Magic Ray of Light
by Anthony Richardson
When the fuzz rises around the curtains, and the room dances for my blurry eyes, I hear the early morning high-pitched ceeeeeee of the television; I feel its constant light. Inches from my nose, the screen engulfs me, and I sit here with my tools. Here I sit, in silent study, while that girl plays noughts and crosses with the puppet clown. No programme, no picture moves, but the dawn serenity of the Test Card. The girl and clown encircled – locked – in perpetual tic-tac-toe. Around them, a robotic mesh of monochrome: blacks, greys, and all their cold rigidity. If I squint, and I often do, the colours merge, the players move, the couple kiss. And all the while the screaming tone intensifies, my ears burn red, but I sit ready with my tools.
A child is used so that skin tones can be tested properly. The clown’s garish clothes are necessary: their contrast is such that a common transmission error called “Chrominance delay in quality” would turn his yellow buttons white. Everything has a purpose, even the game: the X marks the centre of the screen. The triangles on each side check for “Over scanning of picture.” A continuous high C sharp replaces incidental music, which cost too much in royalties. The girl is chubby. “All I remember of the shoot is eating biscuits while the technicians messed around with the board,” she would say in later interviews.
Somewhere it is dawn but my eyes are in the screen. The girl has played the first move, note the circle in the top middle square. Ladies first. The clown responds, X middle left. But that is past, for now the girl is timelessly poised to take her turn. Her hand hovers over the bottom right hand corner. Bottom right’s a clever move, for if she marks that box she can only draw or win. I know this for sure: I have played every possible game from there to its logical conclusion. Days of paper, one handed scenarios, slumber on my crossed legs. Girl. Girl. Girl. Draw. Girl. Anywhere else and game on – bottom middle and the puppet would win. But she knows this, and so the clown has no hope. The girl’s been pondering her move since 1967. She’ll make no mistake. The girl has screwed the puppet over. This eight year old, forever eight years old, is a manipulative bitch. As they stare out at me (what are they looking at? Do they know I’m watching them? Why, at such an important moment in the game? What about the game? Have they no interest in the game?), their grins tell all. The puppet’s – happily naive. Glad to have got the invite. Keen to pit his wits against a human. The girl’s – smug superiority. Bad move, Clown. This one’s in the bag.
I hate the little girl. Always I hate the little girl. Her age, her constant youth, while I sit here and fester. But with my tools beside me, bit by bit I can destroy her little world. How can the puppet win? By distracting her, unsettling her. With my tools. She will lose, and with failure comes age. Impossibly close, I am the screen. I become white, yellow, cyan, green, magenta, red, blue, black, and the clown and the girl spill out and etch their chalk into my exhausted eyes.
X.
The girl is eight years in body, but older in mind, can’t think how old, but adult. Her head spins like a magic roundabout. She sees the strange shapes and colours, knowing that something keeps her here. Something is stuck but she remembers nothing. Perhaps it is LSD that chops her brain and twists her vision. Outside is scary and cold, a grey maze, and although further still on her horizon are those brightly coloured bricks that glow at her like planets, she is thankful for the lines that descend, dissect the harsh tones away from her to form a perfect circle, a haven of clarity, a safe nest.
How long she’s been tripping she can’t put down. But that is not important. The circle makes her tight and cosy with him. It is warm here. He looks after her, she is with him, and he is a puppet, not a metaphorical puppet, but a real puppet with oversized buttons on woollen clothes. She gets off on his straggly hair, his felt cap blue as the room and round as his nose. His smile is an upside down version of her hair band, she digs that. They are on some sort of date and he is making her feel all fuzzy. Time can stretch forever, as long as she trusts him. They play noughts and crosses.
She wonders what it will be like to speak. Her throat is a cat’s tongue.
“I’m… I’m having a great time with you tonight.”
It feels so sensual, moving her lips. Her words melt into his buttons.
The puppet stretches his smile, as wide as TV. His warmth washes over her, lapping at the edges of their world.
“So am I,” he replies. His voice is the growling baritone of a blues singer. “So am I,” he repeats, and part of her wants to sing with him.
But despite the acid, despite the whir-whir whisking her perception, she still has her tactics and, in her hand, the chalk. Her top box nought is as flawless as the border of their world. The white of the chalk is crisp on the blackboard.
Their hands touch when she gives him the chalk. Her heart beats twice, making ripples that push outwards, and the grey wasteland undulates in their wake. Even the BBC TV sign trembles with the flutter of her chest. The puppet’s woollen fingers aren’t at all rough or scratchy.
“First go, baby,” murmurs the puppet clown. She chuckles, a little loudly perhaps, then feels another pull in her chest. Looking down, she sees that she has breasts. Crude outlines of mammoth tits scored with a black marker pen, that weren’t there seconds ago. Someone far away is cackling. But her chest is wholesome, heaving out of her red pinafore, curiously right on a little girl. Her face stings red but the clown digs her just the same. Nothing has changed between them.
The puppet waves the chalk slyly as he ponders where to cross. His eyes narrow, he chooses the middle left square. His hand brushes against her breast as he draws the second line. X. The girl shivers. His woollen fingers feel like Velcro shoes. The clown seems embarrassed, would grow red if the way he was knitted allowed it. Wait. There. His scarlet makeup bleeds into his face, causing him to blush. That’s what the Test Card’s for. Frozen, his eyes skating on hers, his hand lingering on her bosom.
“Oh,” she whispers.
Laughs.
Falls in love.
They kiss, and at once the rowdy blocks of colour at her border zip out of sight. As girl meets puppet clown she feels electric. Someone at the edge of the tunnel is watching her, she knows that, but she is locked in this moment. Forget the game plan, she will put her next nought in the bottom middle square, so he will touch her again, again, again. Top left, bottom left, vertical line. Clown, Clown, Clown, Clown, Clown.
“Bubbles!” shrieks a murderous voice, which pings through the circle and chisels the two apart. The clown and the girl, now forever separate, stare outwards in confusion. There is Jemima in the doorway, Jemima the empty headed doll from the BBC children’s show Play School, her blue button eyes bubbling.
The clown does nothing, lifeless with shock at being exposed. He grins vacantly like a caught fish. And beside him is still the girl. Her smile is different. Her smile dies on her face like a caterpillar. She can’t move. She’s fixed, strapped to her chair next to that lecherous bastard of a puppet who has tried to seduce her – spiked her with acid! – while his own stuffed toy wife stares in at them like a spare jumper through the circular window.
And she, the girl, only eight years old with felt-tipped breasts, mid tic-tac-toe with chalk in hand can only stare out at the intruder. Her cold expression tells all: fear, fury, shame at the futility of it all, the nausea of the tail end of an acid trip, this torturous déjà vu, and worst, almost losing the game.
Miles away, and across what seems like a chasm, the puppet pleads with his wife, his voice squeaking like a dog’s toy.
“Jemima! It was nothing! I swear! It was only a game! It’s work, Jemima! She means nothing! Just her skin tones are important! Jemima! Jemima!”
Jemima looks away. From her pocket she takes a child’s recorder, puts it to her lips in solemn fatigue, and blows a high C sharp, a melancholy note, a puppet’s last post. Ceeeeeee
The curtains tear apart, in bursts the day, and the wife stands there crisp and clean in her proper working clothing. Her eyes are sharp like a killer’s.
“Why do you do this?” she demands, her voice heavy with the importance of a real person. “It’s getting worse – you’re putting on silly voices.”
She scowls at my three-day stubble, my lap littered with paper, the room’s pathetic smell. Shaking her head, she realises who I am.
“And what are these?” she asks of my tools, which in a snap seem silly and naked.
“Sellotape? Felt-tipped pens? A cut out picture of a doll? You’ve sellotaped a picture of a …?”
But I no longer turn to her. I am back with the screen, and as she asks me what exactly it is I’m doing with my fucking self, her voice muffles and slinks away. I am no longer me, with my belittled tools and wasted life. I am the boy watching the girl and puppet. I am the little lad in pyjamas in front of the television set, while mother is in the kitchen cooking bacon that smells like fresh starts, and I am willing on the mantel piece clock, urging Play School to begin.
[1] Magic Ray of Light was the first piece of incidental music commissioned for the BBC.
