The last two. They would have to be aimed at each side of her head. The Indian sighted his throw and, with awful menace, slowly drew back the weapon. A yell!
‘Five!’ Within two inches of the ear.
A final drum-roll.
The hurtling blade shimmered in flight.
‘Six!’ Shouted in huge relief, and topped with a storm of clapping and stamping.
‘Sometimes they try it again blindfold,’ suggested Cribb to Thackeray, who was paler than the Indian maiden.
Then—surprise—normal gaslight was restored and there were two unmistakably European performers removing their head-dresses to receive their salute from the enraptured audience.
‘Capital act!’ said Cribb, applauding energetically.
‘It’s left me feeling like a glass of beer gone flat.’
A large 3 was already in place on the frame to their right where the order of the acts was charted. Nobody appeared to have a programme, so the information was valuable only to the chairman. ‘If that last act ’orrified the ladies a little too much, I’ve got some news to set your minds at rest, girls. We ’ave with us tonight two outstandin’ guardians of the peace. Yes, the boys in blue are with us tonight . . .’
‘Blimey, Sarge. We’ve been spotted.’
‘Steady, Constable.’
‘. . . Those two favourite myrmidons of the Law, P.C.s Salt and Battree!’
The act-drop had been lowered during the announcement, and now two performers dressed as uniformed police officers marched in step to the centre of the stage, the second ludicrously close behind the first. Predictably, there was a collision when they stopped in mid-stage, emphasised with cymbals.
‘Lord save us!’ said Cribb. ‘Not one of these lunatic displays!’
‘Watch yerselves!’ shouted one of the performers. ‘I’m watching you!’
‘Guying the Force is just about the favourite occupation of your fair-minded British general public,’ grumbled Cribb. ‘There ain’t been a pantomime since Grimaldi without a flatfooted constable blundering about with a string of sausages. And there’s more bluebottles on the music halls than there is in the Metropolitan: Vance, Stead, Arthur Lloyd, Edward Marshall—even Gilbert and Sullivan are up to it now. Blasted scandal, it is. Home Secretary wants to look into it, in my opinon.’
‘I’m the man wot takes to pris’n
He who steals wot isn’t his’n
X yer know is my Division
Number ninety-two,’ sang P.C. Salt.
Both artistes now produced authentic police-rattles, which they sprang, to the delight of the audience.
‘We could take ’em in for having police property, Sarge,’ suggested Thackeray.
‘It ain’t the night for it,’ growled Cribb, hunched over the box-front, with his hands over his face, watching the performance between his fingers.
Another song got under way:
‘They gave us an ’elmet and a greatcoat
And armlets to wear upon our sleeve
An ’andsome tunic too
In regulation blue
But now we’ve rattled our rattles we want to leave—
All together now—But now we’ve rattled our rattles we want to leave.’
‘Damned disgrace!’ said Cribb.
‘Watch yerselves!’ shouted P.C. Battree, ‘I’m watching you!’
‘These buffoons earn more for five minutes of this rubbish than you and I would get for a week’s beat- bashing,’ continued the sergeant. ‘And here we are protecting ’em. If this pair suffer an attack, you and I are taking the long way down to the stage, Thackeray.’
Whistles from the audience greeted a pretty young woman who had joined the officers on the stage. Her dress had a certain theatricality about it, but it was her mode of walking—characterised by a singular mobility in the region of the hips—that left no-one in any doubt as to the class of person she represented. After several exaggerated backward glances, P.C.s Salt and Battree began their final chorus:
‘Poor old feet
Out on the beat
Pursuin’ the enforcement of the Law.
But you gets a saucy wink
And the offer of a drink
And that prevents yer feet from gettin’ sore—
Once more now—And that prevents yer feet from gettin’ sore!’
Then, with arch nods and pointing, to leave the audience in no doubt of their intention, they trotted off in pursuit of their assistant, shortly afterwards returning with her to take their bow.
‘At least we didn’t have to go to their aid,’ said Thackeray, conscious of the fury in Cribb’s silence.
‘If I ever meet ’em in the course of duty, they’ll need aid all right.’
The curtain descended and the limelight returned to the chairman’s table. ‘And now, my friends, after that rare entertainment, not being a temperance-observer, I shall enjoy a tipple of fizz generously subscribed by the table on my right. The show proceeds with a redoubtable display of manly vigour from that sovereign of strong men, the ’Ercules of Rotherhithe, the great Albert.’
Albert’s props were the most interesting so far. He stood like some eccentric costermonger behind a substantial platform on wheels, neatly stacked with an extraordinary array of articles: books, folded clothes, the plinth for a statue, a top-hat, flags, a picnic-hamper and three sets of bar-bells. With a nod to the conductor, a cue for the Anvil Chorus, Albert mounted his platform and stood with legs apart, chest inflated and head in profile to the auditorium, and then clasped his hands so that his biceps bobbed up like ferrets in a sack. He was wearing a one- piece costume of the type introduced by Leotard, the original Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze. Generous applause greeted this display of muscularity, so Albert climbed on to his plinth, leaned forward, positioned his legs carefully, and assumed the classic stance of the Discobolus.
‘Pose Plastique,’ explained Cribb authoritatively. ‘The man’s got a fine body. Pity about the moustache, though. Don’t look like ancient Greece to me.’
Albert now descended and progressed to a series of lifts with the bar-bells, accompanied by intermittent chords from the brass section and exhortations from the gallery. Just as the interest was threatening to flag, a novelty was introduced, in the person of an extremely stout, florid-faced woman in long white robes and a hat with red, white and blue ostrich feathers.
‘Blimey!’ shouted someone from the gallery. ‘Keep away from Albert, missus. You’ll rupture ’im.’
The lady’s contribution to the performance was soon made clear, however. While Albert ducked behind his platform to change his costume, she curtseyed and made the following announcement: ‘Now, ladies and gentlemen, in a tribute to a most distinguished member of our race, my son Albert gives his unique portrayal of the bard, Shakespeare!’
There, leaning against his plinth in the pose of the monument in Westminster Abbey, was Albert, with legs crossed, one arm resting on a pile of volumes on the plinth, the other holding an unfurled scroll. He wore breeches, doublet and cloak and a false beard. When the impact of this tableau was fully appreciated, he placed both hands on the edge of the plinth and gracefully upended himself into a slow handstand, the cloak draping itself elegantly over the back of the plinth. Then to a drum-roll and a powerful gesture from his mother’s right arm, Albert removed one of his hands from the plinth and remained poised on the other. The audience broke into open cheering. Theatres like Drury Lane and the Lyceum might have their Shakespeare; only the Grampian had him upside down on one hand!
‘Had me worried for a moment,’ admitted Cribb, when the strong man had righted himself. ‘There was the makings of a nasty little accident there. What are they doing now?’
Albert had disappeared behind the platform again for a change of costume while his mother occupied the centre of the stage with a Union Jack. To the strains of a patriotic tune, she began singing in a strong
