The Disappearance Boy (5 page)

What is revealed is exactly what you would expect under the circumstances.

It’s looking pretty battered, but the harlequin paintwork on the cabinet still shines in the lights – and at just short of ten feet tall, it’s impressive. Mr Brookes’s hands respectfully request that we inspect it closely while we still have the chance. The sides of the box are smooth, except for a strip of moulding about two feet off the floor; it has six small brass handles, one set just inside each of the corners about five feet off the ground and two on a pair of wardrobe-like doors set in the front panel. For some reason, these doors don’t reach down to the ground, but stop short just above the line of moulding. Drawing our attention to this feature, Mr Brookes once again spreads his lips with two swiftly licked fingers, and in the pit the percussionist once again provides the loud serio-comic rip of a wolf whistle; right on cue, two embarrassed-looking stagehands in spangled waistcoats wheel on a small set of functional brown-stained wooden stairs, which they proceed to carefully if a little clumsily slot into the empty space just below the doors. Mr Brookes glances over their handiwork, then ascends the steps. He checks we are all with him by means of a quick questioning look over his shoulder, and then dramatically throws open the doors.

The interior of the cabinet is mirrored, and (of course) entirely empty.

Mr Brookes looks across the stage at his accomplice. She smiles courageously in response, and then keeps her grin clamped firmly in place as he hurries down the steps, crosses the stage and sweeps her off the chair and into his arms. Carrying her for all the world like a bride across a threshold – albeit one bound hand and foot – he swings her high-heeled feet delicately down onto the bottom step of the stairs; using his proffered hand to steady herself, she hops up them in three neat, determined and heels-together jumps. Mr Brookes sweeps round to the opposite side of the stairs, indicating as he does so that his lovely assistant is now going to take her rightful place inside the cabinet. This she does, grinning with apology for the little backwards shuffling move she has to make to do it. Multiplied in the mirrors, she looks out at us from inside her sparkling new home, clearly unsure as to what is going to happen to her next.

We don’t have to wait very long to find out.

On a cue from Mr Brookes, the pit switches to an uptempo rendition of that much-loved classic ‘Goodnight, Sweetheart’; he flies up the steps, and closes the cabinet doors on Sandra’s smile. Dipping his hand first into his left pocket and then the right, he produces a short length of chain and a padlock, and before you know where you are he’s got those doors locked tight and the key tucked in his breast-pocket handkerchief and safely stowed away in his left-hand trouser pocket – clearly, whatever else happens tonight, that girl of his is going
nowhere
. He comes jauntily down the steps, beckoning to the waiting stagehands to remove them as he does so. Then he reaches out and seizes hold of the now free-standing box by two of its corner handles and begins to spin it, turning it fast and hard on its castors – three times clockwise, three times anticlockwise, and frowning with the effort of shifting the body trapped inside. Then he suddenly steps away from the still-spinning apparatus, leaving it to settle. Smiling again, he reveals from behind his back a rather sinister-looking silver-topped walking cane – something that he seems to have plucked out of thin air. He moves stage left of the box, evidently considering his next move, and smartly taps the side of the box with the cane, twice – and quite hard. Then he steps to the right, and strikes it twice again. The first two blows are accompanied by the percussionist’s military-sounding snare drum, but the second pair land with a proper deep thump from his foot pedal. Mr Brookes lets that noise hit home, then steps to the left again, clearly preparing himself for a third and final assault. The percussionist gives him a good proper build-up; Mr Brookes shoots his cuffs, takes a deep breath, raises the cane, steps back a pace, and then, as a cymbal crashes, decisively strikes the air.

In a puff of smoke, the four side panels of the cabinet fall simultaneously open. A rough-edged question mark of pink and orange rises into the lights, writhes, and spirits itself discreetly away. The cymbal-stroke fades too, and the lights strike nothing but an empty cross of mirrors.

As you can see, the Lady is indeed missing.

And now comes the part of the act which I think Mr Brookes always does best.

Taking his time, he casually smooths a stray lock of Brylcreemed hair back into place. Then he simply stays where he is, looking straight out front and with that one black eyebrow of his just ever so slightly raised.
Well
, his look seems to be suggesting,
are you saying she didn’t deserve it?
Teasingly, he glances back upstage at the remains of his exploded apparatus, inviting us to check that there can’t have been a mistake. Inevitably, he makes us wonder if he can’t somehow still have Sandra locked up in or under its ruins. Then, with a rotation of his left wrist, his cane suggests that we might want to remove our attention from his elegant person, and direct it more towards the stage-left wing.

His right hand rises, and he clicks his fingers. Skin sandpapers skin, the follow spot swoops down to the edge of the proscenium and there – large as life and twice as bold, sweeping on to the sound of another cymbal-crash – is Sandra – Sandra, but different.

Sandra, entirely transformed.

Maid no longer, Sandra is wearing a burgundy satin ball-gown from a Bond Street couturier, and her neck is stacked with rubies. Her blonde curls cascade onto a white fox drape, and as she strides on she is pouring Mr Brookes a nice glass of something from a freshly opened bottle of champagne. Now we know why it specifies
Lady
on the bills – and no wonder the band sails into a jauntily uptempo reprise of ‘The Very Thought of You’ to welcome her back. Mr Brookes, ever the man about town, appears not at all astonished by what has happened to her in the few seconds since he saw her last – one might even think he planned it, he stays so debonair. He accepts the proffered
coupe
of bubbly, sips, and returns the glass. A quick kiss, followed by three quick spinning turns and a final throw of his magic cane up into the air, and he re-equips himself for a night out with this glamorous creature – the gloves, scarf and top hat all reappear in their proper places, and after one last adjustment of that recalcitrant lock of hair he offers his lady a suitably gentlemanly arm. She, of course, takes him up on the offer – but just before he sweeps her off to whatever upmarket entertainment venue he is escorting her to this evening – is it to be the Café Royal, I wonder? – Mr Brookes pauses. His hands pat all of his pockets in turn. Is he looking for his wallet? His watch? At last his fingers find what they were seeking, and he pulls out the handkerchief in which we previously saw him wrap that all-important padlock key for safe keeping. He deftly unfolds it – and lying there is not the key at all, but the red silk ropes that we last saw twisted around his lady friend’s wrists and ankles. Mysteriously, they are freshly coiled, and apparently unused. Sandra looks on politely, suggesting that in her new incarnation she has no idea what such things might possibly be used for. Mr Brookes weighs the ropes gently in his hand, and looks out front for one last time. Once again, those pencilled black eyebrows rise in suggestion.
Oh well
, they seem to be saying,
you know how it is, gentlemen. Always best to be prepared …

Sandra’s smile falters for a second. But no one notices – because Mr Brookes slides the ropes back into his pocket, twirls his cane, flicks his eyes up to the flies and bids us a smart and entirely proper goodnight by flicking his white-gloved fingers to the brim of his black top hat. The band launches into a swift two-bar button, and the curtain descends. The happy couple reappear for one last time, knocking out a briskly professional double-dip bow with one reverse, and then a stagehand behind the drapes pages the curtain back so that Mr Brookes can hand Sandra off in truly gentlemanly fashion. A rather charming skip from her, and one last smile and a wave from him, and they exit, looking for all the world as if he’s planning on booking the honeymoon suite sometime rather soon. Thank you, and goodnight!

So here’s how it’s done.

First things first. The biggest and broadest trick in Mr Brookes’s act is that he makes you think that he’s the one who’s doing it. Everything about him is designed to make you think that he is the one who’s making everything happen, but in fact, the body (so to speak) of the act is accomplished by Sandra, by the two stagehands and by our young Reggie.

Secondly, what he
does
work hard to achieve, he makes you miss.
Misdirection
, it’s called; the art of leading your punters’ attention astray. While one hand is flying dramatically upward to the sound of a cymbal-crash, the other set of fingers will be busy palming or pocketing something, unnoticed. And never mind your eye – every detail of the act is designed to draw your
mind
away from how hard those well-trained fingers of Mr Brookes are working. The tight white gloves with the pearl buttons, for instance, the ones that you see him so conspicuously unfastening and loosening finger by finger at the beginning of the act, just before he palms them into his waiting left-hand cuff – the buttons are only there so that when he tricks the gloves back on at the end their sudden restoration will seem bewilderingly effortless. You can’t work out how on earth he has managed to do up such a pair of fiddly buttons again without you spotting him do it, whereas in actual fact the final gloves are a different, much looser and buttonless pair, loaded inside two concealed pochettes set either side of the extended back vent of his dinner jacket, and specifically designed to be slipped on in a moment. The exactly level edges of the silk scarf which is pulled up into his other cuff by its pre-rigged elastic – what the business calls
a visible vanish
– the scarlet-and-black top hat that collapses as it is knocked flat against his chest and then slipped inside his jacket – everything is contrived to make him look as though he’s a man of leisure, whereas in fact the only genuine gesture in the entire act is when Mr Brookes pauses to quickly wipe the sweat from his hands on his handkerchief. Those elegantly deceiving digits of his ache, every night.

Of course, if Mr Brookes were alone up there while he was doing all of this your eye might well catch him out, especially if you had been duped by a man dressed like him before. But he isn’t alone, and at every crucial moment that suspicious eye of yours is cleverly distracted. Sandra’s high heels and hobbling skirt may make her seem gangly and insecure, and she may have to be handed up steps and carried from one place to the other – but all of this makes you completely miss the fact that each of her moves is expertly timed and delivered, drawing your eyes away from Mr Brookes’s deceptive hands just when you should be watching them closely. Likewise, the apron and cap and cuffs all conspire to make her maid’s outfit seem quite fussy and elaborate, whereas in fact everything she has on is rigged to be ripped off in a moment. It’s all, as they say, an act. The demure high neck of the blouse is only there to conceal the rubies she’s already wearing underneath, and the cap isn’t there to tell you she’s a hard-working domestic at all; it conceals the fact that her own hair is already pin-curled flat, ready for her to get the blonde quick-change wig pulled on over it in the wings in one neat tug. It also usefully combines with her three-inch heels to make her seem nearly as tall as Mr Brookes, so that you believe she almost fills the just-big-enough magic cabinet (the mirrors help with that too) – and therefore couldn’t possibly squeeze herself into anything smaller.

And what about Reggie? What’s he up to? When the two stagehands wheel on the draped cabinet in reponse to Mr Brookes’s first wolf-whistled summons, they rotate it. This is quite unneccesary, but demonstrates that there is no one clinging to its outside. As soon as he has undraped it, Mr Brookes opens the doors at the front, thus showing you straight away that there’s no one inside either. This is of course all more deception; Reggie was inside the cabinet when the stagehands were showing you the outside, and outside when Mr Brookes was showing you the inside, slipping through a panel hidden in the mirrors and then clinging like a monkey to the back of the cabinet by means of those two conveniently placed handles, toes perched on that otherwise unneccessary strip of moulding. The minute Sandra is in the box he flips open the panel again, and they start working as one. The rope round her wrists goes between her teeth; the one round her ankles is passed out to Reg, together with her cap, shoes and quickly ripped-off skirt. Then, while she lifts herself momentarily up using two hand-grips hidden in the ceiling of the cabinet, he opens the trap in its floor. The now barefoot Sandra drops down through the open floor and then, via another opening panel down in the base of the cabinet, folds herself into the open back of the flight of steps. Again, it’s not easy, but bending is how she makes her living – and with enough practice and determination it’s surprising just how small a space a person can fold themselves into. She pulls her knees to her chest, braces herself with her hands and bites down hard on the rope between her teeth.

As she is doing all of this – and as she’s then being wheeled off into the wings by the two stagehands – you quite naturally think she is still tied up in the cabinet; not because you are stupid, but because having seen how clumsy and constrained she is, you cannot imagine her doing anything skilfully or fast.

Because the steps are brought onstage by two stagehands who look like nice boys, and who clearly aren’t part of the act proper at all, so couldn’t possibly be part of any deception.

Because the steps are so bloody small – or rather, cleverly insignificant, compared with the painted and glittered and spotlit cabinet.

Because you’re too busy watching Mr Brookes do lots of urgent, impressive and entirely unnecessary things with a chain, a fake padlock and a key.