Doctor Who_ Camera Obscura - Lloyd Rose [3]
Maskelyne had gone away disgruntled, possibly a bit insulted. But genuinely mystified. Octave had been afraid ever since that he would send some friend or colleague up to Liverpool to see the act. But so far there had been no one.
Until tonight.
As Octave was coming up the left-hand aisle, surveying what looked like the usual crowd of entertainment seekers, his eye fell on a man at the back of the theatre who had paused to look around for a seat. The newcomer was perhaps forty, slender and handsome, his hair cut long. Something about him disturbed Octave very much. He stood still as the man came down the aisle, glancing at his hands as he went past. Long-fingered, deft – they could be a magician’s hands. The man’s profile was dramatic, rather beautiful actually, and he was dressed with a certain amount of flair. Yet somehow Octave doubted he was a performer of any sort. He seemed too remote.
Octave watched him take a seat in the eighth row, and half an hour later, when he came on stage, he sensed him there, though he couldn’t see anyone in the glare of the footlights, not even the people on the front row. Octave felt rather than observed his audience. They were a single entity, with a single mood, a beast that laughed as one and gasped as one and, if displeased, booed as one.
Octave knew all about the booing. People arrived at his performances having heard that they would see something spectacular. He had become dismally used to the slow atmosphere of disillusionment, like air leaking from a bicycle tyre, that settled on to the audience as the evening commenced. For, to be perfectly frank, his opening acts were not very exciting. Coloured scarves in a stream from his sleeve. A rabbit from a hat. Linking and unlinking metal rings. A performance of the venerable but familiar cup-and‐balls routine. Nor, to be equally frank, was he very good at any of these acts. Oh he was competent enough. He never actually failed to execute a trick. But he was uninspired, he lacked stage presence. And his moves were clumsy. Occasionally he dropped things. That was when there was sometimes booing.
Tonight, the presence of the man in the eighth row had him particularly on edge. The fellow was invisible, of course, but all the more present for that. Octave sensed a stillness emanating from him. If he had to, he could have pointed into the darkness straight at him.
Not that there was anything hostile in the man’s attention. Indeed, as the show progressed, Octave felt dimly that he was on his side, sympathetic even. Wishing him well. He began to find this comforting. He pulled the scarves from his sleeve with an extra flourish, and hoisted the rabbit (which had behaved itself tonight, thank God, and not urinated in his secret pocket) high. In the perfunctory applause, he thought he could single out the man’s more vigorous clapping. It gave him a sense of relief. Perhaps the fellow was a performer of some sort after all. He seemed to understand.
As he continued, though the audience became slowly more bored and disappointed, Octave’s spirits nonetheless, as always, rose. He was approaching the act that filled the house nightly, the illusion, so-called, that had brought the great Maskelyne up to the unappealing provinces. In some ways, he was glad of the boredom he had generated. What a preface it made for what followed! What a turnaround the audience was about to experience, as if their very heads would swivel one hundred and eighty degrees on their necks. They were going to be stunned, agape, astonished. Amazed.
‘And now, ladies and gentlemen,’ he announced, straining, as always, to be heard at the back of the house, ‘I will perform... The Illusion of the Time-Travelling Cabinets!’
He felt the crowd’s attention shift and sharpen. Ah, now, it seemed to say in its single voice. This is it. Yes, he thought, this is it.
‘I need a volunteer!’ A murmur of accommodation came at him. He swept out his arm and pointed to his unseen supporter. ‘You, sir! In the green coat!’
Though he couldn’t see it happening, Octave knew an usher was guiding the