Shamanka Part 3

Miss Langley panics. "Miss Khaan, I really don't think that's appropria-"

A very dead sparrow drops out of Sam's pocket onto the carpet. Another second and she'd have managed to hide it behind a cus.h.i.+on, but the attack was too sudden.

"See?" shrieks Aunt Candy. "There was no resurrection! The brat pocketed the dead bird and released a live one hidden in her blazer. Cane her, Miss Looney!"

"Oh, no, we don't have a cane."

Aunt Candy looks very disappointed. "Don't have a cane? Well, what do you have? Got any thumbscrews?"

Miss Langley shakes her head.

"No thumbscrews?" yells Candy, "No wonder there's no discipline! And I have to say the hygiene in this school is appalling, Miss Looney."

"The hygiene?"

"There is a dead bird on your rug. I'm not keeping my niece at this filthy, feeble school a day longer. Come, Spam! We're leaving."

"But, Aunt Candy, I don't want to leave."

Despite Miss Langley's pleas for calm, Aunt Candy grabs Sam's hand and drags her outside. Then she sits on the bike, puts her feet on the handle bars and refuses to pedal. "You can push me all the way home, Spam, then you can have your surprise."

It is Sam's birthday today. The occasion is never celebrated, but today is her thirteenth. Ever the optimist, she wonders if Aunt Candy might have bought her a card for once. Or a small gift. Or baked her a cake.

But what are the chances of that happening?

HOW TO SPOT A LIAR.

If someone is lying, their body language is sure to give them away. Here's how.

1. They avoid eye contact.

2. They touch their face, throat and mouth a lot.

3. They scratch their nose or behind their ear.

4. They wear a false smile (if it's a real smile, the eyes become squished).

5. If they say, "I love it!" after receiving a gift and only smile after they've said it, they're lying.

6. A guilty person gets defensive.

7. A liar may unconsciously place objects (books, coffee cup, etc.) between themselves and you.

8. A liar uses your last words to answer questions: "Did you hit John?" "No, I did not hit John."

9. A guilty person may speak too much and add unnecessary details to convince you.

10. If you think someone's lying, change the subject. They'll instantly relax, whereas an innocent person will want to go back to the previous subject.

EFFIE RAY.

Lola has gone. Sam searches everywhere, but an orang-utan isn't easy to lose. She isn't on the roof or in the attic or sleeping in the trees of the communal gardens in St Peter's Square. Sam calls her name over and over, but she doesn't come.

"Surprise!" snorts Aunt Candy. "Lola's not here. She's never coming back. Get over it."

Sam's stomach sinks. Her eyes p.r.i.c.kle with tears but she refuses to let them fall. "What have you done with her?"

Aunt Candy is walking around on all fours with her back arched like a demented crab.

"I've sent her to a lovely zoo. You can't keep an orang-utan in a little flat, it's cruel. An orang-utan needs to be with its hairy friends, doing monkey things."

"Which zoo? Tell me which zoo!"

Aunt Candy raises her eyebrows. "What's it called now? Let me think... Ah, I remember. It's The Zoo for Nosy Parkers."

It doesn't take an expert in body language to know that Aunt Candy is lying. Sam feels like kicking her feet out from under her, but she doesn't; she's not a violent person.

"Why did you get rid of her? Just to hurt me?"

Aunt Candy looks mortally offended. "I got rid of her because she's been teaching you tricks I hate tricks. I've asked you not to do them, but you carry on behind my back and I won't have it."

"But why do you hate magic so much?"

Aunt Candy won't answer, so Sam decides to risk everything and mentions the F-word.

"Is it to do with my father, the magician?"

She guesses it is, because suddenly Aunt Candy's knees buckle. She collapses, cracks her head on the floor and lies there cackling hysterically.

"Magician? Your father isn't a magician. No, no, no. Whatever gave you that idea? He's Bingo Hall. He's an explorer. A murderer. A vicar ... a postman."

"No, he isn't; he's the Dark Prince of Tabuh."

At the mention of his name, Aunt Candy starts frothing at the mouth. "No, no! He's a grave digger, a dustman, a donkey!" She flips onto her stomach and lashes out like a serpent. "How d'you know he's the Dark Prince? Who told you, WHO TOLD YOU?"

It would be so easy for Sam to admit that she's found the witch doctor's notebook and seen her father's photo, but she wants to keep that to herself.

"I'm psychic," she says. "I dreamt about my father. He has a blond streak, just like mine, doesn't he, Aunt Candy? I know I'm right. Now, where's Lola? If you lie to me, I'll know. My dreams will tell me where she is." Sam is exaggerating about her dreams. They won't tell her where Lola is but she wants Aunt Candy to think they will, to freak her out. She hopes it will make her confess and it does.

"All right, you meddling little runt!" she snaps. "I didn't put your stupid ginger friend in a zoo. I sent her to a laboratory where she will help the nice scientists with their experiments."

"But they'll put her in a cage they'll hurt her! How could you, Aunt Candy?"

"Easy! I phoned the laboratory and a man collected her in an armoured van."

Lola would never go anywhere with a stranger, but unfortunately Aunt Candy knew that. "I slipped a tablet into her banana," she confesses. "She was taken away on a stretcher. Looked ever so peaceful."

Sam is not a violent person but she's so upset about Lola, she grabs Aunt Candy by the ears and tries to shake the truth out of her.

"Which laboratory. Where is it?!"

Aunt Candy's chins wobble like a turkey wattle. She seizes Sam's lapels and wrestles her to the ground. There's a lot of slapping and kicking, and in the struggle, her wig slips off and a strand of her real hair ravels round one of Sam's blazer b.u.t.tons. As Sam struggles to her knees, the trapped hair is ripped out of Aunt Candy's scalp. She clutches her head, screams; then, in a pincer movement, s.n.a.t.c.hes hold of Sam's ponytail and drags her towards the boxroom.

"So you like hair-pulling, do you Spam? I like hair-pulling. Come, brat! Into your poky room and stay there!" She pulls the door shut and shoves a chair under the handle so Sam can't escape. "Your cheeky, chimpy chum can't save you now! You can stay there until you are a good brat, which will be ... never!"

Sam hammers on the door. "Let me out! Let me out!" But it's useless. Aunt Candy storms off, slumps on the sofa and sips gin through a straw the width of a hosepipe.

Never one to sit there doing nothing, Sam has opened the witch doctor's notebook and is reading how to make a doll in the shape of her worst enemy. According to the pictures, the doll can be used to inflict anything from measles to murder on the person it represents. Mercifully, all Sam wants to do is prevent Aunt Candy from following her; she's decided to run away. She must rescue Lola, then find her father. She wants to ask him why he abandoned her as a baby. If he had good reason and is a good man, she hopes he'll give her a home. If he is bad or dead, she will mourn him and move on; perhaps she'll find some other relative willing to adopt her.

She's made a scary model of Aunt Candy from sticky putty sc.r.a.ped out of the window. For the spell to work, the book says she must incorporate her enemy's nails or hair into the doll. Aunt Candy's nails are false but she's unwillingly donated some hair. Sam unwinds it from her blazer b.u.t.ton and uses it to make a topknot which she pins to the doll's head. To stop Aunt Candy following her, she follows the instructions to the letter and binds the doll's ankles together with cotton. Then she sits the doll on the sill and packs her rucksack.

Before packing the goatskin pouch, Sam takes out the locket and smiles at the photo of the woman carrying the baby boy on her hip. If the boy is the Dark Prince, she must be his mother which means she's Sam's grandmother. She ties the locket around her neck and says a final goodbye to her home in St Peter's Square. There's nothing to keep her here, but even so it's a wrench it's all she's ever known. Sometimes, no matter how bad things are, we stick with what we know because it's less frightening than what we don't. But there's no hope for her or Lola if she stays.

She puts on the ringmaster's hat and gathers a few tricks. If she needs money, she can always perform illusions on a street corner somewhere. People will pay to see magic. Then she opens her bedroom window and climbs out. As she runs across the roof, some of the tiles clatter and smash on the pavement below. Aunt Candy tries to go after Sam, but she can't move her feet; her ankles appear to be glued together and she falls face down on the rug.

Is her temporary paralysis the effect of the witch doctor's doll or is it the first symptoms of a frozen cartilage, something many contortionists suffer from in their later years? It is not for me to say, but by the time it wears off if it wears off it will be too late for her to follow Sam. She has lost her and she is too insane, too drunk, to try and find her.

Aunt Candy bursts into tears; it wasn't meant to be like this. If only Sam had been her child, she could have loved her, would have loved her. She did have a heart once.

By now, Sam is at Stamford Brook tube station. She's dumped Aunt Candy's bike and she's looking at the map, trying to figure out how to get to St Pancras so that she can catch the overground train to St Albans. Why does she want to go there? To visit a certain Mrs Reafy.

Sam has never met Mrs Reafy, but while she was locked in her room, she studied the witch doctor's list again, wondering idly if any of the people on it could help her find Lola or her father. The more she studied it, the more Mrs Reafy's name leapt off the page. As Sam touched it, her hand was thrown aside. It gave her an electric shock and when, for some reason, the room filled with the smell of boiling jam, she felt certain the witch doctor was trying to tell her something and found herself talking to him out loud.

"So, Grandpa, I take it I should visit this lady? I wish your handwriting was clearer. Does she live in St Aubins or St Albans? Oh, well, I'll just have to look her up in a phone book."

Returning to his list, she'd noticed a portrait next to Mrs Reafy's name, depicting a wild-haired woman swinging a potato or possibly a pendulum over a diamond buried in the sand. From this drawing, Sam guessed that Mrs Reafy was skilled at locating missing objects, in which case she might be able to find lost apes and absent fathers. It was a long shot, but as she didn't have a shorter one, she planned to go and see her.

Back to now. Sam is on the tube and she's been pa.s.sing the time by practising coin tricks, making them appear and disappear. Now she must change onto the Piccadilly Line which she does with no trouble at all. She's travelling without a ticket but it's easy to fool the inspector with an old one she found on the floor; she's been taught sleight of hand by a gifted orang-utan after all.

Sam sits on the only seat available in the carriage, opposite an old lady who keeps staring at her hat. Sam smiles briefly then averts her eyes, hoping to be left alone; but the old lady pokes her with a walking stick and pipes up.

"Don't I know you, dear? You look so familiar."

Sam doesn't know the woman but she recognizes her walking stick. Where had she seen it before? The handle has a monkey's head carved into it.

"It was my grandfather's," says the old lady. "Monkeys aren't to everybody's taste, but I've always had a soft spot for our close relatives."

"Me too," says Sam. "I had a pet orang-utan. She was like a mother to me."

The old lady purses her lips. "Really? You don't look like you were brought up by an orang-utan. You have quite nice manners for a child."

"Lola had perfect manners," says Sam, wistfully.

The old lady puts her head on one side. "Had? Don't you have her any more? What happened, did she pa.s.s away?"

Who knows why it's so easy to pour out your life story to strangers on trains, but it is. In less time than it takes to write down, Sam tells the woman that she's run away from home to look for Lola and that she's off to St Albans to see if Mrs Reafy can find her.

"You won't get to St Albans today," says the old lady. "No trains until tomorrow. There's a strike." She suggests that Sam goes home to her parents. Sam tells her that's out of the question.

"My mother's dead and my father's done a disappearing act; he's a magician, you know."

"A magician?" The old lady rolls the word around in her mouth like a humbug. "I thought your father might have been a ringmaster, judging by your hat. There again, only a fool would judge a person by their hat. It's what goes on under it that's important." She prods Sam's seat with her stick.

"I sat opposite a magician once on this train, in this same compartment. I'll never forget him. His magician's outfit was far too big, but he was so fit and young and handsome, he took my breath away; either that or I was allergic to his rabbit."

"He had a rabbit?"

The old lady shrugs. "Rabbits, doves...? I'm guessing. Whatever he had in his trunk, it was alive and fidgeting." She sighs deeply. "He spoke to me, my magician. He had a voice like melting chocolate. All the men on the train hated him; he made their shoulders look narrow and their hair look thin."

"Did he mention his name?" asks Sam.

"No, dear. He just said it was his first time in London and asked if I knew a good place for a penniless magician to perform. I suggested Covent Garden."

"Why?"

"Have you never been? There are fire-eaters, mime artists, all manner of entertainers; it's famous for them. He took my advice and went there. I often wonder what happened to him."

Covent Garden is the next stop. Given that there's no chance of making it to Mrs Reafy's today, Sam decides to get out. Maybe one of the street performers knows her father. The old lady nods and smiles. "Even if no one's heard of him, you'll while away a pleasant afternoon."

Sam shakes her hand. "Thanks, Mrs...? I'm sorry, I don't know your name."

"That's because I didn't tell it to you, Sam. But since you ask, it's Effie Ray. Quickly or you'll miss your stop."

Sam waves goodbye. It's only when she's in the lift that she realizes Effie Ray knew her name but how? She's sure she didn't tell her. But it's so easy to forget exactly what we've said to complete strangers.

THE MAGIC SUGAR CUBE.