The Wizard and the Demon

Udlotwyn was seated outside his cottage in the warm sunshine when he sensed coming towards him up the hill a sword with a man. When they were within sight he knew that his fears were justified.
    The man proved to be a youth; probably not more than about seventeen. He rode a good horse, but rode it clumsily, suggesting it did not belong to him: probably he had stolen it somewhere. But it was the sword he wore that worried Udlotwyn, for the sword was a demon.
   In past aeons, there had been many demons in the world, but now there were few: it was many years since Udlotwyn had seen one. They had come from Outside, he had been told, and the mighty wizards of past ages had striven to trap and imprison them, to preserve the world from the chaos and destruction they brought. He guessed that this one had been imprisoned in a sword ("Not a wise thing to choose!" he thought), and then buried deep in the earth for safety. Perhaps this youth had turned it up with his plough, and now he imagined he was possessed of a mighty weapon; but in fact the sword was possessing him. It would urge him on to deeds of violence, telling him that he could become a mighty hero, but in fact it would drain him dry, and when he was no more than an empty husk it would discard him and find a new bearer. In the meantime, he,Udlotwyn, would have to be very careful, for the demon in the sword would doubtless seek to kill him. Demons always hated wizards.
     Udlotwyn put forth his powers, out of practice though he was. Ignoring the youth, who would be under the sway of the sword, he concentrated on the most vulnerable target: the horse. By the time it reached the cottage,the horse was convinced it had gone lame in its right fore hoof and was limping badly.
   "Ho, wizard!" called the youth, brandishing his sword, "Bring me out your treasure, or I shall kill you now,rather than later, and slowly, rather than quickly!"
   That's the demon talking, thought Udlotwyn: how else would he know I'm a wizard? But the demand for treasure shows that the youth still has a mind of his own, otherwise he would have killed me immediately instead of wanting treasure. If I proceed carefully I may yet escape with my life.
    "Greetings, Sir Knight!" he said, "My treasure you are welcome to take, for what would an old man like me want with treasure? But it is hidden, and many spells are needed to unlock it,which will take time. But I see you horse is lame: you will not be able to ride far with him unless I cure him. I have food inside, and good water in my well. Pray you: stay a while in my humble cottage while I release the treasure".
   The youth dismounted, and being unaccustomed to riding, he had to return the sword to its scabbard in order to descend. Immediately the demon's hold over him was reduced, and Udlotwyn had little difficulty in persuading him that he was both hungry and thirsty. When the youth had come inside the cottage and was seated at the table, Udlotwyn placed before him not just bread, but the choicest wines and sweetmeats such as might be set before a monarch. Udlotwyn could sense the sword screaming Do not trust him! it's a trick!, but the youth's greed was now in full control of his mind, and it was not long before he had fallen into a deep drugged slumber.
    Udlotwyn unbuckled the youth's sword-belt and, taking care not to touch the sword with his hand, carried it to the back room and locked it in. He then returned to the sleeping youth and caused him to walk, all unawares, out of the cottage and mount his horse, where Udlotwyn secured him to the saddle. The animal was now recovered from its imaginary lameness, and he gave it a slap and commanded it to walk on. When the youth awoke,he would have forgotten everything that had passed. Udlotwyn hoped that the owner of the horse would not punish him: without the sword he seemed to be a harmless enough young man. Udlotwyn then returned to his cottage, sat down and wondered what to do next.
       Once, long ago, he reflected, the world was full of magic; but over the centuries it has all seeped away, and soon there will be none left. It is many years now since I met a wizard: maybe I am the last one. And this sword, perhaps, is the last demon remaining at large. But with no more wizards, who will be able to control even this single solitary demon? I must now watch over it, for as long as there is life in me.
     He entered the back room and with great reluctance drew the sword from its scabbard. Instantly he perceived the power of the demon as it spoke in his mind. Take me, master! it said. Together, none can resist our strength! Together we shall rule the world! But Udlotwyn knew it was only a deception. The demon in the sword would use him to spread death and destruction, and eventually, though it might take many years, in the end it would drain him dry and abandon him. But what could he do? It was said that in the past there had been mighty wizards who could expel demons, back to the Outside from whence they came. But I do not have that power, he thought: nor is there anyone remaining who could instruct me.
     He could still feel the sword tempting him with visions of power and glory, but although there was turmoil in his mind,he managed to resist, and decided on a plan. I must keep the sword here, he thought:  and then I must stay here to guard it; if necessary till the end of my life. But I must also place it somewhere even I will be unable to retrieve it, for I do not know whether I shall always be able to resist its temptations.
    He took the sword from its scabbard. Immediately it resumed speaking to him, promising wealth and glory. He felt his mind tottering as he walked across the back garden to the well. The sword guessed his intent. No, master, no! it shrieked, do no reject this chance! You can rule the world! You can restore the glorious days of magic! It took the last vestiges of Udlotwyn's will to take the cover off the well and drop the sword down. He heard it splash into the water far below. He the picked up several large stone and dropped them down until he was sure the sword was buried. He was utterly exhausted as he replaced the cover.
   He could still hear the voice of the sword, but it was now distant and faint. Maybe it would be best, he thought, to have a new well dug, in a different part of the garden. I shall say that the water from the old well is bad. As the men dig out a new well, I shall use the earth to fill in the old one. I had better do that part of the work myself, lest they should hear the sword and be tempted to look for it.
    He settled down to start his vigil. He would be there a long time.
 

New Year

Brian awoke to see weak daylight creeping through the window. Sheer force of habit meant that he always woke up at the same time every day, and it was only after a few seconds the he realized that it was New Year’s Day, and he was entitled to a little extra lie-in. Not that this day would be particularly special: he knew exactly what was going to happen. Certain people would wish him a “Happy New Year”, and he would wish the same to them: others he would attempt to avoid. After breakfast he would have a stroll outside. He always tried to walk round the garden unless the weather was absolutely foul: not that there would be anything much to see there at this time of year, but he could at least reflect that in a few weeks little green shoots would be emerging from the soil. And maybe he would see a few birds come down for the crumbs that he always scattered. Then for the rest of the day he would read and watch television, and maybe play the odd game of table tennis or pool with his mates. In fact, it would be a day much like any other. The next day was just as predictable, and the one after that. Another year in his life had ended, another was beginning.

   The sheer sameness of each day, and each week, might have preyed upon some minds, but Brian had become accustomed to it, and it no longer bothered him. In a way, the unchanging routine that stretched for years into the past, and ahead into the future, was quite reassuring, and saved him having to think too much. Though of course, he reflected, there could be some major change lurking in the coming year, something beyond his control, which would upset all his routines. They might even decide to transfer him to another prison.      

 .

Police Report on a Double Death

The case of Alexei Pavlovich Tikhonov, following the discovery of the two bodies, has awakened much interest throughout the city. Although not all the facts have yet been ascertained,enough has been discovered for most of the story to be constructed.
    Tikhonov was a middle-aged scholarly bachelor, and most of his immediate circle were people like himself. His life had hitherto been blameless: the only one of his acquaintances known to the police was his disreputable schoolfriend Ketsbaia the Tatar, who was suspected of being a receiver of stolen goods. But Tikhonov's quiet life was to be overturned by Yelena Borisovna Chetskaya.
   She is described as being young, vivacious, friendly and very pretty. She remains something of a mystery, in that the police have been unable to trace a single relative of hers. It has been suggested that she was, as the old saying goes, "no better than she should be", but no firm evidence on that point has yet come to light. Why she was attracted to Tikhonov is not at all clear (it could hardly have been for his money, for he had little), but there is no doubt that he quickly became besotted with her. Rather than take her back to his sparse bachelor apartment, he installed her in an expensive hotel, where they lived together for several weeks. He bought her clothes and jewels, and accompanied her to the theatre and other public events attended by the cream of society.
   Tikhonov's limited finances were soon exhausted. He sold such of his possessions as were of any value, but then had to turn to other methods of raising money. His old friend professor Razminsky has reported that several rare old manuscripts are missing from his collection, so it seems likely that Tikhonov stole them and then sold them on through Ketsbaia. He may have committed other thefts as well. But he must have known that his crimes would be discovered before long, and he would face exposure and punishment. He therefore obtained a measure of poison, and on the third of June poured it into glasses of wine, which he and Yelena then drank.
   Tikhonov's suicide is readily explicable, but, why he should murder Yelena is harder to understand. It was not only pointlessly cruel, but goes entirely against what we know of his character. It is better to think that the two of them, having briefly found happiness in each other's company, resolved to depart this life together.

A childhood in India in the days of the Raj

(A lady called Joyce, a friend of my father, gave me this account)

I was born near Madras, where my father was an official of the Imperial Bank of India. I was an only child, and there was no-one of my age living nearby, so when I once met another child I didn't know how to communicate or talk with her. We didn't mix socially with the Indians or Eurasians (mixed-race). Instead I had a pet goat, called Maggie.
     We lived in a large house belonging to the Bank, which had a garden (called a compound) and servants' quarters. There were five house servants and two gardeners I had an aya (nurse) and a Eurasian nanny, but my best friend was my father's peone (bearer), who was called Robert. He was very old, and was delegated to take me for walks. I remember that in the hot weather we went up to the hills for three weeks, and there for the first time I met children of my own age at the kindergarten.
   Our house was believed to be haunted. Even my father felt uneasy at times. There were poisonous snakes. Once we found a cobra on my mother's bed! She was in it at the time. My father called out "Don't move!", got his gun and shot it!

 I first came to England when I was 5, stayed for six months and then returned to India, where I nearly died of enteric fever. When I was 8 or 9 I was sent to school in England, at Hove in Sussex. I didn't see my parents again for three years; instead I was shuffled round between relatives and friends in the school holidays. That kind of arrangement was quite common. I loved England because I was in good health there, whereas I was always ill in India.
   The first school I went to in England was, I now realize, very strange. Because my parents' main priority was the state of my health, they liked its emphasis on life in the open air rather than on academic studies. After this I went to the Maynard School in Exeter, which was more traditional; and then three years later I was transferred to a day-school in Exmouth. By this time my father had retired from India, and my parents bought a house in Budleigh Salterton in Devon, where many other former Indian officials lived.

I left school at 16 and got married at 19, to an old family friend who was nine years older than me. He was a road engineer, and we spent our honeymoon in Germany, looking at Hitler's autobahns! Despite this, we had a very happy married life. We only visited India once, as tourists!

The Strange Guests, part 2

(The story so far: Betty Worthing, a chambermaid, has got to know a mysterious foreign couple, who call themselves Ilych and Nadezhda, staying at her hotel. Now another foreigner has tried to persuade her to intercept and hand over the couple’s letters. Betty is unsure what to do)

One morning Betty came down to the foyer of the hotel and found the place deserted, apart from one guest sitting in an armchair in a far corner reading a newspaper. Behind the deserted reception desk was the board with the letters waiting to be collected, including one with a foreign stamp. She stepped behind the desk and examined it. Yes: it must be for the couple in room 212! This was her chance!  Quickly she took the letter from the board and slipped it into the pocket of her apron. She was still undecided what to do next: whether to deliver the letter to room 212 or to pass it on to the stranger who had offered her money for such letters; but all that could come later!

    There were footsteps behind her. The guest had dropped his newspaper and risen from his chair, and was now looking at her intently. He was a shortish man, bearded, wearing a tweed suit.

   “I see you’ve picked up the letter for our Russian friends”, he said. He had a strong Scottish accent, and his voice was firm but not threatening.

   “Yes, sir”, Betty replied, since it was pointless to deny it. “I was just going to take it up to them, sir”, she added impulsively. She sensed that she was falling into a situation beyond her control. What on earth should she do now? Suddenly coming to a decision, she told the gentleman how she had been asked to intercept and pass on letters. “But I wasn’t going to do it, sir! And I was afraid if I didn’t take the letter, he might come and take it himself, now there’s no-one about”.

   “Are you with us, then?” he asked.

   “Oh yes, sir!” replied Betty emphatically. Now she was really committing herself; getting in deeper and deeper!

    “Good. I’ll go up there with you then. It’ll save me the trouble of waiting for one of them to come down”. He returned to his chair to pick up his coat and a large bag.

   

He let her lead the way up the stairs. At the end of the corridor he stopped. “Now, lassie, you go and knock on their door and tell them the Scotsman’s come with the pamphlets. I’ll bide here to make sure the coast’s clear”.

    Despite her fears, Betty could not help feeling a tremor of excitement as she knocked on the door. She really was in an adventure now! As usual, the door opened just a crack at first, but then Nadezhda recognised her.

    “If you please, miss: I’ve a letter for you”, Betty said, “and the Scotsman says he’s brought the pamphlets”.

    Nadezhda opened the door, and Betty signalled to her waiting companion to come in. He glanced down the stairs to check they were not being followed before walking to the room. He greeted Nadezhda and Ilych, and then produced a large pile of pamphlets from his bag. Betty noticed that they were printed in strange foreign letters. Ilych thumbed through one of them eagerly, purring to himself with pleasure as he did so.

    “Very good, very good!” he said at last, “I shall arrange for these to be sent into Russia. But tell me: why did you bring the chambermaid up with you? Is she to be trusted?”

   The Scotsman briefly recounted what Betty had told him. The two foreign guests were silent for a while, then Ilych asked her to describe the stranger who had asked her to pass on the letters. “But I wouldn’t do it, sir!” said Betty, “I didn’t like him!”

   Nadeszda still looked distrustful, but Ilych chuckled, pinched Betty on the cheek and called her “a true proletarian heroine”. Betty had no idea what this meant, but gathered that it was intended as a compliment.

    Ilych then sighed. “So they have found us!” he said. “So we must be moving on again; Nadezhda and me. I think we must leave England. Now, child, you may tell your police spy we have gone, and you do not know where. Because, of course, you do not know! Do not tell him this until next week: give us time to get away. We shall take these pamphlets, but I shall give you one. You cannot read Russian, but one day you may learn. I shall write my name on it in your alphabet, so that you will remember me”.

    He picked up his pen and on the first page of the pamphlet wrote very carefully: Vladimir Ilych Lenin. 

My Father Remembers His Childhood

When I was two years old, my family moved to Hartlepool, where my father worked as a marine engineer and shipping inspector. I was the youngest of seven children, so apart from Ruth, who was five years older than me, my brothers and sisters had left home by the time I was growing up, and I only saw them occasionally.

Hartlepool is still well-known throughout the north-east as “the town where they hung the monkey” (see note at end). We rented a big semi-detached house on the main Stockton road, with the trams running outside the front door. I remember it as always being very dirty. We could sit in the garden and watch the smuts from the Seaton steelworks falling around us. Sometimes the night sky would glow as the slag was tipped. Ruth and I discovered that if we rubbed our hands on the trees and then wiped them on our faces, we became completely black; which did not please Mother. One night an enormous dump of tens of thousands of wooden pit-props near the railway caught fire. The flames were so bright that you could read a book by their light, and the intense heat buckled the rail track.
We didn’t often go to the seaside, although there was a good beach quite close. The sea was always cold, and I don’t remember ever bathing in it with any degree of pleasure. Further up the coast, at Black Hall Rocks, you could find coal dust washed up on the beach from an undersea seam, and the unemployed men would come to rake it up and take it home in sacks. We preferred to have picnics up on the moors at Hobhole, where I could go fishing from the footbridge. Once, when I was about 8 or 9, I proudly told Mother that I had caught two cod and five kippers
.
Father was only able to take us on longer outings on Bank Holidays. For three or four summers we stayed in a farmhouse in Kildale, up in the Cleveland hills. This was a very traditional little settlement, with a pub, a church, a local squire, and even a village idiot. The farm was run by a family called Tait: a husband and wife with a son and daughter in their 20s. This was a period of severe depression in farming, and the Taits must have been very poor. They had no motor-vehicle, and just one horse to provide all the pulling-power. It was a dairy farm, and they had their own creamery, which I remember as being the only clean part of the farm. We once bought local cheese (though I think it was from another farmer) which weighed 14 pounds! The farm had no gas or electricity, water came from a spring into a trough, and the only lavatory was a hole in the ground in an outbuilding. We enjoyed our time at the farm, though I suspect Mother would have preferred something more sophisticated.

When I was about ten, Father bought me a second-hand bicycle for £3.10/-. He took me on cycling tours, stopping for bed and breakfast overnight; up Teesdale or Weardale; to Richmond or Barnard Castle. Later I went for rides with a school friend: once we did a day’s run to Whitby and back, which must have been about 80 miles.

When I was 13 I went away to boarding school, where I became a close friend of Francis Crick, who later won the Nobel prize for his work in the discovery of DNA. Then, three years later, Father retired and moved to Bexhill in Sussex, and we never returned to the north-east.

Footnote:
Hartlepool is known throughout the north-east as “the town where they hung the monkey”. The story goes that during the Napoleonic Wars a French ship was wrecked off the coast, and the only survivor to be washed ashore alive was the captain’s pet monkey, which had been dressed in a little military uniform. The people of Hartlepool had never set eyes on a Frenchman, and they assumed the monkey must be a French soldier, so they hanged it! Hartlepool still takes a perverse pleasure in the story of their stupidity: to this day, the mascot of the town’s football team is called “H’Angus the Monkey”

(My father died recently, at the age of 93)

Michael Davenport

-  Hello. I’m very pleased to meet you. As I explained on the phone, I’m collecting material for a biography of Michael Davenport, and I was told you used to work for him.

- Yes, I was his valet.

-  Well, I’d be most grateful if you could fill me in with some personal details of what he was like. I might say, your identity will be treated with the strictest confidence if that’s what you’d prefer. Let me get you a drink anyway ……………… Now, what was he like to work for?

-  He was a complete bastard

-  Really? That’s most interesting. That’s not the way most people would have perceived him at all. They do say, no man was ever a hero to his valet. Tell me more! In what ways didn’t you get on with him?

-  He had no consideration for us at all. He treated us like dirt: never once thanked us for what we did. And we had to do absolutely everything for him, you know. He was like a little kid. It wasn’t just fetching and carrying. When he went to a formal dinner, I had to tie his bow tie for him, cos he couldn’t do it himself, and he refused to wear a made-up one cos it looked cheap. I didn’t mind that too much, but I did mind having to put his shoes on for him.

-  Are you saying he couldn’t do up his own shoelaces?

-  Well, he probably could, though I never saw him do it. I think he just liked to have someone grovelling in front of him, doing them up. Gave him a sense of power: made him feel like an emperor or something. That’s the trouble with these new-money types, you see: no old-style traditional gent would ever act like that. And I really used to hate him for it; because I’ve got a bad back, and it really gave me gyp, kneeling down to tie up his shoes. And he didn’t care. I used to hate him for it.

-  (Then why didn’t you leave him and get another job? No, I won’t ask that now: don’t stop the flow; let him carry on talking)

-  But I got my own back in the end, you see. He was off for this big event, flying out, and

he says, George, get me my special black shoes, and make sure they’re properly polished.

Now: his special shoes. Did you know some of his shoes were specially built up, with quite high heels, to make him look taller? Not many people knew that. Shows how vain he was. So I went to the cupboard and got the special shoes with the big heels, but when I was giving them a shine, I noticed that one of the heels had worked loose and might come off at any moment. Now if I’d told him, he’d have gone mad, and raved at me for not mending it sooner, so instead I just covered up the break with some shoe-polish so you wouldn’t spot it. And then I had to kneel down in front of him to put them on, and my back was hurting really bad, so I couldn’t straighten up afterwards, but he didn’t care. And I thought, if that heel comes off , serve you right! I was really hoping it would, just when everyone was watching him. Because no-one could ever look dignified in public with the heel off one shoe and having to hobble around like they’d got a bad leg. He’d just look silly, and everyone would laugh at him.

-  And it turned out to be more than that, didn’t it? Because he appeared at the door of the plane, and waved, and all the camera flashbulbs popped, and then he started to walk down the steps, and suddenly, over he went, tumbled right down to the bottom, head first, landed on the tarmac and broke his neck. Nobody at the time had any idea how it happened: now we know. A man cut off in his prime. Perhaps even a turning-point in history. Who knows; maybe in 50 or 100 years, people could be asking, would everything have been different if Michael Davenport hadn’t died? How did you feel, knowing that?

 - Well, it was tough on all of us. My back was worse than ever. In the morning, I couldn’t move!