Positively, Mr Shimpling / Absolutely, Mr Duke: After All, After All
(No, despite appearances, I am not turning into a gen writer. Quite. This bittock fic will doubtless end up folded into Under a Dragon Moon. But it also stands alone, so:
Here is a portrait of the greatest star of the Wizarding music halls.)
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No one else laughed the way Derwent Shimpling did. As heartily, as innocently, as freely. After all these years, his face was still that of a happy child, little marred for all the greasepaint. Oh, there was a tinge of purple to his countenance, no question, but there was many a retired colonel in a Gloucestershire village or many an ancient Indian Political in clubland who might say the same, and worse things happened at sea, so thank-you-for-allowing-us-into-your-hearts-and-good-night-and-God-bless-us-all.
For many a decade he had trod the boards, the halls his first love but rep in small, forgotten villages and panto in town halls by no means beneath him (and he was a talented dame, if he did say as much himself, ta, ducks). There had been good nights and - less good: he still treasured, fifty years on, the comment of a visiting American vaudevillian, a Muggle-born, who’d said, ‘You’re not ready for the big-time until you’ve bombed’ - he meant this in the Yank sense of the term - ‘more than the Eighth Air Force’: a joke he’d inherited on the other fellow’s death, and repeated, suitably amended to refer to going for a Burton, Bomber Harris, and the RAF, to younger performers who wanted bucking-up. And it had never really touched him, the life he’d led, never touched the essential innocence that was his distinguishing characteristic - and that had, had he but known it, been what made him the great man he would never for a moment have considered himself to be. Not the draughty dressing rooms and the restive audiences, not the seedy theatrical hotels and the mad landladies and the war years and the absconding impresarios and the splinched luggage: none of it had ever really touched him. No one else laughed the way Derwent Shimpling did, but it wasn’t for his lack of effort, for that was the key to the man: he loved laughter, pursued it all his life, coaxed it and cajoled it. It would have been a very easy thing to have done, had he wished to do, to pursue applause and fame and such fortune as the halls could provide, but it had simply never occurred to him to do. He wanted only to make everyone laugh, and whilst he was incredibly pleased and proud when they did do - most of all when, at a Royal Command Performance, far from Muggle eyes, he had reduced the late Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother to helpless giggles (dear, dear people, the Royal Family, albeit Squibs) - his end and aim was the laughter, not the taking credit for it. And that, of course, was what had made sure that the world laughed with him and loved him well, and that was why he had never lost his innocence.
Oh, Mr Potter, what shall I do?
I meant to sweep the chimmin-ee, I’m trapped now in your Floo!
Please fly me back to Diagon, I’ll stay there all me life,
You’re a hero to the world, sir, but I’ve no real taste for strife
(You’re a hero, Mr Potter, but - I wouldn’t be your wife!
You’re a hero, that is certain, and the world may owe you much,
BUT -
Not for all the gold in Gringotts, I’d not envy your old dutch! )
His parents, God rest ’em both, no doubt had never contemplated such a career for their young Gryffindor - oh, yes, he’d been a Gryffindor at Hogwarts, truncated though his schooling had been, in the end: tragedy demanded Ravenclaw brain, managing took a Slytherin, you couldn’t hope for better performers than Hufflepuffs for the rough and tumble work, vent acts and aerial acts and tumbling and such, but comedy wanted the raw courage, always - but they’d never complained. There were a few folk in Wizard-dom who seemed to share the Muggle attitude towards labouring and trade and the stage, if you could call the halls ‘the stage’, it wasn’t as if he were doing Shakespeare, after all - and oddly, the few who held those notions were Muggle-haters to a man - but for most of the Wizarding world, magic use was magic use, and whether you used or didn’t use magic in your profession or trade was the dividing criterion, be you a driver on the Knight Bus or the Headmaster of Hogwarts … or a song and dance man with a line in patter and physical comedy.
Daddy wouldn’t buy me a Kneazle
Daddy wouldn’t buy me a Kneazle
I ’ave a little Crup
And I’ve raised ’im from a pup
But I’d ravver have a Kneazle, please!
The years had been kind, really. It had been a goodly apprenticeship, from Cordwainer’s Wells to Dreary LaneAlhambraGawber Road. from Holborn to Hogsmeade. He was still sound enough of wind and limb for a song or two and a bit of the old ankle, and why not? Why, the years from eighty on are the prime of a Wizard’s life. And after years of honing the business and polishing the lines, after years of craft such that his well-known ‘after all’ could, standing alone, bring down the house, he could still - ‘still’? Make that, ‘better than ever’ - knock them, in the words of his youth, in the , and a few pointers from some kindly theatrical ghosts, and on to every Empire, Palladium, and
‘Your surname, please.’
‘Ah. It’s ... I’ll spell it out. B-O-U-G-G-W-A-R-I-N-G.’
‘Lovely, but I shan’t be it when I want you, how is it ?’calledspelling
‘Er. You know how “Mainwaring” is called as “Mannering”?’
‘Yes. What - OH. Right, then. I’ll call you by your Christian name, then. What is that?’Oh.
(Pause.) ‘Ah. Roger.’
The thing was - the funny thing was, if you will, guv’nor - that he’d played his part (wait for it) by playing his part. In the halls or over the wireless, when times had looked a bit darkish, he’d done what little he could do (he never accepted that it had been, really, a great deal) to keep spirits up and see to it that the lads and the Home Front alike had kept ‘smiling through’. Grindelwald, those two nasty episodes with Screaming Lord Twunt, it had all been the same, he hadn’t had the opportunity to bear a wand but he’d done everything he’d been allowed to do in putting on appeals, entertaining the Aurors, and bringing what cheer he might to the nation at large. He could take an innocent pleasure in that, and did do; he could have, although he didn’t, take considerable pride in it and a good deal of credit.
And now it was time to banish the last of the darkness and put off the memories of the late war. Laughter was the best potion, after all, and the Wizarding world deserved to celebrate a little, now, after all, you couldn’t say fairer than that, now, could you. Most fears and dreads, even the worst - and, Merlin, but they’d seen the worst of late, now mercifully past - most fears and dreads after all were just so many boggarts, and there’s one sovereign remedy for that, now, isn’t there: Riddikulus!
From the wings, he could hear the chairman, putting his all into the old, familiar, comforting words: ‘And now, Witches and Gentlewizards, I give you -’
His timing was by now instinctive.
‘-the comedian who does exactly what it says on the cauldron -’
He limbered his joints and edged forwards.
‘-the potion as before, just what the Healer ordered -’
The usual charm to muss the hair in the usual fashion, a quick fist through the crown of the self-repairing boater, a quick drag of his soles through the chalk, a twitch of the striped jacket, and he loped out on stage impeccably on his cue.
‘’Ullo ’ullo ’ullo, thank you, Wallace Greenslade couldn’t’ve said fairer, good evening, all - oi, cocky, what’s with the long face, oh, sorry, didn’t know you were a Metamorphmagus, thought you were off-colour - I don’t care to know that! - thought you had a megrim, lad, and we’ll be having none of that tonight - don’t want anyone being glum, ’s like the Wizard from Bedale who came up to Diagon Alley, went into the Cauldron, and Tom said they hadn’t any Yorkshire pud, poor old lad was so dismayed he went back to Yorkshire and battered himself to death -’
Boggarts be gone, he thought, luxuriating in the laughter, it’s peacetime now.