Free Strange Powers by Colin Wilson Page A

particular way; not just daydreaming, but with a kind of calculating determination, like a hunter who is determined to get a certain animal if he has to track it for weeks. Some kind of psychic force seems to come into operation— connected with imagination , just like the trick of turning the paper roundabout—and he may feel certain that he'll achieve his object long before he has any concrete reasons for thinking so.
    Leftwich's power to 'make things happen' is an extension of this. I am inclined to believe that it involves no 'occult' faculty (such as second sight): that it is a power that depends simply on calling upon our 'vital reserves' and abandoning the customary attitude of passivity.
    Leftwich has visited me twice in Cornwall—the second time early in!973. He had finally resigned from his job, bought himself a Commer 'Highwayman' and was prepared to take up his 'life of freedom' at last. He showed us the 'Highwayman', and all its gadgets; these included a generator that, at the touch of a switch, would cause six hundred volts to surge through the bodywork of the vehicle. A sensible precaution, perhaps: no doubt a man who has slept in a house most of his life feels insecure if he parks at the side of the road in some remote part of France—perhaps remembering the fate of the Drummond family... But also typical of Robert Leftwich, with that schoolboy delight in gadgets.
    From my own experience of him, I can vouch that he never seems to get tired—at least, not noticeably. At seven in the morning, as Joy was sleepily switching on the kettle and preparing to get the children's breakfast, Robert would appear outside the kitchen window, as chirpy as if he'd been for a ten-mile walk, looking for shredded wheat and eager to elaborate on some point that he'd overlooked the night before... He also seems to possess the ability to prevent himself from getting cold. I find I need a fairly even temperature; if the room gets cool, I begin to feel chilly around the neck, and need a scarf; if my workroom gets too warm, I have to change my woollen sweater for a cotton one. Robert always seemed to be dressed in the same clothes—a sports jacket, shirt and tie, flannel trousers—and to be unaffected by temperature. He explained that it had struck him one day that when you are embarrassed, you go 'hot all over', and that this power to increase one's body temperature must be natural to man. Ever since that time, he says, he has been able to increase his bodily temperature at will.
    It was during the first visit to Cornwall that I set the tape recorder going, and started asking him questions. What I wanted chiefly was a straightforward biographical outline. The following is a brief summary of what he told me.
    The Leftwich family is basically French, originating in Saint-Sauveur in northern France; the family name was originally De Leftwyche. Since his mother was also French, Robert Leftwich may be regarded as more than 50 per cent Gallic. The family moved to Northwich, where there was, at one time, a Leftwich Hall. On the whole, then, the family 'came down in the world'. Even so, his father, a mathematician and member of the Royal Society, had some distinguished friends, including Sir James Jeans, Sir Arthur Eddington and Sir Charles Boys, the man who 'weighed the earth'. Robert's rather casual relationship with the latter ended when he was eleven or twelve; Sir Charles invited the Leftwich family to his home near Andover. Wandering around the garden, Robert found a pump. Even at this time, he was fascinated by hydraulic devices. He primed the pump with a bucket of water, and worked the handle. A sludgy substance came out. He assumed the pump needed a lot more working before clear water came through, so he went on pumping... In fact, he emptied the liquid manure tanks, and flooded the lawn. Sir Charles wrote Leftwich senior a letter, asking him not to bring his son to the house in future...
    Fortunately, his father was a patient