The Illusionists. Rosie ThomasЧитать онлайн книгу.
then,’ he agreed.
Inside the eating-house damp steam scented with boiled meat and potatoes rose around them and Devil sniffed appreciatively. A score of hungry cabmen clattered and guffawed as they shovelled up their dinners.
They took their seats at a table towards the back. The dwarf was perhaps three feet tall. He hauled himself into place with muscular arms and then settled on his haunches to bring his chin to the right height at the tabletop. He pushed his cap to the back of his head and Devil took a good look at him. His long-chinned but well-shaped face looked too large to be perched on his stunted body but his expression was alert and his hands were quite clean and cared for. He was no vagrant.
‘Cards or cups?’ he asked Devil, who only waved a hand to indicate indifference.
The dwarf took three tin cups out of an inner pocket and with a flourish placed a pea under the middle one. Devil was already bored. The dwarf shuffled the cups, elaborately feinting, and as soon as he sat back Devil pointed. The movements had been practised enough, but not so quick that he couldn’t follow them. He knew exactly where the pea was, and when the dwarf flipped the cup he wasn’t surprised to be proved right.
‘You pay,’ he yawned.
Slyly his companion lifted the second cup and then the third, and there were peas under those too. Devil grinned back at him. The little man had a sense of humour, and his touch wasn’t bad.
‘All right, my friend. You get a fourpenny dinner for your efforts.’
The cups and peas were tucked away and the dwarf rubbed his hands.
‘Are you going to tell me your name, since it seems you know mine already?’
‘You can call me Carlo.’ The dwarf didn’t sound as if he came from London, but neither did he sound as if this exotic label properly belonged to him. He was from the north of England, Devil guessed, although he was hazy about the geography of anywhere that lay beyond Bedford.
‘What kind of name is that?’
‘The one I have chosen,’ his new acquaintance snapped.
A pimply boy leaned over and slapped down cutlery, and at a sign from Devil followed it up with two swimming plates of mutton stew and mash.
‘Or is it a half serving for you?’ this person sneered at Carlo, making to scoop one plate away again. ‘It’s only tuppence for littl’uns.’
‘You put that down,’ Devil ordered. ‘And keep a civil tongue for customers.’
Devil and Carlo ate eagerly. The dwarf dispatched his plateful so quickly that he must have been ravenous.
‘Now,’ Devil said when Carlo belched and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘What’s your story, Carlo from Manchester, or wherever it is and whoever you are? What brings you to London with your quick fingers? Richer pickings down here, is it?’
‘None of your business.’
‘I believe it’s at least four penn’orth of my business now.’
Carlo pursed his lips. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and unwrapped a toothpick from the folds. Applying this instrument to his teeth, he seemed to weigh Devil’s desire for information against his own requirements.
‘Morris’s Amazing Performing Midgets,’ he said at length.
‘Eh?’
‘I said …’
‘I heard. I’m asking you to elaborate.’
Carlo sighed with impatience, as if he could hardly believe that Devil wasn’t already familiar with the Midgets’ reputation.
‘You should know. I know you, and you’re not even first-rate.’ He pronounced it foost. Devil said nothing, amused by the dwarf’s high opinion of himself. ‘High-class act, it was. We didn’t just play the penny gaffs, although I’m not saying there wasn’t times when we were glad to. But we were booked in the better halls, and some private entertainments. We did song and dance, of course, and Sallie had a little piano and a miniature harp, very popular that was, especially with the ladies. Sam and me did a juggling turn, a set of acrobatics, well-rehearsed, top-notch costumes. But the meat and taters of the act was magic. Cards, coins, handkerchers. Miniature. And we ended it all up with a nice box trick. Very nice. All my own work, that was.’
The little man delivered the last snippet of information in a theatrical whisper, tufty eyebrows drawn together, his sharp eyes peering up at Devil. And as he must have known they would, his words made Devil sit up and pay attention.
‘All your own work?’ he repeated. ‘Inventor, are you?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Well, well.’
Devil snapped his fingers at the serving boy who carried away the empty plates and brought them pint mugs of tea. Devil blew on his and took a swallow.
‘Was, you said. Was a high-class act?’
‘Nowt wrong with your ears.’
Devil reflected. He had heard on the circuit or perhaps read in the trades of a northern touring troupe of midgets. The name that suddenly came to him in this connection was Little Charlie Morris.
‘Charlie Morris, that’s who you are. What’s the business with Carlo?’
The dwarf sucked at his teeth to extract the last remnants of food and folded away the toothpick.
‘New start.’
‘I see.’ Devil understood that well enough. ‘What about your sister and her husband?’
He was almost sure, as fragmentary recollections came together, that Charlie or Carlo’s fellow performers had been these two members of his family.
The dwarf’s face flooded with such real sadness that Devil was sure it wasn’t part of an act, nor any attempt at gathering sympathy for mercenary reasons, but the base note of his being.
‘They passed away last year, within a week of each other.’
‘I’m sorry.’
Carlo jerked his head. He added, ‘In-flu-en-za,’ tapping the syllables between his teeth with such finality that Devil didn’t want to upset him by fishing for any further information. But naming the illness seemed to unlock the dwarf’s tongue.
‘My father was like me, my ma’s one of you although she’s no giant. Of us four children there’s two big ’uns and then my sister Sallie and me, and we two always knew we’d have to take care of ourselves because of being small. My dad was a singer in the taphouses. Used to stand him on the counter, they did, and he’d do a ballad and play the piccolo and pass his hat round.
‘Our two brothers went in for mill work but for us littl’uns the best we could have got was being sent to crawl under the looms to collect the waste, and our ma wouldn’t have that. So we were going to join our dad with the act. Make all our fortunes, he said. He trained us up and made us practise the routines, and when we didn’t work hard enough he’d thrash our hides raw with his belt. Poor old Sal used to howl. She was glad to marry her Sam to get away from home. Sam came from Oldham. Just him in the family was small, so it was lonely for him. He was sweet on Sal the minute he saw her. They’d been wed a year when our dad fell off the stage one night when he was corned and hit his head. He didn’t last long after that. I had Sam into the act gladly enough, even though he didn’t have the talent for it. Sal was the one out of the three of us who had the real stage quality. You should have seen her. Like a shining star her face was, under the lamps.
‘We did all right. Then one night Sam was ill with a fever and she was nursing him, and two days after that she was ill herself. Less than a week went by and they were both gone.’
Carlo drank his tea. His mouth tightened as if he regretted having confided so much.
Devil