The Prestige (13 page)

In spite of this the feud has continued for nearly a century.

On the day of Clive Borden's visit we children were eventually brought down from the
nursery, and taken to the dining room to eat with the grown-ups. We liked Nicky, and the
three of us were pleased to be seated together along one side of the table. I remember the
meal clearly, but only because Nicky was there with us. My sister and I thought he was
acting up to amuse us, but I realize now that he could never have sat at a formally laid
table before, nor have been served by other people. He simply did not know how to behave.
His father sometimes spoke to him harshly, trying to correct him or to calm him down, but
Rosalie and I were egging the little boy on. Our parents said nothing to us, because they
almost never said anything to us. Parental discipline was not something my kind of parents
went in for, and they would never dream of berating us in front of a stranger.

Without our knowing it, our rowdy behaviour undoubtedly contributed to the tension between
the adults. Clive Borden's raised voice became a hectoring, grating sound, one I started
to dislike. Both my parents were responding badly to him, and any pretence of courtesy was
abandoned. They began arguing, and my father addressed him in the voice we usually heard
him use in restaurants where the service was slow. By the end of the meal my father was
half-drunk, half-enraged; my mother was pale and silent, and Clive Borden (presumably also
more than a little drunk) was talking endlessly about his misfortunes. Mrs Stimpson
ushered the three of us out into the room next door, our sitting room.

Nicky, for some reason, began to cry. He said he wanted to go home, and when Rosalie and I
tried to calm him down he struck out at us, kicking and punching.

We'd seen my father in this sort of mood before.

“I'm frightened,” I said to Rosalie.

“I am too,” she said.

We listened at the double door connecting the two rooms. We heard raised voices, then long
silences. My father was pacing about, clicking his shoes impatiently on the polished
parquet floor.

There was one part of the house to which we children were never allowed to go. Access to
it was by way of an unprepossessing brown-painted door, set into the triangular section of
wall beneath the back staircase. This door was invariably locked, and until the day of
Clive Borden's visit I never saw anyone in the household, family or servants, go through
it.

Rosalie had told me there was a haunted place behind it. She made up horrifying images,
some of them described, some of them left vague for me to visualize for myself. She told
me of the mutilated victims imprisoned below, of tragic lost souls in search of peace, of
clutching hands and claws that lay in wait for our arms and ankles in the darkness a few
inches beyond the door, of shifting and rattling and scratching attempts to escape, of
muttered plans for horrid vengeance on those of us who lived in the daylight above.
Rosalie had three years’ advantage, and she knew what would scare me.

I was constantly frightened as a child. Our house is no place for the nervous. In winter,
on still nights, its isolation sets a silence around the walls. You hear small,
unexplained noises; animals, birds, frozen in their hidden places, moving suddenly for
warmth; trees and leafless shrubs brushing against each other in the wind; noises on the
far side of the valley are amplified and distorted by the funnel shape of the valley
floor; people from the village walk along the road that runs by the edge of our grounds.
At other times, the wind comes down the valley from the north, blustering after its
passage across the moors, howling because of the rocks and broken pastures all over the
valley floor, whistling through the ornate woodwork around the eaves and shingles of the
house. And the whole place is old, filled with memories of other people's lives, scarred
with the remains of their deaths. It is no place for an imaginative child.

Indoors, the gloomy corridors and stairwells, the hidden alcoves and recesses, the dark
wall-hangings and sombre ancient portraits, all gave a sense of oppressive threat. The
rooms in which we lived were brightly lit and filled with modern furniture, but much of
our immediate domestic hinterland was a lowering reminder of dead forefathers, ancient
tragedies, silent evenings. I learned to hurry through some parts of the house, fixing my
stare dead ahead so as not to be distracted by anything from this macabre past that could
harm me. The downstairs corridor beside the rear stairs, where the brown-painted door was
found, was one such area of the house. Sometimes I would inadvertently see the door moving
slightly to and fro in its frame, as if pressure were being applied from behind. It must
have been caused by draughts, but if ever I saw that door in motion I invariably imagined
some large and silent being, standing behind it, trying it quietly to see if it could at
last be opened.

All through my childhood, both before and after the day that Clive Borden came to visit, I
passed the door on the far side of the corridor, never looked at it unless I did so by
mistake. I never paused to listen for movement behind it. I always hastened past, trying
to ignore it out of my life.

The three of us, Rosalie, myself and the Borden boy Nicky, had been made to wait in the
sitting room, next to the dining room where the adults still conducted their
incomprehensible conflict. Both of these rooms led out into the corridor where the brown
door was situated.

Voices were raised again. Someone passed the connecting door. I heard my mother's voice
and she sounded upset.

Then Stimpson walked briskly across the sitting room and slipped through the connecting
door into the dining room. He opened and closed it deftly, but we had a glimpse of the
three adults beyond; they were still in their positions at the table, but were standing. I
briefly saw my mother's face, and it seemed distorted by grief and anger. The door closed
quickly before we could follow Stimpson into the room, and he must have taken up position
on the other side, to prevent us pushing through.

We heard my father speaking, issuing an order. That tone of voice always meant trouble
would follow. Clive Borden said something, and my father replied angrily, in a
sufficiently loud voice for us to hear every word.

“You will, Mr Borden!” he said, and in his agitation his voice broke briefly into
falsetto. “Now you will! You damned well will!”

We heard the dining-room door to the corridor being opened. Borden said something again,
still indistinctly.

Then Rosalie whispered against my ear, “I think Daddy is going to
open the brown door
!”

We both sucked in our breath, and I clung to Rosalie in panic. Nicky, infected with our
fear, let out a wail. I too started making a yowling noise so that I could not hear what
the adults were doing.

Rosalie hissed at me, “
Hush
!”

“I don't want the door opened!” I cried.

Then, tall and sudden, Clive Borden burst into the sitting room from the corridor and
found the three of us cowering there. How our little scene must have seemed to him I
cannot imagine, but somehow he too had become tainted with the terror that the door
symbolized. He stepped forward and down, bracing himself on a bended knee, then scooped
Nicky into his arms.

I heard him mutter something to the boy, but it was not a reassuring sound. I was too
wrapped up in my own fears to pay attention. It could have been anything. Behind him,
across the corridor, beneath the stairs, I saw the open rectangle where the brown door had
been. A light was on in the area behind and I could see two steps leading down, then a
half-turn with more steps below.

I watched Nicky as he was carried out of the room. His father was holding him high, so
that he could wrap his arms around his father's neck, facing back. His father reached up
and placed a protective hand on the boy's head as he ducked through the doorway and went
down the steps.

#############

Rosalie and I had been left alone, and we were faced with a choice of terrors. One was to
remain alone in the familiar surroundings of our living room, the other was to follow the
adults down the steps. I was holding on to my older sister, both of my arms wrapped around
her leg. There was no sign of Mrs Stimpson.

“Are you going with them?” Rosalie said.

“No! You go! You look and tell me what they're doing!”

“I'm going up to the nursery,” she said.

“Don't leave me!” I cried. “I don't want to be here on my own. Don't go!”

“You can come with me.”

“No. What are they going to do to Nicky?”

But Rosalie was extricating herself from me, slapping her hand roughly against my shoulder
and pushing me away from her. Her face had gone white, and her eyes were half-closed. She
was shaking.

“You can do what you like!” she said, and although I tried to grab hold of her again she
eluded me and ran out of the room. She went along the dreaded corridor, past the open
doorway, then turned on the stone flags at the bottom of the staircase and rushed
upstairs. At the time I thought she was being contemptuous of my fear, but from an adult
perspective I suspect she had frightened herself more than me.

Whatever the reason I found myself truly alone, but because Rosalie had forced it on me
the next decision was easier. A sense of calm swept over me, paralysing my imagination. It
was only another form of fear, but it enabled me to move. I knew I could not stay alone
where I was, and I knew I did not have the strength to follow Rosalie up those distant
stairs. There remained only one place to go. I crossed the short distance to the open
brown door and looked down the steps.

There were two lightbulbs in the ceiling illuminating the way down, but at the bottom,
where there was another doorway leading to the side, much brighter light was spilling
across the steps. The staircase looked bare and ordinary, surprisingly clean, with no hint
of any danger, supernatural or otherwise. I could hear voices rising up from below.

I went down the steps quietly, not wishing to be noticed, but when I reached the bottom
and looked into the main cellar I realized there was no need to hide myself. The adults
were preoccupied with what they were doing.

I was old enough to understand much of what was happening, but not to be able to recall
now what the adults were saying. When I first reached the bottom of the steps my father
and Clive Borden were arguing again, this time with Borden doing most of the talking. My
mother stood to one side, as did the servant, Stimpson. Nicky was still being held to his
father's chest.

The cellar was of a size, extent and cleanliness that came as a complete surprise to me. I
had no idea that our part of the house had so much space beneath it. From my childish
perspective the cellar seemed to have a high ceiling, stretching away on all sides to the
white-painted walls, and that these walls were at the limits of my vision. (Although most
adults can move around in the cellar without lowering their heads the ceiling is not
nearly as high as in the main rooms upstairs, and of course the extent of the cellar is no
greater than the area of the house itself.)

Much of the cellar was filled with stuff brought down from the main house for storage: a
lot of the furniture moved out during the war was still there, draped with white
dust-sheets. Along the length of one wall was a stack of framed canvases, their painted
sides facing in so that they could not be seen. An area close to the steps, partitioned
off by a brick wall, was made over as a wine cellar. On the far side of the main cellar,
difficult to see from where I was standing, was another large stack of crates and chests,
tidily arranged.

The overall impression of the cellar was spacious, cool, clean. It was a place that was in
use but it was also kept tidy. However, none of this really impressed itself on me at the
time. Everything that I've described so far is modified memory, based on what I know.

On the day, what grabbed my attention from the moment I reached the bottom of the steps
was the apparatus built in the centre of the cellar.

My first thought was that it was a kind of shallow cage, because it was a circle of eight
sturdy wooden slats. Next I realized that it had been built in a pit in the floor. To
enter it one had to step down, so that it was in fact larger than it looked at first. My
father, who had stepped into the centre of the circle, was only visible from about his
waist up. There was also an arrangement of wiring overhead, and something whose shape I
could not clearly make out rotating on a central axis, glittering and flashing in the
cellar lights. My father was working hard, there was obviously some kind control
arrangement below my line of sight, and he was bending over, pumping his arm at something.

My mother stood back, watching intently with Stimpson at her side. These two were silent.

Clive Borden stood close to one of the wooden bars, watching my father as he worked. His
son Nicky was upright in his arms, and had turned around to look down too. Borden was
saying something, and my father, while continuing to pump, answered loudly, and with a
gesticulating arm. I knew my father was in a dangerous mood, the sort Rosalie and I
suffered when we had enraged him to the point where he felt he had to prove something to
us, no matter how ridiculous.

I realized Borden was provoking him into this kind of rage, perhaps deliberately. I
stepped forward, not to any of the adults, but towards Nicky. This small boy was caught up
in something he could not possibly understand, and my instinct was to rush across to him,
take hold of his hand and perhaps lead him away from the dangerous adult game.

I had walked half the distance to the group, entirely unnoticed by any of them, when my
father shouted, “Stand back, everyone!”

My mother and Stimpson, who presumably knew what was going to happen, immediately moved
back a few paces. My mother said something in what was for her a loud voice, but her words
were drowned by a rising din from the device. It hummed and fizzed, restlessly,
dangerously. Clive Borden had not moved, and stood only a foot or two away from the edge
of the pit. Still no one looked at me.

A series of loud bangs suddenly burst forth from the top of the device, and with each one
appeared a long, snaking tendril of white electrical discharge. As each shot out it
prowled like the reaching tentacle of some terrible deep-sea creature, groping for its
prey. The noise was tremendous; every flash, every waving feeler of naked energy, was
accompanied by a screeching, hissing sound, loud enough to hurt my ears. My father looked
up towards Borden, and I could see a familiar expression of triumph on his face.

“Now you know!” he yelled at him.

“Turn it off, Victor!” my mother cried.

“But Mr Borden has insisted! Well, here it is, Mr Borden! Does this satisfy your
insistence?”

Borden was still standing as if transfixed, just a short distance from the snaking
electrical discharge. He was holding his little boy in his arms. I could see the
expression on Nicky's face, and I knew he was as scared as I was.

“This proves nothing!” Borden shouted.

My father's response was to close a large metal handle attached to one of the pillars
inside the contraption. The zigzagging beams of energy immediately doubled in size, and
snaked with more agility than ever around the wooden bars of the cage. The noise was
deafening.

“Get in, Borden,” my father shouted. “Get in and see for yourself!”

To my amazement my father then climbed out of the pit, stepping up to the main floor of
the cellar between two of the wooden bars. Instantly, a number of the electrical rays
flashed across to him, hissing horribly about his body. For a moment he was surrounded by
them, consumed by fire. He seemed to fuse with the electricity, illuminated from within, a
figure of gruesome menace. Then he took another step, and he was out of it.