Bring me the Head of the Great Bamberini

Kevin was a conjuror. Or a magician, depending on his mood and what he thought suitable for his latest gig. He wasn’t a very good one. But that didn’t matter. After all, his idol, Tommy Cooper, had achieved fame and adoration through not being a very good magician.

     The trouble is, it wasn’t quite that simple, because in the first place, Tommy Cooper was actually a very good magician, and in the second place, his act of being a very bad one was extremely funny. Kevin was neither particularly skilled nor particularly amusing. At times he said regretfully that though of course he could see why it was inappropriate now, if only he’d been allowed to wear a fez like Tommy it would be funny. But at times even his friends said that he could have worn a fez, a sombrero, a Stetson, and a ladies’ fascinator at the same time, and it still wouldn’t have been funny. 

     It wasn’t for want of trying. He practised in front of a mirror, but he also recorded himself, and sometimes posted these videos on YouTube, so you couldn’t say he was lacking in courage.

     At first he thought he was accidentally reading someone else’s reviews when he saw comments like “Wow, this is amazing!” and “Just watched this over and over – weird and wonderful!”

     Feeling as if all his birthdays and Christmases had come at once, but there was a risk someone had delivered the presents to the wrong address, he watched the video himself to see what he had managed to hit on. He wished he had put on a costume or at least worn a suit if it was attracting attention of the right kind, not just worn his jeans and a T-shirt of a band who were popular in the 1990s. 

      For a few seconds he couldn’t make out what all the fuss was about, then he saw it too. There was a head floating around. Not just a blob of light that was vaguely head-shaped (as blobs tend to be anyway) but most definitely a head. A head with recognisable features, and piercing blue eyes and a beard, and an expression that could only be called enigmatic. 

     Even in the space of him watching the film, the comments had mushroomed. Of course some said it was a fake but others said if it was it was the best fake they had ever seen, and some even said they doubted if Kevin would have the skills to produce a fake of that quality. Well, normally that would have been a blow to his ego (not least because it was the truth) but you underestimated Kevin’s intelligence at your peril and he realised it could work to his advantage.

     He posted himself, “Yes, he does appear sometimes. That is the head of the Great Bamberini”

     He quite neglected his magic tricks both physically and mentally to work on the story of the Great Bamberini. He had been born into a respectable Victorian family, he decided, and his real name was Charles Montague Bamber. He toyed with the idea of making him a member of the aristocracy, but decided against it. No, his father was a respected country doctor who expected his son to follow in his footsteps. When he was a little boy, his conjuring tricks had elicited indulgent smiles from the ladies of the village, from the vicar’s wife and from the schoolmistress, and even from his mother. His father shook his head and said, “You shouldn’t encourage him, Edith.” But Dr Bamber already suspected that young Charlie didn’t need any encouragement. It will stop all that nonsense when he goes away to school, he consoled himself.

     It didn’t. His schoolfellows were a willing and appreciative audience. And when one of the masters came in to see what all the noise was in the dormitory, all the oohs and aahs and applause, and was ready to give them a thorough telling off and an order mark each, he found himself captivated by the tall boy wearing a cloak on top of his pyjamas (nobody ever found out where he got that cloak from, let alone the silver stars adorning it) and performing the most wonderful tricks with the simple things around him – a glass of water, a book, a photograph. The master later confided to one of his colleagues, “I know I should have given them the what-for, but I was enjoying it as much as any of the lads. It was better than anything I’ve ever seen in the theatre!” Kevin could see that young schoolmaster, amazed and open-mouthed, under the skill of that boy with the swirling cloak emblazoned with gold stars.

     Dr Bamber resigned himself to the fact that his son wasn’t going to follow in his footsteps, but insisted he got a university degree behind him. “In English, if you must” he sighed. At least then he could earn a respectable living as a schoolmaster once he got this magic business out of his head. Charlie was genuinely fond of his father, and didn’t want to be at outs with him, and he also wasn’t of age yet, so he went along with the degree business, and in any case, he wasn’t averse to a spell of student life himself and had always loved to read.

     It gladdened Dr Bamber’s heart that his son was apparently giving tuition as well – if he was showing some vocation and liking for teaching, well, so be it. And he was earning some of his own money, too, which was to his credit.

     But Charlie, of course, was imparting Shakespeare and Milton to the unwilling in order to buy more equipment for his act. And he also had enough to hire a hall in the quiet university town. He had already decided that a magician simply couldn’t be called Charles Bamber, so he started calling himself the Great Bamberini, though he never adopted a false Italian accent. Around this time he also grew his beard. 

     By means of the usual grapevines and people who knew people whose cousins knew somebody else’s cousin, news of the performance given by the Great Bamberini got back to Dr Bamber. And he flew into a rage. No, he didn’t, Kevin decided. That would be too melodramatic. He wasn’t the kind of man who would disown his son. Approving of it was another matter. 

     But even Dr Bamber couldn’t help a little hint of a proud smile twitching at his lips when he read the reviews from a great London theatre that they had never seen anything like the Great Bamberini. People queued down the street to see his marvellous performance. He was such a change! Oh, of course he had the cloak (which was now made by a highly skilled tailor) and produced the rabbits out of hats and all the other stuff that was expected, but he also went down into the audience and did card tricks that astounded them, and explained everything in a way that was more like a professor than a performer, but, contradictorily, made his performances stand out.

     Kevin had warmed to his theme. The Great Bamberini’s favourite trick, or at any rate, his most celebrated one, was called the Great Bamberini’s Guillotine. Not for him the cheap sensationalist trickery of seeming to cut young ladies in half. He put his own head on the line, quite literally. Of course, it was perfectly safe; all of it was a brilliant trick, but it was still gratifying to hear the gasps of horror as the blade fell.

     The Great Bamberini wasn’t a haughty man, and was generally popular with his peers, but inevitably he had also made enemies, and one of them, who was really called Roger Hartford, but used the stagename of the Hart-Stopper managed to bribe some of the staff at the theatre to gain access to The Great Bamberini’s equipment. Roger Hartford would never have had the skill, though he was by no means unskilled, to have created the Guillotine himself, but he did have the ability to sabotage it.

     It was said that when the Great Bamberini gave his last performance the audience’s screams could be heard by people dining in a restaurant half a mile away, and that the young policeman who came to the scene fainted and abandoned his police career forever.

     I wonder if that’s overdoing it, thought Kevin. Making it a bit too gory. After all, there was no blood dripping from the head on the screen, which was a pity really.

     It was at that moment that he heard the swish of a cloak, and soft footsteps on the floorboards, and realised that someone was looking over his shoulder.

     Except they weren’t, because you need a head to be able to look.