The table was just a table and it was plain to see that its green surface had nothing on it and that its legs were of the spindly collapsing kind that enabled the whole thing to be folded up and stored away. It was a card table, after all, only to be brought out when needed. But no one could see—because why should they?—that there were other foldings, closings and expandings involved in this table that were in the very space it occupied and around it. There was a whole other secret furniture available that it was the challenge to make any audience not see.
And, as Ronnie would later learn, what short-sighted fools they could be.
He tapped the table with his wand, then ran his hand several times across and around its surface. Then he tapped with his wand the spindly legs and waved the wand between them, all to show that the table was only a table and occupied nothing but air. He did these things with fluid unhurried movements—this was very important—making much play with his hands and arms. This was all to show that he was to be trusted, he was confident, he was in command—he was the performer here. But it was also to achieve certain other unseen things besides.
Then he walked round the table, first in one direction, then the other, circling it, again to show there was only air, but also to show that the table might in some way obey him, it was like a creature he had tamed.
His little audience of two would now be focusing on the table, regarding it inquisitively and keenly, and yet, unwittingly, being distracted in their very intentness in a way that he wanted them to be. Of course his audience, Eric and Penny, weren’t like a real audience because they knew how the thing was done, but they were here to pretend that they didn’t, and to see if he could do it and make even them not notice. It was a test, even you might say an audition. Eric felt that the time had arrived.
It was a simple task in the catalogue of magicianship. Make something appear on the table, something that hadn’t been there a moment ago. What kind of object it might be is up to you. Surprise us. And remember: all the time make a show. Don’t overdo it, but make a show.
It was dark outside, a late November evening, several weeks since Ronnie had been told that his father was ‘missing’, and he had almost got used to that fact by now. He had always been missing, after all. What was the difference? But there was a difference and Ronnie still struggled to understand it.
While he was hopeful on this evening that he could make something appear seemingly from nowhere—he had learnt how to do it—he knew he could not make his father appear. Or at least such a thing was not within his abilities yet, he was only an eager beginner. His recent intensified application to magic was itself, as Ronnie could only dimly see—but Eric and Penny could see it—a means of diverting attention, of distracting him from the pain of thinking about his father.
It was not one of Eric’s ‘warden’ nights, but their own blackout curtains were meticulously in place, with the regular curtains closed before them. For all they knew, this might have been the night on which the Luftwaffe chose to shift its own attention from London or Liverpool to pulverise Oxford instead (in fact it was the turn of Coventry). But for the time being the sitting room at Evergrene had turned into a little hushed theatre, the drawn curtains and just the light of two standard lamps, with their gold-fringed shades, adding to the mood.
Ronnie had thought about it carefully: what should appear on the table? His idea was perhaps not the most original one, yet it would do the work and enable him to add a special touch that might be more than just showmanly, and it had taken some preparing in advance.
Now, having done his circlings, he stood in front of the table and before Eric and Penny and extended his arms wide, palms flattened as if to confirm there was nothing—nothing—suspicious around him. Yet as he did this he felt a strange power. It was the power of this moment of performance, but he could not separate it from some thrilling capacity that he had actually acquired in himself and would always, from now on, simply have.
He felt too the strange power of his silence. He had not spoken a word and had not needed to—he had merely moved. And his silence seemed to have silenced his audience.
But now he made a sound that he’d never been intending. Out it came spontaneously and forcefully, a sudden ‘Hah!’ or mere explosive gush of air from his lungs. At the same time he gave a flick of the wand—inertly lodged till now like an idle drumstick between two fingers—and brought his hands together above his head and clapped them. Then with a sweep of his arms and his whole body he stepped to one side.
On the table, at its centre, was a vase containing several large red roses. They were, as it happened, the last unwilted roses left on one of the bushes in the garden, surviving—perhaps because of some power Ernie had—well into November. Ronnie could see them from his bedroom window and as he pondered his forthcoming event they had suddenly called to him.
He had nonetheless thought it only right to seek Ernie’s discreet permission. Ernie had said, ‘All yours, Ronnie, ain’t my roses.’ He’d got the impression that Ernie somehow knew exactly what he was up to.
So, earlier this day, he had snipped off the best roses—five in all—and secreted them, as he’d secreted the vase.
And the result of it all was that Eric and
