Lizard's Leap: Chapter Fifteen: Act One

Vicki got the hang of it. She folded her forearms one over the other and strutted out like a true performer. The others just copied her; she seemed to know what she was doing.

The stage set was breathtaking; it was made to look like an oriental palace with paper screens, real lanterns and cleverly painted scenery. The only prop on the stage was an easel with a map of the world. The leading lady was standing centre stage. Her character’s name was Miss Anna, and in the story she had come with her son from England to teach the King of Siam’s children. The King of Siam had too many children and twenty-four of them were on the stage, as well as six of his favourite wives. Miss Anna was wearing a long blue dress with an enormous hooped underskirt.

Mark was amazed that the King of Siam had so many wives. ‘Greedy devil, having all those wives, bet he goes down the pub a lot,’ he whispered. The front-of-stage microphones picked up his comment and took it right to the back of the hall. The audience roared with laughter.

Emma, Mark and Kerry copied Vicki and Vicki copied everybody else as they were announced by the King’s eldest son and introduced to Miss Anna. Everything went without a hitch—until it was Emma’s turn to go forward. A few ‘Ahh’s’ came up from the audience when Emma was presented; her natural shyness was assumed to be part of the performance.

Emma was mortified and shuffled forward with her head bowed. She was required to kneel before Miss Anna and put her forehead on the floor in a position of humility and respect. The problem was, once she got down there the thought of having to move again in front of all of those people was too much for her to cope with. She couldn’t see anything at all while her nose was pressed against the floorboard. She had frozen to the spot. One of the King’s wives had to shuffle out of line and move her.

‘Psst. Kid. Move,’ she whispered, coming out of character and sounding very much like Mrs Clark from the chip shop.

Emma shuffled back in a crouch, pulled at the waist of her trousers by the King’s wife. This audience tittered. Emma just wanted to die; it was a terrible ordeal for somebody as shy as her. She shuffled around the edge of the stage to hide at the back of all the children. The audience presumed that this was a rehearsed part of the act, and the collective ‘Ahhhh’ was even louder.

The orchestra played the song, "Getting to Know You". The children joined in with the rest of the actors on stage and their sweet, combined voices rang out over the hall, bringing a tear to many an eye in the audience. They’d been trained in choral singing for months and knew just the right tone to pitch their voices. It was angelic.

Vicki had drifted off into a semi-daydream when her head snapped up and her eyes widened. She tilted her head to one side like an alert budgie and listened to a few bars of the song. Then, completely forgetting where she was she got excited. In a voice that rose above all the singing and was taken out to the audience, Vicki gasped. ‘Hey, I know this song.’

She couldn’t contain herself and forgot her earlier warnings about melting into the cast and not doing anything to get them noticed. She opened her mouth wide—far wider than anybody else on the stage—and sang.

Vicki gave it her all.

“Getting to know you. Getting to know all about you.

Getting to like you. Getting to hope you like me…”

As she became more involved with the music, her arms took on a life of their own. They extended until they were straight out in front of the children at either side of her. Vicki sang. She sang, sang, sang. She sang for all she was worth. It’s not as though the sound that came out of Vicki wasn’t in tune, but there was nothing sweet about it. She had been listening to Miss Anna’s controlled, operatic voice. She could do that. She sang high. She warbled her words so that her lips wobbled like jelly and her neck looked like a turkey’s. But, most of all, Vicki sang loud.

Five rows back in the audience, Mrs Forest wiped her eye with a hanky. She had been laughing so hard that tears were rolling down her cheeks. She dug Mr Forest in the ribs.

‘Hey Grant,’ she asked her husband. ‘Who does that remind you of?’

‘Our Vicki,’ they both said in unison.

The next scene involved Miss Anna giving the class a geography lesson. Anna was explaining that Siam was a very small country, even smaller than Britain. The King’s eldest son was angry with this and started shouting. The King had come to see what all the noise was about.

‘Father. Father. Teacher say Siam small country. She say Siam even smaller than Englan’. This not true, is it, Father? Father say Siam great country. Teacher say Englan’ better than Siam.’

‘Teacher say what?’ yelled the King.

‘Your majesty,’ said Miss Anna gently. ‘I never said that Britain was a better country than Siam, merely that it was larger. Come and look on the map. You see…’

The King looked very angry. He was a huge man with a completely bald head, wearing only a pair of loose, baggy pants that finished at the knee and no shoes. Emma thought that he looked primitive and was very scary. He stood with his legs apart and his arms folded across each other.

‘Silence, woman. Teacher wrong. Map wrong. Siam not little. Siam big. Siam biggest country in world. You disrespect king? Get down on your knees woman. Get down on floor now.’

Emma liked Miss Anna. She was very pretty and had a lovely singing voice. Emma thought she was just the nicest lady she had ever seen. She was like Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty, and Belle out of Beauty and the Beast, all rolled into one. And if that big bully thought he was going to shout at her Miss Anna like that, and scare her half to death, well, he had another think coming. Emma had heard enough.

She’d become increasingly angry as the King had shouted. How could he talk to her like that in front of all these people? If he wanted to tell her off he should have taken her away and done it quietly. And he was wrong too. The big ignoramus.

Emma had forgotten about the audience, apart from the fact that Miss Anna was being shouted at in front of them all. She had also forgotten about being shy. Emma was a four foot high, seething mass of anger, and the King was going to get it.

She strode out from behind all the children and stood in front of the King. Imitating him, she parted her legs, and pointed her finger at his belly button.

‘How dare you speak to Miss Anna like that, you—you—you—great big pot-bellied airbag. You say sorry to Miss Anna right now.’

‘What?’ the King spluttered. He was confused and glanced at Miss Anna. She shrugged her shoulders to indicate that she hadn’t a clue what was going on. The King looked into the wings where the director stood. The director spread his hands and shrugged his shoulders indicating that he didn’t have clue what the girl was doing, either.

Emma wasn’t finished yet; she was just getting going. She was a bright girl and, although normally, she could easily distinguish fantasy from reality, she had become so completely engrossed in the unfolding of the story and was so angry by the way the King was talking to her beloved Miss Anna that she momentarily lost herself. She forgot it was only a theatre production.

‘Of course Britain is bigger than Siam. Maps don’t tell lies. So that makes you silly as well as bad mannered. And another thing,’ she went on, still wagging her finger at the King in anger, ‘Siam doesn’t even exist anymore, so you even got the wrong map for your show. You’d think you would have got the right map, wouldn’t you? Siam changed its name to Thailand years ago. And if you don’t know that, that makes you more than just silly it makes you a …well, Mr King, it makes you a dumb jackass.’

The King went red and one of his eyelids twitched as the curtain came down on the first act.