To the Devil - a Diva! (17 page)

Magda was seething. ‘I knew it. She is a nasty old woman. All that crying out in the night. These evil books …' Suddenly I saw that my beloved was looking rather frightened. I wanted to gather her up in my arms and smother her back into normality. ‘I don't want to stay here, Fox. I can't sleep in a place like this.'

Her eyes looked rather wild then. It was as if she was realising what kind of reception was awaiting her, should she go running back to her parents. It was without the blessing of her rather common grocer father that she had come to me and become my common-law wife. It would be hard on
her to return to them, disgraced. For a moment she looked stricken and I knew what she was thinking.

But she wouldn't have to leave me. She was all mine. I would protect her. All she had seen was my eccentric great aunt's admittedly strange collection of books. Nothing to get the wind up about. Certainly nothing to flee from.

I held my Magda tight. Pushing her face into my neck. I stroked her soft, fragrant hair. I felt the warm wetness of her tears on my flesh. I let her sob gently and, when she was calm again, braced by my strength and my common sense, I told her: ‘There may be one or two things I need to explain to you, my darling.'

Maybe you can't credit the innocence of my darling Magda back then? If only you had met her in her youth. She was quite something. She was like dew on the furled and fleshy whorls of white lilies. That distinct, almost too stuffy and sweet scent. The kind of purity that's just about teetering over into rank corruption.

She became horribly fascinated by the Left Hand Path, of course. You've guessed as much from what I have said before in my interviews and my various bestselling memoirs. She was hooked from that very first day when I – callow, stuttering buffoon that I was – explained to her my family's tradition and closely-guarded secret sidelines. She was – shall we say – agog.

Agog is one of my favourite words, incidentally. It's how I like my audience to be and it has about it a certain ring of the old gods, eh? Gog, Magog, Agog. These are the words of a shaman, inspired by divine fire, plugged into the real life of the world.

This is why I have always felt as if I were in the very centre of the world. Wherever we went upon the surface of the globe – book tours, lecture tours, exotic adventurings undertaken for profit and fun – we always felt that we were the locus mundi. Magda was always by my side, from that very first trip to Great Aunt Helen's pile to the fateful day of her death. All the invisible eyes were trained upon us, as were all the vibrations on the ether.

With that weekend approaching, it really felt as if we had become the centre of things. There came a flurry of telegrams, of cryptic messages in code, announcing the imminent arrival of her Saturday guests. Aunt Helen would receive these at breakfast, smile in a self-satisfied way, and then crumple them up. A great air of expectancy was sweeping through the old house, stirring up the old servants into activity, causing them to call on other servants and soon a frenetic pace was established in the draughty halls. You could hear them in the kitchens, bashing and clashing and preparing a banquet. Delivery vans slid up on the gravel at the back of the manor. We saw them carrying whole pigs and lambs indoors. One van brought wicker cages containing live beasts – goats and chickens. They sounded alarmed and doomed in that brief moment of daylight between van and cellar kitchen. These live creatures disconcerted Magda and I when we peered out of our bedroom window to see what the ruckus was. We had a feeling we knew what they were for.

Soon, as Saturday drew near, Aunt Helen's guests started to arrive. Sleek black cars were pulling up on the drive. Impressive, expensive cars with tinted windows and little flags on their front fenders. Flags of all nations. It was like a secret summit meeting. The servants ushered these guests
into the building quickly, before we could get a good look at them. The place was large enough for them to be installed before we bumped into them. Guest after guest after guest. Most ducked in swiftly, as if nervous of being observed. They were furtive, and we peered out and glimpsed the vivid peacock colours of saris; the lightly flowing robes of Middle Eastern gentlemen, and the dove-grey and ebony regalia of Nazi officers. Magda and I were a little shocked at who was being welcomed into our future home.

Of Great Aunt Helen, the gracious hostess, there was no sign. Her distinguished multicultured visitors were taken in and presumably urged to make the place their own. All of them seemed to know and to understand the routine. Magda and I didn't.

In later years it was Magda who knew more about the occult than I did. Indeed, she proved the more susceptible to its wicked charms and had I not had my native fortitude and strength of mind, she may have been damned forever. I was her rock. And at least I know she is in paradise waiting for me. I salvaged her soul, if nothing else.

The first tangible evidence of her lifelong fascination came with her enthusiasm for the rather shapeless black satin robes with which we were presented by one of the servants. He explained that they were the required uniform for the Saturday night proceedings and then he left us with the things. We'd been taking a spin in the country that Saturday afternoon, intending to keep ourselves out of everyone's hair and, when we returned, the place was thrumming along with all these polite strangers. We sought solace in our room and had been surprised by this gift of new outfits, folded neatly at the bottom of our bed like satanic guest towels.

‘His-and-hers,' Magda said, pulling a face. ‘Your Great Aunt Helen thinks of everything. She must have known that we'd forget to pack our ceremonial robes.'

Something clutched at my heart. It was the way Magda managed to sound so breezy and blithe. She'd had the wind through her auburn hair and the fresh Norfolk air had put two spots of red on her creamy pale cheeks. My beloved was treating all of these preparations like they belonged to some ridiculous game. A charade; an elaborate fancy dress party. Somewhere below us there was a band tuning up. They were making weird, unearthly sounds, distorted by the eccentric twists and turns of the ancient corridors and I couldn't begin to imagine what kind of instruments they were using.

‘Darling,' I said, watching her hold up the black robes. She smoothed them over her svelte form, gazing critically at herself in the looking glass. ‘I rather think this is more serious than you imagine. Aunt Helen means what she says. About the … um, initiation.'

Magda shot me a strange, ironic look.

‘You see,' I stammered, ‘I think I've managed to get us into this pretty deep.'

She came over and punched me lightly on the shoulder. ‘Oh, shut up, Fox. It might be amusing. Just a load of her funny friends dancing about in frocks. I'm rather glad to hear that the old girl still has some life in her. It's better than sitting over another of those interminable dinners of hers.' Suddenly her green, tigerish eyes widened. ‘I say, you don't think there'll be an orgy, do you?' Then she started struggling out of her outer garments and working out how to go about slipping into the donated black robes. I pointed out that one was supposed to be completely naked underneath.

‘Oh!' she cried, delightedly. ‘Been to one of these do's before, have you? Sly old Fox?'

I coloured. ‘School assemblies.'

She was stripping with great gusto by now. She looked at me quizzically. ‘That school of yours begins to sound stranger and stranger.'

‘I thought every school was like that,' I said glumly. ‘Now I realise that we were quite unique.'

Magda was standing in the bright light of the opened curtains. There were golden motes of dust swimming between us. I was staring at her pale, shapely body and I was growing aroused as she unlaced the last of her vestments.

‘They will ask you to do certain things,' I said. ‘During the initiation. And you must perform them. Once the sacred ceremony is underway, you must obey.'

Magda shrugged. ‘In for a penny,' she smiled. ‘I'm a game girl.'

It was I, I realised, who was having all the qualms. ‘I'm not sure I can stand to see other men looking at you … touching you …' This was very hard for me to say. It went against all of my conditioning. I wasn't supposed to think of her as a possession. She was as free a spirit as I. I shook my head to clear it. ‘I am afraid I may become rather jealous.'

Magda smiled indulgently.

‘I know I shouldn't feel like this,' I choked. ‘I shouldn't seek to restrain you … any more than you would dream of restraining me … men and women are equal in wills and potential, I know …'

She stepped up to me, into my clumsy embrace, allowing me to take hold of her. ‘You silly thing, Fox,' she murmured. ‘You know I am yours. Now, get your black satin robes on
and you'll feel much better about it all.' She pulled back, gazed at me and, as she often did, in order to puncture my seriousness, pulled on my nose. ‘There's something very interesting going on here, Fox. I can sense it. At first I was somewhat shocked at finding those books in the library. But I see now that I was simply being prudish and bourgeois. I was reacting as my father would, or my mother. But we are different, Fox. We really have to learn to give ourselves up to novel experiences. Isn't that what marriage is all about?'

I was wondering if she would be singing the same tune come midnight.

‘Come on, Fox,' she said. ‘You're the one who wants to be a writer. You need material! You need adventures! You have to look life in the face and be open to all of it!'

Her use of that word ‘open' put me in mind of Great Aunt Helen and what she had asked me to do this evening. I hadn't gone into this with Magda. I had placed it in the back of my thoughts. Now it came back that, not only was I to watch my fiancée being manhandled by hordes of drunk Nazis and Arabs, I'd have to drill a hole in my aunty's brain to boot.

Oh, Saturday nights in the old days!

We didn't need television then!

There was a cocktail party in full swing downstairs and the rumbles and cackles from the best drawing room made us feel awkward and nervous as we paused outside the doors. That queer music was issuing from within: undulating and exotic. It made all the hairs on my body bristle beneath my sheer satin robes. The two of us held hands and Magda nodded at me decisively. We were going in and we were going in with
confidence. The brightest, youngest things there. We would keep our ends up.

She thrust open the doors.

It was as if Great Aunt Helen was waiting for us, as at a surprise birthday party. We entered the scarlet room and she let out a vivacious shriek. She clutched both our arms and started announcing to the assembled guests that we had arrived, and now the circle was complete, or some such nonsense as it seemed to me. There was a tall Negro in footman's livery holding a silver salver out to us: we were given the same creamy green drink as everyone else. They were swigging this down with great abandon, seemingly quite used to the infernal taste.

Aunt Helen was full of beans. She was like a six-year-old child who had managed to organise her own party, all to her own lavish specifications. She led us in a great circuit of that room, introducing us to her invited revellers and we were soon lost in a flurry of decidedly foreign-sounding names. Aunt Helen behaved as if she were very proud of us. She was even beaming at and flattering Magda, whom I knew for a fact she held in very low esteem. She told her that black was absolutely her colour and that the robes were clinging to her in the most mischievously becoming fashion. I looked at my aunt, thinking she must have gone mad, and I realised with horror that she, too, was prancing around naked beneath her flimsy gown. Suddenly I felt sick with dread, glancing around at the other old duffers chatting and guffawing over their noxious beverages. I thought: it is one thing to be invited to an affair like this when one is young, nubile and fit. But this bunch were looking less and less appealing by the minute.

I was aware then, that my beloved was nudging me
urgently, and that Great Aunt Helen's tone had become more sober and solicitous. We were approaching the orbit of a rather ugly, hawk-like man, who was surrounded by fawning lackies. Obviously a bigwig.

‘Grand Master,' Aunt Helen cried, in a simpering voice. ‘May I present to you my nephew and his woman, Magda, whom you are to initiate this evening.' My aunt was smiling but, as she touched her brow just then, I could tell that the expression was forced. The old lady was in some considerable pain. That confounded skull of hers.

The old, bald, hawk-like man was bending over my darling's slim hand and murmuring imprecations. I distinctly heard Magda giggle, though she refuted this later. Now he was whispering into one of her small and perfect ears. I could have sworn I saw his tongue flick out and it was tiny and forked.

‘We're very privileged to have him preside at our gathering,' Aunt Helen hissed. ‘He's a great adept.'

‘Is he indeed.'

‘And he's very high up in the world of publishing,' she added, with a meaningful look. ‘He might well do you some good, if you insist on carrying out your ridiculous career plans.'

I smiled at this. It sounded to me as if Aunt Helen had come round to the idea of my becoming an author and she was helping me out with a little networking.

The old hawk was still nibbling away at my beloved, his head poised directly above her breasts. My aunt continued with her introductions. At the next face that presented itself I baulked and almost choked on the swizzle-stick from my vile cocktail.

‘Professor Cleavis!' I burst out, glaring at the genial features that had swam out of the general hubbub. ‘What the hell are you doing here?'

Aunt Helen's grin grew more rictus-like. ‘You are already acquainted?'

The old don's ruddy face gurned enthusiastically. ‘Yes, indeed, madam. Young Soames here was one of our brightest stars. We miss him greatly. Especially at the weekly gatherings of our small writers' circle. The Smudgelings feel quite bereft now we no longer hear his works in progress.'