Neil Gaiman - QUEEN OF KNIVES

The reappearance of the lady is a matter of individual taste. - WILL GOLDSTON, TRICKS AND ILLUSIONS

When I was a boy, from time to time, I stayed with my grandparents (old people: I knew they were old - chocolates in their house remained uneaten until I came to stay, this, then, was aging).

My grandfather always made breakfast at sunup: a pot of tea, for her and him and me, some toast and marmalade (the Silver Shred and the Gold). Lunch and dinner, those were my grandmother's to make, the kitchen was again her domain, all the pans and spoons, the mincer, all the whisks and knives, her loyal subjects.

She would prepare the food with them, singing her little songs:

Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do,

or sometimes,

You made me love you, I didn't want to do it, I didn't want to do it.

She had no voice, not one to speak of.

Business was very slow.

My grandfather spent his days at the top of the house, in his tiny darkroom where I was not permitted to go, bringing out paper faces from the darkness, the cheerless smiles of other people's holidays.

My grandmother would take me for gray walks along the promenade.

Mostly I would explore the small wet grassy space behind the house, the blackberry brambles, and the garden shed.

It was a hard week for my grandparents forced to entertain a wide-eyed boy-child, so one night they took me to the King's Theatre. The King's . . .

Variety!

The lights went down, red curtains rose.

A popular comedian of the day came on, stammered out his name (his catchphrase), pulled out a sheet of glass, and stood half-behind it, raising the arm and leg that we could see; reflected, he seemed to fly - it was his trademark, so we all laughed and cheered. He told a joke or two, quite badly. His haplessness, his awkwardness, these were what we had come to see.

Bemused and balding and bespectacled, he reminded me a little of my grandfather.

And then the comedian was done.

Some ladies danced all legs across the stage.

A singer sang a song I didn't know.

The audience were old people, like my grandparents, tired and retired, all of them laughing and applauding.

In the interval my grandfather queued for a choc ice and a couple of tubs.

We ate our ices as the lights went down.

The SAFETY CURTAIN rose, and then the real curtain.

The ladies danced across the stage again, and then the thunder rolled, the smoke went puff, a conjurer appeared and bowed. We clapped.

The lady walked on, smiling from the wings: glittered. Shimmered. Smiled.

We looked at her, and in that moment flowers grew, and silks and pennants tumbled from his fingertips.

The flags of all nations, said my grandfather, nudging me.

They were up his sleeve.

Since he was a young man (I could not imagine him as a child), my grandfather had been, by his own admission, one of the people who knew how things worked.

He had built his own television, my grandmother told me, when they were first married; it was enormous, though the screen was small.

This was in the days before television programs; they watched it, though, unsure whether it was people or ghosts they were seeing.

He had a patent, too, for something he invented, but it was never manufactured.

Stood for the local council, but he came in third.

He could repair a shaver or a wireless, develop your film, or build a house for dolls.

(The doll's house was my mother's. We still had it at my house; shabby and old, it sat out in the grass, all rained-on and forgot.)

The glitter lady wheeled on a box.

The box was tall: grown-up-person-sized and black.

She opened up the front.

They turned it round and banged upon the back.

The lady stepped inside, still smiling.

The magician closed the door on her.

When it was opened, she had gone.

He bowed.

Mirrors, explained my grandfather. She's really still inside.

At a gesture, the box collapsed to matchwood.

A trapdoor, assured my grandfather;

Grandma hissed him silent.

The magician smiled, his teeth were small and crowded; he walked, slowly, out into the audience.

He pointed to my grandmother, he bowed.

A Middle European bow, and invited her to join him on the stage.

The other people clapped and cheered.

My grandmother demurred. I was so close to the magician that I could smell his aftershave and whispered "Me, oh, me . . ." But still, he reached his long fingers for my grandmother.

Pearl, go on up, said my grandfather. Go with the man.

My grandmother must have been, what? Sixty, then?

She had just stopped smoking,

was trying to lose some weight. She was proudest of her teeth, which, though tobacco-stained, were all her own.

My grandfather had lost his, as a youth, riding his bicycle; he had the bright idea to hold on to a bus to pick up speed.

The bus had turned, and Grandpa kissed the road.

She chewed hard licorice, watching TV at night, or sucked hard caramels, perhaps to make him wrong.

She stood up, then, a little slowly.

Put down the paper tub half-full of ice cream, the little wooden spoon - went down the aisle, and up the steps.

And on the stage.

The conjurer applauded her once more - A good sport. That was what she was. A sport.

Another glittering woman came from the wings, bringing another box - This one was red.

That's her, nodded my grandfather, the one who vanished off before. You see? That's her.

Perhaps it was. All I could see was a woman who sparkled, standing next to my grandmother (who fiddled with her pearls and looked embarrassed).

The lady smiled and faced us, then she froze, a statue, or a window mannequin.

The magician pulled the box, with ease, down to the front of stage, where my grandmother waited.

A moment or so of chitchat: where she was from, her name, that kind of thing.

They'd never met before? She shook her head.

The magician opened the door, my grandmother stepped in.

Perhaps it's not the same one, admitted my grandfather, on reflection, I think she had darker hair, the other girl.

I didn't know.

I was proud of my grandmother, but also embarrassed, hoping she'd do nothing to make me squirm, that she wouldn't sing one of her songs.

She walked into the box. They shut the door.

He opened a compartment at the top, a little door. We saw my grandmother's face. Pearl? Are you all right, Pearl?

My grandmother smiled and nodded.

The magician closed the door.

The lady gave him a long thin case, so he opened it. Took out a sword and rammed it through the box.

And then another, and another, and my grandfather chuckled and explained, The blade slides in the hilt, and then a fake slides out the other side.

Then he produced a sheet of metal, which he slid into the box half the way up.

It cut the thing in half. The two of them, the woman and the man, lifted the top half of the box up and off, and put it on the stage, with half my grandma in.

The top half.

He opened up the little door again, for a moment, My grandmother's face beamed at us, trustingly.

When he closed the door before, she went down a trapdoor, and now she's standing halfway up, my grandfather confided.

She'll tell us how it's done when it's all over.

I wanted him to stop talking: I needed the magic.

Two knives now, through the half-a-box, at neck height.

Are you there, Pearl? asked the magician. Let us know - do you know any songs?

My grandmother sang Daisy, Daisy.

He picked up the part of the box, with the little door in it - the head part - and he walked about, and she sang Daisy, Daisy, first at one side of the stage, then at the other.

That's him, said my grandfather, and he's throwing his voice.

It sounds like Grandma, I said.

Of course it does, he said. Of course it does.

He's good, he said. He's good. He's very good.

The conjuror opened up the box again, now hatbox-sized. My grandmother had finished Daisy, Daisy, and was on a song which went: My my, here we go, the driver's drunk and the horse won't go, now we're going back, now we're going back, back back back to London Town.

She had been born in London. Told me ominous tales from time to time to time of her childhood. Of the children who ran into her father's shop shouting Shonky shonky sheeny, running away; she would not let me wear a black shirt because, she said, she remembered the marches through the East End.

Moseley's blackshirts. Her sister got an eye blackened.

The conjurer took a kitchen knife,

pushed it slowly through the red hatbox.

And then the singing stopped.

He put the boxes back together, pulled out the knives and swords, one by one by one.

He opened the compartment in the top: my grandmother smiled, embarrassed, at us, displaying her own old teeth.

He closed the compartment, hiding her from view.

Pulled out the last knife.

Opened the main door again, and she was gone.

A gesture, and the red box vanished, too.

It's up his sleeve, my grandfather explained, but seemed unsure.

The conjurer made two doves fly from a burning plate.

A puff of smoke, and he was gone as well.

She'll be under the stage now, or backstage, said my grandfather, having a cup of tea. She'll come back to us with flowers, or with chocolates. I hoped for chocolates.

The dancing girls again.

The comedian, for the last time.

And all of them came on together at the end.

The grand finale, said my grandfather. Look sharp, perhaps she'll be back on now.

But no. They sang when you're riding along on the crest of the wave and the sun is in the sky.

The curtain went down, and we shuffled out into the lobby.

We loitered for a while.

Then we went down to the stage door and waited for my grandmother to come out.

The conjurer came out in street clothes; the glitter woman looked so different in a mac.

My grandfather went to speak to him. He shrugged, told us he spoke no English and produced a half-a-crown from behind my ear, and vanished off into the dark and rain.

I never saw my grandmother again.

We went back to their house, and carried on.

My grandfather now had to cook for us.

And so for breakfast, dinner, lunch, and tea, we had golden toast and silver marmalade and cups of tea.

'Till I went home.

He got so old after that night as if the years took him all in a rush.

Daisy, Daisy, he'd sing, give me your answer, do.

If you were the only girl in the world and I were the only boy.

My old man said follow the van.

My grandfather had the voice in the family, they said he could have been a cantor, but there were snapshots to develop, radios and razors to repair . . . his brothers were a singing duo: the Nightingales, had been on television in the early days.

He bore it well. Although, quite late one night, I woke, remembering the licorice sticks in the pantry, I walked downstairs.

My grandfather stood there in his bare feet.

And, in the kitchen, all alone, I saw him stab a knife into a box.

You made me love you.

I didn't want to do it.