The Disappearance Boy (21 page)

At least the place was empty.

The woman who appeared when the bell rang on the opening door had the same kind of face as that woman in the cemetery with the daffodils, Reg thought. Two rows of pale green china cups and plates of cakes under a smeared glass dome were laid out on the counter in front of her, waiting.

‘Two teas, please.’

‘No bun, dear? Those rocks are fresh this morning.’

Pam didn’t think she could trust her stomach to keep anything down, and really only wanted a cigarette and to fix her face – but it seemed easier to say yes.

‘Oh, all right. Reg?’

He didn’t say anything, but punctuated his silence with a nod. Why had she never said anything before?

‘Make that two then, please.’

The urn hissed, and a plate caught the side of the cake dome.

‘There we are then, dear. Sugar’s in the spoons.’

‘Thank you.’

Pam knew the tea would turn her stomach, but felt she ought to show willing. At least it was hot.

‘Well,’ she said, placing her cup carefully back down on its saucer after the second sip, ‘I know you probably don’t want to hear this story, Reg, but here goes anyway.’

When Reg played it back in his head that night, staring himself to sleep in the silent company of Mrs Steed’s roses, the story Pamela told him in the cafe seemed both as familiar and as strange as a fairy tale. Even the half-seen tea lady and her hissing urn seemed to be a natural part of it. The place was so small, and so empty – they were her only customers – that she must have heard every word they’d said, but somehow, it didn’t seem to matter; in the years it must have taken her to wear out that faded apron, she’d surely heard it all before.

Although it was long, the actual details of the story seemed to be unimportant. There were no names or dates to anchor it to any particular place, and those facts that were left seemed to have been rubbed smooth by the years Pam had been carrying them around in her bag. She had been very young, she said; fifteen and a half if she was a day. The man was married, and had a car, and that was what they had used for their meetings. Once what had happened had happened –

Pamela said the phrase twice, with enough space between its first and second versions for the bracelet on her wrist to be twisted through two full circles. Reg waited, and knew better than to interrupt.

Once what had happened had happened
, she had never felt that she had any choice about what happened next, she said, and the man with the car had certainly never offered her one. It had all been horrible, very horrible, but after it was all over she’d promised herself that she would never once let herself get caught like that again. Not once. This concluding moral of the story came out with its edges still sharp; she repeated it with her voice drained of all colour, vehemently stubbing out the last inch of her cigarette into the pressed tin ashtray on the table between them as she did it.

‘… honestly. I never have been, and I never will be, I promise you that, Reg. Promise you. Never.’

Her recitation over, she picked up the spoon and stirred her sugar into her now-cold tea. A sudden spurt of steam from the tea urn seemed to bring her back into the room, and she looked abruptly up at the door as if she’d had a premonition that somebody was about to walk in and break the silence by ringing its bell – as if she
wanted
them to, whoever they were. No one did. Reg left it for a moment, then cleared his throat.

‘Did you give him away?’

The voice was as blunt as the question.

‘I didn’t give him away, Reg … I lost him.’

Reg paused, and seemed to be thinking. She wondered if he was imagining a face – people did that, when you told them that you’d lost a child.

‘How old was he? Little?’

Pamela’s right hand had been lying naked on the table, still holding her teaspoon – they’d both forgotten that it was the bruises on her wrists that had started all of this – but now she laid the spoon gently down in the saucer, punctuating the quiet of the cafe with a single conductor’s tap of metal on china. It didn’t matter how many times she’d formulated this particular sentence of the story, either to herself or to a girlfriend – she knew she had to compose herself before she said it. As she always did, she laid the words down quietly and firmly, like cutlery for a Sunday dinnertime, steadying herself so that the job could be done without a trace of harshness.

‘Let’s just say he never really got started, shall we?’

Reggie couldn’t help but glance up at her then – he hadn’t been able to, before. She was looking down at her tea, with a very faint smile just smudging the corners of her mouth. As it happened, Reg understood exactly what she’d just told him, and eventually he said the only thing anyone can say under the circumstances.

‘I’m really sorry.’

‘Are you? Thanks.’ She was grateful to him for not asking any more questions. ‘If I’d have kept him, I hope he’d have been like you.’

‘How d’you mean?’

‘Oh, you know. Kind.’

She looked up at him.

‘And that’s what we’re all looking for really, isn’t it? Somebody kind.’

The smile wavered, weak as water, but stayed.

‘That’s what I’d like, anyway,’ she said. ‘One day. Somebody kind.’

Their eyes met. Met properly.

They walked up to the Grand via the bottom end of the Queen’s Road, and when Pam caught sight of the Clock Tower she stopped in mid-stride. Her first thought was that the clockface must be wrong. Then she checked her watch, and realised it wasn’t.

‘Christ, Reg,’ she said, treading out her fag, ‘he’ll bloody kill us.’

Together, they ran.

They made it to the stage door of the Grand just in time. They were both badly out of breath, but after a quick, panting stop in the concrete-floored corridor for Pam to check her face they made a reasonable job of walking out onto the stage as if there was nothing on their minds except finally hearing all about the new act. For his part, Mr Brookes didn’t ask them where or why they had been together that morning, and if, when he saw them arriving so conspicuously
à deux
, the thought occurred to him of finding a private moment to ask Pam if she’d said anything to the boy yet about the two of them, then it certainly didn’t show in his face; his mind, you might say, was almost entirely on his work.

Pam and Reggie didn’t seem to feel the need to talk either – or at least not straight away. The things they had said to each other that morning never exactly went away – wherever the seafront wind and the urn- and bell-punctuated quiet of that backstreet cafe had put their sentences for temporary safe-keeping, they had certainly not erased them – but they both seemed to find things easier if the strange closeness into which they now found themselves thrown wasn’t referred to directly. On the Friday, for instance, the two of them bowled into Mr English’s alleyway from different directions at exactly the same time, both of them as late as the other and neither of them looking where they were going; narrowly avoiding a serious collision, they ended up back in each other’s shocked, clutching arms. They instinctively inspected each other’s faces for harm, but neither of them asked or thought of asking
Are you all right?

Instead, they laughed. Pam linked her arm through Reggie’s as she always did, and strode him briskly up to the stage door – exactly as if she was Debbie Reynolds turning up for work at the studio in
Singin’ in the Rain
, and he was her limping, leather-booted Donald O’Connor, and everything would be just fine, so long as they kept their brave little chins up.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. That was on the Friday – Friday the fifteenth of May, eighteen days before the Coronation. For now, it was still only twelve o’clock on the Wednesday, and they had a whole new act to rehearse.

Four

North Road With Flags

1

To state the bleedin’ obvious, a magic act only works when the audience fills up its rudimentary pantomime with their own thoughts and feelings. That was Mr Brookes’s real skill as an illusionist, I think; as he vanished, produced, roped and revealed, his suggestively blank-faced performance invited the audience to scribble their own dirty secrets all over its simple script. As he casually looped that scarlet silk out of his trouser pocket, every man in the audience knew that he was in fact unspooling their own unspoken desires to bind and disable that infuriating maid; as that same maid swung on from the wings transformed and smiling, every married woman in the stalls and shopgirl in the gods smiled along with her, recognising from their own experience the exact ways in which the lines of her now ball-gowned body promised her lord and master everything he thought he wanted, while in fact always keeping a bit of herself back in reserve.

His hands may have been working fast, but his public’s minds were working even faster. Well, this morning it was time for those thin blue pages of Mr Brookes’s notebook to bear fruit in the form of a brand-new story for them to keep up with.

Respectable at Last
, you will remember, was the title. He’d set two chairs for Pam and Reggie out on the stage, and asked Mr English to turn on the white working lights overhead. Once the two of them had settled, he flexed and wiped his hands, and explained the whole thing. He didn’t use any of the props or costumes; his hands did everything, swooping through the lights to sketch, indicate, pluck and hover like two assistants doing their eager and well-trained best. They were clear, but tactful, imparting only as much information as was necessary.

He started with his back to them.

‘The curtain rises –’

Mr Brookes coughed, unnecessarily, and started again, altering the angle of his hand so that the gesture became even more exact.

‘The curtain rises, to reveal …’

Two light fingers indicated his chest as he turned.

‘… a gentleman. A gentleman, who is … waiting. We can be sure that he is a gentleman because of his top hat, tails and grey kid gloves.’

The fingers fanned for a moment, were inspected, and then sank back to rest at his sides.

‘And we can be sure he’s waiting because the first thing he does is look at his wristwatch.’

An imaginary watch was inspected; a cuff slid back to cover the exposed skin.

‘In the course of this simple action the gentleman inevitably catches sight of his public, and he seems reasonably pleased to see them. Sauntering across to a small table downstage left, he removes his hat, and then his gloves, finger by finger – the hat, please note, is shown to be empty. He checks his watch again; clearly there are a few minutes to spare. He produces a cigarette …’

His right hand twisted, hovered and rose to his lips. The lips pursed, then opened into a soft exhalation as the fingers moved away.

‘… a cigarette … which is already lit.’

He paused, presumably for the house to enjoy the sight of the rising cigarette smoke. Pam shifted in her seat, but Mr Brookes didn’t look at her.

‘The gentleman checks his watch again, but discovers that it is no longer there. Dismay – hesitation … he discovers it on his
other
wrist. He still has a minute or two. He produces a white carnation …’

The hand curled, plucked – and mimed an insertion.

‘… and fixes it in his buttonhole. He produces a comb and combs his hair. He wipes his hands; the comb and handkerchief both vanish. Are the house still with him? He checks; they are. Good. He checks his watch again – which wrist is it on now, boys and girls? – ah yes, the
right
one again. He has time for one last preparation, it seems. He produces a small yet promising jewellery box. He displays it. He does
not
open it. He replaces it in the appropriate pocket. He pats the pocket. He waits. All he needs now is … The Girl!’

A slight cough; a slight hesitation – even in this simple pantomime, Mr Brookes can’t resist giving himself a bit of a build-up. He indicated the pit behind him.

‘Music, “To Each His Own”. Last drag on the cigarette; visible vanish; prompt cross to downstage left. Are you with me so far, boys and girls?’

The question wasn’t in need of an answer, and didn’t get one. Mr Brookes pressed on. He pointed upstage right, and widened his eyes.

‘A
Lady
enters.’

His eyes stayed on their imaginary target, but a turned finger scanned Pam on her chair; up, and down.

‘Fitted bodice, elbow-length gloves, full supported skirt at mid-calf, black and red all over. Red shoes. Sheer stockings.’

Pam crossed her legs. Reggie wondered how much work there’d be to do on this first gown. And would the shoes fit, if they were second-hand?

‘She parades the frock. Admiration on both sides; she parades the frock again. A kiss on the back of the hand. Corsage produced – a red silk rose to match her gloves. He steps neatly in behind her to pin it on; business; with his other hand, he produces the jewellery box. Jewellery box flipped open. She sees the diamond ring. He extracts it, polishes it, displays it. Delight, on the Lady’s part. He suggests a deal.’

At this point in the story Mr Brookes paused again. He interlaced his fingers and gave them a brisk crack and massage, shaking them in preparation. Reg had been relieved to see that so far the new act was all solo handwork, stuff he’d seen Mr Brookes do before, but clearly this next sequence was going to involve something more demanding. Probably involving Pam, he reckoned.

Pam, meanwhile, flicked her eyes across to Reggie then back to Mr Brookes. He hadn’t looked at her once, not in the whole sequence. Why did he always make it a point of pride to make you feel that you had no idea what was actually going on? Weren’t they supposed to be working together?

Reggie was right on both counts.

A hand slid into a pocket, emerged, cradled and displayed. Mr Brookes picked up his pace.

‘Our old friend the coil of scarlet rope makes a welcome reappearance. Clearly, if the Lady cooperates, then she gets the ring. Hesitation business; encouragement business … The Lady makes her choice, stepping away and offering up her wrists. The ring goes back into the ring box – the box is closed – the box is placed on the table. Please note:
on the table
. Meanwhile … to work! Finger-spread, rope around her wrists – no ankles, Pam, this time, you’ll be pleased to hear –’