It was his first taste of applause. Fucking ’ell.
But this was not all. Still with his suave and gliding movements and as if it were all part of the same act and perhaps, in its way, a kind of magic too, he took two roses from the vase and, stepping forward even as they continued clapping, presented one to Penny and one to Eric, in that order of course, with a little bow to each.
It had been a test, an audition, his first-ever performance, but he hoped that this final double gesture would have another meaning that though invisible—unlike, now, the vase of roses—they would yet ‘see’.
As they took their roses they seemed quite overcome and he felt it again: there was no feeling like it. He had not merely done something that might be admired in an ordinary way, as a child might be admired for learning how to ride a bicycle. He’d done something quite out of the ordinary, even ‘impossible’, and the power to do it was with him. It was not just that a vase of flowers had appeared from nowhere. He himself had become a different person.
• • •
Jack had to make the announcement two nights running. ‘Indisposed.’ The groans of disappointment, even of disgruntlement, that this produced told him how much of a draw Pablo and Eve had now become.
‘Yes, I know, I know,’ he said. ‘You’ll just have to put up with more of me.’
He did not say of course why Ronnie (or Pablo) was ‘indisposed’. He did not want to dampen their holiday mood further. And he did not answer the question, though it was not actually shouted out: ‘What about Eve?’ He extended his preceding act—‘Silvery Moon’. He made a few more jokes. He said, ‘You see, boys and girls, even magicians themselves sometimes have to disappear.’
‘But don’t you worry,’ he said, ‘he’ll be back, Pablo will be back.’ Which didn’t, he knew, help those who’d bought tickets for that particular night. For some reason it came magnanimously into his mind that when Ronnie returned he should become the Great Pablo.
Improvising on the theme of moonlight, he threw in a whole extra soupy, though seasonal number: ‘Shine On, Harvest Moon’. He’d negotiated unsuccessfully with the Rockabye Boys as to whether he might do an extra number with them (leather jacket, quiff and all: that would either show them up or send them up, he thought), but Doris Lane did condescend to allow him to perform a soft-shoe shuffle adoringly round her, provided she could do an extra number—‘I’ve Got a Crush on You’. (It was like dancing round Queen Victoria and crush might have been the word, he was later reported to have said.)
At the end of the show he beefed up his farewell routine, giving added oomph—some might even have said surprising urgency—to ‘Red, Red Robin’. Live, love, laugh and be happy! He did his best, all told, to make up for the sad gap in the evening’s performance, but there were many—and who could blame them?—who simply felt that they hadn’t got what they’d paid for.
To make matters worse, though it was hardly part of some malign conspiracy, the fine weather of the past few days broke and the pier was battered by heavy showers, the sea frothed. Which hardly eased audience dissatisfaction. But the seaside is like that: one moment gaiety and laughter, the next sodden misery.
A bit like show business.
And of course these were two nights when he could not have slipped back into the auditorium to cease to be Jack Robinson and become just a pair of eyes in the dark. Though on the other hand it was on the first of these two nights—and he didn’t have to do it—that he confessed to Evie that this was just what, from time to time, he’d done. And even why.
Just an old song-and-dance man? But that wouldn’t stop him, in the decades to come, having the long and distinguished career he would have, as an actor and then even as one of those who, off stage, put on, create the shows themselves. Just Jack Robinson, picking up girls whenever he liked? That usherette standing there. You never saw me, but why don’t you come and see me after the show? But that didn’t stop him, fortunately or unfortunately, from being a man who could fall in love. Or even from telling Evie White so.
‘It wasn’t the act I wanted to watch, Evie. It was you.’
And Evie, when she was suddenly but not so passively or helplessly on the receiving end of all this, could not help thinking: This is what he does, of course, with all of them. He makes them feel special, he makes them feel that they’re the one. Hadn’t she seen it happen enough times? And wasn’t he now, blatantly, only seizing his opportunity? Ronnie was not there. The sheer obviousness of it all.
But she couldn’t help feeling that she had a better measure of Jack than all the others, and that she had this same opportunity too. And why—it was a good, if uncomfortable question—hadn’t she gone with Ronnie, to hold his hand, to see his mother, to be with him in his time of need? Be careful, she might have thought, you might just be Flora for the night. Though would that have been so awful, if nobody knew? It might even have been the better (or less bad) thing.
Yet she couldn’t help feeling either—and this was the real push and dare of it—that she might really be the special one for Jack. If what he was saying to her now, about slipping back into the auditorium, was true, then
