Читать книгу Fiona Gibson 3 Book Bundle - Fiona Gibson, Fiona Gibson - Страница 30

Harvey Chuckles is standing on a small stage in a draughty community hall, knowing without a doubt that every child in this room would give anything to be somewhere else.

‘Wanna play outside,’ a boy complains, triggering a ripple of dissatisfaction.

‘Make him go away,’ a little girl shrieks from the front row of chairs.

The woman sitting behind her taps her on the shoulder. ‘Hush, sweetheart. Don’t be rude …’

‘But I don’t like him. Tell him to go, Mummy!’

‘Just be quiet and watch, Cordelia,’ the woman snaps. Harvey blunders on through his act, producing his dove pan, an ingenious device the size of a saucepan which enables him to make small objects disappear. By this point, he is wishing he could crawl into the pan and magic himself to a place where strong alcohol is administered. He has juggled beanbags, ridden his unicycle and played jaunty tunes on his one-man-band. Yet his doleful audience look as if they’ve been forced to watch one of those late night Open University programmes on BBC2. Why did they hire him, he wonders? Is it that this particular bunch of pre-schoolers would prefer a freestyle party with no entertainer, or that he is a particularly substandard clown?

Think, think. Balloon animals – that always delights them (well, it works with Sam, Harvey’s four-year-old nephew, though maybe he’s just been humouring him). With a rush of determination he kicks his dove pan aside.

‘Now,’ he announces, ‘I want you to come up with the most outrageous animal you can think of and I’ll make it for you …’ His yellow clown wig is making his head itch and the children are growing more restless by the minute. Whatever made him think this was a good idea? Before his recent incarnation as a children’s entertainer, Harvey had led a reasonably healthy, functioning life, grabbing whatever small acting job came his way and keeping mind and body in shape with regular runs along the long, flat sweep of Shorling beach. He’d never realised that small people, who are barely capable of going to the loo unaided, could be so bloody hostile. Performing in front of a roomful of young strangers is nothing like entertaining Sam, who laughs at anything he does.

‘Anyone think of an animal yet?’ he asks, sweating a little.

‘A dog!’ chirps one of the mothers.

‘A dog. Great! That’s an easy one. While I do this’ – he starts twisting the sausage balloons between clumsy fingers – ‘the rest of you can think of something more challenging for me …’

‘Mummy …’ whimpers a little curly-haired girl, dissolving into quiet sobs as Harvey finally manages to fashion his sausage balloon into a dog, yes, but a dog with an unsightly bulge between its back legs, like elephantitis of the testicles.

‘Bit of a malfunction there,’ he sniggers, aware that it’s wrong to laugh when a child is weeping just six feet in front of him. ‘Now, can anyone think of any other—’

‘Er, excuse me!’ trills the malnourished-looking woman who booked him for this birthday party. ‘Would you mind doing something musical again? I think …’ She winces apologetically, ‘the little ones might enjoy that more.’

‘Oh.’ He adjusts his slightly-slipped wig. ‘Yeah, that’s … that’s fine.’

‘It’s not that we don’t like your animals,’ she adds quickly.

‘No, no, music’s great, that’s an excellent idea …’ He drops his unused balloons by his feet and struggles back into his one-man-band contraption. It’s home-made, constructed during his student years, and seemed funny and quirky back then. Now, strapped to the fully formed body of a thirty-three-year-old man, it seems … ridiculous.

‘Play “Cuckoo Clock”!’ the curly-haired girl commands, having miraculously stopped crying. Relieved, he starts to play a vague approximation of the theme tune he hasn’t heard for decades. ‘That’s the old one,’ she complains.

‘Uh?’

‘They changed it,’ one of the mothers offers, ‘last week. It’s more, er … modern now.’

Harvey stops playing. ‘I’m sorry, I haven’t heard it.’

‘Haven’t you?’ the woman asks. ‘I’d have thought, with this being your job—’ She emits a small, withering laugh.

‘Nope, no idea.’ At this point in the game, there’s no point in pretending.

‘He doesn’t watch Cuckoo Clock,’ the curly-haired girl gasps.

No, he thinks, because I’m an adult, you see, and the only reason I’m doing this is because my agent just told me there’s nothing on the horizon – I think she’s building up to dropping me actually – and unless I can rake together a couple of hundred quid I’ll never make this month’s rent …

‘Well, er,’ the skinny woman says, glancing at the other mothers anxiously, ‘maybe that’s enough for today? What does everyone think?’ There are a few nods from the adults, and an air of relief fills the room.

With difficulty, Harvey unstraps his one-man-band and places it carefully on the scuffed parquet floor. The skinny woman appears beside him, addressing the audience with a rictus grin. ‘That was great, wasn’t it, boys and girls? Now let’s all put our hands together for Charlie Chuckles!’

‘Harvey,’ he corrects her, but she fails to hear. He checks his watch. He was booked till four, and it’s only twenty past three.

*

Of course, his name isn’t really Harvey Chuckles. He is Harvey Galbraith, an actor who grew up in Cumbria before heading south, and who has spent the past decade feeling ridiculously grateful for whatever crumb of work has fluttered his way. For a few years, he nabbed parts in enough TV dramas and plays to convince him that this was a career worth pursuing. Yet things dwindled away and, during especially barren periods, he resorted to doing a little modelling. There was the odd catalogue, or women’s magazine at the less glamorous end of the spectrum, in which he’d invariably be cast as the ‘husband’ in fashion shoots, kitted out in Aran sweaters and chinos, often accessorised with a Labrador on a lead. But even that has dried up now. ‘Sorry, Harv,’ Lisa, his old modelling agent told him. ‘You’re still a good-looking guy but you’re not striking enough to make it as the Mature Hunk.’

So here he is, packing his clowning gear into the boot of his five-year-old Punto in Shorling community centre’s car park. On this blustery Friday afternoon, he hasn’t even bothered to change out of his costume or take off his face-paint. This isn’t like him at all; when he started this six months ago, he vowed that no one would find out what he was doing. No one who mattered, anyway. Harvey has been single for a criminally lengthy period, and he suspects that, if any woman finds out what he does, he’ll have no chance of meeting anyone. What kind of adult female wants to go out with a clown, for God’s sake? Oh, maybe once – just for a laugh – but there’d be no possibility of anything serious, anything real. A sharp wind whips through the springy yellow curls of his acrylic wig as he closes the car boot. Scraps of litter twist and dance across the car park, and there are bursts of laughter from the children inside the hall. Now they’re having fun, charging up and down like a pack of raucous hounds which is all, frankly, children really want to do. They don’t want to watch a small metal bird disappear into a dove pan.

Spots of rain are starting to fall. Harvey climbs into his car and turns on the windscreen wipers, watching their back-and-forth motion for a few moments. A scrap of white paper is trapped under one of them and doesn’t appear to be dislodging. Clicking the wipers off, he steps back out into the rain and pulls it out from beneath the wiper.

‘Look, Mummy, a clown!’ a little girl yelps from the pavement. Harvey turns and gives her a half-hearted wave; she waves back, beaming delightedly. Still clutching the damp piece of paper, he realises he can’t just chuck it on the ground – not in front of the only non-hostile child he’s encountered all day. ‘I like your wig,’ she calls out, giggling.

‘Thank you.’ He bows graciously as she and her mother wave again and make their way down the street. Harvey glances down at the soggy fragment in his hand. Although it’s smudged and barely legible, he can just make out a single word: ‘piano’. Carefully avoiding tearing the paper, he unfolds it and reads: PIANO TUITION KERRY, plus a mobile number.

Piano lessons. It’s raining harder now, causing Harvey’s diamond-patterned satin trousers to cling to his legs. But he’s stopped noticing the cold and imagines himself sitting in an elderly lady’s front room, perhaps being offered tea from a china cup. The room would be warm, with a sleeping cat on the rug, and the piano teacher would teach him to play something beautiful. It doesn’t matter that Harvey doesn’t know anything about classical music, or that the nearest he’s come to playing the piano is tinkering about on his ancient Casio keyboard at home. Because right now, the music that fills his head is making this wet October day feel a little less bleak.

Imagine … not playing the wrong Cuckoo Clock song on his one-man-band but something lovely, like rippling water. What would it be – Handel, Chopin or another of those dead guys? Harvey has no idea. But he knows that being able to play would be an escape from all of this – something of his own. The clowning has to stop, he decides, climbing back into his car and pulling out his phone from the pocket of his baggy red jacket. He places the tiny, sodden piece of paper on the passenger seat. Then, with a swirl of excitement in his stomach, and making a mental note to switch back to his normal voice – not his Harvey Chuckles voice – he taps out the piano teacher’s number.