“That’s rubbish, that is,” said the Magnificent Jimmy. “Hello!”
“Hello!” the children said, loudly this time. He gave a satisfied nod.
At juggling he was fine, he was acceptable, he was delightful: she had forgotten what a good audience member she was. How she liked looking at people who wanted only to entertain, no matter how talented—or untalented—they might be. That was why she’d begun acting in the first place, to be regarded by strangers in the way she did them, with a kind of open narrative love that made up stories. Had he done this all his life? Did he live on board? No: he lived in a bedsit in Harwich. He’d hoped to be a famous magician but had never thrown that first leg over the gate of success. His elderly mother was still alive. He took care of her.
The toddler girl threatened the Magnificent Jimmy’s knees as her mother looked on in admiration; the redheaded boy kept trying to go back of him, as though the Magnificent Jimmy himself were a trick to get to the bottom of.
“Here we go,” said the Magnificent Jimmy, “keep your eye on the blue ball,” and then the blue ball got away from him. It rolled toward the antsy little boy, who caught it. “Thank you, mate,” said the Magnificent Jimmy, “toss ’er here,” and the boy did. “You’re a very naughty blue ball,” the Magnificent Jimmy told the blue ball. “Don’t ever leave me again.”
His balloon-animal skills were terrific, balloons inside balloons, all blown up by his own lungs, no tacky hand pump. “I’ll do this in one go,” he said, and he filled a green balloon with one long breath. “I like to do it to annoy the smokers. Not bad for sixty-seven, eh?” An alien in a helmet. A dachshund who’d swallowed a meatball. A red Jelly Baby. “All my dogs are green poodles,” he said. “Reason being: when I was eleven, I painted the neighbor lady’s poodle green, and my father laughed. First good response I ever got from the man. Therefore, green poodles.”
She hoped he’d make balloons for everyone; she felt nervous for the children who didn’t have one yet. When you were a child you believed yourself special, deserving, and every piece of evidence to the contrary broke your heart. As an adult, the same was true. She hated when magicians asked for child volunteers, as the Magnificent Jimmy did: she felt swamped by the longing that rose up. Little kids put up their hands, eighteen-month-olds: they didn’t know they didn’t have a chance.
And yet Mistress Mickle loved the Magnificent Jimmy. It was a condescending love, she knew; she was Mistress Mickle, on television: you could buy a doll of her; he was the Magnificent Jimmy, sixty-seven and performing on a ferry. Perhaps she could get him an appearance on Barnaby Grudge. Or some other CBeebies program: she would talk to them. She would change his luck. He had the melancholy edge of a man acquainted with the dark thoughts of the back of the boat, someone whose life had not quite panned out. Maybe she would invite him to the excellent privacy of her cabin. Her heart scuttled, a sign she was actually considering it. Today she might do anything.
“All right,” said the Magnificent Jimmy, “this doesn’t work for everyone, but it does for some.” He pulled out a large, black-and-white disc on a stick, set it spinning. “Stare at the center. The very center. Keep staring.”
Was he hypnotizing them? She hoped so. She wanted to be changed. She would stand and do anything the Magnificent Jimmy commanded. For once she would be susceptible. So she concentrated, the good student, on the gyre of the disc. It seemed to go on for hours.
“Stare. Stare. Stare—now look at me!”
Gasps. Laughter. A teenage girl said, “Oh! Look at his head!”
For Mistress Mickle, nothing.
“Now, some people might have seen my head getting bigger,” said the Magnificent Jimmy, and she was stabbed with jealousy: she wanted to snatch that vision straight out of the heads of the underserving children. “Did you see it?” he asked the girl with the serious eyebrows. The girl nodded, looked thoughtful, and opened her mouth—to vomit, it turned out.
She was only the first. The sea had grown furious, but nobody had quite noticed. You could tell the mothers from the sisters then: the sisters giggled and flinched, the mothers leapt forward, hands open—for what?
“Oh, sweethearts,” said the Magnificent Jimmy. “Poor things. There’s your mother, darling. All right, all right, she’ll take care of you.”
But what about me? thought Mistress Mickle. She felt a dull and radiating pain in her jaw, and she stood, and threw up, and fled.
She should have gone back to the cabin—to the shower, the clean towels, her full suitcase—but she had the idea that she shouldn’t be sealed in a box. She should be near other people, just in case. So she pulled her coat over her dress (not an unremitting mess: she had vomited directly into a pool of vomit) and stumbled to the open air. The cold was good, and she felt a flare of the day’s joy. Then it passed and she felt doom.
Throw yourself in. Who would care?
Over the years, she’d gone through the list: her parents (they’d get over it), Jonas (him, too), various lovers (who would mourn her or not, but their lives would not be ruined), her soap opera character (if she were currently playing a character, and if such character were consequential enough for her absence to matter, she would be gently written out of the show).
Wait. Wait, now.
There was no writing Mistress Mickle out of Barnaby Grudge. Was it the water or the realization that made her anxious? The wind boxed her ears. She drew her shoulders up to shield them. She was short of breath.
How would they explain it to the children? Would they simply hire another tall woman with a deep voice and an aptitude for stilts? Would they
