Play the trick? No, do the trick. Not even trick. Eric’s word was ‘illusion’.
And of all the things. Other young men might have put on other shows, gone to other lengths (some young men even drove cars—Eric’s father, naturally, drove a Bullnose Morris) to woo a young woman. Or they might have just got on with it. But Eric had asked her one July evening to an allotment, with a promise of a bag of beans. And it had worked. It had done the trick.
Later, she’d had the strange thought that if he could do such things, then why hadn’t he just magicked her into compliance in the first place? Why the beans, why the rabbits? But then perhaps he had. How did she know that her whole life with Eric wasn’t some kind of hypnosis?
And ‘their Ronnie’? Why couldn’t Eric have found some magic, long ago, to solve their little problem? Though, true, it was more her little problem. But now, twenty-odd years later, and better late than never, they had Ronnie.
Eric had one day turned into Lorenzo (whatever next?) and now Eric, or Lorenzo, had almost stopped doing his stage work because of the war. Magicians weren’t wanted in a war. You’d think they might be needed all the more. But he clearly hadn’t stopped altogether. They don’t stop, or retire, or even give it a rest. It was a thing for life. And she’d long ago come to appreciate that nothing was surprising. Nothing.
He’d signed up as an air-raid warden, so as to do his bit. Magicians can be air-raid wardens too. And there was already talk going around (which turned out to be not so silly) that the Germans were never going to touch Oxford, even with the Cowley works close by.
Every other night he went out after dark with his helmet and his whistle—and his wand?
She sometimes fancied she could write a book: ‘I Married a Magician’. It might be interesting for some people, it might shed some light. But of course she’d never write such a book, because it would involve telling, and you could never tell. It was forbidden. Her part in it all, even her part now with the rabbits and the cold frame, you’d never get it from her. Though one thing she might say—it was a different sort of telling—was that it could all get very demanding. What about normal life?
But it could also get exciting. It could even get wonderful.
She watched Eric talking. She watched Ronnie’s dark little head turn. There we are! There we go! Her heart went out to him—even more than usual. She knew he had his real mother, called Agnes, but she wasn’t here to see or know, was she?
And normal life? What was that anyway? Here they were in another war, the second of their lives. It was going on right now, though, looking at this scene before her, you’d never know. And yet it was the whole point with this young guest of theirs (she didn’t like to dwell on it): if it wasn’t for a war.
She had an older brother, Roy, in Canada, who’d done well for himself and never ceased to remind her of it, and had two boys, one of them coming up to eighteen. Well, Canada was in this war too. And this little Ronnie’s father, it seemed, was out there on a ship somewhere (she didn’t like to think about this either) bringing in supplies—quite possibly from Canada.
Roy had always scoffed that if she’d married a magician she could have anything she liked, couldn’t she? She only had to say. But at twenty-one she’d had a nasty miscarriage which had wrecked her chances of ever having babies again and there was no magic, it seemed, that could put that right. Though shouldn’t she be glad now not to have a young boy or two coming up to eighteen?
There was no magic for some things, it seemed. It couldn’t stop wars, and though it was a selfish, even a wicked thought to have, she couldn’t help being glad about that now. Producing white rabbits out of nowhere was certainly something, but it was nothing compared with this little Ronnie Deane who’d turned up so late in the day.
So let them keep on fighting, that was her secret thought. And what war anyway? She couldn’t see one. Ronnie’s mum had sent him to the best place, all right, even if she didn’t know it and it had all just been the luck of the draw. She’d sent him to the best place, as far as she, Penny Lawrence, was concerned.
She saw his head turn back again and she knew his eyes would be wide and wondering now. He had beautiful dark eyes too, enough to melt your heart.
• • •
It had started to be called the ‘Rainbow Trick’, even the ‘Famous Rainbow Trick’, and God knows how it was done. But it wasn’t, even so, the biggest trick of all. That was saved for the last night, the last show of the season, Saturday 12th September.
Ronnie had said before they went on, ‘It’s the last night, Evie, so let’s give it a bit of extra whirl.’ His eyes had never looked at her—or looked through her—so intently. And, yes, they’d given the rope some extra whirl. She could feel Ronnie, at the other end, through the rope itself, urging her, insisting. More, more! Faster, faster! And when it had appeared—there was always that gasp when it appeared—the rainbow had glowed even more brightly, every colour in it had shone more distinctly, and it had remained visible just a bit longer before disappearing. It was always like a real rainbow in that respect, it would just suddenly appear, then just as suddenly vanish.
But that night, and only that night, there was something else different—or new altogether. Unless it was all imagined. Though how could it have been imagined, if people
