The bill-topper was the ventriloquist, the one I'd come to see, but he turned out to be the sort I don't like: the kind with a walking figure.
As the floods went up he was leaning on the figure, or the figure was leaning on him. It was an English Johnny, or Champagne Charlie. You could tell by the tailcoat and high collar. The head was weird: round, white and lumpy, like the moon or some great fungus, and the grey eyes seemed to be sliding to the side, as if the figure was sad and ashamed at having a perfectly round head. The ventriloquist was also got up like a toff: frock coat and top hat. He was breathing deeply, trying to get a breath in the heat like all of us, and preparing for the walk. The doll, of course, was not breathing at all. Any sort of weather was nothing in his way.
The walk started, and as usual a great cheer went up at the same time as the walking music started up. It was as if a famous cripple had got to his feet and taken his first steps in years. The ventriloquist's left hand was at the figure's back, and he was working the levers that swung the legs. The figure moved by a forward jerk of the left leg, which woke up the right one, and brought it swinging along behind, and the left arm rode up towards the chest every time this happened. The doll's right arm was in the hands of the ventriloquist.
They were heading for two chairs half involved in darkness in the middle of the stage, and you could see that disaster beckoned because the ventriloquist's legs (which were shaking) and the legs of the figure were moving further and further apart, so the two of them were starting to make the shape of an A.
In walking ventriloquism, the figures were always the Johnny or Champagne Charlie sorts, so that their funny walks could be put down to them being cut. It was all so samey, but there was an extra sort of desperation with this pair, and I really wanted them to get to the chairs without a collapse.
Part of the trouble was that the ventriloquist wasn't such a great hand at walking himself. He was a big fellow, but trembly from nerves. At one moment he lost control of the figure's head, which swung from left to right, as if saying:
No, I will not go on with this. But they did reach the chair, and sat down to great applause. The ventriloquist beamed out at the audience. He had a red face, shining with sweat, a wide grey moustache held out by wax, and a sharp, pointed beard, the two of them together making a cross on the lower part of his face. He looked so completely jiggered that really you did not want him to have to do any more work. But he presently produced a cigar and put it in the figure's mouth, saying, very loud, 'Well here we are at the eye doctor's!'
While everyone took that in, and puzzled over it maybe, and the worrit next to me continued with his infernal fidgeting, the ventriloquist produced from his waistcoat a Wind Vesta, and saying, 'A light of course, we must have a light,' he lit the figure's cigar.
Two things now happened that brought more applause: the lights came up to show a line of figures on seats, stretching away to the side of the ventriloquist and the figure, which was now shooting out puffs of smoke from its mouth. The other dolls in the row were an old lady, a rustic type, a darkie and a costermonger. One was moving: the old lady. Her head rocked up and down, as if she was saying: Well, here we are but we must just make the best of it.
I wondered whether folk were clapping because they thought it was good or bad, because it was bad, shocking bad. If you were a ventriloquist you ought to be funny – that was the only way you could get away with it. I had seen no ends of funny ones down in London, but they were mainly the fellows with the knee figures: schoolboy, little Johnny, Jack Tar. But it was always funny business, with the figure saucing the man, instead of this slow, exhibition stuff.
The ventriloquist took the cigar from the figure's mouth, and the figure said something that I worked out was: 'Can we speak in confidence?'
The ventriloquist looked along the row, and, looking ahead again, said: 'I doubt it, you know.'
I watched the nodding head of the old woman, which ticked like a clock, and watched the orchestra sweat as my own head clock ticked.
The ventriloquist was saying, 'Well, my vision is perfect, how about yours?'
It struck me that at this rate it could be as much as ten minutes before the end, and I couldn't take it any more. I was far too hot, and after the conversation with the socialist I'd been quite unable to put away thoughts of the stone on the line.
I stood up and walked out into the foyer, which was a red and gold circle of bars so that I was surrounded by barmen, who were all lining up glasses, waiting for the rush that would come at the end. I picked out one at random and walked over to him feeling strange, with my boots sinking into the carpet. I asked for a glass of water, and he said: 'You look jiggered, mate.' I told him I'd had quite a few days of it. He said, 'How's that then?' and I said, 'Well, I was in a train smash for one thing.'
I told him about the stone on the line, and the death of Margaret Dyson, but the barman wasn't interested in her: 'You, though,' he said, 'you were on the front of the engine, and you weren't hurt even a bit?'
'Well, no.'
'Cor,' he said, 'You're all luck, you are.'
This struck me as the wrong way of looking at things, and made me feel worse about Margaret Dyson. I heard a noise behind me, and was aware that all the barmen in the circle had got hold of the story now and were leaning forward and listening.
'I bet you were shitting yoursen,' said one of them.
'How did the stone get there, then?' one of them called out.
'Put there,' I said.
'You suspect… a spot of mischief, then, do you?' asked the same fellow again.
'I reckon it was socialists,' I said, 'socialists or anarchists who've got a down on excursions, because they're put up by the bosses… So the stone might have been put there as a sort of warning to the railway company.'
'Well, that's all fairly choice,' said one of the barmen. Another said, 'Anarchists,' very slowly, as if he was trying out the word for size.
Just then I felt extra heat and the ventriloquist was standing right next to me. It was powerful strange to see that marvellous beard and 'tache at large in the real world.
My barman handed him a glass of something mustardy coloured, and nothing was said. The ventriloquist was red, shining with sweat, and panting as if he'd run a mile: he was a fellow not meant to be seen at close quarters. He began to drink the mustardy stuff, whilst looking at nothing. He was bigger than he'd looked on stage, especially in his upper half: he looked cut out for something more than ventriloquism.
'A warning by anarchists!' said one of the barmen, slow on the uptake, and the ventriloquist continued to drink and to look at nothing, but the nothing had now moved further into the distance.
The ventriloquist finished his drink, turned, and disappeared through a door between two of the bars.
'I thought that bloke was on stage just now,' I said to my barman.
'He generally takes a little summat just about now for his vocal organ.'
'He gets through heaps of lozenges, you know,' said another of the barmen.
'But that was whisky and honey he had just there,' said the first.
'What's he doing out here, though?' I said.
'There's a bit where he leaves the dolls to it,' said the first barman. 'They're all waiting there at the hopticians -' (he said the word very carefully, and put an 'h' in front of it) '- and they start up with these coughing goes. First one, then the whole lot.'
'How do they cough if he's not there?'
'The movements are all worked from off by the fellow does the props. Rubber tubes and air valves and all that carry on. And property's mate, junior properties – he does the coughing.'
'While Monsieur Maurice drops in here for his little brain duster,' put in another of the barmen.