Frozen Billy

Table of Contents

Will had perched himself on the chair at the end of the table. He sat stiffly, tipping his head from one side to the other in the same way that Uncle Len makes Frozen Billy's head move when he's asking him a question. And Will had somehow made his mouth look big and square, and his eyes round and marble hard, like the dummy's . . .

Clarrie and Will live with their Uncle Len, a ventriloquist in the nearby music hall. But though Len loves his act almost as much as he loves his beer, Top Billing is out of his grasp until Will thinks up a way to double the drama . . .

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Epub ISBN: 9781409012986

Version 1.0

  

I found the notebooks again
today, and read them through
.

The First Notebook

I
hated
Frozen Billy. I hated everything about him. I hated him even more than Will did, if that's possible. I hated his painted staring wooden eyes and the way his eyelids clicked when Uncle Len pulled the string inside his back, to make them blink. I hated his long thin legs, like dangling rods. I hated his bright red wooden mouth, clacked shut or gaping open as square and wide as the opening in a pillar box.

But most of all, I suppose, I hated his chirpy, over-confident voice.

You think that sounds mad, I expect. Hate a doll's voice? A wooden doll can't speak.

But Uncle Len is a ventriloquist. Oh, you never see his lips move, but that's because you're too busy staring at Billy sitting on his knee, blinking, and opening and shutting his mouth, and chatting, chatting – forever chatting.

I never minded him when I was little. I'm teased about the time I dared stamp my foot and scowl at Uncle Len. ‘Make Wooden Billy speak!'

‘Not Wooden Billy,' Uncle Len corrected me. He tapped the rusty tin label screwed along one side of the carrying box. ‘See? It says here. His name is Frozen Billy.'

Will pointed to the label on the other side. ‘And Still Lucy?'

‘Yes.' Uncle Len ran a fingertip over the matching strip of tin on which
STILL LUCY
was painted in tiny white letters. He sighed. ‘And if she'd been hanging on the same hook as Frozen Billy on the back of that Curiosity Shop door, I'd have a double act to send me straight to the Top of the Bill.'

He must have said it dozens of times over the years – usually when he was inspecting a fresh hole in his boot or counting his last few pennies. ‘If I could only find Still Lucy, I'd be set fair for fortune.'

Mother would scold him. ‘Come, now! You know as well as I do, Len, a man makes his own fortune.'

We all knew she was thinking of our father. He's in Australia, on his most important job yet, surveying a road through the outback, and saving every farthing (if they have farthings in Australia) to pay for our passages, longing for us to join him.

‘All right for Charles,' Uncle Len muttered sourly. ‘He always was the lucky one.' But after a moment, his natural good spirits returned. ‘I'll just think myself lucky in his place while he's away, and eat his supper – if I'm invited, Mary.'

And Mother softened, of course, and let him stay. She can't help but be fond of Uncle Len, for all I used to hear her and my father whispering together about his faults. Uncle Len is a natural showman, with charm enough to fetch the ducks off water. That's why he works in music hall – luckily for him, because that meant he was usually still in his lodging house when Mother came home from serving in Mrs Trimble and Miss Foy's shop and, poking her head into the cupboard under the sink, called to me over her clattering of pots and pans.

‘Clarrie, run along and ask Uncle Len if he would like to join us.'

I'd slam my schoolbook shut and run down to the alley. A few doors along, I'd push at his creaking boarding-house door and hurry up the stairs. ‘Mother says there'll be plenty. Will you come?'

‘Will I
come
?' He'd spin me round, even though, now I'm older, I'm no feather to lift. ‘Will I choose to eat good food in fine company, rather than stone soup alone? Praise the day my dear brother married an angel!'

Uncle Len adores Mother. But, then again, he really loves his brother, too. I've sometimes thought he misses him almost as much as we do – like the night he reached for the cocoa tin and turned the picture of the girl on the front to face us.

‘See her?' he said, nodding.

I didn't need to look. I spend hours gazing at her. She has the roundest face I've ever seen, all black and shiny, and she's all smile.

He tapped his finger against her perfect little teeth. ‘Well,' he said, ‘when Charles has earned his pile, and all our family is together again, we'll every one of us have a smile like hers.'