The Tears of a Clown
By Marion Woods
The streets were so familiar it took
hardly any time at all to fall back into the rhythm of walking the well-trodden
route. Block after block, he strode along,
drinking in the sights and the sounds, the smells and ambience that spelt home.
He kept the hat pulled low on his head, the constant drizzle of rain
lending credence to his huddled appearance.
It had been a conscious decision to come
back – one he had thought long and hard about and of which he knew the colonel
did not really approve. ‘Too dangerous’
the old man had muttered, even as he had signed the leave chitty.
Yeah, he thought, it is dangerous, but sometimes - there are times when you have to … go
back. He had done all he could to
tie things up before he’d … left. He
had paid his debts, returned favours owed, bought the drinks for the boys in
the bar after work. But however hard
you tried, there was always something, somewhere, someone that … suffered – however unintentionally. However much you
regretted it.
He’d tried; he really had tried to break
it off.
She’d always said he was thoughtless – an
unregenerate hedonist – yeah. She
had a way with words, a way echoed occasionally by Blue’s rich vocabulary and
his weakness for words with more syllables that you could count. The morning after the first night they’d
spent together, he’d teased her, saying that the classic post-coital relaxant
was a cigarette – but for him it was going to have to be a damn
dictionary! She’d blushed – and she
always blushed so prettily - and looked away so that he had apologised - and
then she’d turned her face to him so that he could see her laughter.
“You are a fraud, Richard Fraser - an
out-and-out fraud - ‘post-coital’
indeed…”
“Hey - police work gives you a rich and
varied vocabulary – but not of words you can often use in polite conversation.
I was just lucky to find an occasion when one phrase was ‘apposite’…” He’d
joined in her renewed laughter - she had such a rich, warm laugh that it had
made the blood in his veins simmer with desire.
She’d
hated it – the police work. She’d tried
not to show it, but he knew. She’d
tried to cover it by fussing over him when he wandered in at all hours, dirty,
hungry and frequently angry at his inability to solve the World’s
problems. She’d cooked him perfectly
balanced meals, which he’d shovelled down without noticing what they were – or
simply been too tired to eat at all.
She’d ensured he had clean clothes, ironed
his shirts – even his mother hadn’t done that – and then when it all got too
much for him, she’d take him to bed and soothe away the heartaches and the
fears with such tender passion that his head reeled remembering it.
Alison
Margaret Topping – youngest daughter of an English science professor at MIT
–raised in the US and now a teacher of English at a local Chicagoan college –
‘Tops’ to her pupils, Alie to her friends.
Topsy to her lover in the privacy of their bed…
As he had risen through the police ranks,
spending more and more time behind a desk dealing with the administrators and
the lawyers, Alie had escorted him to the polite dinner parties, charmed the
wives of the local dignitaries and smoothed his rough edges. She’d also watched him grow more
dissatisfied and had tried to convince him that he was doing the right thing by
becoming less of a street cop and more of a
career police officer. She’d
encouraged him to indulge in his life-long passion for flying, hoping he would
bury himself in his hobby and lose his hunger for action – for excitement – for
a chance to make a difference for the better.
Then, inevitably for such a high-flyer as
he had become, there was the possibility of becoming the supreme commander of
the WGPC – with the obligatory move to Europe - and he’d seen her willing him
to take it. Seen the hunger in her eyes
and known that he would hurt her so much when he turned it down.
They had argued – for the only time in
their relationship. Alie wanted him to
make the best of himself – “you are a fine man, Rick, an honest, dedicated
police officer – you can do so much good…”
He had walked out of their house – walked
down by the lake, weighing the possibilities of the promotion against the lure
of the other job - the one Alie knew
nothing of and could never know of - Spectrum.
It
was a tremendous risk to take. He was
well-known in his profession – a face people recognised from their TV
news. To leave that behind and join a
band of anonymous colour captains in a force dedicated to eradicating terrorism
was chancy. Yet, with every fibre of
his being, he’d wanted that chance.
He took some leave towards the end of May
– told Alie he had a conference - and flew himself to the rendezvous, where
he’d learned all about the fledgling organisation and met the men he would work
with. They were a varied and ‘colourful’ group indeed - ranging from a
master-criminal to a Boston socialite-turned-WAS security agent. There were military officers from the Space
Corps and the WAAF, a submariner from the WASPs and, finally, a retired admiral
as their commanding officer.
By the time he was ready to return home,
he’d committed to Spectrum and plans were already underway for his
‘disappearance’.
A week or so after he got home, he’d told
Alie he wasn’t going to take the WGPC job.
He’d expected an argument - or that she would, at least, berate him for
his lack of ambition. But she’d just
said, “I know… you decided weeks ago, you just couldn’t tell me.”
She’d sat at her desk and listened to him,
as he tried to find a way to tell her it was over between them. She just
listened, an enigmatic smile on her lips.
Finally, she interrupted him: “Rick, it’s
your life – you make your own decisions, you’ve always insisted that was the
case. So be it, I’ll accept your
decision. You must do what is right for you - trust your instincts; they’re
sounder than you believe. Don’t concern
yourself about me.” She laid a hand on
his arm and studied his frowning face. “Life isn’t always easy, Rick, you of
all people should know that. You don’t have
to decide anything straight away… I still say you should give it a week or two
before you tell them for definite… who knows, something may turn up that
changes your mind…”
“Something like what? I can’t imagine anything will, Alie. I don’t want the job – okay?”
He had shaken off her hand, turned away,
speechless with guilt at what he was going to do. He couldn’t warn her – he mustn’t
warn her – to do so would endanger her life as well as his own. He had no doubt that it was the right
decision to join Spectrum – he just wished he knew how to make her hate him, so
that the final parting, when it came – and it was now imminent – would be less
of a wrench. Try as he might, he couldn’t find a way and she’d never know how the
guilt of that failure would come to haunt him.
Sighing, Alie said, “Now, please, I have
essays to mark – go watch the football game... or something.”
The days sped by so quickly – too quickly…
then, on June 19th 2066, at 6:00pm precisely, he’d walked from his
office in the World Government Police building and stopped on the steps,
fumbling for a key to his car.
A single shot rang out, echoing around the
tall skyscrapers until it was impossible to tell where it came from - or even
how many shots were fired - and he fell.
It had hurt far more than he’d expected and he swiftly lost
consciousness.
Spectrum Agents, their presence all part
of the carefully plotted incident, rushed on to the scene to sweep him up into
a nearby ambulance and the news went out over the airwaves – Assistant World
Police Commissioner Richard Fraser, the man responsible for busting apart
organised crime in Chicago, has been assassinated.
Captain Ochre alias Richard Fraser
(deceased) – had been born.
There had been no other option but to
sever all ties. His family – such as it
was – his friends and Alison. He shed
every trace of his past, as thoroughly as he shaved off his distinctive beard
and allowed the barber to cut his hair into a more military style. He felt disconcertingly naked – and cold –
without the beard and the weight of his hair on the back of his neck. They’d even thought to make him use a
sun-bed to even the tan on his face… He
adapted to it quickly, less startled at seeing the stranger in his mirror every
morning and resigned to the tyranny of a daily shave.
Bizarrely, he’d watched his funeral on the
local news, seen the same local dignitaries and his colleagues paying tribute
to a man they had admired, liked and thought they knew well. They’d have been surprised to discover that
they’d hardly known him at all.
At his side in the Officers’ Lounge on
Cloudbase were the men he was having to come to terms with as his ‘new family’
– with all their strengths and weaknesses, their quirks and foibles. No-one knew quite how to react to what they
were seeing – even him. Captains Black
and Magenta stood across the room, watching the broadcast with expressionless
faces, fearing to get too closely involved and yet, perversely, wanting to be
involved. Captains Scarlet and Grey
sat either side of him, providing strangely impersonal comfort by their
presence while Captain Blue – the ‘sensitive’ one amongst them - stood behind
the sofa, a hand resting lightly on his shoulder in a comforting gesture of
unspoken support. Blue could not have failed to notice how his
colleague tensed as a young woman, swaddled in a heavy black coat and wearing a
wide-brimmed hat that hid her face, stepped forward and laid a wreath, before
melting back into the crowd.
It was Blue he feared the most in those
early days, feared that he might divine what Richard Fraser had done, and
disapprove. Blue could be a harsh judge
of human frailty, having no pity for himself - or any other man - who
transgressed the boundaries of his idiosyncratic definition of chivalrous behaviour. So it was Blue
he used to tease the most and provoke into keeping his distance.
But the change from Richard Fraser to
Captain Ochre had been hard. He had
missed her so much that he had buried his loneliness under a cloak of
light-hearted buffoonery and the emptiness in his heart with a roving eye for
the ladies on the base. Over the
months, he perfected the character, until he wore it like a second skin – his
second nature. He was the genial Captain Ochre, the ladies’ man among the
officers - always ready with a smile, a wink, a quip…always the clown – always the joker.
It was a damn good performance – pity
no-one realised it.
The days sped by, bringing momentous
changes in Spectrum’s purpose due to a series of events that transformed the
lives of every one of his new colleagues.
The Mysterons became their ruthless enemies, exercising powers that were
beyond belief in a variety of ways that continuously threw new challenges at the
small elite unit of Spectrum’s defence force.
A unit of five officers who implicitly trusted each others’ integrity,
courage and dedication; a unit that functioned as one. It was in this furnace of war that Richard
Fraser was finally forged into Captain Ochre, too preoccupied with world events
to even remember the cop from Chicago – a man who, to all intents and purposes,
was dead.
Then, only last week he had seen in the
local newspaper – the one remnant of his past that he could not wean himself
from – a report of a tragedy in which a teacher had been gunned down in a brawl
between rival gang leaders at her school.
His heart had stopped beating as the name of the victim had leapt from
the page – Ms Alison Topping.
So that was why he was here, back in
Chicago. To say goodbye, to say sorry, to say I miss you. He‘d sent a
wreath of golden chrysanthemums with a card ‘To Topsy – with all my love’ but
he had left it unsigned, of course.
From across the cemetery, hidden from the
mourners, he watched as the coffin was lowered into the freshly-dug grave. He saw her parents: her mother, dressed
entirely in black and leaning on her husband’s arm, weeping. As the small crowd dispersed he saw a woman
approach the grave – Alie’s favourite sister, Eleanor - with a small child, a
little boy, of no more than three or four years old. He was a robust child with wavy, dark-brown hair and bright brown
eyes, which no sorrow could completely dim.
He had a sweet, roguish face – a face designed to laugh at life.
She helped him drop a tiny wreath of white
roses into the grave and then gently led him away. They passed close by the anonymous stranger and he heard the
child asking with some urgency:
“I am
coming to live with you forever now, Aunt Ellie, aren’t I? Now Mommy’s gone to heaven to be with
Daddy?”
“Yes, Ricky. Mommy asked me, when you were born, to look after you if
anything happened to her. She was
worried that since Daddy… went away, there was no-one else she trusted to care
for you. I promised her I would. We’ll have some fun together, won’t we,
Ricky?”
“Yes, Aunt Ellie… but you won’t go away – will you?”
Eleanor Topping stopped and knelt before
the child. “No, Richard, I won’t go
away. I promise.”
“Honest injun?”
“Honest injun. You and I will live together for always.”
The child smiled, revealing a dimple in
his cheek. “Well, I guess that’s just
fine then, Aunt Ellie.” He hugged the
woman and said, glancing back at the grave,
“Mommy will be happy now she’s gone to be with Daddy – won’t she? I don’t want to leave her here if she’s
going to be unhappy, Aunt Ellie.”
Eleanor turned her eyes back towards the
graveside. “Oh yes, Ricky – she’ll be
happy now.”
He watched them walk out of the cemetery
and get into the small sea-green car Eleanor had always driven. The wardens were slowly filling in the grave
as he approached, but they stopped and allowed him to look down at the
coffin. The brass plate on the lid was
just visible and he read Alison Margaret Topping – followed by her
dates. Beneath that, it said simply - Beloved
mother of Richard Fraser Topping.
“Damn you, Alie – why the hell didn’t you
tell me!” he roared into the emptiness.
It was only later that he realised there
were tears on his cheeks – the salty, scalding tears of a clown.
Just
like Pagliacci did, I try to keep my sadness hid,
Smiling
in the public eye,
But
in my lonely room I cry
The
tears of a clown
When
there’s no-one around.
Tears of a Clown (Song credited to W. Robinson/H. Cosby/S. Wonder)
Authors Notes:
I really don’t know where this story came from. I was hoovering up in the dining room when the Smokey Robinson song – always a personal favourite – came over the stereo, and suddenly this story was there in my mind – almost exactly as I’ve written it down.
I hope no-one
minds me wading into Richard Fraser’s past.
I have always thought that for a man who’s supposed to be an
incorrigible charmer and practical joker, he looks awfully intense and rather
stern, but I imagine he can be utterly charming when he wants to be.
My thanks are due
to Hazel Köhler for her invaluable services as a beta-reader, to Sue Stanhope –
the doyenne of Captain Ochre stories - for a particularly pertinent insight,
and to the usual culprits for their generous encouragement and feedback.
I do not own the
characters from Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons – they were created
by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson for the
TV series Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. The copyright © of
all trademark materials (Captain Scarlet & the Mysterons,
all characters, vehicles, etc.), are owned by ITC/Polygram/Carlton. Information about the series has been taken
from copyright © materials (books, magazines, videos, T.V. media, comics, etc)
owned by ITC/Polygram/Carlton.
Thanks, as ever to
Chris Bishop for her wonderful website, and to you for reading the story and to
William ‘Smokey’ Robinson for one Hell of a good song…
Marion Woods
January 2005
Other stories from Marion Woods
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