Chapter 3: Mavis

“You’re a glutton for punishment.” Moses shook his head and began, “My agent got me a cruise gig just at a time when I was starting to hate the constant travelling in the UK, Australia and North America.”

“Hey, cruise ships are constantly on the move, man.”

“Yes, I know,” Moses chuckled, “but aboard ship your hotel room is constant and everything you need is within walking distance of your cabin, it’s travelling but without all the one-night stand upheaval. But this time they wanted a traditional magic cabaret stage act with magic trick stuff like sawing the assistant in half, throwing hatchets at a young scantily dressed lady on a revolving board, making her disappear after surrounding her with a curtain, all that kind of act. So I needed a permanent assistant.”

“Ah, one that didn’t disappear overnight when you slept?”

“You got it. On board ship I couldn’t get away with using an imaginary assistant, which I had used for several years of touring. I interviewed several candidates through my agent but Mavis had worked the magic scene before, was pretty enough and supple enough to do the escapology tricks and, well, I just liked her as soon as I started talking to her.”

“Liked her? How old were you and she?”

“Hey, I only liked her as an assistant I could work with, who would also be a necessary distraction for the audience. I had absolutely no designs on her, I’d given all that up by then. Yes, I liked her straight away, she was sparky and bright, but sweet too, like the girl next door but with a smile that could set Hollywood alight if she had a mind to. We even got on well together personally. Sure, she knew she was gorgeous, but she was no dummy prepared to just get by on her looks, nor did she expect star treatment. Yes, there was a large age difference, she was 22 and I was 55, but I had the magic at work inside me and I looked about 40, ok, 45. I only found out that I was a magician when I was about 45, so not only did I only age about one or two years in that decade, my body was fitter, my hair thickened and darkened, I was physically stronger and my confidence gave me a certain presence that I probably always lacked before.”

“So you had become a catch for the ladies?”

“For the middle-aged widows, divorcees and wives out for a good time, a one-night lover only, sure, I was MILF catnip, but I wasn’t at all interested in them any more, I’d had my fill of sowing wild oats a decade earlier, for reasons already explained. None of the women on those cruises, mothers or daughters, could hold a candle to my new assistant Mavis and I simply wasn’t interested in anyone who couldn’t match up to Mavis. She was way outside my league, so I had no wish to embarrass myself with her but I was determined to be the best older friend to her that I could possibly be to build her up for her next partner.”

“Yet somehow you both fell in love and you married her?”

“We respected each other from the outset, but we also worked hard together. Using a human assistant I had to use the usual professional props and tricks, and we both showed a lot of pizzazz doing it. What a buzz that was every performance! We just worked so well together, like we produced something better than the sum of our two parts and I only used the magic very sparingly, so everything was perfect. And a month or so into the cruise season, although neither of us were interested in sleeping with anyone, we were really comfortable with each other, even spending all our spare time together. We ate meals together, relaxed in each other’s company, took the odd shore leave tour together.”

“It sounds like a romance.”

“Yes, it felt good, I looked forward to seeing her as soon as possible after I got up every morning. Although our relationship was based on the work and neither of us were slackers, we needed to relax and rest and we just enjoyed being with each other. Mavis always seemed keen to meet up and I certainly never complained. We rehearsed and modified all the elements of the act until it was absolutely first rate. As our confidence and trust grew, we tried trickier stuff, going as close to the edge as we could and then, one day, something went seriously wrong.”

The old man paused, his head filled with memories, a tear escaped and ran down his left cheek.

“What happened Moses?”

“We regularly did a water tank trick as our finale, where I was covered in padlocked chains and fully immersed in a glass fish tank behind an all-enveloping raised and lowered curtain, which was lifted once during the act to show the artiste was still under water then closed again ready for the finale. By the time we open the curtains that first time, the swimmer would have already released the initial padlocks, opened the padlocked lid and taken a breath out of the top of the tank. As the curtain was lowered again, I would be seen franticly searching for the right key to the padlock securing the chain among a pile of 50 keys in the bottom of the tank. When the curtains were finally lifted the tank would be empty with me either standing up on top, or disappeared into thin air; actually hoisted away to the deck above, from where I would run down the stairs and run through the audience to the stage, still dripping wet.”

“I’ve seen the trick, it’s quite dramatic.”

“Mavis persuaded me to switch places, with Mavis in the tank instead of me. Only on one occasion she couldn’t get out, the trick clasp on the tank cover had jammed so she couldn’t open the lid and take that essential first breath. Although the pins had been removed, the mishandling by stage hands had slightly distorted the clasp and she couldn’t release it from the inside, she didn’t have the strength. She was trapped under water for at least three minutes.”

“What did you do?”

“I said ‘Oops’ to the audience, calmly dropped the curtains down for two seconds and magically waved her back to my cabin. I thought she would appreciate more my floor being wet than hers. In fact, my whole cabin including my bed got absolutely soaked. The twenty gallons of water around her must’ve exploded when she materialised. The staff cabins on those cruise ships are really just oversized cupboards and everything got soaked”

“How did that go down?”

“Oh well, overall the reaction was what you could call ‘mixed’,” Moses laughed, “firstly, the audience absolutely loved it when the tank was empty. I and I alone got a standing ovation and two curtain calls. As for Mavis, well, no, she liked it ... nowhere near so much. She missed her curtain call bow to the audience and only caught up with me just as I got to the dressing room. Staff cabins are a long way from the civilised part of the ship. After she roundly smacked me in the face twice, once with each hand, she collapsed in tears. She thought she was going to die in that glass tank and she couldn’t understand how I managed to drag her to my cabin and dump her there.”

“Isn’t it usually the magician that gets into the water, not the assistant?”

“True, and that’s how the trick was when the cruise started. But some of the audience had seen the act several times during the cruise and she wanted to rehearse doing it with her taking my place. She demonstrated that it was safe and we rehearsed the hell out of it behind closed doors without any mishap. One day I had a really heavy cold, there was always some bug floating round those ships and the crew and entertainment staff caught everything going. I couldn’t breathe that well so she begged to perform it on stage instead. So we did. I ham acted my part, with me playing up the coughing fits, so she was acting really sweetly in her concern for my welfare, getting the audience to buy into it and highlighting the risk to this slightly built and very lovely lady. We did that switching roles on an every-other-time basis and she always got a standing ovation. She loved it and I loved seeing her being treated like the star of the show.”