Why had he cried? For his father certainly, but also for some great swamping confusion—confusing yet kind. For this extraordinary metamorphosis that had occurred in his life. For the boy, weeping before on a train, who’d not known any of this was to come—who’d cried then for his mother, for whom he was not crying now. From guilt and dismay that he could cry now for his father yet feel that he had another already to replace him. From drowning gratitude that he’d been taken and dropped down in so much goodness.
But more than this. More than all this bewildering bounty. He had discovered by now his purpose in life. He had discovered, or it had been revealed to him, that Mr Lawrence was not just the owner with his wife of an enchanted place called Evergrene, but, though currently forced to work in a limited way (there was a war on: ‘There isn’t much call, Ronnie’), he was an accomplished magician.
• • •
One day Ronnie sat with Eric Lawrence on the low brick wall of the cold frame. He knew by now what a cold frame was, but one of its incidental functions was to serve as a convenient place to sit on warm days. Mr Lawrence, while they sat, was enjoying a mug of tea and Ronnie was enjoying a glass of ginger beer. The ginger beer was made by the Lawrences themselves—was there no end to the amazements of this place? The recipe had been given them, he was told, by Ernie, who seemed to have talents beyond gardening and who today was nowhere to be seen. Ronnie was now used to this. Sometimes Ernie was there, sometimes he wasn’t.
Mrs Lawrence, after bringing out the drinks, had made herself scarce, as if aware that there was to be some man-to-man talk. Mrs Lawrence had a very nice way of saying whenever she proffered something, or sometimes for no clear reason at all, ‘Here we are!’ And Ronnie had come to love this bright and strangely echoing phrase. Here we are! How happy. And true.
And Eric Lawrence did indeed have something special to impart.
After sipping some tea he smacked his lips and looked around.
‘The great trouble with this garden, Ronnie, is the rabbits. They come and they eat everything.’
This was a strange remark because though the garden backed onto fields and woods Ronnie had never seen any rabbits in it. Perhaps he hadn’t been looking. Perhaps they were something else that Ernie dealt with. They had more than once eaten rabbit pie—something Ronnie had never eaten in Bethnal Green, but which in the country seemed to be a wartime staple.
Mrs Lawrence had once said, when serving it, ‘What would we do without Ernie?’ She’d looked very fondly at Ronnie while putting a serving of pie on his plate, so that he’d almost thought she’d said, ‘What would we do without Ronnie?’ It was a pleasing mistake, as was the idea that he and Ernie might have changed places. If he’d been an older and more polished being, Ronnie might have said to Mrs Lawrence, ‘Ah—but what would we do without your wonderful cooking?’ And Mrs Lawrence might have felt a catch in her throat.
But he’d never seen any rabbits in the garden.
After his emphatic complaint about the invading rabbits, Mr Lawrence suddenly said, ‘Well bless me!’ He would use such cosy expressions—they were a bit like Mrs Lawrence’s ‘Here we are!’s. They made Ronnie feel all the more alert about his inner ‘Fucking ’ell’s.
‘Bless me,’ Mr Lawrence said, ‘there are some of the devils right now.’
Ronnie looked this way and that—the vegetable patch, the lawn—but he couldn’t see a single rabbit.
‘No, Ronnie. I mean the ones behind you.’
Ronnie turned and there, within the low brick confines of the cold frame and beneath its half-raised glass panels, were one, two, three—no, four rabbits. And each one of them was pure white. It looked as if there had been a remarkable and remarkably localised snowfall. But the snow was alive.
They had not been there before. They really had not been there just before. They seemed not at all shy, happily munching at some just-shooting lettuces.
‘You see what I mean,’ Mr Lawrence nonchalantly said. Then he said abruptly, ‘But what was that?’ and pointed at something seemingly in mid-air. Ronnie could not help but be drawn to his straightened finger.
‘Look again, Ronnie. Turn around.’
The rabbits were gone.
It was the beginning. Even perhaps—after more than one start already—the true start of his life.
‘Would you like to know how that was done, Ronnie? Would you like to know how that happened?’ He had taken a quick sip of his tea. ‘One step at a time of course.’
• • •
So it was that Ronnie began what Jack Robbins would call his ‘sorcerer’s apprenticeship’. So it was that years later, having pursued with dogged and solitary determination but with no great profit what he would sometimes speak of as his ‘calling’, Ronnie put an advert, following Jack’s advice, in one or two appropriate places.
‘Magician’s Assistant Wanted. Suit Young Lady. Previous Stage Experience Essential.’
And Evie White had answered it.
In the many years in between, Ronnie had become, thanks to Mr Lawrence’s exclusive instruction, a promising and competent magician, but Mr Lawrence had stressed that it was a long and not necessarily lucrative road, and was Ronnie sure? (Ronnie was certain.)
Mr Lawrence’s tutelage could not last for ever. It was governed by the course of the war. This applied to other things even more exercising than magic. As the war drew to its close Ronnie felt a new qualm enter his life, the reverse of and more complicated than the one he’d felt when his mother had taken him to Paddington and to an unknown fate.
He was fourteen now, a big boy. Was he still a good one? The Lawrences would have said that he was. Was he a changed and even improved one? Yes. Setting aside that he had learnt how to perform
