by Robert Irwin
A mad thought strikes me and, while they are still on the other side of the door, I ease How Boys Bathe in Finland off the shelves and swiftly flick through its pages. Dark waters lap the shore of the sacrificial island. The water spirit, Vu-Murt, is always hungry for human sacrifice. Finnish waters are dangerous to young men, for the pools and rivers are infested with female water-spirits. The Swan of Tuonela floats on the infernal river as the guardian of the Lands of the Dead. And so on. The book turns out to be a commentary on certain esoteric aspects of the Kalevala, Finland’s national epic, and, in short, it is not what I thought it was at all.
‘She will pay. There is always a price,’ was the last thing Felton said (I suppose that should be Charles Felton, or Charles now), before he bade Bridget farewell and rejoined me in the room. Bridget’s complaints, or whatever they were, had apparently driven my problems out of his mind and all he said was that I should make more effort to understand why Maud and I had been brought together. Then he told me to hurry to get changed and descend to the Ritual Chamber.
Granville opened the session in the Ritual Chamber by announcing that Dolor Mundi, just returned from America, would be introducing us to a different sort of pathworking technique – a technique which Lodge members in the States were having some success with.
But then Granville continued,
‘Before that, the Lodge has some outstanding business to attend to. On the evening of Thursday, June 8th, a young woman called Sally Vernon disrupted a meeting in this room. It is necessary now that we not only complete the purification of the House and purge it of all defilement, but that we also offer propitiation to the spiritual presences who have been so grievously insulted.’
Granville looked grim, but there was no break in his voice. He was speaking like a robot. In retrospect, I think that one of the things that was going on was that I was being given a lesson in obedience. Granville was passing another test on the Path.
We started with an opening invocation in which we sought the blessing of the Headless One, ‘who is Light in the Underworld’. As the coloured smoke rose from the brazier, it struck me, not for the first time, that I had entered a different world from that inhabited by the men in grey suits. ‘The few and secret shall rule the many and known.’ The rituals of the Path are very beautiful. There is a kind of natural music in the mingling of muttered incantations, the crackle of burning herbs and hiss of silken robes. It was even so a thousand years ago – and a thousand years before that.
A dirty milk-bottle was produced and placed in the middle of the pentacle. A Lodge member had nicked it from Sally’s doorstep. The milk-bottle was there because it was something which had recently been touched by the object of the exorcism. It was joined by a photograph of Sally. (Where did the Lodge get that from?) The photograph was, of course necessary to provide an image which could act as a focus for our concentration. Granville and I were first to spit on Sally’s portrait. By the time everyone had had a go, she was practically invisible in a storm of spittle. Then we around the Pentacle combined our spiritual energies and summoned up half a dozen of the larvae one after another. As the presence of each was sensed, Granville chanted the refrain,
‘I entered in with woe; with mirth
I now go forth and with thanksgiving,
To do my pleasure on the earth
Among the legions of the living.’
Then Alice entered the pentacle and, taking the bottle in one hand and the soggy photograph in the other, she assumed the Death Posture. We are to understand that the larvae came crowding round her and that they sniffed the milk bottle and they studied the photograph, so that Sally’s image and smell become part of their confused dreams. The larvae will serve as sort of bloodhounds running ahead of the Lady Babalon.
We then moved on to the commencement of the raising of the Lady Babalon, in order that she may mount the Beast and ride off in search of her prey. This is, of course, a lengthier and more perilous business. It is an operation, which, though begun this evening, will take weeks or perhaps even months to complete. It is not lightly done.
‘There is no grace, there is no guilt. This is the Law. Do What Thou Wilt.’
Is it possible that this sort of thing actually works? Even now that I know about the potency of the Gaze, I still find the power of magic at a distance hard to believe in. Obviously, if I had really thought that Sally was going to die because I had spat on her photo, I would not have done it. The freaky thing is that Sally does believe in vibes and voodoo stuff. If she ever found out that she had been ritually cursed in this way, I think that she might indeed just curl up and die. However, that is not going to happen.
Since the exorcism ritual was concluded, Bridget took over the direction of the pathworking. We sat round the edge of the Ritual Chamber, while she explained how we were to engage in a performance of Shibboleth. In Shibboleth one is supposed to achieve catharsis by identifying with the person one most hates and acting out those of his or her characteristics that one most detests, for hatred is like a cancer that gnaws within one, unless one acts it out.
Bridget was first to step out into the centre of the Chamber. She was Jayne Mansfield. It was eerie. I have seen Jayne Mansfield in films and Bridget looked nothing whatsoever like her. Yet in an odd sort of way, Bridget did not just resemble the bulgy film star. She was her. Bridget drifted in and out of focus before my eyes. Sometimes, I saw a glittering-eyed, skinny, old woman. At other times, I was conscious only of a hyper-sexed bimbo parading her enormous breasts. Then ‘Jayne Mansfield’ was joined by Granville. Granville had chosen to parody his saintly, but much-detested father. One by one we all followed him onto the floor.
Up until the second I stood up and opened my mouth I did not know who I would be.
‘I am Maud Boleskine,’ I said.
I had spent so much time with her in the last couple of weeks that it was not difficult for me to get inside her skin. I was confused and embarrassed to be among so many strange people. Faced with Jayne Mansfield, I found myself stumbling and muttering. First I claimed to have seen all her films. Then, when pressed, I had to admit that I could not remember a single one that she had been in. The only film I came up with was one in which Shirley Eaton, not Jayne Mansfield, had been the star. I turned and plunged away and continued to nervously edge round the room, looking for people to talk to, attaching myself to the edges of other people’s conversations, saying things that were simultaneously nice and pointless and dull. I knew that I so desperately wanted to be the life and soul of the party. I kept telling wonky jokes and, since no one else would laugh at them, I went into wild peals of laughter all by myself. There was something about ‘Maud’ that made people nervously edge away.
Shibboleth was like a nightmare cocktail party. Apart from ‘Mansfield’, ‘Mother Theresa’ was the only famous person I met. Otherwise the room was full of nice people – solid, unassuming, well-meaning, clean-living, prim, outgoing, responsible. They were parents, brothers, teachers, employers and they were dull and ghastly. I loved it – and I loved being Maud, so eager to please, so desperate for love.
I was having a really good time, until I encountered Alice. I could not work out what role Alice had chosen at first. It was obviously a man. But who was this aloof, sly person, so fond of using pompously long words, yet so keen to pose as a hipster? It came as a horrible cold shock to realise that Alice was playing me. Not that I thought she was portraying me at all fairly. Her mimicry verged on the unrecognisable. No, it was the renewed shock of coming face to face with someone who hated me more than anyone else in the world. Her hatred was simultaneously mystifying and hurtful.
I just had to step out of character to ask why.
‘Why? I just hate you, that’s why,’ replied Alice. ‘I don’t have to have a reason. You just make my flesh creep.’ And, resuming her parody, ‘Rationality and causality were yesterday’s bag – just crazes which had their day in the nineteenth century. If you are not into non-causational, emotional
lability, you are just not where it’s at, man. Intelligence is the most powerful aphrodisiac and most chicks really dig my brains …’
I would have liked to have turned away, but I felt trapped in my portrayal of ‘Maud’. If I was to stay true to my version of ‘Maud’, I had to cling to ‘Peter’ and hang on to his every word. I had to bat my eyelashes and interrupt from time to time to get ‘Peter’ to explain difficult things. So I stayed there for my verbal flagellation. Alice’s version was so madly exaggerated as to make me look seriously repulsive, but it was clear that this was how she actually saw me and she put all her heart into the impersonation. So I was having to ask myself how Maud, the real Maud, could ever have cared at all for the real Peter?
Pathworkings do not come any more gruesome than this. After it was all over, I came upstairs to write this all up, thereby tasting it again in all its nastiness. My participation in Shibboleth is supposed to have purged me of my hatred of Maud, but I do not think that things work like that and if, for example, you tell someone that you hate them, it does not mean you stop hating them, just because you have told them so. Hitler kept shouting that he hated Jews and he hated them until the day he died. And what is catharsis anyway?
It is late now. I am depressed and worried, but really too tired to think. Another dreary day at the playground tomorrow and Maud has a day off on Thursday, when I have promised to take her to the Zoo. Soon Laura will be here. She has promised to wear shiny leather boots tonight. After the Obscene Kiss, what?
Date? God knows what day.
There is a gap in the record since my awkward diary meeting with Felton and Bridget and my participation in that hideous game of Shibboleth. I am writing this by torch light in the middle of a wood, somewhere, I don’t actually know where. Sally is dancing around me and imploring me to close this little book and be finished with it forever. Yes, I had thought that when I left the Lodge I would be able to ditch all this diary-writing. But I now find that I am unable to say farewell to my Doppelganger. Indeed, the White-Night Scribe of Mysteries, I am madly driven to write all night. My writing hand, like a mutated breed of racing spider, runs across the diary’s pages, faster, ever faster. Blood and ink rage through me. I am burning up in life and faint with longing to fill all the blank pages that are before me. Speed, fierce and intoxicating, courses through mine and Sally’s blood. There’s methedrine to our madness.
But I suppose I better go back and fill in the gap in the record. Perhaps, when I have done so, I shall be better able to understand how me sitting in the middle of a dark wood (through which the right way remains obscure) can have caused the things which happened before this and how, in reverse causation, my present condition can have led to that confrontation with Felton and his wife two days ago now. Jeezus! I am confused.
As I have already noted, on the night of Tuesday June 20th, I sat up late writing my diary. I then sat up later yet, trying to get my thoughts in order, trying to decide what to do next. I came to no decision. On Wednesday morning when I went down to breakfast, I noticed that there was an odd atmosphere. Grieves was standing by the front door as if he was on guard. I sort of noticed this, but did not pay attention to it. As I ate my breakfast, I was thinking about last night and about the game of Shibboleth and what it must be like really to be Maud. Felton’s desire to see the children in the playground seemed so creepy. And I was trying to come to terms with what I had learned about Granville and Sally. I kept coming back to the image of those gaiters on Granville’s white legs.
But then after breakfast Felton said, ‘Well, Non Omnis Moriar, let’s be off then.’
And Bridget took me by the wrist and said, ‘Take me to the little children. I want to see them.’
‘We think that it is time for us to visit your school,’ Felton added.
‘Sure thing,’ I said. ‘No sweat. But I need my research files.’
I went upstairs and picked up my research files – and my red and black books, my cheque book and my address book. I was flustered and my hands were shaking. I couldn’t think what else to take, except my tooth brush which I put in my trouser pocket. I paused to kneel by the toilet with my head hanging over the basin, for I thought that I might throw up from sheer terror, but it was no use. Nothing came. Bridget and Felton were waiting for me downstairs. We walked down the hill. It felt like I was a prisoner being frog-marched to the gallows, with the prison governor on one side of me and the padre on the other. We climbed on the 78 bus which was supposed to take us close to St Joseph’s School, but then, as the bus was pulling away from the stop and beginning to accelerate, I leapt off the rear platform and started running, heading back past Horapollo House towards Swiss Cottage Underground Station. There seemed to be no pursuit and, of course, Charles and Bridget Felton were far too old to emulate my leap. Even so, waiting on the southbound platform at Swiss Cottage, I found myself sweating with fear. I kept looking round, fearing lest a Lodge member should have followed me into the station.
When I arrived at Sally’s place, I rang the bell and kept on ringing it. There was no answer, but I was out of my mind with fear and I kept ringing it for about fifteen minutes. In God’s name why did she not come to the door? Then I remembered that, of course, she was at work, but I still could not remember where. It could be any one of thirty theatres. But I could not wait at her door. The Lodge will have her address on their files. Sooner or later they are bound to come looking for us here. The overwhelming probability was that she would be coming in from the West End. She usually comes out at Notting Hill Gate tube station. Having worked this out, I hurried up Portobello Road and slipped into Abdullah’s Paradise Garden. I sat in the shadows with a glass of mint tea and watched the window and waited. If Sally was dressing for an actual performance, it would be a long wait, until maybe late in the evening. So I sat there taking stock. I’d had to leave most of my life behind at Horapollo House. But what was that? Changes of clothes, a fair number of sociology textbooks, some novels. The hardest things to part with are my LPs. They are going to be expensive to replace. But then I suppose that there are quite a few that I have outgrown or sucked dry of all emotional content, because of my habit of playing records again and again and again, until they mean nothing to me. I wondered what had happened to Cosmic when he was expelled from the Lodge. Was he still alive? Then those gaiters were on my mind again. The gaiters and the spittle-smeared photograph of Sally. She did not tell me about Granville and now I could not tell her about everything which happened on the previous day. I doubted if things could ever be as open and easy between us ever again.
Abdullah’s Paradise Garden has always been a good place to score and I was not surprised when I was approached by a dealer. He was dressed like a Tibetan sherpa and he seemed to be carrying a small pharmacy concealed in the heavy folds of his clothes. I could see that I was definitely going to need some chemical assistance to get me through the days and weeks to come. All the while that we were negotiating I kept my eyes on the window.
The dealer, noticing this, said,
‘It’s cool man. The fuzz busted us yesterday and they never do this place more than once a week.’
I nodded, but I kept watching the window. The dealer found this unnerving,
‘Wow, you’re really paranoid! What are you afraid of?
‘Satanists.’
‘Freeeeaky! Are they into drug busts?’
I think that the dealer thought he was dealing with a madman and he was about to break off negotiations, but I produced some money and ended up scoring four ampoules of methedrine, a couple of ampoules of amyl nitrate, half a dozen cubes of LSD, a tiny sachet of heroin and a couple of grams of dope. It was that dealer’s lucky day.
It was my lucky day too. Towards the end of the afternoon, Sally came walking past the cafe. I grabbed her and dragged her inside. Sally had been expecting something like this to happen. Even so, it took a while to sink in how much danger we are both in. I was adamant that it was not safe for her to go back to her fl
at, so, after some argument, she went to a phonebox and rang Patsy, a friend, who is also a theatrical dresser, though ‘resting’ that day. Patsy came straight round to Abdullah’s and Sally offered her job to Patsy. In exchange, she got Patsy to promise to get her things out of her room and store them for her. Sally sat there scribbling the great list of vital things in her life: toothbrush, Donovan records, raincoat, Red Indian poster, paperback of Lord of the Rings, dowsing amulet, teddy-bear, chillum, plastic bust of J.F.K., and the vibrator. That night we dossed down at the Arts Lab. Since I had taken Granville there a couple of weeks previously, it was a bit risky, but we could not think of anywhere else. They were showing old Eisenstein films all night and I fell asleep with the nightmare image of Ivan the Terrible stooped over me.
The next day which was Thursday, while Sally went off to collect some of her stuff from Patsy, I went round to Michael’s flat. That was really a bummer. I was expecting him to do something, though God knows what. Perhaps I was subliminally entertaining the hope that LSE maintained a ‘safe house’, for those of its sociological researchers whose lives were threatened by their research samples. However, all he could suggest was that I went to the police. But what could I tell the police? I have no evidence that the Black Book Lodge has done anything illegal. I am sure that they killed Julian, yet at the same time I am sure they did not murder him. They just told him to murder himself. Besides my own position as someone who has been participating in what were effectively black masses is none too clear. Michael just faffed around in a perfectly useless fashion. His main concern was that I had been able to come away with enough primary research data to enable me to complete my thesis. The possibility that the Lodge might not let me live long enough to finish my thesis did not apparently interest him and it seems that Talcott Parsons’s methodology offers no kind of protection against being hexed or killed by Satanists.
