The Prestige Read online

  ‘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 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 noticed 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 the 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 part of the house they liked best. 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 a religious sect moving in, 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. There was a constant turnover of members, carried to and from the building in buses.

  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 allegedly 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. The local doctor was 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? Great-grandson of Alfred.’

  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 happen?’

  ‘Here, in this house. You came here with your father. 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 . . . her name’s Rosalie. She hates the 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 sensed 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. Would you like 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 are you able to stay?’ she said.

  ‘Maybe just this drink.’

  ‘There’s 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. She obviously liked drinking, and was used to the effect of it. That helped make 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.r />
  ‘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.’

  7

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

  ‘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 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 believe 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 under the stage name The Great Danton. 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.’

  ‘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 and they rejected me. 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 abandoned by his family. 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 what I call 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 appearance he made. Underneath that, he puts down how many actual performances he carried out, and how many of those were matinées 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 that week 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.