Frozen Billy (12 page)

After that, Uncle Len asked me and Still Lucy what we liked the best about our new country.

‘We're very cold,' I confided. ‘So what we like best is that stuff – that stuff—' I cocked my head to one side, put a finger in my mouth and sucked as if I were a dolly, thinking hard.

‘What stuff, dear?' Uncle Len prompted.

‘You know,' I said. ‘That stuff that changes colour three times in its life.'

‘Three times?'

‘Yes,' I said. ‘It's black when you buy it, red when you use it, and grey when you've finished with it.'

‘Coal!' roared the audience.

And on we went, with riddle after riddle twisted into jokes until we'd spent the time allotted, and a few minutes more. In the end it was Uncle Len who chose to roll some joke round neatly to match another, reached out a hand to draw me towards him as he held up Still Lucy, and made us both take a bow along with him.

The audience cheered and stamped and roared. The curtain dropped, swept up, came down again, swept up. We kept on bowing until I was dizzy.

The curtain came down one last time, and stayed down.

Uncle Len turned to me. ‘Astonishing, Clarrie! A triumph! But how could you ever have—?'

Now came the
real
performance: fooling a man whose skill is fooling others.

I spread my hands. ‘Don't blame me, Uncle Len. Will said it would be an excellent jape, and you'd enjoy it.'

Uncle Len held up Still Lucy to admire her. ‘She is a splendid dummy.' He turned her round and lifted the flap to inspect her mechanism. ‘Where did you find her? And was all this Will's idea? Was it his aim to make me die of heart failure?' He swung round. ‘Will?'

The stage hands stood silent since, the moment the act began, every last one of them had seen Will snatch Frozen Billy up from where I'd hidden him when I switched the dummies, and lay him back in the box. They'd watched him pull a letter from his pocket, drop it on top, and run from the theatre.

Only the stage manager dared say it. ‘Len, he's gone.'

‘Gone?'

‘Ran off the moment the act began.'

‘A wise decision,' Uncle Len said wryly. ‘He risks a thrashing when he gets home for tempting Clarrie into such mischief.' He turned the dummy back to face him. ‘Ithn't that right, Thtill Luthy?'

No one laughed.

Uncle Len didn't notice. He went to the carrying box to lay Still Lucy safely inside.

There, on top of Frozen Billy, lay the short note I'd made my brother copy out that very morning.

Uncle Len stared at it blankly. To save his pride, I picked it up and read it out aloud to everyone:

‘“I'm sorry, Uncle Len. I've run away. I'm off to make my own fortune overseas. Your nephew, Will.” '

‘Run away?' Suddenly my uncle looked like a rag doll whose stuffing has dropped out of him. His jaw dropped as low as Frozen Billy's. ‘Run away to
sea
? Young
Will
?'

I waited with heart stopped. Here was the test I'd dreaded. What would my uncle do? For though Will could have played my part that night as puppet on the stage, I couldn't have played his as runaway. No one would ever have thought I'd gone to sea.

But this way, what a risk we ran. For Uncle Len might believe that Will had gone. But if he chose to remember only his sour moods over the last few weeks, he might say nothing more than, ‘Damn the boy! He has been constant trouble! Now he must fend for himself!' and stride off to cool his temper at the Soldier at Arms.

Then he'd miss everything I hoped would follow, because this plan of mine depended on speed; and speed, here, hung upon a loving heart.

Give him his due, he didn't make me suffer long. I'd hardly caught my breath before he was seizing my arm.

‘Will? Down at the docks? A boy so young? Clarrie, for God's sake, we must follow him!'

‘Quick, then!' I said, my heart as light as air. For I knew, even if I failed in one thing, I'd managed another. I'd proved that, for all his petty sins and weaknesses, deep down my uncle's heart was true.

He stretched out a hand to hurry me, then stopped as if he only now saw clearly that I was standing in a fluffy wig, peppered with ribbons, with shoe blacking over every inch of me and bright red lips.

‘No time to waste,' he told me. ‘I'll run ahead!'

Thrusting Still Lucy into my arms, he broke through the line of staring stage hands and ran like the very devil.

The Last Notebook

H
ere is a riddle that we missed on stage. How do you get four people onto one steamship with only one ticket? Uncle Len asked it a hundred times on the voyage, then answered his own question: ‘Best ask Clarrie! For she is the only person in the world who has ever yet managed it!'

But it was simple enough, with everything set to fall into place like dominoes in a line. Down at the docks, Will kept his painted face well hidden in the hood of his theatre cloak as he waited for the boat from Dun Laoghaire. Through driving rain, he strained to pick Mother's face out from the throng of passengers leaning over the deck rail.

‘Look for the clothes she was wearing when she went off,' I'd told him. ‘Look for a woman in black.'

‘But it was dark,' he complained to me bitterly after. ‘And they seemed all in black. If I'd not had the sense to stand where I knew she'd pass, between the ship's berth and the quickest way home, I would have missed her.'

But it didn't happen. He had the luck to spot her as she hurried past.

He stepped up behind her. ‘Mother!'

She stopped dead in her tracks. ‘Will?'

She swung round, then clutched her hand to her heart.

‘The fright he gave me!' she told me afterwards. ‘To hear my own son's voice, then turn to see a living, breathing image of Frozen Billy grinning from the hood of a cloak. If I'd not been rooted to the spot in horror, I would have run a mile.'

But Will had not been able to stop himself. Forgetting his painted face, he hurled himself into Mother's arms. And as she felt his trembling frame through the wet folds of cloak, and heard him whisper, ‘Oh, Mother! How glad I am to see you!' she came to her senses and all fears fled.

They hugged and kissed, and then she held him at arm's length. ‘Will? Why are you made up to look like a puppet?'

Behind them, a ship's hooter brayed, reminding Will.

‘No time for that! Quick. You must get your ticket.' He dug in the cloak's lining pocket and pulled out the cocoa tin. ‘Here is the money for your passage.'

Mother lifted the lid. Inside, stuffed tight, was all the money Madame Terrazini had given me.

‘Will? Where does this money come from?'

‘Father!' lied Will (though he claimed later that he was sorely tempted to ruin everything by boasting, ‘My wages!'). And all the time he was pushing Mother back through the stinging spears of rain towards the shipping office. ‘You must buy a ticket, Mother. The ship's about to sail and you must get on board.'

‘On board?'

He said she stared at him as if he'd told her she must fly to the moon.

‘Yes. We're off to Australia.'

‘Tonight? But it's impossible.
Impossible!
'

She seemed so adamant, Will told us after, that he thought of launching into some sad tale about poor Father lying sick with fever, calling for his family. But then he claims he couldn't bring himself to tell such a cruel untruth, not even to hurry her on board. So he just stood there as the winds rose round them and the hooter brayed, insisting, ‘We're going, Mother.'

She stood her ground, clutching her shawl to her in the furious wind. ‘Show me
your
ticket, Will.'

He pulled out the sodden wet boarding card some happy traveller had tossed into the gutter at journey's end, and held it just outside the nearest circle of lamplight, so she couldn't read the printing. ‘Here it is, Mother.'

Now Mother's face was poised between her soaring hopes and lingering fears. ‘But what about my darling Clarrie? And Uncle Len! How can I step off one boat onto another without being certain every last one of my family is safely with me?'

What was my brother to say? For my plan's timing was so tight, with one boat in just as the next went out, that Uncle Len had yet to prove himself.

Will took a chance. As he himself said after, ‘What's one lie more, when your whole roof is thatched with them?' He claims it was a stroke of genius. Mother says it was a dreadful risk to take, and Will should be ashamed of his foolhardiness.

I say my brother is the bravest, most daring and quick-witted boy who ever walked the earth. For Mother insists she heard him telling her, ‘Uncle Len's on his way and Clarrie is on board.' Yet he insists, when Mother scolds, that she misheard, and what he really shrieked into the wind was, ‘Uncle Len knows the way and Clarrie is on the boards.'

‘Theatre boards!' he crows now, each time the story is told.

And Mother frowns and says, ‘Luck shone on you that night.'

‘Not luck,' he says. ‘Clarrie's fine planning – and my astonishing performance!'

For, following my orders, he pushed Mother as far as the ticket office and, when she had her boarding card in hand, hurried her over to the sailors at the bottom of the gangplank. The first took her ticket, peered at it closely, then put out an arm to steady her as she grasped the swaying side ropes to start the climb aboard.

Will hung back a moment, as if to take the chance of one last lingering look at the city of our childhood.

Then suddenly he pointed at nothing and no one and cried excitedly, ‘See, Mother? There is Uncle Len! See him?' Again he pointed, then turned back to Mother. ‘Quick! You go ahead to find Clarrie. I'll wait here at the bottom of the gangplank and help Uncle Len with the bags.'

And Mother, longing to see me, left him there.

‘What bags?' Uncle Len said ruefully, after. For when he reached the dock, he had not even a hat or cloak to shield himself from the blustering winds and sheets of dark sea spray crashing over the sea wall.

He ran from sailor to sailor – ‘A young boy! Have you seen a boy?' – while Will crouched in the shadow of a pile of crates, keeping watch for the sister he knew would soon be following, in a cloak far too large, and hampered by a box as long as a child's coffin.