by Robert Irwin
Julian is right too about hippies being effeminate. So is a lot of the pop music. Consider The Who’s ‘I’m a Boy’. But surely it is a good thing to be effeminate? On the subject of sex, assuming reincarnation is true as Cosmic says it is, I have always wondered why do so many souls, just over half of them, choose to be reincarnated as females rather than males?
The Invocation to Aiwass was held in the deconsecrated oratory which is next to the house. A statue of Ahriman stands where the Christian altar once was. Serpents coil round Ahriman’s contorted body. A couple of local members of the Lodge drove in for the service of Invocation. Most of the Magick rituals I have participated in so far have been pretty boring. (Which fool was it who said that the Devil has all the best tunes? Not someone acquainted with the rituals of Crowleyanite Magick. I have yet to hear anything to match ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’, or ‘Jerusalem’.) This service was only enlivened by the escape of the goat before Felton could take the razor to its windpipe. So, while Julian, standing beside Ahriman, continued to intone the names of the astral servants of Aiwass, the rest of us were chasing the goat between the benches. Finally, Granville lunged for its haunches in a kind of rugby tackle and managed to hold it, until Felton was able to get his hands on its halter. The red-eyed goat, the embodiment of baleful maleficence, had its throat slit to consecrate a forthcoming ‘Consecration of the Virgin’, whatever that may be, and, as on previous occasions, we all drank the blood of the sacrificed beast.
To breakfast on goat’s blood is not a pleasant experience. Fortunately, this was followed by a proper breakfast back in the house. I had kedgeree and black pudding – the first time I have ever had these things. My enjoyment was slightly spoilt by Felton coming up behind me and remarking that my poor old mother was probably going to get better quicker without me dancing attendance upon her.
After breakfast, Felton had Julian show me over the house and its grounds. This Julian did without any enthusiasm. He was rather like a bored estate-agent showing an unlikely customer round the place. It was a big property, but there was nothing to interest me particularly, except that I noticed that all the upstairs windows had bars on them. Our tour ended up in the gun-room. Julian got Mr Dunn to unlock one of the cupboards and Felton and Granville joined us and we all went out to do some clay-pigeon shooting beyond the tennis courts. Then there was lunch. After lunch, Felton slipped me coins with which to tip the butler and we all went off to collect our bags. I was first back down into the hallway where Julian was waiting and looking just as depressed and anxious as when I first met him. I offered my hand to him and prepared myself to utter some words of conventional thanks for his hospitality. But instead he thanked me, albeit in a somewhat half-hearted way.
‘I suppose I should be grateful to you. You are the one who is going to set me free,’ he said, but he did not take the proffered hand.
(Obviously Julian loathes the sight of me. Here is another person who, like Alice, hates my guts. It is oddly disturbing to experience oneself as hateable. And maybe now Sally has also joined the club of Peter-haters. I do not like to think about this. Yet I will think about it – just like I think about sliding down the razor-sharpened banister.)
In the car on the way back to London, Felton casually asked me,
‘Would you really like to be a hippy, Peter?’
‘No. It was a debating point. Julian just got on my nerves that’s all.’
‘Good, the Lodge has no need for hippies, or any other kind of drop-out. What the Lodge wants is people in positions of influence. It is prepared to make great sacrifices and to wait a long time in order to get its chosen candidates in the right places. As a drop-out, you would be useless to us, Peter. We want you to have a job, to marry and have children.’
Then casually,
‘What did you make of Julian?’
‘Well -’
I hesitated and he, seeing this, laughed. ‘Oh don’t bother. I will find out soon enough after I read your diary entries for the weekend.’
‘Actually, I did not care for him very much and I don’t think he likes me either.’
‘Perhaps you will change your mind when you learn that he has decided to make you his heir. The house, the estate, the money, it will all go to you.’
Are Felton and Granville pulling my leg? I did not exactly get the impression from Julian that I was the son he wished he had had but never did have. All the same, it was a good fantasy and I sank back into my seat and imagined what it would be like to inherit Julian’s house. It would be fun to turn the place into a hippy colony, where all we freaks would be waited on by butlers and maidservants. We could turn over the maids, while the butlers might service the chicks with our permission. Then the servants would pass round post-coital joints on silver trays. In the summer there would be marquees on the lawns for rock concerts. Upper-class living is wasted on the stuffy upper-classes; only the hippy really knows how to get full value out of pleasure … Then there was Julian’s remark about me being ‘the chosen one’; this was the springboard for another fantasy about me being the Hippy Messiah. That has a fine apocalyptic ring, does it not? I should play the guitar like Dylan, heal the sick and make the dead walk again.
From there I drifted on to thinking about the difference between hippy and beatnik. Robert Drapers claims to be a beatnik. That is why he wears black roll-neck pullovers. Also he reads depressing existentialists and claims to suffer nausée and angst and other things with foreign names. He really is ‘beat’ in the sense that life seems to have beaten him. Whereas I really am more interested in the hippy thing. Beats strike me as being really pretty straight. I have seen a photo of the archetypal beatnik, Jack Kerouac. He has short hair and he is standing on the porch of his mother’s house, wearing a check shirt and drinking beer from a bottle. He could be auditioning for a part in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. I mean, how straight can you get?
With a jerk, I suddenly remembered something which all the business of the last few days – what with the move, the break with Sally, my father’s telephone calls and the country house weekend – had driven out of my mind. I had to go to a conference on the sociology of cognition at Leeds the following day. A couple of weeks ago I had even prepared a paper on ‘Cognitive Dissonance in Children’s Play Fantasies’ and I was supposed to be giving it on Monday afternoon. I told Felton about this. I thought that maybe he would forbid me from going to the conference as well, but it was all right with him.
We were later getting back to London than we should have been and, having got to London, we had to first drop Granville off in Kensington. We had missed dinner at the Lodge, but Grieves had put sandwiches out in the kitchen. I had hardly finished the last mouthful when Felton urged me to take a bath. If I was making an early start tomorrow, it would be better if I took a bath now. There was no reason to argue and I went upstairs, got in the bath and lay back and thought about my seminar paper and then about the events of the previous couple of days. I was looking forward to writing my diary in bed.
I was wandering back down the dark corridor in my pyjamas when I heard something which made my skin prickle and my body feel cold all over. It was the sound of a woman singing opera. The sound was coming from my room and from my record player, but I had put no record on and this was not my music. I pushed the door open. Although I had left the light on when I went for my bath, the room was now in darkness. I stood there hesitating and thinking of turning and running, when a match was struck and a candle lit. It was Laura who sat on my bed and held the candle up to my face. She was smiling.
‘“Voi che sapete.” You who know about love. It is Mozart, Peter. “Love is the Law. Love under the Will”.’
She spoke in clear bell-like tones. She was wearing a tweed skirt and silk blouse. She patted the bed, motioning me to sit beside her. I did so and we sat close but without looking at one another.
‘Peter, I want us to play a game of pretend. Let us pretend that I am a virgin and I want you to seduce me.’ She
paused and reconsidered, ‘Or rather that I might want you to persuade me that I want to be seduced.’
I could hear her breathing. She was tense. What was I supposed to do? And never mind what I was supposed to do, what did I want to do? Looking at her properly I saw that she was quite a bit older than I was, but not actually old. She was in her forties, I suppose, and vaguely attractive in a matronly sort of way. Without looking at her, I placed a hesitant hand on her stockinged knee. She brushed it off.
‘I don’t want a grubby feel. Talk to me. Persuade me that you love me and that I should sleep with you.’
‘Well, I don’t and I’m not into pretend games,’ I said. ‘Look sorry, Laura, it’s nothing personal, but I don’t need your sex lessons. I’ve slept around and had a lot of experience.’
‘Now, don’t be so graceless, Peter. Simple politeness should have dictated a more courteous response to an older woman who is proposing to go to bed with you – eventually, if you play your cards right. I am sure that you do not need sex lessons. That is not the point. We could be mistaken, but we suspect that you do not know much about courting – about how to make a woman feel special.’
(Courting? Get real.)
‘We are not interested in whether or not you can get it up with any dolly bird. The question is whether you can court a respectable, innocent girl and, not to put too fine a point on it, seduce a virgin. Now do you have experience with virgins?’
‘No, well, I admit that I don’t go around collecting maidenheads. But I can’t do this. It’s silly. What am I supposed to say?’
‘You have to understand that I am a virgin, so this first time I will be afraid. You will need to reassure me about it. You will also need to persuade me that you are serious and that this is not some casual affair, but that you really care about me. Tell me I am beautiful. Tell me how much I will enjoy my first full experience of sex. Promise me marriage. Promise anything.’
‘This is just so weird. I can’t.’
‘Don’t be chicken, Peter.’ She reached out to me reassuringly. ‘You’ve had plenty of experience at role play during the pathworking sessions. This is just another sort of role play and one that will be much more enjoyable than most, I promise you. It’s really not that hard a thing. You must have had a lot more experience in seducing girls than I have at playing at being a virgin. It does not matter what you really think about me. Just make something up. Obviously I want to go to bed with you, otherwise I would not be sitting here. But, as far as the pretence is concerned, I’m young, inexperienced and emotionally insecure. So I just need to hear some words that will make it seem all right for us.’ And suddenly, in an artificially high, schoolgirlish voice, ‘Oh Peter, are you sure it’s all right, just the two of us being here alone?’
Some play acting and then, at the end of it, a good fuck. It was freaky, but I decided to enrol in this impromptu course on how to seduce virgins.
‘We really have to be alone, Laura for me to tell you how much I love you. I would be too shy to do it in a crowd of people. Besides, isn’t it pleasant being here on a summer’s evening in the candle-light and listening to Mendelssohn?’
‘Mozart,’ Laura corrected me instinctively.
‘ – listening to Mozart. This is our night, our moment and nothing is more important than our love – at least nothing is more important than my love for you. I still don’t know how you feel about me.’
‘I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘Perhaps it is not so easy for a girl to know what her feelings are.’
I took her hand. With half my mind, I was trying to remember seduction lines from films like Alfie or The Knack. Trying, but not succeeding. I was on my own.
‘That is something I just can’t understand, Laura. I know how I feel. Whenever I see you, I feel weak. I didn’t ask to fall in love with you, but, now that I have, I am in perpetual pain. Perhaps it would have been better if I had never met you. Then I would not be in this terrible pain – ’
I stopped and turned anxiously, as Laura was leaning forward, bent double. Only as I looked closely did I see that she was convulsed with laughter.
‘What is it darling Peter? Is it the gallstones again?’ And shakily trying to pull herself together, ‘Oh, I’m sorry I know that’s not fair, but really you were going a bit over the top. Sorry, sorry. Take it from “Perhaps it would have been better if I had never met you”. ’
She composed her face and struggled to gaze back at me gravely.
‘Perhaps it would have been better – ’
It was no good. She creased up with laughter again. Something inside of me did a flip. Hitherto, she had been to me a Lodge teacher and a strange old bag. Suddenly I found myself sitting next to a living, breathing, laughing human being and I desired her intensely. I had a hard on.
‘Oh this is hopeless.’ She managed eventually. ‘No, go on Peter. Give it your best shot.’ But she was weeping at the ridiculousness of it all.
‘Perhaps it would have been better if I had never met you. But though I am in pain, it is still a very sweet pain. Laura, may I kiss you?’
She nodded,
‘Of course you may,’ and hastily wiping away the tears of laughter, she turned her face to me.
From what Mr Cosmic had been saying, I was expecting Laura’s kiss to be like a blowtorch on the mouth. However, she was still trying to act out the part, and she only opened her mouth a little and she did not allow my tongue to get very far.
‘Laura darling, you have such a beautiful body. It is a pity to keep it covered in clothes. Will you let me undress you? Just that and nothing more? I only want to look at your glorious body unclothed and worship it with my eyes.’
‘Aaah, yer father’s moustache!’ she replied in a croaky voice. ‘Sorry, sorry. Well Peter, I don’t know. Won’t Daddy be angry?’
‘He need never find out.’
As I said this, I was grimly fumbling at the zip of her skirt. Unfortunately the zip had snagged.
‘Let’s both be naked. I too would like to stand naked before you so that there are no pretences between us.’
Now Laura who had been watching my struggles with the zip with interest, just threw herself back on the bed and howled.
‘Oh Laura Wilkins, how on God’s earth did you ever get yourself in this fucking stupid, stupid, ridiculous situation?’ And then, ‘Oh, let me do the zip. Yes, I definitely think you’ve persuaded me that I ought to yield my maidenhead to you. I’m bored with being a virgin. Come on let’s get our clothes off and fuck.’
We stood to strip in front of one another. She was wearing a corset and the straps of the corset dug into the flesh of her shoulders. I was already fancying her, but this pathetic physical detail made me fancy her rotten. I was on my knees in front of her and I was not acting as I unclipped her suspenders and murmured endearments to her mute but glorious legs. Then I rose to kiss her and she ran her fingers down my ribcage.
‘You have an amazing body,’ she said wonderingly. ‘It’s like the body of a flamenco dancer. I wonder if there can be space for a heart in such a skinny body?’
Then,
‘Oh Peter, you will be gentle with me, won’t you?’
Her whole body was rippling with laughter as I entered her.
Laura was a good lay – no, let me rephrase that. She was a sensational lay. She knew about things that Sally had never dreamed of and some of those things were seriously weird. After sex, she produced cigarettes. I had never seen her smoke before.
‘Well, we cocked this one up – to coin a phrase,’ she said finally. ‘The Master is not going to be pleased.’
‘Need he ever know?’
‘Unless Aiwass strikes him blind in the next twenty-four hours, he will know all right. He will read about it in my diary. Just as Felton will read about it in your diary. They will probably compare notes.’
‘Oh.’ (I had thought that we would keep the details of tonight’s encounter secret. Stupid, but that is what I thought.)
�
�Tell the truth and shame the Devil,’ said Laura. ‘That’s what I say – not that I’ve ever seen the Devil ashamed.’
She was now very brisk, smoothing down her skirt and touching her hair. Seeing my horrified expression, she allowed herself a little smirk.
‘Things have not worked out quite as planned. Still tonight’s encounter has brought us closer together. I hope that soon you will come to regard me as your new mother.’
‘My real mother is dying.’
‘Yes, I know.’ She paused at the door. ‘If I were you Peter, I would not go to sleep yet. It will be better for you if you write your diary now, while every detail is fresh in your memory. You have to tell the truth in your diary. The penalty exacted by the Lodge for not doing so is pretty grim. Take it from your new mum.’
So I did set to work straightaway bringing my diary up to date and it was late before I could set my alarm clock and allow myself to drift off to sleep.
Monday, June 5
I set off as early as the trains would allow to the conference in Leeds University. I only missed the speech of welcome and a couple of short papers. Michael was also at the conference and we talked over coffee. I had to explain a bit about my new address and although I was studiously vague about what sort of set-up Horapollo House was, he still twigged that I was tied up with some sort of occult group and he was caustic about it.
‘All these kinds of esoteric set-ups are after one thing and one thing only and that’s money. They will milk you dry.’