and I were well versed in them. The man's name was Mr Clive Borden, and the boy, his son, was called Nicholas, or Nicky. Nicky was about two, which was three years younger than me and five years younger than my sister. There did not appear to be a Mrs Borden, but this was not explained to us.
From my own researches I have subsequently found out a little more about this family. I know for instance that Clive Borden's wife had died shortly after the birth of her baby. Her maiden name was Diana Ruth Ellington, and she came from Hatfield in Hertfordshire. Nicholas was her only son. Clive Borden himself was the son of Graham, the son of Alfred Borden, the magician. Clive Borden was therefore the grandson of Rupert Angier's greatest enemy, and Nicky was his great-grandson, my contemporary.
Obviously, Rosalie and I knew nothing of this at the time, and after a few minutes Mama suggested that we might like to take Nicky up to our nursery and show him some of our toys. We meekly obeyed, as we had been brought up to do, with the familiar figure of Mrs Stimpson on hand to look after us all.
What then passed between the three adults I can only guess at, but it lasted all the afternoon. Clive Borden and his boy had arrived soon after lunchtime, and we three children played together, uninterrupted, all afternoon until it was almost dark. Mrs Stimpson kept us occupied, leaving us to play together when we were happy to do so, but reading to us or encouraging us to try new games when we showed signs of flagging. She supervised toilet visits, and brought us snacks and drinks. Rosalie and I grew up surrounded by expensive toys, and to us, even as children, it was clear that Nicky was not used to such excess. With adult hindsight I imagine the toys of two girls were not all that interesting to a two-year-old boy. We got through the long afternoon, however, and I've no memory of squabbles.
What were they talking about downstairs?
I realize that this meeting must have started as one of the occasional attempts our two families have made to patch up the row between our ancestors. Why they, we, could not leave the past to fester and die I do not know, but it seems deep in the psychological make-up of both sides to need to keep fretting over the subject. What could it possibly matter now, or then, that two stage magicians were constantly at each other's throats? Whatever spite, hatred or envy that rankled between those two old men surely could not concern distant descendants who had their own lives and affairs? Well, so it might seem in all common sense, but passions of blood are irrational.
In the case of Clive Borden, irrationality seems part of him, no matter what might have happened to his ancestor. His life has been difficult to research, but I know he was born in west London. He led an average childhood and had a fair talent for sports. He went to Loughborough College after he left school but dropped out after the first year. In the decade afterwards he was frequently homeless, and seems to have stayed in the houses of a number of friends and relatives. He was arrested several times for drunk and disorderly behaviour, but somehow managed to avoid a criminal record. He described himself as an actor and made a precarious living in the film industry, doing extra and stand-in work whenever he could find it, with periods on the dole between. The one short period of emotional and physical stability in his life was when he met and married Diana Ellington. They set up home together in Twickenham, Middlesex, but the marriage turned out to be tragically short-lived. After Diana died Clive Borden stayed on in the flat they had been renting and managed to persuade a married sister, who lived in the same area, to help bring up the baby boy. He kept working in films, and although he was again drifting socially, he appears to have been able to provide for the child. This was his general situation at the time he came to visit my parents.
(After this visit he left the flat in Twickenham, apparently moved back to the centre of London, and in the winter of 1971 went abroad. He went first to the USA, but after that travelled on to either Canada or Australia. According to his sister he changed his name, and deliberately broke all contacts with his past. I have done what investigation I can, but I have been unable to establish even whether he is still alive or not.)
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But now I return to that afternoon and evening of Clive Borden's visit to Caldlow House, and try to reconstruct what had taken place while we children played upstairs.
My father would have been making a great show of hospitality, offering drinks and opening a rare wine to celebrate the occasion. The evening meal would be lavish. He would enquire genially about Mr Borden's car journey, or about his views on something that might be in the news, or even about his general wellbeing. This is the way my father invariably behaved when thrust into a social situation whose outcome he could not predict or control. It was the bluff, agreeable faзade put up by a decent English gentleman, lacking in sinister connotation but completely inappropriate for the occasion. I can imagine that it would have made more difficult any reconciliation that they were trying to achieve.
My mother, meanwhile, would be playing a more subtle part. She would be much better attuned to the tensions that existed between the two men, but would feel constrained by being, in this matter, a relative outsider. I believe she would not have said much, at least for the first hour or so, but would be conscious of the need to focus on the one subject that concerned them all. She would have kept trying, subtly and unobtrusively, to steer the conversation in that direction.
I find it harder to talk about Clive Borden, because I hardly knew him, but he had probably suggested the meeting. I feel certain neither of my parents would have done so. There must have been an exchange of letters in the recent past, which led to the invitation. Now I know his financial situation at the time, maybe he was hoping something might come his way as a result of a reconciliation. Or perhaps at last he had traced a family memoir that might explain or excuse Alfred Borden's behaviour. (Borden's book then existed, of course, but few people outside the world of magic knew about it.) On the other hand, he might have found out about the existence of Rupert Angier's personal diary. It's almost certain he kept one, because of his obsession with dates and details, but he either hid or destroyed it before he died.
I'm certain that an attempt to patch up the feud was behind the meeting, no matter who suggested it. What I saw at the time and can remember now was cordial enough, at least at first. It was after all a face-to-face meeting, which was more than their own parents’ generation had ever managed.
The old feud was behind it, no matter what. No other subject joined our families so securely, nor divided them so inevitably. My father's blandness, and Borden's nervousness, would eventually have run out. One of them would have said: well, can you tell us anything new about what happened?
The idiocy of the impasse looms around me as I think back. Any vestige of professional secrecy that once constrained our great-grandfathers would have died with them. No one who came after them in either family was a magician, or showed any interest in magic. If anyone has the remotest interest in the subject it's me, and that's only because of trying to carry out some research into what happened. I've read several books on stage magic, and a few biographies of great magicians. Most of them were modern works, while the oldest one I read was Alfred Borden’s. I know that the art of magic has progressed since the end of the last century, and that what were then popular tricks have long since gone out of fashion, replaced by more modern illusions. In our great- grandfathers’ time, for instance, no one had heard of the trick where someone appears to be sawn in half. That familiar illusion was not invented until the 1920s, long after both Danton and the Professeur were dead. It's in the nature of magic that illusionists have to keep thinking up more baffling ways of working their tricks. The magic of Le Professeur would now seem quaint, unfunny, slow and above all unmysterious. The trick that made him famous and rich would look like a museum piece, and any self-respecting rival illusionist would be able to reproduce it without trouble, and make it seem more baffling.
In spite of this the feud has continued for nearly a century.
On the day of Clive Borden's visit we children were eventually brought down from the nursery, and taken to the dining room to eat with the grown-ups. We liked Nicky, and the three of us were pleased to be seated together along one side of the table. I remember the meal clearly, but only because Nicky was there with us. My sister and I thought he was acting up to amuse us, but I realize now that he could never have sat at a formally laid table before, nor have been served by other people. He simply did not know how to behave. His father sometimes spoke to him harshly, trying to correct him or to calm him down, but Rosalie and I were egging the little boy on. Our parents said nothing to us, because they almost never said anything to us. Parental discipline was not something my kind of parents went in for, and they would never dream of berating us in front of a stranger.
Without our knowing it, our rowdy behaviour undoubtedly contributed to the tension between the adults. Clive Borden's raised voice became a hectoring, grating sound, one I started to dislike. Both my parents were responding badly to him, and any pretence of courtesy was abandoned. They began arguing, and my father addressed him in the voice we usually heard him use in restaurants where the service was slow. By the end of the
