The Prestige

by Christopher Priest

  Yesterday evening there was a party for me and several boys and girls from the village, it being Christmas they are allowed here. Henry was here too but he would not come to the party because of the others. He missed a great treat because we had a conjuror at the party!

  This man, who was called Mr A. Presto, did the most wonderful tricks I have ever seen. He started by making all sorts of banners and flags and umbrellas appear from nowhere, with lots of balloons and ribbons. Then he did some tricks with playing cards, making us choose cards which he was able to guess. He was very clever. He made billiard balls come out of one of the boy’s nose, and a whole lot of coins fell out of a little girl’s ear when he grabbed hold of it. There was a piece of string which he cut in half then joined up again, and at the end of it all he produced a white bird out of a small glass box that we could see was empty before he began!

  I pleaded and pleaded to be told how these tricks were done, but Mr Presto would not tell me. Even afterwards when the others had gone, but nothing I could say would make him change his mind.

  This morning I had an idea, and I got Grierson to drive into Sheffield for me and buy all the magic tricks he could find, and to see if there were any books that told you how to do it. Grierson was gone nearly all day, but in the end he came back with most of what I wanted. It includes a special glass box for hiding a bird in so I can produce it by magic. (Special floor to the box, which I hadn’t thought of.) The other tricks are a bit harder, because I have to practice. But already I have learnt a trick where I can guess which card someone else has chosen and I have tried it out several times on Grierson.

  17th February 1871

  I managed to see Papa alone this afternoon for the first time in many months, and found that the situation was much as Henry has already described it. There is nothing apparently to be done about it, except to make the best of a bad job.

  I could gladly kill Henry.

  31st March 1873

  Today I removed and destroyed all entries from the last two years. It was the first act I performed on returning from school.

  1st April 1873

  Home from school. I now have sufficient privacy to write in this book.

  My father, the 12th Earl of Colderdale, died three days ago, 29th March 1873. My brother Henry assumes his title, lands and property. The future of myself, my mother, and every other member of the household, be they ever so mighty or humble, is now uncertain. Even the future of the house itself cannot be counted upon, as Henry has openly spoken in the past of making drastic changes. We can only wait, but for the time being the house is preoccupied with funereal preparations.

  Papa will be buried tomorrow in the vault.

  This morning I am feeling more sanguine about my prospects. I have been here in my room this morning, practising my magic. My progress with this field was one of the victims of my recent purge of this diary’s pages, because from the start I kept a detailed record of what it took to become proficient in sleight of hand . . . but all this had to go when I decided to remove the rest. Suffice to say that I believe I have now attained performance standard, and although I have not yet put it to test, I have often practised new tricks on the fellows at school. They feign a lack of interest in magic, and indeed some of them declare that they know my secrets, but I have had one or two moments when, gratifyingly, I have seen genuine bafflement in their expressions.

  There is no need for haste. All the magic books I have read advise the novitiate not to rush, but instead to prepare thoroughly so that one’s performance has surprise as well as skill. If they know not who you are, it adds to the mystique of what you are, and what you are about to do.

  So it is said.

  I wish, and this is my only wish in this saddest of weeks, that I could use my magic to bring Papa back to his life. A selfish wish, because it would undoubtedly help restore my own life to where it was three days ago, but also a fervently loving wish, because I loved my Papa and already I miss him, and regret his passing. He was forty-nine years old, and I believe that is too young by far to be a victim of failure of the heart.

  2nd April 1873

  The funeral has taken place, and my father has been laid to rest. After the ceremony in the chapel, his body was taken to the family vault, situated beneath the East Rise. The mourners all walked in a line to the entrance to the vault, and then Henry and I, together with the undertaker and his staff, bore the coffin underground.

  Nothing had prepared me for what followed. I had never been inside the vault. From outside, where a door has been built between a couple of columns, it looks at most as if it might be a small cave or passage dug into the hill. When you go inside it turns out to be a huge natural cavern stretching back into the hill, widened and enlarged for use as the family tomb. It is in complete darkness, the ground underfoot is uneven and rocky, the air is foetid, we saw several rats, and the numerous jagged shelves and ledges protrude into the passageway causing painful collisions in the dark. We were each carrying a lantern, but once we were at the bottom of the steps and away from the daylight they proved of little use. The undertakers accepted all this in a professional manner, even though carrying the casket must have been extremely difficult under the circumstances, but for my brother and I it was a short but significant ordeal. Once we had found a suitable ledge and deposited the coffin, the senior undertaker intoned a few scriptural words and we returned without delay to the surface. We emerged into the bright spring morning we had left a few minutes earlier, where the East Lawn was festooned with daffodils and the buds were bursting from the trees around us, but for me at least the sojourn in that dark tunnel cast a shadow across the rest of the day. I shuddered as the stout wooden portal closed, and I could not throw off the memory of those ancient broken caskets, the dust, the smell, the lifeless despair of the place.

  Evening

  An hour or so ago came the ceremony, and I use the word with the sense that it is exactly the one I want, the ceremony around which the day has been built. For this, the reading of my father’s will, the interment was a mere preliminary.

  We were all there, assembled in the hall beneath the main staircase. Sir Geoffrey Fusel-Hunt, my father’s solicitor, called us to silence, and with steady, deliberate hands he opened the stout brown envelope that contained the dread document, and slipped out the folded sheets of vellum. I looked around at the others. My father’s brothers and sisters were there, with their spouses and, in some cases, their children. The men who managed the estate and who guarded the game, patrolled the moor, protected the farms and the fishery, stood in a group to one side. Next to them, also clustering, the tenant farmers, eyes wide with hope. In the centre of this huge group, directly facing Sir Geoffrey across his desk, myself and Mama, with the servants behind us. In front of us all, standing, arms folded across his chest, central to the moment, Henry dominated the occasion.

  There were no surprises. Henry’s main inheritance is of course not subject to my father’s will, nor are the hereditary rights of property. But there are freeholds to be disposed of, portfolios of shares, amounts of cash and stocks of valuables, and, most important of all, rights of possession, of occupation.

  Mama is given the choice, for the remainder of her life, of occupying a principal wing of the main house or total occupation of the dower house by the gate. I am allowed to remain in the rooms I presently occupy until I finish my education or gain my majority, after which my fate will be decided by Henry. The destiny of our personal servants is linked to our own. The rest of the household is to stay or be disposed of as Henry sees fit.

  Our life is to be unravelled.

  A few cash legacies have gone to favoured retainers, but the bulk of the fortune is now Henry’s. He made no move, showed no sign, when this was announced. I kissed Mama, then shook hands with several of the estate managers and farmers.

  Tomorrow I shall try to decide how I am to live my life, and to make this decision before Henry can make it for me.

  3rd April 1873 />
  What am I to do? There is more than another week before I return to school, for what will be my last term.

  3rd April 1874

  It seems appropriate to return to this diary after the space of a year. I remain at Caldlow House, partly because until I am twenty-one I am in the charge of Henry, my legal guardian, but mainly because Mama wishes me to.

  I am minded by Grierson. Henry has taken a residence in London, from where it is reported that he daily attends the House. Mama is in good health, and I walk to the dower house every morning, which is her best time, and we speculate unprofitably about what I might be able to do once I gain my majority.

  Following Papa’s death I allowed my practice of legerdemain to fall into neglect, but about nine months ago I returned to it. Since then I have been practising intently, and taking every opportunity to watch the performance of stage magic. For this purpose I travel to the music halls of Sheffield or Manchester, where although the standards are variable I do see a sufficient variety of turns to stimulate my interest. Many of the illusions are already known to me, but at least once in every performance I see something that excites or baffles me. After this the hunt for the secret is on. Grierson and I now have a well-trodden path around the various magic dealers and suppliers, where, with persistence, we eventually gain access to what I require.

  Grierson, alone in our diminished household, knows of my magical interest and ambition. When Mama speaks pessimistically of what is to become of me, I dare not tell her what I plan, but deep inside me I feel a knot of confidence that when I am eventually cast adrift from this half-life in Derbyshire I shall have a career to follow. The magic journals to which I subscribe write of the immense fees a top illusionist may now command for a single performance, not to mention the social kudos that attaches to a brilliant career on the stage.

  Already I am playing a part. I am the disinherited younger brother of a peer, down on his luck, reduced to hand-outs from a guardian, and I trudge through my dispiriting life in these rainy hills of Derbyshire.

  I am waiting in the wings, however, because once I am of age my real life will begin!

  Idmiston Villas, London N 31st December 1876

  I have finally been able to get my boxes and cases from storage, and I spent a dismal Christmas going through my old belongings, sorting out those that I no longer want, and those I am glad to find again. This diary was one of the latter, and I have been reading through it for the last few minutes.

  I remember that once before I decided to set down the minutiae of my magical career, and as I write this now I have the same thought. Too many gaps already exist, though. I tore out all those pages where I described my rows with Henry, and with them went the records I kept of my progress. I cannot be bothered to go back in memory and summarise all the various tricks, forces, moves I learnt and practised in those days.

  Also I see from my last entry, more than two and a half years ago, that I was then waiting in dejected stupor to reach the age of twenty-one, so that Henry could throw me out of the house. In fact, I did not wait that long, and took matters into my own hands.

  So here I am, at the age of nineteen, living in rented lodgings in a respectable street in a London suburb, a man free of his past, and, for the next two years at least (because irrespective of where I am living Henry has to continue my allowance), free of financial worries. I have already performed my magic once in public, but was not paid for it. (The less said about that humiliating occasion the better.)

  I have become, and shall remain, plain Mister Rupert Angier. I have turned my back on my past. No one in this new life of mine will ever find out the truth of my birthright.

  Tomorrow, being the first day of the new year, I shall summarise my magical aspirations and perhaps set down my resolutions.

  1st January 1877

  The morning post has brought with it a small parcel of books from New York for which I have been waiting for many weeks, and I have been looking through them for ideas.

  I love to perform. I study the craft of using a stage, of presenting a show, of entertaining an audience with a stream of witty or droll remarks . . . and I dream of laughter, gasps of surprise, and tumults of applause. I know I can reach the top of my profession simply by the excellence of presentation.

  My weakness is that I never understand the working of an illusion until it is explained to me. When I see a trick for the first time I am as baffled by it as any other member of the audience. I have a poor magical imagination, and find it difficult to apply known general principles to produce a desired effect. When I see a superb performance I am dazzled by the shown and confounded by the unseen.

  Once, in a stage performance at the Manchester Hippodrome, a magician presented a glass carafe for all to see. He held it before his face, so that we could glimpse his features through it. He struck it lightly with a metal rod, so that by its gentle ringing noise we could tell it was symmetrically and perfectly made. Finally, he held it upside down for a moment so that we could see for ourselves it was empty. He then turned to his table of props where a metal jug was in place. He poured from this, into the carafe, about half a pint of clear water. Then, without further ado, he went to a tray of wineglasses set up on one side of the stage and poured into each of them a quantity of red wine!

  The point of this is that I already had in my possession the device that enabled me to appear to pour water into a folded newspaper, then pour back from it a glass of milk (the sheet of paper remaining unaccountably dry).

  The principle was much the same, the presentation was different, and in admiring the latter I lost all sight of the former.

  I spend a large amount of my monthly allowance in magic shops, where I have purchased the secret or the device that has allowed me to add one trick or another to my steadily expanding repertoire. It is devilish hard to discover secrets when they cannot be purchased for cash! And even when I can, it is not always the answer, because as competition increases so illusionists are forced to invent their own tricks. I find it simultaneously a torment and a challenge to see such illusions performed.

  Here the magic profession closes ranks on the newcomer. One day, I dare say, I shall join those ranks myself and try to exclude newcomers, but for the present I find it vexing that the older magicians protect their secrets so jealously. This afternoon I penned a letter to Prestidigitators’ Panel, a monthly journal sold by subscription only, setting out my thoughts on the widespread and absurd obsession with secrecy.

  3rd February 1877

  Every weekday morning, from 9.00 a.m. to midday, I patrol what has become a well-worn path between the offices of the four main theatrical agencies who specialise in magic or novelty acts. Outside the door of each one I brace myself against the inevitability of rejection, then enter with as brave a face as I can feign, make my presence known to the attendant who sits in the reception area, and enquire politely if any commissions might be available to me.

  Invariably, so far, the answer has been in the negative. The mood of these attendants seems to vary, but most of the time they are courteous to me while brusquely saying no.

  I know they are pestered endlessly by the likes of myself, because a veritable procession of unemployed performers trudges the same daily path as me. Naturally I see these others as I go about my applications, and naturally I have befriended some of them. Unlike most I am not short of a bob or two (or at least not at the moment), so when we make tracks at lunchtime to one or another tavern in Holborn or Soho I am able to stand a few drinks for them. I am popular for this, of course, but I do not fool myself that it is for any other reason. I am glad of the company, and also for the more subtle hope that through any of these hail-fellows I will one day make a contact who might find or offer me some work.

  It is a congenial enough life, and in the afternoons and evenings I have abundant time left to myself in which to continue to practise.

  And I have time enough to write letters. I have become a persistent and, I fancy, a controversi
al correspondent on the subject of magic. I make a point of writing to every issue of the magic journals I see, and try always to be acute, provocative, disputatious. I am partly motivated by the sincere belief that there is much about the tawdry world of magic which needs putting to rights, but also by a sense that my name will not become known unless I spread it about in a way that makes it remembered.

  Some letters I sign with my own name; others with the name I have chosen for my professional career: Danton. The use of two names allows me a little flexibility in what I say.

  These are early days and few of my letters have so far been published. I imagine that as they start to appear my name will soon be on the lips of many people.

  16th April 1877

  My financial sentence of death has been pronounced, made official! Henry has informed me, through his solicitors, that my allowance will end as expected on my twenty-first birthday. I have the continuing right to reside in Caldlow House, but only in the rooms already allocated to me.

  I am glad in a way that he has at last uttered the words. Uncertainty no longer dogs me. I have until September next year. Seventeen months in which to break this vicious circle of failure to get work, leading to failure to become known, leading to failure to build an audience for my skills, leading to failure to find work.

  I have continued to trail my coat around the theatrical agencies, and now, from tomorrow, I must do so with renewed resolve.

  13th June 1877

  Summer weather is here, but springtime has belatedly arrived for me. At last I have been offered some work!

  It is not much, some card tricks to perform at a conference of Brummagem businessmen in a London hotel, and the fee is only half a guinea, but this is a red-letter day.