The Blackpool Highflyer

Chapter Thirty-three

As the stitches were put in, I asked the doctor whether concussion cases ought to be kept lying down or raised up. He gave a great sigh and said, 'It depends,' and I was happy with that.

Each stitch was like a little star made of silk. Iodine was painted over the top, and it was stinging under the bandage as I walked back through the Infirmary grounds with the wife.

'I don't know what's going forward,' she said, 'but you are to speak to the police.'

'Yes,' I said, taking the second letter from my coat pocket. It was franked 'Blackpool', and had been forwarded to Back Hill Street from the Joint station. It was from Henry Clarke, the good ventriloquist.

'Dear Mr Stringer,' I read,

On the sands at Blackpool recently you made enquiry as to whether I had been on a particular train, namely the 8.36 Halifax to Blackpool Express on Whit Sunday last. I told you that I had not been, but there seemed something rather familiar about those details.

On returning, directly afterwards, to my dressing room at the Seashell Music Hall, and looking in my diary, and at certain documents in my pocket book, I remembered that my ventriloquial figure, Young Leonard, was sent in his travelling basket as luggage in advance on that very train.

Forgive me for writing but I am fairly burning up with curiosity as to why you should have made your enquiry, and I admit that I cannot put from my mind a feeling of anxiety. If my figure were to become lost or damaged, I would very soon become destitute, and it is always with the greatest reluctance that I entrust my 'boy' to the care of the railways. Leonard's basket is marked about with 'fragile', 'this side uppermost', and every label going, but it is always such a relief when he is returned to my own safekeeping. Might I close, then, by asking you outright why you put your question. I do so in every confidence that, as a conscientious employee of the railway company, you will have sought the information in my own best interests.

Please do write to me here at the Seashell, Mr Stringer.

Yours respectfully,

Henry Clarke

I stopped amid the tired flowers of the Infirmary gardens and turned to the wife. Suddenly, all was newness. 'I am going off to the Palace Theatre,' I said. 'No,' she said.

But I knew that she would not argue with an invalid, and I set off at a lick for the centre of Halifax, calling back to the wife: 'Don't touch the white stuff in the bag on the floor of the parlour – it's quicklime.'

Had the terrible ventriloquist Monsieur Maurice tried to wreck the 8.36, only to find his stone in the way of our special train pulled by the Flyer? And had he done it in order to kill something that was already dead?

Young Leonard, the very lifelike figure, was a winner in the halls and could not be built again because his maker, the man in Manchester with the queer, short name that I could not bring to mind, was dead.

Young Leonard had been the making of Henry Clarke, and in a roundabout way the undoing of Monsieur Maurice.

As I pounded on, I saw that Halifax was a little busier by now. What had been the chances of the guard's van, or the guard's part of a carriage where the luggage was kept, being blasted to smithereens in our smash? No more than fair. And what were the chances of a ventriloquist's doll, heavily protected in a well-made travelling basket, being ripped apart in that smash?

You'd get long odds against that. You'd have to be clean out of your senses to try it. But there again train wreckers were clean out of their senses.

‹o›

That summer the world was full of old men sweating in livery, and one of them stood outside the stage door of the Palace Theatre, where Monsieur Maurice was top of the bill for Wakes Week. I didn't know the exact time, but I did know we were not far off the first performance of the evening.

'How do,' I said to the guard on the stage door, who said nothing back but stared at my bandage, I supposed because I looked like a Hindoo. 'I'd like to have a word with Monsieur Maurice,' I said.

'Best write him a letter,' said the door guard.

'I mean… Morris Connell,' I said.

'Acquainted with the gentleman, are you?'

'We've met before,' I said.

'What do you want to see him for?'

'Just… shake him by the hand, like,' I said. 'I'm a student of ventriloquism.'

'Follow me,' said the door guard, and he led me into the back of the theatre, past all those hot, empty gaslit spaces that must exist for the shows to go on. There was a very strong smell that was completely new on me. A tiny cat followed behind us for a bit of the way, and, through one doorway, I glimpsed a fellow wearing trousers and boots but no shirt. He was plucking at a banjo. His eyes were blackened with makeup, and as he turned to stare after me I seemed to see right into his mind.

We came to a door with a little slate attached to it. On the slate were chalked the letters 'MM', and the word 'knock'. Livery knocked, and the door was opened by Monsieur Maurice.

'Fellow wants a word, Mr Connell,' said Livery. 'Student of ventriloquism.'

Monsieur Maurice nodded at the doorkeeper, who went away with the ventriloquist looking after him.

'Time was when a fellow like that would have said "sir"' said Monsieur Maurice. He closed the door and fell to staring at my bandage.

I put out my hand. 'Jim Stringer,' I said.

He didn't give his name; everybody knew it after all.

He was not in his stage costume, but wore an ordinary blue suit. His fancy beard and moustache looked just as they did on stage, though, with the moustache stretching out wide, like the yardarm of a sailing ship.

The dressing room was painted green. There was a looking glass with electric lights running all across the top of it, which put me in mind of Blackpool. But the lights only lit the mirror. In shadows at the back of the room was a long couch, and the walking swell figure with the moon head was stretched out on it. The thing looked about right lying down – what could be more natural than taking a breather between shows? It was a better hand at lying down than walking at any rate. Behind the couch was a closed door.

Monsieur Maurice took a drink from a glass of something strange-coloured that was on his dressing table. 'Student of the art, are you?' he said, and he looked me over. He did not seem to recognise me from our earlier meeting, but it was hard to say. 'Lesson number one, take care of the vocal chords.'

He looked at the concoction in the glass and I thought: the fellow's canned. That's why he's let me in.

'Now I must be careful as regards you students,' he said. He folded his arms and looked at me.

'Why?'

'I call it brain stealing… Had most of my best ideas imitated over the years.'

'I just really came along to say how much I enjoyed your performances, and especially the walking, which I hold to be the hardest thing of all to pull off.' He nodded and nearly smiled. 'I sometimes wonder if there's any call for it these days,' he said. 'Lately, we've had a steady rim of stars in the art who go for the knee figures: the smaller sort of doll, sitting there on the knee. They're all right in their way, but they're just comic turns really. I prefer the walking and the business with a row of figures. Ventriloquism ought to be a spectacle to be wondered at rather than just laughed at.'

'I agree,' I said.

As he picked up his drink and took another pull at it, a strange vapour came across to me from the glass. The stuff was yellow and bits of it lingered on his moustache, shining there in the gloomy room. Behind him lay the figure: sleeping so very deeply, with its head like a big toe expanded to giant size.

'And of course, the younger chaps have all given up the distant voice,' he went on.

There was a pause, and a sizzling sound came from the direction of the figure stretched out on the couch. It took me a moment to realise that something was happening to Monsieur Maurice's lips behind the moustache.

'Frying fish, do you see?' he said, at which the noise stopped. 'Of course the beauty of the distant voice is that one can have an act without going to the expense of buying a figure. Do you have one of your own as yet?'

'No,' I said, 'although I am putting a little away every week in hopes of getting one. I am thinking of going for one of the knee figures I must admit, simply on account of those particular ones being so much cheaper… I rather like Young Leonard, you know, Mr Henry Clarke's schoolboy figure.'

Monsieur Maurice sighed, but that's all he did.

'That doll has a good saucy face,' I said.

Monsieur Maurice glanced backwards at the blank, sleeping moonface of his own walking figure. 'Sauciness is all the fashion now,' he said. 'And the poor ventriloquist is merely the butt of the jokes made by the figure.'

'Yes'1 said, 'but of course it's the ventriloquist himself who's making the jokes.'

Monsieur Maurice was frowning at me. 'Of course it is,' he said.

'Henry Clarke's all right if you like that sort of ventriloquism,' I said.

'Yes' said Monsieur Maurice with another sigh, another sip of his strange cordial. 'Yes he is. We've been sharing bills at Blackpool, and they've lately put him top, over me.'

He looked down and looked up and there was a heaviness in his eyes.

'Henry Clarke's a pleasant fellow,' said Monsieur Maurice, 'but why do you think they would put him up to top of the bill?'

I could see that he really wanted to know.

'I couldn't say,' I said, 'I work on the railways. I'm pretty often firing trains to Blackpool…'

There was no flicker in the face of Monsieur Maurice, just a deepening sadness.

'For this reason,' I went on, 'I am pretty often in Blackpool, and I saw you on at the Seashell only a few weeks ago. All I can say is that I thought you a good deal better than Henry Clarke, who's more of a droll, as you say.'

'By Jove, did you?' said Monsieur Maurice, and he brightened a little. 'I sometimes feel,' he said, 'as I walk across the stage with the figure, that if there ever was another cry of…' He began to shake his head. 'I don't quite follow,' I said.

'Oh, at the Seashell once… There was a big fellow sitting on the front row… Blackpool's a vulgar sort of place as I expect you know, and all the vulgarity had come together in this fellow, who was with his girl because… Well, you know, they're never alone, the ones that call out.'

'What did he call?'

Monsieur Maurice looked down at his empty glass, then at the door at the back of the room, and I heard the fish frying once again; more fish this time, in hotter oil, and now with words mixed in: 'Monsieur Maurice, Monsieur Maurice…'

He turned back to me, and said: 'I am being called from that door.'

I looked at the dead figure and the door behind.

'Front-of-house business,' said Monsieur Maurice; 'I really must attend to it; I am so grateful for your interest.'

He bundled me out through the other door, and I was back in Horton Street, double-quick time, with a very choice expression on my face.

Monsieur Maurice had not put the stone on the line. The world was moving away from him at a great rate, which he knew; and he also knew there was nothing to be done about it. I was thinking of the vulgar fellow who had called out the word that Monsieur Maurice had not been able to bring himself to repeat. I doubted that it would have been anything out of the way. 'Rubbish!' – that would probably have been it. Or 'Get off!' I could imagine George Ogden giving such a cry.

And nobody went alone to Blackpool, as Monsieur Maurice had almost said.

I began to run.