The Magic Kingdom (16 page)

“Oh, my lost youth!” he cries.

“Hush, cutie,” the girl beside him says, “the tour’s almost done. Another two minutes.”

Charles Mudd-Gaddis begins to scream. Colin, the children, Mary, are frightened. He screams. He screams and screams.

“Another two minutes,” the big girl says. “Two minutes. I promise.”

He screams.

“Stat!”
shouts the girl to cast members behind the scenes. Charles knows the word. Mary, Colin, all the children do. It is the code word for emergencies in hospitals. Mary, Colin, and the kids think something has happened to Charles. “
Stat! Stat!”
the girl shouts. The gondola stops abruptly.

“Hey!” a tourist jokes. “Whiplash!”

Cast members rush up with flashlights.

“What is it?”

“What’s happened?”

“I think he’s scared of the dark,” the girl says.

Colin starts to climb over the seats to get to Charles.

“Please don’t do that, sir. Please sit down. Arlene’s got the boy.”

“He’s—”

“I’m going to have to ask you to sit down, sir. For your own safety. The little boy will be fine. We’re going to evacuate him.”

“He moves like he’s a thousand,” Benny Maxine says. “He’ll fall and break his hip in the dark.”

“There’s an ample catwalk. He’ll be all right.”

All have scrambled out of the car; the children are led away by solicitous cast members. It’s as if they’re being guided through tear gas. Then lights come on through the Haunted Mansion like the stark auxiliary lights in theaters and hospitals, like emergency lights in subway cars. Props fade, patterns disappear from the bare canvas walls, the specters are snuffed out, the crystal ball is empty, the bats’ eyes on the wallpaper are tiny light bulbs, the puppet teapot spills a ribbon of twisted, colored cellophane, the coffins and old chests seem only a reliable wood, the ravens some hinged taxidermy, the illusionary space they have been traveling through a sort of warehouse. Visitors to the mansion groan.

“Just look at this place,” Noah Cloth grumbles. “I bet there’s no such thing as ghosts.”

“I guess not,” Tony Word agrees dispiritedly.

“Dying blokes like us ain’t got a snowball’s chance in Hell,” Benny Maxine says, moving along the pavement beside the curving tracks, the baffled architecture, up the trace inclines and down the indifferent slopes which, in the dark, had seemed so formidable.

“There’s probably no such place as Hell,” Noah says.

“No,” says Tony Word.

“No,” says Benny Maxine, “it’s just an expression.”

“Like Heaven.”

“Let’s don’t tell the girls,” Benny says.

And the three boys dissolve in tears.

Charles Mudd-Gaddis was inconsolable.

So was Mary Cottle, who, practically bleeding from the nerves by this time, her mile-high tensions actually giving her a sort of pain, managed to shake Colin, who received the four children at the same door through which they’d been admitted, accepting them like prisoners formally surrendered by the good- looking attendant who’d dusted off the boy’s blond wig and handed it to the male nurse (“Still got the little fellow’s yellow hat, Dad?” “Oh, I’m not their dad.” “No?” “I’m just the nurse who travels with them.” “Is that so?” “I’m nobody’s dad.” “Not the daddy type?” “Never have been, never will be.” “Where you staying?” “At the Contemporary.” “Swell health club at the Contemporary. You ought to check it out.” “Maybe I will”), and extricated herself from the crowd on the ramp at the Transportation and Ticket Center, using it as a shield and positioning herself behind a lone gate on the platform, and now sits by herself in the dark, empty car on the same monorail on which Colin Bible and the four boys ride, her skirt hiked above her knees, her hand down in her panties and two fingers on her dry clit, pulling the till-now dependable flesh, ringing it like a bell, but distracted, her mind not quite blank this time (which, frankly, her body abandoned to a merely mechanical friction had always been an ally in this business) but filled with a whole catalogue of vagrant images (rather, she thinks, like the Haunted Mansion itself), from the could-be-trouble exchange between Colin and the tall, good-looking attendant to, for example, the skirt, the dresses she’s packed, how proud she is of what can only have been a keen sense of her own character, a trained forethought, anticipating, she supposed, that there would be scenes, that there’d have to be, and so eschewing pants suits (though she had known that these, in all likelihood, would be the standard mode of dress, as indeed, they quite turned out to be) for the skirts and dresses which would be more convenient in emergency. So on the one hand—even the idiom distracts her, takes her still further from that state of mind, not desire, not lust, but merely the bleeding nerves, the mile-high tensions, the sort of pain—pleased, but on the other bothered, the absence of soap and water, for another example, being a damned nuisance just now, most inconvenient, for if she brings herself off or, for that matter, even if she doesn’t, it won’t do to touch any of the children without first washing her hands, so she’ll have to continue to hide from them, duck into the Ladies’, though none of this constitutes even a fraction of her real nervousness, for if she
is
able to bring herself off, why, she’ll be cool as a cucumber,
able
to cope, but she’s not so sure now she will. For one thing she hadn’t paid close enough attention on the way out, can’t recall how long it takes to get to the hotel, whether there’s a stop. There is, at the Polynesian Village Resort Hotel, and though more people get off the monorail there than on, and absolutely no one comes into her car, the doors automatically open and Mary is forced to do some very fancy cape work with the skirt—thank
God
she’s wearing one, otherwise she’d have had to stand, she’d never be able to get the pants up over her hips in time without becoming something of another attraction at Disney World, at least for the people passing by on the station platform—and now she’s quite sure it’s clear sailing back to their hotel and she might just be able to make it if only the recorded voices on the car’s loudspeaker that keeps nattering on about Disney and the “imagineers” who built this place would just shut up for a minute, and if only she could get that damned vision of Colin Bible out of her head. The silly sod. The poof nurse
would
have to go making googoo eyes at the kid from the Haunted Mansion. Blast people who make scenes, she thinks.

As the train pulls into the big bright interior of the Contemporary Resort Hotel. And the doors open. And Mary Cottle, coming up empty, hastily lowers her skirt over her bare thighs and her awry panties and leaves the monorail.

Pretending to be searching for something she’s dropped, she crouches behind the wide-flung doors and waits until Colin and the kids clear the platform, are out of sight.

Then she goes down to the desk and rents that room.

3

I
dunno,” Colin Bible said. “I dunno what happened. Maybe he’s bent.”

“He’s a little kid. He was spooked. He was afraid of the ghosts,” Bale said.

“It was before we ever got inside. It was before he ever even seen any ghosts. We was still in the queue.”

“You waited in the queue?”

“They don’t want special treatment, Mister Bale.”

“Eddy,” Eddy said.

“Jeez, ‘Eddy’s’ hard, Mister Bale. No disrespect, but ‘Eddy’s’ hard for me. You’ve got to remember that Liam was my patient.”

“You don’t think I remember that?”

“I’ve hurt your feelings.”

“Nonsense.”

“I’ve hurt your feelings. It was all right to call Liam by his first name. He was my patient but he was a kid. It’s just not on to go all intimate with a patient’s family. You can ask Mister Moorhead regarding the ethicals of all this.”

“Mary Cottle calls me Eddy.”

“If Liam had lived it’d be a different story.”

“Oh? Yes?”

“If Liam had lived, you, me, and your missus could have gone off to the boozer, bought pints all around, tossed darts into the cork, and toasted one another’s health. It’d’ve been, ‘Here’s to your health, Colin.’ And turn and turn about I’d have picked up my mug and replied, ‘And ’ere’s to your own, Eddy!’ And Liam’s, of course. And Ginny’s—Mrs. Bale as was. If Liam had lived.”

“We could have been mates? If Liam had lived?”

“We’d have come through something important, don’t you see.

“And of course, if Liam had lived, you’d have had no
reason
to keep your distance.”

“I don’t think of it as a question of distance, Mister Bale.”

“Don’t you? You know, Colin, I was rather surprised you let me recruit you on this enterprise. I should have thought you could have made more money if you’d stayed on in England.”

“I’m paid well enough. Higher than regular.”

“Still,” Eddy said.

“What, didn’t you know that?”

“Higher than higher than regular,” Eddy said.

“Anyways, I wouldn’t want you to think I’m here for the money. These kids, these kids are condemned and convicted. They’ve been found guilty. Mister Bale. They’ve been put on the index. There’s a price on their heads. I’m a nurse. It’s my professional duty. Still, if my friend hadn’t given his blessing I shouldn’t have come.”

“Yes,” Eddy said, “it’s your ‘friend’ we’ve been talking about.”

Which was when Eddy thought the now flushed, embarrassed, and unforgiven man seemed to lose his temper. Colin glared at him and Bale thought, Won’t call me Eddy but’d strangle me easily enough. Though when he spoke, Colin’s voice was meek, the put-upon tones of patient, humbled injury muffling it like carpet, heavy drapes. “I’m not aware,” he said, “that we’ve ever discussed my friend, Mister Bale.”

“Liam brought him up,” Bale said.

“Liam? Liam did?”

“Oh, please,” Eddy said, “I saw you hugging at Heathrow. I know all about it. How you promised my son he’d go into the waxworks when he died.”

“I was cheering him up.”

“Liam didn’t believe you were cheering him up. Liam thought you meant every word. He believed it on his deathbed.”

“He didn’t seem a religious boy, our Liam. I was sounding him out like, Mister Bale. He seemed to take to the notion, so I encouraged him to believe I could arrange it.”

“What?
To think he could be turned into some great wickless candle?”

“
Can
dle?
Can
dle? We’re talking about art, Mister Bale. That’s art what my friend does.”

“Oh, your
friend
again! That gave you his blessing. That told you, ‘Certainly, Colin. Go for it, darling. Take the Brownie along, why don’t you? Maybe we can get all of them in the picture.’”

“We
could!”
Colin snapped. “We never discussed it but we
could!
No one stands in the way of art. Oh, I don’t say what you’re doing isn’t well meant, even heroic in some proper charlie sort of way, but if it’s all to end up in the boneyard what difference does it make?”

“It calls attention.”

“And wax doesn’t? Wax
doesn’t
call attention?”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Why’d you hire me? Why’d you hire me then, you think I’m so bloody ridiculous?”

“Because mugs have no control,” Bale said calmly. “Because sooner or later they get in over their heads. They become outrageous.”

“Outrageous?”

“Outrageous. Oh,
yes.
Because sooner or later they’re thinking Great Train Robbery. They’re dreaming about tunneling under Lloyd’s. They have Old Lady of Threadneedle Street schemes and hold opinions about Richard III, the babes in the Tower.”

“You’ve been to the Madame’s then?”

“They’re
thinking
Madame Tussaud’s! Oh, yes, outrageous. Some dreadful crèche of the infant dead. Because I thought you might pull something like this, that’s why. That if you had enough rope…You never gave a thought to bad taste, did you? Or turned your mind to public opinion, invasion of privacy, the terrible consequences of going too far?”

“Not a bit of it,” Colin Bible said. “Just as you never thought about what it means to be dead.”

“What? What does it mean, Colin?”

“It means you’ve no longer any say in the matter,” Colin Bible said. “According to my friend, who happens to be an expert in this particular area, it means public domain, Mister Bale.”

“Eddy,” Eddy Bale said.

Who was astonished but not displeased to be speaking as he’d meant to speak back in England, warning them away from their private fiddles, his quiet caper heart at last unburdened. Sorry only that it had to be Colin Bible, whom he liked and trusted more than the others, who took the brunt of his wild charges. Seeing he had set a fire under the man.

Then I
am
mad, he thought sadly.

Colin certainly was. Furious. All he’d meant was to take Bale aside and cite the woman’s dereliction. Getting separated like that was unforgivable. He wanted it on the record. Now he couldn’t remember whether they’d even spoken of it. And he was fond of Eddy. How had they gotten into such a foofaraw? However, they were in it. The man had implied just awful things about his friend. Poor Colin, Colin thought. And not without a blast of the same shame, stricken, embarrassed for his fuddy- duddy technology, he’d felt earlier that day in the Hall of Presidents when Lincoln had begun to speak. And felt again, only this time with the full force of an idea which earlier had been only the vaguest of notions and was to its implications and consequences what loose change in one’s pocket might be to an idea of money, say. Now it was almost fully formed, beginning to take shape even as he’d tried to deflect Bale’s wild charges, and still firming up, though what he was going to do already clear enough for him to begin to take the first dreadful steps.

Because she shared a room with them, Nedra Carp was partial to Lydia Conscience and Rena Morgan. If this was unfair to the rest of the children, if it excluded the boys or put a distance between Janet Order and herself, why, then, it couldn’t be helped. It would have been a defiance of her nanny heart otherwise. A nanny—she could not, in conscience, endorse the justice of this, only vouch for it; it seemed an instinct, almost a condition, some less-than-neutral magnetism of the blood that drew her loyalties and turned her into some patriot of the propinquitous that carried with it all the convenient obligations of hired-hand love—she felt herself constitutionally unable (and disinclined, too) not so much of assuming responsibility—she was responsible by nature and would probably have put herself at risk without a second thought, throwing herself into burning buildings and heavy seas, though she feared fire above all else and was not a strong swimmer, if a young life were at stake—for the welfare of children not in her charge, as unable to work up any affection that had not actually been bought and paid for. It was a flaw in her character. She understood and even chided herself for this. She even tried to be better but knew she was incapable of an unauthorized love. What bothered her even more were her aversions, her view of other children, even these children—the boys, Janet Order—as threats and rivals, something “other” in them that put her off and made her uneasy, queasy, squeamish: rather, she thought, like some hungry, willful orthodox offered proscribed food. Objectively, she disapproved of this aspect of her character. She was nothing if not objective, professional objectivity being her strong suit, her stock in trade, and was prepared not only to do the fair thing but to perceive it, which was not always easy
(turns,
for example; not
whose
turn, necessarily, which was usually only a matter of simple reckoning, but the
quality
of a turn, too, its special boons or built-in deficiencies: if the wind was down and refused the kite, if the one pushing the swing was a slacker, if a child didn’t fully understand the terms of a game; or
trades:
whether fraud was intended, whether a toy was damaged by abuse, accident, or through some basic defect in its construction; settling all manner of arguments and disputes right down to the thorny question of taste itself: what to do, for instance, if only yellow balloons remained to be distributed; who should get the caramel, who must take the toffee) and was, because she dealt with children who didn’t have her fine perceptions and sensibilities and were without skill in weighing evidence or making her surgical distinctions, who had, in fact, nothing but their own supercharged egos to judge by and go on, and whose blind, barbaric self-interest lived in them like a weight in dice and was sometimes, even for Nedra, impossible, a judgment call. And not just her aversion to children who did not come under her immediate purview. Mary Cottle seemed a nice enough young woman—though Nedra could not have been more than four or five years older than Mary and quite possibly may even have been the same age, it was Nedra, in her capacity as nanny, who willingly took it upon herself to assume the seniority—yet to Nedra, Mary was just one more “other.” Though she could hardly have meant “just” since she did not suffer others all that lightly. The fact was that Mary Cottle’s presence in the room was nothing less than an affront. Nedra couldn’t help it and even felt bad about her squeamish antipathies and unreasonable inimicals, but facts were facts. She was put off by the sight of the woman’s toothbrush in the bathroom they shared, by the razor she used to shave her legs, the stench of her cigarettes, the hair in her comb, her nightgown on the hook on the back of the bathroom door, the sight of her soiled, unmade bed, the sound of her breathing when she’d fallen asleep. And if it was true what the children were saying, that Miss Cottle had become separated from Colin Bible and the youngsters on the way back to the hotel…? Dereliction of duty made Nedra’s skin crawl.