Magic!

I was on my way back from a hard day at the zoo when I first saw her. We were on the escalators at Brixton tube. She was going down, I was going up. She had eyes like diamonds, lips like rubies. She turned and I turned and we watched each other getting smaller and smaller. It was like being ripped apart.

One week later I saw her again. This time on the delayed 18:18 from Victoria. She was sitting between a tall Rastafarian and a skinhead child clutching desperately on to a pink hula-hoop. It was like a sandwich nobody would ever buy.

As we pulled out of Vauxhall station I finally plucked up the courage to speak. I asked her for the time, shouting loudly across the silent carriage. She pointed at my watch and laughed and then, I don't know why, she told me she was a magician's assistant. She said that every night she had genuine stainless swords thrust through her and was cut in half with a long-toothed saw.

"I would treat you better than that," I said and immediately blushed at my idiocy. I stammered that my father had been a magician once too.

"Magic!" she said and we both laughed and I knew she was the one. If I hadn't known already.

At Stockwell she stood up and passed me a golden-edged card. She told me that was where she worked and that I should come and see the show. Then, before I had chance to say anything she was swallowed whole by the departing crowds. All the way back to Brixton the skinhead child looked at me with mocking eyes through the centre of his pink hoop.

I found the club down two flights of dusty concrete steps off a sidestreet in Balham. I took a seat at the narrow bar and ordered a pint of lager from the one-eyed barman. I put the six daffodils I had bought from a market stall down on the stool next to me and lit a cigarette.

On stage a Cockney comic was winding up his act. I tried to make sense of his jokes, turning the individual words inside and out in my mind but the meaning seemed impossibly far out of reach. I clapped loudly as he walked into the wings. Next it was her.

She was wearing a pink tutu and bottle-bottom thick glasses. She kept bumping into things and the magician shook his head disconsolately. There was the biggest round of applause when she levitated fifteen feet into the air and banged her nose on the ceiling. I took a long drink from my lager and ordered another one.

For the final part of the act the magician produced flowers out of a shining black top hat. There were bouquets of hydrangeas, chrysanthemums, a whole field of roses. And to top it off a shimmering fantasy of chattering snapdragons. I looked down at my bunch of daffodils wrapped in yesterday's tabloid. They had been jostled viciously by an out of season group of West Ham supporters between
Clapham North and Clapham Common. I left them there and left the club.

One week later I went back, timing my arrival for the end of the show. I couldn't stand to see it again, especially the levitation. This time in my pocket I had a set of marked cards. I snuck backstage and after first barging in on a troop of performing dwarves I found her.

She was sitting in front of a mirror with glowing bulbs around it removing make up with the scrunched end of a dishcloth.

"Take a card, any card," I said, fanning out the deck.

If she was surprised to see me she didn't say anything. She put her head on one side for a long time and then she reached around behind me and into the back pocket of my jeans. She pulled out the Queen of Hearts.

"Is it this one?" she said.

I nodded my head, the blood rushing to my cheeks, behind my eyes.

"That's the oldest trick in the book," she said and then, "Would you like to come back for a coffee?"

"Magic!" I said.

After walking for five minutes beneath the sodium glow of street lights she told me to get down on one knee and without argument I did. She stepped onto my thigh and then onto my shoulder and leapt into the air. Moments later she came gliding back down clutching the iron rungs of a fire escape ladder. I wondered how she managed on her own but either I didn't have the courage to ask or I didn't want to know.

Her flat was two rooms, a kitchen and a bathroom, all below the eaves. The ceilings were sloping and it was impossible to take two steps without having to bend. She told me to sit and I did. She left the room and moments later came back with lengths of rope draped over her shoulders and a large Hessian sack in her arms.

"I want you to tie me up," she said.

I asked about the coffee but she put her head on one side and smiled. Her lips were like rubies, her eyes like diamonds.

"Do you know anything about knots?" she asked.

I told her that once I had been a sea scout and she laughed and said she had thought so.

I started with her ankles, with a simple knot. It had been a long time but the knowledge was still there and my fingers worked as if in a groove. "It's a half hitch," I said when I had finished and she said it was very nice. She told me to carry on.

Her knees I fastened with a reef knot and then I got more ambitious. I did her wrists with a hunter's bend, I made a manharness knot around her body. As I tied each knot I explained to her how it was done and also the knot's history. For once the words came easily.

When I was finished she told me to put the Hessian sack over her and to go to into the bathroom and to lock the door. I wasn't to come out for five minutes.

Those five minutes were the longest of my life. I sat on the closed lid of the toilet and stared at my watch. Exactly on five minutes I jumped up and swung open the door.

The sack was on the floor, surrounded by the lengths of rope.

"Coffee?" she said as she came out of the kitchen. She was holding two steaming cups. I could smell the sharp tang of coffee beans in the air.

Later she told me that all this was small fry, chicken feed. Her dream was to make an elephant disappear.

"Houdini did it," she said. "And do you know what he said?"

I shook my head.

"He said that even the elephant didn't know how it was done."

I laughed and then told her I might be able to help. I told her I worked in the zoo. I told her I worked with elephants.

One week later at two o'clock in the morning we were standing in the rain outside the enclosure trying to decide on an elephant. I suggested a small one but she said that in this case size didn't matter. She looked at me and put her head on one side. I said she was the expert and it was up to her.

We constructed the tent together. It was easy, just a series of metal tubes that slotted into each other. Pulling the canvas over the structure was more difficult, purely because the canvas was so heavy. After an hour we had finally done it and we were ready.

The elephant she decided on was Ariel. I led him up to the tent with a trail of peanuts and she stood looking tense. She told me to turn around and I did and then seconds later I heard a loud noise and I turned back. Ariel was gone.

"Where did he go?" I said.

"Even he doesn't know," she said. "Even he doesn't know." She clapped her hands. "I did it. Would you like to come back for coffee?"

I looked at the empty space where Ariel had been and then at her. "Do you want me to tie you up again?"

She shook her head. "I've done enough for tonight. I still want you to come though. I'll never forget this."

The room was as we had left it. The ropes were neatly coiled and the Hessian sack was folded into a square. I stood with my head bent below the eaves and eventually she told me to sit.

"Coffee?" she said.

"Magic," I said, but it was without exclamation. In my mind all I could see was that space where Ariel had been and now wasn't. When he had been a small elephant I had fed him peanuts from a cup. I had shown him off around the local schools. We had history.

"Taa Taa!" she said as she came out of the kitchen. Her head was back and she had one coffee mug balanced on her chin and another on her nose.

"Coffee," I said.

"Freshly ground," she said.

"Nice," I said.

She put the coffee down in the space between us and then bent into her own chair.

After a while she said, "Nice?"

I nodded my head.

"Not magic?" she said and then before I had chance to say anything she told me to go into the bathroom. I glanced nervously at the Hessian sack but she told me that this time it was OK, I was not to worry.

Somehow I knew what I was going to see even before I'd opened the door. But somehow it was still a surprise. You see I'd taught Ariel many tricks but not this one.

This trick surprised me.