MASQUES OF SATAN

by Oliver, Reggie

  It was this usurpation that first invited my prejudice. He had taken over my aunt’s home, and who was he? He was, of course, the famous direct voice medium Norman Fand, but this, to a lecturer in philosophy, means less than nothing.

  He had a mean, blunt featured, truculent sort of face, much of which was hidden by heavy tortoiseshell-framed glasses. One might have taken him for a middle-ranking Trade Union official. His most distinctive feature was his hair, a thick white mane swept back from a low and furrowed brow. It was long enough to brush the collar of his suit at the back, and was so neatly combed and coifed that I wondered if he used hair lacquer.

  I could not deny that he had a certain presence, a powerful egotistical vacuum towards which all the attention in the room was sucked. Sensing I would not be immune to the influence, I tried to concentrate on the others who were listening to his monologue. He was talking about his recently published memoirs, entitled, perhaps rather ungrammatically, Me and My Voices, and how he had been forced to sack the unfortunate ghost who had been hired by the publisher to assist him. ‘In the end, I wrote the whole book myself,’ he said, and went on to instruct us on the proper way to write an autobiography, personal experience having equipped him with the expertise.

  My Aunt Dora was watching him closely. Like most writers who are lifelong observers, she had cultivated a look of courteous blandness in public, but I thought I detected the occasional twitch of amusement on her lips. It could have been wishful thinking. Other expressions in the room were less inscrutable, though the only one in which I could see unequivocal disgust was that of Sir Harvey Tarrant, or ‘old Sir Harvey Tarrant’, as Aunt Dora invariably called him, even though he was barely older than she was. He was a distinguished molecular biologist and a lifelong friend of my aunt’s, a neat, alert almost hairless man.

  The others, who included a fair sprinkling of Aunt Dora’s lame dogs, were obviously captivated. Fand moved easily from the subject of his autobiography to anecdotes about the famous people he knew. He was, it would seem, in the unique position of being on intimate terms with a number of living celebrities, at, admittedly, the more vulgar end of the spectrum, in addition to a number of dead ones. Among the dead his celebrity acquaintance was more distinguished, and included royalty.

  There was one face I did not recognise and which seemed oddly out of place, a tall man in his thirties with a smooth face and dyed blonde hair. His clothes attempted flamboyant elegance, and a brightly coloured silk scarf was elaborately knotted around his neck. The expression on his face was one of rapt attention mingled with a certain proprietorial complacency. I guessed, correctly as it turned out, that this was some kind of attendant or acolyte of Fand’s. His name was Carl.

  When Fand’s monologue had come to a reasonably obvious close, my Aunt was very quick to forestall its resumption. She had spotted me, of course, as I came in to the room and now showed herself very anxious to introduce me to Fand. I shook his hot, wet chunk of hand.

  ‘Ah, yes. Your Aunt has told me all about you,’ said Norman. He had a deep, gravelly chest voice, like an old-fashioned actor’s, and an accent which had once been honest cockney but was now overlaid with the veneer of suburban refinement. I had the curious feeling that though his eyes were looking in my direction they were not really looking at me. ‘You’re the philosopher, aren’t you? I am in touch with quite a few philosophers on the other side. Mostly Chinese, but some English. Bertrand Russell came through at one of our recent sessions.’

  ‘I would have thought he would have been rather sceptical about that sort of thing. He certainly was in life.’ I hope that I had conveyed a certain light-hearted scorn without being downright rude. Subtlety, however, was wasted on Norman Fand.

  ‘Not now he isn’t. Bertie’s completely changed his tune.’

  This impertinence enraged me, but I realised that it might have been calculated to do so, so I kept my temper. ‘I shall tell my colleagues,’ I said. ‘They will be fascinated to hear it.’

  ‘You do that,’ he said, then turning to Carl, who was now in close attendance: ‘I’ll have another glass of that very pleasant sherry, if I may.’ I was dismissed from the presence. The first round had gone to him.

  I found Sir Harvey Tarrant in a corner, thoughtfully nibbling a Bath Oliver biscuit which Aunt Dora always served with sherry.

  ‘A new addition to our circle,’ I said.

  ‘The man’s a disease,’ said Sir Harvey. ‘Did you notice his fingernails?’ I had as a matter of fact. They had been expertly manicured and polished, evidently not something Sir Harvey approved of in a man. ‘We’d better keep an eye on him. I’m rather afraid Dora might prove susceptible.’

  ‘She has a pretty robust vein of common sense,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, I agree. One of the most level-headed people I know, in the ordinary way of things; but don’t forget, she is a woman.’

  My aunt once told me that Sir Harvey had proposed to her after Anton’s death. It was a warm friendship, securely based on mutual esteem and misunderstanding.

  II

  One Sunday a fortnight later Aunt Dora invited me to lunch. It was just us two and we enjoyed the relaxed interludes of talk and silence that only old friends, or ‘relative friends’, as she once described our status, can enjoy. Blunt as my intuitions are, I was not completely immune to the sense that Aunt Dora may have been waiting to tell me something. She was a little more restless than she usually was. It came with coffee.

  ‘By the way,’ she said. ‘I went to a séance with Mr Fand. It was an unusual experience. I won’t go into details, but there seems to be a possibility that Anton is going to come through from the other side. Now don’t give me that look, Geoffrey. I know it sounds absurd. And, yes, I know Norman Fand is rather a horrid little man. I haven’t completely lost my marbles, as you moderns say. That’s why I want you to come with me this afternoon. He’s having another of his sessions at four o’clock.’

  In the end I agreed to accompany her. I felt that she would be safer with me than without me, and I tried to keep the proverbial ‘open mind’, whatever that may mean.

  Aunt Dora’s house on Highgate Hill is in a terrace of semi-detached houses called Larch Avenue. It is situated on a slope, and three doors further down was Fand’s house. Not having far to walk we arrived rather promptly and were ushered into the house by Carl, who was wearing a sky-blue cardigan. He spoke in the hushed tones of a confidential valet.

  ‘Norman is relaxing as usual before our afternoon meeting.’ He pointed at a door on the left side of the entrance hall. The room to which it gave access must have been the one which looked out onto the front garden, the equivalent of my aunt’s dining room. I had noticed as we came up the path to the house that the windows of the room in question were heavily curtained. ‘He loves the old silence,’ Carl added.

  I must have looked puzzled at this unexpectedly thoughtful and poetic statement. ‘The old silent films,’ Carl explained. I understood: ‘silents’ not ‘silence’. ‘He has a projector and a screen and a collection of old silent films, and he watches them in there It puts him in a relaxed, receptive spirit for our meetings. He loves those old silents. Ramon Novarro, Rudolph Valentino. Ivor Novello. Theda Bara. He’s in touch with a lot of them, you know, on the other side. Clara Bow is a real darling. We sometimes have trouble with Rudolph, especially if Ramon has been in contact. But Ivor is a real gentleman. He has quite a collection of signed photos of the old silent stars. Would you like to see them?’

  He led us down the corridor and into the sitting room at the back of the house. It was the equivalent of the room where Fand had held forth at my aunt’s. Curtains had been drawn across the French windows, and in the centre of the room chairs were already laid out in an oval for the afternoon’s séance. At one apex of the oval was a dining chair with arms, sometimes known as a ‘carver’, presumably the seat reserved for Fand’s use. Beside it on a low table was an old-fashioned reel-to-reel tape recorder and a microphone on a stand. Th
e room was relatively bare otherwise, but the dark red walls were covered with framed photographs, many of them signed and dedicated to Fand. Carl pointed to one section of wall which was devoted to a parade of ancient film stars in their gauzy, silvery pride. Some like Valentino and Novarro were still just about known to the general public; others like Vilma Banky, Antonio Moreno, and Rod la Rocque were faint echoes of a forgotten era.

  ‘Most of them are signed, you see,’ said Carl. ‘But all done before death. Norman always makes a little joke about that, because, you see, he’s got to know quite a few of them on the other side, as I told you. But some of them did give him guidance about how to find signed photos of them at a reasonable price.’

  ‘How thoughtful of them,’ said Aunt Dora. That characteristic inflection of gentle irony reassured me. Carl smiled, happily insensible to such subtleties, then left the room to answer the doorbell. Others were arriving for the séance. They trickled in, smiling and babbling: elderly, respectable, middle-aged, mainly female. I was mildly irritated to see Peggy Wentworth among the galère. She blended in perfectly, of course, but I did not like the idea of her having changed allegiance from my Aunt Dora to Norman Fand.

  Presently Carl entered and clapped his hands. ‘Now, ladies and gents, please, Norman will be coming through shortly, so if we can take our seats quietly. Now, most of you are old hands and know the ropes as I like to call them——’ There was a senseless murmur of semi-laughter. ‘But for those of you who don’t’ — looking at me — ‘I just want to remind you that Norman likes to work in the dark, and any sudden noise or especially light is very dangerous to him. As you know, Norman is a direct voice medium and he does produce what we call ectoplasm. The “etheric voice-box” is another technical term for it. You will see it emerging, and you are not to be alarmed by it. Sometimes the ectoplasm has a tiny weeny bit of a smell, but it’s nothing to worry about. Norman will be joining us in a few moments, so I’d just like to say one last thing. Now some of you lovely people have been asking about making a little contribution towards the work we do. As you know, Norman never accepts payment for what he does, which is a purely spiritual thing, but we do welcome your charitable giving to the cause. And your generous gifts, as you know, will receive in turn a great blessing from the Spiritual Realm. There will be a little basket on the side table in the hall as you leave into which you can place cash or cheques made out to the Society of the Inner Planes. That’s all, thank you, and if you can now take your seats.’

  I drew Aunt Dora to a couple of chairs as far from Fand’s carver as we could make it. The idea of ectoplasm did not appeal to me. Presently Fand entered, rubbing his hands together, nodding and smiling to the assembled company.

  I saw him rally his devotees with little teasing jokes that elicited fawning, laughing responses from them. He was progressing around the room so that he would reach my Aunt last, thus, I suppose, honouring us. When he arrived in front of us he sandwiched Aunt Dora’s hand between both of his and said, rather unctuously, that he was so glad she could come. He looked rather less favourably on me.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mr Philosopher,’ he said. ‘Have you come to learn or to scoff?’ I replied rather lamely that I had an open mind. He nodded and patted me on the shoulder, clearly not deceived. Whatever else he was Fand was sharp-eyed, and he had detected my hostility at once.

  He went and sat down in his carver while the rest of us also settled. Carl stood by the door using a dimmer switch to lower the lights gradually, as if the place were a cinema. Once the room was almost completely dark, he himself took a seat a little outside the circle to the left of, and slightly behind, Fand, in order to operate the tape recorder. This he switched on to record after urging us to fill our minds with ‘goodwill towards the Spirit world and Norman’s work in it.’

  You will know I am sure that the vast majority of séances, whether genuine or not (whatever that may mean), are very dull, and this was no exception. All the same, it was of interest to me because it was a new kind of dullness. We all want to know what life is like beyond the grave; unfortunately, it would appear, the deceased, though voluble, are not very illuminating on the subject. However because something happened at the end of the séance which was significant I must give an outline of what went before.

  At first we heard nothing but heavy breathing from Fand. As my eyes became accustomed to the darkness I could see him slumped in his chair, head slightly to one side. His eyes appeared to be open but sightless. Presently a small dribble of some greyish substance began to form, pulsating slightly, on his lips. It looked to me as if he were gradually extruding a dirty linen handkerchief from his mouth. At the same time an odour was wafted across to me, sweetish and sulphurous, like that of decaying fish. It was not overpowering, but it was sufficient to induce disgust and unease. Then the voices began.

  I have to admit that, probably by some ventriloquial feat, it did appear that the voices were coming not from Fand himself but from somewhere outside him, perhaps even from the dirty handkerchief which Carl had called his ‘etheric voice-box’. The timbre of the voices varied, certainly, but the variation was no greater than that which could be produced by an experienced actor or a good television impressionist. As each voice came, murmurs from the assembled company told me who they were supposed to be.

  The first voice was that of Fand’s ‘Spirit Guide’ I was told, a ten year old boy called Ricky who had perished in a Zeppelin raid on London in 1917. He was greeted by the ‘old hands’ in the group with friendly familiarity, and chirruped away in a cockney falsetto.

  ‘Ricky’s the name. There’ll never be another. Boys will be boys, eh? Lucky for you girls, or you’d get no fun. I’m a cheeky chappie, I am.’

  The old hands laughed at these antics, indulged them up to a point, but they did not quite conceal their impatience to hear the main event. Ricky, for his part, acted as a kind of master of ceremonies, introducing the other voices with more than a touch of resentment that he was not the principal attraction.

  The first speaker was a Major Macorquodale. When he was announced I detected a slight restlessness among the old hands, despite outward expressions of interest and respect. I soon understood the reason. He was a sermonising bore, and his news from the other world, though couched in the most optimistic terms, was curiously dispiriting: ‘Here is complete unity and harmony and love. Here is truly brotherhood. Here is the wisdom of all time expressed in all manner of ways, by all manner of peoples, irrespective of any earthly ideas of class, or creed, or colour. Truly this is a spiritual world, but not as man has depicted it. Indeed it is so, so different, and so tremendously alive, so vital, so far removed from man’s conception of things, that it cannot be adequately described. One can only feel it and know it and sense it — it is so vast and so beautiful.’ He talked colourlessly of colour and lifelessly of life. It filled me with misery because I knew that somewhere, lurking beneath the high-sounding platitudes, was a lie.

  There was a short pause after the Major had said ‘farewell’ and promised to return. Ricky said: ‘You liked that, didn’t you? Didn’t you, eh?’ Everyone agreed that they had, but without conviction. ‘I’ll bring him on again, then, shall I?’ said Ricky.

  ‘We would like to know if there are any other messages from the other side, Ricky dear,’ said Mrs Bowles, an ‘old hand’ and self-appointed leader of the group. But Ricky was not through with his teasing.

  ‘Oh, yes! Oh, yes! I know what you’re after. You just want a bit of sensation, a bit of how’s your father, that’s what you want. You want a bit of a knees-up, don’t you?’

  Mrs Bowles and the others were trying to sound amused, but then an odd thing happened. It was as if the line went dead for a moment; there was an odd choking and clicking sound, then we heard the sound of singing:

  ‘Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar

  Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell?

  Whom do you lead on Rapture’s roadway, far,

  Bef
ore you agonise them in farewell?’

  The voice was not good, a braying amateur attempt at a tenor voice, and it sounded like an imitation of an old recording. Aunt Dora suddenly gripped my arm. A murmur rippled round the room.

  ‘Is that you, Rudi?’ said Mrs Bowles.

  ‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,’ said a throaty voice with a slight foreign accent. ‘Yes, it is I, Rudolph Valentino. I am still practising my singing.’

  ‘Oh, it’s wonderful, Rudi,’ said Mrs Bowles, backed by sounds of insincere agreement from the rest.

  ‘Dear lady, you are too kind. In the next world we continue to practice the arts because art is a means of expressing beauty, and beauty is that which elevates us to higher planes of spiritual advancement . . .’ And so on. Rudolph was as dull as his predecessor, Major Macorquodale. The slight interest he sustained was because of the few pale shreds of egoism that remained to clothe the faceless shade. ‘If I can use the small reputation that I gained on earth to communicate through you the message of universal love and peace to the world, then I feel that my efforts in this mediumship have not been entirely wasted.’

  Aunt Dora’s grip, which had tightened during the singing of the song, relaxed. I was beginning to long for the event to be over, but once again there seemed to be an interruption in the flow of verbiage, a slight choking sound. The voice that resumed was still Valentino’s, but less monotonously relaxed.

  ‘I wish to say,’ said Rudolph, ‘that there is someone on this side who wishes to communicate with someone present among you. He cannot use his own voice because it takes some time on this plane to accustom oneself to this instrument if I may so term what is——’

  He was clearly lapsing into verbiage, but Mrs Bowles had the courage to interrupt him.

  ‘Who is the message from, please, Rudi?’