Читать книгу The Mannequin Makers - Craig Cliff - Страница 14
ОглавлениеIn which Eugen Sandow performs in Marumaru and a seed is planted
Colton Kemp and Jolly Bannerman sat on the damp sand passing a bottle of peaty home-distilled whisky back and forth as the tide receded.
‘To the New Year,’ Bannerman said for the umpteenth time and held the bottle aloft. The two had spent the afternoon together. Jolly had asked after Louisa several times, but Kemp had not told him she was dead. More than a day had passed and he still had not told anyone. ‘She’s fine,’ was all he’d say.
‘And sweet wee Flossie?’
‘As sweet as ever.’
‘You’re a lucky man, Col.’
‘We shall see.’
He looked at the ironmonger, slouched forward over his knees, his slender height compressed like a heron about to take flight. Bannerman slapped his long, tobacco-stained fingers on the grey sand. ‘Tell me I’m not a good husband, Col? Tell me I don’t deserve a little respect?’
Kemp kept silent. Small round pebbles scattered across the beach shimmered in the soft light of late afternoon. The waves covered them with a thin film on the way up the beach but the receding water took the easier route, parting either side of each stone, creating hundreds of little arrow heads pointing back to town, back to his house. Arrows that flickered a few times and disappeared until the next wave came to his toes and pulled back.
‘The likes of which . . .’ Bannerman returned his head to his knees without finishing his thought.
Kemp took the bottle from his friend’s loose grip. ‘I’m not ready to be a father. I can’t do it.’ He took a swig.
The sloshing sound roused Bannerman once more. He held out his hand for the bottle. ‘Hey, are you going to the show tonight?’
‘What show?’
‘What show? Come on, Col. I know the opposition got one over you with the statue, but you can’t tell me you don’t have a ticket.’
‘When were you ever in a state to get a ticket?’
‘Milly got ’em. Just the two I’m afraid. You don’t have tickets? Col, my boy.’
‘Leave it be.’
‘They’ve got plenty besides Sandow. Singers, story-tellers. Louisa and Floss would love it. Perhaps there are still some tickets left.’
‘Louisa is in no state to go,’ he said, his lie almost colliding with the truth.
‘Right, the baby. Any day I suppose. She looked fit to burst when last I saw her.’
He dug his hand into the sand and squeezed.
‘Don’t be nervous, Col. You’ll be a halfway decent father.’ He handed him the near-empty bottle and stood. ‘I’m off home. Off to get cleaned up and take Milly to the show like a good husband. A good husband.’ He shook his head and patted Kemp on the shoulder. ‘Hope to see you there.’
Another wave petered out on the beach and pulled back. The landward arrows flickered. Kemp had not been home since the morning, since Flossie had woken him and sent him to run errands. He’d purchased the supplies she had requested from Mr Fricker and Sam Tong, the greengrocer, but he paid the Chase boy to deliver them. The muscles of his stomach clenched whenever he thought about crossing the threshold. He had decisions to make, so many decisions—funeral arrangements, someone to cover for him at Donaldson’s, names for the twins if they could survive on a diet of cow’s milk and Flossie’s attention—but out in the world he continued to preserve his awful secret.
He looked at the bruised sky, stood and walked up the violet dunes. As he emerged on Regent Street, he saw movement in the window above Bannerman’s workshop. He looked down the road: a spoil of dust had been hoofed up in the distance, perhaps at the corner of Victoria Street. Yes, he could see carriages coming from the wharf’s direction and turning up Victoria to reach the Theatre Royal. The show would soon be starting. He continued on, down the slight slope. He passed the hushed Criterion, crossed a vacant Albert Street and stood in front of the lawn of the Methodist Church. Unseen silvereyes sang tweeooh tweeooh in the black-leafed camellia. A fat thrush toddled a few steps across the sad lawn, stopped and cocked its head before skitting into the bushes.
The Carpenter’s window was next. If he had any gratitude for the show, it was that it had cleared the crowd from the front of Hercus & Barling so he could observe the window in solitude. The electric lights that usually ran until nine had been switched off, which meant that he had to press his head to the glass to see the details of the display. At the centre stood the plaster statue of Eugen Sandow, a white spectre clutching one fist close to his forehead and the other down by his hip at the end of a straightened arm. His curly hair and undulating torso were stippled with daylight. Kemp looked at the statue’s splayed feet, no doubt a pose struck by Sandow to show off the development of his thighs and calves, and wondered about the weight of the small, square pedestal that managed to keep the likeness from falling over.
Sandow was ringed by seven admirers, all female. Each mannequin was familiar to him: the three blonde nymphs, the dignified dame with the operatic build, the pig-tailed schoolgirl on the cusp of adulthood, the black-haired evil stepmother from a fairy story and the serene lady in the red moirette, though, like the other figures, most of her outfit had been changed to show off the season’s latest fashions. The Carpenter’s mannequins did not have articulated limbs—his creations were fixed in the one pose as Sandow was—but they were arranged carefully to disguise their odd gestures and give the impression of a crowd clustering around the town’s new arrival. To Kemp they were admiring a mere statue rather than a man. It was more than just the difference in materials, the full palette The Carpenter employed against the scuffed white of the Sandow replica. The breath of life granted to his figures had been withheld from the plaster Sandow. He considered the crescent of real onlookers that had occupied the footpath since the display was unveiled and saw how The Carpenter’s figures would close this circle. Had he intended this? Was he suggesting that for every person looking through the window there was a better dressed doppelgänger on the other side?
He looked again at Sandow and even in the dimness he could perceive rough edges where he would have made them smooth, blank patches where small but important details—the grain of the moustache, the slight protrusion of a nail beyond the toe, the point at which the earlobe meets the flesh of the face—had been glossed over. He had learnt the importance of such things in the course of his mannequin making, though his hands often muffed these master strokes.
It was clear that this Sandow was a second pressing. A plaster version of a bronze statue from a cast of a showman made to hold the same pose beyond the limits of boredom and pain: a copy of a copy of a charade.
Even now, he thought, I am losing Louisa. Her image is becoming fixed in my head. Those thousand memories, that ever-changing face. All is being sanded down to one, and that will be sanded further until there is no life left.
His forehead pressed against the glass of The Carpenter’s window, Colton Kemp felt his desire to see the real Sandow, the living Sandow, grow.
After a long while he left the window and came to Victoria Street, congested with hitched horses, donkeys, drays, buggies and bicycles, but almost devoid of people. On the near corner a boy tossed a silver coin over and over. Even the town’s few coach drivers must have had tickets to the show. As he approached the Theatre Royal he saw the ‘Sold Out’ banner plastered across the placard outside the box office window. The office itself appeared deserted at first, but he made out the rounded form of Burt Tompkins holding his ear to the wall that backed onto the auditorium. Kemp rapped the glass with his knuckles, giving the old man a start that caused him to drop the small metal cylinder he’d been using to listen to the entertainment.
Once Tompkins had regathered himself he said, ‘Sorry Col, the house is full.’
‘Do us a favour, Burt. Can’t I stand up the back?’
‘Back’s already full of folks standing. The old girl wasn’t built to fit the whole town.’
‘There must be room for one more.’
‘If you had a ticket, perhaps.’
‘You know I don’t have a ticket, Burt.’
‘I’m sorry, Col.’
‘Jesus, Burt.’
Tompkins removed his round spectacles and rubbed the lenses with his checked handkerchief.
‘I meant to get a ticket,’ Kemp said, ‘but with Lou—,’ the name caught in his throat but he pushed it out with a second effort, ‘with Louisa expecting . . .’
Tompkins returned his specs to the bridge of his nose and leant in to the pane of glass that separated them. ‘I didn’t tell you, but you might be able to get in by the stage door around back. Plenty of hubbub back there, but if you look as if you belong . . .’
‘Thanks, Burt.’
‘Give my love to Louisa.’
Kemp placed his palm on the glass and nodded.
The rear of the theatre on Market Street was indeed a hive of activity. The backstage area must not have been large enough to house Rickards’ entire company and the overflow went about their business in the open air under the glow of several large lanterns. A small-waisted woman with a powdered face sang scales, holding the hem of her blue dress and her many petticoats up from the reach of the dust and dirt. A man in a black tuxedo handed an accordion to a boy standing inside a covered wagon, before inspecting the teeth of two well-fed ponies with jewel-encrusted bridles.
Kemp looked around for an excuse to enter the theatre. Wooden crates were scattered here and there, stalks of hay sprouting from the openings. He placed the lid back on one of these crates, lifted it and made for the stage door.
‘Who’s that for, then?’
Kemp turned and saw an old man standing near the ponies, a body brush in one hand and his eyebrows raised.
‘Fresh chains for Mr Sandow,’ he replied.
‘Well then,’ the man said, ‘schnell, schnell.’
Kemp put the empty crate down inside the corridor and took the stairs two at a time, turning right, away from the sound of a contralto on stage, who was singing what sounded like ‘Love’s Old Sweet Song’, and merged into a crowd of men in the wings. The contralto was joined by the woman in the blue dress he had seen warming up outside. They performed a duet of ‘Life’s Dream is O’er’ which, though sung in perfect harmony, made him grit his teeth. He pressed his back to the wall of the auditorium and tried not to listen to the lyrics. Standing on his toes he could see the twenty-piece orchestra crammed into the theatre’s tiny pit and believed he could hear the discomfort in their performance. He scanned the audience, every face familiar, until he spotted Milly Bannerman seated at the end of the very last row of the stalls. Jolly was standing immediately behind, his hands clamped on his wife’s shoulders, his eyes closed, head swaying with the music.
The master of ceremonies came forth and shook the hands of both singers. ‘Miss Nita Leete and Miss Ray Jones!’ he said and clapped theatrically as they skipped off the stage like May queens. The man, dressed in a crimson topcoat, now gestured for the audience to quieten down. Kemp wondered if this was Harry Rickards himself or just another paid performer. It was the kind of question he would lean across and whisper to Louisa. She would know no more than him, but she would find some detail—the frayed hem of the man’s coat, the knot of his bootlace—to support a theory either way.
‘The penultimate act this evening,’ the master of ceremonies was saying, ‘is another taste of fine culture. The finest theatre from Mother England’s finest poet. A superb vignette from The Bard’s great pastoral play, The Winter’s Tale. A story for the fireside on a chilly January eve—January in the Northern Hemisphere, of course. A tale of jealousy, rage, loss, deception, but also, as we shall witness, magic, transformation and reunion. The perfect apéritif before another statue comes to life.’ He raised his hand to his lips. ‘But I have said too much. Ladies, gentlemen, I give to you the Gates Family Players and the concluding scene of The Winter’s Tale.’
The crowd clapped politely as the master of ceremonies backed away from the front of the stage and passed a shuffling figure who, despite being robed in white cloth and sporting a long grey beard, clearly counterfeit, could not have been past twenty years of age. There were a few hoots of recognition from the crowd and someone shouted, ‘Atta boy, Jesse!’, though this meant nothing to Kemp.
In one hand this figure carried a large hourglass hung from a chain and in the other a book.
Young Father Time stopped at the centre of the stage and began to read off a sheet of paper stuck to the cover of the book:
‘I, that please some, try all, both joy and terror
Of good and bad, that makes and unfolds error,
Now take upon me, in the name of Time,
To use my wings. Impute it not a crime
To me or my swift passage, that I slide
O’er sixteen years and leave the growth untried
Of that wide gap, since it is in my power
To o’erthrow law and in one self-born hour
O’erwhelm custom. Your patience this allowing,
I turn my glass —’
He paused to upend the hourglass.
‘and give my scene such growing
As you had slept between: Leontes leaving,
The effects of his fond jealousies so grieving
That he shuts up himself. Yea, of this allow,
If ever you have spent time worse ere now;
If never, yet that Time himself doth say
He wishes earnestly you never may.’
With this, the figure shuffled back to the wings and two stage hands rolled out a backdrop painted to resemble the nave of a chapel, with real velvet curtains hung across a niche. Four men and two women, one quite old, the other rather beautiful, took the stage in a jumble of togas, tunics, capes, stockings, sandals and elfin shoes. The largest of the men in the finest of the garments also wore a crown of some heavy metal to which only the last flakes of gilt still clung.
‘O grave and good Paulina,’ the king began, ‘the great comfort that I have had of thee!’
He took the older woman’s hand and she spoke to him reverently as they strolled along the stage, the other actors in tow. In front of the curtained niche, the king stopped and spoke solemnly:
‘Your gallery have we pass’d through, not without much content in many singularities; but we saw not that which my daughter came to look upon, the statue of her mother.’
The actress playing Paulina began to describe the statue of the queen, the way the likeness exceeded anything the ‘hand of man hath done’, before pulling back the curtain. The actors gasped as a woman completely in white, posing on a short pedestal, was revealed. The audience murmured. Perhaps they saw an echo of Sandow’s statue—the white powdered face, one hand held up to support a veil of white lace, the other down by her hip.
The actors marvelled at the supposed statue. Kemp thought the use of a veil unwise as the light material showed every movement. He considered the possibility of constructing a new window display based on this scene. He scanned the audience for The Carpenter, who might not be able to deliver such a scene as quickly as him, but would most certainly trump his queen (and that of the poor actress on the pedestal). Yes, there he was, leaning forward in his seat, craning his neck, thinking the very same thoughts.
The king, Leontes, scrutinised the queen’s face.
‘But yet, Paulina,’ he said, ‘Hermione was not so much wrinkled, nothing so aged as this seems.’
‘So much the more our carver’s excellence,’ Paulina responded, ‘which lets go by some sixteen years and makes her as she lived now.’
Kemp watched Hermione blinking and wondered if it was possible to train the eyelids to behave.
Leontes continued to admire the statue, oblivious to its blinking. The younger actress, clearly the king’s daughter both in life and in the play, knelt at the foot of the statue. ‘Dear queen, that ended when I but began, give me that hand of yours to kiss.’
Kemp felt behind him for the wall and was glad of its support.
Would a statue of Louisa be a fitting tribute or another painful failure?
When his focus returned to the play, Leontes was saying to another man, ‘See, my lord, would you not deem it breathed? And that those veins did verily bear blood?’
Paulina made to draw the curtain on the statue, but Leontes stopped her.
‘I am sorry, sir,’ Paulina said, ‘I have thus far stirr’d you: but I could afflict you farther.’
‘Do, Paulina,’ Leontes said, ‘for this affliction has a taste as sweet as any cordial comfort. Still, methinks, there is an air comes from her: what fine chisel could ever yet cut breath?’
Kemp looked at The Carpenter again, squeezed into the stalls, straining to see over the heads of those in front of him. It seemed an unlikely place for a recluse. But if Begg was to be believed, he’d been on hand to secure Sandow’s statue when it arrived at the train station the day before.
‘If you can behold it,’ Paulina was now saying, ‘I’ll make the statue move indeed, descend and take you by the hand; but then you’ll think—which I protest against—I am assisted by wicked powers.’
Leontes begged her to continue and Paulina, facing the audience directly, said, ‘It is required you do awake your faith.’
Stirring music began from the orchestra pit as Paulina urged the statue to come to life. With evident relief the actress playing Hermione began to stir. She reached out for the king’s hand and stepped down from her pedestal.
‘O, she’s warm!’ proclaimed Leontes. ‘If this be magic, let it be an art lawful as eating.’
The couple embraced and after one last speech from the king the players all left the stage, returning to receive their applause and take their bow.
The master of ceremonies returned, rubbing his hands together greedily.
‘And now, fine people of Maru-maru,’ he said, pronouncing the town’s name as if it were two separate words, ‘the time has come for the pinnacle of the performance, the strength of the show. But first I must beg your patience as the stage is prepared for the many feats the Great Sandow will perform.’
The same two stage hands who had rolled The Winter’s Tale’s background onstage came and rolled it off, though this time they were garbed in white togas and Roman sandals. Joined by four more men similarly attired—two of whom had been in the previous vignette—they began placing wooden crates on the stage in a deliberate fashion. When the boxes were all arranged, the mock Romans removed items with brief flourishes—dumbbells, barbells, chains, large bands of elastic, lengths of wood—the audience gasping with each revelation. The two strongest-looking men, possibly disciples of Sandow, each carried a large basket on stage and held them still as a third man fixed a steel rod between them. When everything had been arranged the men left and the curtain was lowered.
Kemp took this moment, while the rest of the crowd murmured with excitement, to consider again the challenge of a Winter’s Tale window display: the spirals of artifice of having a wooden mannequin standing in for an actress pretending to be a marble statue (possibly enchanted) of the queen. How he longed for Louisa to be his sounding board, his collaborator. To sketch the scene he saw in his head so that he might see the flaws in the arrangement of the figures. But it would flounder, he realised, without the perfect Hermione. Such a mannequin was beyond his capabilities. He looked at his bandaged forefinger, which began to throb on cue.
The curtain began to rise and the theatre fell silent. At first only the wooden crates at the foot of the stage were visible, then a revolving platform—he tried in vain to see how it might be powered—and inch by inch a man wearing only a leopard skin loincloth was revealed against a purple backdrop.
Though Kemp had seen—had scrutinised—the plaster statue in the window of Hercus & Barling, he had still expected the real Sandow to be more imposing. What spun slowly before the people of Marumaru was a fair-headed, clean-limbed man of medium height somewhere in his mid-thirties. The orchestra began to play a swift, upbeat tune. Sandow’s clear skin glowed pink under the stage lights. The pose he held—his hands clasped behind his head, his feet at right angles with one heel lifted slightly, his torso in the contrapposto of classical sculpture—showed the development and balance of his muscles, the perfect symmetry of his form. Most striking to Kemp was the man’s back. It was as if it had been moulded by the hands of a loving god, each muscle distinct and purposeful. It was a tactile thing, begging to be touched. Beautiful in a way that was beyond man or woman, beyond art or life, even beyond the figures that emerged from The Carpenter’s gouges.
After two or three slow revolutions of the pedestal, Sandow lowered his arms, making fists of his hands, dropped his head almost until his chin touched his chest and rearranged his pose, making new abdominal muscles prominent that had previously lain flat. It was as if serpents were pulsing beneath the man’s skin and he had managed to charm them into performing in unison. Despite the stillness of each pose, he seemed on the edge of being burst open should the charm wear off.
Sandow began to alter his poses more quickly, working up to the pace of the orchestra’s accompaniment and giving Kemp less than half a turn to absorb each new perfection before it was erased by another.
In the grief, confusion and anger of the last two days, Colton Kemp had shrunk from the world’s many stimulations, had sought and failed to drown his sadness and release his tension, had doubted the existence of happiness elsewhere and in the future, had seen himself confronted with a greyer life untouched by beauty—and yet here he was, in a theatre crowded with almost everyone he knew, excited and overstimulated by this vision of a man, spinning and spinning like a celestial body.
The pedestal came to a stop. Sandow performed a backward somersault from standing, folded his arms and stood perfectly still, his face in profile. The crowd, who had been applauding and exclaiming for the duration of the brief exhibition, responded with a hero’s ovation.
‘Thank you,’ he said and stepped down from the pedestal. ‘Thank you. Please, that is quite enough applause.’ His voice was deep and guttural.
‘I wish to briefly talk to you about how I have attained my strength, the system I am sure many of you are familiar with, before I perform some demonstrations.’ He gestured to the props on the stage. ‘I was not a healthy child. My parents were not endowed with extraordinary strength. All the strength I possess I owe to my system.’
The boy, Jesse, who had been Father Time, returned to the stage stripped to the waist like Sandow, though he wore a thick leather belt and white tights rather than the master’s Herculean loincloth. With Jesse as his model, Sandow—part preacher of the gospel of physical culture, part salesman for his own wares—proceeded to demonstrate how to perform exercises with his Spring-Grip Dumbbell and his elastic ‘developer’. A lot of attention was paid to the development of the lungs and chest—though he pronounced it schest, in perhaps the clearest signal of his origins—and at one point demonstrated how he could expand his chest from an already impressive forty-seven inches to a full sixty-one.
He repeated often the fact that a person of any age or gender could undertake these exercises and obtain benefit from them. ‘As I travel about the colonies,’ Sandow said, resting a hand on Jesse’s shoulder, ‘I like to hold special talks with physicians and other interested parties of a town. These talks are discussions in the true sense and I much prefer this back and forth to a mere address. Unfortunately, as I will be leaving town early in the morning, I will not have the opportunity to hold such a congress here. However, I will take questions from the floor this evening.’ He held up his hand quickly. ‘But first, let me conclude the traditional portion of the show with a few feats of strength!’
With one hand he seized Jesse by the belt and lifted him over his head.
The theatre erupted in a pandemonium of applause.
The assistants in togas returned to the stage and the orchestra resumed. Sandow began by lifting a weight he stated was one hundred and thirty pounds, though it looked like a toy as he raised it above his head with one hand. He brought it down and handed it carefully to an assistant, who struggled to return it to its wooden rack. Sandow then lifted a barbell from the floor to an arm’s length above his head in a single jerk. ‘Two hundred and forty-two pounds,’ he said, while still supporting the weight. He then lifted a larger barbell to his shoulder, announced, ‘Three hundred pounds,’ and proceeded to fully extend his arm above his head.
The strongman began to stalk around the stage, lifting barrels and bursting chains, quickly and quietly. Even as the acts became more and more ludicrous, he maintained an air of grace.
He lay on his side and lifted one of his assistants by the ankle into the air.
Assistants brought forward two trestles. Sandow rested his neck on one, his heels on the other, and began lifting barbells with each hand while four of his assistants stood on his torso.
He lifted the makeshift barbell constructed from the two large baskets and the metal rod, then asked two assistants to stand inside the baskets and lifted the rig with similar ease.
He tore a pack of playing cards in half with his fingers. Then he tore two packs at once, then four, one on top of the other, ripping them as cleanly as if they had been cut with a knife. An assistant fastened the torn packets with ribbons and threw them into all parts of the theatre to be examined and retained as mementoes.
‘And now for a feat often referred to as “The Roman Column”,’ Sandow announced with no sign he was short of breath. He suspended himself upside down, his knees hooked over a horizontal bar protruding from an imitation marble column, then raised himself up in a sort of hanging sit-up. He repeated the feat with a barbell in each hand and again with assistants swinging on the end of the barbells.
Sandow righted himself and the column was removed from the stage. He announced, a little brusquely, ‘And now for “The Tomb of Hercules”,’ and reclined back until his hands were on the ground, his body arched upward, pelvis pointing at the vaulted ceiling. The six assistants carried out a large wooden platform and placed it on top of the strongman. It was so large that one end remained on the ground, forming a sort of ramp, though Sandow’s arms and legs did not appear fazed by the weight.
Jesse then led out the two ponies by their jewelled bridles and walked them carefully up the ramp of the platform until it lifted from the ground and the platform was horizontal. The six assistants then retrieved all the weights that had been used during the show and handed them to Jesse, who arranged them carefully, maintaining the equilibrium of the platform. Then, one by one, he clasped the hands of the men in togas and lifted them onto the platform.
Kemp almost forgot that beneath the seven men, two ponies, more than a thousand pounds of weights and the heavy platform itself, was Sandow, hands and feet planted on the stage as if embedded in the firmest of foundations.
As the people of Marumaru cheered, the assistants dismounted with care, removing the weights and lowering the platform so that the ponies could walk down. Once the men in togas had removed the platform, Sandow pushed himself upright with what strength remained in his arms and dusted himself off. He gave a cursory bow and left the stage.
Two minutes later he returned, dressed in a three-piece suit that Kemp would wager had come from Savile Row. He looked almost unremarkable and the audience greeted him with a trickle of polite applause.
‘Thank you very much,’ Sandow said. ‘We have a few minutes remaining if you wish to ask me any questions about my system, or the benefits of physical culture more generally.’
A scatter of hands rose into the hair. ‘Yes, madam?’ He pointed at Mrs Harry Wisdom in the second row.
‘Mr Sandow, what is your view on prohibition?’
‘It is my belief, madam, that if a healthy love of physical culture was spread among the young there would be no need of prohibition. Men who study physical culture take care of their bodies and when they have a drink or two have the willpower to say, “No, old man, I have had enough. This stuff does not do me any good if I take more.”’
Big Jim Raymond stood without invitation and asked in his booming, mayoral voice, ‘What about lunatics? Do you think they would benefit by physical training?’
‘Undoubtedly,’ Sandow replied. ‘They have adopted my system at Coney Island and no fewer than eighty persons have been sent out of the asylum thoroughly cured. It is the body that feeds the brain, the latter consuming twenty-five per cent of the blood in the system. Among businessmen and politicians very often it consumes as much as sixty per cent. It stands to reason, therefore, that if you do not keep the machinery for manufacturing food for the brain in good order something must burst. Many diseases can be cured by physical training of the body, for a healthy state of the mind will not allow the bacillus to live in the body.’
The crowd mumbled in agreement.
‘And you, sir, standing toward the back?’
Jolly Bannerman straightened the lapels of his ill-fitting suit. ‘Have you received many challenges during your tour, Mr Sandow?’ he asked, grinning.
‘Oh, a great many,’ Sandow said, ‘and always from men who have nothing to lose and everything to gain from the advertisement they would get in a public competition with myself. But to accept challenges from every man I meet is not my object in life.’ Jolly’s face sank. ‘I am endeavouring to make other men stronger than I am myself. That is my gospel and I think I have preached it well enough to you this evening. You, sir,’ Sandow indicated to a man seated four rows from the front. Kemp recognised him as Mr Fricker, the pharmacist, as he stood to ask his question.
‘Have you devoted any time to developing some of the minor organs, such as moving the ears?’
The town chuckled as one.
‘I must admit that I have not attained this accomplishment,’ Sandow replied. ‘Indeed, I do not see its value, unless one wishes to become a professional listener.’ This retort was met with widespread laughter, applause and a few ringing bravos.
‘But surely,’ Kemp shouted, pushing to the front of the men standing in the wings, ‘the actress in your company who plays a statue could benefit from learning not to blink?’
Sandow fingered his moustache, grinning as he searched for where the voice had come from. ‘Far be it from me to comment on other performers,’ he said, looking vaguely in Kemp’s direction, ‘particularly those more artful than me, a simple strongman.’
‘But could the eyelids be trained?’ Kemp persisted.
‘I do not see why not,’ Sandow said, finally eyeing Kemp, who felt as if an icicle had been planted in his chest.
Sandow clapped his hands together. ‘What an interesting array of questions. I thank you for your kindness and hospitality and wish you all the best for the New Year.’
The strongman made his way off the stage. The curtains dropped and the townsfolk collected their purses and canes from the floor but Colton Kemp was already out the door and running.
The grey warbler with the long-tailed cuckoo.
