“Yes. We talked about that. She told you of course that I never knew?”
“She explained that—yes. I wasn’t altogether surprised. There were some things I never understood. And children notice far more than their parents imagine they do. Deb—my wife—and I have often compared notes about that. We’ve decided to assume that our two’ll know everything about everything. You liked my family, mother said.”
“Yes, I did, Bryan. I took to the whole four of you—before I knew where I came into it.”
“We’ve a cottage about four miles away—not much of a place, I’m afraid. It was almost derelict when I took it over, but I’m making it into something. Come and have a look at us. Deb doesn’t know definitely about you yet, of course, but I think she began to do some quick guessing this afternoon. And she liked the look of you too, I may say.” He swished the beer round in his glass mug, and for the first time looked somewhat embarrassed. “I don’t think they’ll let you see mother again. They felt they were stretching a point today. I can’t make a fuss. They’ve been very good about various things——”
“I didn’t expect they would. And I know it doesn’t matter now. Death’s serious enough, and I’m not pretending it isn’t. But we are in our time, and our time lives. I know enough now to know that, even though I can’t hope to understand it all. But we’ll talk about that later. What I want to say now is that I’ve retired from industry, have been handsomely rewarded, have nobody but myself to look after, and I want you, like a sensible chap, to tell me how I can make myself useful. By the way, what’s your job, Bryan?”
“It’s a mixture. When I left the Army I wanted to work with my hands. I’ve always liked working with my hands. So I tried all sorts of jobs, usually just one jump ahead of that particular union. I must warn you, I’m against the trade unions——”
“Sorry to hear it,” said Ravenstreet, not too heavily. “I’ve had plenty of fights with ’em in my time. But I know they’re necessary. What’s your objection? Political? Are you one of these new young Tories?”
“No, it’s not political. But as an odd-job man—and that’s what I’ve been, still am up to a point—I think they keep everything too inflexible, slow and wasteful. Like the State and its ministries. I believe we could have gone twice as far as we have done since the War if we hadn’t had these dead hands everywhere. Most men would have enjoyed themselves more too, producing some food or helping to build something. Most jobs nowadays are much easier than people think they are. And what’s the point of deliberately slowing ourselves up? Half the men I know are just plain bored. Either they haven’t any skill or they have skills they can’t use properly. So, these days, when I’m not doing odd jobs for people, I go round talking to groups of chaps——”
There was a message that the hospital wanted to speak to Mr. Slade. When his son went to the telephone, not hurrying and fussing but moving towards it with a quick easy grace, Ravenstreet began thinking about him. He was quite different from any son he had ever imagined for himself, some figure that would have been merely a reflection of his own ego. Clearly he could differ sharply with this boy, argue and lose his temper with him; here was a personality that, making allowance for youth and inexperience, was at least as definite and solid as his own; and Ravenstreet found himself delighted with him. Nevertheless, he concluded, he would never really know him. This delightful, probably most lovable, young man might be said to enter Ravenstreet’s world from a country that Ravenstreet would never see, for he represented his own generation, not his father’s. But what a wealth of promise, like that of time alive, there was in all this!
“The night sister says I might as well go home. I’ve no telephone there, and she knows that, but she’s pretty sure I shan’t be wanted. So I’ll get along, because Deb will be worrying. What are your plans?” He suddenly produced a quite unexpected broad boyish grin. “I haven’t a clue what I ought to call you.”
“We’ll not bother about that just now. And the only plan I have is to stay here. And to see you—and perhaps the family—tomorrow.”
Philippa died in her sleep the following night, and two days later Ravenstreet walked with Bryan and Deborah to see her coffined bones laid in the earth. Various relatives were also present of course, mostly middle-aged people who contrived to look indignant all the time as if they might have done something about this miserable business if they had been told about it earlier; and Ravenstreet was grimly amused to discover how Bryan and Deborah merely endured these people politely and turned instinctively to him. He had been able to be of considerable service to the bewildered youngsters, who had been hit harder than they had expected to be by the actual fact of death and by all its grisly paraphernalia. Deborah, who had lost her own parents during the War, had taken to him at once; and already his relationship with her gave him something deeper than pleasure. She was, he realised quite soon, an enchanting creature, as gallant as a last hopeless cavalry charge, at once despairing and gay, like so many young middle-class wives and mothers in Britain these days, the perfect mate for the atom-heavy, bewildered, badgered young male. And unlike Bryan, who was happy with his hands and things and a few simple crusading ideas and was quite incurious about the universe and life in general, she could never hear enough about the Magicians and spent entranced hours, constantly interrupted of course by the loud demands of the children, Patience and Rufus, asking him questions about them. And of course Patience and Rufus were always asking questions too, about everything. It was wearing but wonderful.
After the funeral, he insisted upon their staying with him at Broxley. Any doubts Bryan may have had, because of his various jobs, were instantly demolished by the impetuous blazing-eyed Deb, who announced that a third August in that cottage would be unendurable, that the lives of the children were menaced by the wet plaster in the kitchen, and that all Bryan’s jobs, plus a few more, would be waiting for him when he got back, a stronger, healthier man. So they set out, in brilliant sunshine, for Warwickshire, Ravenstreet taking Deb and Rufus, who contrived to be sick and yet bright scarlet with excitement, and Bryan taking Patience, who divided her loyalties between her father and the dilapidated little car, which she felt would be hurt if she preferred the great shiny Rolls.
“I’ll tell you a secret,” cried Deb as they rolled across Berkshire and Rufus slept in her lap. “I adore luxury. I don’t expect it—I know that doesn’t work, you have to give up too many other things that are better—but when it suddenly arrives, I adore it. Now Bryan doesn’t—he’d just as soon be uncomfortable and a bit squalid, so long as he’s doing what he wants to do. Mind you, he really wants everything clean and sensible—that bit squalid wasn’t really fair—but he doesn’t want anything extra—like linen, flowers, silver, cold white wine in very thin glasses, evening clothes, a sumptuous car like this. He’d much rather be driving our little old monster. And instead of stopping for lunch somewhere, eat cheese sandwiches under a hedge with Patience, who’s just like him, at least just now. Later of course she’ll turn into a woman—and begin wanting something extra. I hope we women haven’t overdone it—some obviously do, American types queening it like mad. You’re enjoying all this, aren’t you? Not the luxury part—you’re used to it—but having a share of a family—um?”
“Yes. And I’ll tell you a secret now. I’d forgotten this part—no, that’s not true, but I didn’t like to mention it before. The Magicians—you see, they come into it——”
“I hoped they would. I’m all for the Magicians.”
“As well as showing me time alive, they always seemed, in a rather vague way, to promise me something good—not depending on ideas and beliefs but perhaps something they knew I wanted even if I didn’t know I wanted it——”
“We come into this. Shut up, Rufus. Go to sleep again or look for cows or something. Yes?”
“I’ll show you Wayland’s letter when we get to Broxley. The one he left behind. In it he said that Marot told him to tell me that I’d have various
choices in the near future, and that the one that seemed to offer least would be the best. Though it seemed nothing but pain and darkness, he said. Well, you can see what that was.”
“Yes,” she said, frowning a little. “We know what that was.” Then in a different tone, coming from a cleared brow: “But it made her much happier too. Quite different. Bryan’s sure about that—and he saw her twice after you and I did.”
There was one of Mervil’s newspapers in the hotel where they lunched. On the front page was a column headed Wonder Drug on the Way, with some vague but artfully enticing stuff in it about a possible cure for worry. So Mervil, with or without Sepman’s formula, had found the idea too attractive to resist. Did that mean that the Magicians had lost after all? Or was Mervil bluffing? And where were the Magicians now?
He was not the only man asking that question, as he discovered after dinner, when he had left Bryan and Deb in the drawing-room and had gone into the small study to do some accounts. With the dusk and the bats and the sound of the nightjars came Inspector Triffett, seemingly taller and more wooden than ever, wearing his bewildered expression.
“I rang you up a day or two ago, sir,” said the inspector, “but you were away. Being not far from here on an enquiry, I thought I might venture to call. And this time I’m lucky. But it’s the only piece of luck I’ve had so far on this foreign hypnotist case. Now I’ll put it to you straight, sir. I asked for—and you gave me—some particulars of those three. There wasn’t much to go on——”
“All I had, Inspector.”
“That’s what I want to know, sir. And no funny business? You gave me just what you knew about ’em?”
“Certainly. I wish I did know more about them.”
“And you’ve had no contact since they left here, sir?”
“No, I haven’t, Inspector. Again I wish I had. I’m even more anxious to find them than you are.” He motioned to the inspector to sit down. “I feel I owe them a great deal. I keep wondering where they are and what they’re doing.”
Inspector Triffett, sitting bolt upright, stared hard in his own unblinking fashion. Then, like a ventriloquist’s doll who had taken to conjuring, he produced from nowhere a well-worn notebook, which he flicked open with his thumb. “Then you’re out of luck too, sir. Not only we don’t know where they’ve gone but we can’t discover where they’ve ever been—or who they are—or what they are. Now here are the details, sir.” He read from the notebook, very solemnly. “Wayland, supposed to be a retired civil engineer who has worked for many years in the East. Not known anywhere. No line of enquiry shows any result. Nicholas Perperek, probably Bulgarian by birth, now a merchant travelling between Italy and Greece. Same thing. No trace. Marot, French, an optician in Bordeaux. Now that looks more likely, doesn’t it? But it isn’t. We heard two days ago there’s no optician in Bordeaux called Marot. So we don’t know where they’ve gone to, where they came from, who they are.”
“I’m not surprised,” said Ravenstreet. “They were like that.”
Inspector Triffett closed his notebook with a sharp slap, rose majestically, held out his hand. “Well, that’s how it is. Now if one of them should get in touch with you, Sir Charles, will you promise to let me know?”
Ravenstreet smiled as he shook hands. “Certainly not, Inspector.”
THE END
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Boynton Priestley was born in 1894 in Yorkshire, the son of a schoolmaster. After leaving Belle Vue School when he was 16, he worked in a wool office but was already by this time determined to become a writer. He volunteered for the army in 1914 during the First World War and served five years; on his return home, he attended university and wrote articles for the Yorkshire Observer. After graduating, he established himself in London, writing essays, reviews, and other nonfiction, and publishing several miscellaneous volumes. In 1927 his first two novels appeared, Adam in Moonshine and Benighted, which was the basis for James Whale’s film The Old Dark House (1932). In 1929 Priestley scored his first major critical success as a novelist, winning the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for The Good Companions. Angel Pavement (1930) followed and was also extremely well received. Throughout the next several decades, Priestley published numerous novels, many of them very popular and successful, including Bright Day (1946) and Lost Empires (1965), and was also a prolific and highly regarded playwright.
Priestley died in 1984, and though his plays have continued to be published and performed since his death, much of his fiction has unfortunately fallen into obscurity. Valancourt Books is in the process of reprinting many of J. B. Priestley’s best works of fiction with the aim of allowing a new generation of readers to discover the magic of this unjustly neglected author’s books.
ABOUT THE COVER
Cover: The cover is a reproduction of the original 1954 jacket art by Val Biro (b. 1921). In the 1950s and 1960s, Biro designed as many as 3000 book jackets for first editions by many prominent authors, including J. B. Priestley, Nevil Shute, and C. S. Forester. He now lives with his wife in Sussex. The publisher gratefully acknowledges Mr. Biro’s permission to reproduce the illustration.
The Magicians Page 21