The Magicians

by J. B. Priestley

  “Fortunately,” said Wayland gravely. “But then that is how it would be. You were meant to be the link, the approach. And this is one of the challenges, the immediate crises, we were expecting. I’m very grate­ful, Ravenstreet. And Marot and Perperek will be grateful too. If you will excuse me, I will go and explain to them—I think they went into the vegetable or fruit garden. No doubt there are things you would like to do.”

  He went to do those things, which included some telephoning. What he had thought of as the hangover from his experience ‘in the alive’ oddly persisted. He felt intensely aware of everything he saw and heard during this hot sleepy July morning: the lupins burning blue; the old brickwork in the sun; the humming and buzzing everywhere; the gleam of brass in the sudden dusk of the hall; the long cool vista of the drawing-room caught in the convex mirror; the tiny voices, which might be those of creatures imprisoned in a match-box, that came to him out of the telephone receiver; and yet it seemed to him that all these things had an air of mockery, as if they were hinting they were only part of some enormous deception, artful pro­perties of some performance. He began to feel that the whole setting could be whisked away and something quite different, but equally vivid, equally convincing down to its last detail, be put in its place. He had always thought of the world as being solidly outside himself, but now it occurred to him vaguely but disturbingly that perhaps the relative positions should be reversed, that the world—or what passed for it—was really inside and he himself outside it. Not that this made much sense; but there the notion was.

  Finally, after he had made several calls, one came for him. It was Major Prisk, his act as a silly-ass character scaled down for the telephone. Sepman was getting restive, Prisk explained, and so Mervil thought two birds could be killed with one stone if Ravenstreet motored up to Cheshire, thereby meeting Sepman and helping to keep him quiet, Sepman being a type liable to fly off the handle. Prisk gave him the address, a village near Northwich, and told him exactly how to find the house. “Now if you’d run up this evening, old boy,” Prisk continued, “and you could do it under three hours with your eyes shut, then you could dine with ’em—yes, there’s a Mrs. Sepman, very good value—and stay the night if you wanted to. I’ll tell you what, chummie—if you’ll promise to do just that, I’ll be there myself. They can put us both up, and while you’re giving Ernest the works—yes, that’s his name, old boy, Ernest—I can keep little Nancy amused, otherwise she might be a nuisance. You’ll see what I mean when you get there. But I’m not venturing unless I have your definite promise, Ravenstreet, for various good reasons.” He sounded more serious now. “And I know Mervil would be pleased. Agreed? Fine! I’ll let the Sepmans know. Aim at arriving about seven, in case they want to take us out to dinner. Be seeing you, chummie!”

  He told the Magicians about this over the lunch-table. They listened with stupendous gravity, exchang­ing profoundly knowing glances. In this Mervil-and-Prisk business atmosphere—and these arrangements could not be discussed out of this atmosphere—there was something rather pathetically absurd about the three old boys, with their Three-Wise-Men act. That call from Prisk had broken the spell of the morning. Something in his manner perhaps gave Ravenstreet away, for they noticed the change.

  “Is foolish old men—um?” said Perperek, still twinkling. He was eating an enormous lunch, far more than the other two put together. “But you are kind man, I think—good to mad peoples.”

  “I hope so,” Ravenstreet told him, smiling.

  “What Perperek means,” said Wayland, “is that whatever you think, he hopes you will humour us. After all, if you’ve decided now, after talking to your business friends, that we’re simply three harmless old eccentrics, then it can’t hurt you to do what we ask, because we’re harmless. You please us, and do yourself and your friends no mischief.”

  “It is not good for you, though, this attitude, I must warn you.” This was Marot, always the stern member of the trio. “But we will not talk of that now.”

  “We must put your kindness and hospitality to a further test,” said Wayland, flashing across his quick illuminating smile. “But first tell me, please, how many people could stay here for a night. One night would do.”

  Ravenstreet thought for a moment. “At a pinch I could accommodate another four or five in addition to you three. I wouldn’t like to try it for a week, but a night or two wouldn’t hurt anybody. Why do you ask?”

  “Even before you received that telephone call,” said Wayland, “we’d decided that it would be best if you could persuade your business friends—no, I know they aren’t really your friends, but that does not matter—to come here so that we could meet them. If we try to see them elsewhere, it will all be very difficult——”

  “On guard!” cried Perperek triumphantly, flourishing his knife. “Too much!”

  “But if we’re here when they arrive, three harmless old men you have rescued from the damaged hotel here, other guests seen at dinner who must be amused for an hour after dinner, then they will not be on guard, as Perperek says.”

  “A little deception,” said Marot gravely, “but not much. It will not be necessary for you to tell any lies. And we would not ask for this if we did not think it so important. But it is of an importance you cannot imagine.”

  “We change life for your grandchildren,” Perperek announced.

  “Not for mine,” Ravenstreet said, grinning. “I haven’t any.”

  Perperek opened his eyes wide. “How do you know?”

  “Well, I suppose it’s just possible, but not very likely——”

  “I think likely.” Perperek was twinkling again.

  Ravenstreet turned to Wayland. “You’re asking me to invite here all the people involved in this business—the Sepmans, I take it, and the other three? You won’t of course mention the actual thing——?”

  Wayland shook his head. “You have our word for that. It will be all apparently accidental. Can you do this—very soon?”

  “I can try. But I don’t suppose it’ll be easy. Sepman probably has work to do. The others are very busy men. Fortunately this is a sort of halfway house—and I might be able to make difficulties that ask for some kind of immediate conference and then insist that we all meet here.”

  “Is always quick sensible man,” cried Perperek with approval. “Too good for tick-tock—an’ no childrens and grandchildrens. Pity! Rav-en-street, I tell you, I like you very much. I try—to give you somethings very nice. You see.”

  With this, it appeared, Marot was in agreement, for he caught Perperek’s eye and nodded some sort of acceptance. And even though he was now finding them rather absurd, Ravenstreet could not altogether dismiss this remark of Perperek’s and the looks and nods that followed it. Afterwards he was to recall the scene with more than wonder and astonishment.

  Shortly after lunch he drove himself to the works, poked around there in a superannuated sort of way for an hour and a half, and then set out for Cheshire and the Sepmans. He took it easy and the traffic was not too bad, so that he had plenty of time to think. His mood was very different from that of the lunch-table. He suddenly found himself far closer than he had been all day to that ‘time alive’ experience of the previous night. Driving the car—the half-fixed attention, the repetition of mechanical little movements, the air flowing round him (for the afternoon was still hot, and he had the car open everywhere)—may have brought that experience back, almost compelling him to live it again. He had not given Philippa Storer a thought for years; she belonged to a higgledy-piggledy past he was glad to forget. What had happened to her after he had left that cottage at Pelrock Bay?

  There was little to remember. Without telling him anything, she had sold her share of the bookshop and lending library and had then immediately left the district. Somebody had told him she had gone to the South Coast somewhere. Then another somebody, a year or so later, had seen her, perhaps on the South Coast, and had said she was married, with a child or two about. And that was the e
nd of her, until last night when she had marched in again through that cottage doorway, with not a flick of an eyelash missing. What­ever had become of her, she was now alive again, like that morning and afternoon in the cottage, in the clearly-lighted forefront of his mind. He could consider her, and did. Reasonably too, without any sentimental haze, though the shame of his newly-remembered treachery still burned; and he came to the dispassionate conclusion that, quite apart from this treachery, which seemed to have a life of its own like the time that held it, he had been a fool to let her go so that he could please Frank Crewe and claim Maureen.

  One of them had been his kind of woman, and the other hadn’t. It was, he concluded, as simple as that. This was something he wouldn’t have understood then, twenty-seven years ago, though he would have pre­tended to in passionate or highly sentimental moments; but now it was plain to him. Maureen had been younger, superficially perhaps the more attractive, quite as intelligent, and through her father much closer to him in his work and daily life. It was easy to justify his preference. Any Eugenic Council or Marriage Board, settling these questions for bewildered youngsters, would have awarded him Maureen at once, would have told Philippa to bring in an un­married English Master from the nearest grammar school. And they would have been as horribly wrong as he had been, even though a trifle purer in their motives. Whether chemistry did it or psychology, one girl had been right for him, in or out of bed, and the other hadn’t. God help them!—though in fact God hadn’t, although He had apparently demanded perfect results—he and Maureen had tried hard enough, urged on by plenty of magazine articles and little books on How to Make Your Marriage a Success. But trying, on any big scale, just wouldn’t work in these tricky departments of life. You caught each other at it all the time, and then it was irritating or pathetic, and neither irritation nor pathos could begin to put it right. You weren’t caught up and then lost in the relationship; you were self-conscious and fumbling when you ought to have been letting it rip; you felt a clumsy fool when you ought to have felt glorious; you came home with yet another responsibility weighing upon you; you could never let your whole being flow out freely; you were only half yourself; and disappointment nagged like a toothache. Poor Maureen! How sorry he had been, and how she had come to hate him for being sorry! He realised now that if he had been a much worse husband, spending their money on drink and women and horses, he would have been a much better one from her fundamental point of view, at least offering her drama and martyrdom, an excuse for her failure as a wife. And no children, the final misery for a woman like Maureen, with no real interests outside her home! He sent his wry apologies after her into the dark. Sorry again, Maureen!

  He continued to think about her, not about himself and his own life. He remembered the look she had given him in the nursing home, a look that was bright though not hard with irony she could never have found words for, even if she had not been too weak to do more than mutter a little. There she was, being hurried into the dark, into dissolution, when most of her womanhood—and there had never been anything wrong with it, everything was there to keep the un­discovered right man happy—had been wasted, a miraculous creation shovelled into the dust-bin. Given one shot, in the wind and rain, with the target miles away. Had it been his fault, for making that decision to marry her? Or Frank’s for pressing it on them both, out of his passion, thoroughly mischievous in the end, for arranging things for everybody? Or nobody’s—just part of the evil muddle? Maureen’s grandmother in such a situation, he told himself, would have found some consolation in the belief, impressed upon her no doubt almost daily, that happiness was not to be expected in this world, this vale of tears, but in the next, where shining gates would be opened for the virtuous. But Maureen had had no such consolation; like him she belonged to a generation that saw the grave as the end and expected all happiness, the realisation of every dream, this side of it, the vale of tears being hastily revamped into some sort of temporary paradise. Which was, he reflected, a great deal too much to expect, breeding disappointment that in turn bred anger, violence, cruelty. What then were men to do, if they were not to tear themselves to pieces? Try to restore the vale-of-tears-but-Heaven-is-waiting notion of this life? Lose themselves like the Magicians in some Oriental maze of strange dimensions, recurring time, levels of being and knowledge, bewilderingly fantastic epics of trial and error? Or in despair—and weren’t there signs of this already—forget every high dream of what life might be, avoid disappointment and any sense of frustration by expecting nothing more than the day’s blunted and routine sensations, calling in the Mervils and Karneys and Prisks and Sepmans (and perhaps the Ravenstreets, perhaps not) to keep them cosy and secure and beyond the last taunts of the dying imagination?

  So his mind worked as he kept the car purring and rolling toward the north-west, in the huge glow of the late afternoon. It seemed to him that this mind he examined spasmodically, between encounters with traffic and lights, was still an open mind, in spite of his promise to the Magicians. Yet obscurely he felt glad that sheer good-nature, a host’s and younger man’s response to Wayland’s smile, Perperek’s droll twinkle, the bleak urgency, ancient and prophetical, of Marot, had allowed him to make them that promise, turning him, however sceptical and amused, into a colleague of theirs, preventing him from feeling complete loyalty to Mervil and Co. Humouring them, he found he was also, rather mysteriously, humouring himself.

  After that he was too busy for further reflection; trying to remember Prisk’s instructions; going down one lane after another, to find the Sepmans’ villa. Finally he turned with some difficulty into a narrow drive, halted his Rolls before a mock-Tudor façade, and twisted a doorbell that went off like a fire alarm.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Sepmans

  As Prisk had foreseen, the Sepmans were taking their guests out to dinner, to some country inn about ten miles away that was famous throughout Cheshire for its food, Nancy Sepman said. Prisk him­self, however, had not yet arrived, although it was after seven, so they waited for him in the flimsy-whimsy sitting-room, drinking gins-and-limes and nibbling cheese straws. Ravenstreet was not enjoying himself. He felt rather tired and didn’t find a mixture of gin, limejuice and cheese straws very pleasant and reviving. The glasses had saucy nudes painted inside them, and represented the naughty-naughty side of the room’s flimsy-whimsy, in which Nancy Sepman’s personality had found expression. The place was filled with things pretending to be other things; and Ravenstreet, who had always disliked such rubbish, now wondered for the first time if it had any psychological significance.

  The Sepmans seemed like two type characters in a modern morality play: the Dissatisfied Woman and the Angry Man. Nancy was a good-looking dimpled brunette, who might have looked better if she had not been too elaborately got-up for a splendid social evening. During this time when they were waiting for Prisk, she was too worried to be gay or even cheerfully relaxed. She seemed to be far less interested in her husband than he was in her. Indeed, it was clear that he was entirely devoted to her, seeing her as a magical being on an earth from which all other magic had vanished. With everybody and everything else, Ernest Sepman had apparently lost all patience. He was a small but thickset fellow about forty; not attractive to look at, sallow and rather pug-faced; and worse to listen to, for he had a flattish and rather nasal voice, probably south Lancashire, rasped with irritation. He suggested a world of sulphuric acid works, dingy labs, packed and reeking canteens, crowded trams on wet nights, snarling political meetings held in Victorian Infant Schools, frayed collars sawing away at the neck, woollen underwear worn too long, headaches and indigestion and angry rashes, tinned fish and custard powder and suits that wrinkled and shoes that cracked and ships that never came home. And if he made a million, he would still suggest that world, still be the furious disinherited man.

  Sepman had made it clear at once that he was annoyed with Mervil and Karney and was ready on the smallest provocation to be equally annoyed with Ravenstreet. But Ravens
treet gave him none, carefully explaining that he had been approached by Mervil and Karney but had not yet committed himself to the scheme, although he had made a favourable test of Sepman Eighteen. Sepman explained in turn that he had been a research man with a big local firm of chemical manufacturers but had walked out of his job, after some encouragement from Mervil and Prisk. He had used up all his patience working on the drug, which he had had to do at night and at the week-end, and now he expected everything to happen at once. All this was while Ravenstreet was being shown his bedroom. Down below, over the gin-and-lime, the excited Nancy, who obviously regarded this as a social occasion, never allowed them to exchange more than two remarks without calling attention to herself. Raven­street saw what Prisk had meant when he had talked about keeping little Nancy amused.

  About twenty to eight Prisk came roaring up in an immensely long sports car bristling with lamps and badges, giving the impression he was taking part in the Monte Carlo Rally. His apologies for being late were perceptibly flavoured with whisky; his colour was high and his smile broad; but he took charge of everything at once, creating an atmosphere in which Nancy flowered into genuine gaiety, a woman whose splendid evening had begun. There was some fast hocus-pocus about cars, which resulted in Prisk taking Nancy, who climbed into the super-sports-model as if she were home at last, and Ravenstreet being left to drive Ernest. Perhaps Prisk, who had given Ravenstreet a knowing look, thought a sedate journey in the Rolls would offer a chance for some solid talk; and then perhaps not, thought Ravenstreet, who had already begun to entertain certain suspicions. Actually, Sepman, loosened by the gin he had had, talked all the way about himself.

  “If you think I like this sort of life, Sir Charles,” he said in his grating fashion, “you can think again. I’ve had about as much of it as I can stand. Same with Nancy of course, only she doesn’t show it like I do. You’d never think, would you, to look at her and hear her talk, that she was as fed up as I am? She is, though. Scraping along here’s been murder. I want a lot more money and I’m going to get it, don’t you worry. If it wasn’t for the chance of marketing Eighteen—time we gave it a name, isn’t it?—I’d be out of this country like a shot. And unless Mervil and you lot come up to scratch pretty soon, I’ll be off anyhow, either to the States or Canada, if it costs me my last penny getting there, which it will. Don’t forget I’ve had to do this research, years of it too, in my own time, usually after doing a hard day’s work or at the week-end. And had to turn bloody cartwheels to keep it to myself. If the firm had got on to it, I’d have been lucky to have got another twenty quid and a vote of thanks at the annual general meeting. But I got it out right under their noses—and serve ’em right. Got to look after yourself—let’s face it. But mind you,” and the snarl left his voice, “I could never have done it if it hadn’t been for Nancy. It was just as bad for her—worse, I expect—but she believed in me—told me to go right on and not worry about her, though it might mean nights and week-ends on her own. She’s been wonderful, Nancy has,” he added, almost dreamily.