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CHAPTER 1

BRUCE AND BELINDA

Tonight's the night. Even though I can't be there and she can't be here, I've done what I can to make it special.

I've fetched all the soft toys out of the store cupboard, and arranged them on the settee. In the old pine chest I found some tinsel, and wondered whether to blow up some balloons. I dug out the red piece of cloth that we throw over the settee when we want to look posh, and spread it carefully on the floor from the front door into the sitting room. I decided to keep the bubbly for later, but I took a beer out of the fridge and opened the packet of popcorn. I sat down among the animals and pressed the remote.

There she is. And him, of course.

Bruce and Belinda's Question Time. Of course, it's only a pilot, but everyone knows how much is hanging on it. It's a brilliant format. No questions in advance: a hard call for people who are used to interviews where prescripted questions enable them to prepare. And a sharper probing than is generally acceptable because it comes from a puppet and is sweetened by the charm of Belinda's interventions. Hard-soft, good cop – bad cop. B and B: Beauty and the Beast.

"So, Mr Mayor, how do you answer your critics?" Her sweetness of tone does not mask the directness of her questioning.

And then comes the probing snout, jeering. "Yes, Mr Mayor, Boris is right this time, isn't he?"

The "bad cop" is the puppet, Bruce, and the "good cop" is of course "Belinda", or Suzie, my Suzie.

It always takes me a while to get used to the blond wig and ridiculous makeup. It feels odd, too, watching it on my own, but as it's a live show, Suzie can hardly be with me, and I wasn't included in the specially invited audience because, in an attempt to harness the recent youthquake, they'd made the decision to invite only those aged between eighteen and twenty-five. Hard to accept that I'm past it!

I wonder how she's feeling. Nervous, I'm sure, but you'd never know it. She's always so self-contained. Whenever I see her on stage, she seems completely at home: her infectious smile embracing the audience. They love her, and she seems to know it. But this is different. Her own show. And live: there's nothing like live TV, they say, to get the adrenaline going.

For this show they've managed to get none other than Sadiq Khan. What a coup! Not actually Suzie's suggestion, though I know she's happy with it. It was always clear that, although Suzie would be consulted, the BBC would have the ultimate say. They've promised that if this pilot works, they'll consider commissioning a series. If they do, Suzie might get more say for future shows, as they begin to trust her. But for a kick-off she couldn't have asked for more.

Suzie Tavener is, of course, a respected financial journalist, and I'm Aubrey De'Ath Grimsby-Grenville (known as Orbs), a something in the City. That's how most people see us and how we often make our money.

Only, that's not who we are. In fact, Suzie is best known for something else entirely, and under another name. Suzie is a ventriloquist – or vent, as we call them – and her name is Belinda. But she keeps the two entirely separate. Never the twain shall meet. Actually, Suzie isn't well known at all. She's very much public property but very few people know who she is. Only a select few know her in either of her two worlds and hardly anyone other than me knows of the connection between them.

As for me, I also have a hidden life, and another name, but my life is even more secret, because I am not well known and Cyril isn't exactly a name to conjure with (so to speak!).

The first thing to say about me is that I'm not a clown. I'm not one of those sinister creatures hiding God knows what behind white faces and scaring the wits out of passers-by. No, I'm a fool. Silly name but with a proud history. Every culture has its tales about fools. The fool as truth-teller, the child-like person who sees through the stupidities and falseness of the age. Look at the wisdom of Shakespearean fools, see what power there is in the fool, what we have to offer the world. Yes, we wear a costume and a red nose, but being a fool isn't about hiding; for me, it's about presenting who I am, my true self, more truly myself than any of my more publicly acceptable personae. You could say that the difference between a clown and a fool is the difference between a maze, a place of confusion where you get lost, and a labyrinth, where there is only one way in, one centre, one truth. A place of trust. Finding, not losing, yourself.

Opinion is split about having a fool name. I have one, but I tend not to use it – it's not a separate part of myself, after all, but the essential part of me. The best part of me. You may have heard of Holy Fools – people like Roly Bain – well, I'm not a person of faith, but we do the same sorts of things. Some fools speak, but not in my tradition. We sometimes use our voices to make sounds, maybe sing, but not communicate in a traditional way by speaking. Shutting down one sense, I find, intensifies the others. I listen, hear and see much more keenly. Of course I'm not silent in my daily life. When Bruce allows us to get a word in, Suzie and I chat about everything under the sun.

I realise I haven't introduced Bruce. Remiss of me. Bruce is a fox with long and deceptively soft fur shading from cream to brown. But there's nothing cutesy or naff about him. Basil Brush he's not. Bruce is a much tougher affair, with a far from amiable expression and a hard snout for sniffing out the truth. Though it pains me to say so, he's rather magnificent.

Looking back at the screen, I can see that Suzie is in her element. From the first moment of this programme it's been clear that she has the knack of drawing out the truth from her victims. With all his intelligence and political experience, Sadiq is charmed. So by the time B&B home in on some of his key policies and question the discrepancy between rhetoric and action, they have him on the ropes.

Charm and intelligence: it's an unbeatable combo, a perfect expression of my girl's political instincts. Because Suzie has a politics degree, she's bright. She's also a couple of years older than me, which gives me an excuse for her greater success. She started on a political weekly and eventually was invited to do a monthly column of her own for both the print and the online versions. Like everything she does, it's original. It's a gossip column, not from within Westminster, but from the people on the street. She's always been good at engaging with Joe and Betty Bloggs, and feels strongly that it's their views that need to be heard. So her column is Vox Pop. And because it's not about her, it's anonymous.

Until her performance career took off, journalism was how Suzie made a living and it's always a fall-back position. Not that it looks as if that will be needed anytime soon, or ever if things carry on like this. But she's kept up her column, kept her skills and contacts ticking over. And in any case, her knowledge of grassroots opinion feeds into what she is doing on the show, providing her own oblique and unique contribution to political discourse.

The idea for the series came from the political editor of BBC TV who was in Edinburgh on holiday, and happened to pop in to her act. When he saw her coming out after the show he was gob-smacked to discover that the blond-headed "Belinda" was, in fact, the Suzie that he'd bumped into at political parties.

"I thought you looked familiar, but I would never have imagined it was you. Never in a month of Sundays." Amazing how seeing someone in a different context throws the mechanics of our memories. That was Suzie's protection.

Geoff was captivated and soon realised the potential of what he'd seen. Suzie's performing skills combined with her political nous: the astringent sharpness so evident from her columns together with the sweet demeanour of her stage presence made a winning combination. And it was then that he had his brainwave. Why not, he thought, have a new form of political interview?

The following morning, he invited Suzie for a walk along Portobello beach and, as he walked, he outlined his idea.

"Political satire is nothing new, of course," he said, "but so many comedians don't go beyond the usual easy targets. This could combine the satire of Dead Ringers or Spitting Image with the straightforward interview of public figures. A double-pronged attack. No one's done anything like it."

It was quite a lot to take in, but Geoff was persuasive. "You've got the skill. You've got the political background. You could do it, Suzie." And squeezed her arm.

Suzie stopped and stood for a while, watching the waves. She could feel her excitement rising. Yes, she thought, I could. No script for me, no preparation for them. This could work.

"Okay," she said. "You're on. But one condition: you must keep stumm. Not a word." God knows why Suzie has this thing about secrecy, but that's part of who she is.

Watching the show, I'm so proud of her. I'm falling in love with her all over again.

I first fell for her over the footlights just over two years ago, dazzled by the extraordinary talent of this girl, her charm and audience skills so different from the rather sad (usually male) nerds who retreat into the personae of their puppets. I know some people think ventriloquism is creepy, but there's nothing creepy about my gal. I couldn't believe that she was unattached. How could that be? In the early days of our relationship, during those embarrassing exploratory conversations, Suzie wasn't very forthcoming. Dismissively, she said that none of her previous relationships had been serious. Saying what I wanted to hear, I guess. But perhaps I was never confident enough to believe her. How was it that a lovely girl like her had ended up with me?

When Suzie brought Bruce on our first date, I was amused, charmed even, but I have to say that in bed the charm wore thin. For Bruce is always there. Although Suzie doesn't usually throw her voice at home, unless she's practising for her show, and that she does mostly in the privacy of the bedroom, Bruce is a constant companion, a seeming attachment in almost every waking moment. When we're watching TV, he is usually on her arm, nodding, inclining his head back and forth, expressing his non-vocal opinions, and hiding from the scary bits with his head under his wing or on Suzie's shoulder. I've tried remonstrating with her, but I guess she can't help it. Goes with the territory. I've tried to be patient. I thought that as she got to know me it would wear off. Pathetic, I know, but after a while her divided attention began to make me feel insecure, like a reflection on my manhood, questioning my devastating attraction as a lover.

Not that I'm much of a catch. Fairly ordinary looking, wiry if you're being polite, scrawny if I'm honest, with big ears, and financially in a permanent state of wobble. My parents still think I'm some sort of Hooray Henry in the City, a world alien enough to them for me to keep up the façade, especially as I don't see much of them. Whereas for me London has been a liberation, they hate it, and rarely visit. In fact, I do some filling in at the bank from time to time to earn a few much-needed pennies – but at a lowly level in the accounts department, nothing flashy. Lucky to get in, actually, especially with such a flexible arrangement, but contacts and all that, who you know. Mum and Dad have no idea of what I actually do.

My other life started about seven years ago when, on a whim, I joined an evening class at the Circus Space. I just had to have some light relief from the tedium of office life. At first it was just a way of having fun and then I found it was much more than that. I absolutely loved it – not the juggling, high wire acts and so on, but the clowning. Such fun. It didn't occur to me as a job: I was too much my father's son. But after a couple of years of sheer boredom – and, yes, misery – the only thing I could think of that had given me joy were those two terms of evening classes. So I looked around and began to dream.

Even in our business it's who you know, so I contacted our clown teacher, Joe. He was doing a couple of gigs at Greenbelt and invited me along, expenses paid, to be his "glamorous assistant". I managed to fend off his advances, and had a really good time. It was so good to spark off an audience. After that, Joe persuaded me to do a residential workshop on the subtle art of fooling and, although I could barely afford it, I went. And discovered that it was not a possible job but a way of life. A way of being that expressed my self more profoundly than any other kind of social exchange. It was a transformation. For the first time in my life I knew what it was to feel at ease.

When I got into show biz, I realised how limited my allmale existence had been – family, school, and the City: that too was pretty male-dominated. Because when I encountered girls, women, however tongue-tied I was to begin with, I realised how much I liked this different species. Why had it taken me so long? They were definitely preferable. But I started late, so even by the time I met Suzie at twenty-eight, I wasn't very experienced.

Suzie and I "get" each other; we live in the same world and don't need to spell it all out. After all that dreary soul-searching that my previous girlfriend went in for – analysing our emotions all the time – it's such a relief. Though I know my fooling training is about emotional honesty, as a continual practice it's all a bit exhausting.

That isn't the only difference between the two women. Eva, my ex, was bipolar and somewhat unpredictable, which in the end was more than I could bear. Suze, on the other hand, is always her sunny, joyful self. Maybe it helps to transfer her negativity to a puppet. Bruce is a grumpy old thing, the Victor Meldrew of the puppet world, Meldrew with a Yorkshire accent – maybe Boycott is nearer the mark. Yes, he sounds like Geoffrey Boycott.

Suzie doesn't like me criticising him. Once, when I called him grumpy, she turned on me. "He's not the only one. You have a grumpy voice too. I know, I've heard you." Too true. It's usually silent but sometimes I find that I've said something under my breath, and someone's heard it and is shocked. And what I had to say about that dratted puppet was mostly unrepeatable.

It's amazing that Suze can apparently change her personality so completely and, with her bright clear tones, can throw her voice into such a gruff basso profundo. I can't imagine that it can be good for the vocal chords, but Suze says there's no strain, it's no problem.

When we met, I was living an itinerant life – moving all over the country from one festival or gig to another. Not so much abroad – I couldn't afford it – but London, Edinburgh, Brighton, Leeds and a few smaller events. I wasn't living anywhere. Or rather, as the Scots say, wasn't staying anywhere. Of course I was living! Scraping a living, perhaps, travelling the circuit, cadging a night on a sofa in the flat of anyone who would have me. Friends were good – we are all pretty used to the struggles of the entertainment world. And smartphones have made it all possible. They also enable me to take calls from my parents without them needing to know where I am (or where I'm not). Suzie had just taken on this place in Bow, and was wondering if she could afford it on her own. So it made sense for me to move in.

I don't think I'm too much trouble. I'm used to living in other people's spaces, adapting to their ways, and the rhythms of their lives. I do my bit; I'm pretty domesticated, really. In my previous life I got to know who needed the shower when, what time it was civilised to appear in the morning or disappear at night, which way to hang the loo paper or the mugs on the hooks on the wall. And in that world no one is coy – we're always moving about the bathroom or changing room in various stages of undress.

This is a small flat but big enough for the two of us, especially as we're both away so much. And it's really convenient. Near the DLR and only about half an hour into town – less than that by bike. And at the same time it has a distinct character of its own. Mainly Bangladeshi, but with some older original East Enders and a few newer incomers from Somalia and Eastern Europe. People are friendly when you get to know them, and living above a shop as we do, we are in close proximity to our neighbours, both below and on either side. We are set back from the main road so aren't generally bothered by the sound of the traffic. It's amazing how quiet it can be.

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Excerpted from "The Silence Diaries"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Jennifer Kavanagh.
Excerpted by permission of John Hunt Publishing Ltd..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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