MASQUES OF SATAN

by Oliver, Reggie

  The envelope contained another envelope, typewritten and addressed to ‘Mr J. Pegley’ which had been carefully resealed. By the feel of it it contained a letter. Then there was the flat cylindrical object which I had felt. It was a reel of audio tape, eight or nine inches in diameter, of the kind which could be played on those big old-fashioned ‘reel-to-reel’ tape recorders of the ’50s and ’60s.

  As it happened, Tom said he still had the old Grundig tape recorder which his father had salvaged from the theatre when it closed. We played a few seconds of the tape, and when Tom heard that it was his father’s voice on it he stopped the machine. He does not want to listen to his dead father’s voice. I suppose I can understand that. Tom has given me the tape and the recorder to take back to my guest house. I am going to transcribe what his father says and give him a copy.

  Tuesday 10 July 2006:

  I have been sitting up all night listening with earphones on, transcribing Jack Pegley’s tape. I have hardly had time to think about what he said, and perhaps that is just as well. I give it here complete without any expurgations.

  ‘Testing . . . Can you hear me? Right. This is Jack Pegley. I am Jack Pegley and I wish to state . . . I am the Hallkeeper of the Grand Pavilion theatre. That’s right, hallkeeper. None of this caretaker, stage doorman rubbish. I been with the Grand Pavilion a long time. Before the war I started. Stage Carpenter, I was then, when there was stage carpenters. I was a flyman too; did all sorts. That was before Mr Marlesford, Sir Kenneth as he became, bought the theatre. I was there before him. Then when I injured my knee down that orchestra pit, they made me hallkeeper and I ran the corner. The prompt corner to you. I was in charge. Well, Mr Marlesford, he trusted me. He said I was his eyes. Blind he was, Mr Marlesford. “Pegley,” he said, “be my eyes.” So I was. Now this what I’m saying is for a reason, so I’m not telling any funny stories, only what I got to. [A pause. Pegley seems to be breathing hard.] Right then. Mrs Marlesford, she was Jane Selway, the leading lady and what she said went in the theatre. Mr Marlesford, he allowed that, and anyway he had his own, the arms and that, but he come down every weekend and sometimes in the week and he sits in the box with his guide dog Wisper, and he listens to the show, and sometimes he talks to me through the Tannoy we had made for him in his box where the old speaking tubes used to be. “Pegley, are you there?” he says, whispering through the machine to me in the prompt corner. “Pegley, are you there?” And I says, “Yes, sir, Mr Marlesford, and it’s five minutes to the end of act one,” or some such. And he says: “Pegley, leave the mike on so’s I can hear you in the prompt corner,” so I do that. He likes to hear me give my orders to ring down the curtain or dim the straws in the battens, or some such. Well Jane Selway, I call her Jane, because she says: “Call me Jane. Everyone calls me Jane,” she’s a fine, beautiful young woman and a fine actress. I see her do all sorts. “You should have seen her,” I says once to Mr Marlesford, accidental, and he says “I can’t!” All sharp and sudden like. He had a cold temper on him sometimes. Well, here’s the thing. Jane, she gets on with everyone, but specially with this young man who comes down from London. Roland Payne, his name was. Comes down having been in one of Mr Binkie Beaumont’s shows at the Haymarket. Oh, it’s Binkie this and Binkie that, and dear Noel and darling Boo Laye and what not, but he could act a bit, I’ll say that. Well, he and Jane they get on famously and that season, 1952 it was, I’ll never forget, they’re a team, like leading man and leading lady. Roland Payne and Jane Selway. They get a bit of a following, and people want to come and see Payne and Selway. Most nights they’re selling out, and it’s a big house, I tell you, thousand seater plus. Well, one night, it’s Love from a Stranger — no, I tell a lie, that came later: it’s The Lady’s Not For Burning. I remember there was a lot of fancy talk in that show. Well, I was in the prompt corner during Act I and I hear Mr Marlesford on the Tannoy “Pegley, are you there?” He says. And I say, “Yes, sir, Mr Marlesford; it’s twenty minutes to the Act One curtain, and I’m just nipping round to the opposite prompt side to put another stage weight on one of the braces. There’s a flat flapping about horrible. I’ve got plenty of time and they won’t need me on the book, so I’d rather see to it myself.” And he says:“‘Right you are, Pegley, but still leave the mike on so’s I can hear the prompt corner.” So that’s what I do and then I went round to the OP and I fix the stage weight. And as I do so I look across the stage and see Roland and Jane in the wings on the other side, waiting to go on. They’re standing by my desk and talking, and touching, and I wonder if they know my microphone’s on. Well, it’s only a thought and I forget it when I get back to the prompt corner. Then it’s getting ready to bring the curtain down on act one. And it’s a big line from Mr Roland Payne that rings down the curtain: “For God’s sake hang me, before I love that woman!” I remember that. Funny stuff. The curtain drops, big round of applause and we bring in the iron for the interval. Then I hear on the Tannoy: “Pegley, are you there?” It’s Mr. Marlesford in his box. It was a shock like because I’d forgotten him. So I says, “Yes, sir, Mr Marlesford. I’m here.” And he says: “Did you see them?” Just that. It took me a time to figure it out what he meant and then the penny drops. So I says, “Yes, sir, Mr Marlesford. I did see.” Then he just says: “We know,” and clicks off. Well, I’m sticking to what’s important now, but let’s just say as the weeks pass it’s plain what’s going on. Mr Marlesford, he says nothing, but when he’s in his box he always tells me to keep my mike on, and sometimes he sends me off if I’m not busy in the corner to check the box office returns, or some such, just to get me away from the corner. I know what he’s up to. Anyway, we start on a two week run of Love from a Stranger. Always goes down well, that show; and Jane is playing the girl, and Mr Payne he’s playing the villain, Bruce, and we come to the Saturday, end of the first week. Mr Marlesford he’s come down to see the Saturday night show, but I don’t hear from him down the Tannoy till right at the end just before the curtain: “Pegley, are you there?” he says. So I says, “Yes, sir, Mr Marlesford. I’m here.” And he says, “Come up and see me in the box after the show.” Well, that’s a turn up for a start. He’s never done that before, so up I go after the show. And there he is bolt upright in his chair with his black guide dog Wisper lying flat on the carpet underneath it. “Pegley,” he says, “I want you to do something for me. Nodder” — that’s his chauffeur, Mortimer Nodder — “will drive my wife and self back to the Seabourne house, then he’s taking me to London. Now then, where does Mr Payne go for a drink after the show?” I says it’s usually The Feathers. “Right then,” he says. “When you leave the theatre tonight, I want you to throw the main electricity switch in the prompt corner like you always do, but I don’t want you to lock up as per, I want you to leave the stage door unlocked. Do you understand?” I says yes. He says, “Then you take your time, but you go over to The Feathers and you find Mr Roland Payne and you say to him these words: ‘There’s someone waiting for you on stage at the theatre. Go now. The stage door’s unlocked.’ Just that. Then you skedaddle.” And it’s as if he can see me opening my mouth to say something, because the next thing he says is, “Don’t ask any questions. I’ll see the stage door is locked afterwards, and I’ll see you don’t lose by it. That’s all.” Then he gets up and picks up his stick and whistles to Wisper who leads him out of the box and through the pass door and down to his wife’s dressing room. And I’m left standing there in the box, scratching my head and not knowing what to think. Well, I do exactly what I’m told and I go to The Feathers and I give Mr Payne the message. And there’s one funny thing. When I give him what I’m told to say, Mr Payne he doesn’t seem surprised. He just nods his head and gives a little smile, like what they call a smirk, and then he looks at me like he wants me to get out of there, so I do. And then the more I think about it, the more I don’t like it. It’s not that I can put my finger on it, but it smells nasty. So I wait round the corner from The Feathers — it’s a fine night with a big moon — an
d not long after I see Mr Payne come out of The Feathers with his trilby on cocked at an angle, cheeky like, and he hurries towards the Grand Pav. Well, I follow at a distance because I know where he’s going, and I go round the theatre the other way so I won’t be seen by him. And that’s where I see round the side, in the shadow of the theatre there’s a car. It’s Mr Marlesford’s Rolls with Nodder, the chauffeur, in his uniform standing beside it.

  Now that gets me really worried, I don’t know why, but it does, so I hurry round to the stage door and Mr Payne, he must already have gone in, so I go in. Almost the first thing I hear when I’m in is this sort of crash and coming from the stage, it sounds like. Well, like a fool, I try to switch on a light and I’ve forgotten that I threw the mains switch to the building at the prompt corner. Still, I should know my way by now, so I feel hand over hand along the wall to one of the pass doors onto the stage. By God, it’s black as the ace of spades in there. I can’t see a thing, but I can hear. My Christ, I can hear. It’s someone screaming out in agony, like you can feel the pain yourself. It’s coming from somewhere near the stage, but there’s an echo, hollow like. And it goes on, this screaming. It’s Mr Payne, I know the voice, and now I’ve worked out where he is. He’s in the orchestra pit because it’s deep and hollow. I feel my way round the back wall and then the prompt side wall towards the corner, and all the time there’s this screaming going on. But now it’s getting weaker and mixed up in it is a sort of coughing and what I call a gurgle, like he’s choking on jam or something thick and sticky. Now I’ve got to the prompt corner and I stop dead still. Then there’s this great big choke and it stops. Everything’s quiet for a second — silence — and I’m just reaching up to where I think the mains switch is going to be when I hear this other sound. It’s like tap, tap, tap of a stick on the stage and the patter of paws and the breath of a dog. It’s coming my way towards the prompt corner but I can’t see a thing. Everything’s as black as bloody hell. He’s coming closer. I hold my breath. I say nothing. He’s three, four feet away and I can almost smell him. Wisper gives a little low growl, like she does, and he says: “Pegley, are you there?” I say nothing, and again he says “Pegley, are you there?” That’s when I run, bumping into him as I go and he’s wearing this long overcoat of soft cashmere like, soft and cold. I don’t know how, I find my way to the pass door and then I’m out of there. Then I forget but I know the wife, she lets me in three or four in the morning, and I’d got through a bottle of Bell’s by then, so she thinks she knows the reason, except I’m not usually a big drinker. Later that morning I have to go back to the theatre, though I don’t usually go in on a Sunday, because I know what’s going to be there and I have to report it. Then a few days afterwards Mr Marlesford and I have a talk, and he says he’ll see me all right. But I’m making sure he does, so when you hear this I might be dead; and if I’m dead and Mr Marlesford — Sir Kenneth, I should say — is still alive, then you know what to do.’

  When I had transcribed the tape, and read it over, I opened the letter that was with the tape. It was addressed to Mr Pegley from a firm of London solicitors:

  Parkins, Wraxall & Worby, Solicitors

  1 Lupton Court

  Gutter Lane

  Cheapside

  London E.C.2.

  Dec. 5th 1971

  Dear Mr Pegley,

  We have been instructed by the Estate of the late Sir Kenneth Marlesford and under the conditions of his will to charge you with the following task.

  You are to come to these offices at the above address and collect from us the urn containing the late Sir Kenneth’s ashes and take them by train to Seabourne. There you are to gain access to the Grand Pavilion Theatre and place or scatter those ashes ‘Where,’ in the words of Sir Kenneth’s List of Instructions signed and dated 23rd December 1970, ‘Mr. Pegley knows I wish them to be so placed or scattered.’

  For this task you are to receive the sum of £500 plus expenses. Should you reveal the nature of this task, or any of the contents of this letter, to any person whatsoever (family members included) you will at once forfeit the pension which Sir Kenneth has allowed that you should continue to be paid under the provisions of his last will and testament signed, dated, and witnessed, 23rd December 1970.

  We await your response at your earliest convenience,

  Yours etc,

  Sydney Wraxall

  I asked Tom whether his father had fulfilled this obligation. Tom says he doesn’t know, but he thinks he remembers his father going up to London (a thing he rarely if ever did) at about that time. ‘Anyway,’ said Tom, ‘our dad was never one to pass up the offer of a bit of extra cash.’

  I did not ask Tom precisely how his father had died, but, as it happens, he volunteered the information. It happened in November 1991. Pegley was alone in his house, his wife having died three years previously, and he was sleeping in the first floor bedroom. At some time in the early hours of the morning he got up, presumably to answer a call of nature. He switched on the passage light, but the bulb blew and fused all the lights. One can only speculate what happened next, but it was probably in the confusion which followed this minor mishap that Mr Pegley took a step or two in the wrong direction and ended by falling down his own stairs and breaking his neck.

  There had been an inquest, but the jury brought in a verdict of accidental death.

  Wednesday 11 July 2006:

  Today I managed to gain access to the theatre and stayed there just long enough to testify that the interior is indeed a splendid example of Frank Matcham’s art. I don’t want to write anything further about my experiences in the Grand Pavilion, Seabourne, except this: my quest is over, but what I have found will remain with me.

  * * * * *

  This is where George Vilier’s diary ended. A few days later his body was found on the rocks below Beachy Head some miles further down the coast. No indication can be found — apart, perhaps, from that ambiguous last sentence — that he was suffering from depression, or that his mind was unbalanced.

  Shades of the Prison House

  Shades of the prison-house begin to close

  Upon the growing boy . . .

  Wordsworth, Intimations of Immortality

  I

  FORGIVE ME, I can only talk in fragments. The memories are returning, but in bursts, like the sudden flowering of fireworks in a night sky. This is the way I remember now, ever since the blow to my head — when was it? — two days ago now? Everything up to the age of thirteen and then — nothing until I wake up here at the age of sixty . . . three, did you say? Dear God; and why am I here? No! Don’t tell me! I must have been well educated in that black and empty interim because I express myself well, do I not? So the rest of me is still in there somewhere, but I know nothing of it. Why, therefore, should I accept responsibility for whatever it is I am supposed to have done? No! Don’t tell me! I am trying to concentrate. Here comes another memory shooting up out of the darkness: I must get it down.

  Sarson and I are in the back of the Rolls. Have you ever been in a Rolls-Royce? There is a special smell which I can only describe as the smell of wealth, the smell of soft and yielding upholstery, of polished walnut accessories and, above all, the faint intoxicating whiff of Montecristo Cigars from the front seats where Sarson’s Uncle Rex sits with the chauffeur. What was his name? Mort. Rex always called him Mort: his full name is Mortimer Nodder, I believe. I can’t remember what Mort’s face looks like, but I can see the back of his neck. He must be a thin chap, because the muscles and veins in his neck are visible and his skin is white, its surface irregular, like the skin of a plucked chicken. His dull brown hair is cut short and he always wears a grey peaked cap. Mort smooths the Rolls out of the drive of Russell Court School with a gentle purr from its engine. Then Sarson jabs me with something: a pin, I think it is.

  Wait! This can’t make any sense to you. I must try to start at what is absurdly called the beginning, because, of course, there really is no beginning, or end. Nor, for me, is the
re a middle, but we’re not going into that.

  I’ll have to start with my mother, a widow by the time I was eleven. My father died in 1955, leaving us well provided for, and we moved from Surrey to a quite luxurious service flat in one of those big blocks just off Baker Street. Mother had never liked the country: she much preferred London friends, London shops, and everything done for her. I still hunger for the country. I can see the flat now, full of the things she loved and I hate. She collects nineteenth century bric-à-brac, which is just beginning to be fashionable. Perhaps I acquired a taste for these things later in life, but I have lost it again now. There are papier mâché tables inlaid with mother-of-pearl, a crowd of brightly coloured stuffed birds under a glass cloche, and that pair of Staffordshire China dogs on the mantelpiece. I loathe them because they don’t look like real, proper dogs to me. I want a proper dog, not the London lapdog Mother has acquired: a black and tan Pekinese called Fu-Fu whose bulging eyes stare at me with loathing out of its puckered, snuffling little face. Mother is telling me that she has ‘just met a Mrs Sarson — such a nice woman! — and, do you know, we were talking and it turns out that she has a son called Giles who goes to Russell Court, just like you, and the same age too! Do you know him? You ought to be friends. Perhaps you are already. You never tell me these things, Peter, you’re so secretive.’