Nicola Barker: Clear: A Transparent Novel

And we don’t like that.

But with the advent of Blaine’s box, things have started to go crazy. Is it Blaine himself? The excitement? The fury? The awe? Whatever the root cause, people suddenly seem to feel the powerful need to generate mess. It’s Goo-ville. It’s Crap-town. There’s old fruit, rotten eggs (British poultry farmers are just loving this situation. Fuck Sky, man. We really need to start seeing the colour of their sponsorship money), and worst of all, there’s the ‘human’ element.

Now don’t get me (or Georgi) wrong: people have always pissed in corners (a bridge — any bridge — almost demands as much from any man with a working penis), but the way things are currently, it’s like the embankment is a toilet and Blaine is just the scented rim-block dangling in his disposable plastic container from the bowl at the top. It’s getting completely degenerate . People are shitting everywhere . Man, it’s Shit-o-fucking-rama down here. Huge steaming piles of the stuff, in every alcove, every crevice, every corner. And then there’s poor Georgi — with his broom, his weak hose, his little shovel — being expected to clean all this crap— your crap — up.

But here’s the best part: He doesn’t blame you .

Uh-uh .

Not at all.

He blames the hungry (and decidedly shitless) bugger in the box .

Blaine.

‘Is him ,’ Georgi gesticulates irately towards the pallid New Yorker with his broom, ‘tha’ stupid, crazy, dirty-fucky-bastar’ Jew .’

Yeah . So where the hell am I supposed to stash my sandwich wrapper?

I have an agenda. You really need to know that. I mean all this isn’t just arbitrary .

Uh- uh .

I have an agenda.

So my dad’s name — for the record (and this is pertinent; it’s the core of the thing, the nub ) — is Douglas Sinclair MacKenny, and all things being equal, he’s a pretty run-of-the mill kind of guy. He enjoys gardening, Inspector Morse , steam trains and Rugby League. He’s into trad-jazz, Michael Crichton, elasticated waists, Joanna Lumley and lychees. When he was nineteen years old he swam the English Channel. But he doesn’t swim much any more.

He runs a sub-post office in north Herefordshire (where I was born, 28 long, hard years ago — not on the counter , obviously, let’s not be that literal, eh? — his lone progeny: Adair Graham MacKenny). He’s happily (well, within reason ) married to my mum (Miriam), and he’s fundamentally a very genial, affable, easy-going creature.

( Fundamentally —so he doesn’t like black people or queers, but which underachieving 55-year-old, small-minded, Caucasian, Tory-voting cunt does? Huh ? Name me one.)

Nothing bugs him (not even the long and inexorable queue of pensioners at closing). Nothing winds him up.

Well… okay , then. So there’s this one thing…it’s a really tiny thing…and it bugs him just a little.

Is that a fair representation?

No.

Fine. Fine . So this particular thing bugs him quite a lot.

He doesn’t like it, see? It pees him off. It rings his bell. It pulls his chain. It sits — it really sits, and it presses, hard —on his buzzer.

This thing is (has always been/will always be) a source of unbelievable distress to him. It’s a thing which he loathes / fears / distrusts more than any other. This thing (if you refer to it, idly) makes him clam-up, then blanch, then shake uncontrollably. He’s virtually lethally-fucking- allergic to this thing.

Any guesses?

Wheat? Pigeons? Lichen? Jasper Carrott? Dahlias? Lambswool? Beer?

Nope.

Douglas Sinclair MacKenny hates — I said he hates —illusionists. And with a passion.

Let me tell you why.

Great Yarmouth. Nineteen fifty-nine. The height of the Summer Season. My dad, still then but a boy, is down on the beach with a large crowd of deliriously rambunctious, candy-floss-speeding, bucket-swinging, spade-waving, snotty-nosed comrades. He’s clutching sixpence which his mother has just given him. He is planning to spend this money on- deep breath now, Dad, deeeep breath- a Magic Show!

The magician or ‘illusionist’ in question is no less (and no more) a man than ‘The Great Carrazimo’. Carrazimo is (by all accounts) fairly competent at the magicianing thing. He does some nifty stuff with doves. He can pretend — very effectively — to chop off his thumb. He can throw his voice. He even (and Dad still doesn’t know how) stole some little girl’s laugh . Seriously. He nicked it (she was temporarily hoarse) and then found it again inside her sticky bag of Liquorice Allsorts.

This is all good stuff (I know you’re thinking) so why the angst?

Here’s why: at the end of his show, Carrazimo pulls a stunt which leaves everyone agog. He gets the kids to dig a hole — a deep hole — in the sand. He climbs into the hole. He then tells the kids to fill it up.

That’s right. The Great Carrazimo is intending to get himself Buried 100 Per Cent Alive.

The kids — they aren’t a bad bunch — are slightly nervous at the prospect. I mean it’s been a good show. The little girl’s laugh is back. The thumb’s on. The doves are cooing. It’s very nearly lunchtime.

But Carrazimo insists. It’s the climax of his act.

The kids still aren’t entirely convinced. ‘And here’s the thing,’ one especially ‘responsible’ (read as: ‘opportunistic’) young ‘un pipes up, ‘if you don’t come back, what’s gonna happen to the rabbit and the doves and all the rest of your stuff?’

Carrazimo grins. ‘If I don’t come back,’ he says, ‘then you can divide it among you.’

Two seconds later, Carrazimo disappears under a hail of sand.

It takes about ten minutes to bury the illusionist completely. Douglas Sinclair MacKenny has played his part — has even taken the precaution of patting the sand neat and flat on top. He’s concerned for the illusionist (yes he is), but he has one (very constant, very careful) eye already firmly affixed on the illusionist’s grand collection of magic wands. There’s a fat one (the very one he used to fix his thumb back on), and if the worst happens, Douglas Sinclair MacKenny is determined to have it.

When all the work is done, the kids sit down, en masse, and they wait.

And they wait.

Eventually (it’s now half an hour past lunch), one of the mums happens along.

‘What on earth are you all up to?’ she asks.

‘We’re waiting for Carrazimo,’ they respond.

‘Well where is he?’ she asks.

‘In the sand,’ the kids boom back.

Pause .

‘So how long’s he been under there?’ she enquires.

‘Thirty-seven bloody minutes ,’ Douglas Sinclair MacKenny yells furiously.

Another five minutes pass. By now quite a crowd has formed. One of the fathers has asked the kids to indicate precisely where the illusionist is buried. The kids are still quite cheerful at this stage (if getting a little hungry), and they happily mark out the spot.

The parents start to dig (the poignancy quotient of this scene is presumably dramatically heightened by the fact that all these men and women have borrowed their kids’ tiny shovels). The atmosphere is grave (on the surface, at least), but then- 32 seconds into the rescue operation- an unholy scrap breaks out.

It has finally dawned on the children that Carrazimo might not actually be returning to collect his stuff, and everybody wants first dibs on the things he’s left behind. Douglas Sinclair MacKenny is — in his own mind at least — now first in line to get himself that fancy fat magician’s wand. But two other boys — at least — have their greedy eyes glued on this exact-same prize.