Frozen Billy (3 page)

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.

‘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 his 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

S
o 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.