The Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart

‘It all started the day before my tenth birthday. It was my first time in town, I can remember it like it was yesterday. I heard you singing, then I saw you. My clock hands pointed towards you, as if attracted to a magnetic field. My cuckoo started singing. Madeleine was restraining me. I escaped her grip to go and stand right in front of you. The way I sang the response, you’d think we were in some outlandish musical comedy. You sang, I answered, we were communicating in a language I didn’t know, but we understood each other perfectly. You danced and I danced with you, even though I had no idea how to dance. Anything felt possible.’

‘I remember, right from the very beginning I remembered. The moment I found you in my dressing room, I knew it was you.’ The sadness doesn’t leave her voice. ‘That strange little boy from when I was ten years old, the one who slumbered at the back of my memories. I was sure it was you . . .’

‘You remember . . . D’you remember what a bubble we were in? It took Madeleine’s fist to burst it.’

‘I stepped on my glasses and when I put them on my nose, they were all bent.’

‘Yes! Glasses with a bandage on the right lens. Madeleine said it was to make the weak eye work harder.’

‘She was right . . .’

‘From that day on, I never stopped dreaming of finding you again. When I discovered where you went to school, I begged Madeleine to let me enrol. I waited for so long, but instead of you I got Joe. Joe and his stooges. On my first day at school, I had the misfortune to ask if anybody knew the beautiful little singer who’s always bumping into things. Joe couldn’t bear the fact that you were no longer by his side, so he took all his frustration out on me. He could tell how crazy I was about you, which made him even more jealous. Every morning I walked through the school gates with a knot of panic that stayed in the pit of my stomach for the rest of the day. I endured his attacks at school for three years. Until the day he decided to tear off my shirt, so I was bare-chested in front of the whole school. He wanted to open up my clock and humiliate me even more, but I’d had enough of being pushed around. We got into a fight and it ended badly, very badly, as you know. So I left Edinburgh in the middle of the night, headed for Andalusia. I crossed half of Europe in search of you. It wasn’t always easy. I missed Madeleine, Arthur, Anna and Luna, I still miss them . . . But my greatest dream was to see you again. And now, Joe is back to snatch that dream. He’ll do everything in his power to turn you away from me. He’s already begun, can’t you see?’

‘Do you really think I’d get back together with him?’

‘Look, I don’t doubt you, but what if he destroys the trust we’ve built up piece by piece? I hardly recognise you since he turned up. He’s taken my place on the Ghost Train, he sleeps in our bed, which used to be the only place where we were safe from the outside world. As soon as I turn my back, he spreads gossip about my past . . . I feel as if I’ve been stripped of everything.’

‘But you . . .’

‘Listen to me. One day, he looked me straight in the eye and warned me: I’ll smash that wooden heart on your head, I’ll smash it so hard you’ll never be able to love again. He knows where to aim.’

‘You too, or so it would seem.’

‘Why do you think he decided to tell you his version of the story about his poked-out eye?’

She shrugs, like a sad bird.

‘Joe knows how uncompromising you are. He knows how to set fire to the strands of your hair, which connect to your heart grenade. You do a very good impression of a bomb, but he also knows how vulnerable you are underneath. He knows that if he introduces an element of doubt, you might implode. Joe is trying to wear us down so that he can win you back. If you’d only realise that, you could help me stop him.’

She turns towards me, slowly raising her parasol-eyelids. Two fat tears trickle down her magnificent face. Her make-up runs over her crumpled eyelashes. She has a strange talent for looking as captivating in suffering as in joy.

‘I love you.’

‘I love you too.’

I kiss her tear-filled mouth. She tastes of overripe fruit. Then Miss Acacia walks away. I watch the forest wrap itself around her, as the shadowy branches gobble her up.

In a few steps she’s vanished. Oh Madeleine, this tempo of shattering dreams makes my gears get noisier, and more painful too. I’ve got this horrible feeling Miss Acacia and I will never see each other again.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

In which our hero asks, ‘Oh Madeleine, where are you when I need you most?’

On the way to Melies’ workshop, my clock rattles alarmingly. The Alhambra’s bewitching alcoves echo back.

When I get there, nobody’s in. I sit down in the middle of all those cardboard cut-outs. Lost among so many inventions, I become one of them. I’m a human gimmick, who wishes he could ditch the special effects. At my age, the only ‘effect’ I’d like to have on people is being thought of as a proper grown-up man. But have I got the talent to show Miss Acacia what I’m made of, and how much I burn for her? Can she believe in me, or will she always think I’m playing some sort of trick on her?

My dreams stretch to the top of Arthur’s Seat. I’d like to teleport that mountain here, in front of the Alhambra. To find out what’s happened to my makeshift family. I’d give anything for them to appear here, right now. I miss them so badly . . .

Madeleine and Melies would talk about psychology and ‘tinkering with things’, over a delicious meal cooked from one of my midwife-mother’s secret recipes. She and Miss Acacia would spark each other off on the subject of love; they’d probably tear each other’s hair out too. But all hostilities would cease with the aperitif. They’d tease each other, acerbic one moment, kind the next, until they were in cahoots at