The Prestige

Saying she wanted to show me something, she put down her glass and crossed the room to a desk placed against the wall just behind where I was sitting. As she stooped to reach into a lower drawer her dress sagged forward at the neck, and I stole a glimpse: a thin white strap, part of a lacy bra cup, the upper curve of the breast nestling inside. She had to reach into the drawer, and this made her turn around so she could stretch her arm, and I saw the slender curves of her back, her straps again becoming discernible through the thin material of her dress, then her hair falling forward about her face. She was trying to involve me in something I knew nothing about, but instead I was crudely sizing her up, thinking idly about what it might be like to have sex with her. Sex with an honourable lady; it was the sort of semi-funny joke the journalists in the office would make. For better or worse that was my own life, more interesting and problematical to me than all this stuff about ancient magicians. She had asked me where in London I lived, not who in London I lived with, so I had said nothing to her of Zelda. Exquisite and maddening Zelda, with the cropped hair and nose-ring, the studded boots and dream body, who three nights before had told me she wanted an open relationship and walked out on me at half past eleven at night, taking a lot of my books and most of my records. I hadn't seen her since and was beginning to worry, even though she had done something like that before. I wanted to ask this honourable lady about Zelda, not because I was interested in what she might say, but because Zelda is real to me. How do you think I might get Zelda back? Or, how do I ease myself out of the newspaper job without appearing to reject my father? Or, where am I going to live if Zelda moves out on me, because it is Zelda's parents’ flat? What am I going to survive on if I don't have a job? And if my brother's real, where is he and how do I find him?

Any one of these was more involving to me than the news of a feud between great-grandparents of whom I had never heard. One of them had written a book, though. Maybe that was interesting to be told about.

"I haven't had these out for ages," Kate said, her voice slightly muffled by her exertions of reaching inside the drawer. She had removed some photo albums, and these were piled on the floor while she reached to the back of the deep drawer. "Here we are."

She was clutching an untidy pile of papers, apparently old and faded, all in different sizes. She spread them on the settee beside her, and picked up her glass before she began to leaf through them.

"My great-grandfather was one of those men who is obsessively neat," she said. "He not only kept everything, he put labels on them, compiled lists, had cupboards specifically in which to keep certain things. When I was growing up my parents had a saying: "Grandpa's stuff". We never touched it, weren't really allowed to look at it, even. But Rosalie and I couldn't resist searching some of it. When she left to get married, and I was alone here, I finally went through it all and sorted it out. I managed to sell some of the apparatus and costumes, and got good prices too. I found these playbills in the room that had been his study."

All the time she had been talking she was sifting through the bills, and now she passed me a sheet of fragile, yellow-coloured paper. It had been folded and refolded numerous times, and the creases were furry with wear and almost separating. The bill was for the Empress Theatre in Evering Road, Stoke Newington. Over a list of performers it announced a limited number of performances, afternoons and evenings, commencing on 14th April until 21st April. ("See Newspaper Advertisements for Further Arrangements.") Top of the bill, and printed in red ink, was an Irish tenor called Dennis O"Canaghan ("Fill Your Heart With The Joy Of Ireland"). Other acts included the Sisters McKee ("A Trio of Lovely Chanteuses’), Sammy Renaldo ("Tickle Your Ribs, Your Highness?") and Robert and Roberta Franks ("Recitation Par Excellence"). Halfway down the bill, pointed out by Kate's prodding forefinger as she leaned over towards me, was The Great Danton ("The Greatest Illusionist in the World").

"This was before he actually was," she said. "He spent most of his life being hard up, and only really became famous a few years before he died. This bill comes from 1881, when he was first starting to do quite well."

"What do all these mean?" I said, indicating a column of neatly inked numbers inscribed in the margin of the playbill. More had been written on the back.