The Abominable Showman Read online

  But so many things have changed since then, perhaps my mother was right.

  ‘We might visit the canal,’ I told my mother.

  ‘Bound to be froze over,’ was her reply.

  I peered towards the unwashed scullery window. Streams of summer sunlight pierced through cracks in the grime.

  ‘I’d best take my gloves too then,’ I said, for as I also mentioned earlier, I was always polite.

  Andy rose from the breakfasting table and fell heavily to the floor. He had sellotaped his ankles together and glued a cardboard facsimile of a fish’s tail to his socks. I dragged him into our neat front parlour, then went to find our scarves.

  It was August and we were on our summer holidays. Most days we adventured in Gunnersbury Park. But if the rain fell heavily, as it so often did (something to do with the Russians, my mother assured me), Andy would be sent up to his room and I to my granddad’s where he told me Rainy Tales.

  Today the sun blazed down upon Brentford and we grew quite hot in our scarves.

  I pushed my brother along in his old pushchair. A short-sighted lady in a straw hat gave us a penny for the guy. The penny was a shilling and so we spent it on Jubblys. We both had big orange juice stains around our mouths by the time we reached the Butts Estate. But that was a fashionable affectation for schoolboys back in the day and no one even looked twice.

  ‘That’s where the lady lives,’ said my brother, pointing with a grubby unwashed paw. ‘But beware your winky,’ he added. A very nice turn of phrase.

  Before us stood a tall imposing house. It was a grand and Georgian affair, probably built like many of the others on profits from tea and slavery. But this one stood out slightly from the rest as it had gone to seed. Grandeur usually crumbles with dignity and the ruination that clouded the features of this once-proud abode did so in an artful manner which was somewhat appealing.

  ‘And that is the wall you climbed?’ I asked, pointing with my well-washed hand, with its dirtless finger nails.

  ‘I climbed up the ivy,’ said Andy. ‘I was a monkey that day. A purple macaque, with short tail and cheek pouches.’

  ‘Very nice too,’ I recalled the impersonation. ‘I shall go and knock on the door, you wait here for me.’

  ‘Knock on the door?’ cried my brother. ‘What about your winky?’

  ‘Enough of this winky-talk, please. I shall knock on the door and if the lady answers I will tell her that it is Bob-a-Job week and that I am a boy scout come to tidy her garden.’

  ‘And what if she does not answer?’

  ‘Then she will be out and I will shin over the wall. And you,’ and I pointed hard at my brother, ‘will give a good loud monkey call if you see her coming back, so as to warn me. All right?’

  Andy shook his head very hard and said it could not be done.

  ‘And why on Earth can it not be done?’ I asked him in reply.

  ‘Because I am a fish,’ said Andy. ‘And fishes do not do monkey talk.’

  ‘Ah,’ said I. ‘And that is where you are wrong. Some do. Yesterday I saw a merman at the British Museum. Half a monkey and half a fish, now what do you think of that?’

  ‘I will gibber,’ said Andy. ‘As a merman might.’

  I left my brother in the pushchair and marched to the lady’s front door. I will not pretend that I am of a courageous disposition. On the contrary, I am rather a timid fellow. Cautious, shall we say. I like to plan ahead and not to take unnecessary risks. Flight, rather than, fight, for me.

  The door seemed to lack for a knocker. The bell pull was rusted in. I stood back and stroked my chin and then I kicked that door. No sound came at all from within so I kneeled down and pushed upon the letter box.

  A once grand hall with a threadbare carpet and ancient dusty pictures on the walls. I kicked the door some more very hard and then peeped again through the letterbox. An empty house has a special empty sound. It is a hard, soundless sound to hear, or not hear, because in order to not hear it you must first enter the house. Which means that it is no longer empty. And so will not not-sound the same.

  You could not-hear it through the letterbox though.

  ‘There is no one at home,’ said I.

  I turned towards my brother and raised a thumb. Andy shrugged and did fin-flapping finger motions. I shook my head and sighed.

  Then, having looked to the left and the right and waited until an elderly gentleman in a hacking jacket and kilt ambled from sight, I scrambled up the ivy and onto the garden wall.

  And here I caught my trouser seat upon the broken glass that had been cemented onto the top of that wall. The broken glass that my brother Andy had neglected to mention. There was some tearing of trouser, some screaming from myself and with the use of a swearing word I fell very painfully into the lady’s garden.

  My brother had, and has, a most distinctive laugh. It has brought violence to him on occasions over the years. When he has too publically employed it in order to express his delight at others’ misfortunes. That laugh followed me over the wall. I groaned bitterly.

  And I fell into nettles, which had also escaped his mention. I used the word ‘bastard’ and used it through gritted teeth.

  My trousers were ruined and there was blood on my bottom, I got up and rubbed at myself. I had nettle stings all over my hands and there was not a dock leaf to be seen.

  I was on the verge of having a cry, when I espied the lamb.

  It was there, right there in the corner of the garden, tethered by its long dark stalk and looking all forlorn. It was bigger than the one at the British Museum and unexpectedly to me, a very vivid green. It looked in my direction and bleated plaintively. And I forgot about my wounded bum and nettle stings and stared at that sad little creature and felt so desperately sorry.

  It was all alone in this overgrown garden. A being from another age. An age of magic and wonder. And it had almost eaten all the grass and leaves within its limited reach. A day or two more perhaps and it would fade into compost. Really heart-breakingly sad.

  I looked at the lamb and the lamb looked back at me.

  ‘Hello little man,’ I said softly.

  The lamb gave a sorry bleat.

  ‘You’re all right now,’ I told it. ‘You will not die. I will look after you. I will feed you cabbage and lettuce and sprouts.’

  The lamb gave a dear little yawn.

  ‘I’ll dig you out by the roots,’ I said. ‘Carefully pot you up and carry you home. And I will protect you from tom cats and I will –’

  ‘What will you do?’ came an old cracked voice. ‘Just what will you do?’

  I turned to find a tall gaunt lady staring down at me. She was a very ancient lady and wore an old-fashioned frock and pince-nez spectacles.

  ‘What will you do?’ she asked again and pointed at me with a very large pair of scissors.

  ‘I will love him,’ I said to the lady. Quite surprising myself. ‘I will love him and not let him die.’

  Then my heart seemed to beat very fast.

  And I sank to my knees.

  And fainted.

  3

  I awoke in an old battered chair in a room that smelled strongly of lavender. The tall gaunt lady leaned over me and asked if I would like some lemonade. I felt rather giddy. Then I felt at myself.

  ‘You are all intact,’ she said, making scissor-snapping movements with her fingers. ‘But you are a naughty little boy.’

  ‘I feel there are extenuating circumstances,’ I said. For I had recently learned these words and now seemed the time to use them.

  ‘Oh,’ said the lady. ‘Are there really? Are there really indeed?’

  ‘I came to save the life of the lamb,’ I said and the lady nodded thoughtfully.

  ‘I’ll go and get some lemonade,’ she said.

  She left me all alone in that old room and I could of course have taken to my heels. And I wonder, perhaps whether this was her intention. But I stayed instead and just sat there and looked all around and about. I sniffe
d too at the lavender which peeped from pots and vases.

  You can of course tell much about a person by sitting in their living room and gazing around and about. You can ‘deduce’ as Mr Holmes would say. Not that I was ever really a fan of Sherlock Holmes; I never found his adventures very exciting.

  I have always been a Lazlo Woodbine man myself. The daddy introduced me to his books, written by Brentford’s most famous man of letters, Mr P. P. Penrose. Lazlo Woodbine was a modern detective. A nineteen-fifties all-American genre private eye. He wore a trench coat and a fedora and carried a trusty Smith & Wesson in his shoulder holster. He drank Jack Daniels and bottles of Bud and he smoked strong cigarettes.

  And being the true professional he was he only worked four locations. His office, where clients came to call. A bar named Fangio’s, where he chewed the fat with the barman and always met the dame that would do him wrong. An alleyway where he got into sticky situations and a rooftop where he would have a final showdown with the criminal, who would inevitably take the big plunge over the edge.

  With Laz you could expect copious amounts of sex and violence, a trail of corpses balanced by a fair degree of wholesome trench coat humour. And all in the first person only, that’s how Laz did business.

  He never did much deducing though, he always preferred to beat the truth out of his suspects.

  So I could not apply the methods of my favourite fictional detective here and I really don’t know why I mentioned him at all. Perhaps just to fill time until my lemonade arrived. That would probably be it.

  My lemonade arrived upon a silver tray with a doily and even had two lumps of ice jingling in the top.

  ‘This is a lovely room,’ I said to the lady. And, ‘Thank you,’ too, as I accepted my lemonade.

  ‘How polite,’ the lady said, seating herself and smoothing out the folds in her faded frock. ‘So what do you like best about my lovely room?’

  I had a sip of the lemonade. It tasted somewhat bitter. ‘I like –’ and I gave the room a good glance, ‘I like that monkey there.’ The monkey was a fine-looking fellow. Stuffed and mounted within a high glass dome. He wore a velvet smoking cap that reminded me of the one worn by the gentleman in the Atlantis Bookshop, a red tail coat, morning trousers, starched shirt with a high collar, shoes with spats and an oriental waistcoat. His glass-eyed stare looked somewhat forlorn, but his big teeth showed in a grin.

  ‘Ah,’ said the lady and smiled a thin smile. ‘Dawkins, the monkey butler. He served my father many years ago.’

  I had another sip of lemonade. This second sip seemed nicer than the first. ‘If I was ever ship-wrecked on a desert island,’ I said. ‘I would have a monkey butler. And a gorilla for a bodyguard. And I would ride on a turtle’s back and live in a fine tree house.’

  The lady raised a snowy eyebrow. ‘You have clearly given the matter considerable thought,’ she said.

  ‘I am a boy scout,’ I said, though I wasn’t. ‘So I must be prepared.’

  ‘You were not very prepared when you climbed over my wall. You tore your trousers and fell in the nettles.’

  I frowned a little and thought of my brother’s laughter. But then he was now sitting out in the sun, while I was in here drinking lemonade and engaging in sophisticated conversation with a member of the aristocracy. Rather fitting too, I thought. I was so clearly a cut above my brother.

  ‘Was your daddy a lordship?’ I asked. ‘To have a monkey butler.’

  ‘He was a famous man,’ said the lady. ‘That is his portrait there.’ She gestured with a fragile hand towards a great oil painting. It hung above the fireplace, enclosed within a massive gilded frame. A gentleman with a stern yet friendly face was posed before a fireplace. Indeed the very fireplace over which the portrait hung. He held in one hand a book entitled Calculus, the other rested upon the shoulder of Dawkins the monkey butler.

  ‘Gosh,’ was all I had to say, as nothing else would do.

  ‘His name was Ernest Rutherford,’ said the lady. ‘He was a chemist and scientist and he won a Nobel Prize.’

  ‘My daddy won the Victoria Cross,’ I said. ‘For fighting Germans in the war.’

  ‘Really?’ said the lady. ‘Is it like this one?’ She rose and drifted like a ghost across the lavendered room, reached into a glass-fronted cabinet and bought out something for me to see.

  It was a truly beautiful something.

  A medal, in the form of a cross of bronze, with a crown and a lion upon it, and a motto ‘For Valour’ in raised bold letters beneath. It was affixed to a yellow silk ribbon and lay upon velvet in a black leather box.

  ‘Gosh,’ was all I had to say once more.

  ‘Put down your lemonade and take it out of its box,’ said the lady. ‘It hasn’t seen daylight for many many years.’

  I put down my lemonade and lifted it carefully. It was remarkably heavy for its size. I was very impressed.

  ‘Did your daddy win it for fighting Germans?’ I asked.

  ‘Turn it over,’ the lady said. ‘And see what is on the back.’

  I turned the medal gently and saw small letters neatly engraved upon it.

  ‘Read aloud,’ the lady said and so I read aloud.

  ‘For Agnes Rutherford,’ I read. ‘For valour in the face of an evil foe.’

  I looked up at the lady and said, ‘I thought your daddy was Ernest.’

  ‘He was,’ the lady nodded her head. ‘I am Agnes Rutherford.’

  ‘Gosh’ was losing its charm for me, so I said, ‘Crikey’ instead. And then I said, ‘But you are surely a –’

  ‘Lady?’ said the lady. ‘I do believe that I am.’

  ‘I am only young,’ I said. ‘But I do know that ladies did not fight in the war. They built bombs and aeroplanes and dug turnips in the countryside. But they didn’t have guns and didn’t shoot any Germans.’

  ‘I didn’t win it in the war,’ said the lady. ‘Although it was a sort of war, I suppose.’

  She took the medal from me, returned it to its box and returned both box and medal to the cabinet. Then she took herself to the window and gazed out into the garden lying beyond.

  I had another sip at my lemonade and a bit more of a glance about the room. There were a great many stuffed animals in tall domes of glass and many old school books in high book cases. Paintings there were, some it seemed of the lady when she was young. Very pretty the lady had been, and though she was old she was still quite pretty now. There were a number of curious things around and about in the room, which I did not recognise for what they were. Bits of ancient machinery, possibly odd kinds of weaponry?

  The lady suddenly turned from the window. ‘You should go,’ she said.

  I saw that she had tears in her eyes.

  ‘What is the matter?’ I asked.

  ‘Memories,’ the lady said. ‘Nothing for you to worry your young head about. You must go now, I have things to do.’

  I finished my lemonade and got myself up from the battered old chair. Then I thought of the vegetable lamb.

  ‘Can I go out through the garden?’ I asked.

  ‘No you cannot,’ said the lady.

  ‘Could I just say goodbye to the lamb then?’

  The lady mopped a tear from her eye with a lacy handkerchief. A little smile appeared upon her lips. ‘You can say goodbye to the lamb,’ she said. ‘And you can come and visit it again if you like.’

  ‘I would like that very much,’ I said.

  ‘But please do not try to steal it, or else,’ and she made those snip-snip motions once more with her fingers.

  ‘I won’t,’ I said.

  ‘Then promise.’

  ‘I promise I won’t.’

  ‘And promise too that you will not tell anyone about it. It must be our secret, do you understand?’

  ‘Not really,’ I said.

  ‘Then I will explain to you next time you come.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ I said. ‘Can I come tomorrow?’

  The lady smiled broadly. ‘You can,’ s
he said. ‘At ten o’clock sharp. And knock on my door with your knuckles. I did not like all that kicking you did before.’

  After saying goodbye to the vegetable lamb, Lady Agnes Rutherford VC showed me to her front door. I shook her slender hand before I left. Andy was not where I had left him and so I went in search of my wayward sibling.

  But I would return to the lady’s house the next day.

  Bringing too some sprouts for the vegetable lamb.

  4

  Keeping a secret can at times be tricky.

  Especially if it’s a really big secret. Something that you would truly like to boast about knowing. But I kept my promise to Lady Agnes and even when I was later in the ambulance and the nurse, who was trying to resuscitate my brother, demanded to know why I had not been looking after him and had left him to drown in the canal, I remained true to my word.

  Andy survived, although they did have to pump out his stomach. I was asked why his ankles were sellotaped together, but I was not going to get my brother in trouble by letting on that he had been impersonating a fish in a public canal.

  I made up a plausible tale about gangsters and how they had kidnapped Andy, thinking him to be one of their own who had broken one of their many unwritten laws.

  The nurse said that she would be having words with my mother. I wasn’t very keen on that and told the nurse we were orphans.

  ‘Homeless and unloved,’ I said. ‘And craving only a crust of bread to keep our souls joined to our bodies.’

  The nurse said she would speak to my father too.

  The nurse said she lived three doors up from us and knew the daddy well.

  Things did not look too promising for me. I wondered whether now might be the time to leave home and make my own way in the world. Perhaps join a travelling circus or sign aboard a liner bound the distant East.

  But as it was, I really shouldn’t have worried.

  For when Andy and I returned home later in the day there was a lot of fuss going on at our house and no one paid any heed at all to us.

  The bailiffs were paying one of their regular visits and my mother had barricaded herself in and could be seen at an open bedroom window, with hands raised high calling down the wrath of God onto the heads of the bailiffs.