Shamanka (7 page)

“Oi, dilly, dilly! Get off my pitch or you shan't be Queen!”

She can't work out who's speaking. The nearest person is the Jumping Bean Man and he has a Mexican accent; this one's definitely cockney.

“Yeah,
you
. Off you go to Banbury Cross. Clear off!”

The voice appears to be coming from a statue of a Victorian pie-seller. It wasn't there a moment ago, or had she been too engrossed in her magic to notice it? She stares at the figure; it can't have spoken – it's made from stone.

Then suddenly the statue blinks. Sam leaps back, cracks her head against a lamppost and sits down hard on her hat. The pie-seller rushes forward to help her up, shedding clouds of grey powder.

“Sorry, Jumping Joan. This is what happens when Simple Simon meets a pieman.”

Sam dusts herself down and punches her hat back into shape.

“I'm fine, really. You made me jump, that's all.”

The statue laughs, but not unkindly. The pink of his mouth looks luminous and fleshy against his flinty face.

“I made you jump? Occupational hazard, I'm afraid. S'wot I do for a living.” He reaches inside his concrete-coated apron and shows her his business card.

Sam is impressed. “How do you manage to stand so still, Mr Hayfue?”

“Practice, love. Been doing this since the Stone Age. The trick is to wriggle your toes to keep the blood circulating, otherwise you pass out.”

“I want to have a go,” says Sam. “Tell me if I blink.”

Bart gives her his tray of stone pies. She fixes her face and her limbs, stands as still as she can and holds her breath. After a few seconds, he snaps his fingers near her nose.

“Ha, you blinked! You gotta be prepared or all the Contrary Marys will see straight through your disguise. They'll pinch you, tickle you; anything to get a reaction. But if you can ignore it, you'll fool them as easy as three blind mice.”

Sam tries again and this time Bart is full of encouragement.

“Pretty good, Polly Flinders. You'll be warming your pretty little toes on my pitch next, only please don't. This spot used to be a good 'un but now I can't move for fire-eaters, jugglers and magicians – not that I'm
supposed
to move, of course.”

Sam assures him he can have his pitch back right now. She didn't realize she was standing in his spot. She just needed the money for food.

“You could do with fattening up,” he grins. “Fancy a pie, Lucy Locket?”

The ones on his tray look decidedly inedible. Sam pokes one and wrinkles her nose.

“Not
those
. I meant a real pie from the caff. They do a nice one with four and twenty blackbirds and there's Tuppenny Rice for pudding. They bung half a pound of treacle on it, but it's too much for one person, you'll go pop. We'll ask for two spoons and share, all right?”

Sam asks why he keeps quoting nursery rhymes and he explains that when he was a baby, he had a terrible accident. His mother put his cradle at the top of a tree but unfortunately it had been a particularly windy day and the bough broke. Sam smiles. “And down you came, cradle and all, I suppose?”

“You heard about it then?” says Bart. “I bumped my head, you know. Wrapped it in vinegar and brown paper and went to bed, but the damage was done. I've been stuck in nursery rhyme mode ever since. Mother wasn't one to sit on her tuffet. She called Doctor Foster but there was heavy flooding where he lived – Gloucester as I recall – and the poor bloke stepped in a massive puddle and never turned up. So much for the National Health Service, eh?”

Sam has never heard such a load of nonsense. “You're just making all this up aren't you, Bart?”

“Am I? Who are you to say what's fact and what's fiction? For all you know, you're just a character in a book.”

“A likely story.”

They walk down a side street to the café, away from the smart restaurants. This is where the market traders eat. Although the pies are frozen and there's margarine on the white, ready-sliced bread, Sam has never tasted anything better. She almost kids herself that she's happy but, of course, how can she be when Lola is trapped in a cage somewhere.

Bart, who has made a career out of watching people watching him, watches her. He sees the sadness floating across her eyes in a beautiful pea-green boat.

“What's up, Bo? Lost your sheep?”

She puts her fork down. “Bart, there's something I need to ask you.”

“Go on, then. But you'll have to speak up coz I'm stone deaf.
Stone deaf
!” He snorts at his own joke but it doesn't raise a smile. Sam isn't in the mood.

“Bart, did you ever come across a magician called the Dark Prince of Tabuh?”

Bart almost chokes on his gristle. “Blimey … the Dark Prince? I haven't heard that name in a while.”

Yes, Bart had met him. Years ago, mind. He'd met him right here, in Covent Garden. The Dark Prince had just come over from abroad. He'd been working on an ocean liner – one of those cruise ships – but had to leave in a hurry because … well, he never said why. He was a good-lookin' lad, only he was wearing a magician's outfit that looked like it belonged to a fat bloke. His name wasn't really the Dark Prince, of course. No, that was just his stage name.

“Did he tell you his real name?”

Bart hits himself on the head with his pudding spoon to jog his memory.

“Let me see. Was it Tommy Tucker? No! It was a regular, English name. Was it Bobby Shaftoe? Only he'd been to sea and he was bonny. No, no, his real name was John. John Tabuh – that was it! Why do you ask, d'you know him?”

Sam touches the locket around her neck. “He's my dad. I'm trying to find him. He left when I was a baby.”

Bart blinks slowly. Fake stone-dust floats off his eyelashes and lands in his pastry. “I'll tell you what,” he says. “Fathers don't just say ‘Bye, Baby Bunting' and leave for no reason. Maybe he just went hunting to fetch you a rabbit skin.”

“No, if that was the case, he'd be back by now. Aunt Candy told me he was an explorer but I found his photo and his magician notes and … I
dream
about him.”

“I've never had a dream,” says Bart. “Not when I'm asleep, anyway. Not even when I was a little boy under a haystack. When I'm sleeping, it's as if the curtains fall and the show's over. There's no encore of events that happened in my life. I only ever have dreams in the day when my eyes are open, when I'm standing still. Maybe I'm dreaming now.” He freezes in his chair; his fork halfway to his lips, his mouth fixed in mid-chew. One second he is a man of flesh, the next he is stone. Sam taps his bowl with her fork.

“Bart … Bart!”

He shakes his head like a dog with wet fur and becomes human again. “Where was I? Has the clock struck one? Has the mouse run down?”

Bart gathers his thoughts and picks up the invisible thread that might lead to John Tabuh. The last time he saw him he was performing tricks where the Jumping Bean Man now stands. Good tricks they were, like he'd been doing them for far longer than his years. John couldn't have been much older than … what, eighteen?

How did he come to be there? Well, he never said much, but he did mention he'd met an old lady on the Piccadilly Line who'd told him to get out at Covent Garden. Sam's mouth drops open.

“That's what happened to me! An old lady on the train told me to come here too. I wonder if it was the same person? That would be too much of a coincidence, surely? Unless it's some kind of magic?”

Bart shakes his head. “Not magic, just maths. Coincidences are one a penny, two a penny. It's a small world and a very repetitive one. A very repetitive one. I bet your old lady sits in the same seat on the same train every day and has done for donkey's years. The odds are that ninety-five per cent of old ladies talk to strangers on trains, rising to ninety-nine per cent if the stranger is handsome. If he happens to be a magician, Covent Garden is bound to crop up in conversation, so, statistically, the chances of the same lady talking to you and your dad are much higher than you think.”

Sam would have preferred a magical answer to a mathematical one. She toys with a sugar cube and takes out a pencil. “So, Mr Statistics, what are the odds of me finding my father? Give me a number between one and ten.”

“Three.”

Sam writes it on the sugar cube, drops it in her glass of water and holds Bart's hand over it. “Only three? Are you sure?”

He nods and squeezes her hand. She turns it over. There's a number three written on his palm but he never put it there.

“How did
that
get…?”

“Magic, Bart. If
only
you'd said five. A three in ten chance of finding him is not good.”

He wipes crumbs off his lips. “If you want my advice, leave him alone and he'll come home, wagging his tail behind him. On the other hand, if you go after him it might speed things up a bit.”

Two schools of thought then, but Sam doubts her father will ever come home of his own accord.

“Have you any idea where he went, Bart?”

“The Old Bill moved him on coz he didn't have a licence for his monkey. So feeling sorry for the bloke, I ran after him and—”

“His monkey? Are you sure it wasn't an ape?”

“Am I a zoo keeper? Monkey, ape? I dunno. It was hairy and ginger and shuffling cards with its toes. Anyway, as I said, I ran after The Dark Prince and—”

“But that was
Lola
!” interrupts Sam, “My orang-utan!”

So now we know how Lola learnt to do magic. She helped John Tabuh with his act. If Sam's dreams are to be trusted, they'd left their home in the rainforest together to find the answer to three questions and somehow they ended up here. They didn't travel all that way in a mwa sawah; they'd been on a cruise ship. But why? And where did John learn to perform magic?

“I think you should find out,” says Bart.

Sam pushes her plate to one side. “That's what I'm
trying
to do.”

First, though, she has to find Lola; it's a matter of life and death. Mrs Reafy might be able to help her, but she can't get there until tomorrow because of the porters' strike. If only she could find her father, he'd know what to do.

Bart orders pudding, but Sam can't eat hers. Not because it's too hot or too cold or because it's nine days old. She's lost her father, her orang-utan and her appetite. Perhaps all is not lost, however…

“'Course, John had nowhere to stay, so I gave him the address of a warehouse he could doss in,” says Bart. “My mate Kitty lived there at the time. She did a lot of wood carvings. Liked to keep herself to herself. What was her surname … Fisher? No, not Fisher. It was Bastet.”

Fortified by this new piece of information, Sam picks up her spoon and shovels a large helping of rice pudding into her mouth.

“Mad as a hatter, poor old Kitty,” mutters Bart.

“Why mad?”

According to the living statue – who considered himself to be normal in every way – Kitty Bastet was mad because she claimed to be the reincarnation of an Egyptian priestess and worshipped cats; mad because she believed the ancient spirits communicated with her through automatic writing. Sam thinks she sounds wonderful.

“Don't you believe in spirits, Bart?”

“I once met a ghost eating toast – halfway up a lamppost. What's up, why the face?”

Sam looks at him rather strictly. “It's not kind to call your friend mad, Bart.”

“She wasn't a close friend.”

Kitty had what they call a split personality. Bart reckoned the “spirits” who spoke to her were the voices in her own head.

“Do you think Kitty would talk to me?” asks Sam. “Even if my father has moved out, she might know where he went. Does she still live at the warehouse?”

Bart has no idea. We're talking years ago, but Sam could always go and see. The warehouse is near Docklands. She'd need to get to West India Quay. He pulls out a piece of paper and draws her a map. She thanks him for everything, especially the pudding and pie, and he walks her to the station. He seems sorry to see her go.

“I won't kiss you goodbye,” he says. “Georgie Porgie did that and made the girls cry. I don't want to see you cry. Anyone would think I was made of stone.” And he gets down on one knee, clutching his hand to his heart. A tear rolls down his dusty cheek and sets like concrete. In a split second, Bart morphs from emotional to motionless.

Sam doesn't look back. She has a quick look at Bart's map but she's in such a hurry, she fails to notice it's drawn on ancient, hand-pulped paper. Mind you, the light is fading.

She changes trains several times. The warehouse is a long walk from West India Quay and by the time she arrives, it is dark. She's not at all sure this is where she should be. There's no warehouse – just scorched earth, scrubby wasteland and rubble.