Satan Wants Me (7 page)

Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise,

Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue;’

But maybe, as I advance along the Path, I will find the answer. There will be a spell to make time stand still for me, so that I dance forever in 1967, while the others plod on through the years that follow and they age with those years.

Sally reads a lot of poetry and she learns it by heart, Yeats, Donne, Blake, also Ginsburg, Corso and Ferlinghetti. She likes shopping for little things. She likes to have me break raw eggs over her body. She’s a kind of metaphysical sociologist in that she likes to suss people out by going around asking them dopey questions, like, ‘What do you think is the purpose of life?’ or, ‘What sorts of thing do you find funny?’ or, ‘Do you think that intensity is a good thing?’ She asks me, she asks Mr Cosmic, the postman, the man at the door of Middle Earth, anyone. Then, at the end of a week or so, she compares the answers and thinks of the next question.

Sally is an Aquarian. She looks a bit like Mia Farrow before she cut her hair. (‘Every Man or Woman is a star,’ as Crowley observes.) Or maybe like Nico on the sleeve of
The Velvet Underground and Nico
. (
The Velvet Underground
is my whale song.) She loves her freedom and does not want to get trapped in the channelled ways that straight people think in. Aquarian people like unusual things and they keep changing their ideas. This is her age. These are weird times – ‘The Season of the Witch’, as her oracle Donovan puts it.

The Lodge did not make a good impression on her. She grooves on Mr Cosmic though. They share a thing about Arthur and Guinivere. He thinks, like her, that Arthur and his knights will return and that millions now living will see the rebuilding of Camelot. I think she’s probably slept with Cosmic a couple of times. That’s cool.

Spent the afternoon bringing the diary up to date, while I watched my clothes spinning round in the launderette and nursed my cold. In the evening I dressed for dinner. I had not worn a suit since graduation. The knot of the tie is to me as the hangman’s noose – a punishment imposed by society. I made my way to the Gay Hussar in Soho. I was feeling pretty seedy and I was apprehensive that the demon-who-makes-me do-things-I-don’t-want-to might be accompanying me to the restaurant. The Gay Hussar is all red plush and dark lacquer with deep benches, the sort of place where a colonel in the Ruritanian army might meet his opera-singer mistress. I had never eaten in such a place before, but, according to Felton, there are many more expensive and prestigious restaurants in London. We are going to visit them all, working up the list gradually. Felton was already there sipping a glass of something green. I am not used to eating late, but, though my impatience must have been obvious, Felton insisted on doing a big winemanship number. I was there for a lesson, rather than a meal. He ordered a bottle of Montrachet and made me follow him, as he twirled the glass by the stem and peered and sniffed at the wine. Then we had to sip, making little dog’s arse movements of the lips. I hate sipping. Gulping is my normal pace. Felton had to reach across and stop me from draining the glass. A Montrachet is a full-bodied, dry, white Burgundy. It has a flowery bouquet and a kind of honeyed oak aftertaste. It is such a great white wine that I was supposed to faint or something, but it tasted like white wine and I drank it. Perhaps if I hadn’t got a cold I would have got more out of it. However, I have to memorise all this winemanship stuff. It is actually part of my training as a sorcerer.

‘So where does Sally think you are tonight?’ asked Felton, when he had finished banging on about the vineyards of the Beaune region.

‘She probably thinks that I’m in bed sick.’

Felton nodded, satisfied, and turned to the waiter and asked him to bring a bottle of Haut Brion claret, a 47 if possible, to our table, so that it could start breathing while we were slowly working our way through the Montrachet – I mean so slow, it was like getting one’s booze through a drip-feed. Then he started pointing out other people in the restaurant. There was an MP called Tom Driberg. And there was a writer, Angus Wilson. I was quite impressed at being in the same room as Wilson, until I remembered that the man who wrote
The Outsider
is called Colin Wilson, not Angus. I do not know who this Angus is. However, when Felton and the Master judge that I am ready, I am going to be introduced to all sorts of famous and influential people.

‘We are grooming you to be part of the elite.’

‘Why me?’

‘The Lodge is looking for new members. They should be young and, even more important, intelligent and with qualifications. Your first-class degree is a powerful recommendation. True, it is only in sociology and sociology is just socialism dressed up as an academic discipline -’

I started to protest, but he made those funny waving movements with his fat hands.

‘Peter, no scowls! They do not suit your pretty face. Let us not quarrel about sociology of all things! Even you must admit that practitioners of that arcane ‘science’ have no literary style – or any other sort of style. It is a subject for people who like wearing duffel coats.’

I put my ear to the bottle of Haut Brion and pretended to listen to it breathing. Felton looked displeased, but he continued nevertheless,

‘But my point is that the Lodge wants you to continue with your studies, so that you get your Ph.D. in sociology. After that, we shall see. In thirty years time I should expect to see you as a Fellow of All Souls, a Permanent Secretary in the Civil Service, or the director of a publishing company. Something along those lines will be achieved by you and the Lodge working together. We already have rich and powerful ‘sleepers’ in high places and they will assist you in joining them. Did you know that among the ancient Egyptians poverty was regarded as a disease?’

(No, I thought, it is old age that is the disease. How can Felton bear to be himself, flabby and falling apart? However, I said nothing and he, unaware of what I was thinking, continued talking. Whatever occult powers the learned Doctor may possess, telepathy does not appear to be among them.)

‘Our Prime Minister may bleat about the “classless society”. The reality is that the future lies with a new aristocracy of the spirit, whose members shall be drawn exclusively from those who find honour in serving the purposes of the Great Work. To know, to will and to be silent.’

‘Oh yeah! Who gets to decide who is in this new aristocracy?’

‘We do. There is no need to be bashful about it.’

‘Will Mr Cosmic be one of the new Lords of the Spirit then?’

‘Mr Cosmic? Oh you mean David Hargreaves. Well, he is a bright young man, but he has no culture. You disagree?’

‘I definitely do. He has got rock culture.’

Felton was impatient with this.

‘Oh yes, yes. Perhaps rock is a culture in some hideous sociological sense – or, no, what’s that horrible new word? A ‘subculture’, a ‘subculture’ of the lazy, the unwashed, the inarticulate and the deafened. Yes, certainly a ‘subculture’, for doubtless it has its own traditions, ceremonies, high priests, relics, ritual sacrifices even. However, in a serious sense, the pabulum provided by the popular-music industry is a betrayal of three millennia of
Hochkultur
– of Homer, Virgil, Dante, Paracelsus, Goethe. To switch on a television set is to gain a glimpse of moral chaos.’

Now, of course, I wanted to argue with all this fat-headed, right-wing rhetoric. My experience of switching on a telly is that one usually then finds oneself dopily watching some old codgers playing a quiz game called
What’s My Line
, or a handful of teeny-boppers listlessly bobbing up and down on a programme called
Ready, Steady, Go
. No glimpse into moral chaos then. I wish it was. However, the topic of cultural politics was dropped for the rest of the evening.

Felton said that he had come to the conclusion that Cosmic probably did take baths, but he then caked the dirt on afterwards. Then, having observed that the Lodge did have plans for Cosmic, though not of the same sort as it had for me, Felton started to teach me about the pacing of a glass of claret and precisely how long it took to flare into the full grandeur of its taste. Allegedly, the experience is like listening to music. Then he turned abruptly to questioning me about my research. The intensity of his interrogation was most curious. The wine was forgotten – well not exactly forgotten, but he was drinking it rather than sipping it as he cross-questioned me about my observation of the children in the playground. Although I tried to explain about ritual conceived of as a formal action which is primarily symbolic, he was not interested in any of that sort of ‘bogus academic jargon’. He wanted to know what the playground looked like? How many children were there in it? How old were they? Could I describe some of the individual children? Did I know any of their names? Were they all taken home by their parents? I did my best to answer, but I was and am uneasy. There are two ugly possibilities – but, no, I think some things are best left unwritten. After a while, his interest in the children subsided and, I, not seeing why I should always be on the receiving end, started to cross-question him. I did not get much for my pains.

I wanted to know if Felton really thought what astrological sign I was born under was significant? Why was it so important for him to read my diaries? What was the Black Book Lodge set up for? What was its Work? Why had Felton stayed with the Lodge and what had he got out of it? What was his relation to the Master? Was it true that Felton was born in Alexandria? What was the Cairo Working? What if anything happened between Felton and Crowley?

It was no use. Felton was like one of those politicians who, instead of answering the question he has been asked, prefers to answer his own questions.

The Work is something one only fully comes to understand as one advances on the Path. The truth about the Cairo Working was buried within myself and I should recognise it when I was ready for it. Magical knowledge is like that. It is extremely difficult to say how many people are affiliated to the Lodge, since there were so many different degrees of belonging. Nor could one pin down a firm foundation date for the Lodge, as it evolved out of and gradually broke away from the Ordo Templi Orientis. Felton had continued to visit Crowley after the Lodge’s breakaway, but, in his last years, Crowley’s powers were fading. There always were problems with his sex-magic techniques, but, in the end, ‘the trouble with Crowley is that he went to a minor public school.’

Really! That is precisely my impression of Felton – that he went to a minor public school. Unlike Granville, for example. Granville is a Harrovian – and he keeps letting you know it. I know that Laura went to one of those experimental private schools where children are encouraged to run wild. Agatha gives the impression that she received a university education, though by now it is overlaid with all sorts of dottiness. As for the Master, he stands outside the British class system. According to Mr Cosmic, the Master was born in Damascus, the son of Christian missionaries, but he was educated in Tibet, at Shamballa, or some such place. Felton, I now learn, got his doctorate in music.

Perhaps it was the effect of the claret. Suddenly Felton was excited, lit up – like a jelly on fire – if that is possible.

‘Music can take a man along the Path. Music is the image and the foreshadowing of the harmony that pervades the world and organises its secret hierarchies. The motions of the spheres in the heavens are in conformity to harmony and proportion, so that, though their passage is made in perfect silence, that passage is musical. The Adept who seeks to make his life a work of art will comport himself in conformity with the harmony that is in all things. Even today’s debased popular ditties, redolent as they are of vaudeville shows and dance halls, speak of higher truths. As Sir Thomas Browne put it, music “is a Hieroglyphical and shadowed lesson of the whole World”.’

I made a mental note to think of this when I next listened to Martha and the Vandelas.

A little later, Granville joined us for sorbets and coffee. I had not known that we were expecting Granville. He had walked over from the Opera House, after a performance of
Idomeneo
. He and Felton started to discuss how my education should be taken in hand, talking about me as if I were not present. I was to attend operas on a regular basis. Also the theatre …

At length Felton turned back to me,

‘Tomorrow afternoon, if it does not get in the way of your researches, Granville will take you to Savile Row and get you fitted for a dinner jacket.’

‘I could also take him to Trumpers and get his hair cut,’ volunteered Granville.

‘Oh Granville, no! Peter’s hair is beautiful. It makes him look like a cavalier – Rupert of the Rhine perhaps. No, I have always loved long hair on men – so delightfully boho!’

Granville, intensely apologetic, turned to me. He feared that he might have hurt my feelings. He was accustomed to regard a visit to Trumpers as a treat. Granville’s own hair is not so short. It is thick and curly. Like Cosmic, Granville has a gypsy-ish air about him, but he is an older and cannier gypsy and his movements are smooth and controlled, not Cosmically wild.

Over coffee we argued over music – opera at first, but then, as the conversation drifted, I was astonished to learn that Granville was a fan of the Beach Boys and the Grateful Dead. However, he has no time for British groups, even though some of them patronise his shop. Granville was asking about Sally and why she no longer came to the lectures, when Felton broke in and asked,

‘How much have you told Sally about the inner work of the Lodge?’

‘Nothing much. But it is not secret, is it?’

‘Oh, secrecy is vulgar,’ replied Felton. ‘We are not schoolboys engaged in some surreptitiously illicit activity, such as puffing on the weed behind the cycle shed.’

‘Even so, there is such a thing as the discretion which is part of good manners,’ added Granville.

And with that, the evening broke up. I could not taste the wine properly because of my cold. However, it occurs to me that my cold, unsensational though it seems, might well be an illness of initiation, like Hans Castorp’s TB in
The Magic Mountain
or those strange fevers that shamans get prior to becoming shamans. Being ill may be a kind of
rite de passage
into a new life.