"Christopher Priest - The Prestige" - читать интересную книгу автора (Priest Christopher)

had a tentative, almost nervous bearing, and she frequently looked away from me and back
again while I was speaking. I assumed this was not through apparent lack of interest in what I
was saying, but because it was her manner. I noticed, for instance, that her hands trembled


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whenever she reached out for something on the table. When I finally felt it was time to ask her
about herself, she told me that the house we were in had been in her family for more than three
hundred years. Most of the land in the valley belonged to the estate, and a number of farms were
tenanted. Her father was an earl, but he lived abroad. Her mother was dead, and her only other
close relative, an elder sister, was married and lived in Bristol with her husband and children.
The house had been a family home, with several servants, until the outbreak of the Second
World War. The Ministry of Defence had then requisitioned most of the building, using it as
regional headquarters for RAF Transport Command. At this point her family had moved into the
east wing, which anyway had always been the favoured part of the house. When the RAF left
after the war the house was taken over by Derbyshire County Council as offices, and the present
tenants (her phrase) arrived in 1980. She said her parents had been worried at first by the
prospect of an American religious sect moving in, because of what you heard about some of
them, but by this time the family needed the money and it had worked out well. The Church kept
its teaching quiet, the members were polite and charming to meet, and these days neither she
nor the villagers were concerned about what they might or might not be up to.
As by this point in the conversation we had finished our meal, and Mrs Makin had brought us
some coffee, I said, "So I take it the story that brought me up here, about a bilocating priest, was
false?"
"Yes and no. The cult makes no secret of the fact it bases its teaching on the words of its
leader. Father Franklin is a stigmatic, and he's supposed to be able to bilocate, but he's never
been seen doing it by independent witnesses, or at least not under controlled circumstances."
"But was it true?"
"I'm really not sure. There was a local doctor involved this time, and for some reason she
said something to a tabloid newspaper, who ran a potted version of the story. I only heard about it
when I was in the village the other day. I can't see how it can have been true: their leader's in
prison in America, isn't he?"
"But if the incident really happened, that would make it more interesting."
"It makes it more likely to be a fraud. How does Doctor Ellis know what this man looks like,
for instance? There's only the word of one of the members to go on."
"You made it out to be a genuine story."
"I told you I wanted to meet you. And the fact that the man goes in for bilocation was too
good to be true."
She laughed in the way people do when they say something they expect others to find
amusing. I hadn't the faintest idea what she was talking about.
"Couldn't you have just telephoned the newspaper?" I said. "Or written a letter to me?"
"Yes I could . . . but I wasn't sure you were who I thought you were. I wanted to meet you
first."
"I don't see why you thought a bilocating religious fanatic had anything to do with me."
"It was just a coincidence. You know, the controversy about the illusion, and all that." Again,
she looked at me expectantly.
"Who did you think I was?"
"The son of Clive Borden. Isn't that right?"
She tried to hold my gaze but her eyes, irresistibly, turned away again. Her nervous, evasive
manner put tension between us, when nothing else was happening to create it. Remains of lunch