The woman led them to the stage door of a nearby theatre.
"At least you're already in costume," she told Spud.
Backstage all was chaos. The woman in the white dress with the red boots was joined by a woman in a red dress with white boots. Together they strong-armed Spud to the edge of the stage, keeping him waiting in the wings for his cue.
Spud clutched the banana, and cast pleading looks at Chas, but Chas was lost in thought and paying no attention to what was going on around him.
"Remember... April..." he muttered to himself.
The entire stage was lit only by a single spotlight, centred on a very large table, with very large chairs, on which was laid a very large tea set. All of the props were made of foam, painted in lurid and fluorescent colours.
There was a man on stage, dressed in a fluorescent green pin striped suit making his bows to rapturous applause from the audience.
"What does he do?" Spud asked the two women holding him tight.
"He's the first man in the world to swallow a watermelon whole," the woman in red replied.
"Damn, I missed it!" Spud pouted as the man came offstage.
He was replaced by two actors, a man and a woman, both dressed in outlandish costumes of the raided-a-scrap yard variety. They both wore elaborate clown makeup, and were talking quite normally about their trip to the supermarket, and their day at the office.
As far as Spud could tell, there was absolutely nothing funny at all about what they were saying; in fact it sounded incredibly dull to him. But the unseen audience, out behind the stage lights, were laughing uproariously, and applauding every second word.
After five minutes or so, the two actors simply got up and walked off stage. With a shove, the two women pushed Spud, still clutching the banana, out onto the stage, straight into the glare of the spotlight.
Silence from the audience greeted him. He raised one hand to shield his eyes, the better to be able to peer into the gloom beyond the stage and see who was there. But it didn't help.
He turned on his heel and tried to walk offstage. But the two women were waiting for him, and just shoved him back on again.
"Chas!" he called out to the wings. But Chas was staring into space, turning the mother-of-pearl disk over and over in his hands.
"Chas!!" yelled Spud again, a tinge of hysteria creeping into his voice. "Help!"
The theatre was deathly silent.
"Fuck," said Chas softly, and put the disk back into his pocket. Ignoring the audience, and ignoring the actors clustered around in the wings, he strode directly onto the stage.
With one dramatic movement he swept the table clean of crockery, and with another he flung it across the stage. Underneath the table was a design set into the wood of the stage, an enormous cogwheel. He knelt down at the very centre of the wheel and pulled.
Smoothly a trapdoor came up, letting a shaft of brilliant white light into the gloom of the theatre. Chas disappeared down into it.
Spud gawped a minute, then followed him. The sound of rapturous applause followed him, cut off abruptly by the slam of the closing trapdoor.
They were in Mr Cuckoo's lair once more.
"Right," said Spud. "Now what?"
Chas smiled grimly, and started walking.
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