Olivia's Enchanted Summer (13 page)

Chapter Nineteen

“When we were boys,” said Michael, “Jack and I did everything together. Jack was three years younger than me, but we were more than brothers, we were best friends. We put on shows together in the garden with our friends. But Jack and I were in charge. We did everything ourselves. Writing the scripts, creating the music on an old cassette player, making the scenery. Jack was always very good with his hands. The shows were always rather swashbuckling affairs, and they always had two essential ingredients.”

“What were they?” asked Alfie.

Jack, the girls, Michael and his son and Alicia were packed closely together on the two big sofas in the drawing room. Pablo had disappeared to help Lydia settle the rest of the
Swans upstairs in some of the many bedrooms. Georgia and Aeysha were sleeping in a four-poster bed that had room for at least six. But Olivia, Eel and Alfie insisted that they weren't tired and that they wanted to hear what Jack and Michael had to tell them immediately.

“Better out than in,” advised Alicia. “We don't want Livy jumping to any more conclusions.”

So they had all settled down on the sofas, interrupted only by a text from Evie to Jack saying that she and Tati were safe and were on their way. Michael and Jack talked and talked. They started with their lonely childhood. They had busy parents who had little time for their two sons, who took refuge in each other's company and putting on shows.

“But what were the special ingredients in the shows?” repeated Alfie insistently.

“We each had a speciality,” said Jack. “Mine, of course, was acrobatics and later the slack rope and tightrope. I eventually went off to join a circus in Europe when I was barely seventeen. But your dad did magic tricks. He was a really brilliant stage magician.”

“Just like you, Alfie!” said Eel.

Alfie turned bright red and looked worried, and Olivia added quickly: “He's amazing. He's got a real talent for it – like father, like son.”

Michael was looking intently at his son. Alfie took a deep breath. “I found all this conjuring paraphernalia and books in the attic years ago,” he said to his father, “but when I tried to show you my first trick after weeks and weeks of practice, you got really angry and told me to put it all back where I found it and never ever touch it again. But I couldn't let it alone. I've been practising in secret ever since.”

“You must have been,” said Eel, “because you've got really good.” Then she added sagely: “That happens when you practise a lot. It's happening with my dancing.”

“Are you angry with me?” asked Alfie, looking at his dad anxiously.

“Oh, Alfie, of course I'm not angry,” said Michael. “Just ashamed that I was cross with you when you first found all the conjuring stuff, and tried to stop you from doing something you obviously really love. You clearly have a real talent.”

“But why did you get so angry?” asked Olivia, who was increasingly beginning to think
that all grown-ups were mad.

“Because it reminded me of a self I thought I'd long buried.” He looked at Jack. “Shall I continue?” His brother nodded.

“I first met Toni at a post-show party for a West End production of Shakespeare's
Twelfth Night
. She played Viola.”

“Viola's one of my middle names,” said Olivia excitedly. “I've read the play. Viola gets shipwrecked with her brother and she thinks he's drowned, but he's not, he's still alive. But she doesn't know that.”

“That's right,” said Alicia softly, “and Viola dresses up as a boy and the great lady Olivia – who you are also named for – falls in love with her. It's a play about mistaken identities, illusions, deceptions and misunderstandings, about people not seeing what they think they see or only seeing what they want to see.” Then she added drily: “A bit like this family, really.”

“I'd been employed by the producer to do a magic show to entertain the cast and guests at the last-night party,” said Michael. “I was a struggling playwright in London at the time, I'd just had my first play accepted by the Royal Court but not yet produced and I was
supplementing my income by doing conjuring shows. That was the night I met Toni. I made her disappear.”

“You made our mum disappear!” said Olivia breathlessly.

“Yes,” said Michael. “She asked me to.” Then he added with a twinkle: “But only after I'd sawn her in half. I noticed Toni at once. Who couldn't? She wasn't just beautiful. She had an aura about her, as if she lived just a little more intensely than anybody else.” He smiled. “Maybe a bit like you, Olivia. I'd been to see
Twelfth Night
twice, buying cheap seats right up in the gallery, and like everybody else in the audience I was already a little bit in love with her, or at least with Viola.

“At the party she was like a bright shimmering light attracting everyone towards her, so I was surprised when she suddenly detached herself from a group of famous theatre people and came over to talk to me. After all, I was just the hired help. A nobody. We chatted for a bit and I told her about my play, and then she asked if I could really make people disappear and I laughed and said it was all an illusion, that of course I couldn't really make
somebody disappear but I could make people think that I had. Then she said that sometimes all the constant attention made her wish that she could disappear. I remember her saying very clearly: ‘Tonight I wish I could be anywhere else but here.' So I said that if she would act as my assistant for the night I would arrange it.”

Olivia and Eel were wide-eyed.

“How?” they asked in unison.

Michael glanced at Alfie. “Do you know?” he asked his son.

Alfie nodded. “I found the box for that, too. I've been working on it. I'm not perfect, but I almost managed to make Angus McMillan disappear when he came round for tea, but he got claustrophobic and wouldn't let me do it again after the first time, even when I promised him my school pudding for a whole week.”

Michael put his finger against his nose and said to Olivia and Eel. “I can't tell you, it's against the magician's code to give away secrets, isn't it, Alfie?” Alfie grinned and nodded. “So,” continued Michael, “I made your mum disappear that night. She walked into the box, and when I opened it a few minutes later she wasn't there. All that was in the box was the
costume that she had worn in the play when Viola had dressed up as a boy and called herself Cesario. Everyone was amazed, but I think they all understood that it was her way of saying goodbye to the play and to them. That she was moving on.”

“Where had she disappeared to?” asked Eel.

“Only to the pub around the corner,” said Michael with a grin, “and I soon joined her there. Before the evening was over I'd fallen in love and six months later we were engaged.”

“She was nineteen,” said Alicia quietly. “She had the world at her feet. Both of you did. Your play became a massive success. The two of you were going to be the toast of the West End, you both had such glittering careers ahead of you.”

“Then what happened?” asked Olivia.

“I came back,” said Jack.

Chapter Twenty

A pinky glow in the sky could just be spotted through a crack in the thick curtains. The first birds were beginning to sing. Jack was talking in a voice so low that Olivia and the others had to lean forward to catch his words.

“I'd been in Europe travelling with a couple of circuses since our parents had been killed in a car crash. I missed Michael so much, but I was getting a real education in walking the high-wire, and I didn't have any money, so trips home weren't an option. Then I heard that a circus needed a tightrope walker for a show in London. It was only a three-day gig, but it was a chance to get back to the UK and see Michael. I knew he was engaged to be married. We tried to write to each other, but I was always on the move
and it was in the days before mobile phones and an Internet café on every street corner. We hadn't had much contact.”

“I was thrilled to see you,” said Michael, “but then I had to go to Edinburgh because the Traverse Theatre was about to put on a play of mine. I was starting to do really well, and I was in the middle of writing my first Hollywood screenplay. It meant I wouldn't get a chance to see Jack perform, but I knew that we'd have time together after I got back. He was going to be staying on for a couple of weeks. So I gave him the keys to my rented flat, got Toni two tickets for the circus so she could go and watch him, arranged for them to meet up afterwards, and told him to look after her for me.”

“I remember the night Toni and I went to the circus as if it was yesterday,” said Alicia, a look of great sadness etched on her face. “Toni was tired. She was in rehearsal at the National. She was going to play Nina in Chekhov's
The Seagull
. I told her we didn't have to go. I was never very keen on the circus, I thought it vulgar and always loathed all those not very funny clowns, but she said it would be rude not to turn up. So we did. For years afterwards I
regretted it. She was entranced by everything, but she was most entranced by you, Jack. When you stepped out on the wire, it was as if she was stepping out there with you. I could see it in her face. It was closed and dreamy, and afterwards when everyone else was clapping she sat as if in a daze and she just said four words, and I'll always remember them, because they were so strange and yet so utterly right: ‘He inhabits the air'.

“It was as if she was enchanted. I knew at that moment that she was lost to me and Michael, although I did everything I could to stop it. It was like trying to break a spell or to stop a giant boulder rolling down a hill. I tried to make her come back to the Swan with me that night, I even told her my arthritis was playing up, but she wouldn't and in the end we had a terrible row and I stormed off. She didn't come home. Perhaps if I'd stayed, things would have turned out differently.”

“I don't think so, Alicia,” said Michael. “What was going to happen was going to happen.”

“What did happen?” asked Olivia.

“Toni came to find me after the show. As
soon as I saw her, I knew. I knew she knew it, too. The French have a phrase for it. It's called a
coup de foudre
. Being hit by a thunderbolt. Love at first sight.”

“Like in
Romeo and Juliet
,” breathed Olivia.

“Yes. I felt as if I had suffered an electric shock. My entire body tingled and hurt. All I could think of was that line when Romeo first sees Juliet and he says:
‘O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!'
Of course we fought it. We were very young, still both teenagers, but we weren't complete kids, we knew what we were doing was going to cause pain for a lot of people. For us, too. Neither of us wanted to hurt Michael, we both loved him very much, and I know this sounds like an excuse but it's true: it was stronger than both of us.

“We knew everyone would try to stop us being together, you in particular, Alicia, because you'd think that Toni was throwing away everything, a life of security with Michael and her own glittering career, and that's why we acted like cowards and ran away together, leaving a note in Michael's flat.”

“If only you'd told me yourselves, maybe I'd have understood,” said Michael quietly.

“I got on a train to Edinburgh to tell you, Michael, but I got off at Berwick-upon-Tweed. I sat on the platform for hours trying to find the courage to get on another train. But I couldn't. I didn't even have the courage to face my own brother and tell him to his face,” said Jack bitterly.

“That's what hurt the most,” said Michael. “That's why I told you I never wanted to see either of you ever again. And I meant it at the time, although there have been many times I've regretted it since. I wanted to come to Toni's funeral, but Alicia didn't want me to and she was so consumed by grief that I had to respect her wishes.”

“I don't blame you for not wanting to see me,” said Jack. “It's the one thing in my life that I feel really ashamed about, so ashamed that I couldn't bear to contact you all these years. Not even when I heard that you'd got married, that Alfie had been born and Ginny had died. Can you ever forgive me?”

“Oh, Jack, I already have. I forgave you a long time ago, but I let things simmer. I'm as much to blame as you are. We've both been fools, we should just be grateful that luck and the kids
have brought us back together.” Michael hugged his brother and then hugged his son.

“It's so strange,” breathed Olivia, “to think about your parents when they were young and how they might have loved other people before they loved each other. Might even have married other people.”

“Yes,” said Alfie, “and just think – if what happened hadn't happened, none of us would ever have been born.”

“What a horrible thought!” said Eel. “That would have been a terrible tragedy for the entire world.” Everyone laughed.

“Eel Marvell, you have the biggest ego the world has ever known,” said Olivia, “and I love you for it. I'm so glad you're my sister. I'm never going to fall out with you, ever.”

Suddenly, they heard a dog bark and someone knocked on the door.

“That must be Evie and Tati,” said Eel. “They're back.”

“Yes,” said Olivia, peering out of the curtains, “but the big question is, where have they been?”