[BOOK TOUR: BOOK EXTRACT] The Disappearance Boy by Neil Bartlett @InkandescentUK @neilvbartlett #TheDisappearanceBoy

Today is my stop on the The Disappearance Boy by Neil Bartlett book tour and I’m sharing a book extract with you.

Before the extract I’ll leave the synopsis of the book:

1953. The backstreets of Brighton are buzzing with preparations for the celebrations of the Coronation of Elizabeth II and, at the Grand Theatre, illusionist Teddy Brookes is plotting something crowd-pleasing to crown the occasion—with some assistance from glamorous Soho showgirl Pamela Rose. What the audience can never see is that, hidden behind the smoke and mirrors of his act, there is a whole world of secrets and lies…

And a disappearance boy.

In his acclaimed fourth novel, Neil Bartlett once again performs his trademark trick of slipping into the hidden spaces of queer history and bringing them vividly to life.

Now I leave you with the wonderful extract:

BOOK EXTRACT

In Spring 1953, illusionist Teddy Brookes has got a last-minute booking at the Grand Theatre, Brighton. With him are Pamela—the glamorous ex-Soho-showgirl who is going to be his new ‘Vanishing Lady’—and Reggie, his assistant—who is the Disappearance Boy of the title. In this extract we meet all three of them, and the strange, dilapidated  building they will perform in.

The Brighton Grand is gone now. Its doors finally closed for business in 1955, and the building burnt memorably to the ground in 1961; however, on the afternoon that Mr Brookes and Reggie and their new girl first arrived, its façade was still making a reasonably convincing job of promising the pedestrians who passed it on their way up or down North Road a good night out. Plastered Italianate pillars divided up the windows of the first floor, a couple of gesturing ladies still flanked the pediment at the top, and on either side of the front doors—grand affairs with ideas well above their station, all bevelled glass and big bright handles—two framed bills proudly listed the current show’s attractions in scarlet and blue lettering. These changed every two or three weeks—weekly in the winter—and this week, underneath headliners Lauri Lupino Lane and Madame Valentine’s ‘Nudes de Montmartre’, they announced by means of a pasted-on slip that third on the bill was one Miss Burstone, the Talented Vocaliste. This, Reggie guessed, was the act that had been hurried on to replace whoever had been injured and who they themselves would be replacing come Monday. He couldn’t see the name of anyone he’d ever shared a stage with before—certainly no Rigolettos—and running his eye down the rest of the names he couldn’t help smiling. The management—Mr J. Clements, Sole Prop.—definitely wasn’t making its money by underestimating anybody’s taste. The Three Karloffs; ‘Ramena’ and her Exotic Dance; Suzanne De Wynter, Aerialiste Extraordinaire; Paquita and Pascale; George Truzzi; The Lovely LORRAINE; Mr Paul Clifford and his Orchestra—in other words, a few laughs, a couple of specialities, a touch of skirt and quite a bit of skin towards the top of the bill. It looked as though ‘The Missing Lady’ should be right at home, so long as they could get her up and running in time.

Reg didn’t go in through those glittering front doors, of course—he carried on up North Road then ducked off to his left, going in the back way to keep his agreed rendezvous with Mr Brookes and Pamela.

‘Right,’ said Mr Brookes, rubbing and twisting his hands together. ‘Shall we?’

Leaving Reggie and Pamela together in the middle of the stalls, he slipped through a door leading out into the foyer. Reggie was familiar with this part of the get-in routine and knew that all he had to do was sit and watch and wait, but Pamela clearly wasn’t; as Mr Brookes headed off into the dark to find his way upstairs, she looked around as if she wasn’t quite sure why she’d been brought along. A stained-glass panelled door leading to the bar at the back of the stalls had been left propped open, and a single shaft of daylight was raking across the scalloped backs of the seats in front of them, barely penetrating the toothless mouth of the stage

‘Not spending much on the paintwork, are they,’ she said eventually, eyeing the quartet of bare-breasted ladies who supported the boxes on either side of the proscenium. One breast was fissured. ‘Still, I expect it looks better with all the lights on. Funny old places these, aren’t they?’

Reggie had never really thought of it like that exactly, but he could see she had a point. In this lighting, the Grand wasn’t looking very grand at all. The upholstery on the back of the seat in front of him was greasy, and the swags of plaster laurel leaves that draped the proscenium looked more black than gilt. That lingering smell of last night’s house only underlined the emptiness, and up above the rather-too-small chandelier that was supposed to top the whole thing off you could barely make out a smokily painted midnight sky with a spattering of gold stars. The clouds were cracked and starting to peel. Reg squinted and tipped his head back. He thought he could just about make out a constellation of stars that he didn’t recognise down in the left-hand corner, seven of them, all in one gilt cluster and barely catching the light. What were they?

‘I’ve played in worse,’ he said, still squinting. ‘Better, obviously,        sometimes, but definitely worse as well.’

He’d have to look those stars up in an encyclopaedia—not that there was much likelihood of there being time to get to a library this week. Why did Mr Brookes always insist on this get-in routine of using the girl to check his sightlines right up to the back of the gallery, when they could easily have had an hour off for lunch and a roam around instead? After all, it wasn’t as if a house like this was ever going to sell much up beyond the second circle, was it—not at this time of year.

‘Reggie!’

He twisted round to see where Mr Brookes was calling from but couldn’t find a figure to go with the voice up there in the darkness. He shouted back anyway.

‘Yes, Mr Brookes.’ It seemed right to be formal, somehow, with the new girl here.

The voice came echoing down again over the serried ranks of seats, dark and no-nonsense. Mr Brookes knew that all this place needed to come alive was a few paying customers.

‘Show Pam back through the pass door and get her to walk the reveal, would you, Reg?’

‘Yes, Boss.’

Pam, he thought, leading the way through the darkness. Not Pamela, not Miss Rose: Pam. Doesn’t waste any bloody time, does he?

‘What does he mean?’ Pam was keeping her voice down as she picked her way behind Reggie along their row of seats—obviously she didn’t want her new employer to hear her. ‘Walk his what? Bloody hell, that’s heavy—’

The pass door at the Grand was a serious affair, an eight-foot high contraption of sliding metal. Although the stage side of it was blank and black, the auditorium side was scarlet and had NO ADMISSION TO THE PUBLIC lettered across it in six-inch capitals. Clearly whoever had painted them had very pronounced opinions about the dividing line between the two worlds it served to keep separate. Reggie helped Pam to hold the door open, and she squeezed herself through.

‘Straight on from stage left,’ he said, keeping his voice down too, ‘and then hold centre two feet upstage of the footlights. He just likes to get an idea of what you’re going to look like before he starts working. Helps him feel in control. Just up those steps and then left and you’re on.’

Pamela peered ahead to see where Reggie was indicating. ‘Does it now. Well, who am I to get in the way of anybody’s feelings? Right… ’

Reggie let the iron barrier slide slowly closed behind her (it sighed, as if it was sorry to see her go: Persephone returning to Hades) shuttering off her swinging backside as she picked her way up the three concrete steps to stage level. It would be just like Mr Brookes to bring a girl all the way down here to the seaside and then send her packing if she wasn’t up to scratch, he knew that. But time was short, and with that figure, he thought she stood more than a fair chance.

‘Is this it?’

She was shading her eyes as if it wasn’t darkness she was looking up into, but a too-bright light. Her other hand was reversed on her hip, knuckles resting lightly on the bone, fingers curled, elbow and shoulder perfectly relaxed. Well, thought Reg. That’ll show him.

‘Mr Brookes? Are you there?’

‘Left a bit.’ The voice echoed down from somewhere right up under the painted stars. ‘Now right.’

‘Sounds like the rifle range at the fair,’ she laughed, obeying his instructions with a lazy cha-cha first one way and then the other. ‘Not going to bloody shoot me, are you?’

‘Not unless I have to. Right, that’s bang centre. Think you can remember that?’

‘Oh, I think so. I just need to line myself up with that door to the bar.’

She pointed to the back of the stalls. The half-light from the opendoor hid all of her nerves, and softened the lines of her hair and the black and white of her elegantly extended forearm. The gold charms on her wrist rearranged themselves, and fell silent; one pointing finger sketched in the thought that somewhere out there beyond the bar there must be a street, and people, and a normal working life. You could see that it was true what she’d said on the train about working in a floor show, thought Reggie. She hit every pose just right.

‘But then, it won’t be the first time I’ve done that of an evening.’

Her laugh rang out through her voice, and Reggie couldn’t help but smile back at her from out in the darkened auditorium. He remembered what Mr Brookes had shouted down the phone at him over the noise of that pub, and decided that yes, they had struck lucky. Rehearsals with this one might even be fun.

What are your thoughts on the extract? Let me know in the comments!

Make sure to check out the trailer for the book by clicking H E R E.

*Purchase ‘The Disappearance Boy’ here:

*You can also find the book here: Foyles, Gay’s The Word and the Inkandescent website.

**I am in no way compensated by these sites. I am simply sharing it so people can find this book easier.

Neil Bartlett has been an acclaimed and pioneering voice in British queer culture since the 1980s. His first novel, Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall (written in a council flat on the Isle of Dogs), was Capital Gay’s Book of the Year 1990. It went on to be translated into five European languages, and was recently republished by Profile as a Serpent’s Tail Classic. His second novel, Mr. Clive and Mr. Page, was nominated for the Whitbread Prize in 1996, his third, Skin Lane, was shortlisted for the Costa Award in 2007, his fourth, The Disappearance Boy, earnt him a nomination for Stonewall Author of the Year 2014. Neil is also a maker of rule-breaking performance and theatre. After a controversial early career, he was appointed Artistic Director of the Lyric Hammersmith in 1994 and, in recognition of his work there, was awarded the O.B.E. in 2000. Since leaving the Lyric in 2005, he has created work for major cultural producers including the National Theatre, the RSC, the Manchester Royal Exchange, the Edinburgh International Festival, the Wellcome Foundation, Artangel, Tate Britain—and the Royal Vauxhall Tavern.

Find him on: Website and Twitter.