Witch Dust Read online

  Adam was so inordinately and fiercely proud of the way in which, from humble fumblings with bunches of spring-open artificial flowers and strings of coloured scarves, he’d surged to the very pinnacle of his profession that I don’t believe he ever really stopped to think how it all came about. Neither, oddly enough, for a long while did I. After all, when you’re brought up watching your Father saw your Mother in half most nights, it’s not always easy to know what’s what, and whilst I was aware from an early age, things weren’t always quite as they seemed, it was a good few years before I put a far firmer finger on it.

  ***

  They met in the early ‘70’s, she was just eighteen and he was twenty-four. It was, they never tired of telling people, grand passion at first sight. Adopted, she’d had a rotten upbringing, knowing nothing about her natural family and, I gathered, with no urge as she reached adulthood to investigate who or where they might be. Her early years, as she recounted them, sounded like something out of Dickens with the sob factor turned up. Childless when they took her in, her adoptive parents then went on to have two, unexpected offspring of their own and, according to my Mother, there was clear distinction indeed between little orphan Ophie and their own kids. She’d run away from home when she was seventeen and had no contact since.

  She’d made her way to London with her few possessions in a pathetic bundle – Dick Whittington minus the cat – and secured a job in Liberty on Regent Street. She started as a junior in Millinery, but within a very short while, had worked her way up to saleswoman status.

  She was exceptionally successful, scoring the highest sales in her department, probably because customers fell in love with hats modelled disingenuously above her lovely face and blonde curls convinced, usually erroneously that they too could look as good. She was stepping out, at that time, with Peter Pollard in Gentlemen’s Underwear, an earnestly adenoidal young man with a larger pay packet than hers and a touching willingness to spend it. The story was, they’d gone out for supper one evening and then on to a small night-club where, as fate would have it, my Father was performing.

  He asked for a volunteer from the audience, spotted Ophelia and their glances locked across the crowded room. In an instant, he’d crossed the distance like a thing possessed, swept her close and led her transfixed, back to the small stage. He produced a bunch of flowers, several coins and a couple of doves from about her person and the rest, as they say, is history. Poor old Peter Pollard and the others in the audience might just as well not have been there, in fact probably heartily wished they weren’t – trust me, I’ve spent enough time sitting on the sidelines, watching my parents exchange heavy-lidded looks, to know just how superfluous to requirements you can feel.

  Departing retail with relief and no regrets my Mother, like a dolphin making it back to water, plunged headlong and happily into show business. Their successful stage partnership was born and so, scandalously, within nine months was I.

  When they eventually found the time between bookings, they officially tied the knot at Chelsea Register Office, she in a white crochet mini dress and full-length hooded fur cape, he in a Regency suit, sporting a flourishing Zapata moustache and flowered cravat. The photo album shows, even at that point, they’d managed to accrue a fair old smattering of celebrity friends and there, rubbing elbows with Mick and Bianca, was a younger, slimmer Murray with extravagant flares, sideburns to die for and me, sound asleep in his arms.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  From things Murray’s said or rather left unsaid, over the years, I gather the Match Made in Heaven came in the nick of time for Adam Adamovitch (previously Sydney Blomblot, but what kind of a stage name would that have been?) who, up until then, hadn’t exactly been hitting the heights. Doing the rounds of some of the less salubrious pubs and clubs, he’d had his share of raucous heckling from punters keener on socialising than on sleight of hand, and usually too far gone to recall, or indeed care, which card they’d picked. He was in desperate need of a gimmick and when my Mother turned up, hey presto she was it, and then some! From that moment on, they never looked back.

  There’s no doubt, they made a stunning couple, and the camera loved them so much it practically followed them around with its tongue hanging out, begging for more. The fact that they were married, legitimised for all ages of audience, the amusing, often slightly risqué double-entendres that became one of their trademarks without, as my Mother always stressed, the tone being lowered in any way.

  And to give them their due, they never rested on their laurels, never stood still, constantly re-inventing the act, creating ever more complicated feats of apparently life-threatening scenarios that had the audience on the edge of its seat, fingernails gnawed to the knuckle. As they moved further and deeper into the realms of illusion, their reputation grew proportionately. What Adam Adamovitch and the lovely Ophelia did today – levitating higher, vanishing faster, staying underwater longer – was studied long and hard by peers and aspirants alike, with the goal of doing it better tomorrow. My Father was fond of quoting ‘All the world’s a stage.’ and indeed to them, it always was, they were both consummate performers through and through.

  Of course, all I ever wanted was to live a life more average. Growing up as I did, with people extracting coins from ears, rabbits from hats or levitating in the living room, I absolutely adored being invited to friends’ houses, where normality was the name of the game and parents never seemed to feel the urge to ham it up over the egg sandwiches.

  Having people back to me wasn’t half as much fun. I knew full well that if Adam and Ophelia weren’t in evidence at our large Maidenhead home with its lawns sloping gently down to the river, my friends would be deeply disappointed and I’d feel I’d fallen short. However, I also knew how much worse it could be when they were there. I lost count of the number of times I was abandoned without a backward glance, in favour of entertainment of a more magical kind. I certainly couldn’t keep track of the number of occasions I stormed out in a huff to go and watch television on my own, without anyone so much as noticing I’d left the room. Whilst accepting from an early age, my parents were never going to be feet-on-the-ground folk, I did feel they could occasionally make an effort to at least hover within landing distance of sensible and remember which of us were supposed to be the grown-ups.

  It should have been no surprise I suppose, that they wouldn’t tolerate being called Mum and Dad, said it made them sound middle aged and worse – suburban. I was always told to use their names, but that didn’t feel right to me, so most of the time we compromised uneasily on Ma and Pa. They in turn had lumbered me with Serenissima, and try dealing with that when you start school with missing teeth and a resulting lisp. The name was bad enough, the icing on the cake being them explaining to all and sundry it was chosen because I was conceived in Venice – just a little more, I felt, than anyone really needed to know. As soon as I was old enough, I made a unilateral decision and insisted on the far more prosaic Sandra. I’m not proud to admit the name thing turned into an ongoing war of attrition, me Mum and Dadding them to annoy and they Serenissima-ing me back because they knew how mad it drove me.

  ***

  Because I toured for a portion of every year with my parents, both in this country and abroad, there were long periods when I was tutored on the road. I grew adept at finding small corners in which to study, whilst heated planning sessions, language to make a sailor blush and rejected props flew over my head. Unlike the succession of put-upon and faintly bewildered tutors, stringently interviewed and employed by Murray to oversee my education, I never had any problems concentrating. I was used to being surrounded by sawing and hammering as sets were created, erected and dismantled, and I loved the security and familiarity of my Mother’s Chanel No. 5, overlaid by the cigarettes and sweat of stage hands and dancers.

  Spending a lot of time as I did, observing from the wings, I was aware early of all sorts of things. I knew for example
that my Father, much as I adored him, was in truth not half as clever as he and everyone else thought he was. With the sure instinct of a child and the critical eye of one brought up in the business I also knew, but hoped he didn’t, that on his own he wasn’t actually very good. On the other hand, the lovely Ophelia, for all her blonde dizziness and addiction to her own image – neither of my parents ever passed a mirror they didn’t like – was as sharp as a tack in spotting new opportunities and innovative in her exploitation of every one of them.

  There was, I was aware, much more to my Mother, histrionics and all, than immediately met the eye and although I can clearly remember to the day when suspicion was finally confirmed, realisation had been sneaking up and clearing its throat to get my attention for quite some time.

  There’s always been for me, a definitive and clearly delineated difference between real magic which was what my parents performed on stage and all the other stuff that went on. Real magic, once you knew how it was done and had spent hours watching carpenters and mechanics sweat to get it right, was all the more seamlessly brilliant for the effort that went into it. What I labeled Funny Business, was another and far smellier kettle of fish altogether.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Our Christmases were always way-over-the-top affairs; designer decorated tree, famous-name guests and an event planner person meticulously organising everything from the first canapé to the final cracker. I should also add that for us this happened not once, but twice a year. Once in July, to be photographed for one or other of the glossies, when we all sat around sweating like pigs, dressed in suitably themed Xmas jumpers and then all over again, on the proper date. Both these occasions, naturally included a perfect chef-cooked turkey, which my prettily flushed, aproned and triumphant Mother would bear in from the kitchen to a huge round of applause – as if she’d actually had anything remotely to do with it. Oh yes indeed, so much of the time we lived in a kind of cloud cuckoo land.

  One particular year, I suppose I must have been about eleven, it was our December Christmas and my Mother opened an intricately wrapped and beribboned box, cautiously as instructed. With shrieks of delight, accompanied by even louder shrieks from the encircling guests – showbiz folk are never restful to be with – she extracted a somewhat confused, jet-black, Persian kitten, weighed down by an elaborate diamond encrusted collar, almost as big and certainly twice as heavy as she was.

  “Something precious for my precious.” Intoned my Father, for whom a humble ‘Hope you like it.’ would never have sufficed. Murray, always looking for and finding the bright side, muttered,

  “Scratch the furniture to blooming shreds that will, and don’t expect me to clear up when it craps on the carpet.” My Mother though was immediately totally enchanted, well aware just how perfectly the black sleekness of the kitten would contrast in photographs against her own flawless peaches and cream, and an instant, mutual adoration society was formed.

  Stuck, not unlike myself, with a ridiculous pedigree name, which in her case was swiftly shortened to the more useable Ink, kitten almost didn’t make it to cat, when one day she happened to spot several sparrows landing a little way away and leapt, like a mad thing, out the open front door and down the drive. Unfortunately, she was hurtling down the drive at the same time as Fred the Grocer, in his battle-scarred white van, was hurtling up.

  Accustomed as I was to my Mother’s hysterics over most things, the scream which rent the air on this occasion, was truly panic stricken and I dashed to where she stood, just in time to see the ball of black fur streak in front of the van, with fatal impact inevitable. Brakes squealed, the kitten shot vertically upwards and the van ploughed to a swerving, gravel-spraying stop beneath her rather than the other way around. I thought for one dreadful moment that she’d been hit and hurled upwards. But strangely, for a beat or two, she simply hovered in mid-air, looking more surprised than alarmed, before sinking slowly back down to the ground and making a dash for the safety of my Mother’s outstretched arms. Fred exited the van shakily, removing his tweed cap and scratching a sparsely haired head.

  “Bloody ‘ellfire and damnation.” He said, “See that, did you? Never seen a blinking cat do that before and that’s for sure.” My Mother, chiding and cooing simultaneously, had already turned back inside, so it fell to me to take an agitatedly muttering Fred, along with the fruit and veg, through to the kitchen. But he wasn’t wrong, I’d never seen a cat do that before either.

  ***

  A few months after that, there was the knife thing. For a year or so, knife-throwing had featured as part of the act. My Mother, smiling valiantly, buckled to a revolving wheel, legs and arms spread-angled would be sent whirling, while my Father – blindfolded to boot – would rapidly hurl a succession of lethally sharp knives at her. When the wheel was halted, she’d be carefully unstrapped, lifted down and escorted triumphantly away by a couple of the dancers, leaving her perfect body shape, perfectly outlined by the still quivering blades. I’d watched them rehearse and perform this to the point of boredom, and it was only by chance, that one day I happened to glance up from where I was slumped over two seats in the empty auditorium reading, while I waited for them to finish. I saw a hurtling knife suddenly pause, shiver impossibly in mid-air then fractionally alter angle, before continuing headlong to embed itself safely, centimeters from my Mother’s elegantly blushered cheek.

  I knew I wasn’t mistaken, but nobody else seemed to have noticed anything out of the ordinary. I nodded quietly to myself, wandered off to find out from Murray what time we were going to eat, and simply added what I’d seen to an oddities file which perhaps, until that point, I hadn’t realized I was compiling.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It probably wasn’t until a good couple of years after that particular incident – I must have been coming up for thirteen then – that accumulated concerns coalesced into uncomfortable confirmation. Whilst I’d always known Ophelia was out of the ordinary, it transpired she was rather farther out than I could ever have imagined.

  Murray had, as he did fairly frequently, hit the roof,

  “Are you out of your teeny tiny mind?” He’d shrieked, when my Father announced his plans to introduce a lion into the act. “…And where, may I bloody ask, are you planning to keep the frigging thing?” My Father, who usually exploded immediately Murray did, maintained for a brief while, before he lost it, a saint-like demeanor. He explained that the strict rules and regulations governing the appearance of performance animals meant there’d be a fully qualified trainer on hand at all times. Additionally, the necessary authorities had to be completely happy with the conditions under which the animal was to be kept, as well as entirely confident about safety and security.

  Murray remained as unmollified as I’d ever seen him, and there followed a great deal of shouting and gesticulating from both parties. My Father finally told Murray where about his person he could stick his old-woman worries, while Murray suggested to my Father that he might like to find similar accommodation for the lion, its bleeding trainer and its sodding cage.

  Despite all the drama and hoo-ha, my Father got his own way. The lion duly joined us on tour and from his mournful expression, viewed the whole enterprise in much the same dubious light as Murray. His trainer, Johnjoe was a tall, skinnily anaemic young man, who appeared to have outgrown himself height-wise and always looked in imminent danger of suddenly folding over in the middle. He was a bit short on conversational skills and thrown into frequent blushing incoherence, by the brevity of the costumes worn by Ma and the other girls. But he was a sweet chap, always found time to answer my numerous big cat questions and, when he wasn’t busy mucking out, was always happy to muck in.

  Languid, as we nicknamed him, although no doubt a fine specimen of lionhood, was not a stage natural and unlike my parents, didn’t perk up and perform at the first whiff of the greasepaint or roar of the crowd. His natural inclination seemed to be to lie down
and sleep a lot. This was so far from what was required, that all sorts of desperate measures had to be resorted to, including dubbing. Poor old Johnjoe was dispatched to London Zoo, armed with a tape-recorder and strict instructions not to return without some blood curdling sound-effects. These were duly played over the theatre’s sound system when the cage was rolled onstage. Sadly, Languid never really got used to that, invariably jumping out of his skin and dropping into a defensive crouch, convinced he was under attack by another lion. My Father was livid,

  “He’s nowhere near wild enough.” He yelled at a hastily convened crisis conference, “We want pacing and roaring.”

  “We want, doesn’t always get.” Muttered Murray, living dangerously as always and smug in the knowledge he’d vetoed the idea from the start. Johnjoe scratched his head and averted his eyes from a group of dancers in the skimpiest of leotards, energetically rehearsing on the other side of the stage.

  “P’raps I could give him his supper a fair old bit earlier, so’s he’s hungry again by time he comes on?”

  “Well, why didn’t you damn well say so before?” Snapped my Father. “And for God’s sake can’t you spray him with something, he stinks to high heaven.”