Grand Finale – Opening Chapters

 

1

THE PROFESSIONAL DUMMY

DEEP IN THE bowels of the London Palladium, Argyll Street was a corridor filled with dressing rooms. Each dressing room door had a bright gold star painted on its outside. On one particular door, the name of the act currently occupying the room was papered beneath its gold star: The Great Bentley and his Talking Timber, Tommy!

Inside the dressing room, Bentley and his ventriloquist’s dummy, Tommy, were preparing to perform for the night’s show; a live performance already underway and beaming to billions of fans around the world … such was the pulling power of one particularly talented act. An act saved for the show’s Grand Finale: The Great Bentley and his Talking Timber, Tommy!

It was Bentley and his ventriloquist’s dummy that had single-handedly revived the televised variety act. Words cannot hope to express the magnetism of the act.

The dummy had been examined on many occasions immediately after the act, as it seemed impossible to believe that there was not a tiny person lurking beneath its apparent wooden exterior. One of the examinations, televised by the BBC, is now a TV and viral internet clip comedy classic. Tommy’s protestations at being examined were hilarious. These were thorough examinations, because the consequences of finding anything amiss, anything but an ordinary ventriloquist’s dummy, would have cost Bentley and his management agency millions of pounds … not to mention the end of his career … or worse!

One of the reasons the dummy, Tommy, seemed so alive to the audience was due in part to Bentley’s apparent incredible skill of being able to speak at the same time as Tommy. In one act, Bentley swaggered around the stage completely inebriated and moaning about the pressure of being famous while Tommy sang “What a Wonderful World” in a fruity sober voice. Bentley appeared to collapse into unconsciousness near the end of the act, but Tommy finished the act off before screaming out to the audience asking for a doctor. The curtains closed, and Bentley had to be carried away on a stretcher to his dressing room.

Tonight Bentley had had a drink or two, but was not drunk. The dressing room had a small writing desk, a bed, a chair, and a mirror above a sink. Bentley was sitting on the edge of the bed staring angrily at the dummy that sat arrogantly on a chair. Not for the first time, he was deep in argument with his dummy.

“But we had a deal!” snapped Tommy, his musical ventriloquist jabber rising to breaking point. His wooden lips had not moved, though the sound seemed to be coming from them.

“I know, I know,” pleaded Bentley quickly. He looked troubled and much older than his thirty years. “Oh, Tommy. Don’t you see? I’ve got to be the one who runs the show. If people thought you real … Oh, Tommy, surely you see!” Bentley was exasperated as his control over the dummy was diminishing, and the curtain call was imminent.

“So you admit it, I’m real?”

“How else can I explain this madness? I wish I had never met that Master character on that blasted fateful day.”

As Bentley stared insanely at him, Tommy felt the croaky high-pitched jabber build in his throat. “The Master gave me to you on that ‘damned blasted fateful day’, and he gave me the skill to put words in your mouth. He knew of my entertainment abilities. I’m more than a dummy … and Bentley, you are less than one! At best, you are a professional dummy, working for the Master. You have no skills of your own. Zero talent. The Master saw in you the perfect straight man … that’s all.”

“Nevertheless, I refuse, categorically and unequivocally, to say the key words the Master gave me to free you,” shouted a resolute Bentley, shooting up to his feet from the edge of the bed with a pained expression. He plodded the few feet to Tommy and planted his screwed up angry face in front of Tommy’s deathly-still brightly painted face.

“Bah!” said Tommy. “Tonight will be a show they’ll never forget, Bentley—you useless bag of blood and bones. A deal’s a deal. I’ve made you great. Greater even than the Master thought possible. You must say the words he gave you and release me.”

“You should not talk of the Master that way. It’s too early. It’s really up to the Master to instruct me to release you. And I was only toying with the idea … to keep you quiet!” pleaded Bentley as he slouched away from Tommy and over to the dressing room sink to slap some cold water on his furrowed brow.

While applying some finishing touches of makeup to his face in the mirror, bordered by flowers, Bentley said soberly to the dummy’s reflection, “Tommy, I can’t really say those words. You do understand that, don’t you? I’d die before I did.”

“Fiddlesticks!” roared Tommy, his immobile frame grinning cheekily on the chair, loaded with an inertia that seemed destined to explode into life at any moment. His high fluty tones continued their attack, “I’ll make you say them. I’ll make you say the words that I can’t put in your head. The words the Master gave you. You see if I don’t, you worthless excuse of a performer.”

Bentley ignored Tommy and continued to attempt to make himself presentable.

“I can see you, Bentley. Look into my eyes!”

Bentley’s comb stopped midway through his hair as he studied his dummy’s face in the mirror.

“Is there not a spark in my eyes, you miserable excuse of a human being?”

Bentley had to admit, there did seem to be.

“I can’t move my lips yet, but soon I will be able to. You’ll see!”

Bentley’s eyes focused on Tommy’s lips in the mirror, but they remained motionless. He turned his attention back to combing his hair. A few strokes of the comb and he was done. He looked again, glumly, at Tommy’s reflection, half expecting him to speak. He did …

“You’re a mockery to this great theatre, Bentley. You know it’s so. Don’t you, Bentley? A mockery. That’s what you are. You’re second rate. You abuse the word ‘talented’. I’m fed up with only being able to observe things around me and speak my thoughts through your mouth. Now, come on Bentley, a deal’s a deal! I only made you great because you agreed you would free me. FREE ME, Bentley! What part of the phrase don’t you understand, you toad-faced idiot! A DEAL’S A DEAL!”

“Look, Tommy, that’s quite enough! I won’t stand for it. D’you hear!” screamed Bentley with clenched fists as he turned to face Tommy. “Okay, okay, I did make a deal the other night. But I was as drunk as a goldfish swimming in a bottle of whiskey—‍”

“—as per usual.”

“—shut up … and you were misbehaving. I thought I was losing control. I only agreed in order to save the pair of us. Surely you can see what would happen if people suspected, if the Master suspected? The Master, Tommy—the Master!”

Bentley trudged towards Tommy; reluctantly he picked him up and began checking out his mechanisms in preparation for the show.

“Oi! Get orf … you brainless, gutless imbecile! Careful, Bentley! Swivel my head just a touch … it aches in that position … ah, that’s better.”

It was hard to tell if Tommy enjoyed or despised Bentley physically manipulating him. What was clear was that Tommy enjoyed mentally manipulating Bentley.

“We’ll be called soon,” said Tommy, “and there’s Royalty in the audience tonight, Bentley, old bean. Not to mention the fact that TV cameras are beaming the act to an international audience. Billions, Bentley! It’s streaming on the Web too. There will be Americans, Chinese, Indians, Russians … You name it—they will all be watching. Think of it, Bentley—BILLIONS!” Tommy paused before dealing another deadly blow. “Maybe even the Master!”

Bentley rushed over to the sink and retched. How would he get through this evening? He remembered how he even got nervous way back in his career when he appeared in school assemblies reading stories from his poorly written books.

Am I mad?

How can a dummy be real? Did I really meet the Master? How did I suddenly become a great ventriloquist when I had never even attempted ventriloquism before? Did the Master give me this skill, or is this dummy really speaking to me and putting words in my throat? And I wonder, what would really happen if I said those words? The words that the Master burned in my mind for the release of Tommy.

Between retches, Bentley gave the immobile Tommy a quick look in the mirror. It’s just a dummy … the voices are a product of my mind … my crazy mixed-up schizoid mind. The Master, simply a voice that my crazy mixed-up schizoid mind once put in my head. One voice led to another.

Am I mad? I am mad! And it’s made me famous!

Bentley was soon producing the most incredible jumble of cacophonous noise. “Ha ha ha!” he squeaked in Tommy’s voice as he simultaneously retched, each staccato cackle hitting him like suicidal machine-gun bullets. “Go on, Bentley. Give it all you got. Turn yourself inside out. Just wait till we get on that stage tonight.” And with those encouraging words, the voice of Tommy collapsed once more into a fit of manic giggles.

 

2

COLLISION DUE IN THE ORION NEBULA

MEANWHILE, WATERMAN, THE stage manager, and Hartnel, the usher, were clip clopping down the stone-tiled floor of the dressing rooms corridor outside, coming to collect Bentley and Tommy for the show’s Grand Finale. Though both in ties and suits, their physical appearances suggested they were a different species: Waterman was in his late thirties, short and grossly overweight, like a walking pork pie; Hartnel was old, a tall, thin, withering man, like a walking stick of celery. Waterman’s beetroot face was bursting with blood; Hartnel’s gaunt face had nowhere for blood to go.

As the manager and usher approached the final act’s dressing room, their ears were assaulted by the mingled sounds of vomiting and joviality, which rolled and echoed like a lunatic’s nightmare throughout the bowels of the London Palladium theatre.

“What a ghastly racket! I hope this isn’t part of the act?” said a concerned Waterman to Hartnel as they shuffled to a halt outside Bentley’s dressing room door, the clip clopping of their shoes dying away in ever diminishing echoes and seeping away into the structure of the building.

“Quite remarkable though, ain’t he, sir,” said Hartnel, his old face crackling like crumpled paper into a smile. “I’ve seen ’em all, sir. Remember Henderson, the American, 1965? He was fantastic, sir. But this Bentley … he’s something else … he’s the best there’s ever been.” Hartnel was so proud to be able to tell his friends that he knew The Great Bentley and his Talking Timber, Tommy! “You’d think Tommy was real, sir. Just yesterday, I had a conversation with him that lasted for well over half an hour.”

“And what was Bentley doing during this conversation?” asked Waterman in a sceptical tone. He never believed anything Hartnel told him as being an accurate representation of the truth.

“Well, that’s the strangest thing, sir—he was asleep.” Hartnel’s wrinkled face lit up with enthusiasm, as per usual.

“Next, you’ll be telling me the dummy even spoke over Bentley’s snoring,” said Waterman, with more than a hint of sarcasm. “Just get on with it,” he added, his face compressing as if he were feeling the pressure of time quickly steamrollering over him.

Hartnel tapped politely on the door with a coin, as he always did.

“Go away, Hartnel,” came the muffled, fluty yell of Tommy. “I know it’s you, craggy face. I’m not ready yet. Is that fat boy with you, Hartnel?”

Waterman’s face flushed a deeper shade of beetroot, and he burst into the room like a thunderstorm.

“Bentley, one more quip like that and I don’t care who you are, you’ll never work anywhere this side of the Thames again!” roared Waterman like an angry bear. Such was his resonance that a plastic vase toppled into the sink, spilling a single red rose.

“Oooooh … big deal, fat boy. Shiver me timbers. What a loss that would be … to those on the other side of the Thames!” laughed Tommy.

Hartnel was grinning like the proverbial Cheshire Cat.

“Mr Waterman,” said Bentley, drawing himself away from the sink, “I do apologise for Tomm—er … for my behaviour. I can’t help it. That darn stick of wood gets the better of me sometimes.”

“Well, just you keep a mind to make sure it doesn’t when you’re in my presence,” said Waterman, stamping his foot hard on the dressing room carpet, sending up a small puff of dust.

“A presence we can hardly hope to ignore,” jibed Tommy. “Good grief, man, you’re enormous.”

“Listen, you,” roared Waterman, turning swiftly on Tommy. “I’ll have you broken up for firewood after the show if you make one more offensive wisecrack like that. Is that understood?” Waterman was doing an excellent impression of a school’s strictest teacher disciplining a school’s naughtiest pupil. But Tommy remained silent … so Waterman pushed his face right in front of Tommy’s and shouted at the top of his voice, “IS THAT UNDERSTOOD!”

Hartnel bit his lip trying not to laugh. He obviously did not want to exacerbate the situation. After all, there was a show to do.

Tommy’s eyes appeared to burn with evil intent as they stared back, hard, into Waterman’s blazing face, as if he did not appear to take kindly to the thought of Waterman threatening to have him chopped up into firewood.

There was a brief uncomfortable silence in the dressing room.

Then, unexpectedly, the left eye of Tommy winked, the lash falling and rising like the London Palladium curtain.

Waterman jumped back.

He cursed, and then stormed out of the dressing room, as if he were embarrassed at realising he had been talking to a dummy, and for a moment had thought it alive. He, of all people!

“Hartnel!” roared Waterman over his shoulder as he marched away down the corridor. “Drag that damn madman Bentley up to the stage wings!”

“Fat boy! Don’t run, now! You’ll have yourself a heart attack! Watch out for the whale hunters—it’s blubber season, I hear!” shouted Tommy after him.

Waterman’s stride was momentarily broken by Tommy’s painful remark. The corridor paused in silence for a theatrical moment. But Waterman eventually resumed his march, his shoes tack-tacking along the stone-tiled floor of the corridor as they headed towards the wings of the stage … Waterman had work to do.

A few seconds later, after Hartnel had dusted down Bentley’s suit, he escorted Bentley and his dummy out of their dressing room.

Tommy’s eyes twinkled like stars as he bobbed up and down like a ship on the sea, cradled close to Bentley’s heart. The three of them swept down the discreetly lit corridor towards the stage wings in hot pursuit of Waterman.

Tommy’s wooden-lipsticked smile appeared to broaden.

“Tonight’s the night, Bentley,” whispered Tommy, his lips moving in response to the manipulations of Bentley’s fingers. Bentley ignored him. The voice was produced in Bentley’s throat, but Bentley had no control over it. Either he was mad or the dummy was somehow truly controlling him. He preferred to think of himself as mad.

Tommy continued to whisper like a poisonous wind. “Bentley, guess what? Just a little over 1,500 light years from us, amongst the enormous clouds of gas and dust stretching several light-years across—the Orion Nebula, a birthplace of stars—there is a catastrophic astronomical event due this evening. It’s just the chance I’ve been waiting for! This event will give me the opportunity to apply telling pressure on you, forcing you to keep your side of the deal. Breaking you once and for all.”

Bentley shook Tommy. “Shut up, for goodness’ sake. If you’re going to say anything, at least talk sense.”

“What’s that, sir?” said Hartnel, turning to Bentley.

“Nothing,” said Bentley.

“I have limitations imposed on me, Bentley,” whispered Tommy. “We are slaves. We are all slaves of the fiendish, omnipotent Master. Fear not, he cannot hear me. I am masking signals. I sense energies beyond any human, and have found a way of utilising them, which is how I mask signals and why you’re gradually losing control over me. If the Master has been spying on us recently, he will not have heard any of our conversations relating to him. I’ve been masking the signals … sending out harmless conversations. However, without your release, I can never be truly free. And we’re running out of time. So be brave, be ready, Bentley. We need each other! We’re a team. Always have been.” Tommy then hesitated and began the sequence of verbal exchanges that was the duo’s signature catch phrase.

“Ready to Rock!” said Tommy loudly.

“Ready to Roll!” answered Bentley mechanically.

“Ready to Rock ‘n’ Roll!” barked the duo together, Bentley’s throat seemingly splitting itself in two to produce the two independent voices.

“Ah, Bentley,” remarked a smiling Hartnel, “absolutely amazing how you do that—no ventriloquist hitherto has managed such a skill.”

“Don’t you think perhaps you should be congratulating me as well?” said Tommy, and his head swivelled to look Hartnel in the eye.

“Ha ha! Most amusing. A veritable free act … just for me. You just love performing, Bentley, don’t you,” laughed Hartnel. “And that look on your face. As if you hate performing. As if you’ve swallowed a lemon dipped in salt. It makes you all the more engaging.”

Bentley ignored Hartnel. He could hear the cheers of the audience swelling in the distance as the latest act was drawing to an end. He struggled along the corridors of the London Palladium, scared and confused. Although he had never had to prepare for the act because the voices just planted themselves in his head and his hands automatically manipulated the dummy, he was nevertheless sick with nerves. It seemed with every act, Tommy was teasing him with a greater ferocity. The audience naturally believed that Tommy was completely in Bentley’s hands, physically and mentally. But Bentley knew otherwise.

 

3

AN UNEXPECTED ACTOR

BENTLEY LOOKED DOWN at Tommy to the small coffin-like trunk on wheels that a stagehand was tucking Tommy into. A flicker of resentment bulged from Bentley’s eyes as the wooden lid of the trunk began scraping heavily over the dummy’s head. The lid finally clunked shut, blocking out the soft mellow lights of the theatre wing.

Bentley was left standing there, in a blind panic, a fear beyond description. He was on his own. It was always this way in the final moments before taking to the stage. The usual symptoms of pre-performance anxiety, psychologically but not medically dangerous, attacked him: heart palpitations, dizziness, a feeling of suffocation, sweating, nausea and shaking.

At such times, Bentley was lost to the world.

He could sense that, contrarily, Tommy was grinning invisibly in his confident, some would say arrogant, toothy mischievous fashion, as he lay motionless in his temporary sarcophagus. Bentley knew that Tommy would not be suffering any nerves whatsoever.

Suddenly, on the stage, the show’s compere enthusiastically announced, “What a show it’s been. And it doesn’t end here! It leads to here: to our Grand Finale! So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen in the audience, and viewers all over the world, the Royal Variety Performance, here at the London Palladium, welcomes … The Great Bentley and his Talking Timber, Tommy!”

A deafening applause rippled and rose to a crescendo as Hartnel shoved Bentley forwards.

Out from the theatre wings into the bright limelight of the main stage stumbled Bentley nervously pushing the four-wheeled trunk. He looked like a rabbit caught in the glare of a juggernaut’s headlights. Laughs broke out immediately at the comical sight of the ungainly terrified Bentley.

“Break a leg, Bentley! Knock ’em dead!” shouted Hartnel encouragingly in the time honoured tradition of the theatre.

Bentley said nothing but a muffled voice from the trunk he was shuffling along barked, “He couldn’t break his little fingernail!”

“Oh, Bentley, what a marvellous talent you are,” praised Hartnel, his enthusiastic eyes twinkling like a child receiving a birthday present.

The trunk slowed to a halt in accord with the dying applause. In the dampening silence, Bentley could feel the loaded anticipation of the audience. Shock, horror … what were they in store for this evening he wondered?

Bentley dragged into position a nearby simple wooden chair that he did the majority of his routine on. The stage directional microphones picked up a screech as the legs scuffed the polished mahogany stage floor. Nervously, he drew back the chair and sat down on it, waiting for Tommy to begin the act, for he had no idea what form the act would take? He stared down at the silent trunk … waiting … waiting …

But for the first time, Tommy remained silent! No singing, no jokes. Nothing.

After an unbearable amount of time, though it was less than a minute, Bentley realised he would have to open the act.

“Tommy? I say, Tommy? Are you in there?” he said, struggling even to play the role of the straight man.

Tommy did not answer.

“Tommy! Are you in there?” Bentley knocked hesitantly on the lid of the trunk. His face looked uncomfortable, as if the weight of those watching were squashing him into a single point of embarrassment. He tried his best to smile, but the theatre audience and millions of homes saw only a Draculian grimace.

Bentley’s increasingly desperate situation and his agonising reaction to it came across as very humorous and laughter was beginning to roll and break onto the stage like happy waves onto a beach. Everyone knew that Tommy must be in the trunk, and the growing anticipation of how the situation would unravel itself was adding significantly to the tension and humour.

Suddenly and quite unexpectedly, Tommy’s thoughts invaded Bentley’s mind.

Shh! Bentley, shut up for a minute. I’m concentrating.

Bentley was so shocked he fell off his chair shouting, “No. It’s no good speaking in my head … the audience can’t hear that. Tommy! Tommy! Come on … say something out aloud. The people want to hear you,” he pleaded. His cheeks glowed like radioactive tomatoes as embarrassment found its way into his mind on top of everything else.

The audience roared with laughter. Reluctantly, Bentley clambered back to his sitting position.

Bentley, you demented jackass, the stars in the Orion Nebulae are right this second colliding. I told you they would. Now sit still, shut up, and let me concentrate. I can feel particular energies feeding me. I’m sure the Master is monitoring us either directly or more than likely through his slaves. But he’s wasting his time, because I’m using my growing powers to relay false signals. So don’t worry, we’re safe from his evil prying senses. Aah, these peculiar energies, they’re so intoxicating. I think I’ve got enough power now—all I need is you to say the Master’s words and release me, then we’re in with a shout, Bentley! D’you understand? We’re in with a chance! A chance to take on the omnipotent Master. We cannot miss such an opportunity! Release me, Bentley! Say those words! Release me!

“Never, Tommy! Never!” cried Bentley, craning over the trunk from his seated position. “Stop this mad tommyrot! Get out of my head and talk to the audience this minute!” Bentley did not look like he could take much more. Tommy’s thoughts disappeared and were replaced by his own: I am mad! I am mad!

Suddenly, a small girl with a mop of ringlets of red hair leapt out of the darkness of the audience like a flea pumped with steroids, and she appeared on the edge of the stage. A collective gasp of surprise whipped up from the audience. Two strong arms, near the girl’s shins, clasped together like a crab’s pincers, but they locked onto thin air because the little girl leapt up in a perfect front somersault out of their grasp. She looked about six years old. She was dressed smartly in a blue blouse, grey knee-length skirt, white ankle-length socks, and black shoes. She tumbled in a series of perfect cartwheels, back flips and somersaults towards Bentley, shouting hysterically.

“You’ve killed Tommy! You’ve killed him! You must have forgotten to put holes in his box!” When she reached the trunk, she pointed her finger accusingly, her eyes wide like a pair of full moons glinting beneath the silvery stage lights, “SEE! NO HOLES!”

The girl’s voice was a naturally rich, fruity voice. It was clear and powerful, as if she had swallowed a megaphone.

Bentley was flabbergasted.

The audience was flabbergasted.

The tiny girl started to punch Bentley around his arms. “Oooh, you beastly thing!”

Laughter spread like a hungry fire amongst the audience in the high octane thrill of peak entertainment.

Waterman looked on incredulously from the wings. “Hey, Hartnel? You know anything about this routine?”

“Nothing, sir. But it’s wonderful. The audience is lapping it up. Genius is what Bentley is, sir. By keeping the loquacious Tommy quiet, he seems to have created a comedic tension in the whole state of affairs that one cannot help laugh at for a release. He’s obviously using this girl as the trigger.”

Waterman raised a critical eyebrow towards Hartnel, who was just grinning at the stage with the fire of theatrical excitement burning in his eyes.

Just then, while Bentley was fending off the girl’s verbal and physical attack, two security guards escorted a man to Waterman and Hartnel.

“Mr Waterman,” began the taller of the two guards, “This is Shirley Temple’s father.” By which he meant the little girl’s father. The other security guard kicked him smartly on the shin for being insensitive and rude about the girl in front of the father—though she did look and sound strikingly like the child starlet, Shirley Temple, of the late 1930s, as anyone with a decent knowledge of the entertainment industry would know.

“I see. I take it then that this is not part of Bentley’s madness?” asked Waterman to those generally around him.

“No, sir,” replied the shorter guard. “Mr Pile’s daughter just jumped from her seat without warning, Mr Waterman.”

“I tried to stop her,” interjected Mr Pile with pleading, apologetic eyes. “She’s always been as slippery as an eel. We always have a hell of a job catching her at bath time. She’s a regular little Jacqueline-in-the-box. But I can’t believe what she’s done. I really just can’t believe it. Susan—that’s my wife—she must be doing her nut watching at home. I’m in for it when I get home.”

Waterman looked around at the calamitous scene. The concerned father. The dynamite moppet Shirley Temple look-a-like, thumping away at the distressed Bentley. The silence of Tommy. The fire in Hartnel’s experienced eyes. The roar of the audience.

“Come of it,” said Waterman to Mr Pile. “She’s obviously part of the act. Such a great projecting stage voice. And her gymnastic abilities are Olympic standard. She didn’t learn those trying to avoid a bath.”