To Make an Orange Fool
Take the juice of six oranges and six eggs well beaten, a pint of cream, a quarter of a pound of sugar, a little cinnamon and nutmeg. Mix all together, keep stirring over a slow fire till it is thick then put a little piece of butter and keep stirring till cold, and dish it up.
I have not really done justice to Mr Crease. My drawing of him I feel might be too sketchy. It is important for all that follows that he should be better painted. He was the most contrary of men and his temper more unpredictable than the weather. For all that, his skill as a magician was second to none. Every illusion he performed was done with a grace that his everyday life lacked for he possessed an abrupt manner and said what he thought without the inconvenience of worrying if what he thought might offend. Fools he tolerated moderately well.
That first disastrous rehearsal took place in the long gallery on the third floor, the last of Queenie’s undecorated rooms. Here was a broken mirror, cobwebs, dust and little more except two chairs. Mr Crease started to talk about the show that he was going to perform at the masquerade ball on the opening night of the fairy house.
‘We will start with the setting,’ he said, and he closed his eyes so that only his painted eyes could see.
By degrees the chamber began to change slowly into an elegant garden. The floor became grass and gravel, and in the distance the sunlight sparkled on a fountain. Orange trees grew in huge terracotta pots, the scent blew gently in the breeze.
I clapped my hands in amusement.
‘More, more,’ I said and it all vanished – every blade of grass, the fountain and all the orange trees.
‘Never do that again,’ he said sharply. Then changing his tone, he asked, ‘What was missing from the garden?’
‘Nothing. It was perfect.’
‘There were no people. That is what I want you to do.’
‘You mean like Pretty Poppet?’
‘No,’ said Mr Crease. ‘Best leave her alone. Try someone else.’
‘Who?’
He didn’t answer.
I was pleased when at least I managed to bring Shadow into the room.
Mr Crease ignored his little dog and said, ‘Ads bleed, is that the limit of your powers? Is that all you can offer me? Is your imagination so stifled by preconceived ideas? Is it solely reliant on rational laws of probability?’
‘I suppose it is,’ I said.
‘What a whimsical, pathetic thing you are,’ said Mr Crease. ‘I am bored with your conventional, feeble mind. It is always elsewhere. So far I have seen nothing that makes me inclined to waste my gifts on you.’ He walked to the door. ‘You have the skill of a clodhopper. A street magician might amuse me better.’
‘You haven’t shown me how to do anything,’ I said. ‘How am I to learn if you don’t show me?’
‘You think there is a recipe for this?’
‘It would help.’
‘If you were a cheap street magician I might show you a few tricks but I would never insult the word by calling it “magic”. Where do your think your power lies?’ I had no answer. He came back to me and put his finger in the middle of my forehead and then on my stomach. ‘It comes from within. You believed in Shadow and the power of that belief pulled his ghost through, made him visible to others. You did the same with Pretty Poppet. My fear, Tully, is that your gift is born out of nothing more than naivety. The minute you said to yourself, “This isn’t possible, this isn’t rational, this defies gravity,” it was no longer possible. Today I believe I am seeing the tail end of a childish gift and if that is the case I dust my hands of you.’
I felt so angry my cheeks went to flame.
‘You mightily misjudge me, sir. And you are no help whatsoever. How should I conjure ghosts out of thin air? Tell me?’
He walked out the door and slammed it behind him.
I remembered the dark days I lived through in Milk Street, for perhaps there is nothing darker than when you have found sunlight only to see the shutters closed and to be imprisoned in the abyss again. Did I have the power? Had I really said to myself it was impossible so many times that it had become impossible?
Again that night I didn’t sleep, but lay awake wondering if Mr Crease could be right. When I was a child I believed everyone could do what I could do. That much is true. I believed it with an unquestioning passion. Perhaps that was what was missing: belief, passion.
After breakfast the next day I left the dining room and reluctantly made my way up to the long gallery, taking with me Mercy’s present for want of company. I started to talk to the stuffed parrot as I waited for Mr Crease.
‘I would much prefer that you were alive. At least then you might bring me some comfort and help, perhaps, in proving my worth to Mr Crease. Did you note, dear, dead parrot, he has a very good set of teeth? “Boozey.” Well Boozey, is that what you were called? Why? “A sailor named me long ago. Wing white in blue sky, my feathers knew the wind and the ways its breath blew.”’
I was so lost in what I took to be a one-sided conversation that I didn’t hear Mr Crease come in.
‘What is the name of your parrot?’ he asked, making me jump. He was standing right behind me.
‘Boozey,’ I said. ‘Though where that came from I haven’t an angel’s feather of an idea.’
‘A good name,’ said Mr Crease. ‘Does the parrot recognise it?’
‘The parrot is dead.’
‘So is Shadow. Who captured the parrot?’
‘A sailor.’ I thought I might as well make use of what had slipped into my mind.
‘Where?’
I shrugged.
‘Parrots come from jungles far away,’ said Mr Crease. ‘Where a lushness of foliage grows.’
As he spoke, foliage grew out of the walls of the long gallery, a tangle of woody vines hung down, leaves sprouted, soft as a baby’s skin, stitching themselves over each other, hungry for the light. Butterflies, paint pots on wings, flew among the branches, as the plaster ceiling disappeared into a blue sky. An opera of birdsong echoed round us. A snake slithered on its belly into the undergrowth. Heat filled my senses and the perfume of exotic flowers was so heady I felt giddy. All this Mr Crease appeared to have at his command.
Forgetting about what was possible or impossible, I called ‘Boozey’, for surely if anyone should relish this landscape it would be my dead parrot. I called again and felt a feathery wind by my ear and saw his white shape fly past.
‘Boozey, where are you my beauty?’
Far off someone else was calling, and before us appeared a thin reed of a man dressed in sailor’s clothes.
He stood in a small clearing, a machete in his hand, his head tilted to the sky, listening to its cry, following the movements of the parrot until it came to rest on his outstretched hand. His face lit up.
‘There you are, my beauty,’ he said. ‘I won’t have you served up for the captain’s dinner. Here, I’ve peeled you an almond.’
And he fed it with unexpected delicacy to the small beak of his great love.
With a click of Mr Crease’s fingers everything disappeared and the parrot was back on his perch, unmoving, lifeless. There was not a sign of what had been before. Convinced I had played no part in the magic that had unfolded before me, I gazed defiantly at Mr Crease.
He stared at me, silently tapping his cane on the floor.
‘You are right,’ I said. ‘My gift belongs to childhood. I couldn’t do anything like that. I wouldn’t know how to go about such imaginings – after all, I have spent my life imprisoned with only fleeting glimpses of the outside world. I have never seen a jungle, never seen a forest, never seen a river. I don’t know what a street magician can or cannot do. I am, as you say, miserable, predictable and mundane. I didn’t ask to be your apprentice and – ’
Mr Crease interrupted me. ‘We are finished,’ he said.
I picked up the cage and went to my chamber with tears in my eyes, convinced that my time at the fairy house was over. I told myself that I didn’t care and packed what little I had. I was itching to see the world. But when I opened the chamber door the maid was standing there.
‘Mr Crease says I am to dress you and he wants you downstairs before the clock strikes the half-hour.’
I looked at the clothes she was holding.
‘Those are a young man’s clothes,’ I said.
The maid wisely kept her peace. Only when I was dressed and a short bob wig and a hat firmly placed on my head did she say, ‘You make a handsome lad.’
The quality of the clothes alone made my heart stop pounding. Surely if Mr Crease was to have me thrown onto the streets he wouldn’t have me dressed in such expensive finery?
I found him by the front door brushing plaster dust off his hat.
Weaving between the ladders I went to him and said, ‘I beg your pardon, sir. I spoke out of turn.’
‘Never apologise to me,’ said Mr Crease. ‘I don’t give a fuck.’