THE PRESTIGE by Christopher Priest

For Elizabeth and Simon

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to acknowledge with thanks the help given by the Authors' Foundation

Also thanks to John Wade, David Langford, Leigh Kennedy� and the members of alt.magic

PART ONE

Andrew Westley

It began on a train, heading north through England, although I was soon to discover that the story had really begun more than a hundred years earlier.

I had no sense of any of this at the time: I was on company time, following up a report of an incident at a religious sect. On my lap lay the bulky envelope I had received from my father that morning, still unopened, because when Dad phoned to tell me about it my mind had been elsewhere. A bedroom door slamming, my girlfriend in the middle of walking out on me. "Yes, Dad," I had said, as Zelda stormed past with a boxful of my compact discs. "Drop it in the mail, and I'll have a look."

After I had read the morning's edition of the Chronicle , and bought a sandwich and a cup of instant coffee from the refreshment trolley, I opened Dad's envelope. A large-format paperback book slipped out, with a note loose inside and a used envelope folded in half.

The note said, "Dear Andy, Here is the book I told you about. I think it was sent by the same woman who rang me. She asked me if I knew where you were. I'm enclosing the envelope the book arrived in. The postmark is a bit blurred, but maybe you can make it out. Your mother would love to know when you are coming to stay with us again. How about next weekend? With love, Dad."

At last I remembered some of my father's phonecall. He told me the book had arrived, and that the woman who had sent it appeared to be some kind of distant relative, because she had been talking about my family. I should have paid more attention to him.

Here, though, was the book. It was called Secret Methods of Magic , and the author was one Alfred Borden. To all appearances it was one of those instructional books of card tricks, sleight of hand, illusions involving silk scarves, and so on. The only aspect of it that interested me at first glance was that although it was a recently published paperback, the text itself appeared to be a facsimile of a much older edition: the typography, the illustrations, the chapter headings and the laboured writing style all suggested this.

I couldn't see why I should be interested in such a book. Only the author's name was familiar: Borden was the surname I had been born with, although when I was adopted as a small child my name was changed to that of my adoptive parents. My name now, my full and legal name, is Andrew Westley, and although I have always known that I was adopted I grew up thinking of Duncan and Jillian Westley as Dad and Mum, loved them as parents, and behaved as their son. All this is still true. I feel nothing for my natural parents. I'm not curious about them or why they put me up for adoption, and have no wish ever to trace them now that I am an adult. All that is in my distant past, and they have always felt irrelevant to me.

There is, though, one matter concerning my background that borders on the obsessive.

I am certain or to be accurate almost certain, that I was born one of a pair of identical twins, and that my brother and I were separated at the time of adoption. I have no idea why this was done, nor where my brother might be, but I have always assumed that he was adopted at the same time as me. I only started to suspect his existence when I was entering my teens. By chance I came across a passage in a book, an adventure story, that described the way in which many pairs of twins are linked by an inexplicable, apparently psychic contact. Even when separated by hundreds of miles or living in different countries, such twins will share feelings of pain, surprise, happiness, depression, one twin sending to the other, and vice versa. Reading this was one of those moments in life when suddenly a lot of things become clear.

All my life, as long as I can remember, I have had the feeling that someone else is sharing my life. As a child, with nothing to go on apart from the actual experience, I thought little of it and assumed everyone else had the same feelings. As I grew older, and I realized none of my friends was going through the same thing, it became a mystery. Reading the book therefore came as a great relief as it seemed to explain everything. I had a twin somewhere.

The feeling of rapport is in some ways vague, a sense of being cared for, even watched over, but in others it is much more specific. The general feeling is of a constant background, while more direct "messages" come only occasionally. These are acute and precise, even though the actual communication is invariably non-verbal.

Once or twice when I have been drunk, for example, I have felt my brother's consternation growing in me, a fear that I might come to some harm. On one of these occasions, when I was leaving a party late at night and was about to drive myself home, the flash of concern that reached me was so powerful I felt myself sobering up! I tried describing this at the time to the friends I was with, but they joked it away. Even so I drove home inexplicably sober that night.

In turn, I have sometimes sensed my brother in pain, or frightened, or threatened in some way, and have been able to "send" feelings of calm, or sympathy, or reassurance towards him. It is a psychic mechanism I can use without understanding it. No one to my knowledge has ever satisfactorily explained it, even though it is common and well documented.

There is in my case, however, an extra mystery.

Not only have I never been able to trace my brother, as far as records are concerned I never had a brother of any kind, let alone a twin. I do have intermittent memories of my life before adoption, although I was only three when that happened, and I can't remember my brother at all. Dad and Mum knew nothing about it; they have told me that when they adopted me there was no suggestion of my having a brother.

As an adoptee you have certain legal rights. The most important of these is protection from your natural parents: they cannot contact you by any legal means. Another right is that when you reach adulthood you are able to ask about some of the circumstances surrounding your adoption. You can find out the names of your natural parents, for instance, and the address of the court of law where the adoption was made, and therefore where relevant records can be examined.

I followed all this up soon after my eighteenth birthday, anxious to find out what I could about my brother. The adoption agency referred me to Ealing County Court where the papers were kept, and here I discovered that I had been put up for adoption by my father, whose name was Clive Alexander Borden. My mother's name was Diana Ruth Borden (n�e Ellington), but she had died soon after I was born. I assumed that the adoption happened because of her death, but in fact I was not adopted for more than two years after she died, during which period my father brought me up by himself. My own original name was Nicholas Julius Borden. There was nothing about any other child, adopted or otherwise.

I later checked birth records at St Catherine's House in London, but these confirmed I was the Bordens� only child.

Even so, my psychic contacts with my twin remained through all this, and have continued ever since.

The book had been published in the USA by Dover Publications, and was a handsome, well-made paperback. The cover painting depicted a dinner-jacketed stage magician pointing his hands expressively towards a wooden cabinet, from which a young lady was emerging. She was wearing a dazzling smile and a costume which for the period was probably considered saucy.

Under the author's name was printed: "Edited and annotated by Lord Colderdale."

At the bottom of the cover, in bold white lettering, was the blurb: "The Famous Oath-Protected Book of Secrets".

A longer and much more descriptive blurb on the back cover went into greater detail:

Originally published as a strictly limited edition in 1905 in London, this book was sold only to professional magicians who were prepared to swear an oath of secrecy about its contents. First edition copies are now exceedingly rare, and virtually impossible for general readers to obtain.

Made publicly available for the first time, this new edition is completely unabridged and contains all the original illustrations, as well as the notes and supplementary text provided by Britain's Earl of Colderdale, a noted contemporary amateur of magic.

The author is Alfred Borden, inventor of the legendary illusion The New Transported Man. Borden, whose stage name was Le Professeur de la Magie, was in the first decade of this century the leading stage illusionist. Encouraged in his early years by John Henry Anderson, and as a prot�g� of Nevil Maskelyne�s, Borden was a contemporary of Houdini, David Devant, Chung Ling Soo and Buatier de Kolta. He was based in London, England, but frequently toured the United States and Europe.

While not strictly speaking an instruction manual, this book with its broad understanding of magical methods will give both laymen and professionals startling insights into the mind of one of the greatest magicians who ever lived.

It was amusing to discover that one of my ancestors had been a magician, but I had no special interest in the subject. I happen to find some kinds of conjuring tedious; card tricks, especially, but many others too. The illusions you sometimes see on television are impressive, but I have never felt curious about how the effects are in fact achieved. I remember someone once saying that the trouble with magic was that the more a magician protects his secrets, the more banal they turn out to be.

Alfred Borden's book contained a long section on card tricks, and another described tricks with cigarettes and coins. Explanatory drawings and instructions accompanied each one. At the back of the book was a chapter about stage illusions, with many illustrations of cabinets with hidden compartments, boxes with false bottoms, tables with lifting devices concealed behind curtains, and other apparatus. I glanced through some of these pages.

The first half of the book was not illustrated, but consisted of a long account of the author's life and outlook on magic. It began with the following words:

"I write in the year 1901. "

"My name, my real name, is Alfred Borden. The story of my life is the story of the secrets by which I have lived my life. They are described in this narrative for the first and last time; this is the only extant copy. "

"I was born in 1856 on the eighth day of the month of May, in the coastal town of Hastings. I was a healthy, vigorous child. My father was a tradesman of that borough, a master wheelwright and cooper. Our house�"

I briefly imagined the writer of this book settling down to begin his memoir. For no exact reason I visualized him as a tall, dark-haired man, stern-faced and bearded, slightly hunched, wearing narrow reading glasses, working in a pool of light thrown by a solitary lamp placed next to his elbow. I imagined the rest of the household in a deferential silence, leaving the master in peace while he wrote. The reality was no doubt different, but stereotypes of our forebears are difficult to throw off.

I wondered what relation Alfred Borden would be to me. If the line of descent was direct, in other words if he wasn't a cousin or an uncle, then he would be my great� or great-great-grandfather. If he was born in 1856, he would have been in his middle forties when he wrote the book; it seemed likely he was therefore not my father's father, but of an earlier generation.

The Introduction was written in much the same style as the main text, with several long explanations about how the book came into being. The book appeared to be based on Borden's private notebook, not intended for publication. Colderdale had considerably expanded and clarified the narrative, and added the descriptions of most of the tricks. There was no extra biographical information about Borden, but presumably I would find some if I read the whole book.

I couldn't see how the book was going to tell me anything about my brother. He remained my only interest in my natural family.

At this point my mobile phone began beeping. I answered it quickly, knowing how other train passengers can be irritated by these things. It was Sonja, the secretary of my editor, Len Wickham. I suspected at once that Len had got her to call me, to make sure I was on the train.

"Andy, there's been a change of plan about the car," she said. "Eric Lambert had to take it in for a repair to the brakes, so it's in a garage."

She gave me the address. It was the availability of this car in Sheffield, a high-mileage Ford renowned for frequent breakdowns, that prevented me from driving up in my own car. Len wouldn't authorize the expenses if a company car was on hand.

"Did Uncle say anything else?" I said.

"Such as?"

"This story's still on?"

"Yes."

"Has anything else come in from the agencies?"

"We've had a faxed confirmation from the State Penitentiary in California. Franklin is still a prisoner."

"All right."

We hung up. While I was still holding the phone I punched in my parents� number, and spoke to my father. I told him I was on my way to Sheffield, would be driving from there into the Peak District and if it was OK with them (of course it would be) I could come and stay the night. My father sounded pleased. He and Jillian still lived in Wilmslow, Cheshire, and now I was working in London my trips to see them were infrequent.

I told him I had received the book.

"Have you any idea why it was sent to you?" he said.

"Not the faintest."

"Are you going to read it?"

"It's not my sort of thing. I'll look through it one day."

"I noticed it was written by someone called Borden."

"Yes. Did she say anything about that?"

"No. I don't think so."

After we had hung up I put the book in my case and stared through the train window at the passing countryside. The sky was grey, and rain was streaking the glass. I had to concentrate on the incident I was being sent to investigate. I worked for the Chronicle , specifically as a general features writer, a label which was grander than the reality. The true state of affairs was that Dad was himself a newspaperman, and had formerly worked for the Manchester Evening Post , a sister paper to the Chronicle . It was a matter of pride to him that I had obtained the job, even though I have always suspected him of pulling strings for me. I am not a fluent journalist, and have not done well in the training programme I have been following. One of my serious long-term worries is that one day I am going to have to explain to my father why I have quit what he considers to be a prestigious job on the greatest British newspaper.

In the meantime, I struggle unwillingly on. Covering the incident I was travelling to was partly the consequence of another story I had filed several months earlier, about a group of UFO enthusiasts. Since then Len Wickham, my supervising editor, had assigned me to any story that involved witches� covens, levitation, spontaneous combustion, crop circles, and other fringe subjects. In most cases, I had already discovered, once you went into these things properly there was generally not much to say about them, and remarkably few of the stories I filed were ever printed. Even so, Wickham continued to send me off to cover them.

There was an extra twist this time. With some relish, Wickham informed me that someone from the sect had phoned to ask if the Chronicle was planning to cover the story, and if so had asked for me in person. They had seen some of my earlier articles, thought I showed the right degree of honest scepticism, and could therefore be relied on for a forthright article. In spite of this, or perhaps because of it, it seemed likely to prove yet another dud.

A Californian religious sect called the Rapturous Church of Christ Jesus had established a community in a large country house in a Derbyshire village. One of the women members had died of natural causes a few days earlier. Her GP was present, as was her daughter. As she lay paralysed, on the point of death, a man had entered the room. He stood beside the bed and made soothing gestures with his hands. The woman died soon after, and the man immediately left the room without speaking to the other two. He was not seen afterwards. He had been recognized by the woman's daughter, and by two members of the sect who had come into the room while he was there, as the man who had founded the sect. This was Father Patrick Franklin, and the sect had grown up around him because of his claimed ability to bilocate.

The incident was newsworthy for two reasons. It was the first of Franklin's bilocations to have been witnessed by non-members of the sect, one of whom happened to be a professional woman with a local reputation. And the other reason was that Franklin's whereabouts on the day in question could be firmly established: he was known to be an inmate of the California State Penitentiary, and as Sonja had just confirmed to me on the phone he was still there.

The community was established on the outskirts of the Peak District village of Caldlow, once a centre of slate mining, now heavily dependent on day trippers. There was a National Trust shop in the centre of the village, a pony trekking club, several gift shops and an hotel. As I drove through, the chill rain was drizzling through the valley, obscuring the rocky heights on each side.

I stopped in the village for a cup of tea, thinking I might talk to some of the locals about the Rapturous Church, but apart from me the caf� was empty, and the woman who worked behind the counter said she drove in daily from Chesterfield.

While I was sitting there, wondering whether to take the opportunity to grab some lunch before going on, my brother unexpectedly made contact with me. The sensation was so distinct, so urgent, that I turned my head in surprise, thinking for a moment that someone in the room had addressed me. I closed my eyes, lowered my face, and listened for more.

No words. Nothing explicit. Nothing I could answer or write down or even put into words for myself. But it amounted to anticipation, happiness, excitement, pleasure, encouragement.

I tried to send back: what is this for? Why was I being welcomed? What are you encouraging me to do? Is it something about this religious community?

I waited, knowing that these experiences never took the form of a dialogue, so that raising questions would not receive any kind of answer, but I was hoping another signal would come from him. I tried to reach out mentally to him, thinking perhaps his contact with me was a way of getting me to communicate with him, but in this sense I could feel nothing of him there.

My expression must have revealed something of my churned-up inner feelings, because the woman behind the counter was staring at me curiously. I swallowed the rest of my tea, returned the cup and saucer to the counter, smiled politely, then hurried out to the car. As I sat down and slammed the door, a second message came from my brother. It was the same as the first, a direct urging of me to arrive, to be there with him. It was still impossible to put it into words.

The entrance to the Rapturous Church was a steep driveway slanting off the main road, but barred by a pair of wrought-iron gates and a gatehouse. There was a second gate to one side, also closed, marked Private. The two entrances formed an extra space, so I parked my car there and walked across to the gatehouse. Inside the wooden porch a modern bell push had been attached to the wall, and beneath this was a laser-printed notice:

RAPTUROUS CHURCH OF CHRIST JESUS WELCOMES YOU

NO VISITORS WITHOUT APPOINTMENT

FOR APPOINTMENTS RING CALDLOW 393960

TRADESMEN AND OTHERS PRESS BELL TWICE

JESUS LOVES YOU

I pressed the bell twice, without audible effect.

Some leaflets were standing in a semi-enclosed holder, and beneath them was a padlocked metal box with a coin slot in the top, screwed firmly to the wall. I took one of the leaflets, slipped a fifty-pence piece into the box, then went back to the car and rested my backside against the nearside wing while I read it. The front page was a brief history of the sect, and carried a photograph of Father Franklin. The remaining three pages had a selection of Biblical quotes.

When I next looked towards the gates I discovered they were opening silently from some remote command, so I climbed back into the car and took it up the sloping, gravelled drive. This curved as it went up the hill, with a lawn rising in a shallow convex on one side. Ornamental trees and shrubs had been planted at intervals, drooping in the veils of misty rain. On the lower side were thick clumps of dark-leafed rhododendron bushes. In the rear-view mirror I noticed the gates closing behind me as I drove out of sight of them. The main house soon came into view: it was a huge and unattractive building of four or five main storeys, with black slate roofs and solid-looking walls of sombre dark-brown brick and stone. The windows were tall and narrow, and blankly reflected the rain-laden sky. The place gave me a cold, grim feeling, yet even as I drove towards the part of the drive made over as a car park I felt my brother's presence in me once again, urging me on.

I saw a Visitors this Way sign, and followed it along a gravel path against the main wall of the house, dodging the drips from the thickly growing ivy. I pushed open a door and went into a narrow hallway, one that smelt of ancient wood and dust, reminding me of the Lower Corridor in the school I had been to. This building had the same institutional feeling, but unlike my school was steeped in silence.

I saw a door marked Reception, and knocked. When there was no answer I put my head around the door, but the room was empty. There were two old-looking metal desks, on one of which was perched a computer.

Hearing footsteps I returned to the hallway, and a few moments later a thin middle-aged woman appeared at the turn of the stairs. She was carrying several envelope wallet files. Her feet made a loud sound on the uncarpeted wooden steps, and she looked enquiringly at me when she saw me there.

"I'm looking for Mrs Holloway," I said. "Are you she?"

"Yes, I am. How may I help you?"

There was no trace of the American accent I had half-expected.

"My name is Andrew Westley, and I'm from the Chronicle ." I showed her my press card, but she merely glanced at it. "I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions about Father Franklin."

"Father Franklin is in California at present."

"So I believe, but there was the incident last week�"

"Which one do you mean?" said Mrs Holloway.

"I understand Father Franklin was seen here."

She shook her head slowly. She was standing with her back to the door which led into her office. "I think you must be making a mistake, Mr Westley."

"Did you see Father Franklin when he was here?" I said.

"I did not. Nor was he here." She was starting to stonewall me, which was the last thing I had expected. "Have you been in touch with our Press Office?"

"Are they here?"

"We have an office in London. All press interviews are arranged through them."

"I was told to come here."

"By our Press Officer?"

"No� I understood a request was sent to the Chronicle , after Father Franklin made an appearance. Are you denying that that happened?"

"Do you mean the sending of the request? No one here has been in contact with your newspaper. If you mean am I denying the appearance of Father Franklin, the answer is yes."

We stared at each other. I was torn between irritation with her and frustration at myself. Whenever incidents like this did not go smoothly, I blamed my lack of experience and motivation. The other writers on the paper always seemed to know how to handle people like Mrs Holloway.

"Can I see whoever is in charge here?" I said.

"I am the head of administration. Everyone else is involved with the teaching."

I was about to give up, but I said, "Does my name mean anything at all to you?"

"Should it?"

"Someone requested me by name."

"That would have come from the Press Office, not from here."

"Hold on," I said.

I walked back to the car to collect the notes I had been given by Wickham the day before. Mrs Holloway was still standing by the bottom of the stairs when I returned, but she had put down her bundle of files somewhere.

I stood beside her while I turned to the page Wickham had been sent. It was a fax message. It said, "To Mr L. Wickham, Features Editor, Chronicle . The necessary written details you requested are as follows: Rapturous Church of Christ Jesus, Caldlow, Derbyshire. Half a mile outside Caldlow village, to the north, on A623. Parking at main gate, or in the grounds. Mrs Holloway, administrator, will provide your reporter Mr Andrew Westley with information. K. Angier."

"This is nothing to do with us," Mrs Holloway said. "I'm sorry."

"Who is K. Angier?" I said. "Mr? Mrs?"

"She is the resident of the private wing on the east side of this building, and has no connection with the Church. Thank you."

She had placed her hand on my elbow and was propelling me politely towards the door. She indicated that the continuation of the gravel path would take me to a gate, where the entrance to the private wing would be found.

I said, "I'm sorry if there's been a misunderstanding. I don't know how it happened."

"If you want any more information about the Church, I'd be grateful if you'd speak to the Press Office. That is its function, you know."

"Yes, all right." It was raining more heavily than before, and I had brought no coat. I said, "May I ask you just one thing? Is everybody away at present?"

"No, we have full attendance. There are more than two hundred people in training this week."

"It feels as if the whole place is empty."

"We are a group whose rapture is silent. I am the only person permitted to speak during the hours of daylight. Good day to you."

She retreated into the building, and closed the door behind her.

#############

I decided to refer back to the office, since it was clear the story I had been sent to cover was no longer live. Standing under the dripping ivy, watching the heavy drizzle drifting across the valley, I rang Len Wickham's direct line, full of foreboding. He answered after a delay. I told him what had happened.

"Have you seen the informant yet?" he said. "Someone called Angier."

"I'm right outside their place now," I said, and explained what I understood was the setup here. "I don't think it's a story. I'm thinking it might just be a dispute between neighbours. You know, complaining about something or other." But not about the noise, I thought as soon as I had spoken.

There was a long silence.

Then Len Wickham said, "See the neighbour, and if there's anything in it, call me back. If not, get back to London for this evening."

"It's Friday," I said. "I thought I'd visit my parents tonight."

Wickham replied by putting down his receiver.

I was greeted at the main door of the wing by a woman in late middle age, whom I addressed as "Mrs Angier", but she merely took my name, looked intently at my press card, then showed me into a side room and asked me to wait. The stately scale of the room, simply but attractively furnished with Indian carpets, antique chairs and a polished table, made me feel scruffy in my travel-creased and rain-dampened suit. After about five minutes the woman returned, and uttered words that put a chill through me.

"Lady Katherine will see you now," she said.

She led me upstairs to a large, pleasant living room that looked out across the valley floor towards a high rocky escarpment, at present only dimly visible.

A young woman was standing by the open fireplace, where logs blazed and smoked, and she held out her hand to greet me as I went across to her. I had been thrown off guard by the unexpected news that I was visiting a member of the aristocracy, but her manner was cordial. I was struck, and favourably so, by several features about her physical appearance. She was tall, dark-haired and had a broad face with a strong jaw. Her hair was arranged so that it softened the sharper lines of her face. Her eyes were wide. She had a nervous intentness about her face, as if she were worried about what I might say or think.

She greeted me formally, but the moment the other woman had left the room her manner changed. She introduced herself as Kate, not Katherine, Angier, and told me to disregard the title as she rarely used it herself. She asked me to confirm if I was Andrew Westley. I said that I was.

"I assume you've just been to the main part of the house?"

"The Rapturous Church? I hardly got past the door."

"I think that was my fault. I warned them you might be coming, but Mrs Holloway wasn't too pleased."

"I suppose it was you who sent the message to my paper?"

"I wanted to meet you."

"So I gathered. Why on earth should you know about me?"

"I plan to tell you. But I haven't had lunch yet. What about you?"

I told her I had stopped earlier in the village, but otherwise had not eaten since breakfast. I followed her downstairs to the ground floor where the woman who had opened the door to me, addressed by Lady Katherine as Mrs Makin, was preparing a simple lunch of cold meats and cheeses, with salad. As we sat down, I asked Kate Angier why she had brought me all the way up here from London, on what now seemed a wild-goose-chase.

"I don't think it's that," she said.

"I have to file a story this evening."

"Well, maybe that might be difficult. Do you eat meat, Mr Westley?"

She passed me the plate of cold cuts. While we ate, a polite conversation went on, in which she asked me questions about the newspaper, my career, where I lived and so on. I was still conscious of her title, and felt inhibited by this, but the longer we spoke the easier it became. She had a tentative, almost nervous bearing, and she frequently looked away from me and back again while I was speaking. I assumed this was not through apparent lack of interest in what I was saying, but because it was her manner. I noticed, for instance, that her hands trembled whenever she reached out for something on the table. When I finally felt it was time to ask her about herself, she told me that the house we were in had been in her family for more than three hundred years. Most of the land in the valley belonged to the estate, and a number of farms were tenanted. Her father was an earl, but he lived abroad. Her mother was dead, and her only other close relative, an elder sister, was married and lived in Bristol with her husband and children.

The house had been a family home, with several servants, until the outbreak of the Second World War. The Ministry of Defence had then requisitioned most of the building, using it as regional headquarters for RAF Transport Command. At this point her family had moved into the east wing, which anyway had always been the favoured part of the house. When the RAF left after the war the house was taken over by Derbyshire County Council as offices, and the present tenants (her phrase) arrived in 1980. She said her parents had been worried at first by the prospect of an American religious sect moving in, because of what you heard about some of them, but by this time the family needed the money and it had worked out well. The Church kept its teaching quiet, the members were polite and charming to meet, and these days neither she nor the villagers were concerned about what they might or might not be up to.

As by this point in the conversation we had finished our meal, and Mrs Makin had brought us some coffee, I said, "So I take it the story that brought me up here, about a bilocating priest, was false?"

"Yes and no. The cult makes no secret of the fact it bases its teaching on the words of its leader. Father Franklin is a stigmatic, and he's supposed to be able to bilocate, but he's never been seen doing it by independent witnesses, or at least not under controlled circumstances."

"But was it true?"

"I'm really not sure. There was a local doctor involved this time, and for some reason she said something to a tabloid newspaper, who ran a potted version of the story. I only heard about it when I was in the village the other day. I can't see how it can have been true: their leader's in prison in America, isn't he?"

"But if the incident really happened, that would make it more interesting."

"It makes it more likely to be a fraud. How does Doctor Ellis know what this man looks like, for instance? There's only the word of one of the members to go on."

"You made it out to be a genuine story."

"I told you I wanted to meet you. And the fact that the man goes in for bilocation was too good to be true."

She laughed in the way people do when they say something they expect others to find amusing. I hadn't the faintest idea what she was talking about.

"Couldn't you have just telephoned the newspaper?" I said. "Or written a letter to me?"

"Yes I could� but I wasn't sure you were who I thought you were. I wanted to meet you first."

"I don't see why you thought a bilocating religious fanatic had anything to do with me."

"It was just a coincidence. You know, the controversy about the illusion, and all that." Again, she looked at me expectantly.

"Who did you think I was?"

"The son of Clive Borden. Isn't that right?"

She tried to hold my gaze but her eyes, irresistibly, turned away again. Her nervous, evasive manner put tension between us, when nothing else was happening to create it. Remains of lunch lay on the table between us.

"A man called Clive Borden was my natural father," I said. "But I was adopted when I was three."

"Well then. I was right about you. We met once before, many years ago, when we were both children. Your name was Nicky then."

"I don't remember," I said. "I would have been only a toddler. Where did this meeting take place?"

"Here, in this house. You really don't remember it?"

"Not at all."

"Do you have any other memories from when you were that age?" she said.

"Only fragments. But none about this place. It's the sort of house that would make an impression on a child, isn't it?"

"All right. You're not the first to say that. My sister� she hates this house, and couldn't wait to move away." She reached behind her, where a small bell rested on a counter, and dinged it twice. "I usually take a drink after lunch. Would you care to join me?"

"Yes, thank you."

Mrs Makin soon appeared, and Lady Katherine stood up.

"Mr Westley and I will be in the drawing room this afternoon, Mrs Makin."

As we went up the broad staircase I felt an impulse to escape from her, to get away from this house. She knew more about me than I knew myself, but it was knowledge of a part of my life in which I had no interest. This was obviously a day when I had to become a Borden again, whether or not I wished to do so. First there was the book by him, now this. It was all connected, but I felt her intrigues were not mine. Why should I care about the man, the family, who had turned their back on me?

She led me into the room where I had first met her, and closed the door decisively behind us. It was almost as if she had felt my wish to escape, and wanted to detain me as long as she could. A silver tray with a number of bottles, glasses and a bucket of ice had been placed on a low table set between a number of easy chairs and a long settee. One of the glasses already held a large drink, presumably prepared by Mrs Makin. Kate indicated I should take a seat, then said, "What would you like?"

Actually I would have liked a glass of beer, but the tray bore only spirits. I said, "I'll have whatever you're drinking."

"It's American rye with soda. Do you want that too?"

I said I did, and watched as she mixed it. When she sat down on the settee she tucked her legs under her, then drank about half the glass of whiskey straight down.

"How long can you stay?" she said.

"Maybe just this drink."

"There's a lot I want to talk to you about. And a lot I want to ask you."

"Why?"

"Because of what happened when we were children."

"I don't think I'm going to be much help to you," I said. Now that she wasn't twitching around so much, I was beginning to see her more objectively as a not unattractive woman of roughly my own age. She obviously liked drinking, and was used to the effect of it. That alone made me feel I was on familiar territory; I spent most weekends drinking with my friends. Her eyes continued to disconcert me, though, for she was always looking at me, then away, then back, making me feel someone was behind me, moving about the room where I could not see them.

"A one-word answer to a question might save a lot of time," she said.

"All right."

"Do you have an identical twin brother? Or did you have one who died when you were very young?"

I could not help my startled reaction. I put down my glass, before I spilled any more, and mopped at the liquid that had splashed on to my legs.

"Why do you ask that?" I said.

"Do you? Did you?"

"I don't know. I think I did, but I've never been able to find him. I mean� I'm not sure."

"I think you've given me the answer I was expecting," she said. "But not the one I was hoping for."

#############

I said, "If this is something to do with the Borden family, I might as well tell you that I know nothing about them. Do you realize that?"

"Yes, but you are a Borden."

"I was, but it doesn't mean anything to me." I suddenly had a glimpse of this young woman's family, stretching back more than three hundred years in an unbroken sequence of generations: same name, same house, same everything. My own family roots went back to the age of three. "I don't think you can appreciate what being adopted means. I was just a little boy, a toddler, and my father dumped me out of his life. If I spent the rest of my own life grieving about that, I'd have time for nothing else. Long ago, I sealed it off because I had to. I've a new family now."

"Your brother is still a Borden, though."

Whenever she mentioned my brother I felt a pang of guilt, concern and curiosity. It was as if she used him as a way of getting under my defences. All my life the existence of my brother had been my secret certainty, a part of myself that I kept completely private. Yet here was this stranger speaking of him as if she knew him.

"Why are you interested in this?" I said.

"When you first heard of me, saw my name, did it mean anything to you?"

"No."

"Have you ever heard of Rupert Angier?"

"No."

"Or The Great Danton, the illusionist?"

"No. My only interest in my former family is that through them I might one day be able to trace my twin brother."

She had been sipping quickly at her glass of whiskey while we spoke, and now it was empty. She leant forward to mix another drink, and tried to pour more into my glass. Knowing I was going to have to drive later, I pulled my glass back before she could completely fill it.

She said, "I think the fate of your brother is connected with something that happened about a hundred years ago. One of my ancestors, Rupert Angier. You say you've never heard of him, and there's no reason why you should, but he was a stage magician at the end of the last century. He worked as The Great Danton, because in those days all the magicians used grandiose stage names. He was the victim of a series of vicious attacks by a man called Alfred Borden, your great-grandfather, who was also an illusionist. You say you know nothing about this?"

"Only the book. I assume you sent it."

She nodded. "They had this feud going, and it went on for years. They were constantly attacking each other, usually by interfering with the other one's stage show. The story of the feud is in Borden's book. At least, his side of it is. Have you read it yet?"

"It only arrived in the post this morning. I haven't had much of a chance�"

"I thought you would be fascinated to know what had happened."

I was thinking, again: why go on about the Bordens? They are too far back, I know too little about them. She was talking about something that was of interest to her, not to me. I felt I should be polite to her, listen to what she was saying, but what she could never know was the resistance that lay deep inside me, the unconscious defence mechanism a kid builds up for himself when he has been rejected. To adapt to my new family I had had to throw off everything I knew of the old. How many times would I have to say that to her to convince her of it?

Saying she wanted to show me something, she put down her glass and crossed the room to a desk placed against the wall just behind where I was sitting. As she stooped to reach into a lower drawer her dress sagged forward at the neck, and I stole a glimpse: a thin white strap, part of a lacy bra cup, the upper curve of the breast nestling inside. She had to reach into the drawer, and this made her turn around so she could stretch her arm, and I saw the slender curves of her back, her straps again becoming discernible through the thin material of her dress, then her hair falling forward about her face. She was trying to involve me in something I knew nothing about, but instead I was crudely sizing her up, thinking idly about what it might be like to have sex with her. Sex with an honourable lady; it was the sort of semi-funny joke the journalists in the office would make. For better or worse that was my own life, more interesting and problematical to me than all this stuff about ancient magicians. She had asked me where in London I lived, not who in London I lived with, so I had said nothing to her of Zelda. Exquisite and maddening Zelda, with the cropped hair and nose-ring, the studded boots and dream body, who three nights before had told me she wanted an open relationship and walked out on me at half past eleven at night, taking a lot of my books and most of my records. I hadn't seen her since and was beginning to worry, even though she had done something like that before. I wanted to ask this honourable lady about Zelda, not because I was interested in what she might say, but because Zelda is real to me. How do you think I might get Zelda back? Or, how do I ease myself out of the newspaper job without appearing to reject my father? Or, where am I going to live if Zelda moves out on me, because it is Zelda's parents� flat? What am I going to survive on if I don't have a job? And if my brother's real, where is he and how do I find him?

Any one of these was more involving to me than the news of a feud between great-grandparents of whom I had never heard. One of them had written a book, though. Maybe that was interesting to be told about.

"I haven't had these out for ages," Kate said, her voice slightly muffled by her exertions of reaching inside the drawer. She had removed some photo albums, and these were piled on the floor while she reached to the back of the deep drawer. "Here we are."

She was clutching an untidy pile of papers, apparently old and faded, all in different sizes. She spread them on the settee beside her, and picked up her glass before she began to leaf through them.

"My great-grandfather was one of those men who is obsessively neat," she said. "He not only kept everything, he put labels on them, compiled lists, had cupboards specifically in which to keep certain things. When I was growing up my parents had a saying: "Grandpa's stuff". We never touched it, weren't really allowed to look at it, even. But Rosalie and I couldn't resist searching some of it. When she left to get married, and I was alone here, I finally went through it all and sorted it out. I managed to sell some of the apparatus and costumes, and got good prices too. I found these playbills in the room that had been his study."

All the time she had been talking she was sifting through the bills, and now she passed me a sheet of fragile, yellow-coloured paper. It had been folded and refolded numerous times, and the creases were furry with wear and almost separating. The bill was for the Empress Theatre in Evering Road, Stoke Newington. Over a list of performers it announced a limited number of performances, afternoons and evenings, commencing on 14th April until 21st April. ("See Newspaper Advertisements for Further Arrangements.") Top of the bill, and printed in red ink, was an Irish tenor called Dennis O"Canaghan ("Fill Your Heart With The Joy Of Ireland"). Other acts included the Sisters McKee ("A Trio of Lovely Chanteuses�), Sammy Renaldo ("Tickle Your Ribs, Your Highness?") and Robert and Roberta Franks ("Recitation Par Excellence"). Halfway down the bill, pointed out by Kate's prodding forefinger as she leaned over towards me, was The Great Danton ("The Greatest Illusionist in the World").

"This was before he actually was," she said. "He spent most of his life being hard up, and only really became famous a few years before he died. This bill comes from 1881, when he was first starting to do quite well."

"What do all these mean?" I said, indicating a column of neatly inked numbers inscribed in the margin of the playbill. More had been written on the back.

"That's The Great Danton's Obsessive Filing System," she said. She moved away from the settee, and knelt informally on the carpet beside my chair. Leaning towards me so she could look at the bill in my hand, she said, "I haven't worked it all out, but the first number refers to the job. There's a ledger somewhere, with a complete list of every gig he did. Underneath that, he puts down how many actual performances he carried out, and how many of those were matinees and how many in the evenings. The next numbers are a list of the actual tricks he did, and again he had about a dozen notebooks in his study with descriptions of all the tricks he could do. I have a few of the notebooks still here, and you could probably look up some of the tricks he did in Stoke Newington. But it's even more complicated than that, because most of the tricks have minor variations, and he's got all those cross-referenced as well. Look, this number here, "10g". I think that's what he was paid: ten guineas."

"Was that good?"

"If it was for one night it was brilliant. But it was probably for the whole week, so it was just average. I don't think this was a big theatre."

I picked up the stack of all the other playbills and as she had said each one was annotated with similar code numbers.

"All his apparatus was labelled as well," she said. "Sometimes, I wonder how he found time to get out into the world and make a living! But when I was clearing out the cellar, every single piece of equipment I came across had an identifying number, and each one had a place in a huge index, all cross-referenced to the other books."

"Maybe he had someone else do it for him."

"No, it's always in the same handwriting."

"When did he die?" I said.

"There's actually some doubt about that, strangely enough. The newspapers say he died in 1903, and there was an obituary in The Times , but there are people in the village who say he was still living here the following year. What I find odd is that I came across the obituary in the scrapbook he kept, and it was stuck down and labelled and indexed, just like all the other stuff."

"Can you explain how that happened?"

"No. Alfred Borden talks about it in his book. That's where I heard about it, and after that I tried to find out what had happened between them."

"Have you got any more of his stuff?"

While she reached over for the scrapbooks, I poured myself another slug of the American whiskey, which I had not tried before and which I was finding I liked. I also liked having Kate down there on the floor beside my legs, turning her head to look up at me as she spoke, leaning towards me, affording more glimpses down the front of her dress and probably well aware of it. It was all slightly bemusing to be there, not fully comprehending what was going on, talk of magicians, meetings in childhood, not at work when I should have been, not driving over to see my parents as I had planned.

In that part of my mind occupied by my brother, I felt a sense of contentment, unlike anything I had known from him before. He was urging me to stay.

Outside the window the cold afternoon sky was darkening and the Pennine rain continued to fall. An icy draught came persistently from the windows. Kate threw another log on the fire.

PART TWO

Alfred Borden

I write in the year 1901.

My name, my real name, is Alfred Borden. The story of my life is the story of the secrets by which I have lived my life. They are described in this narrative for the first and last time; this is the only extant copy.

I was born in 1856 on the eighth day of the month of May, in the coastal town of Hastings. I was a healthy, vigorous child. My father was a tradesman of that borough, a master wheelwright and cooper. Our house at number 105 Manor Road was in a long, curving terrace built along the side of one of the several hills which Hastings comprises. Behind the house was a steep and secluded valley where sheep and cattle grazed during the summer months, but at the front the hill rose up, lined with many more houses, standing between us and the sea. It was from those houses, and from the farms and businesses around, that my father took his trade.

Our house was larger and taller than others in the road, because it was built over the gateway that led to the yard and sheds behind. My room was on the street side of the house, directly above the gateway, and because only the wooden floorboards and some thin lath-and-plaster lay between me and the open air the room was noisy through every day of the year, and viciously cold in the winter months. It was in that room that I slowly grew up and became the man that I am.

That man is Le Professeur de la Magie, and I am a master of illusions.

It is time to pause, even so early, for this account is not intended to be about my life in the usual habit of autobiographers, but is, as I have said, about my life's secrets. Secrecy is intrinsic to my work.

Let me then first consider and describe the method of writing this account. The very act of describing my secrets might indeed be construed as a betrayal of myself, except of course that as I am an illusionist I can make sure you only see what I wish you to see. A puzzle is implicitly involved.

It is therefore only fair that I should from the beginning try to elucidate those closely connected subjects � Secrecy and the Appreciation Of Secrecy.

Here is an example.

There almost invariably comes a moment during the exercise of my profession when the prestidigitator will seem to pause. He will step forward to the footlights, and in the full glare of their light will face the audience directly. He will say, or if his act is silent he will seem to say, "Look at my hands. There is nothing concealed within them." He will then hold up his hands for the audience to see, raising his palms to expose them, splaying his fingers so as to prove nothing is gripped secretly between them. With his hands held thus he will rotate them, so that the backs are shown to the audience, and it is established that his hands are, indeed, as empty as it is possible to be. To take the matter beyond any remaining suspicion, the magician will probably then tweak lightly at the cuffs of his jacket, pulling them back an inch or two to expose his wrists, showing that nothing is there concealed either. He then performs his trick, and during it, moments after this incontrovertible evidence of empty-handedness he produces something from his hands: a fan, a live dove or rabbit, a bunch of paper flowers, sometimes even a burning wick. It is a paradox, an impossibility! The audience marvels at the mystery, and applause rings out.

How could any of this be?

The prestidigitator and the audience have entered into what I term the Pact of Acquiescent Sorcery. They do not articulate it as such, and indeed the audience is barely aware that such a Pact might exist, but that is what it is.

The performer is of course not a sorcerer at all, but an actor who plays the part of a sorcerer and who wishes the audience to believe, if only temporarily, that he is in contact with darker powers. The audience, meantime, knows that what they are seeing is not true sorcery, but they suppress the knowledge and acquiesce to the selfsame wish as the performer�s. The greater the performer's skill at maintaining the illusion, the better at this deceptive sorcery he is judged to be.

The act of showing the hands to be empty, before revealing that despite appearances they could not have been, is itself a constituent of the Pact. The Pact implies special conditions are in force. In normal social intercourse, for instance, how often does it arise that someone has to prove that his hands are empty? And consider this: if the magician were suddenly to produce a vase of flowers without first suggesting to the audience that such a production was impossible, it would seem to be no trick at all. No one would applaud.

This then illustrates my method.

Let me set out the Pact of Acquiescence under which I write these words, so that those who read them will realize that what follows is not sorcery, but the appearance of it.

First let me in a manner of speaking show you my hands, palms forward, fingers splayed, and I will say to you (and mark this well): "Every word in this notebook that describes my life and work is true, honestly meant and accurate in detail."

Now I rotate my hands so that you may see their backs, and I say to you: "Much of what is here may be checked against objective records. My career is noted in newspaper files, my name appears in books of biographical reference."

Finally, I tweak at the cuffs of my jacket to reveal my wrists, and I say to you: "After all, what would I have to gain by writing a false account, when it is intended for no one's eyes but my own, perhaps those of my immediate family, and the members of a posterity I shall never meet?"

What gain indeed?

But because I have shown my hands to be empty you must now expect not only that an illusion will follow, but that you will acquiesce in it!

Already, without once writing a falsehood, I have started the deception that is my life. The lie is contained in these words, even in the very first of them. It is the fabric of everything that follows, yet nowhere will it be apparent.

I have misdirected you with the talk of truth, objective records and motives. Just as it is when I show my hands to be empty I have omitted the significant information, and now you are looking in the wrong place.

As every stage magician well knows there will be some who are baffled by this, some who will profess to a dislike of being duped, some who will claim to know the secret, and some, the happy majority, who will simply take the illusion for granted and enjoy the magic for the sake of entertainment.

But there are always one or two who will take the secret away with them and worry at it without ever coming near to solving it.

#############

Before I resume the story of my life, here is another anecdote that illustrates my method.

When I was younger there was a fashion in the concert halls for Oriental Magic. Most of it was performed by European or American illusionists dressed and made up to look Chinese, but there were one or two genuine Chinese magicians who came to Europe to perform. One of these, and perhaps the greatest of them all, was a man from Shanghai called Chi Linqua, who worked under the stage name Ching Ling Foo.

I saw Ching perform only once, a few years ago at the Adelphi Theatre in Leicester Square. At the end of the show I went to the stage door and sent up my card, and without delay he graciously invited me to his dressing room. He would not speak of his magic, but my eye was taken by the presence there, on a stand beside him, of his most famous prop: the large glass bowl of goldfish, which, when apparently produced from thin air, gave his show its fantastic climax. He invited me to examine the bowl, and it was normal in every way. It contained at least

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 800