It was canary yellow and Ruby was pretty sure it came out of a spray can.
When the bell rang and they were finally released from the stuffy classroom, Beetle caught up with Ruby in the corridor.
‘Hey,’ he said, ‘so what bad thing did you do?’
‘You have yellow on your shoe,’ she said.
Beetle glanced down at his footwear. ‘Yeah, I guess I do.’
Ruby looked at him – it was an unsettling look and the boy began to sense something was up.
Ruby’s voice gave nothing away, her face bore a look it was impossible to fathom, but the question she asked was very direct. ‘Why did you trash my bike?’
‘Your bike?’ said Beetle, ‘I would never, I mean why would I? I mean, I like you.’
‘That bike was real special to me, that bike saved my life once. Clancy Crew is the only person on this planet I would give that bike to and you trashed it,’ said Ruby.
The boy’s face slowly began to contort, understanding dawning.
‘I didn’t know it was yours,’ he explained.
Clancy, who just happened to be making his way to class, was at that very moment coming towards them, concentrating on not getting bumped by anyone. As a result he hadn’t yet seen his most loyal friend talking to the gorilla kid. It was only when he heard the familiar low-pitched voice that he looked up.
‘That Crew kid is a friend of yours? You have to be kidding,’ said the boy.
‘Why do I have to be kidding?’ said Ruby. ‘Do I sound like I’m kidding?’
‘It’s just you seem like you’re, you know, cool.’
‘I am cool,’ said Ruby.
‘But he’s such a loser.’
‘That “loser” happens to be a good friend of mine, my closest friend actually.’
‘But I mean, how was I to know, he’s like a total duh.’
‘No, I know what a total duh looks like.’ She was looking at him hard in the face, and it was impossible for this total duh not to get her meaning. ‘You think it’s OK to beat kids up with your three pals, all four of you, bravely fighting one “loser kid, one skinny loser kid”? You picked the right colour, man – yellow, just perfect for a bunch of cowards.’
Afterwards at the diner, Clancy was feeling a mixed response to what had been said.
‘Thanks for sticking up for me and all, but did you have to call me a loser?’
‘I didn’t call you a loser, I was merely repeating the word he had used to describe you.’
‘Yeah but did you have to do that, I mean what’s so wrong with saying, “He’s no loser, OK?” or better still, “This kid is the least losery guy I know.”’
Ruby pondered on this a minute before nodding. ‘Sure, I admit that either of those two options would have been better, but it came out that way in the heat of the moment. So, do you wanna order something? I’m starving.’
‘I’m considering pancakes,’ said Clancy.
‘I like the way you think, my friend, I’m gonna go with your pancake instinct and double that order!’ said Ruby closing the menu and setting it to one side. Then she looked across the table at him.
‘So just how long has this kid been giving you grief, Clance?’
‘What kid?’ said Clancy looking around him like there was someone in the diner who was ready to biff him. It was a convincing fake.
‘Still got that old Clancy Crew sense of humour I see.’ He smiled and she punched him lightly on the arm.
‘Ow,’ squealed Clancy.
‘Good one,’ said Ruby. ‘How do you come up with that sound?’ She did it again.
‘Ow, no Ruby, that really does totally hurt.’
‘Oh jeepers, sorry Clance, I didn’t realise.’
‘That’s OK Rube. So how come you were all hung up on this guy anyway?’
‘What?’ spluttered Ruby.
‘I saw you sitting in Sunny’s diner chatting to him, you looked real cosy.’
‘I wasn’t with him, bozo, he just sorta showed up.’
‘That’s OK Rube, no need to explain. It’s just I wouldn’t have figured him to be your type, he seemed a bit of a phoney.’
‘My type? My type? What are you talking about?’
‘I mean, I guess if you really look at him he has got these pretty-boy looks, obvious and a little bland, but that hair, boy that hair, he has great hair – too much product but you could have changed that.’
Ruby was sitting speechless.
‘But I mean, a lot of girls get taken in by these kinda bland boys, don’t feel bad about it.’
Her face relaxed and then she rolled her eyes.
‘Oh funny Clance, real funny – are you thinking of comedy as a career?’
‘I got ya Rube, you gotta admit it.’
‘Did you really think I actually liked that numbskull?’
‘For about an hour. . . OK maybe five days, but now I can see you would rather hang out with a pancake-eating loser than spend quality time with a gorilla.’
‘Losers don’t eat pancakes,’ said Ruby.
‘So let’s order,’ said Clancy.
Chapter 47.
WHEN RUBY WALKED INTO THE KITCHEN she found a note pinned to the fridge door.
Ruby, I am hanging the pictures for the Margo Bardem exhibition at the Scarlet Pagoda, please meet me there at four o’clock so we can go shoe shopping – yours, by the way, are a disgrace and you MUST have some decent footwear for tomorrow night’s premiere. Please don’t argue about it,
YOUR MOTHER
Ruby looked at the kitchen clock – she was already running a half-hour late. She toyed with the idea of borrowing Britney O’Leary’s latest reject, a brand-new moped which had been sitting for at least a month untouched in the O’Learys’ garage and as far as Ruby was aware had only made it out of there five times. It was hardly a crime, was it, to make use of something that a very spoilt someone never even bothered to ride?
She thought for a moment more. Yes, she figured, it no doubt was. In the end she settled for riding the bus.
Stay out of trouble Rube.
When Ruby arrived at the theatre her mother was still busy directing a team of staff clutching hammers and standing up ladders. The putting-up of the exhibition was taking a lot longer than expected and framed pictures of Margo Bardem seemed to be leaning against every wall. Margo in costume, Margo relaxing on set, Margo laughing with the crew – it was true what Frederick Lutz had said, she was certainly tall.
There was one of Margo with George Katsel on the set of The Cat that Got the Canary – she seemed to be listening very hard to what he was saying. In the background people were working, moving scenery and setting up lights. At the very top of the photograph someone was walking a high wire. It was only possible to see their lower legs, but what was interesting about this wire-walker was: she was wearing little yellow tap shoes.
Click, click, click, went Ruby’s brain and she turned and walked out of the theatre doors. She ran along the sidewalk, following the walk of fame until she found Margo Bardem’s footprints in the concrete, and when Ruby stepped into them she knew at once the meaning of the message left by the skywalker thief – you tread stolen steps Margo.
Margo Bardem’s feet were big. Like, size-8 big.
Margo Bardem could never have worn the famous Little Yellow Shoes – they were maybe five sizes too small for her. Therefore she could not have performed the stunts seen in The Cat that Got the Canary. She had never tap-danced on the high wire, or even on a rooftop. The person who had, was in the background of that photograph – the woman walking the high wire – who was she? Whoever she was, it was her stunts and her tap-dancing that made Margo a star. Margo Bardem had stolen someone else’s limelight – that was her crime.
Ruby thought and thought and as she thought she walked and her walking brought her to the door of Ada Borland’s studio.
The door was answered by the woman all in grey.
‘I’m afraid Ada’s not here,’ said Abigail, ‘but I
would be happy to show you anything if there’s something you particularly want to see.’
‘I was wondering if you had any pictures taken at the Scarlet Pagoda,’ said Ruby, ‘around the time The Cat that Got the Canary was being shot?’
‘Well yes,’ Abigail said. ‘We have a lot of photographs relating to that film. You looking for pictures of Margo?’
‘Well, actually,’ said Ruby, keeping her tone casual, ‘I wondered if you have any pictures of her stunt double.’
Abigail paused for a second. ‘You mean the acrobat?’
‘I guess,’ said Ruby, ‘if she’s the one who danced on the high wire and ran across the rooftops?’
‘The Little Canary,’ nodded Abigail.
‘So you knew Margo never did the stunts?’
‘Oh yes. They kept it quiet,’ said Abigail, ‘but people in the industry knew and in those days I worked for the studio.’
‘So you have pictures of the Little Canary?’ asked Ruby.
‘We don’t actually have any photographs taken during filming,’ said Abigail. ‘Rumour has it that George Katsel banned photographs on set and destroyed any that were taken. I think the Cat wanted to build the myth of Margo – he wanted people to believe that she was actually capable of tap-dancing on a high wire.’
‘Could she walk a high wire?’ asked Ruby.
‘Couldn’t even tap-dance on terra firma, not at that time anyway. She was originally a hairdresser working at the theatre – she learned to dance later on, of course.’
‘So who was the canary?’ asked Ruby.
‘Come with me,’ said the woman. She led the way to the space at the back of the gallery where spiral stairs led up to the archive room. Here hundreds of photographs were stored in wide shallow drawers. Abigail paused just a minute before selecting the correct tray and then lifted out a folder, tied at the sides with binding ribbon.
She laid it out on the white table and then, after checking her hands were clean (they looked like the sort of hands that always were), she went through the folders one by one, first lifting the tissue paper from the photograph and carefully laying it aside so Ruby could see.
‘Is that her?’ asked Ruby leaning closer. ‘The acrobat?’
‘That’s her,’ confirmed Abigail. ‘The Little Canary.’ The feet were blurred like the lights behind her, a tiny figure on an almost invisible wire. ‘This was taken when she was in the circus, long before the movie was made.’
‘She’s small,’ announced Ruby.
Abigail was examining the picture with an eye-glass. ‘I’d guess about your height.’
‘Small,’ said Ruby.
‘She was a mere child back then,’ said Abigail, ‘but she didn’t really grow much taller than that.’
The pictures had been taken in the early 1930s and were all in black and white. You could sense the atmosphere from the expressions on the faces in the crowd, the excitement and wonder, but it was hard to get a real impression of the spectacle it must have been.
‘No colour pictures?’ asked Ruby.
‘As it happens, yes; they were taken a few years on, sometime after 1936 – colour film wasn’t widely available before then.’
The colour was beautiful, almost super-real. The shoes, though, were still only visible as a sparkling blur of light.
They had a little heel to them and dainty ankle straps and were designed to look as much like tap-dance shoes as was possible, considering that they were actually high-wire shoes.
‘It was rumoured that she had terrible eyesight,’ said Abigail. ‘I don’t know if it’s true, but they say she even devised her own sort of Braille-like language – a sort of number code, to help her learn her dance steps.’
Ruby was looking so intently at Abigail that Abigail asked if she was all right.
‘Yes,’ said Ruby, ‘just really interested, is all.’
‘You see, this way she could feel the numbers with her fingers and practise the steps of the routine wherever she was. Who knows if she did or not, it might just be another myth, but what is true is that life to her was just a blur. Though I guess her near-blindness gave her another talent – she could feel her way across a high wire better than anyone I ever heard of or saw since.’
‘How come the shoes ended up appearing in the movie – was the film inspired by the high-wire act?’
‘Not exactly, it was inspired by her, the Little Canary.’
‘So why didn’t she play the lead?’
‘She had originally been set to star in it,’ said Abigail. ‘The story goes that one night the director George Katsel went to the circus with some friends, it was all the rage and everyone wanted to see the avant-garde circus troupe, Cirque de Paradiso, and it was there on this particular night that he saw something that delighted him.’ Abigail’s hands made theatre of what she was describing, almost dancing as she spoke.
‘The spotlight settled on a tiny yellow-feathered thing high on a trapeze. And then the trapeze began to move, flying back and forth so the feathers started to flutter, spinning in the air until a tiny figure in a yellow-sequinned costume was revealed, dazzling as a human mirror ball. The trapeze moved faster and faster, then with a sudden screech of music the room went to black just for a second, a drum roll. . . and when the spotlight returned there was the same tiny jewelled woman tap-dancing on the high-wire. The audience would gasp.’
‘How did she do that?’ asked Ruby.
‘The tap-shoe sound was conjured with sound effects – that was easy enough to explain – but the high heels on the high wire? No one ever quite knew how she did that. Some kind of illusion – the shoes she wore on the wire were probably flat but designed to appear heeled. No one ever saw them close up. The ones she wore when she stepped onto the ground were regular heeled shoes but people never saw her make the switch – it was clever. Anyway,’ continued Abigail, ‘dashing George Katsel, celebrity of the moment and hero of the movie industry, was dazzled, besotted by this dancing imp and her beauty, and he insisted on meeting the tiny acrobat. She was billed as the Little Canary and though she was well known as an act, no one outside the circus community knew who she was – which as it turned out was how she liked it.’
‘Not a fame seeker?’ said Ruby.
Abigail shook her head. ‘This girl liked the shadows. She was reluctant to become visible, to step out from the public’s imagination. But George Katsel was not the toast of the silver screen for nothing, he was the very embodiment of glamour and charm, so they met, and fell for each other instantly, the usual pattern for him, but not for her. She was, as far as we know, a serious sort; never took life lightly. She adored him. The circus rolled on but she stayed behind, mesmerised as a rabbit in headlights, gazing at this man who lived in a permanent spotlight.’
‘Then what happened?’ asked Ruby. Abigail had a way of telling a story – Ruby was rapt.
‘Beats me,’ said Abigail. ‘George was set to marry her and she was set to star in a movie he had commissioned just for her. The Cat that Got the Canary. But when it came to the Canary’s big moment she sort of froze, couldn’t do it – she wasn’t an actress, she was an acrobat – so they replaced her with Margo Bardem. Only. . . the Canary still did the dancing and the high-wire stunts. They just cut the film so you couldn’t see her face. They never credited her, of course.’
‘That’s uncool,’ said Ruby.
‘Anyway, next thing you know the wedding is off.’
‘Why?’ said Ruby.
‘Because George Katsel married Margo Bardem.’
‘Super uncool,’ said Ruby.
‘That’s showbiz for you,’ said Abigail. ‘Here today, gone tomorrow. Poor Celeste.’
‘What did you call her?’ said Ruby.
‘I said, poor Celeste.’
‘The Canary’s name was Celeste?’
‘Yes. Why, does that mean something to you?’
The buzzer buzzed. ‘That’s a customer,’ said Abigail. ‘You’ll have to excuse me.’ She went
to greet whoever it was and Ruby made her way back onto the street.
So the poet’s muse was Celeste the acrobat, the Little Canary, and it was her who gave the poetry book to George Katsel. Ruby thought these thoughts as she worked her way back home to Cedarwood Drive.
The picture was coming into focus. . . but the edges were still a blur.
Chapter 48.
THE NEXT DAY WAS THE DAY OF THE GRAND PREMIERE of Margo Bardem’s lost movie at the Scarlet Pagoda, and the actress’s long-awaited star turn – assuming her security team could prevent her from being kidnapped.
Ruby woke up that morning to find an interesting garment draped over her chair. She blearily stumbled from her bed, fumbled for her glasses and went to take a closer look. What she saw was a black and red jumpsuit and a pretty cool one at that.
There was a note pinned to it.
Try this on for size. If you are planning on being dumb and dangerous, you might as well look good. Hitch.
The suit fitted perfectly and looked pretty cool, but what, she wondered, was it about this suit that might make Hitch think she should wear it?
She went downstairs and was greeted by Mrs Digby, who looked her up and down and said, ‘Well if those aren’t the cat’s pyjamas then I don’t know what a feline wears these days.’
‘I have no idea if that’s a compliment, Mrs Digby, but I can tell you this jumpsuit is awful comfortable, you might like one yourself.’
‘I might indeed, but where would one presume to purchase an outfit of that description?’ asked Mrs Digby. ‘ShopSmart?’
‘I don’t think Hitch shops at ShopSmart.’
‘Well I guess he knows where the stylish folk purchase their garments. I’m sure I don’t.’
Ruby took a carton of banana milk from the fridge and climbed onto one of the high stools at the kitchen counter.
‘Yes, be sure to eat before you go out tonight,’ warned Mrs Digby, ‘all they serve at these dos is finger food and hot air.’
‘Why don’t you come, Mrs Digby, I am sure it will be very entertaining,’
‘I told you, you’re not getting me inside that Scarlet Pagoda – not for all the corn in Idaho.’