“The Crummles touch,” said Ingestree. “They were about the last to have it.”
“I don’t know who Crummles was,” said Magnus. “Ramsay will tell me later. But I must make it clear that these two didn’t look in the least funny to me. Odd, certainly, and unlike anything I had ever seen, but not funny. In fact, ten years later I still didn’t think them funny, though I know lots of people laughed. But those people didn’t know them as I did. And as I’ve told you I first saw Milady when she was applauding my tricks with the cards, so she looked very good to me.
“ ‘Let him show what he can do, Jack,’ she said. And then to me, with great politeness, ‘You do juggling, don’t you? Let us see you juggle.’
“I had nothing to juggle with, but I didn’t mean to be beaten. And I wanted to prove to the lady that I was worth her kindness. So with speed and I hope a reasonable amount of politeness I took her umbrella, and the little man’s wonderful hat, and Holroyd’s hat and the soft cap I was wearing myself, and balanced the brolly on my nose and juggled the three hats in an arch over it. Not easy, let me tell you, for all the hats were of different sizes and weights, and Holroyd’s hefted like iron. But I did it, and the lady clapped again. Then she whispered to the little man she called Jack.
“ ‘I see what you mean, Nan,’ he said, ‘but there must be some sort of resemblance. I hope I’m not vain, but I can’t persuade myself we can manage a resemblance, mphm?’
“I put on a little more steam. I did some clown juggling, pretending every time the circle went round that I was about to drop Holroyd’s hat, and recovering it with a swoop, and at last keeping that one in the air with my right foot. That made the little man laugh, and I knew I had had a lucky inspiration. Obviously Holroyd’s hat was rather a joke among them. ‘Come here, m’boy,’ said the boss. ‘Stand back to back with me.’ So I did, and we were exactly of a height. ‘Extraordinary,’ said the boss; ‘I’d have sworn he was shorter.’
“ ‘He’s a little shorter, Guvnor,’ said Holroyd, ‘but we can put him in lifts.’
“ ‘Aha, but what will you do about the face?’ said the boss. ‘Can you get away with the face?’
“ ‘I’ll show him what to do about the face,’ said the lady. ‘Give him his chance, Jack. I’m sure he’s lucky for us and I’m never wrong. After all, where did Holroyd find him?’
“So I got the job, though I hadn’t any idea what the job was, and nobody thought to tell me. But the boss said I was to come to rehearsal the following Monday, which was five days away. In the meantime, he said, I was to give up my present job, and keep out of sight. I would have accepted that, but again the lady interfered.
“ ‘You can’t ask him to do that, Jack,’ she said. ‘What’s he to live on in the meantime?’
“ ‘Holroyd will attend to it,’ said the little man. Then he offered the lady his arm, and put his hat back on his head (after Holroyd had dusted it, quite needlessly) and they swept out of that grubby assembly room in the Crown and Two Chairmen as if it were a palace.
“I said to Holroyd, ‘What’s this about lifts? I’m as tall as he is; perhaps a bit taller.’
“ ‘If you want this job, m’boy, you’ll be shorter and stay shorter,’ said Holroyd. Then he gave me thirty shillings, explaining that it was an advance on salary. He also asked for a pledge in return, just so that I wouldn’t make off with the thirty shillings; I gave him my old silver watch. I respected Holroyd for that; he belonged to my world. It was clear that it was time for me to go, but I still didn’t know what the job was, or what I was letting myself in for. That was obviously the style around there. Nobody explained anything. You were supposed to know.
“So, not being a fool, I set to work to find out. I discovered downstairs in the bar that Sir John Tresize and his company were rehearsing above, which left me not much wiser, except that it was some sort of theatricals. But when I went back to the buskers and told them I was quitting, and why, they were impressed, but not pleased.
“ ‘You gone legit on us,’ said the boss of the group, who was an escape-man, like the one we saw this morning. ‘You and your Sir John-bloody-Tresize. Amlet and Oh Thello and the like of them. If you want my opinion, you’ve got above yourself, and when they find out, don’t come whinin’ back to me, that’s all. Don’t come whinin’ bloody back here.’ Then he kicked me pretty hard in the backside, and that was the end of my engagement as an open-air entertainer.
“I didn’t bother to resent the kick. I had a feeling something important had happened to me, and I celebrated by taking a vacation. Living for five days on thirty shillings was luxury to me at that time. I thought of augmenting my money by doing a bit of pocket-picking, but I rejected the idea for a reason that will show you what had happened to me; I thought such behaviour would be unsuitable to one who had been given a job because of the interference of a richly-dressed lady with an eye for talent.
“The image of the woman called Nan by Sir John Tresize dominated my mind. Her umbrella, as I balanced it on my nose, gave forth an expensive smell of perfume, and I could recall it even in the petrol stink of London streets. I was like a boy who is in love for the first time. But I wasn’t a boy; it was 1930, so I must have been twenty-two, and I was a thorough young tough—side-show performer, vaudeville rat, pickpocket, dope-pusher, a forger in a modest way, and for a good many years the despised utensil of an arse-bandit. Women, to me, were members of a race who were either old and tougher than the men who work in carnivals, or the flabby, pallid strumpets I had occasionally seen in Charlie’s room when I went to rouse him to come to the aid of Willard. But so far as any sexual association with a woman went, I was a virgin. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I was a hoor from the back and a virgin from the front, and so far as romance was concerned I was as pure as the lily in the dell. And there I was, over my ears in love with Lady Tresize, professionally known as Miss Annette de la Borderie, who cannot have been far off sixty and was, as Ingestree is eager to tell you, not a beauty. But she had been kind to me and said she would show me what to do about my face—whatever that meant—and I loved her.
“What do I mean? That I was constantly aware of her, and what I believed to be her spirit transfigured everything around me. I held wonderful mental conversations with her, and although they didn’t make much sense they gave me a new attitude toward myself. I told you I put aside any notion of picking a pocket in order to refresh my exchequer because of her. What was stranger was that I felt in quite a different way about the poor slut that helped the escape-artist who kicked me; he was rough with her, I knew, and I pitied her, though I had taken no notice of her before then. It was the dawn of chivalry in me, coming rather late in life. Most men, unless they are assembled on the lowest, turnip-like principle, have a spell of chivalry at some time in their lives. Usually it comes at about sixteen. I understand boys quite often wish they had a chance to die for the one they love, to show that their devotion stops at nothing. Dying wasn’t my line; a good religious start in life had given me too much respect for death to permit any extravagance of that sort. But I wanted to live for Lady Tresize, and I was overjoyed by the notion that, if I could do whatever Holroyd and Sir John wanted, I might be able to manage it.
“It wasn’t lunacy. She had that effect, in lesser measure, on a lot of people, as I found out when I joined the Tresize Company. Everybody called Sir John ‘Guvnor’, because that was his style; lots of heads of theatrical companies were called Guvnor. But they called Lady Tresize ‘Milady’. It would have been reasonable enough for her maid to do that, but everybody did it, and it was respectful, and affectionately mocking at the same time. She understood both the affection and the mockery, because Milady was no fool.