Eventually I believe I became dull to them. The English have a traditional tolerance of eccentrics, and my late-night arrivals, my solitary presence without servants, my unexplained method of making my living, came eventually to seem harmless and familiar.
All this aside, I found life in the flat disagreeable for a long time after I first moved in. I had rented it unfurnished, and because I was necessarily sinking most of my earnings into the family house in St Johns Wood, I could at first only afford cheap and uncomfortable furniture. The main source of heating was a stove, for which logs had to be brought up from the yard below, and which provided fierce heat in the immediate vicinity and none at all discernible in any other part of the flat. There were no carpets to speak of.
Because the flat was a refuge for me, it was essential that I should make it a comfortable place to live in and convenient for living quietly, sometimes for long periods at a time.
The physical discomforts aside, which of course began to ease little by little, as I was able to acquire the various practical things I wanted, the worst of it was the loneliness and the feeling of being cut off from my family. There has never been any cure for this, then or now. At first, when it was just Sarah from whom I was separated, it was intolerable enough, but during her difficult confinement with the twins I was often in agonies of worry about her. It became even more difficult, after Graham and Helena were born, especially when one of them fell ill. I knew my family was being cared for and looked after with love, and that our servants were dedicated and trustworthy, and that should the worst illnesses occur we had sufficient funds to be able to afford the best treatment, but none of this was ever quite enough, even though such thoughts did provide a measure of consolation and reassurance.
In the years when I had been planning The Transported Man and its modern sequel, and my overall magical career, it had never occurred to me that having a family might one day threaten to make it unworkable.
Many times I have been tempted to give up the stage, never perform the illusion again, abandon, in effect, the performance of magic altogether, and always because I have felt calls of affection and duty to my lovely wife, and of fervent love for my children.
In those long days in the Hornsey flat, and sometimes in the weeks when the theatrical season gave no openings for my act, I had more than abundant time to reflect.
The significant point is, of course, that I did not give up.
I kept going through the difficult early years. I kept going when my reputation and earnings began to soar. And I keep going now when, to all intents and purposes, most of what remains of my famous illusion is the mystery that surrounds it.
However, things have been a lot easier recently. During the first two weeks that Olive Wenscombe was working for me I happened to discover that she was staying in a commercial hotel near Euston Station, a most dubious address. Explaining why, she told me that the Hampshire magician had provided lodgings with his job, but she had of course given these up when she left his employ. By this time, Olive and I were making regular use of the couch at the rear of my workshop, and it did not take me long to realize that my employ too might be able to offer her permanent lodgings.
The Pact controlled all decisions of such a nature, but in this case it was just a formality. A few days later, Olive moved into my flat in Hornsey. There she stayed, and has stayed, ever since.
Her revelation, that was to change everything, came a few weeks later.
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Towards the end of 1898 a theatre cancellation meant that there was more than a week between performances of The New Transported Man. I spent the time in the Hornsey flat, and although I went across to the workshop once, for most of the week I was ensconced in a domestically happy and physically stimulating routine with Olive. We began redecorating the flat, and with some of the recent proceeds of a successful run at the Illyria Theatre in the West End we bought several attractive items of furniture.
The night before the idyll was to end — I was due to take my show to the Hippodrome in Brighton — she sprung her surprise. It was late at night, and we were resting companionably together before falling asleep.
'Listen, hon,' she said. 'I've been thinking you might want to start looking around for a new assistant.'
I was so thunderstruck that at first I did not know how to answer. Until that moment it had seemed to me I had reached the kind of stability I had been seeking all my working life. I had my family, I had my mistress. I lived in my house with my wife, and I stayed in my flat with my lover. I worshipped my children, adored my wife, loved my mistress. My life was in two distinct halves, kept emphatically apart, neither side suspecting the other even existed. In addition, my lover worked as my beautiful and bewitching stage assistant. She was not only brilliant at her job but her lovely appearance, I was certain, had doubtless helped me obtain the much larger audiences I had been playing to since she joined me. In popular parlance, I had my cake and was greedily eating it. Now, with those words, Olive seemed to be unbalancing everything, and I was thrown into dismay.
Seeing my reaction, Olive said, 'I got a lot I want to get off my chest. It isn't so bad as maybe you think.'
'I can't imagine how it could be much worse.'
'Well, if you hear half of what I say, it'll be worse than you ever imagined, but if you stick around to hear it all, I guess you'll end up feeling good.'
I took a careful look at her and noticed, as I should have done from the start, that she seemed tense and keyed up. Clearly, something was afoot.
The story came out in a flood of words, quickly confirming her warning. What she said filled me with horror.
She began by saying that she wanted to stop working for me for two reasons. The first was that she had been treading the boards for several years, and simply wanted a change. She said she wished to live at home, be my lover, follow my career from that standpoint. She said she would continue to work as my assistant as long as I asked her to, or until I could find a replacement. So far so good. But, she said, I hadn't yet heard the second reason. This was that she had been sent to work for me by someone who wanted to know my professional secrets. This man—
'It's Angier!' I exclaimed. 'You were sent to spy on me by Rupert Angier?'
To this she readily confessed, and on seeing my anger she moved back and away from me, then began to weep. My mind was racing as I tried to remember everything I had said to her in the preceding weeks, and to recall what apparatus she had seen or used, what secrets she might have learned or discovered for herself, and what she might have been able to communicate back to my enemy.
For a time I became unable to listen to her, unable to think calmly or logically. For much of the same time she was weeping, imploring me to listen to her.
Two or three hours passed in this distressing and unproductive way, then at last we reached a point of emotional numbness. Our impasse had lasted into the small hours of the morning, and the need for sleep loomed heavily over us both. We turned out the light, and lay down together, our habits not yet broken by the terrible revelation.
I lay awake in the darkness, trying to think how to deal with this, but my mind was still circling distractedly. Then out of the dark beside me I heard her say quietly, insistently, 'Don't you realize that if I was still Rupert Angier's spy I would not have told you? Yes, I was with him but I was
And so on, long into the night.
In the morning, in the grey and dispiriting light of a rainy dawn, I said to her, 'I have decided what to do. Why don't you take a message back to Angier? I will tell you what to say, and you will deliver it, telling him it's the secret for which he has been searching. You may say whatever you wish to make him believe that you stole the secret from me, and that it is the prime information he has been seeking. After that, if you return, and if you then swear that you will never again have anything to do with Angier, and if,
