Authors: Christopher Priest
Georgina wasn't present at the interview, of course. Nor was I. Tommy Elbourne was there,
but as always he kept out of the way. She & I were effectively alone in my workshop.
I asked Olive about a costume, & she said she hadn't brought one. She looked me straight
in the eye when she said this, & there was a long silence while I thought about what that
meant & what
she
must think about what it meant. No young woman applying for the job would expect to be
hired without being measured or fitted or tried out in some way. Applicants always brought
a rehearsal costume.
Well, Olive apparently had not. Then she said, “I don't need a costume, honey.”
“There is no chaperone present, my dear,” I said.
“I guess you can put up with that!” she said.
She promptly took off her outer clothes, & what she was wearing beneath was of the
boudoir; she was left in garments that were immodest, loose-fitting & prone to accidents.
I took her to the Palanquin, where although she obviously knew what it was & where she had
to conceal herself, she asked me to help her climb inside. This required much intimate
handling of her semi-clad body! The same happened when I showed her the mechanism of
Vanity Fair. Here she pretended to stumble as she came through the trap, & fell into my
arms. The rest of the interview was conducted on the couch at the back of the workshop.
Tommy Elbourne left quietly, without either of us noticing. He was not there afterwards,
anyway.
The rest is substantially correct. I took her on, & she learned how to operate all the
illusions in which I needed her.
My performance always opens with the Chinese Linking Rings. It is a routine which is a
pleasure to work, and audiences love to watch it, no matter if they have seen it before.
The rings gleam brightly in the limelight, they jingle metallically against each other,
the rhythmic movements of the prestidigitator's hands and arms and the gentle linking and
unlinking of the rings seem almost to Mesmerize the audience. It is a trick impossible to
see through, unless you are standing a few inches away from the performer and are able to
snatch the rings away from him. It always charms, always creates that electrifying sense
of mystery and miracle.
With this accomplished I roll forward the Modern Cabinet, which has been standing upstage.
A yard or so from the footlights I rotate the cabinet to show both sides and the back. I
make sure that I am seen to pass behind it, so that the audience may glimpse my feet
through the gap between the stage and the floor of the cabinet. They have seen that no one
was clinging to the back of the cabinet, and now they can satisfy themselves that no one
may be secreted beneath it. When I fling open the door to reveal the interior, then step
inside to release the catch that holds the rear panel in place, the audience can see right
through from front to back. They see me pass through, likewise from front to back, and
close the back wall once more. The door hangs open, and while I am apparently busy behind
the cabinet they take their chance to peer more intently at the interior. There is nothing
for them to see, though: the cabinet is, must be, completely empty. Quickly, then, I slam
the front door closed, rotate the cabinet on its castors, and throw open the door. Inside,
large, beautiful, bulkily dressed, smiling and waving her arms, entirely filling the
cramped interior of the cabinet, is a young woman. She steps down, takes her bow to
thunderous applause and leaves the stage.
I roll the cabinet to the side of the stage, whence it is quietly retrieved by Thomas
Elbourne.
So to the next. This is less spectacular, but involves two or three members of the
audience. Every magic act includes a few moments with a pack of cards. The magician must
show his skill with sleight of hand, otherwise he runs the risk of being thought by his
professional colleagues merely to be an operator of self-working machinery. I walk to the
footlights, and the curtains close behind me. This is partly to create a closed, intimate
atmosphere for the card tricks, but mainly so that behind them Thomas may set up the
apparatus for The New Transported Man.
With the cards finished, I need to break the feeling of quiet concentration, so I move
swiftly into a series of colourful productions. Flags, streamers, fans, balloons and silk
scarves stream out unstoppably from my hands, sleeves and pockets, creating a bright and
chaotic display all around me. My female assistant walks on stage behind me, apparently to
clear away some of the streamers, but in reality to slip me more of the compressed
materials for release. By the end, the brightly coloured papers and silks are inches deep
around my feet. I acknowledge the applause.
While the audience is still clapping the curtains open behind me, and in semi-darkness my
apparatus for The New Transported Man may be seen. My assistants move quickly on to the
stage and deftly clear away the coloured streamers.
I return to the footlights, face the audience and address them directly, in my fractured,
French-accented English. I explain that what I am about to perform has become possible
only since the discovery of electricity. The performance draws power from the bowels of
the Earth. Unimaginable forces are at work, that even I do not fully comprehend. I explain
that they are about to witness a veritable miracle, one in which life and death are
chanced with, as in the game of dice my ancestors played to avoid the tumbril.
While I speak the stage lights brighten, and catch the polished metal supports, the golden
coils of wire, the glistening globes of glass. The apparatus is a thing of beauty, but it
is a menacing beauty because everyone by now has heard for themselves of some of the
deadly power of the electrical current. Newspapers have carried accounts of horrible
deaths and burns caused by the new force already available in many cities.
The apparatus of The New Transported Man is designed to remind them of these appalling
accounts. It carries numerous incandescent electric lamps, some of which come alight even
as I speak. At one side is a large glass globe, inside which a brilliant arc of
electricity fizzes and crackles excitingly. The main part of the apparatus appears, to the
audience, to be a long wooden bench, three feet above the floor of the stage. They can see
past it, around it, underneath it. At one end, by the arc-lit glass chamber, a small
raised platform is bestrewn with dangling wires, their bare ends dangerously exposed.
Above the platform is a canopy where many of the incandescent lamps are placed. At the
further end is a metal cone, decorated with a spiral of smaller glowing lamps. This is
mounted on a gimbals device that allows it to be swivelled in several directions. All
around the main part are small concavities and shelves, where bare terminals lie in wait.
The whole thing is emitting a loud humming noise, as of immense hidden energies within.
I explain to the audience that I would invite some of its members on to the stage to
examine the device for themselves, but for the immense danger to them. I hint at earlier
accidents. Instead, I say, I have devised a few simple demonstrations of the power
inherent within the machine. I allow some magnesium powder to fall across two bared
contacts, and a brilliant white flash momentarily blinds the members of the audience
closest to the stage! While the smoke from it balloons upwards I take a sheet of paper and
drop it across another semi-concealed part of the apparatus; this immediately bursts into
flame, and its smoke also rises dramatically to the rigging loft above. The humming sound
increases in volume. The apparatus seems to be alive, only barely constraining the
frightful energies that lie within.
At stage left my female assistant appears with a wheeled cabinet. This is strongly made of
wood, but because it is built on wheels she is able to turn the thing around so it might
be seen from all sides. Then she lets down the front and sides to show that it is empty.
I grimace sadly at the audience then signal to the girl, who brings to me two immense
dark-brown gauntlets, made to seem as if they are of leathern material. When these are
covering my hands she leads me to the apparatus, until I stand behind it. The audience can
see most of my body still, and satisfy themselves that there are no concealed mirrors or
shields. I lower my two gauntleted hands to the surface of the platform, and as I do so
the sound of electrical tension increases, and there is another brilliant discharge of
electrical energy. I reel back, as if in shock.
The girl moves away from the apparatus, cowering a little. I break off from my
introduction to plead with her to leave the stage for her own safety. At first she
resists, then gladly hurries into the wings.
I reach up to the directional cone, grip it gingerly with my heavily gauntleted hands, and
move it with great care until its apex is pointed directly at the cabinet.
The illusion is approaching its climax. From the orchestra pit there comes a roll of
drums. I place both hands on the platform once more, and magically all the remaining lamps
shine out brightly. The sinister hum increases. I first sit on the platform, and swivel
around so that I can stretch my legs out, then lower myself until I am lying full length,
surrounded by the evidence of the terrible electrical forces.
I raise my arms, and pull off first one, then the other gauntlet. As I lower my arms I
allow my hands to droop below the level of the platform. One of them, the one the audience
can see, falls casually into the receptacle where, a few seconds earlier, a piece of paper
had been ignited.
There is a brilliant, blinding flash of light, and all the lights on the apparatus fuse
into darkness.
In the same instant… I vanish from the platform.
The cabinet bursts open, and I am seen hunched up inside.
I roll slowly out of the cabinet, and collapse on to the floor. I am bathed in stage
lights. Gradually I come to my senses. I stand. I blink in the brightness of the lights. I
face the audience. I turn towards the platform, indicate where I had been, turn back to
the cabinet immediately behind me, and indicate where I had arrived.
I take my bow.
The audience has seen me transmogrified. Before their eyes I was catapulted by the power
of electricity from one part of the stage to another. Ten feet of empty space. Twenty
feet, thirty feet, depending on the size of the stage.
A human body transmitted in an instant. A miracle, an impossibility, an illusion.
My assistant returns to the stage. Clasping her hand I am smiling and bowing as the
applause rings out and the curtains close before me.
If I say no more of this, it will be acceptable. I shall not intervene again. I may
continue to the conclusion.
Life in my flat in Hornsey, an area of north London several miles from my house in St
Johns Wood, left much to be desired. I had chosen the flat, one of ten in an apartment
house in a quiet side street, simply because its anonymity seemed to fulfil my needs. It
was on the second floor at the rear of a modest, mid-century building, occupying one of
the corners, so that although it had several windows looking out into the surrounding
small garden, entry to it was by a single plain door leading off the stairwell.
Not long after I had taken up occupancy, I began to regret the choice. Most of the other
tenants were lower-middle-class families, running modest households; all the other flats
on my floor had children living in them, for instance, and there was much coming and going
of domestic servants of one kind or another. My single state, especially in a flat of such
a size, obviously aroused the curiosity of my neighbours. Although I gave out every sign
of wishing not to be drawn into conversations, some were nevertheless inevitable, and soon
I felt exposed to their speculations about me. I knew I should move to another address,
but at the time I first took the flat I craved to have a steady place in which I could
stay between performances, and even if I were to move I knew there would be no guarantee I
would not attract curiosity elsewhere. I decided to adopt a pretence of polite neutrality,
and came and went discreetly, neither mixing too much with my neighbours nor appearing
secretive in my movements. Eventually I believe I became dull to them. The English have a
traditional tolerance of eccentrics, and my late-night arrivals, my solitary presence
without servants, my unexplained method of making my living, came eventually to seem
harmless and familiar.
All this aside, I found life in the flat disagreeable for a long time after I first moved
in. I had rented it unfurnished, and because I was necessarily sinking most of my earnings
into the family house in St Johns Wood, I could at first only afford cheap and
uncomfortable furniture. The main source of heating was a stove, for which logs had to be
brought up from the yard below, and which provided fierce heat in the immediate vicinity
and none at all discernible in any other part of the flat. There were no carpets to speak
of.
Because the flat was a refuge for me, it was essential that I should make it a comfortable
place to live in and convenient for living quietly, sometimes for long periods at a time.
The physical discomforts aside, which of course began to ease little by little, as I was
able to acquire the various practical things I wanted, the worst of it was the loneliness
and the feeling of being cut off from my family. There has never been any cure for this,
then or now. At first, when it was just Sarah from whom I was separated, it was
intolerable enough, but during her difficult confinement with the twins I was often in
agonies of worry about her. It became even more difficult, after Graham and Helena were
born, especially when one of them fell ill. I knew my family was being cared for and
looked after with love, and that our servants were dedicated and trustworthy, and that
should the worst illnesses occur we had sufficient funds to be able to afford the best
treatment, but none of this was ever quite enough, even though such thoughts did provide a
measure of consolation and reassurance.
In the years when I had been planning The Transported Man and its modern sequel, and my
overall magical career, it had never occurred to me that having a family might one day
threaten to make it unworkable.
Many times I have been tempted to give up the stage, never perform the illusion again,
abandon, in effect, the performance of magic altogether, and always because I have felt
calls of affection and duty to my lovely wife, and of fervent love for my children.
In those long days in the Hornsey flat, and sometimes in the weeks when the theatrical
season gave no openings for my act, I had more than abundant time to reflect.
The significant point is, of course, that I did not give up.
I kept going through the difficult early years. I kept going when my reputation and
earnings began to soar. And I keep going now when, to all intents and purposes, most of
what remains of my famous illusion is the mystery that surrounds it.
However, things have been a lot easier recently. During the first two weeks that Olive
Wenscombe was working for me I happened to discover that she was staying in a commercial
hotel near Euston Station, a most dubious address. Explaining why, she told me that the
Hampshire magician had provided lodgings with his job, but she had of course given these
up when she left his employ. By this time, Olive and I were making regular use of the
couch at the rear of my workshop, and it did not take me long to realize that my employ
too might be able to offer her permanent lodgings.
The Pact controlled all decisions of such a nature, but in this case it was just a
formality. A few days later, Olive moved into my flat in Hornsey. There she stayed, and
has stayed, ever since.
Her revelation, that was to change everything, came a few weeks later.
#############
Towards the end of 1898 a theatre cancellation meant that there was more than a week
between performances of The New Transported Man. I spent the time in the Hornsey flat, and
although I went across to the workshop once, for most of the week I was ensconced in a
domestically happy and physically stimulating routine with Olive. We began redecorating
the flat, and with some of the recent proceeds of a successful run at the Illyria Theatre
in the West End we bought several attractive items of furniture.
The night before the idyll was to end — I was due to take my show to the Hippodrome in
Brighton — she sprung her surprise. It was late at night, and we were resting
companionably together before falling asleep.
“Listen, hon,” she said. “I've been thinking you might want to start looking around for a
new assistant.”
I was so thunderstruck that at first I did not know how to answer. Until that moment it
had seemed to me I had reached the kind of stability I had been seeking all my working
life. I had my family, I had my mistress. I lived in my house with my wife, and I stayed
in my flat with my lover. I worshipped my children, adored my wife, loved my mistress. My
life was in two distinct halves, kept emphatically apart, neither side suspecting the
other even existed. In addition, my lover worked as my beautiful and bewitching stage
assistant. She was not only brilliant at her job but her lovely appearance, I was certain,
had doubtless helped me obtain the much larger audiences I had been playing to since she
joined me. In popular parlance, I had my cake and was greedily eating it. Now, with those
words, Olive seemed to be unbalancing everything, and I was thrown into dismay.
Seeing my reaction, Olive said, “I got a lot I want to get off my chest. It isn't so bad
as maybe you think.”
“I can't imagine how it could be much worse.”
“Well, if you hear half of what I say, it'll be worse than you ever imagined, but if you
stick around to hear it all, I guess you'll end up feeling good.”
I took a careful look at her and noticed, as I should have done from the start, that she
seemed tense and keyed up. Clearly, something was afoot.
The story came out in a flood of words, quickly confirming her warning. What she said
filled me with horror.
She began by saying that she wanted to stop working for me for two reasons. The first was
that she had been treading the boards for several years, and simply wanted a change. She
said she wished to live at home, be my lover, follow my career from that standpoint. She
said she would continue to work as my assistant as long as I asked her to, or until I
could find a replacement. So far so good. But, she said, I hadn't yet heard the second
reason. This was that she had been sent to work for me by someone who wanted to know my
professional secrets. This man—
“It's Angier!” I exclaimed. “You were sent to spy on me by Rupert Angier?”
To this she readily confessed, and on seeing my anger she moved back and away from me,
then began to weep. My mind was racing as I tried to remember everything I had said to her
in the preceding weeks, and to recall what apparatus she had seen or used, what secrets
she might have learned or discovered for herself, and what she might have been able to
communicate back to my enemy.
For a time I became unable to listen to her, unable to think calmly or logically. For much
of the same time she was weeping, imploring me to listen to her.
Two or three hours passed in this distressing and unproductive way, then at last we
reached a point of emotional numbness. Our impasse had lasted into the small hours of the
morning, and the need for sleep loomed heavily over us both. We turned out the light, and
lay down together, our habits not yet broken by the terrible revelation.
I lay awake in the darkness, trying to think how to deal with this, but my mind was still
circling distractedly. Then out of the dark beside me I heard her say quietly,
insistently, “Don't you realize that if I was still Rupert Angier's spy I would not have
told you? Yes, I was with him but I was
bored
with him. And he'd been messing around with some other lady, and it kind of annoyed me.
All the time he was obsessed with attacking you, and I needed a change and so I cooked up
this idea myself. But when I met you… well, I felt differently. You're so unlike Rupert in
everything. You know what happened, and all that was real between us, right? Rupert thinks
I'm spying for him, but I guess by now he's realized he isn't going to hear anything back
from me. I want to stop being your assistant because so long as I'm up there doing the act
with you, Rupert's waiting for me to do what he wants. I just want to get out of it all,
live here in this apartment, be with you, Alfred. You know, I think I love you—”
And so on, long into the night.
In the morning, in the grey and dispiriting light of a rainy dawn, I said to her, “I have
decided what to do. Why don't you take a message back to Angier? I will tell you what to
say, and you will deliver it, telling him it's the secret for which he has been searching.
You may say whatever you wish to make him believe that you stole the secret from me, and
that it is the prime information he has been seeking. After that, if you return, and if
you then swear that you will never again have anything to do with Angier, and if,
and only if
, you can make me believe you, then we will start our lives together again. Do you agree?”
“I will do it today,” she swore. “I want to put Angier out of my life forever!”
“First I have to go to my workshop. I have to decide what I can safely tell Angier.”
Without further explanation I left her in the flat and took the omnibus to Elgin Avenue.
Sitting quietly on the top deck, smoking my pipe, I wondered if I was indeed a fool in
love, and that I was just about to throw away everything.
The problem was discussed in full when I arrived at the workshop. Although potentially
serious, it was just one of several crises the Pact has had to confront over the years,
and I felt no great or novel problem was being presented this time. It was not easy, but
at the end of it the Pact emerged as strong as ever. Indeed, as a recordable testament of
my continued faith in the Pact, I can say that it was I who remained in the workshop while
I returned to the flat.
Here I dictated to Olive what she should inscribe on the sheet of paper, in her own
handwriting. She wrote it down, tense but determined to do what she saw as necessary. The
message was intended to send Angier searching in the wrong direction, so it needed to be
not only plausible but something he would not have thought of on his own.
She left Hornsey with the message at 2.25 p.m., and did not return to the flat until after
11.00 p.m.
“It is done!” she cried. “He has the information I gave him. I shall likely never see him
again, and I certainly shall never again, in this lifetime, speak a friendly word of,
about or to him.”
I never enquired what had taken place during those eight and a half hours she was absent,
and why it had taken her so long to deliver a written message. The explanation she gave is
probably the true one for being the simplest, that with the time taken to travel about
London on public transport, and with not finding Angier immediately, and with discovering
that he was in performance in another part of the city, the time was innocently used up.
But as that long evening went by I harboured many grim fantasies that the double agent I
had turned against her first master might have doubled back once more, and either I should
never see her again or that she would return with a renewed subversive mission on his
behalf.
However, all this occurred at the end of 1898, and I write these words at the end of the
momentous month of January 1901. (The events in the outside world resound in my ears. The
day before I penned these words Her Majesty the Queen was finally laid to rest, and the
country is at last emerging from a period of mourning.) Olive returned to me more than two
years ago, true as her word, and she remains with me, true to my wishes. My career
continues smoothly, my position in the world of illusions is unassailable, my family is
growing, my wealth is assured. Once again I run two peaceful households. Rupert Angier has
not attacked me since Olive passed him the false information. All is quiet around me, and
after the turbulent years I am at last settled in my life.