right! Down she comes again, and then you’ll be wanted on the living statues.’

Fifteen turns later, he tottered away to report for his next task. Behind the gauze-cloth, Greece was being constructed, a series of columns secured with stage-braces in front of a cloth depicting the Acropolis.

‘Are you one of the heavies?’ someone asked him.

‘Yes.’

‘Good. This one’s yours. Aphrodite. Keep your head well down, don’t jerk, and watch out for the Thinker coming towards you from the other side.’

‘Aphro . . . ?’

‘Miss Penelope Tring. Get yourself in position and she’ll climb up at once.’

A wooden structure on small wheels, not unlike an upright piano painted white, with two steps on the keyboard side, was waiting for him. Young women with sheets draped about them were standing nearby, ready to go on. He noticed two handles on the back of the structure and gripped them. It moved quite freely. He waited uncertainly.

The last of the footmen quitted the stage and the Grecian maidens arranged themselves behind the gauze-cloth in an arc, leaving free the area ahead of Thackeray. In the opposite wing he could see another of the heavy contingent crouching behind a similar plinth on wheels, but his already supported a white statue. The orchestra stopped playing and Albert’s mother made her final introduction, but Thackeray did not hear a word of it. Miss Penelope Tring was mounting his plinth . . .

Next moment the stage was bathed in light, the orchestra were playing some stately melody and someone was pushing him from behind. Automatically, he began the journey to the other side: automatically, because his mind refused to accept the reality of what he had just seen and could continue to see if he turned his eyes that way. It was manifestly impossible that he, Detective Constable Edward Thackeray of Scotland Yard, was at that moment crossing a stage in a satin suit, crouching behind a conveyance supporting a female person clothed only in white silk fleshings. Never mind the disturbingly life-like male figure being wheeled past on his right; never mind the warmth proceeding from the vaguely rotund areas of whiteness on his left, a few inches from his cheek. Fantasy, all of it. Why, Sergeant Cribb, for all his bullying ways, would never subject a man to such indignities.

‘Hold on, mate!’ a voice at his elbow cautioned. ‘You’ll shove the lady through the wall if you don’t put the brake on.’

As they halted, Miss Tring relaxed her pose and hopped down heavily from the plinth in front of Thackeray, sufficiently substantial to convince anyone else that she existed. Of course he had heard, over pints of ale, of things that happened across the Channel, of poses plastiques and tableaux vivants in Parisian theatres. That unquestionably accounted for the trick of his imagination that had produced the present illusion. Why, if he pinched himself or, better still, reached out a thumb and forefinger to Miss Tring, she would certainly vanish. But something restrained him, and presently the apparition accepted a cloak from someone and walked away to the dressing-rooms.

Above the stage Albert’s mother completed a final chorus of ‘Up in a Balloon’, the curtain was lowered, and so were she and her bulldog, with someone else assisting at the winch. But there was no respite for Thackeray. ‘Carry this to the centre,’ a bystander told him, ‘and place it on the blue spot.’ He found himself holding a species of umbrella-stand made of glittering chromium and containing a formidable array of swords. ‘For the illusionist,’ he was told. ‘Get moving, damn you!’

Swords! His thoughts raced back to the unfortunate conjurer languishing in Newgate, and his abortive trick with the girl in the cabinet. Would the perpetrator of these ‘accidents’ (if there were such a person) have the audacity to repeat his wickedness here? Cribb’s words came back to him: ‘Carry out your orders . . .’ He walked to the middle and found the blue spot. The swords had one good effect on him, anyway: his mind had cleared itself of illusions and was fully alive to the dangers in the present situation. Another order was barked at him: ‘Only the table now. On the yellow square.’ That looked harmless enough, thank goodness. A silk-covered card-table with conjurer’s impedimenta, a silk hat, wand, gloves and a glass containing a red liquid.

The curtain was up again almost before he was back in the wings, and from the other side a performer in white tie and tails had taken the stage. Thackeray recognised him at once as one of the guests at Philbeach House, and it shortly became quite clear why he had been there. The man picked up one of the swords, thrust back his head, opened his mouth wide and slowly inserted the blade until the hilt was six inches from his teeth. The sword-swallower!

He withdrew the blade, and repeated the feat twice, with broader swords, accompanied by drum rolls. In the wings, Thackeray breathed with relief as the weapons came out as clean and shining as they had gone in. Not for long, however. As though sword-swallowing were not spectacular enough, the performer produced a box of matches, lighted a spill and began a demonstration of fire-eating. Really! Did people like that deserve police protection?

‘My Lords, Ladies and gentlemen, for my final trick,’ said the sword-swallower, when the fire-eating was safely completed, ‘and for your delectation, I should like to introduce my charming assistant, Miss Lola!’

She ran on to the stage from behind Thackeray, brushing him with her cloak as she passed. Lola Pinkus, like Miss Tring, had found a new forte in the profession. She curtsied most appealingly, tossing her blonde curls back as she straightened. How refreshing to see at last a young woman decently covered from neck to ankle!

‘Take it off!’ appealed some philistine in the audience.

‘Patience, sir, if you please,’ remonstrated the sword-swal- lower. ‘You may think, my friends, that you have seen all too little of Miss Lola. Soon you shall see less. In fact, she shall vanish altogether, before your very eyes.’ He picked up the glass. ‘In here is the most marvellous fluid in the world—’

‘Gin!’ shouted someone.’

‘No, sir! Not even gin has the properties of this particular brew. Take one draught of this and within seconds you will disappear completely. And I feel obliged to announce that it may not be purchased afterwards by gentlemen wishing to experiment on their mothers-in-law. Now, Miss Lola, would you care to give me your cloak? Our friends in the audience may wish to be assured that you are, in truth, flesh and blood and no mere illusion.’

Even this act! Thackeray noted a depressing sameness in the entertainment. Whatever their billing, the object of the performances seemed to be to display the fair sex in various degrees of indecency. Lola Pinkus was more adequately covered than Miss Tring, but somewhat less than respectability would have required in, say, a swimming-bath for females only. And the audience were behaving intolerably, whistling and shouting as though they had never seen a half undressed woman before. Perhaps they had not. Thackeray sniffed. There were compensations, after all, in a humble upbringing.

‘I shall now invite Miss Lola to drink this glass of the magical fluid,’ announced the sword-swallower, when he could get a hearing. ‘And then you must watch closely, for to see is to believe!’

Lola approached him and took her stance with particular care. Thackeray watched keenly. He already had an idea of how the disappearance might be effected. The drum-roll began. The sword-swallower made some spectacular movements with the cloak. The footlights and the side-lighting dimmed, leaving a single beam directed on the performers from the gallery. Lola held the glass high, lowered it and drank. Simultaneously the sword-swallower shielded her from the audience with the cloak. With a most convincing scream she dropped through the trap-door on which she was standing. The lights came on. The cloak was swept aside to show the disappearance accomplished. Gasps of amazement were heard from the auditorium.

‘To see is to believe!’ shouted the sword-swallower.

‘And here I am!’ a voice came from high in the gallery. Everyone turned to see. There she was in her spangles and little else, waving triumphantly. A thunder of applause greeted her. Few of those present could have realised, as Thackeray did, that they were not looking at Lola Pinkus, but her sister, Bella.