The Blood Dimmed Tide (14 page)

‘This is the last place I would expect to find her,’ I said truthfully.

‘She was in your bedroom going through your suitcase. When I confronted her, she told me the truth. That she belonged to the Daughters of Erin. They’ve instructed her to keep an eye on you.’ He glared at me as if I had been responsible for bringing out the worst in his fiancée. ‘For months, I had been discounting the rumours about her. However wilful and selfish my fiancée was, I could not believe she would betray her country, her own people.’ His voice lowered to a confidential level. ‘Which is why I have broken off our engagement.’

‘Perhaps you never took the trouble to find out who she really was.’

His face grew pale. He tried to speak but failed.

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Report her to the police. Don’t worry, she won’t be back to disturb you. At least not tonight.’

The door of the gatehouse lay slightly ajar. I stepped inside and locked the door behind me. I felt uneasy. I stood in the hallway and looked into the rooms, listening as if the burglary might still be in progress. The distant sound of crows settling down to roost formed an unruly backdrop to the silence of the house. I went into the bedroom and saw that my suitcase had been emptied. Clothes and books lay strewn across the floor.

By the time I settled to bed my mouth was dry and my chest hurt. To quell my excitement, I unwrapped the bitter cake of hashish and ingested a sizeable amount with a greediness that was completely alien to pleasure. I slid under the covers and heard the restless sound of the sea return. I fell asleep like a shell creature dropping off a rock into a churning ocean, falling through an underwater darkness that flared with a thousand fluttering shapes. The face of Issac gazed up at me with vacant, billiard-ball eyes, and mouthed something, but his words were lost in my ceaseless tumbling.

13

Three of Cups

CAPTAIN Oates experienced his flight from terror as a dreamless passage through derelict mansions, rocky cliffs and gurgling tides, with the dead girl’s haunting breath always on his neck. He spent wild mornings stumbling over rock pools and under steep cliffs, or in the hinterland of overgrown estates, searching for a new hiding place. He still had his wits about him, whatever people thought, but his mental apparatus had served him poorly. He realised that now. Straightforward military intelligence was useless against the adversary he faced. God might have been of assistance, but he had turned his back on Him, after witnessing the sight of soldiers’ bodies stacked like countless sandbags in the trenches of Verdun and the Somme.

Nevertheless, he had almost cried out in prayer when he first saw the ghostly figure of Rosemary O’Grady, gasping and struggling as if she were drowning in air. From the start, he had tried to rationalise what was happening. The spirits are people like ourselves, a housemaid with the second sight had once told him. Earthbound souls who believe they are still alive, but are condemned to repeat over and over again the painful moments of their death. They should be treated like guests and offered hospitality and sympathy.

He had grown used to the ghost’s presence, and that of her companion spirits, the swaying forms of their bodies, their anguished cries, and the wailing drift of their voices as they cried out his name, driving him out each morning to the sea-whipped extremities of the Sligo coastline. There his mind took refuge in the sound of the drowning surf.

It frightened him greatly that he was able to feel their deathly cold hands. He had run up against them in his panic the previous night; light, delicate hands, but substantial all the same, and ice-cold, pushing him to the side as he tore through the darkness. That night had been the worst in a succession of cruel hauntings that seemed designed to test his fragile sanity. It had finally dispelled the lingering possibility that the whole thing might be taking place inside his head.

He had sat huddled over a fire in a single room cabin at the back end of an overgrown estate, when, shortly after midnight, the wind picked up and rattled through the cabin with the sound of rotten bones knocking together. And then something fragrant and sweet hung in the air, along with the laughing sound of young women’s voices. But what women would be abroad at such a time in the night, or in such a place? He sidled to the left of the fire, where an angled mirror gave him a view of the door, allowing him to see who was entering without them noticing him. Immediately, he pulled his head back. The ghostly faces of several young women had appeared upon the mirror’s surface, their eyes darting in all directions, as though they too were using it as a window to peer into the room.

He lay down and pretended to be asleep, watching with apprehension through his half-closed eyes.

Slowly, a group of cloaked figures filled the room like vapours, hovering over his prone body. The sound of their whispering made his blood chill.

‘If he’s guilty, he must be punished.’

‘Rosemary must be avenged.’

‘Dear Captain, do not resist.’

‘Is he trying to hide from us in his sleep?’

‘He dare not run again.’

‘He is wicked to the core. I can see it in his face. Wicked and guilty.’

‘Then let’s trap him in this nightmare. Paralyse him in his sleep.’

‘Make him one of us.’

‘Let’s take him now. Sweet man, it is time to come with us.’

He was so overwhelmed with fear that he dared not draw a breath. Their voices were low and seductive, but cruelty rang through their sweetness with the harsh clang of metal. He thought helplessly of escape but at the same time the tenderness of their voices made him burn to stay.

Their whispering stopped, and then he heard a commotion in the air, a frantic beating of sticks and something softer like feathered wings, closing in around his head. Then the prodding began, so sharp it felt like a series of bites. On his head, and then his limbs and chest. He heard the sound of laughter, female and exultant. Half-mad with fear, he squirmed on the floor. When the prodding became too intense to bear, he jumped to his feet and brushed by their soft forms, feeling their cold hands propel him out into the darkness. He fled into the night, running for his life and his reason.

‘Give me the sea as a hiding-place,’ he kept saying to himself as the darkness enclosed him. How else was he going to survive these haunted nights?

14

King of Cups

WITH no other mode of transport than a rusted bicycle, I gave myself more than an hour to get to the railway station on time, but convoys of army vehicles had blocked the roads, and I was rerouted a mile around the town of Sligo. I rode through narrow streets packed with people and traffic. The atmosphere was weighted with dread and expectation. Rain glittered on the Union flags which flew tirelessly, decking every flagpole in sight, practically blindfolding the shops and gaunt-faced townhouses. It was market day, and pushing against me was a mixed bag of farmers with thick beards and smoking pipes, cattle dealers with shrewd dark faces, and a regiment of sales girls swaying to work in long black skirts. Even the statue of Queen Victoria, sitting on her plinth in Market Place, seemed a challenge to my presence. In the main square, a band of RIC men posted notices warning the Daughters of Erin that if they launched any further operations, serious military reprisals would be made. The notices ended with the slogan
God Save the King
.

I swerved on and off the shoulder of the cobbled streets dodging old women selling creels of wizened potatoes and churns of golden butter. The throng of horses and carts came to a halt for cattle and sheep, but trundled over flocks of banty hens. A milk-wagon horse expired outside the station, causing more delay, and then a bicycle transporting a tower of freshly baked bread collapsed in front of me.

Anxious at being late, I bounded into the station, aware of the attention I was receiving from a group of men in belted raincoats and soft hats huddled at the station doors. I assumed they were undercover police checking for wanted men and women travelling in and out of the town.

Fortunately, the train from Galway had just arrived. Among the disembarking passengers, I spied a man with a greatcoat which spread like wings as he stepped from his carriage. A soft black sombrero shaded his angular features and a voluminous silk tie flowed from his collar. His trousers dragged over his long feet as he strutted up and down the platform. In his wake stepped a woman with a clear, intelligent face.

Even before greeting him and smelling his familiar odour of carbolic soap, medicine and old books, I was seized by a deep tug of loyalty and tenderness to my mentor, William Butler Yeats, which was quickly replaced by anger and self-pity that he had left me to my own devices in such dangerous territory. A few days previously, I had received a telegram that he and Georgie had travelled to Ireland and were spending a night or two with Lady Gregory at Castle Coole in Galway before making their onward journey to Sligo. Their arrival could not have come soon enough for me. I embraced him warmly on the busy platform.

‘I was afraid I might die,’ announced Yeats, ‘if I left it another day or even an hour to return to this wild coast.’ His nose ran in the wind but he appeared oblivious to it. A group of tired-looking soldiers shuffled by in grey uniforms, making his habit and gait appear even more eccentric.

Georgie stood at his side like a silent guard. ‘Willie has had the cold but is much better today,’ she advised me. ‘He was worried you might have made contact with his ghost and secured its release.’

Some of the crowd stopped to stare at Yeats and his young wife, as though they were royalty visiting their raffish kingdom of rain. On the adjoining platform, another train snorted with steam, anxious to leave. The carriages rocked as passengers boarded. The press of bodies, enthusiasm and noise threatened to swallow us up.

‘I trust you’ve had a comfortable stay at Lissadell,’ shouted Yeats.

‘To tell you the truth,’ I confessed, ‘this supernatural quest is like a fever. Everyone treats me as though I’m contagious. I’ve found Sligo to be one of the most hostile places I’ve ever visited.’

The wheeze of the locomotive engine and its cloud of hissing steam drowned my words. In any case, Yeats did not appear to be listening. The tide of embarkation had captivated his attention.

‘What a wonderful sight,’ he declared. ‘No longer do I feel like a shadow. Or an exile. In London, everyone pretends to be living. But we’re all frauds, hiding behind our stacks of books in the British Library.’ He turned round and surveyed the throng with the look of a schoolboy who’d been detained too long from play by his teacher. ‘I’ve lost contact with Irish crowds, with ordinary people. I’ve lost touch with the forces working for Ireland’s freedom.’

Georgie and I dragged Yeats along the platform. Behind us, a porter struggled with their substantial baggage, a collection of portmanteaus , boxes and trunks.

‘How did you spend your time in Galway?’ I asked and immediately saw some of the light depart their eyes.

‘By your disappointed expressions, I suspect your experiences were less than fascinating.’

Georgie spoke for him. ‘We sat at countless séances in servants’ quarters, listening to blind old women say in Irish that the dead do not yet know they are dead.’

Yeats’ words were tinged with a note of petulant complaint. ‘Unfortunately, gathering evidence that the soul lives on demands many lines of investigation. And many encounters with terrible frauds.’

‘Some mediums try to fool the world,’ I said. ‘Others just fool themselves.’

‘But I intend to put some distance between myself and this country’s charlatans.’ He stared at me, eyes glinting. ‘I have come straight to the source. What have you been up to, Charles?’

‘Peering into coffins and the minds of deranged Irish men and women. Do all your compatriots suffer from a monomania?’

‘Only the interesting ones.’ His shining eyes lighted on me and then darted away. ‘What about the scenery?’

‘I used to think I was a dedicated Romantic, but I’ve seen enough windswept beaches, brooding cliffs and enchanted forests to last me a lifetime.’

‘Any sign of our ghost?’

I hesitated for a moment. The departing train, packed now, shuddered and began to slide along the platform.

‘A few clues and scattered traces,’ I mumbled.

‘Do you believe her soul has returned?’

‘I’m an occult investigator. What I believe or not is irrelevant.’

Yeats nodded as if in agreement, but his attention was distracted by the sight of a new-looking cast-iron lamp post beside the station house. He became very heated on the subject of municipal lighting and the lack of ornament to the lamp posts that were springing up all over Ireland.

‘A curse on the municipal planning office,’ he declared. ‘What is the point of all this lighting, if everything it shines upon is ugly?’ He stared about him ruefully. ‘There was once a fine avenue of lime trees planted here. A curse to anyone who cuts down a tree or raises a building planned in a government office.’ Then he grabbed my wrist and looked at my watch. ‘It’s time we thought about dinner. There will be eggs and fresh butter at the hotel, but I wonder will we have meat. I shall insist that our ghost-catcher should dine on the finest roast beef.’

We progressed through the crowd in fits and starts. Everyone seemed to be in our way. I spied a familiar figure leaning into a doorway that provided little cover, a tall, sinister sketch of a man with a black cap and a belted raincoat that flapped in the stiff Atlantic breeze like a warning flag. I felt a sudden stab of anxiety at the thought that I had become Wolfe Marley’s latest assignment. I fought the sudden impulse to flee to the nearest library and bury my head in some tome on ancient civilisations, anything to hide away from this world of intrigue and constant surveillance. I glanced back when we were a little further down the street, and caught his gaze in the reflection of a shop window. He watched me intensely, as though I were a thief mingling with innocents.

When we arrived at the hotel Yeats and Georgie went up to their room and did not come down for lunch. I ate at the table alone, and after a further hour of waiting went upstairs in search of them. I knocked on the door of their room but there was no answer. I pushed it open. The dishes of the lunch they had ordered lay on the table, most of the food untouched. A cloud of incense wafted from the adjoining bedroom. Through the half-opened door, I made out the shape of Yeats kneeling in front of his wife. On the floor lay many loose pages of writing. His hands fluttered over the leaves, searching for a word or phrase. Now and again, he stared up at Georgie with pursed lips, his parchment cheeks glowing with two red spots of excitement.

I stepped closer, not making a sound. There was something different about Georgie. An attentive wife, usually she and Yeats were in constant conversation. Even while engrossed in books, they would regularly stop to read each other favourite phrases and passages, like-minded companions on a quest towards spiritual and intellectual enlightenment.

Sitting supine in an armchair that afternoon, she seemed to belong to no one, not even herself. Her hair had been untied, and fell about her shoulders. The skin on her temples shone translucently, and her eyelids were closed, the long lashes fluttering as though she had surrendered herself to some sort of trance. A page full of writing fell from her hand. Yeats quickly placed a blank one in front of her and she began to fill it with a strange jerking scrawl. While one hand wrote, the other sat on her lap, opening and closing. She was whispering to herself in a voice soft and without any form of emphasis, in the tone of someone reciting a text by rote. At times her writing switched directions, looping backwards in lines that ran off the page. Something was being written through her; I stared in fascination. It was the first time I had witnessed the remarkable practice of automatic writing, a phenomenon that investigators believed was either a feat of free association or a mysterious communion with the spirit world.

Yeats did not notice me as I entered the room, so engrossed was he in studying her handwriting. I lifted up a handful of stray pages and read a tangle of riddles, promises and entreaties interspersed with references to a collection of ancient mythologies. I found it impossible to decipher any meaning in this Byzantine puzzle of words, but I noticed how Yeats raked through the scattered pages, practically grovelling at the feet of his beloved, as though she held the crown of his poetic genius.

Midway through some sort of astrological prophecy, Georgie stopped speaking and writing. Silence filled the room. Yeats stared at her with the look of a man abandoned in a labyrinth without a map.

A light breeze wafted through the curtains of the window, unsettling the pages on the floor. The air smelt of the sea. A sheet fluttered against my foot. I picked it up and read what seemed to be a stream of gibberish. Then I noticed something else. At first, I thought I was mistaken. When I was convinced I was not, I folded the sheet and slipped it into my breast pocket without Yeats noticing. Its style closely resembled another sample of handwriting that was fresh in my memory.

‘No use having a theory if it tires you,’ intoned Georgie, her eyelids still closed. ‘The fatigue is the safeguard against excess.’ Then she began snoring softly.

‘Are you alright?’ I asked Yeats.

He rose to his feet, waving the incense smoke away from his face. ‘Mr Adams, you must tell no one about what you see before you. Since you and I last met, Georgie has been blessed with a stream of supernatural messages, which come in the form of automatic writing. This afternoon, I have been priming the pump with the most difficult spiritual questions.’

He sat down suddenly.

‘You don’t look well.’

‘Indigestion.’

‘From what?’ I glanced at their uneaten food.

‘The supernatural world. Georgie has filled thirty-two pages this afternoon alone.’ He picked himself up, unable to hide a smile of satisfaction on his weary face. ‘I never imagined that my young wife would become a conduit for hidden truths from the unseen world.’ He lowered his voice in a confidential tone. ‘Not to mention a fount of metaphors for my poetry.’

I was stunned. Here was evidence beyond doubt that Yeats had successfully switched muses from the untouchable Maud Gonne to his sophisticated city-born wife. Yeats had made Gonne into a living legend with his poetry, the ‘perfect beauty’ with ‘cloud-pale eyelids, dream-dimmed eyes’. He had dared to dream that she might marry him; on several occasions he had proposed to her, and she had made the excuse that there were secret reasons she could never marry, before trampling on his ardour by marrying Major John MacBride, a nationalist hero in Ireland. However, Maud’s rejections had not prevented Yeats from arranging an astral marriage with her spirit, and in lectures to fellow Golden Dawn members, he claimed to have met astrally with Gonne during sleep, once appearing to her as a great serpent.

‘Come into my study,’ he said, leading me back into the main room. Any space in which Yeats emptied his trunk of books and manuscripts he called his study.

‘Let me offer you a glass of wine from the Pope’s own vineyard at Avignon.’ He beckoned me to an armchair and filled two glasses from a bottle he had ordered from the hotel cellars. He passed me a glass and sat in the armchair opposite. Raindrops twitching upon the windowpane filtered a sombre light across his face. I recounted my adventures since we had last met, including the sea journey to Ireland and my midnight meeting with Maud Gonne.