by Lazlo Ferran
“Do you know how worried we were? Where were you?” My father just ruffled my hair.
What this taught me was there was a kind of insanity about the way the world worked. Boredom, the drop of rain, the tomb and the sheer impossibility of the stone that somehow managed to fall, for the first time in perhaps hundreds of years; I was left with a feeling of having being outwitted. It all seemed the work of an evil genius.
The immediate effect of accepting this new view of the world, this insanity, was an almost total loss of anger. Indeed I found myself quite at peace when faced with ludicrous events. Sometimes I could even laugh whereas before I would get frustrated and angry. I found myself spending more time observing my friends at school which lead to a certain distance but the calmness I began to feel inside made it worthwhile. As the summer clouds rolled by over London I became more of a thinker and storer of experiences. War was approaching though you would hardly know it. The Empire seemed still to cover half the world and my father still brought home gifts in the evening; a balsa wood model plane or a wind-up toy train which whistled when I pushed it across the Wilton wilderness in the lounge.
My father was an engineer – something to do with radio – and his reward was our lovely house between elevated Highgate and leafy Crouch End. My mother was one of those women who men seek out; a blaze of light and beauty and quick wit with the reputation to match.
When they were going ‘up to town’, to some posh London Nightclub to dance to the Ray Noble band she would put on her finest beads and furs with a hat from among those she stored in the small room and then he would look adoringly at her. You could sense a rhythm building in them; a need to dance.
Antonia, my youngest sister, was a devil. Nadia, my oldest sister, but younger than I and blonde but going darker, was the mouse.
My relationship with this ‘insanity’ continued to grow and I could often see it approaching like a dark cloud. Some would say it’s my own demon and I have certainly considered this at great length as I have grown older. It would happen like this: I drop my only coin and seeing it roll away, I chase after it but I slip, kicking the coin, which then drops through the grill of the only drain for half a mile. This means I don’t have the fare home which means that I have to walk and then get knocked over by a car.
***
The next big incident involving this malevolence happened at school.
I was caught out as the ring-leader of a prank which Paul and I carried out at the expense of Spiffy. Paul was just given a ticking-off while I had to spend all afternoon picking up litter.
It felt strange to be in the playground when everybody else was inside but it was sunny and I didn’t mind it after a while. Just before 4 pm, I was walking across a piece of land we called the triangle which was between two blocks. The path was surrounded at that time of year by puddles and mud. I suddenly felt compelled to step off the path to the right into the mud. It was such a powerful feeling – as if my life suddenly depended on it – I didn’t hesitate. As I trudged across the mud I had the sudden urge to turn around and then thought I noticed something moving, through the window of a room on the corner of the block opposite. That room was hardly ever used, being a storage room.
Teachers having an affair?
I couldn’t help moving closer to the building. I could see something moving from side to side, swaying, as if it was a coat hung from the ceiling. Not knowing what I was looking at and nervous at being caught I edged closer, to one side of the window, until I was only about ten feet away. I peered in and jumped in horror. It was a human hanging by the neck from a rope.
Suicide!
“Bloody Hell,” I heard myself say as I ran around to the entrance of the building, only to find a large group of my mates coming out. I pushed past them, ignoring their calls, and ran straight to the room with the hanging. I wrenched the door handle down but the door was locked. I banged on it. “Stop!” I cried. I was shouting at the top of my lungs and suddenly I heard a teacher’s voice behind me.
“Hey! What are you doing boy?”
“Sir. Sir. Come quick,” I shouted, running up to him. “Somebody is hanging in there. I saw it from the playground!”
He and some other teachers followed me as I ran back to the room and we had to push through a crowd of pupils gathering in the corridor. I felt a dread as the door was finally forced open.
Just before I was pushed aside by one of the teachers I noticed the shoes on the suspended body; pretty patent leather shoes. I knew who these shoes belonged to. Miss Silver was a pretty brunette and a favourite of the boys. She had always been kind to me and I hoped against hope that she would be alright. I was left outside with everyone else. I walked up to the most senior boy and he looked enquiringly at me.
“It’s one of the teachers, a woman. She has hung herself I think. I saw it from the playground.”
***
I saw two magpies and thought of the song, ‘One for sorrow, two for joy’. I was walking near Queens Woods, on the green, in early summer.
Joy. That’s good.
I had been feeling down all day and I was trying to cheer myself up. Miss Silver had never come back to the school and the memory left a stain in me. I took more and more to wondering alone, and I felt I was growing apart from people, even Antonia, Nadia and my best friend Paul. I had tried broaching the subject of ‘the darkness’ with both my parents but faltered at the first post. I felt very alone. I was reminded of what my mother had said one day in the kitchen.
I asked, “Don’t you ever think that one day
people might be able to travel to see distant places just by thinking about it?”
She had replied, “You’re always chasing rainbows!”
I wasn’t chasing rainbows but perhaps she had spotted my struggle. Of course it wasn’t my only worry.
I always worried about my eyes. When I was seven I had run around a corner at school and surprised Theo, who was a big guy, and he had instinctively stuck out his fist and hit me in the eye, turning my blue eye brown. I was told the condition is called Heterochromia. My vision also suffered slighyly and for many years I often had bouts of blurriness in that eye; my left. At one time doctors told me I needed glasses, and I thought I might lose sight in that eye completely. Blindness was what I often dreamed about now, waking up sweating with a vague fears I often could not put my finger on but would later realise were about sight. I sometimes pressed my fingers hard into my eyes, holding them there for a few seconds before releasing, so that I could watch the kaleidoscope of colours shooting through my vision. I did it because I believed one day I might lose my sight completely and I wanted to experience it intensely while I could. Lately I had begun to feel an even darker, waking-fear. I sometimes felt that the other eye, my good eye, was getting blurry too, and I feared I might go completely blind.
“Irrational,” I told myself.
Nevertheless the fear was there. Beethoven was my favourite composer; I empathised with his fear of going deaf, and his eventual horror at actually going completely deaf. I was also a little short which bothered me. My mother told me I had not eaten properly for nearly a year after the accident and this was why I had not grown properly. I ate as much as I could now to try and make up. From my eye defect and slight shortness came a deep insecurity, although I often wondered later in life if the insecurity wouldn’t have developed from any kind of negative experience when I was young and whether in fact it was there anyway from the beginning. It was affective when I was facing physical challenges and pre-eminent with girls. I loved Natalie Houghton from afar but I never did get the courage to talk to her.
***
At the start of summer in June or July I think, on a warm Saturday morning, we set out for Hertfordshire to visit my grandfather.
Grandma had died many years ago, before I was born. I was slightly scared of Grandfather Hugo, although he was always smiling, sitting in an ancient wheel chair with his long white beard dangling in the many cups of tea we made
for him. He was usually looked after by John, my father’s brother who lived nearby, and when we arrived grandfather was already sitting in the sunny back garden facing north and away from the house and the street of houses behind him. Antonia and Nadia fussed around him, Nadia climbing up onto the blanket covering his knobbly knees.
“Hello, my little Lord,” he said to me, calling me the name he reserved for when my deeds had been particularly good.
“Hello.” I said smiling. I didn’t like formalities. While my mother and John continually wheeled him in and out of the house through the French windows, bumping his glasses off his nose each time he mounted the little step, we passed a pleasant afternoon exploring the house and garden and drinking ginger beer with our mouths full of salmon sandwiches.
I always liked his library of books and shortly before we were to leave my father left me alone with him while all the others put on their coats.
“Your father has told me about your little adventure at school.”
“Oh. It was nothing really. Anybody would have done it.”
He smiled at my self-deprecation and my informality, something I knew he secretly approved of.
“What do you want to do when you grow up, my little Lord? Hmm?”
“Oh well, you know. It’s hard to know really.” I was walking around the room, running my fingers absently over the glass cases of books lower down and peering up at the gold-lettered titles on rows of books nearly to the ceiling.
“Well, what are you good at?”
“Sport and art and science. I am good at lots of things.”
This unexpected confidence and honesty beguiled him and he laughed quietly.
“Yes, you really are one of us, aren’t you? Although I think most probably you are more talented that your father and myself.”
“Oh I doubt it grandfather.” He had been a writer, a journalist at the turn of the century, publishing a few obscure books on gardening and the history of Hertfordshire, before later becoming a local newspaper editor and ending his days writing a weekly column about Hertfordshire, its history, and gardens.
“Oh I think so. I truly think so. It runs in the family you know, having a multitude of talents. Did you know we are from Southern Europe, the Balkans in fact?”
We visited him rarely and although I suspected he had a great deal of knowledge this was the first time he had talked to me directly about anything so interesting. I faced him. “Really? Wow! Father never told me that. Where exactly?”
“Ah well, that is the biggest question. That is for you to find out I think. There is a family tree I have drawn up somewhere. I will find it for you. In the meantime I want to give you this.” He leaned forward, and lifted an old brown leather-bound book off of the table in front of him. “Here. Take it,” he said thrusting it towards me.
I was a little nervous but gladly cradled the heavy old book in my hands. I turned it so that I could read the spine. ‘A History of the Supernatural and Mythical Beasts and Customs of Central and Southern Europe’ by Edgar de Boulon.
“I knew him you know – Edgar. Yes, I even contributed some of the passages myself. There is more to our family than you know yet, my little Lord. Yes. Read this if you are interested, as I am sure you are, or will be soon. Have you heard of the Knights Templar?”
“Um.” I wanted to say I had but I hadn’t. “No.”
“Well. They know secrets and they will help you but do not become a slave to them. And do not hesitate to ask me if you have any questions. Write them down for when you visit me next time. Now I think you had better go. They will be waiting for you.”
“Goodbye grandfather.” I held out my hand and he took it and shook it before placing his other hand on top of mine.
“Goodbye, my son.”
I had a strong feeling secrets were about to be revealed to me as I climbed into the car, clutching the old book.
* * *
Chapter Three
1 2, 3 5, 5 8, 4 6, 1 3, 3 5, 3 3, 3 5, 2 4, 7 8, 3 6, 4 9
“From my reverie about my childhood, I look up at the sloping walls of the roof-space above the Cathedral. I listen intently for any sign of the Serpent but still I can hear nothing other than the distant sound of the organ below. I return to Rose’s statement. It went on, ‘I remember, too, how much you said the Bombing attack during the war also affected you. I also know that you have a greater capacity for getting to the truth than anybody else I have ever met.’ This made me smile and think about my spell in Intelligence.”
Three years after the visit to my grandfather, Nazi Germany invaded Czechoslovakia. It was 1938 and I was already in the Air Cadets, then just created as the Air Defense Cadet Corps. Hendon Aerodrome asked for, and took, two cadets each from four of the local schools and ours was one of them. Of the five boys who volunteered, Paul and I, both good at sport and academically, had been put forward and excitedly attended preliminary parades; two evenings per week in an old hut in a cold corner of a local football ground. Paul was in all ways a natural, but my eyes would have stopped me, were it not for the favours called in by my Headmaster. After a few months of drilling, aero-modeling, map reading and long hikes that left us exhausted but physically fitter each week, we were given our UNIFORMS, army dress but with the badge of the Air Defense. We were led at first by Squadron Leader Hennesy, a real Squadron Leader and one with a big moustache, although we later realised that he was already retired from the RAF. He drilled us relentlessly into the night; static drill, basic drill, quick and slow, banner drill, band drill and other drills. Occasionally we would compete with other units at football or athletics, mostly during the week-long camps at Easter and during the summer school holidays. Paul and I met many friends who we would later go into combat with. My favourite exercise was probably what they called ‘marksmanship’ but we called ‘shooting’ in loud voices. We only had one old Lee-Enfield No.8 .22 rifle, which used to jam occasionally inducing a healthy wariness in us, but the awed look on the other kid’s faces in school WHEN YOU told them your average was up to seven on the range was priceless. The best thing of all, of course, was flying but we had to wait a long time for that. Every few weeks we would meet at Hendon Aerodrome, and in our quiet corner of the airfield was a ragged old Tiger Moth which we were allowed to clean and fuss over. Occasionally when Hennesy wasn’t around we would sit in it and imagine what it would be like to get above the North London clouds.
As the spring of ’39 crept in, we finally had our chance to fly. One Saturday, in the bone-penetrating damp air of Hendon, I left the ground far below me as Squadron Leader Hennesy took me for my first circuit. I had been the fourth in line as we leaned against the hut in our thickest coats, passing around a roll-up one of the boys had brought, and acting as if it really was nothing; both the CIGARETTE and the flying. I found myself humming ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ to myself, a habit under stress which irritated me, and I instantly changed it into the ‘High-Ho’ song from ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’.
The flight only lasted a few minutes and I don’t think I felt the cold blast of air as I peered out over grey London with my hands resting lightly on the joy-stick so that I could feel Hennesy’s movements in the cockpit behind me. I wanted so much to take control, but like the first time my father let me drive the Rover for a few yards in a country lane I was nervous of the power of the beast. I think I remember having a grin that seemed to go right around my face the whole time I was in the air. I climbed out of the cockpit, back on the ground and my friends all patted me on the back.
“Your face!” said Paul, clutching his belly, laughing. “It’s just white and red and your eyes are white goggles with tears just...” He couldn’t finish the sentence.
“Wow! Paul, you wait. You will love it! I mean it’s not fast, like a Hurricane, or 109 but it’s just like well I dunno. Ha! Ha!”
***
I woke up sweaty and heard an unfamiliar whining sound like a moaning demon. The siren, which I soon realised was what it was, wa
s followed shortly by a crump sound in the distance followed by a few more. I guessed what that was and padded over to thE curtains to peer outside at the night sky. It was the first air-raid of my war and the pit of my stomach, so recently filled with never-ending feelings for Natalie, was suddenly knotted with fear. There were a few flashes on the horizon and a few moments of vibration each time a bomb exploded, interspersed with the hornet’s drone of German bombers. I heard Nadia, quietly crying in the next room, and I was about to go to her when I heard my mother’s voice gently comforting her.
Probably Heinkels.
I was caught in a fascination, not wanting to go back to bed, wanting, in a horrified way, to see something more, but soon it was all over. I went back to bed, and eventually, back to sleep.
It was not long before I, TOO, was delivering bombs over the territory of the enemy. Flying low over the grey waves, we spied the Dutch coast ahead, and I raised the stick to bring the Blenheim over the pretty buildings on the sea front. The two Bristol Mercury engines roared at full revs and the voice of our navigator, Ferret, crackled thinly in my earphones.
“New heading skip. 270 degrees, expect flak in two minutes.”
At that moment I had that feeling, the one of a malevolent presence, and I knew an evil fortune was with us. Suddenly I felt complete calm come upon me, as if my centre had become a clear pool of water under the dappling sun. I was alert to what was going on around me but somehow I was separate from it.
It had been planned as a bold, day-time raid on docks, and we were to approach the docklands from inland after swing around from the south. If we surprised the Germans their guns would be pointing the other way and we would get a good run at the warehouses along the quay-side.
The attack was a disaster. With fighters above us, we were forced to stay low and the Anti-Aircraft guns decimated the squadron, shooting down the Squadron Leader, leaving me as SECOND-in-command to save the rest of us. I turned back inland AFTER bombing, an intuitive move to outwit the enemy guns, and it seemed to be working UNTIL I found myself staring at quiet bit of airspace ahead of us and thinking that something wasn't right.
