Discussons On The Night Before.

I didn’t get to sleep, but waited downstairs for everyone else to get up. I sat listening to the birdsong start, and watched the pale light of the sunrise. I couldn’t eat, but became hungrier through the night, and pulled up my knees against the cold. I just played with the gloves Fuzz gave me, making patterns and puppets with them on the table. When Norman came down it made the day real.

We gave him the TV guide version when we got back last night, to which he nodded in his sober fashion, as if we’d told him about a plane crash over the Alps. I gave him the full run through of the night while he made eggs and toast. I still couldn’t eat. I felt the need to confess how rubbish I’d been, screaming and running.
“Did you know Samuel’s sick?” I told him about the blood he coughed up. “Did you know he’s got like a burglar’s Aladdin’s cave in his car? Like, a lot of stuff.”
“He told me, yeah.”
“About being sick?”
“No, the car. He doesn’t talk about things like his health, you know that. He’s getting on for a hundred isn’t he.”

I hadn’t realised, except to moan, that when we trained Samuel always took it easy, using Tai Chi moves, making me do all the work. When he woke up I went into the living room to talk to him alone. I had to apologise for screaming the night before: when we found Enright’s body, the world became something else. It wasn’t like a crime show, where the body is a puzzle. The body was a fact, more solid than all the plans and presumptions I was carrying with me. I was filled with the idea that Enright could do anything, and he was suddenly dead, suddenly not.

When I started to believe in magic, allowing that truth to filter everything that was happening to me, my world didn’t change – it just proved itself to be bigger than I’d realised; where I thought I had answers I now had questions. Apart from my father, that was the only change. When Enright (or whoever now) killed himself in front of me, there was a theatricality that suspended fear. Last night I found myself in a world I didn’t recognise as my own. I’d gone in to Enright’s house hoping to find signs of real magic being practised, and if that didn’t happen then Samuel’s humbling would be my compensation. To see the body there, it made me feel like a great weight was falling towards me. I felt sick, not from squeamishness, although it wasn’t pleasant, but from distrust.
“It made me nervous.” I admitted to Samuel. “It made me wonder what was coming next, that’s why I screamed. Sorry.”

Samuel finished packing away his bedding, putting the room back to normal. He was washed, clean shaven, his hair wet. He’s keeping it clipped short now. He put on his shirt over a white vest, covering the arms that always look weak compared to gym-sculpted muscles. I realise now that he can probably punch through walls. I wonder how long Enright’s six thugs held him back before his lungs gave up on him? He finished dressing by buckling his sword and telescope to his belt. He looked at me long enough to make me feel like a little boy, and then longer, so that the feeling passed.
“You have nothing to be sorry for. Except that we both must apologise to Angela. She should never have been put in such a dangerous situation.”
I said nothing, but nodded.
“Did you want to train now?”

About eleven, when Angela was up, we all sat together around the table. It was as though we’d each heard part of a rumour and were hoping to build it into a man. Each of us had spent the night and the hours since going over what we knew, spinning that out into unshared fears. We sat making a box from our shoulders.
“Do you think he was arrested?” Angela looked at us all.
“Which one?” Said Samuel. “He could be arrested and free. When they identify the body, can’t they test the blood nowadays? It’ll prove to be the man under arrest that’s the victim.”
“I think twins have the same DNA.” I offered.
“And there’s forty witnesses that saw him stab himself, yourself included.” Samuel went on. “The most they can be charged with is concealing the body.”

“Could he ever do any of it?” Norman asked. “The reappearing, any of that.”
“There’s no reason to think that he did,” said Samuel. “If there were three of them, they could afford to kill off one and still pull tricks.”
“But when did they switch?” I asked. “I was there at the resurrection. I saw the body and then he came back.”

I went over that night again - how I took Enright’s son up, and then the body was covered in the silk robe. People were surrounding the table, but I could always see him lying there.
“He’d just killed himself in front of me, I couldn’t look away. And at The Red Deer he rematerialised behind me. He was seen on the stairs, he vanished.”
“So Angela was told.” Said Norman. “But wasn’t that from one of that crowd? And when you saw him at the theatre, someone marked him with chalk to prove it wasn’t a trick, but if that was set up in advance.”
“At the party,” Samuel added to Norman’s theory, “you said there was a core of his followers, couldn’t they have been the only ones at the table, just for a minute?”
“But you could always see the table.”
“Covered up.” Said Angela. “Stage magicians pull off better tricks than that all the time. But of course they do that for people who want to be tricked. I believe the guy I spoke to about what he saw on the stairs, by the way. He’s no fan of Arthur Enright.”
“So he says.” Norman said. “But if so, then what did he see?”
“He saw Enright’s son ask his father a question, and then when they came into the light, Enright was gone.”
“When they came into the light.” Norman said. “Stage magic.”
“Hold on.” I realised going over it again as I listened to the others. “His son, on the stairs, made that carver look away. At the resurrection his son went up to Enright’s body and then led me away again. I doubt anyone was looking anywhere other than at that boy or their own shoes.”
“He used his own son to provide the misdirection.” Said Norman.

“Does Reeves know?” Samuel wanted to know. We think he must, if he’s living there.
“But why do it?” I asked.
“Look at him.” Said Samuel. “He’s got magicians all over the world doing his bidding.”
“But does he want to bring magic back or not? Is it just about this?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t know. As I said last night – power corrupts.”
“Where did they come from? The copies?” Asked Norman.
“We don’t know that they are copies.” Said Angela. “They could all just as easily be him, split into three. My guess would be some time before Tuesday Midnight. No one was watching him that closely before then.”

“How do we find out if he’s been arrested?” This was Angela’s main concern. Samuel was right; we’d put her at risk, making her such a visible look out. There was the suggestion that we call the local paper and ask them if they knew anything, but no one knew who to ask. We could have phoned the police pretending to be the local paper. We could go to The Red Deer and check out the gossip, or ask the neighbours. We decided to wait and see.

It occurs to me now, that there’s a reason people say don’t look back. It’s not because of regrets: I’ve done stupid things all my life and if I didn’t look back at them then I’d make the same mistakes all day. I can’t afford to look back at who I was, even only to last year. There must be a word for it – it’s probably French if it exists – to mean that thread of who you are across the gulf of how you’ve changed. I’ve spent the last three months trying to hold on to that thread, as if I’ll cease to be, but it’s based on what? The compliments of strangers, a favourite book?

Before we broke up the meeting, Norman remarked that it was ironic forty-odd genuine magicians got faked out by a bit of showbiz and misdirection. Nobody spotted anything was wrong. It was then that I remembered Challoner was at the house. Everyone laughed and joked with him, thinking that his favourite snack was proof of what they’d just seen. Did he do it intentionally? Was it with Enright’s blessing, or at Enright’s request? He went missing within days. Did he threaten to unmask Enright as a fake?