Rosie Thomas - The Illusionists

‘What’s this?’ the dwarf sniggered.

Devil preened. He wore a suit of red cloth, cut to fit so snugly that it might have been a second skin.

‘Ah, my performance costume? It is for a trick called the Infernal Flames. Tonight at Prewett’s they were begging for more.’ This was not strictly true, but Devil was always good at reinterpreting reality in his own favour. ‘But for our grand opening at the Palmyra we will do far better than Jacko Grady has bargained for.’

They turned to their work. The cabinet interior was empty except for a double shelf. Tonight’s work was to line all the inside surfaces with a seamless layer of jet-black velvet. Devil undid a draper’s brown-paper package and smoothed a bolt of fabric on a swept circle of floor. He took a tailor’s tape and called out the measurements in feet and inches and Carlo pencilled them on a sheet of paper. Each measurement was taken twice, to ensure accuracy. The velvet had been expensive to buy and none of Devil’s techniques of persuasion had achieved even a pennyworth of discount. Carlo set to with a pair of shears. He was a dextrous worker and the first neat rectangle was soon cut to the precise size. Devil had applied brush and glue to the cabinet wall and with some cursing and arguing they succeeded in sticking the light-absorbing material in place.

Halfway through the task they stood back to gauge the effect. The finished walls of the box seemed to melt into black space. Even Carlo the perfectionist was pleased.

‘I have some more good news,’ Devil announced. ‘Tomorrow your head will be ready. I am to collect it after we leave here.’

‘At last. So we must begin to work up the beheading. I’ll be needing a suit of tall clothing.’

Devil sighed. There was a deal of investing to be done before any return could be hoped for, but still his confidence held.

Devil and Carlo together had visited the wax-modelling studio of Mr Jasper Button in Camden Town, and Carlo had made his way there alone on three subsequent occasions. He had sat patient and motionless on a stool, with the smells of warm wax and linseed oil and turpentine all round him, while the modeller built up sub-layers and then sculpted pellets of wax over a wire frame. On the last visit the modeller had sorted through a basket filled with plaited hanks of cut human hair, holding up one specimen after another next to Carlo’s head and muttering to himself as he searched for the best match. He ran his fingers through the dwarf’s abundant locks and pulled at the sprouting tufts of his eyebrows.

‘Where does it all come from?’ Carlo had asked.

‘Plenty of people hereabouts are glad to sell the hair off their heads for a shilling or two.’ Jasper held up a long plait of rich copper-gold. ‘This one belonged to a woman who knew that all her youth and loveliness shone out of it, but the day came when she had nothing else to sell. Her hair was just the start of it.’ He dropped the plait into the basket again.

‘If this was quality work, I’d be using human hair on you. See? This is the closest for colour and texture.’ He brandished a salt-and-pepper bunch next to the dwarf’s face and Carlo twisted away from it in disgust. ‘Devil Wix won’t pay for that, of course. You and your model will be making do with an identical pair of horsehair wigs. What are you supposed to be? The good philosopher, isn’t it? Maybe I’ll be generous to you both and give you your eyebrows in real hair.’

Carlo stared at the egg-bald wax head on its stand. The coffin maker’s was creepy enough, but this shadowy place deep in the wrecked streets surrounding the railway yards more than matched it. There was a box containing dozens of glass eyes on the floor at his feet, all unwinking and all fixed on him.

‘You and Wix know each other from back when?’

The other held up a loop of wire, measuring by eye the breadth of skin between Carlo’s brows.

‘A long time.’

No more was forthcoming.

Without meeting the gaze of the glass eyes Carlo tried another topic on the modeller. ‘Odd sort of a job you do, wouldn’t you say?’

Jasper gave him a contemptuous glance. ‘My waxwork of Miss Nellie Bromley in Trial by Jury is the favourite figure in the Baker Street exhibition. I’d not call my artistic work odd. Not by comparison with your own, for example.’

Carlo scowled but said nothing. After that they had posed and modelled in silence.

After a long night at the coffin maker’s Devil walked up from Holborn to Euston and thence along the sooty roads that led to Camden Town. All along the way rough tent encampments lay beside the railway lines and under the arches and bridges. The men, women and children who existed here were black-faced and their ragged clothes were black, as were the heaps of brick rubble and even the dead leaves hanging on the few weak trees. Black smoke billowed from cooking fires and smouldering brick kilns, and the occasional threatening figure lurched out of this murk and mumbled at him. By shrinking inwardly Devil made himself seem smaller and darker too, and he passed through these places without difficulty.

By the time he rattled the latch of the studio door Jasper Button was already at work.

‘Jas? You there?’

‘Where else would I be?’

‘I’d say anywhere you could be, if only you had the choice.’

Jasper ignored him. The streets outside might be warrens of decrepit houses and belching chimneys and gaunt sheds but his studio was snug enough. A blanket hung over the doorway to keep in the warmth, there was a coal fire in a narrow little grate and a black kettle on the hob.

‘You want some tea?’

‘You don’t have anything stronger?’

It was a question that didn’t expect an answer. Jasper Button never touched a drop, and given what had happened to his mother and father Devil understood why not. The modeller warmed an earthenware teapot and lifted the kettle using a knitted potholder.

Devil was stalking the bald wax head, examining it from every angle.

‘What do you think?’ Jasper was eager for Devil’s approval. More than a decade ago, the two of them had played together up in the green fields and lanes surrounding the village of Stanmore. Devil had been the ringleader in those days, the admired and feared chief of a band of boys who had in common their rebelliousness and their longing for first-hand experience of the world they could see from the top of Stanmore Hill.

Devil pretended to consider. ‘I think you have achieved a reasonable likeness.’

‘Go to hell. The head’s not for sale, then.’

‘Poor Jas. What will you do with it, in that case?’

‘I’ll exhibit it. There’s always an audience in the Chamber of Horrors.’

‘True enough. Let’s have a look.’

Jasper lifted the head off the stand and turned it upside down to reveal a meticulously gory cross-section of severed bone, muscle and artery. Devil whistled.

‘I say. That’s very pretty. Is that what it really looks like?’

‘Like enough,’ Jasper said brusquely. ‘Enough to satisfy your tavern audiences, at any rate. If I decide to let you have it, that is. I rather liked your midget friend, so I might just keep his likeness beside me for sentimental reasons.’

‘I expect you will feel even more sentimental about two sovereigns, won’t you?’ He put two fingers into the pocket of his waistcoat where the naked end of his watch chain rested.

‘Let’s see the colour of them,’ Jasper insisted, knowing his friend too well.

The money and the model were exchanged and Devil stowed the waxen version of Carlo in a bag with his scarlet stage costume. Once the transaction was complete he was able to give due praise.

‘You’re a magician, Jas, you know, in your own way. Not in my league of course, but it’s a decent skill. Are you going to pour that tea or leave it to stew?’