The Loblolly Boy and the Sorcerer (7 page)

Nevertheless, that was what he did. He swooped down into the square and landed on the grass. For some time,
he wandered about examining the gardens, the occasional public monument and sculpture. Then he wandered across the street to look in the shop windows. A Japanese restaurant with a fish tank full of lazily swimming goldfish with long silken fins and beautifully tessellated scales; a home appliance store with ten or so television sets all tuned to the same scene from a soap opera: a weeping woman with mascara running down her cheeks, her lipsticked lips forming a silent agonised O; a real estate agency with a glass case filled with photographs of the homes people had lived their lives in and now wanted to leave; and a coffee shop with smoked glass windows and shadowy figures within sitting at tables, lifting cups, chatting to friends.

He stopped and idly looked in.

One man was sitting alone.

There was a familiar look to the cast of his shoulders even through the dark glass.

Feeling a small catch in his throat, and trying to suppress his excitement, the loblolly boy hurried to the entrance and peered through the open door.

There, sitting alone at a small table, a cup in his hand and an unread newspaper on the table before him, was his father.

CHAPTER FOUR

T
HE SORCERER

T
he loblolly boy hurried into the café and right up to the table where his father was sitting. He stood there for some moments almost as if to reassure himself, and then he eased into the chair opposite.

His father was no Sensitive. He gave no indication whatsoever that somebody had just joined him at his table. Instead he stared for the most part into the middle distance, sipping at a cup of black coffee from time to time, glancing around occasionally whenever a movement or a noise attracted his attention. On such occasions he would stare right though the loblolly boy clearly seeing nothing there except empty space.

The loblolly boy felt a gathering despair at this. Never before had he understood the deepest meaning of
so near, yet so far
. His father was only the width of a little table away, and yet they might as well have been living on different planets.

He studied him carefully. Was it his imagination or was his father’s hair greyer, perhaps thinner? With a slight
shock, he realised that his father looked a lot older, far older than the few months should have accounted for. He looked sadder too, more lined. What was the word? Melancholy. Was this because he was alone?

Where was Janice?

He realised at that point that he wasn’t sure what day it was. Somehow, because of the kids at the park he’d presumed it was a weekend. Probably a Saturday. If so, it was odd for his father to be out alone. Since she’d been on the scene, he and Janice tended to spend most of their available time together.

Then again, if it wasn’t a weekend then why wasn’t he at work? Back in their home town he’d worked in an office in accounts. Did he not have a job yet? Had he lost it? Was that why he looked so troubled?

Now that he’d found his father, though, it was going to be all right, thought the loblolly boy. He’d be able to follow him home, wherever home was. Once he knew where they were living he’d be able to confront the usurper and somehow persuade him to Exchange.

After that?

It didn’t really matter. Somehow he’d cope.

At length, his father drained his coffee and placed the cup on the table. There was a heaviness in his movements.
He gathered the newspaper, and folded it under his arm. Then, with a barely discernible nod to the woman behind the counter, he made his way out of the shop. The loblolly boy followed closely behind. He’d already lost one possible pathway to finding his counterfeit self; he wasn’t going to lose this one.

He guessed his father would have a car parked
somewhere
nearby. That didn’t matter. It’s easy to follow a car from a hundred metres above. However, his father walked at a leisurely pace along the footpath apparently in no hurry to get anywhere. He often stopped at a shop window. He waited patiently at pedestrian crossings until the signal and then crossed slowly and deliberately. The loblolly boy realised that he was just killing time. Perhaps he has an appointment or something, he thought. That didn’t matter, either. He had plenty of time as well.

They came across a busker, his back to a shop window, a violin case open in front of him with a few silver and gold coins shining on the plush blue velvet. The loblolly boy wasn’t at all surprised when his father stopped to listen to what he had to offer.

The busker was unusual for a street performer. For a start he was dressed in a dinner suit and a black bow tie as if he were playing in a major orchestra not on a street corner in a small provincial city. He was very tall, and his height accentuated his slenderness. He was not only elegant, but everything he was wearing looked as if it had come from some swanky store, not from the Salvation Army. His shoes were patent leather and shone brilliantly
in the afternoon sun. His jacket sleeves were pulled back to facilitate his playing and his cuffs were fastened with black onyx links with small gold chains. His hair was long and silver …

The loblolly boy could not work out how old he was. He looked young and energetic but the long silver hair suggested he was much older.

He was playing a violin, a strange jaunty tune that the loblolly boy recognised from somewhere. His playing completely absorbed the busker. His head was lifted up and his eyes stared up into the inside of his head so that all his watchers could see were sockets of almond white. This was so disconcerting that the loblolly boy shuddered. He was half-wondering whether he’d come across yet another blind person when two things happened.

Firstly, the loblolly boy remembered where he’d heard the melody before. The last time he’d heard those haunting cadences they’d been brayed at him in a little cabin by the sea.

The busker was playing the Captain’s strange shanty. What was it?
The Jugglers, the Sorcerer and the Gadget Man
.

The second thing was that the busker seemed to return to the real world. He certainly was not blind. He looked about him at the small crowd of spectators, and his eyes were sharp and penetrating. The loblolly boy had never seen such a cold, calculating appraisal. As they swept over him he could not tell whether the man had been aware of him or not, all he noted were that the man’s eyes were almost as black as his onyx cuff-links, and as hard.

And not only were they black and hard, they seemed as
old as time, like coal, like anthracite, aeons old.

Once the gaze had left him, although he still felt unnerved, the loblolly boy couldn’t help but call out. ‘Do you know the words to that tune?’

The busker, who had continued playing throughout, gave no indication that he’d heard the question. However, some seconds later after finishing the verse section he returned to the refrain and this time he sang the words the loblolly boy half remembered, albeit in a rich and baritone voice quite unlike the Captain’s caterwauling.

At the
Bam Bam
! part he’d given off playing and banged the violin firmly twice with the back of his bow. It was sharp, violent and unexpected. The small group of spectators laughed a little nervously.

And then the busker continued with a verse, but it was not a verse the Captain had sung, and the loblolly boy shrank a little, so sinister was it:

And he completed the song with another playing of the refrain, although this time he did not sing.

Then he suddenly stopped and bowed deeply, as if he’d been performing at the Royal Albert Hall. There was some desultory applause, one or two people threw coins into the violin case, and most moved away. The busker straightened and looked about him again with those glittery eyes, and then abruptly stepped right in front of the loblolly boy. He slipped his free hand into his pocket and brought out a small ivory rat which he held directly before him so that the loblolly boy could see the beautifully chiselled detail, the fine carved lines suggesting the texture of hair, the delicate sharpness of ivory teeth in a grinning ivory mouth.

Then the busker clasped his large hand over the rat.

‘Now you see it … Now you don’t!’ he whispered in his deeply modulated voice.

He opened his hand and the rat had vanished.

Looking right through the loblolly boy, so that the boy couldn’t know whether he’d been seen or not, the busker gave a thin, satisfied smile and stepped back again.

Thoroughly frightened, the loblolly boy looked around for his father who had been standing a metre or so to his left.

To his despair, he realised that his father had gone. He looked desperately about the thinning crowd and up and down the footpath, but his father was nowhere in sight.

Like the ivory rat, he had disappeared.

The street corner was suddenly darker and almost deserted. The loblolly boy felt furious with himself. The one thing he’d promised to do — keep his father in sight — had been betrayed. Everything had fallen apart. What was the phrase? Turned to custard.

He could understand the darkness: a large appropriate cloud had spread across the sky, but he couldn’t quite understand why there were now only two people on the street corner: himself and the strange busker.

The man, who had been bending over to place his violin back into its case, stood up once more. Now that the busker was no longer bending or crouched over to play his fiddle, the loblolly boy could see how tall and thin he really was. He looked at him sourly, for in some obscure way he blamed the busker for the loss of his father.

For all that, the busker gave no sign of acknowledgement and the loblolly boy remained unsure whether he was even aware of his existence.

He couldn’t resist demanding of him though: ‘Why did you do that?’

‘Do what?’ asked the busker in an amused voice.

That settled one thing. The busker
could
hear him. He’d suspected as much anyway.

‘You sent my father away. Why did you do that?’

The busker turned towards him and if there had ever been any doubt it was now washed away completely.

‘It seemed an interesting thing to do.’ The busker smiled bleakly.

‘Interesting?’ said the loblolly boy. ‘Did you know how important it was that I find my father?’

‘Of course,’ said the busker.

‘Then why did you do it?’

The tall man laughed lightly. ‘Why not?’

‘You had to have a reason!’

‘Did I? Well, try this. I did it to make the plot of your life a little more complicated, a little more challenging.’

The loblolly boy stared at him in amazement. ‘Don’t you think,’ he demanded, ‘that it’s complicated and challenging enough already?’

‘How much is enough?’ asked the busker dryly. ‘Anyway,’ he added, ‘you
were
warned about me, weren’t you?’

‘I was?’

‘You seemed to know about the song,’ said the busker. ‘I suppose the ridiculous Captain Bass taught you it.’

The loblolly boy stared at him. Again he cursed his own stupidity.

‘That’s right,’ said the busker. ‘Some people call me the Sorcerer. I’m very pleased to meet you.’

The loblolly boy nodded slowly. He was not sure he could say he was very pleased to meet the Sorcerer in return,
especially when the Sorcerer added, ‘Very pleased, indeed. I sense we’re going to have a lot of fun together.’

The loblolly boy couldn’t imagine how he could have any sort of fun with this tall, forbidding creature.

‘Well, little loblolly boy,’ said the Sorcerer, sweeping back his hair with his free hand, ‘you know, I’m hungry and feeling thirsty after all that activity. Will you join me for a meal?’

‘I’ll come with you, if you like,’ said the loblolly boy. ‘But
you
know I can’t eat or drink.’

‘Ah, yes … My little mistake. No gustatory pleasures for you, are there little loblolly boy?’

The loblolly boy had only a rough idea what that meant, but he had a very clear suspicion that the Sorcerer had made no mistake. Watch him, he thought. The Captain was right. He’s sharp and he’s mean. Again he saw those black, calculating eyes summing up the crowd and missing nothing.

He’d rather thought that the Sorcerer would choose to go a fast-food outlet or a greasy spoon. Surely busking wouldn’t have brought in much money. To his surprise then, the Sorcerer paused outside an expensive-looking restaurant and studied the menu in the glass case intently.

‘This looks passable,’ he murmured. ‘Let us enter!’

He led the loblolly boy down a richly carpeted foyer and into an elegant dining room. The tables were covered in white linen, the cutlery was silver, the napkins were real, not paper, and rolled into silver napkin rings. The loblolly boy had never been into such a place before.

The Sorcerer, though, seemed perfectly comfortable. He
moved easily between the tables, nodding pleasantly at the two or three already occupied. The loblolly boy followed, gazing about. The walls were panelled in dark oak and the room was illuminated by a large central chandelier and four smaller chandeliers.

The Sorcerer found a table to one side and, after placing his violin on the carpet, sat down and leaned back in a lordly way. He gazed about expectantly, idly drumming his long fingers on the tablecloth.

Eventually a waiter approached with a menu under one arm. This he handed to the Sorcerer and then moved to one side and hovered discreetly as the Sorcerer flicked through it.

‘What do you think?’ asked the Sorcerer. ‘Fish? Flesh? Or fowl?’

The waiter started forward, thinking he was being addressed, and then stepped back again a little confused, divining correctly that the Sorcerer seemed to be speaking to the empty space across the table.

‘I don’t think I’ll bother with soup,’ continued the Sorcerer. ‘I’m not a soup man. I think …’ he paused, considering the options. ‘I think I’ll have fish. The turbot braised in white wine sounds perfect. What do you think?’