Shamanka (2 page)

5. Place the napkin “cup” back on the table, grab the audience's attention and smash your hand down on it.

6. Drop the real cup from your lap.

7. Show the audience there is no hole in the table and the coin is still there!

W
e have travelled back in time to 1985. We're in London, looking through the back window of a top floor flat in a crumbling house in St Peter's Square. We can't see through the front windows; they're boarded up. The panes were smashed in a fit of rage and they were never replaced. You'd think the flat was unoccupied if you looked up at it from the street – but it's not.

There is a dreadful commotion going on. The neighbours can't hear it, because there are no neighbours. A woman is screeching at Sam. The voice you can hear is Aunt Candy's but I'm afraid it's a little slurred.

“You've been practising your dirty magic tricks behind my back all along haven't you, Spam? Remove that hat! If there's a rabbit under it, I swear I'll skin you both alive!”

Aunt Candy hates magic but she loves gin. She's been drinking it for breakfast. She gets drunk because she's unhappy, but the drink doesn't make her forget; it makes her remember, and then she hates Sam even more.

Why does Aunt Candy hate her? Sam has no idea. She is a good child, grateful for a roof over her head (even if it does leak). She lives with her aunt because she has no mother and her father has disappeared to the ends of the earth – or so she's been told.

Aunt Candy is demanding to know why Sam is dressed in that
ludicrous
ringmaster's hat, that
nasty
velvet cloak and that
ridiculous
silver leotard. The leotard is baggy, partly because it belongs to Aunt Candy and partly because Sam is so thin; she has to survive on scraps. If she were properly fed, she might be pretty, but Aunt Candy couldn't stand that. She's already jealous of Sam's green eyes and her blue–black hair, which has a tantalizing streak of natural blonde.

She knocks Sam's hat off with her umbrella and pokes her in the ribs.

“I hate you,
hate
you! Did I say you could borrow my stage clothes, Spam? Take them off before I hurl. They remind me of my stupid, wanton sister.”

Sam leaps to her mother's defence.

“Why must you say such wicked things about her?”

Aunt Candy has good reason to hate Sam's mother, Christa, but she won't tell her why. She staggers into the front room, wrestles the cap off the gin and dabs some behind her ears like perfume, as if to remind herself she was glamorous once. She takes a long swig. It sounds like bath water gurgling down a plughole.

“Your mother never wanted you!” she snorts. “You were an accident, Spam. When you were born, she took one look at you and died of shame. Your own father left the country! Face it, daaahling. You're not very popular, are you?” She has told Sam many stories about her parents, none of which are the same.

“But the last time I asked, you said my father went abroad because he was an intrepid explorer. Why won't you tell me the truth, Aunt Candy?”

Aunt Candy sprawls around on the sofa.

“I was trying to spare your pain,” she sneers. “But if you want the truth, you can have it. Your father wasn't an intrepid explorer, he was a womanizer. A trickster! A back street bungler, and his name was – wait for it, because it's quite hilarious – his name was
Bingo Hall
!” She laughs until she coughs. “And here's the crunch! Your mother went looking for him in the jungle and was eaten by a crocodile –
snap, snap
! That's why we never visit her grave, may she rest in pieces!”

“You're making it up!” cries Sam.

“Oh, there, there. All right, she wasn't eaten by a cwocodile. She went to Wonga Wagga and married a cannibal so you have lots of lickle cannibal brothers and sisters.”

“Aunt Candy, you're lying.”

“There's no fooling you, Spam, is there?”

Aunt Candy has rolled onto her stomach so her head is hanging off the sofa. Her legs are doubled up behind her at such a spine-snapping angle, she's actually folded herself in half. The gin bottle is held between her toes and she is tipping alcohol into her mouth with her feet. The reason she can assume this grotesque position is because she used to be a contortionist, performing under the dubious title of Candy, The Human Cobra. Sam shakes her head in despair.

“You know what, Aunt Candy? I don't care if my brothers and sisters are cannibals. If only you'd invite them to stay, at least I'd have someone to play with.”

“Well, ha, ha. They're not coming. Your darling mummy
didn't
marry a cannibal. Auntie made it all up. Seriously – and this is the truth – your daddy murdered her and she came back as a zombie to haunt him!”

Aunt Candy slides off the sofa. Her blonde, nicotine-stained wig has slipped sideways. Her scarlet lipstick is smeared into a lopsided gash. She lurches towards Sam, eyes rolling, hands outstretched as if she is about to strangle her.

Just then, a ginger ape leaps out from behind the sofa, bares its teeth at Aunt Candy and snatches off her wig. This is Lola, Sam's pet orang-utan. If it wasn't for Lola, Sam would have died long ago. Aunt Candy clutches her head and screams.

“Get that flea-ridden beast away from me! I'll have it destroyed!”

“Lola doesn't have fleas, Aunt Candy. The only time she
ever
had fleas was after she borrowed your hairbrush, remember?”

Sam's voice is low and calm, which annoys her aunt even more. Her face turns purple. She tries to rearrange her few remaining wisps of real hair in the mirror, shrieks at her bald patch, then blunders back into the kitchen and jams a tea cosy over her head. Now she threatens Sam with a teapot.

“How
dare
you encourage that monkey to mock me!” she splutters. “I've put up with you for all these years and what thanks do I get? Rudeness and tricks! I never wanted you here!”

“So you keep telling me, Auntie. In which case, why did you take me in?”

Sam steps backwards to avoid being jabbed with the spout of the teapot. She's asked Aunt Candy this question many times before but has never had a satisfactory answer.

“Your
only
friend, the orange monkey, turned up with you on my doorstep like rubbish blown in from the street,” she snaps. “Could I shoo her away? No! She barged past me and put you to bed in my knicker drawer. She wouldn't even let me throw you out of the window. I've been stuck with you ever since.”

Sam folds her arms defiantly.

“Lola isn't a monkey and she isn't smelly. She's an ape and she's been a better mother to me than you ever have.”

This much is true. Aunt Candy showed no interest in caring for Sam when she was a baby. She worked in a night club and any money that she earned went on clothes and beauty treatments, in the hope that one day the man she loved would come back and marry her; but he never did. Meanwhile, Baby Sam had to sleep in the knicker drawer. Aunt Candy gave her no cot, no comfort and no love. I think she had none left to give.

Luckily, Lola was very maternal. She loved Sam as if she were her own baby. She fed her with a bottle, combed her silky, dark hair and knew just where to rub if she had wind. She bathed her in a washing-up bowl and carefully powdered her. She put her to bed in the knicker drawer and if she cried, she would rock her in her long, strong arms until she fell asleep. She never left Sam's side – she daren't, for fear that Aunt Candy would kill her.

Sam hardly ever cried. She was too young to realize how much she had to cry for; but on the odd occasion when she did, Lola would amuse her with magic tricks she'd learnt from her previous owner. His name will become familiar to you soon.

For now, it's enough to know that Lola could make a pebble appear from nowhere, then –
puff!
– she would make it disappear, and little Sam would gurgle with delight. Lola could make a white daisy turn into a pink one, and once she turned a frog into a raspberry bun. It was a good illusion. Lola was so silent and dextrous, the lady on the bench next to theirs (to whom the bun belonged) never saw her take it.

As Sam grew older, Lola taught her how to do these tricks for herself. She had a natural instinct for it. Making a coin disappear was child's play; she mastered it before she could walk. As a toddler, her sleight of hand was so good she could fool you into thinking a paper cup could be pushed through a solid oak table.

By the time Sam was four, she could put three silk ribbons in her mouth and when she pulled them out – abracadabra – they would be neatly knotted together. Soon, she was creating her own illusions. She fitted secret compartments into matchboxes and made magic hoops out of coat hangers. She practised for hours in front of a mirror until each trick was perfect. As she had no human company, it was her only source of amusement. Apart from Lola, magic was the one thing that made her happy.

Sadly, Sam couldn't share that happiness with Aunt Candy. She had to learn to keep her tricks up her sleeve. Once, when she was nine, Sam made the mistake of thinking she could endear herself to her aunt by showing off her magic skills and produced a baby mouse from under the lid of the butter dish.

It was a sweet mouse, a neat illusion, and the butter wasn't spoilt; but instead of greeting it with applause, Aunt Candy flew into a rage. She threw the dish and the mouse out of the window, locked Sam in the broom cupboard and made her promise never to do magic again.

If Lola hadn't found the key, she'd have been left in the cupboard all night.

From that day forward, Sam only dared to practise magic in secret; her aunt had no idea what an expert she'd become until just now.

Earlier today, Aunt Candy had announced that she was going to the pub and wouldn't be back before six. Thinking she had the house to herself, Sam had gone into Aunt Candy's bedroom and borrowed her old circus clothes. Completing the outfit with a ringmaster's hat she found in the back of the wardrobe, Sam had covered the kitchen table with a sparkly cloth and performed her latest illusions in front of Lola.

She was just coming to the finale when Aunt Candy came home early, caught her in the act and became hysterical. That's when we arrived and began to watch them through the window.

Lola has been shut in the kitchen. Sam is backing away from the teapot, and wigless, drunken Aunt Candy is forcing her to march backwards up the stairs that lead to the attic.

“I told you, no magic! No magic … ever!”

She kicks the attic door open and pushes Sam inside.

“
Please
… Let me out! I didn't mean any harm,” Sam pleads.

Aunt Candy is merciless. She locks the door, puts the key down her cleavage and goes back to the pub.

Sam is left alone in the dark.