Remember Why You Fear Me (63 page)

On the day it all started, on the day the children started dying, it was a group of fourteen. Fourteen is fine, fourteen’s just a bit like twelve, really, if you squint. Fifteen if you count the little girl, but even at the start she didn’t quite seem to belong somehow, I didn’t see her as part of the gang. Everything seemed satisfactory, actually; the mother paid up front, and she had no interest in giving any instructions beforehand—“Just have fun!” she said, which was nice—and the birthday boy was eight, and eight’s a good age, they’re not too stroppy at eight. I entered the lounge, and all the children were already sitting on the floor in preparation, in ordered rows of three, and as I took my position behind the table in front of them the muttering stopped and they looked at me in polite expectation. No one mocked the top hat, and I thought that was a good thing; I did the rabbit joke anyway, I said there was something nibbling at my ear, reached into the hat and pulled out the toy. They even seemed to enjoy the trick—there wasn’t any applause, of course not, but there were smiles and satisfied nods.

This is going to be easy, I thought to myself, and I relaxed a little—just a little, I swear, I’m too experienced to relax too much—but looking back now that was a mistake and a fatal one.

If you want applause for your magic, don’t go looking for it from a child. Children might clap, but only like trained monkeys, because that’s what they’ve been taught to do, and usually there’s some adult at the back leading them on.

But adults love magic tricks—and precisely because that’s what they are,
tricks
. They’re all grown up now and they’ve realized that life’s all a big trick, really, tricks are all you get—you work all day to earn money you give away in taxes, you fall in love with people who say they love you back when they’re lying through their teeth. We’re taught not to trust anybody, to read the small print, that every act of generosity has an ulterior motive. All the special offers on the ads and in the shop windows, no, they’re not so special at all. Everyone is trying to scam you. And what I do, I get up on stage, and I’m honest about it: “All I have to offer you is fake,” and they
love
that, they all strain forward in their seats to see me pull off my deceptions, I look out into the audience and, really, all of them, their eyes are gleaming. And the applause at the end, the applause! “I don’t know how you did that,” they’ll say. “I don’t know how you forced that playing card on to me, I don’t know how you made my money vanish into thin air.” What they’re really saying is, “I don’t know how you lie so well. I don’t know how you lie so much better than me.”

Children, though, are fundamentally unsuited for magic. They’re interested in the effect, not in the skill the effect required. You give them magic, but what do they care, they have magic in their lives every day. Miraculously there’ll be food on their plates every meal time, there’s a roof over their heads at night, there are always new toys to play with and new cartoons to watch on Nickelodeon. And each and every year their birthdays will roll around, they’ll just roll around again, and they’ll be, yes, a little bit older, but they’ll be, no, not really old at all, and out of thin air there’ll appear presents and cake and parties. And if they’re unlucky, their parents might hire to those parties a magic act. They might get me.

I don’t do many adult shows these days. For adults it’s all about the patter, and my patter isn’t good enough, I don’t know how to talk to grown-ups, I feel all I ever see are children, where do you start with a grown-up? And I’ll go on to the stage and I’m in the wrong mindset. It’s as if I’m still performing to kids, and the anger and the hatred are there in my tooth-gritted grin, and the audience can
see
that, they can tell. You might be able to convince an adult that you tore up a newspaper or made a ball disappear under a cup or randomly picked a card from a pack. But you can never convince an adult you don’t hold them in contempt when it’s written over your bloody face for all to see.

Fundamentally, I suppose, I’m unsuited as a magician for anything other than children’s parties. That’s the bugger of it.

For just over two months now I’ve been seeing this woman called Sally. It’s a bit on and off. She’s a single mother, and I met her at one of the parties; she didn’t see my act, she just came at the end to pick up her daughter, but she was told I was the magician, and we got talking, and her eyes started to gleam the way all adults’ eyes do. I’m glad it hadn’t been her daughter’s party, I’d have felt awkward had the relationship started with me getting paid. We went out for dinner. “Have you ever been on TV?” she asked over chimichangas, and I said I had. I’d once been on a spot on Children in Need, it was only broadcast in the Leeds region, but Sally didn’t have to know that. “Do you know anyone famous?”, and I told her I’d once met Paul Daniels. “How do you do all those tricks of yours?”, and I explained that that was a magician’s secret, and I winked, and I pulled a flower out from behind her ear, and she was enchanted. I did the patter. Her daughter was none too impressed, mind you. “Say hello, Abigail,” Sally would say whenever I came to pick Sally up, but Abigail gave me the same sullen look I got from her at the party when she spent the majority of my act picking out threads from the carpet. “Hello, Abigail,” I’ll say, I’ll try, and I might flash her my most toothsome grin, pull out a flower from behind
her
ear, she doesn’t give a toss. It doesn’t matter, I don’t see much of Abigail. Sally gets in a babysitter, and by the time we come back to hers it’s long past Abigail’s bedtime, and I make sure I never stay all night in spite of Sally’s protestations, I’m never there for breakfast and the school run. We get into Sally’s bed and we have sex and we try to do it ever so quietly for fear of disturbing Abigail, and that’s okay, that takes some skill, keeping the silence is like a conjuring act—and Sally’s getting better at it too, her sleight of hand is improving. “Do me a trick,” she’ll say, and sometimes I do. “Put on your hat,” so that’s all I’ll wear, naked except for the topper. And that’s what she wants from me, that’s all I am, she wants the tricks. She knows it’s all just a lie. She’ll cuddle in, “say something magical,” she’ll whisper, “I love you, please, say something magical to me.” “Abracadabra,” I say.

“Let me introduce myself,” I said. “My name’s the Great Miraculoso. But you can call me Great for short.” No laughter, not even a ripple, but that’s okay, I wasn’t expecting any. “I’m a magician. I make the impossible real. It’s not a bad job. My mum doesn’t like it. She’d rather I was a doctor. But, eh, I told her, it’s her fault, whoever heard of a doctor called the Great Miraculoso, not much else you can do with a name like that.” I hate you all.

All of the patter is misdirection, of course. As I chatter away, and I flutter one hand, with the other I’m setting up props for the first few tricks. “How about you? Any of you want to be magicians? Which one of you is Tommy? Where’s the birthday boy?” The little kids all exchanged glances, almost as if trying to decide which of them to elect, and then a boy raised his hand. Just a boy, as pointedly nondescript as any of the others, unsmiling—he looked as if he’d rather be anywhere else, doing
anything
else, and I guessed that the conjuring act aspect of his party had been entirely his parents’ idea. “What about you, Tommy, want to be a magician one day?”

Tommy said shyly, “Yes.” I thought nothing of that. Put a kid on the spot and they’ll say anything. Normally they’ll say ‘no,’ but some say ‘yes,’ and at the end of the day a shy ‘yes’ has no more weight than anything else.

“That’s what I like to hear,” I said. “Come on up, and I’ll show you how to do your very first trick.”

He got to his feet, stepped around his friends, and approached me warily.

“Okay, now, there’s nothing to be scared of,” I said. “You’re not going to be sawing a lady in half. Not for another half hour anyway, ha! Being a magician is a great job. But you know what, the pay is awful. But that’s okay, because we’ve got magic, we can just conjure up more money whenever we need it. All it takes is a bit of concentration. You any good at concentration, Tommy? Now, what I want you to do is just think of some money. If you concentrate really hard it’ll appear. A million pounds. No, let’s not do a million pounds, that’s a
lot
of concentration, you’ll get a headache, let’s say twenty pee. I want you to think of twenty pee, Tommy, just push out all other thoughts, just think of that coin, the shape of it, the feel of it, think what it’d be like to have an extra twenty pee to your name.”

Now, most kids close their eyes at this point. Even screw them up tight. Tommy didn’t. He just stood there, his face as smooth and placid and sodding miserable as before.

“I really want you to concentrate,” I said.

“I am.”

I glared at him for a second, I couldn’t help it. “Fair enough. And we need a magic word, or the magic won’t happen. Know any magic words, Tommy? Any magic words. Anyone, any magic words? No? Okay. We’ll say ‘abracadabra.’ Say it after me, Tommy, abracadabra!”

“Abra,” said Tommy slowly, and that was my first inkling he was actually mocking me, he wasn’t shy at all, he wasn’t unhappy, “cadabra.”

“Well done!” I said. “You’re a natural! Your first trick. Brilliantly done. Money out of thin air, you’ll never go poor again, well done, you can sit down now!”

At this point the average child will look confused. They’ll maybe point out they haven’t seen their twenty pee. They haven’t made magic at all. Tommy didn’t do this, he just stood there, he wasn’t going back to his seat yet, and his eyes bore into me. I looked at his friends. They had nothing to say either. I moved on. “Oh, but silly me!” I said. “You’ve magicked up the money all right. But you can’t get at it. It’s right there in your head. Can you feel it, Tommy, the twenty pee in your head? Bit cold, isn’t it? How do we get it out of there? Hmm. You’ll need another magician. Another, better magician. Wait a second, I’m another magician! Am I better? Let’s find out, wait a second, hold still, this is pretty dangerous.” And I stretched out my hand, brushed the back of his ear. I wanted to give him a cuff right round it for playing along so badly, but I didn’t, I just grinned my hate grin at him all the more ferociously. “And twenty pee!” I said, and held the coin up to him, and held it up to the audience. “That’s yours to keep. Happy birthday, don’t spend it all at once!”

“I wasn’t thinking of twenty pence,” said Tommy. “I was thinking of a pound.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. And my brain was just starting to come up with a response, maybe tell him not to be so greedy, or make some joke about the recession, when his own hand shot out—and I thought the kid’s going to
hit
me, and I actually flinched—and he brushed
my
ear, and then he was holding out a pound coin to me, and then holding it out to his audience, and he was at last smiling.

“Well done,” I said.

“I had the coin concealed between my fingers,” he told me.

“Yes, I know.”

And then the smile was wider, and he made his hand into a fist, and then quickly opened it once more. “But who knows what I did with this,” he said. And there, lying on his outstretched palm, was a five pound note.

I didn’t say anything.

And nor did he for a moment. And then he stuffed the note into my shirt pocket. “Yours to keep, don’t spend it all at once.”

“Right,” I said. “Thank you. That’s quite a trick. You should have my top hat, you deserve that!” And I gave him a little clap; no one joined in. “And you should look after the rabbit it came with,” I added, “he gets a little scared of cheeky young conjurors.”

Tommy’s smile faded. No, not faded—it simply wasn’t there anymore, as if it had never been, as if it had only been an illusion, and his face was as dull and blank as before. He put the top hat on to his head. It was too big for him, he looked ridiculous, it sank down to his eyes. He took the stuffed rabbit. He made his way back to his friends.

“Now you might think,” I said, “that I made a mistake there. Inviting Tommy up to do a trick with me. Being bested by an eight year old.”

“Seven year old,” said Tommy. “My birthday’s not til Tuesday.”