The Blackpool Highflyer (13 page)

They were heading for two chairs half involved in darkness
in the middle of the stage, and you could see that disaster
beckoned because the ventriloquist's legs (which were shak­ing) and the legs of the figure were moving further and further
apart, so the two of them were starting to make the shape of
an A.

In walking ventriloquism, the figures were always the
Johnny or Champagne Charlie sorts, so that their funny
walks could be put down to them being cut. It was all so
samey, but there was an extra sort of desperation with this
pair, and I really wanted them to get to the chairs without a
collapse.

Part of the trouble was that the ventriloquist wasn't such
a great hand at walking himself. He was a big fellow, but
trembly from nerves. At one moment he lost control of the
figure's head, which swung from left to right, as if saying:

No, I will not go on with this. But they did reach the chair,
and sat down to great applause. The ventriloquist beamed
out at the audience. He had a red face, shining with sweat,
a wide grey moustache held out by wax, and a sharp,
pointed beard, the two of them together making a cross on
the lower part of his face. He looked so completely jiggered
that really you did not want him to have to do any more
work. But he presently produced a cigar and put it in the
figure's mouth, saying, very loud, 'Well here we are at the
eye doctor's!'

While everyone took
that
in, and puzzled over it maybe,
and the worrit next to me continued with his infernal fidget­ing, the ventriloquist produced from his waistcoat a Wind
Vesta, and saying, 'A light of course, we must have a light,' he
lit the figure's cigar.

Two things now happened that brought more applause:
the lights came up to show a line of figures on seats, stretch­ing away to the side of the ventriloquist and the figure, which
was now shooting out puffs of smoke from its mouth. The
other dolls in the row were an old lady, a rustic type, a darkie
and a costermonger. One was moving: the old lady. Her head
rocked up and down, as if she was saying: Well, here we are
but we must just make the best of it.

I wondered whether folk were clapping because they
thought it was good or bad, because it
was
bad,
shocking
bad.
If you were a ventriloquist you ought to be funny - that was
the only way you could get away with it. I had seen no ends
of funny ones down in London, but they were mainly the
fellows with the knee figures: schoolboy, little Johnny, Jack
Tar. But it was always
funny
business, with the figure saucing
the man, instead of this slow, exhibition stuff.

The ventriloquist took the cigar from the figure's mouth,
and the figure said something that I worked out was: 'Can we
speak in confidence?'

The ventriloquist looked along the row, and, looking ahead
again, said: 'I doubt it, you know.'

I watched the nodding head of the old woman, which
ticked like a clock, and watched the orchestra sweat as my
own head clock ticked.

The ventriloquist was saying, 'Well,
my
vision is perfect,
how about yours?'

It struck me that at this rate it could be as much as ten min­utes before the end, and I couldn't take it any more. I was far
too hot, and after the conversation with the socialist I'd been
quite unable to put away thoughts of the stone on the line.

I stood up and walked out into the foyer, which was a red
and gold circle of bars so that I was surrounded by barmen,
who were all lining up glasses, waiting for the rush that
would come at the end. I picked out one at random and
walked over to him feeling strange, with my boots sinking
into the carpet. I asked for a glass of water, and he said: 'You
look jiggered, mate.' I told him I'd had quite a few days of it.
He said, 'How's that then?' and I said, 'Well, I was in a train
smash for one thing.'

I told him about the stone on the line, and the death of
Margaret Dyson, but the barman wasn't interested in her:
'You, though,' he said, 'you were on the front of the engine,
and you weren't hurt even a bit?'

'Well, no.'

'Cor,' he said, 'You're all luck, you are.'

This struck me as the wrong way of looking at things, and
made me feel worse about Margaret Dyson. I heard a noise
behind me, and was aware that all the barmen in the circle
had got hold of the story now and were leaning forward and
listening.

'I bet you were shitting yoursen,' said one of them.

'How did the stone get there, then?' one of them called out.

'Put there,' I said.

'You suspect... a spot of mischief, then, do you?' asked the
same fellow again.

'I reckon it was socialists,' I said, 'socialists or anarchists
who've got a down on excursions, because they're put up by
the bosses ... So the stone might have been put there as a sort
of warning to the railway company.'

'Well, that's all fairly choice,' said one of the barmen.
Another said, 'Anarchists,' very slowly, as if he was trying
out the word for size.

Just then I felt extra heat and the ventriloquist was standing
right next to me. It was powerful strange to see that marvel­lous beard and 'tache at large in the real world.

My barman handed him a glass of something mustardy
coloured, and nothing was said. The ventriloquist was red,
shining with sweat, and panting as if he'd run a mile: he was
a fellow not meant to be seen at close quarters. He began to
drink the mustardy stuff, whilst looking at nothing. He was
bigger than he'd looked on stage, especially in his upper half:
he looked cut out for something more than ventriloquism.

'A warning by anarchists!' said one of the barmen, slow on
the uptake, and the ventriloquist continued to drink and to
look at nothing, but the nothing had now moved further into
the distance.

The ventriloquist finished his drink, turned, and disap­peared through a door between two of the bars.

'I thought that bloke was on stage just now,' I said to my
barman.

'He generally takes a little summat just about now for his
vocal organ.'

'He gets through heaps of lozenges, you know,' said
another of the barmen.

'But that was whisky and honey he had just there,' said the
first.

'What's he doing out
here,
though?' I said.

'There's a bit where he leaves the dolls to it,' said the first
barman. 'They're all waiting there at the hopticians -' (he said
the word very carefully, and put an 'h' in front of it) '- and
they start up with these coughing goes. First one, then the
whole lot.'

'How do they cough if he's not there?'

'The movements are all worked from off by the fellow
does the props. Rubber tubes and air valves and all that
carry on. And property's mate, junior properties - he does
the coughing.'

'While Monsieur Maurice drops in here for his little brain
duster,' put in another of the barmen.

'And it won't be the last of the night,' added the first.

'Monsieur who?' I said.

'Maurice,' said the first barman, and it came out like 'more
ice'. 'Very Frenchified, he is.'

'But not really, though,' added another of the barmen.

'I've seen his name before,' I said; 'it was being put up out­side a little hall in Blackpool.'

'Very likely,' said my barman.

I looked at my glass of water and enquired about the price of
a pint. On hearing the answer, I told my barman I'd nip back to
the Evening Star for my last of the night, if that was quite all
right with him. He grinned, and all the barmen watched me
walk through the main doors and out into the hot night.

There might have been thirty people in the Star by now, and
every man jack avoiding the billiard table. The Ramsden's was
off, so I put away a pint of something else that I didn't much
care for, and it didn't knock the stone on the line from my mind,
so I took another, and that seemed about the right dose.

I came out of the Evening Star for a second time, and a tram
went racing past like a comet with advertisements, or the fast
drawing-back of a curtain. Looking far to my left, I saw the
Joint and Hind's Mill, a black modern castle at the top of Bea­con Hill. To the right, at the top of Horton Street, was another
beacon of sorts, the Palace Theatre, but the show was done
long since and, as I watched, the lights began to go out. I
made towards this disappearing target anyway, and turned
off before reaching it to enter the side streets.

The wife would have been home an hour since, or more, so
I was late. I didn't like to be late back for the wife, and I didn't
like to be
bothered
about being late back.

There was a quarter moon, lying on its back, lazy and not
giving out much light; there were flies around all the gas
lamps, and too much life in the streets, though none of it to be
seen: just far-off shouts and cries, and all doubled by the echo
of the houses. The shouts always seemed to be shadows of
sound, around the corner, or in the alleyways behind the
houses.

I turned down a snicket that cut a terrace in half, then
pushed along a particular back alley because I liked the racket
my boots made on the cobbles, but the clanging of the segs on
my heels was presently doubled, so that the sound was more
the clip clop of a horse. I turned, and there seemed to be a
fast-travelling shadow, but no sound. I carried on walking,
and was back to hearing the sound of my own boots. I turned
into another snicket, and then I was in Back Hill Street.

The gas was up in the occasional house. I came to ours,
which gave out no light, and saw a man or a shadow of a man
beyond, in Hill Street. Something about him made me look
behind me, and there came a shout from that direction that
seemed to jump, so that it was two shouts, and then the noise
of something happening in Hill Street, and then nothing.