MASQUES OF SATAN (39 page)

But in the beginning it is all fun, and there is not a cloud in the sky, though there is one thing I see which puzzles me, ‘troubles’ would be too strong a word. We are on our way back from the Arundown races. It is Saturday and, though we’re not going to be late for the first house, Rex has, as usual, cut it pretty fine. He is driving and I, as some special treat, am sitting beside him in the front seat; Sarson and Roxanne are in the back. We are going fast, which is exciting, but not frightening because Rex is a good driver. He concentrates intensely on his driving. The Rolls leaps along like a panther. As we crest a ridge we almost take off and everyone laughs except Rex. He grins though. I see his teeth exposed, clamped on the ever-present Montecristo cigar. I look back at Sarson and Roxanne to share their pleasure. They are both bright-eyed and smiling.  Roxanne is wearing a light summer frock of a pinkish floral pattern with a wide skirt. The New Look: you know what I mean. She is fresh and lovely. Sarson, who is sitting behind Rex, has his left hand under her right thigh and she has her hand round his wrist. It looks as if his hand has been severed. That is all. It is very discreet, but it also looks very secret. Suddenly I seem to know more than I think I know. Do you understand? I can read their faces. She looks bewildered, excited, afraid; his look is one of triumph. I turn back and keep my eyes on the road. Nothing more is said.

The next morning Sarson sleeps in late while I get up to fulfil my mother’s request by going to church. Sarson does not ask where I am going, and I do not tell him. I think it is about eight on a Sunday morning, and the town is cool and silent. There is a breeze from somewhere, which blows last night’s fish and chip papers down the empty promenade. I look around for a church, but I have no particular one in mind. In a side street I came across a small, blood-coloured Gothic building, like a large municipal toilet. Outside there is a sign which reads: CONVENTICLE OF GOD. Underneath it says: ‘Pastor: Dr Emmanuel Bocock.’ This must be a church, and there are respectable people in suits and overcoats going into it, so I go in. I do not want to waste time looking around for something else, so this will have to do.

A smiling middle-aged woman in a hat like a flattened sponge cake hands me a hymn book. She asks if I am a visitor and I nod. She says I am very welcome. It is polished pine everywhere, rather like the chapel here. Yes, I can remember that: I can’t think why. I am slightly surprised that the focus of the church is not the altar like the churches I know, but a great pulpit. The windows are of plain, opaque glass. There are no pictures, but there are texts written up on polished wooden panels, and there are two in particular on either side of the pulpit. One of them reads: BE YE SURE THAT THE LORD HE IS GOD (Psalm 100, v.3). I puzzle over this. After all, who else would he be? The second was somehow more comprehensible to me: HE HATH PREPARED HIS THRONE FOR JUDGEMENT. (Psalm 9. v.7) Immediately a picture comes into my mind of our Head Master, The Reverend Richard Cowdray, preparing the arm chair over which the victims of his judgement are bent. Even then, I know this is ridiculous, but I cannot escape the image. Its familiarity thrills me; somehow I have been connected to the Divine.

I begin to worry, though, because I can see that this is not a usual church. For one thing, it seems to be entirely composed of the middle-aged and elderly. There is a harmonium murmuring in the background, sounding like the wheezy, subdued conversation of the old. Someone sits next to me, a neat, white-haired man with a plum-coloured waistcoat under his grey suit. He asks me questions which I answer shyly. I avoid mentioning Rex and the life at the Grand Pavilio, because I feel sure he will not approve. He puts his hand on my knee and tells me I am very welcome. I move cautiously away from him in my pew.

Another man enters through a door in the wall and mounts the stairs to the pulpit. He is not wearing a surplice, as I had expected, but a black velvet gown over his suit. I see hints of purple silk in the hood and sleeves. He has big, regular features and greying, curly yellow hair. There are hymns and prayers and readings, and then he speaks.

This is the annoying thing. I cannot tell you exactly what he said; I only know that the words he speaks are for me. His eyes are on me. It was to be the end of time, that I know, and the elect would be lifted up while the rest were going to be cast aside like so much waste paper to be burnt in the flames. To those who have come to Him, all power and authority is given, and we will be charged with taking the fiery sword of His judgement to every corner of the earth and sea. In a moment I am not so much listening as living his words, floating high, unhindered over the forest of time, skimming the mountain tops like the eagle, running in the plains like the ravening lion. I come out of God’s Conventicle charged with His mission and a certainty that it must be kept secret. I have become God’s spy and will not give the game away. I am entering enemy territory. I think I say a few words to Dr Bocock, as he shakes hands with his congregation on the steps. I know he has invited me to take coffee in the little hall next door to the Conventicle, but I decline. He asks me to visit him the next day and I agree, not knowing if I will go or not, feeling free of all obligations except my divine mission.

As I walk back a part of me expects that at any moment my vision will be restored to normal sanity, but it is not, quite. I sense that from now onwards I will be walking between two worlds, and that gives me a secret pleasure and a sense of superiority over both.

As I am going back to the hotel for breakfast I see two people standing at the railings of the beach promenade. It is Rex and Roxanne. Not wanting to be seen I watch from a distance, so I do not at first catch what they say.

He is leaning casually against the railing, a smoking Montecristo in one hand, but I can tell that his pose is unnatural. He is tense, pretending to be casual. She stands upright, about three feet away from him, wearing a pale blue raincoat, though there is no sign of rain in the sky. She wipes the tears from her red-rimmed eyes. Distance exaggerates her qualities: she looks unnaturally frail and slender, like a delicate wading bird on a sea-fringed shore. Rex is talking, and she keeps turning away from him and then looking back into his face with wide, wet eyes. Again I have this feeling that though I have no idea what is being said and felt, yet some part of me knows. And equally as part of me, my physical body, stays staring at the scene, another part, huge and unknown, runs to comfort and embrace her.

Rex raises his voice and I hear some words: ‘Cool it, baby. It was nothing. Don’t make a big issue of it.’ She turns and walks away from him, now sobbing so that the whole of her body is convulsed. He says: ‘Roxy!’ and starts to follow her. She begins to run. He pauses, decides to let her go, and petulantly tosses his cigar from the promenade onto the beach. He begins to stride towards the Metropole, and as he does so he catches sight of me.

Together we walk towards our hotel for some moments in silence, then he says, ‘Take a tip from me, Pete old sport, don’t have anything to do with women. Be like Billy Wilshire and stick to sailors. Love ’em and leave ’em; shag ’em and shake ’em off. That’s the drill. I mean, I’m an easy going man. Everybody knows that. Easy come, easy go, that’s always been my motto. So don’t let them get their sticky mitts into you. All right, boyo?’

I nodded. He ruffles my hair savagely.

III

I think everything up until now has been a prelude. The next act begins on Monday with a tiny incident. I say tiny now, but I didn’t think so then, because it allowed me to know that a war was beginning. It was a war, as St Paul says, ‘not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world.’ At that point I still thought you could take a neutral position; and it was only later that my mission from God was revealed to me.

Monday morning Rex takes us out in the Rolls. Roxanne is not with us and the atmosphere is restless and hectic. Rex does not seem to know what to do. He changes his mind several times. We stop the car in a little village and Sarson says he wants to buy some sweets, so he asks Rex for some money to go into the newsagent’s on the other side of the road to get some. Rex refuses to give him money. I have some money so, reluctantly, I offer it, but Rex stops me.

‘No! If my nephew wants some sweets let him get them himself.’

‘But how, Uncle Rex?’ says Sarson. ‘I haven’t got any money.’

‘Use your imagination, lad. Show us what you’re made of.’

There is a silence. Sarson’s mood turns from petulance to defiance.

‘All right, then!’ He says, opening the car door. He turns to me. ‘You coming?’ I shake my head. ‘Cowardy Custard!’ He says. I fold my arms because I don’t really care, and I stay in the car.

Rex and I watch him walk over to the newsagent’s and go in. The sun is shining on the pretty, quiet Kentish village and people are going about their lawful business. I stare out of the window trying not to think about what is happening. While I am doing this I become conscious that Rex has turned round in the driver’s seat and is looking at me.

‘Roxy will be back, you know,’ he says. It took me some time before I realise what he is talking about, my head is so full of other things. I nod. ‘It was just a thing,’ he says. ‘You know what girls are like. She just got het up over nothing. She’ll be back.’ I nod again, knowing that for all his apparent confidence, he needs to be reassured. At that moment we see Sarson running out of the shop. As soon as he gets in Rex drives off fast.

Sarson’s face is flushed and his eyes are bright. ‘I did it,’ he says and laughs. Rex laughs. We all laugh while Sarson distributes the sweets he has stolen and Rex drives on through the brilliant green countryside.

 That night I am wandering about back stage between the first and second houses. Most people go out for a drink or a meal between the shows. I don’t feel like anything to eat, and I like the theatre at this time, when it is almost deserted and I can explore its hidden corners without being observed.

I am walking along the back stage corridor when I notice that the girl dancers’ dressing room door is ajar and a light is on. Through it I see that the room has only one occupant, and she is sitting at the long dressing table in front of the mirror surrounded by bright bulbs. She is smoking and staring into the mirror. She has on a pink silk dressing-gown, but it is untied and open, and I can see she has nothing on underneath but bra and pants which are only a little whiter than her skin. It is Roxanne. The sight of her fills me with an excitement that I cannot fully understand. Don’t get me wrong: I am not a complete innocent. The biological facts have been explained to me, but they are still only remotely fascinating pieces of information, like the geography of Mars, or Venus.

I have learned that under such circumstances I must always knock, so I do. After a pause a faint voice asks me to come in. Roxanne turns to face me. She has tied up the belt of her pink silk gown tightly, so that her waist looks nipped in, no wider than a hand’s span. I notice that she has not only stubbed out the cigarette but washed the ashtray, too, so that there is no evidence that she has been smoking.

‘Hello, love,’ she says. I think she is genuinely pleased to see me. ‘What you been up to? Would you like a nice cup of tea?’ She indicates a chair next to hers then gets up, fills the kettle, and puts it on the gas ring. Presently she asks me to fetch the bottle of milk from its relatively cool position on the window ledge. When I have done this I turn round and find that she is looking at me with a little frown on her face.

‘Rex didn’t send you to see me, did he?’

‘No!’ My honesty is too transparent to need further interrogation. I give her an edited version of the day, which naturally does not include the incident of the sweets. I tell her how we went to a swanky hotel in Brighton for lunch and on the way back we walked along the Devil’s Dyke and Sarson and I ran races on the Downs, and how Rex offered a nip of whisky to the winner which was Sarson; but how I had a nip of whisky too.

At this Roxanne looked at me solemnly. ‘I don’t think it’s right that Rex should encourage you two boys in bad ways like that,’ she says. I thought she was being rather pious, and perhaps she was. She makes the tea in a little brown pot and gives me a cup.

‘You have a nice drop of tea,’ she said. ‘That should sober you up.’ We drank our tea in silence. ‘That’s better, eh?’ I nod. Then she asks me if I know that Rex and she ‘have had a bust up’, and I say I do.

‘I don’t want to be treated like I’m just one of his girls. I’m not like that. I’m sorry. Do you understand?’

I nod and she sees that my eyes are filling with tears. She strokes my cheek.

‘You are a love,’ she says, but she’s wrong. She thinks that the tears are for her, but they are not. The tears are for me because I know I am not old enough to love her as I want to.