Cuckolds, Crowley, Colleagues and Confrontations

Not long after my taking a leading rôle in a society for occult investigation, a knock came on the door of my flat. It was Anthony Hill - later referred to by the man he cuckolded as “Hutchinson.” He stood alongside an attractive dark-haired woman who held a baby in her arms. The child, I would later learn, was Jamie Farrant. They wanted the use of my flat for a brief period before going off together to goodness knows where. Anthony referred to the cuckold as “Allan,” which, although not his real name, was the name by which he was generally known. I vaguely recognised the female, Mary, as a barmaid from The Woodman pub on Archway Road where I had played tenor saxophone in a jazz group on a couple of occasions. Now she and Anthony were asking me to collude in their “elopement.” Put on the spot, I made a split-second decision to resolve this dilemma by declining.

Anthony who had once worked full-time in the darkroom at the Kilburn branch of a portrait studio, but was now a milkman in the mornings, leaving his afternoons free to work at my studio darkroom. I was impressed by his ability to quote Byron’s poetry at length. His favourite poet, however, was Shelley after whom his daughter was middle-named. The photographic studio was always busy on Saturdays, which might explain why I was not invited to his wedding in 1966. Friday evenings at his home witnessed séances with all the dinner guests. A member of my studio staff was present on a number of these occasions, and almost fainted when the wine glass used at one séance allegedly lifted up in the air and shattered. Yet another incident involved an electric plug suddenly exploding in its socket with an ensuing shower of sparks just as contact was made with the alleged discarnate spirit. Anthony thought he was receiving messages from a nineteenth century ghost until it told him to go away in no uncertain terms. “Adieu” was all he received via the ouija-board thereafter. On hearing about these incidents, I felt then, as I do now, that the only spirits to be evoked at séances are malevolent ones. Anthony's wife became disturbed by these strange experiences, and further attempts to contact the dead were quickly abandoned. Anthony once told me that he believed in the Devil because he had seen his form manifest in cigarette smoke inside the Kilburn studio’s darkroom. This incident occurred before I knew him. He also admired the poet, climber and diabolist Aleister Crowley who featured, along with many others, on the cover of The Beatles’ album Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. Crowley had shocked an entire generation in Edwardian Britain, only to become an icon of the 1960s. It was Anthony, part-time employee at my Islington studio darkroom and self-styled Crowley fan, who had come knocking at my door. Nothing would ever be quite the same again. He failed to return to work after his affair with Mary Farrant - something he described as the happiest six months of his life - and instead opted to take jobs other than darkroom work, including another milk round before becoming a newspaper vendor. Mary returned to her husband, but left to live with her parents in Southampton two days after giving birth to Danny, a second son (not Farrant's), in August 1969. She filed for a divorce, remarried and became Mary Coster, remaining in Southampton for the rest of her life. Anthony returned to his wife and their Priestwood Mansions' flat in Archway Road, Highgate, London.

The bizarre twist to this episode is that Farrant, now having been made homeless following his eviction from another flat in Archway Road, sought refuge in Anthony’s coal cellar. Partial to alcohol, Farrant would later be arrested and held on remand for shenanigans, not entirely unrelated to his drinking, in the following year. A handful of months before the arrest, he wrote to his local newspaper to declare that he had seen a ghostly figure some nights as he “walked home past the gates of Highgate Cemetery.” Thus he became one of a number of people I interviewed, and was briefly interviewed in the press and on a television programme along with various other witnesses. I immediately noticed an obvious flaw, however, in his overture to the press. It is physically impossible for him to “walk home” from any of the pubs he frequented in Highgate Village and pass by the cemetery gates in Swains Lane. A map of the area confirms his cellar lodgings in Archway Road to be located in the completely opposite direction. But, then, Farrant was not the least bit serious when he wrote his letter of 6 February 1970 to the Hampstead & Highgate Express. It was fraudulent. The exercise was nothing more than an attention-seeking prank. To that end it succeeded.

By the mid-1980s, covert operations that had taken me to the dark corners of human existence were necessarily being abandoned. By 1988 the wolf’s clothing required for that dangerous task was finally discarded, as my declaration of faith was published in a book:

“My key beliefs can be summed up as follows: I accept the divinity of Jesus Christ who lived as God made flesh and died for our sins upon the cross before being resurrected. ... Salvation is available to all who choose the way of God. And the way is by Jesus Christ alone.” (From Satan To Christ, Holy Grail, 1988, page 6).

It was an immense relief to no longer work undercover in the occult hemisphere; dealing with so much deceit and chicanery; having to say things to draw out intelligence to uncover facts. It was like awakening from the nightmare of a colourless void into a beautiful landscape of spectral sunlight. I sensed being almost reborn. Two brief meetings with David Farrant occurred during the last years of my working covertly. The final one in Highgate Wood, already recounted, witnessed him, almost without substance, wafting in the night aimlessly. The penultimate meeting, on 11 May 1982, found me confronting him with incontrovertible evidence of his deception and press collusion. Taped conversations with a solicitor identifying him now existed.

Confronting him at this late stage revealed that I had been gathering evidence against him, and that I was not the “wolf” I had appeared throughout our conversations over the preceding period. A confrontation ten years earlier had nonetheless been a public challenge for him to be put to the test over his non-existent “witchcraft powers.” During the intervening period, I thought I had managed to gain his confidence by appearing neutral and pliant to his games. By playing on his ego, telling him what I sensed he wanted to hear, I tried to draw him out; raising topics purposely to see if he would take the bait. New evidence, however, revealed, despite all these attempts, I still remained high on his list of intended targets. The assistance of the News of the World, especially their legal manager Henry R Douglas, and solicitor John E Payne of Oswald Hickson, Collier and Company, put paid to Farrant’s plan to frame innocent people. He had already colluded with journalist Frank Thorne back in 1977 to try and ruin my reputation, as revealed to me by Farrants then partner Nancy O’Hoski whom he deceived and hurt, but on this occasion Farrant had come thoroughly unstuck. The newspaper was having none of it. The scheme involved framing Anthony Hill with a counterfeit article forged by Farrant in what ostensibly appeared to be Anthony’s hand. The ultimate victim, of course, was me, as I was named throughout the fraudulent article. I played him the taped evidence, told him some of what I knew, and asked him to explain himself. He stood in stony silence. Despite being confronted with this cast iron evidence of yet more deception along the lines of his 1977 collusion, he attempted to deny everything. His pale eyes became downcast. He was visibly shaken. In that moment I recognised his emptiness and also his weakness which no amount of pity would rectify. I told him that he was a charlatan who had once again been found out, and that our meetings were now over. We did meet briefly one last time five years later. This was related solely to him sending a “challenge to a duel” (a facsimile of Farrant’s “challenge” is reproduced in From Satan To Christ, Holy Grail, 1988, page 51) on 21 December 1986.

Following that final meeting, I would write: “The sombre figure of David Farrant can still be seen shuffling through London’s Muswell Hill as the Eighties draw to a close. He occupies a bed-sitting room opposite Highgate Wood where he once shamelessly flaunted his witchcraft. Now stooped and haggard-looking, he dwindles in his own peculiar oblivion.” (From Satan To Christ, Holy Grail, 1988, page 24).

Those who attended the funeral of my dear friend, Diana, included old acquaintances I had not seen for years. Among them was someone I first met four decades earlier; someone I did not at first recognise due to his changed appearance. Anthony greeted me warmly with a handshake before taking his seat in the chapel where I and a priest conducted the service. Afterwards, as groups started to disperse and wander back to their vehicles in various parts of the cemetery, I walked down a lane of tombs with Anthony before bidding him farewell. He told me he was quitting England to live in a sunnier country with his second wife, Lucy.

“So you’re not coming back?” I enquired. “Only to visit,” he answered, adding: “It’s just not the same any more.” Indeed, nothing was quite the same any more in the new century. Anthony’s parents were both deceased and his only sibling had been left the greater portion of an inheritance by his recently departed mother. We walked a little further down that lonely avenue of graves on one of the coldest and dankest days in recent memory. I was struck by the fact that he wore nothing on his head. He must have been freezing and our skin was almost starting to take on the hue of my purple biretta . Despite the cold and solemnity of the occasion, there still remained a warmth from long ago that had returned to embrace this reunion. Someone else would later remark that, even in death, Diana brought old friends together. Things had not always been so warm. Suspicion once lurked due to Anthony cuckolding and even for a while colluding with Farrant. But that was now all in the distant past.

His vehicle was outside the graveyard. We reached the point of departure, and, slowly coming to a halt, turned, faced each other and shook hands. 

Anthony’s grey, watery eyes reflected just how low the temperature had reached on that bleak January day, and I recalled how they once used to contain a glint of mischief and mirth. That was in another era when optimism loomed and the world was young. Now his eyes were sad and serious, as were the times in which we found ourselves. The moment passed. Mouths exhaled more mist as we each struggled to form some semblance of a frozen smile. I waved as Anthony receded into the dismal veil beyond where foreign climes beckoned.