by Ian Sansom
T.S. Eliot was not in fact my friend, or even an acquaintance, though Morley himself had met him on several occasions. ‘Very smooth,’ had been his verdict. ‘Cold hands. Direct gaze. Manners of a saint.’ It was not, I thought, an entirely whole-hearted endorsement.
‘I don’t know Mr Eliot, I’m afraid,’ said the headmaster.
‘Poet,’ explained Morley. ‘Former banker: not a recommendation. Currently I believe panjandrum-in-chief at Faber and Gwyer, is that right, Sefton?’
‘Faber and Faber,’ I corrected him.
‘As I believe they are now known, yes.’ He was extracting cards from the pack as he did so, examining their garish colours. ‘Though there was only ever one Faber, Sefton. Geoffrey Faber? Do you know him?’
‘I can’t say—’
‘Curious chap. Doubled-up his name for the sake of euphony after he and my friends the Gwyers went their separate ways.’
‘Ah.’
‘Anyway, Madame Sosostris I believe, isn’t it, in The Waste Land? Sefton?’
‘Yes, that’s correct.’
‘Lot of nonsense, of course.’ He began laying out the cards on the bench in a pattern. ‘What is it, “Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante, wisest woman in Europe with a wicked pack of cards.”’
‘Something like that,’ I said.
He finished laying out the cards.
‘“Wicked”, would you say, Sefton? Or childish, rather?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘No. Now, would you care to give us a reading, perhaps?’ He pointed to the cards, one by one: ‘High Priestess; Magician; 10 of Cups; Queen of Wands; the Devil; 8 of Wands; 2 of Cups; Wheel of Fortune; Judgement; and the Knight of Swords.’
I looked at them. It was just a random pattern.
‘Any thoughts at all?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘No. Like your friend Mr Eliot you seem to have an ignorance of the exact constitution of the Tarot pack. Do you know if Alex is interested in the occult sciences at all, Headmaster? Or one of the boys perhaps?’
‘Not as far as I’m aware,’ said the headmaster. ‘But you know what boys are like. They pick up these odd sorts of things and …’
‘Quite,’ said Morley.
These were indeed odd sorts of things but I still hadn’t found the photographs I was looking for. I was now up on a stool, going through the uppermost shelves.
‘Well, anything interesting up there?’ asked Morley.
‘Notebooks, mostly,’ I said.
‘Notebooks,’ he said. ‘Hmm. Well, come on, man, let’s have a look.’
I brought down a clutch of innocent-looking school notebooks. Morley ran a finger over their covers, looking for dust.
‘In regular use,’ he said. ‘And yet set up so high. One might almost suspect that they were not meant to be seen.’
To my eye, there seemed to be nothing remarkable about them: they were standard school notebooks. Except that where usually the cover might read ‘History’ or ‘Mathematics’ these read ‘Formula for Personal Spiritual Development’, and ‘Astral Explorations of Past Lives’. ‘Notes on Astrology’; ‘The Twelve Tribes’; ‘Clairvoyant Investigations’; ‘Horoscopes’; ‘Seances’; ‘Psychic Experiments’.
‘Fascinating,’ said Morley. He flicked quickly through one, and then another. The headmaster examined some of them also, and I rifled through the pages of some others. All the books seemed to be written in code. And they all contained diagrams, sketches of gyres, phases of the moon, disorganised material generally.
‘Interesting,’ said Morley.
‘Really?’
‘It’s code. Yes. Seems to be. Do you recognise the handwriting at all?’
The headmaster studied the books. ‘I’m not sure. It could be one of the boys, I suppose.’
‘Or a teacher?’
‘Possibly. Should we be worried?’
‘I think it all rather depends on whether our amateur occultist sees themselves more as a psychic or as a mystic,’ said Morley.
‘Is there a difference?’ asked the headmaster.
‘Yes, there certainly is, Headmaster. There is indeed. A psychic receives messages, sometimes unwillingly, and certainly unbidden. A mystic, on the other hand, goes seeking the divine.’
‘Bad as each other, then?’
‘Not quite, no. Psychics, I find, are perfectly harmless, on the whole – rather entertaining, often. Cranks, but harmless cranks. Individualists. Eccentrics. Wonderful woman down in Clacton … But mystics … Mystics tend rather towards the malevolent, in my experience. And they like to band together to cause mischief. Not a lot to be said in their favour.’
Morley was now digging deeper into some of the cupboards and produced some bits and pieces of religious paraphernalia. A crucifix. A bottle of holy water.
‘Anything missing from the chapel, Headmaster?’ asked Morley.
‘I have no idea.’
‘Might be worth checking.’
‘Mr Morley?’ I said. I was up on the stool still: there was another shelf of books below the shelf containing the notebooks. ‘Do you want to look at everything?’
‘Yes, yes, let’s have them all down, Sefton, if you please.’
There were paperbacks and some books in soft leather linings. I passed them down to Morley.
‘What have we got here then, gentlemen? Montague Summers, eh, The History of Witchcraft and Demonology? Now we’re getting somewhere! Montague Summers, indeed. Excellent little guide.’ Morley flicked through the pages of the book. ‘Though the problem with Summers of course is that he actually seems to believe in the witch cults.’
‘You do seem terribly familiar with all this material, Morley, if you don’t mind my saying so,’ said the headmaster.
‘“Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians,”’ said Morley. ‘The Book of Acts, is it? Occult knowledge: it is tempting, I suppose. For a moment. And I have read widely – or as widely as one might need – in the alchemists, the Gnostics, the Hermetists, Neoplatonists and what-not, but I can’t honestly say I’ve found that much there that one might not find in Plato’s Timaeus. Also, do you know Mr Watkins’ bookshop on Cecil Court?’
‘In London?’
‘Off Shaftesbury Avenue,’ said Morley. ‘You know it, Headmaster?’
‘Cecil Court, yes. I think I’ve taken Mother down there a few times. Not the bookshop though, I don’t think.’
‘It’s rather “interesting”, as Sefton might say. They hold these little soirées. I went along to a few, after my son … Anyway. Tea, cake and theosophy. Makes for a pleasant enough sort of evening. I have struggled my way through the works of Eliphas Levi, and MacGregor Mathers. Max Müller’s books on the sacred texts of the East. They’re all after the same thing essentially.’
‘Which is?’
‘Power, of course. The idea of transforming oneself into a magus. Solomon the Mage, Simon Magus, Comte de Saint-Germain. Etcetera. No shortage of the blighters. The magus, the sorcerer, the alchemist: all of them seized with an obsession, a desire for greatness. Insight. Power. Wisdom. They think by force of will they might somehow achieve that which is impossible. Short cuts to knowledge. We know that often men wish for knowledge because power attends it; they strive for knowledge not for its own sake, but in order to attain power. Seized with such a perverted desire, men become demented. I have seen it oftentimes among university professors. Politicians are prone to the same fantasy, of course. Total control. Command.’ Morley paused. ‘Hmm. Are there people in the school who you think might be susceptible to this dangerous sort of fantasy, Headmaster? The idea that they might rightfully rule?’
‘I really don’t know, Morley.’
‘The spurned lover? A man overlooked for promotion or cheated of some sort of preferment? The man who sees himself as the rightful … Is Alex the only person with keys to the darkroom?’
‘Apart from me,’ said the headmaster.
‘And your keys have mys
teriously disappeared?’
‘Or been misplaced.’
Morley fell silent. The atmosphere in the room had changed. As Morley had been talking the headmaster had been absent-mindedly going through one of the notebooks, where he had found a set of negatives, which he was now holding up to the red safelight.
‘Ah,’ said Morley. ‘Well spotted, Headmaster! At last! Some photographs. I was beginning to wonder what Alex used the room for!’
It became clear, at that moment, what Alex used the room for.
They were photographs, mostly of women – naked women. In the negatives of course their skin was jet black, and the hair – and pubic hair – a quite startling white.
Photographs, mostly of women
‘Well well,’ said Morley.
‘Oh dear,’ said the headmaster.
Several of the negatives were indeed of Mrs Dodds. She was quite right: they were not photographs that her husband would have been pleased to view.
‘Well … only to be expected perhaps,’ said Morley. This was, I think, the only occasion during our time together that I saw him blush – though it may simply have been the red light. ‘New technologies always lend themselves to – shall we say – fleshly uses. You know that many of the first pamphlets published after Gutenberg were nothing more than scurrilous …’
But there were also photographs of men. With other men.
‘Is that the chaplain?’ I said.
‘I rather fear so,’ said Morley. ‘Headmaster?’
The headmaster seemed to have lost all his strength; he collapsed down upon himself, onto the stool on which I had been standing, collapsing like a boxer returning to his corner and throwing in his towel, a gesture of total defeat. Morley turned his back to me slightly and laid a hand upon the headmaster’s shoulder – and in the same instant I laid my hand upon the negatives of Mrs Dodds and was about to put them into my pocket for safekeeping. But Morley had noticed me reaching out for them and grabbed my wrist with one hand, snatching the negatives with his other. His strength was quite astonishing.
‘Sefton?’
‘I …’
‘What do you think you’re doing, man?’
‘I was just going to …’
‘You were going to what?’
‘I was just going to look after them.’
‘And why do they need you looking after them?’ asked Morley.
‘They need destroying,’ said the headmaster bitterly, his head in his hands.
‘I’m afraid it may be too late for that, Headmaster,’ said Morley. ‘And I think you may have some explaining to do, Sefton. Do you want to tell us why you were interested in coming down here?’
I said nothing.
‘Sefton?’ repeated Morley. ‘You’d better speak up, man.’
‘I happened to have mentioned to someone that I was interested in the darkroom and they said that Alex had … asked them to become an adept.’
‘Someone happened to mention to you that Alex had asked them to become an adept?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you didn’t see fit to mention it?’
‘No, I …’
‘You may have wasted us precious time, Sefton.’
‘But I thought … Alex was the hero of the hour and—’
‘Who might this person be, might I ask?’
‘An acquaintance,’ I said.
‘Sefton?’
I remained silent.
‘Headmaster?’
Morley was holding up my negatives to the light.
‘The face here looks familiar, but I can’t quite think … Headmaster? This might be important. I need you to …’
The headmaster glanced up. He recognised her straight away. ‘Mrs Dodds,’ he said. ‘It’s Mrs Dodds, Morley.’
‘And she is?’
‘She’s the wife of our benefactor. Mr Dodds, who has enabled us to buy the new school.’
‘And the others are?’
‘Mostly other benefactors.’
Morley was pacing up and down now. ‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ he said. ‘Oh dear, oh dear.’ He held up the negatives to the safelight. ‘Sefton, what exactly did your Mrs Dodds say about Alex?’
‘She said that he had asked her to become an adept.’
‘And that’s all?’
‘And that Alex claimed he was some sort of … mage?’
‘Come on, Sefton! And you didn’t think to pass on this information?’
‘I—’
‘You can never trust a man who calls himself a mage,’ he said.
‘But you call yourself the People’s Professor,’ I said.
‘Not a title I claim for myself, Sefton. It’s merely a shorthand, for the newspapers.’
‘Do you think he’s a devil worshipper?’ I asked. ‘Alex?’
‘You’ve clearly been watching far too many movies, Sefton. Only fools believe in devil worship. And only idiots believe in devil worshippers.’
‘So—’
‘I think it’s more likely he’s someone who believes in the perfectibility of man’s soul. In developing full human potential. Do What Thou Wilt Shall be the Whole of the Law and etcetera. Love is the Law, Love under the Will.’
‘Sorry?’ I said.
‘He was never the same after the war,’ said the headmaster, interrupting, lost in his own thoughts. ‘He was always … looking for something.’
‘Which is why you moved here?’
‘Mother thought it would be a good idea to move the school here.’
‘Because?’
‘I think … I thought she just wanted a view of the sea. But Alex had these grand schemes and plans. He was able to persuade all these benefactors. I thought it was …’
‘And you knew nothing about it?’
The headmaster was silent.
‘Well,’ said Morley, clearing his throat, ‘let’s just see if we can establish exactly what’s going on here, shall we?’ And then having peered at the photographs for a moment, he suddenly swung around and pointed over the doorframe.
Inscribed over the door, in the dark I could make out black-painted letters, SATOR AREPO, set out in a pattern:
SATOR
AREPO
TENET
OPERA
ROTAS
‘That,’ said Morley.
‘What?’
‘In a lot of the photographs. The Sator Arepo, from the testament of Solomon. Magic palindrome. Now, if we have the Sator Arepo, we’re probably going to have …’ He looked down at the floor. ‘Move out of the way, Sefton.’
There were markings on the floor.
‘Damn!’ said Morley. ‘Damn!’
‘What is it?’ asked the headmaster.
‘This,’ said Morley, indicating some markings on the floor, ‘this is the Tree of Sephiroth, if I’m not much mistaken.’
‘Which means?’
‘It means that this is some sort of chamber.’
‘What sort of chamber?’
‘Wasn’t there a notebook there, Sefton, that said something about the moon?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Just have a look. Ephemerides tables, that sort of thing? Saturn in the ascendant? Mercury triune to the ascendant? Saturn and Uranus triune to the moon? It’s not a full moon by any chance tonight, is it?’
‘It is, Mr Morley, yes. I think so.’
‘Which means our occultist friends will be active exactly’ – Morley checked his watch with the luminous dial – ‘around now.’
‘But there’s nothing happening here,’ I said. ‘You couldn’t swing a cat in here.’
‘No. But a cockerel maybe,’ said Morley.
‘A cockerel?’
‘Or a hen.’ He pointed to stains on the floor. ‘Mr Gooding’s missing chickens?’
‘What on earth are you suggesting, Morley? That—’
‘They’d really need bigger premises,’ continued Morley. ‘Somewhere private. And if you were involving the boys …’
We began running upstairs to the dormitories.
CHAPTER 20
AN ARTIFICIAL PARADISE
MORLEY RAN SO FAST I thought he might actually take off. He took the steps two at a time, the headmaster not far behind him.
The dormitories stretched across the top floor of the building. The candles in their sconces illuminated the corridor: it was like walking into a bad dream. Morley had made it to the first dormitory before I had reached the top of the stairs. The headmaster followed him in. I followed them both.
I was momentarily shocked and disorientated. Glancing frantically around in the darkness trying to find my bearings, different objects seemed to loom from nowhere and become suddenly visible: the beds, of course, their metal glinting in the moonlight, and the lockers, a pile of books here, a few pebbles on the windowsill there, the clock on the wall, and row upon row of old school photographs. And then directly opposite the door – a dark black face, with one big round white eye staring at us, teeth bared. It was as if eternal night itself had fallen and the devil was making his appearance. I gasped and stumbled back.
‘Ssshh!’ commanded Morley. ‘Silence, Sefton!’
The big white eye – pitted like a peach stone – continued staring, boring into me. Somehow Morley and the headmaster ignored it and this was almost as shocking as the thing itself. My panic gave way to suspicion. I made myself look again and stare back, steadying my breathing. It was nothing more than a big Geographia classroom map of the moon and the stars: the phases of the moon were the teeth.
I felt like an utter fool.
And then in the dim light came the sound.
There is a very distinct and peculiar sound that is the sound of a group of boys sleeping. It is the sound of turbulent rest, of troubled dreams and secrets, an endless flow of shuffling and mumbling and stifled tears: a room of sleeping boys is never actually silent. The noise, the terrible cacophony of humans even at rest. It used to torment me when I was young and at school: there seemed nowhere to hide from it. The incessant sound of silence. It made me nervous and unsettled – the terrible sound of boys asleep.
And now there they lay, lit only by the moon filtering in through the windows, their eyes and mouths half open, like a row of mannequins in a bizarre shop display, hidden and yet visible, present and disappearing, abandoned to themselves and to the otherworld of dreams. The wonderful sound of boys asleep.
