The other people clapped and cheered.
My grandmother demurred. I was so close
to the magician that I could smell his aftershave
and whispered "Me, oh, me…" But still,
he reached his long fingers for my grandmother.
Pearl, go on up, said my grandfather. Go with the man.
My grandmother must have been, what? Sixty, then?
She had just stopped smoking,
was trying to lose some weight. She was proudest
of her teeth, which, though tobacco-stained, were all her own.
My grandfather had lost his, as a youth,
riding his bicycle; he had the bright idea
to hold on to a bus to pick up speed.
The bus had turned,
and Grandpa kissed the road.
She chewed hard licorice, watching TV at night,
or sucked hard caramels, perhaps to make him wrong.
She stood up, then, a little slowly.
Put down the paper tub half-full of ice cream,
the little wooden spoon-
went down the aisle, and up the steps.
And on the stage.
The conjurer applauded her once more-
A good sport. That was what she was. A sport.
Another glittering woman came from the wings,
bringing another box-
This one was red.
That's her, nodded my grandfather,the one
who vanished off before. You see? That's her.
Perhaps it was. All I could see
was a woman who sparkled, standing next to my grandmother
(who fiddled with her pearls and looked embarrassed).
The lady smiled and faced us, then she froze,
a statue, or a window mannequin.
The magician pulled the box,
with ease,
down to the front of stage, where my grandmother waited.
A moment or so of chitchat:
where she was from, her name, that kind of thing.
They'd never met before? She shook her head.
The magician opened the door,
my grandmother stepped in.
Perhaps it's not the same one, admitted my grandfather,
on reflection,
I think she had darker hair, the other girl.
I didn't know.
I was proud of my grandmother, but also embarrassed,
hoping she'd do nothing to make me squirm,
that she wouldn't sing one of her songs.
She walked into the box. They shut the door.
he opened a compartment at the top, a little door. We saw
my grandmother's face. Pearl? Are you all right, Pearl?
My grandmother smiled and nodded.
The magician closed the door.
The lady gave him a long thin case,
so he opened it. Took out a sword
and rammed it through the box.
And then another, and another,
and my grandfather chuckled and explained,
The blade slides in the hilt, and then a fake
slides out the other side.
Then he produced a sheet of metal, which
he slid into the box half the way up.
It cut the thing in half. The two of them,
the woman and the man, lifted the top
half of the box up and off, and put it on the stage,
with half my grandma in.
The top half.
He opened up the little door again, for a moment,
My grandmother's face beamed at us, trustingly.
When he closed the door before,
she went down a trapdoor,
and now she's standing halfway up,
my grandfather confided.
She'll tell us how it's done when it's all over.
I wanted him to stop talking: I needed the magic.
Two knives now, through the half-a-box,
at neck height.
Are you there, Pearl? asked the magician. Let us know
-do you know any songs?
My grandmother sang Daisy, Daisy.
He picked up the part of the box,
with the little door in it-the head part-
and he walked about, and she sang
Daisy, Daisy, first at one side of the stage,
then at the other.
That's him, said my grandfather, and he's throwing his voice.
It sounds like Grandma, I said.
Of course it does, he said. Of course it does.
He's good, he said. He's good. He's very good.
The conjuror opened up the box again,
now hatbox-sized. My grandmother had finished Daisy, Daisy,
and was on a song which went:
My my, here we go, the driver's drunk and the horse won't go,
now we're going back, now we're going back,
back back back to London Town.
She had been born in London. Told me ominous tales
from time to time to time
of her childhood. Of the children who ran into her father's shop
shouting Shonky shonky sheeny, running away;
she would not let me wear a black shirt because,
she said, she remembered the marches through the East End.
Moseley's blackshirts. Her sister got an eye blackened.
The conjurer took a kitchen knife,
pushed it slowly through the red hatbox.
And then the singing stopped.
He put the boxes back together,
pulled out the knives and swords, one by one by one.
He opened the compartment in the top: my grandmother smiled,
embarrassed, at us, displaying her own old teeth.
He closed the compartment, hiding her from view.
Pulled out the last knife.
Opened the main door again,
and she was gone.
A gesture, and the red box vanished, too.
It's up his sleeve, my grandfather explained, but seemed unsure
The conjurer made two doves fly from a burning plate.
A puff of smoke, and he was gone as well.
She'll be under the stage now, or backstage,
said my grandfather,
having a cup of tea. She'll come back to us with flowers
or with chocolates. I hoped for chocolates.
The dancing girls again.
The comedian, for the last time.
And all of them came on together at the end.
The grand finale, said my grandfather. Look sharp,
perhaps she'll be back on now.
But no. They sang
when you're riding along
on the crest of the wave
and the sun is in the sky.
The curtain went down, and we shuffled out into the lobby.
We loitered for a while.
Then we went down to the stage door
and waited for my grandmother to come out.
The conjurer came out in street clothes;
the glitter woman looked so different in a mac.
My grandfather went to speak to him. He shrugged,
told us he spoke no English and produced
a half-a-crown from behind my ear,
and vanished off into the dark and rain.
I never saw my grandmother again.
We went back to their house, and carried on.
My grandfather now had to cook for us.
And so for breakfast, dinner, lunch, and tea,
we had golden toast and silver marmalade
and cups of tea.
'Till I went home.
He got so old after that night
as if the years took him all in a rush.
Daisy, Daisy, he'd sing, give me your answer, do.
If you were the only girl in the world and I were the only bay.
My old man said follow the van.
My grandfather had the voice in the family,
they said he could have been a cantor,
but there were snapshots to develop,
radios and razors to repair…
his brothers were a singing duo; the Nightingales,