Clear: A Transparent Novel. Nicola Barker

shake uncontrollably. He’s virtually lethally-fucking-allergic to this thing.

      Any guesses?

      Wheat? Pigeons? Lichen? Jasper Carrott? Dahlias? Lambswool? Beer?

      Nope.

      Douglas Sinclair MacKenny hates – I said he hates – illusionists. And with a passion.

      Let me tell you why.

      Great Yarmouth. Nineteen fifty-nine. The height of the Summer Season. My dad, still then but a boy, is down on the beach with a large crowd of deliciously rambunctious, candy-floss-speeding, bucket-swinging, spade-waving, snotty-nosed comrades. He’s clutching sixpence which his mother has just given him. He is planning to spend this money on – deep breath now, Dad, deeeep breath – a Magic Show!

      The magician or ‘illusionist’ in question is no less (and no more) a man than ‘The Great Carrazimo’. Carrazimo is (by all accounts) fairly competent at the magicianing thing. He does some nifty stuff with doves. He can pretend – very effectively – to chop off his thumb. He can throw his voice. He even (and Dad still doesn’t know how) stole some little girl’s laugh. Seriously. He nicked it (she was temporarily hoarse) and then found it again inside her sticky bag of Liquorice Allsorts.

      This is all good stuff (I know you’re thinking) so why the angst?

      Here’s why: at the end of his show, Carrazimo pulls a stunt which leaves everyone agog. He gets the kids to dig a hole – a deep hole – in the sand. He climbs into the hole. He then tells the kids to fill it up.

      That’s right. The Great Carrazimo is intending to get himself Buried 100 Per Cent Alive.

      The kids – they aren’t a bad bunch – are slightly nervous at the prospect. I mean it’s been a good show. The little girl’s laugh is back. The thumb’s on. The doves are cooing. It’s very nearly lunchtime.

      But Carrazimo insists. It’s the climax of his act.

      The kids still aren’t entirely convinced. ‘And here’s the thing,’ one especially ‘responsible’ (read as: ‘opportunistic’) young ’un pipes up, ‘if you don’t come back, what’s gonna happen to the rabbit and the doves and all the rest of your stuff?’

      Carrazimo grins. ‘If I don’t come back,’ he says, ‘then you can divide it among you.’

      Two seconds later, Carrazimo disappears under a hail of sand.

      It takes about ten minutes to bury the illusionist completely. Douglas Sinclair MacKenny has played his part – has even taken the precaution of patting the sand neat and flat on top. He’s concerned for the illusionist (yes he is), but he has one (very constant, very careful) eye already firmly affixed on the illusionist’s grand collection of magic wands. There’s a fat one (the very one he used to fix his thumb back on), and if the worst happens, Douglas Sinclair MacKenny is determined to have it.

      When all the work is done, the kids sit down, en masse, and they wait.

      And they wait.

      Eventually (it’s now half an hour past lunch), one of the mums happens along.

      ‘What on earth are you all up to?’ she asks.

      ‘We’re waiting for Carrazimo,’ they respond.

      ‘Well where is he?’ she asks.

      ‘In the sand,’ the kids boom back.

       Pause.

      ‘So how long’s he been under there?’ she enquires.

      ‘Thirty-seven bloody minutes,’ Douglas Sinclair MacKenny yells furiously.

      Another five minutes pass. By now quite a crowd has formed. One of the fathers has asked the kids to indicate precisely where the illusionist is buried. The kids are still quite cheerful at this stage (if getting a little hungry), and they happily mark out the spot.

      The parents start to dig (the poignancy quotient of this scene is presumably dramatically heightened by the fact that all these men and women have borrowed their kids’ tiny shovels). The atmosphere is grave (on the surface, at least), but then – 32 seconds into the rescue operation – an unholy scrap breaks out.

      It has finally dawned on the children that Carrazimo might not actually be returning to collect his stuff, and everybody wants first dibs on the things he’s left behind. Douglas Sinclair MacKenny is – in his own mind at least – now first in line to get himself that fancy fat magician’s wand. But two other boys – at least – have their greedy eyes glued on this exact-same prize.

      There is a brief halt to the digging as the tragic magician’s possessions are firmly removed from a host of small, grasping hands, and when the digging resumes, the children are duly frogmarched up the beach, on to the prom, and into the warm, distracting embrace of the funfair for ‘a couple of rides’.

      It isn’t a long while after that Carrazimo’s body is pulled from the sand. Yes. He’d performed this feat a hundred times before. But it’d rained at breakfast and the sand – for some reason – was just slightly wetter than it usually was in summer.

      He’d drowned.

      Douglas Sinclair MacKenny was scarred for ever. Not just by the death (although that took its toll – he was, after all, an accessory to the illusion), but by the fact that he was cruelly denied that most tantalising, powerful and coveted of items: the magician’s fat wand. Carrazimo had promised, hadn’t he? The perfidious, two-faced, double-crossing liar.

      Hmmn. Think there might’ve been any phallic significance in all of that?

      I know what you’re thinking: it was all a very long time ago now (this illusionist stuff). And he’s just my old dad, after all – I mean if he happens to see me more than twice in your average year – Christmas / birthday – he starts to think the worst.

      Suspicious?

      Suspicious?!

      ‘Got dumped by your lady friend, did you, Adie?’

      ‘Running a little short of money, eh?’

      ‘Thrown in the towel at your job again, then?’

      ‘Still living with that immigrant?’

      ‘Got yourself the effing clap?’

      ‘Finally planning to tell your poor mum and me that you take it up the arse, for pleasure? That you’re a dirty (tick one or all of the below:) transexual/bisexual/pansexual/disgusting bloody fag?!’

      (Look, for the thousandth time, Dad, I’m not a homosexual. It’s just the way I wear my hair – I mean if TV’s Vernon Kay can do it and marry a beautiful woman and sustain a successful career…)

      Jesus, that illusionist has got a lot to answer for.

      And the fact is…(to get down to the facts again)…Hmmn, how to put this into actual words?

      The fact is (to reiterate) that blood is marginally thinner than an iced vodka slammer (and not half so digestible) and I’ve been using…

       No.

      I’ve been employing…

       No.

      I’ve been deriving…

      Score!

      …a certain amount of…

      Uh…

      …real…

       Scratch

      …serious…