My mother's name was Jennifer, though my father always called her Jenny at home. They met when my father was working for the Foreign Office, where he had been throughout the Second World War. He was not a career diplomat, but for health reasons he had not entered the military but volunteered instead for a civil post. He had read German Literature at university, spent some time in Leipzig during the 1930s, and so was seen as possessing a skill useful to the British Government in wartime. Translation of messages intercepted from the German High Command apparently came into it. He and my mother met in 1946 on a train journey from Berlin to London. She was a nurse who had been working with the Occupying Powers in the German capital, and was returning to England at the end of her tour of duty.
They married in 1947, and around the same time my father was released from his post at the Foreign Office. They came to live here in Caldlow, where my sister and I were eventually born. I don't know much about the years that passed before we came into the world, or why my parents left it so long before having a family. They travelled a great deal, but I believe the driving force behind it was an avoidance of boredom, rather than a positive wish to see different places. Their marriage was never entirely smooth. I know that my mother briefly walked out during the late 1950s, because one day many years later I overheard a conversation between her and her sister, my Auntie Caroline. My sister Rosalie was born in 1962, and I followed in 1965. My father was then nearly fifty, and my mother was in her late thirties.
Like most people, I can't recall much about my first years of life. I remember that the house always seemed cold, and that no matter how many blankets my mother piled on top of my bed, or how hot was my hot-water bottle, I always felt chilled through to the bone. Probably I am remembering just one winter, or one month or one week in one winter, but even now it seems like always. The house is impossible to heat properly in winter; the wind curls through the valley from October to the middle of April. We have snow coverage for about three months of the year. We always burnt a lot of wood from the trees on the estate, and still do, but wood isn't an efficient fuel, like coal or electricity. We lived in the smallest wing of the house, and so as I grew up I really had little idea of the extent of the place.
When I was eight I was sent away to a girls’ boarding school near Congleton, but while I was little I spent most of my life at home with my mother. When I was four she sent me to a nursery school in Caldlow village, and later to the primary school in Baldon, the next village along the road towards Chapel. I was taken to and from the school in my father's black Standard, driven carefully by Mr Stimpson, who with his wife represented our entire domestic staff. Before the Second World War there had been a full household of servants, but all that changed during the war. From 1939 to 1940 the house was used partly to accommodate evacuees from Manchester, Sheffield and Leeds, and partly as a school for the children. It was taken over by the RAF in 1941, and the family has not lived in the main part of the house since. The part of it in which I live is the wing where I grew up.
If there had been any preparations for the visit, Rosalie and I were not told what they were, and the first we knew about it was when a car arrived at the main gate and Stimpson went down to let it in. This was in the days when Derbyshire County Council was using the house, and they always wanted the gates locked at weekends.
The car that drove up to the house was a Mini. The paint had lost its shine, the front bumper was bent from a collision, and there was rust around the windows. It was not at all the sort of car that we were used to seeing call at the house. Most of my parents’ other friends were apparently well-off or important, even during this period when our family had fallen on relatively hard times.
The man who had been driving reached into the back seat of the Mini, and pulled out a little boy, just now waking up. He cradled the boy against his shoulder. Stimpson conducted them politely to the house. Rosalie and I watched as Stimpson returned to the Mini to unload the luggage they had brought with them, but we were told to come down from the nursery and meet the visitors. Everyone was in our main sitting room. Both my parents were dressed up as if it was an important occasion, but the visitors looked more casual.
We were introduced formally, as we were used to; my family took social manners seriously, and Rosalie and I were well versed in them. The man's name was Mr Clive Borden, and the boy, his son, was called Nicholas, or Nicky. Nicky was about two, which was three years younger than me and five years younger than my sister. There did not appear to be a Mrs Borden, but this was not explained to us.
From my own researches I have subsequently found out a little more about this family. I know for instance that Clive Borden's wife had died shortly after the birth of her baby. Her maiden name was Diana Ruth Ellington, and she came from Hatfield in Hertfordshire. Nicholas was her only son. Clive Borden himself was the son of Graham, the son of Alfred Borden, the magician. Clive Borden was therefore the grandson of Rupert Angier's greatest enemy, and Nicky was his great-grandson, my contemporary.
Obviously, Rosalie and I knew nothing of this at the time, and after a few minutes Mama suggested that we might like to take Nicky up to our nursery and show him some of our toys. We meekly obeyed, as we had been brought up to do, with the familiar figure of Mrs Stimpson on hand to look after us all.
What then passed between the three adults I can only guess at, but it lasted all the afternoon. Clive Borden and his boy had arrived soon after lunchtime, and we three children played together, uninterrupted, all afternoon until it was almost dark. Mrs Stimpson kept us occupied, leaving us to play together when we were happy to do so, but reading to us or encouraging us to try new games when we showed signs of flagging. She supervised toilet visits, and brought us snacks and drinks. Rosalie and I grew up surrounded by expensive toys, and to us, even as children, it was clear that Nicky was not used to such excess. With adult hindsight I imagine the toys of two girls were not all that interesting to a two-year-old boy. We got through the long afternoon, however, and I've no memory of squabbles.
What were they talking about downstairs?
I realize that this meeting must have started as one of the occasional attempts our two families have made to patch up the row between our ancestors. Why they, we, could not leave the past to fester and die I do not know, but it seems deep in the psychological make-up of both sides to need to keep fretting over the subject. What could it possibly matter now, or then, that two stage magicians were constantly at each other's throats? Whatever spite, hatred or envy that rankled between those two old men surely could not concern distant descendants who had their own lives and affairs? Well, so it might seem in all common sense, but passions of blood are irrational.
In the case of Clive Borden, irrationality seems part of him, no matter what might have happened to his ancestor. His life has been difficult to research, but I know he was born in west London. He led an average childhood and had a fair talent for sports. He went to Loughborough College after he left school but dropped out after the first year. In the decade afterwards he was frequently homeless, and seems to have stayed in the houses of a number of friends and relatives. He was arrested several times for drunk and disorderly behaviour, but somehow managed to avoid a criminal record. He described himself as an actor and made a precarious living in the film industry, doing extra and stand-in work whenever he could find it, with periods on the dole between. The one short period of emotional and physical stability in his life was when he met and married Diana Ellington. They set up home together in Twickenham, Middlesex, but the marriage turned out to be tragically short-lived. After Diana died Clive Borden stayed on in the flat they had been renting and managed to persuade a married sister, who lived in the same area, to help bring up the baby boy. He kept working in films, and although he was again drifting socially, he appears to have been able to provide for the child. This was his general situation at the time he came to visit my parents.