He shook the woman and gave her a squeaky voice. “What day do you think it is?”
“It’s Wednesday, isn’t it? Thursday, rather. Hang on, it’s Friday, of course. Saturday, I mean.”
“It’s Sunday. Can’t you hear the bells?”
“I thought they were for us to be married. Hey, what are you hiding there? I didn’t know you had a baby yet.”
“That’s no baby, that’s my boyfriend.”
Shone twisted the figures to face the audience. The puppets might have been waiting for guffaws or even groans at the echo of an old joke; certainly he was. The residents were staring at him with, at best, bemusement. Since he’d begun the performance the only noise had been the sidling of the puppets along the stage and the voices that caught harshly in his throat. The manager and Daph were gazing at him over the heads of the residents; both of them seemed to have forgotten how to blink or grin. Shone turned the puppets away from the spectators as he would have liked to turn himself. “What’s up with us?” he squeaked, wagging the woman’s head. “We aren’t going down very well.”
“Never mind, I still love you. Give us a kiss,” he croaked, and made the other puppet totter a couple of steps before it fell on its face. The loud crack of the fall took him off guard, as did the way the impact trapped his fingers in the puppet’s head. The figure’s ungainly attempts to stand up weren’t nearly as simulated as he would have preferred. “It’s these clown’s shoes. You can’t expect anyone to walk in them,” he grumbled. “Never mind looking as if I’m an embarrassment.”
“You’re nothing else, are you? You’ll be forgetting your own name next.”
“Don’t be daft,” he croaked, no longer understanding why he continued to perform, unless to fend off the silence that was dragging words and antics out of him. “We both know what my name is.”
“Not after that crack you fetched your head. You won’t be able to keep anything in there now.”
“Well, that’s where you couldn’t be wronger. My name …” He meant the puppet’s, not his own; that was why he was finding it hard to produce. “It’s, you know, you know perfectly well. You know it as well as I do.”
See, it’s gone.
“Tell me or I’ll thump you till you can’t stand up,” Shone snarled in a rage that was no longer solely the puppet’s, and brought the helplessly grinning heads together with a sound like the snapping of bone. The audience began to cheer at last, but he was scarcely aware of them. The collision had split the faces open, releasing the top joints of his fingers only to trap them in the splintered gaps. The clammy bodies of the puppets clung to him as his hands wrenched at each other. Abruptly something gave, and the female head flew off as the body tore open. His right elbow hit the wall of the theater, and the structure lurched at him. As he tried to steady it, the head of the puppet rolled under his feet. He tumbled backwards into the moldy curtains. The theater reeled with him, and the room tipped up.
He was lying on his back, and his breath was somewhere else. In trying to prevent the front of the theater from striking him he’d punched himself on the temple with the cracked male head. Through the proscenium he saw the ceiling high above him and heard the appreciation of the audience. More time passed than he thought necessary before several of them approached.
Either the theater was heavier than he’d realized or his fall had weakened him. Even once he succeeded in peeling Old Ruthless off his hand he was unable to lift the theater off himself as the puppet lay like a deflated baby on his chest. At last Amelia lowered herself towards him, and he was terrified that she intended to sit on him. Instead she thrust a hand that looked boiled almost into his face to grab the proscenium and haul the theater off him. As someone else bore it away she seized his lapels and, despite the creaking of her stick, yanked him upright while several hands helped raise him from behind. “Are you fit?” she wheezed.
“I’ll be fine,” Shone said before he knew. All the chairs had been pushed back against the windows, he saw. “We’ll show you one of our games now,” Unity said behind him.
“You deserve it after all that,” said Amelia, gathering the fragments of the puppets to hug them to her breasts.
“I think I’d like—”
“That’s right, you will. We’ll show you how we play. Who’s got the hood?”
“Me,” Unity cried. “Someone do it up for me.”
Shone turned to see her flourishing a black cap. As she raised it over her head, he found he was again robbed of breath. When she tugged it down he realized that it was designed to cover the player’s eyes, more like a magician’s prop than an element of any game. The man with the handless watch dangling from his wrist pulled the cords of the hood tight behind her head and tied them in a bow, then twirled her round several times, each of which drew from her a squeal only just of pleasure. She wobbled around once more as, having released her, he tiptoed to join the other residents against the walls of the room.
She had her back to Shone, who had stayed by the chairs, beyond which the noise of rain had ceased. She darted away from him, her slippered feet patting the carpet, then lurched sideways towards nobody in particular and cocked her head. She was well out of the way of Shone’s route to the door, where Daph and the manager looked poised to sneak out. He only had to avoid the blinded woman and he would be straight up to his room, either to barricade himself in or to retrieve his belongings and head for the car. He edged one foot forward into the toe of the slipper, and Unity swung towards him. “Caught you. I know who that is, Mr. Tommy Thomson.”
“No you don’t,” Shone protested in a rage at everything that had led to the moment, but Unity swooped at him. She closed her bony hands around his cheeks and held on tight far longer than seemed reasonable before undoing the bow of the hood with her right hand while gripping and stroking his chin with the other. “Now it’s your turn to go in the dark.”
“I think I’ve had enough for one day, if you’ll excuse—”
This brought a commotion of protests not far short of outrage. “You aren’t done yet, a young thing like you.” “She’s older than you and she didn’t make a fuss.” “You’ve been caught, you have to play.” “If you don’t it won’t be fair.” The manager had retreated into the doorway and was pushing air at Shone with his outstretched hands as Daph mouthed, “It’s supposed to be the old lot’s time.” Her words and the rising chant of “Be fair” infected Shone with guilt, aggravated when Unity uncovered her reproachful eyes and held out the hood. He’d disappointed Ruth; he didn’t need to let these old folk down too. “Fair enough, I’ll play,” he said. “Just don’t twist me too hard.”
He hadn’t finished speaking when Unity planted the hood on his scalp and drew the material over his brows. It felt like the clammy bodies of the puppets. Before he had a chance to shudder it was dragging his eyelids down, and he could see nothing but darkness. The hood molded itself to his cheekbones as rapid fingers tied the cords behind his head. “Not too—” he gasped at whoever started twirling him across the room.
He felt as if he’d been caught by a vortex of cheering and hooting, but it included murmurs too. “He played with me in the bath.” “He wouldn’t let us in there.” “He made me miss my cartoons.” “That’s right, and he tried to take the control off us.” He was being whirled so fast he no longer knew where he was. “Enough,” he cried, and was answered by an instant hush. Several hands shoved him staggering forward, and a door closed stealthily behind him.
At first he thought the room had grown colder and damper. Then, as his giddiness steadied, he understood that he was in a different room, farther towards the rear of the house. He felt the patchy lack of carpet through his slippers, though that seemed insufficient reason for the faint scraping of feet he could hear surrounding him to sound so harsh. He thought he heard a whisper or the rattling of some object within a hollow container level with his head. Suddenly, in a panic that flared like white blindness inside the hood, he knew Daph’s last remark hadn’t been addressed to him, nor had it referred to anyone he’d seen so far. His hands flew to untie the hood—not to see where he was and with whom, but which way to run.