Mixed Magics (UK) Read online

  Carol saw that she was not going to get any sense out of him. So she said “Thank you,” to stop him shouting after her again and went the way he had pointed. It led her among a huddle of gypsy caravans. Since these all had a blurred cardboard sort of look, Carol went straight past them, knowing they must belong to the cast of thousands. She knew the caravan she wanted would look properly clear and real. And it did. It was more like a tarry black shed on wheels than a caravan, but there was real black smoke pouring out of its rusty iron chimney.

  Carol sniffed it. “Funny. It smells almost like toffee!” But she decided not to give her people any further warning. She marched up the black wooden ladder to the door and flung the door open.

  Smoke and heat and the smell of drink and toffee rolled out at her. Her people were all inside, but instead of turning politely to receive their orders as they usually did, none of them at first took any notice of her at all. Francis was sitting at the table playing cards with Martha, Paul, and Bimbo by the light of candles stuck in green bottles. Glasses of strong-smelling drink stood at each of their elbows, but most of the drink smell, to Carol’s horror, was coming from the bottle Lucy was drinking out of. Beautiful, gentle Lucy was sitting on a bunk at the back, giggling and nursing a green bottle. As far as Carol could see in the poor light, Lucy’s face looked like a gnome’s and her hair was what Mama would describe as “in tetters”. Melville was cooking at the stove near the door. Carol was ashamed to look at him. He was wearing a grubby white apron and smiling a dreamy smile as he stirred his saucepan. Anything less villainous was hard to imagine.

  “And just what,” said Carol, “do you think you’re all doing?”

  At that, Francis turned around enough for her to see that he had not shaved for days. “Shut that blesh door, can’ you!” he said irritably. It was possible he spoke that way because he had a large cigar between his teeth, but Carol feared it was more likely to be because Francis was drunk.

  She shut the door and stood in front of it with her arms folded. “I want an explanation,” she said. “I’m waiting.”

  Paul slapped down his cards and briskly pulled a pile of money toward himself. Then he took the cigar out of his boyish mouth to say, “And you can go on waiting, unless you’ve come to negotiate at last. We’re on strike.”

  “On strike!” said Carol.

  “On strike,” Paul said. “All of us. I brought the cast of thousands out straight after the last dream. We want better working conditions and a bigger slice of the cake.” He gave Carol a challenging and not very pleasant grin and put the cigar back in his mouth – a mouth that was not so boyish, now Carol looked at it closely. Paul was older than she had realised, with little cynical lines all over his face.

  “Paul’s our shop steward,” Martha said. Martha, to Carol’s surprise, was quite young, with reddish hair and a sulky, righteous look. Her voice had a bit of a whine to it when she went on. “We have our rights, you know. The conditions the cast of thousands have to live in are appalling, and it’s one dream straight after another and no free time at all for any of us. And it’s not as if we get job satisfaction, either. The rotten parts Paul and I do!”

  “Measly walk-ons,” Paul said, busy dealing out cards. “One of the things we’re protesting is being killed almost every dream. The cast of thousands gets gunned down in every final scene, and not only do they get no compensation, they have to get straight up and fight all through the next dream.”

  “’nd never allowsh ush any dthrink,” Bimbo put in. Carol could see he was very drunk. His nose was purple with it, and his white hair looked damp. “Got shick of coloured water. Had to shteal fruit from Enshanted Garden dream to make firsht wine. Make whishky now. It’sh better.”

  “It’s not as if you paid us anything,” Martha whined. “We have to take what reward we can get for our services.”

  “Then where did you get all that money?” Carol demanded, pointing to the large heap in front of Paul.

  “The Arabian treasure scene and so forth,” said Paul. “Pirates’ hoard. Most of it’s only painted paper.”

  Francis suddenly said, in a loud slurry voice, “I want recognition. I’ve been ninety-nine different heroes, but not a word of credit goes on any pillow or jar.” He banged the table. “Exploitation! That’s what it is!”

  “Yes, we all want our names on the next dream,” Paul said. “Melville, give her our list of complaints, will you?”

  “Melville’s our Strike Committee Secretary,” said Martha.

  Francis banged the table again and shouted, “Melville!” Then everyone else shouted, “MELVILLE!” until Melville finally turned round from the stove holding his saucepan in one hand and a sheet of paper in the other.

  “I didn’t want to spoil my fudge,” Melville said apologetically. He handed the paper to Carol. “There, my dear. This wasn’t my idea, but I didn’t wish to let the others down.”

  Carol, by this time, was backed against the door, more or less in tears. This dream seemed to be a nightmare. “Lucy!” she called out desperately. “Lucy, are you in this too?”

  “Don’t you disturb her,” said Martha, whom Carol was beginning to dislike very much. “Lucy’s suffered enough. She’s had her fill of parts that make her a plaything and property of men. Haven’t you, love?” she called to Lucy.

  Lucy looked up. “Nobody understands,” she said, staring mournfully at the wall. “I hate Francis. And I always have to marry him and live hap-hic-hallipy ever after.”

  This, not surprisingly, annoyed Francis. “And I hate you!” he bawled, jumping up as he shouted. The table went over with a crash, and the glasses, money, cards, and candles went with it. In the terrifying dark scramble that followed, the door somehow burst open behind Carol, and she got herself out through it as fast as she could…

  …And found herself sitting on a deck chair on the sunny terrace again. She was holding a paper in one hand, and her parasol was rolling by her feet. To her annoyance, someone had spilt a long sticky trickle of what seemed to be fudge all down her blue dress.

  “Tonino! Vieni qui!” somebody called.

  Carol looked up to find Chrestomanci trying to put together a broken deck chair in the midst of a crowd of people who were all pushing past him and hurrying away down the terrace steps. Carol could not think who the people were at first, until she caught a glimpse of Francis among them, and then Lucy, who had one hand clutched around her bottle and the other in the hand of Norman, the man Carol had first met sitting on a box. The rest of them must be the cast of thousands, she supposed. She was still trying to imagine what had happened, when Chrestomanci dropped the broken deck chair and stopped the very last person to cross the terrace.

  “Excuse me, sir,” Chrestomanci said. “Would you mind explaining a few things before you leave.”

  It was Melville, still in his cook’s apron, waving smoke away from his saucepan with one long, villainous hand and peering down at his fudge with a very doleful look on his long, villainous face. “I think it’s spoiled,” he said. “You want to know what happened? Well, I think the cast of thousands started it, around the time Lucy fell in love with Norman, so it may have been Norman’s doing to begin with. Anyway, they began complaining that they never got a chance to be real people, and Paul heard them. Paul is very ambitious, you know, and he knew, as we all did, that Francis isn’t really cut out to be a hero—”

  “No indeed. He has a weak chin,” Chrestomanci agreed.

  Carol gasped and was just about to make a protest – which would have been a rather tearful one at that moment – when she recalled that Francis’s bristly chin had indeed looked rather small and wobbly under that cigar.

  “Oh you shouldn’t judge by chins,” said Melville. “Look at mine – and I’m no more a villain than Francis is a hero. But Francis has his petulant side, and Paul played on that, with the help of Bimbo and his whisky, and Lucy was with Paul anyway because she hated being forced to wear frilly dresses and simper at Francis. She and
Norman want to take up farming. And Martha, who is a very frivolous girl to my mind, came in with them because she cannot abide having to clear up the scenery at such short notice. So then they all came to me.”

  “And you held out?” asked Chrestomanci.

  “All through The Cripple of Monte Christo and The Arabian Knight,” Melville admitted, ambling across the terrace to park his saucepan on the balustrade. “I am fond of Carol, you see, and I am quite ready to be three villains at once for her if that is what she wants. But when she started on the Fairground dream straight after The Tyrant of London Town, I had to admit that we were all being thoroughly overworked. None of us got any time to be ourselves. Dear me,” he added. “I think the cast of thousands is preparing to paint the town red.”

  Chrestomanci came and leaned on the balustrade to see. “I fear so,” he said. “What do you think makes Carol work you all so hard? Ambition?”

  There was now such a noise coming from the town that Carol could not resist getting up to look too. Large numbers of the cast of thousands had made straight for the beach. They were joyously racing into the water, pulling little wheeled bathing huts after them, or simply casting their clothes away and plunging in. This was causing quite an outcry from the regular holidaymakers. More outcries came from the main square below the casino, where the cast of thousands had flooded into all the elegant cafés, shouting for ice cream, wine, and frogs’ legs.

  “It looks rather fun,” said Melville. “No, not ambition exactly, sir. Say rather that Carol was caught up in success, and her mama was caught up with her. It is not easy to stop something when one’s mama expects one to go on and on.”

  A horse-drawn cab was now galloping along the main street, pursued by shouting, scrambling, excited people. Pursuing these was a little posse of gendarmes. This seemed to be because the white-bearded person in the cab was throwing handfuls of jewels in all directions in the most abandoned way. Arabian jewels and pirates’ treasure mostly, Carol thought. She wondered if they would turn out to be glass, or real jewels.

  “Poor Bimbo,” said Melville. “He sees himself as a sort of kingly Santa Claus these days. He has played those parts too often. I think he should retire.”

  “And what a pity your mama told your cab to wait,” Chrestomanci said to Carol. “Isn’t that Francis, Martha and Paul, there? Just going into the casino.”

  They were, too. Carol saw them waltzing arm in arm up the marble steps, three people obviously going on a spree.

  “Paul,” said Melville, “tells me he has a system to break the bank.”

  “A fairly common delusion,” said Chrestomanci.

  “But he can’t!” said Carol. “He hasn’t got any real money!” She chanced to look down as she spoke. Her diamond pendant was gone. So was her diamond brooch. Her sapphire bangles and every one of her gold ones were missing. Even the clasps of her handbag had been torn off. “They robbed me!” she cried out.

  “That would be Martha,” Melville said sadly. “Remember she picked pockets in The Tyrant of London Town.”

  “It sounds as if you owed them quite a sum in wages,” Chrestomanci said.

  “But what shall I do?” Carol wailed. “How am I going to get everyone back?”

  Melville looked worried for her. It came out as a villainous grimace, but Carol understood perfectly. Melville was sweet. Chrestomanci just looked surprised and a little bored. “You mean you want all these people back?” he said.

  Carol opened her mouth to say yes, of course she did! But she did not say it. They were having such fun. Bimbo was having the time of his life galloping through the streets throwing jewels. The people in the sea were a happy splashing mass, and waiters were hurrying about down in the square, taking orders and slapping down plates and glasses in front of the cast of thousands in the cafés. Carol just hoped they were using real money. If she turned her head, she could see that some of the cast of thousands had now got as far as the golf course, where most of them seemed to be under the impression that golf was a team game that you played rather like hockey.

  “While Carol makes up her mind,” said Chrestomanci, “what, Melville, is your personal opinion of her dreams? As one who has an inside view?”

  Melville pulled his moustache unhappily. “I was afraid you were going to ask me that,” he said. “She has tremendous talent, of course, or she couldn’t do it at all, but I do sometimes feel that she – well – she repeats herself. Put it like this: I think maybe Carol doesn’t give herself a chance to be herself any more than she gives us.”

  Melville, Carol realised, was the only one of her people she really liked. She was heartily sick of all the others. Though she had not admitted it, they had bored her for years, but she had never had time to think of anyone more interesting, because she had always been so busy getting on with the next dream. Suppose she gave them all the sack? But wouldn’t that hurt Melville’s feelings?

  “Melville,” she said anxiously, “do you enjoy being villains?”

  “My dear,” said Melville, “it’s up to you entirely, but I confess that sometimes I would like to try being someone… well… not black-hearted. Say, grey-hearted, and a little more complicated.”

  This was difficult. “If I did that,” Carol said, thinking about it, “I’d have to stop dreaming for a while and spend a time – maybe a long time – sort of getting a new outlook on people. Would you mind waiting? It might take over a year.”

  “Not at all,” said Melville. “Just call me when you need me.” And he bent over and kissed Carol’s hand, in his best and most villainous manner…

  …And Carol was once again sitting up in her deck chair. This time, however, she was rubbing her eyes, and the terrace was empty except for Chrestomanci, holding a broken deck chair, and talking in what seemed to be Italian to a skinny little boy. The boy seemed to have come up from the bathing pool. He was wearing bathing trunks and dripping water all over the paving.

  “Oh!” said Carol. “So it was only a dream really!” She noticed she must have dropped her parasol while she was asleep and reached to pick it up. Someone seemed to have trodden on it. And there was a long trickle of fudge on her dress. Then of course she looked for her brooch, her pendant, and her bangles. They were gone. Someone had torn her dress pulling the brooch off. Her eyes leaped to the balustrade and found a small burnt saucepan standing on it.

  At that, Carol jumped and ran to the balustrade, hoping to see Melville on his way down the stairs from the terrace. The stairs were empty. But she was in time to see Bimbo’s cab, surrounded by gendarmes and stopped at the end of the parade. Bimbo did not seem to be in it. It looked as if he had worked the disappearing act she had invented for him in The Cripple of Monte Christo.

  Down on the beach, crowds of the cast of thousands were coming out of the sea and lying down to sunbathe, or politely borrowing beach-balls from the other holidaymakers. She could hardly tell them from the regular tourists, in fact. Out on the golf links, the cast of thousands there was being sorted out by a man in a red blazer, and lined up to practise tee shots. Carol looked at the casino then, but there was no sign of Paul or Martha or Francis. Around the square, however, there was singing coming from the crowded cafés – steady, swelling singing, for, of course, there were several massed choirs among the cast of thousands. Carol turned and looked accusingly at Chrestomanci.

  Chrestomanci broke off his Italian conversation in order to bring the small boy over by one wet, skinny shoulder. “Tonino here,” he said, “is a rather unusual magician. He reinforces other people’s magic. When I saw the way your thoughts were going, I thought we’d better have him up to back up your decision. I suspected you might do something like this. That’s why I didn’t want any reporters. Wouldn’t you like to come down to the pool now? I’m sure Janet can lend you a swimsuit and probably a clean dress as well.”

  “Well… thank you… yes, please… but…” Carol began, when the small boy pointed to something behind her.

  “I speaka Eeng
leesh,” he said. “You droppa youra paper.”

  Carol dived around and picked it up. In beautiful sloping writing, it said:

  Carol Oneir hereby releases Francis, Lucy, Martha, Paul, and Bimbo from all further professional duties and gives the cast of thousands leave of indefinite absence. I am taking a holiday with your kind permission, and I remain

  Your servant,

  Melville.

  “Oh good!” said Carol. “Oh dear! What shall I do about Mr Ploys? And how shall I break it to Mama?”

  “I can speak to Ploys,” said Chrestomanci, “but your mama is strictly your problem, though your father, when he gets back from the casin – er, fishing – will certainly back you up.

  Dad did back Carol up some hours later, and Mama was slightly easier to deal with than usual anyway, because she was so confused at the way she had mistaken Chrestomanci’s wife for a servant. By that time, however, the main thing Carol wanted to tell Dad was that she had been pushed off the diving board sixteen times and had learned to swim two strokes – well, almost.

  THE SAGE OF THEARE

  There was a world called Theare in which Heaven was very well organised. Everything was so precisely worked out that every god knew his or her exact duties, correct prayers, right times for business, utterly exact character and unmistakable place above or below the gods.

  This was the case from Great Zond, the King of the Gods, through every god, godlet, deity, minor deity and numen, down to the most immaterial nymph. Even the invisible dragons that lived in the rivers had their invisible lines of demarcation. The universe ran like clockwork. Mankind was not always so regular, but the gods were there to set him right. It had been like this for centuries.

  So it was a breach in the very nature of things when, in the middle of the yearly Festival of Water, at which only watery deities were entitled to be present, Great Zond looked up to see Imperion, god of the sun, storming towards him down the halls of Heaven.