The Blood Dimmed Tide (23 page)

‘What about the swimmers with ropes?’

‘Have you ever stopped to consider how difficult the business of smuggling is? The sea is the worst criminal of all. I wrecked several yachts along this coast not to mention the loss of countless barrels of merchandise. I discovered the only safe way to bring in the contraband was to have swimmers tow the barrels in on a rope. Even then, I lose a third of my bounty. The tide that rises through these tunnels has sucked away a fortune in brandy.’ He crouched in front of me like a dog about to bare its fangs. His men drew closer, bristling with violence.

‘You’re no longer a policeman,’ I accused him. ‘You’re a smuggler and a murderer.’

My words were cut off by an oil rag stuffed into my mouth, which forced my tongue down my throat. I gagged as someone pulled a sack over my head. The smell of oil stung my eyes and made my breathing laboured.

‘Unfortunately for you, we can’t stop now,’ said his voice, the only firm thing in the darkness. ‘This is our prime time, our window of opportunity. What do you think will happen when the insurrectionists rise up and overthrow British Rule? What will happen to the Irish Constabulary then? Where will we go? The War Office will abandon us to our fates in a country run by priests and peasants. The contents of these barrels are our pension, our security against a hostile future.’

I writhed against my captors. I kicked back with my legs and struck my head against a sharp rock. Then everything went black.

When I returned to consciousness, I found myself trapped in a tiny cavity with only enough space for my curled up body. I held my breath and wriggled my shoulders, and the tiny cavity swung into motion, rocking back and forth. I was floating in some sort of barrel or tub. I called out but no one answered. I listened to the slow-paced sound of waves washing against the sides, solitary as the tolling of a bell, and lay still waiting for God only knew what.

25

Queen of Cups

YEATS was unable to remember for how long, how many hours or days he had spent in the hotel bedroom, recovering from his illness. His mind floated away from his body and wandered through the dirty side streets of Sligo town and out to vantage points along the wild coast. He spied the wreckage of great estates, laurel and clematis running with abandon across the once flourishing gardens. He saw unbridled horses galloping across dawn-bleached beaches, young women full of anger and longing sinking into the deathless foam. He watched as phantoms that could neither touch nor hear nor see led him through secret tunnels of churning water to the dreaded gateway between this world and the next.

His mind drifted in and out of sleep. A weary tenacity swept him on like a swimmer too weak to fight the current. His mind flitted through the events of the past month, sorting through the countless gestures and expressions he had observed. He kept imagining himself returning exhausted through the deserted streets of Sligo, to find Georgie waiting for him like a guard at the threshold of a darkened room, her arms crossed, a frown on her lips. A powerful wind rushed through his mind and the room filled with fluttering pages. ‘Whose wings are these?’ she asked. But it was only the inescapable pages, falling and rising between them, pages crowded with words, smudged and urgent and full of wretched spelling mistakes, pages like the state of his mind, bursting with rage and frustration.

When he switched on the bedside lamp and sat up in bed, he could still see her face and page upon page of her writing flash before his half-closed eyes like flickering images from a magic lantern. He was so agitated he could not sleep, and his eyes, desperate to go on searching for the meaning behind the words, left his weakened body and floated down into an abyss of lurking terrors, half-human beasts, unborn children and screaming birds, all whirling in a gyre beneath a stormy sky that resembled a monstrous black rose.

Later in the night, he was aware of Georgie slipping quietly into the bedroom. The dark illuminations of his mind had vanished, leaving him with the sobering realisation that it was not the spirit world that had dragged him back to Sligo, but the influence of a more mortal hand. Someone a lot closer to home. With this insight, he felt the silver cords binding him to the ghost of Rosemary O’Grady fall away one by one. The letter addressed to him was a piece of pure fiction. A fragment of ridiculous fantasy.

He could see the motivation behind it, now. At one stroke, the letter-writer had swept him out of reach of the Zeppelin bombers, as well as the clutches of Gonne’s daughter Iseult and the entire London literary and spiritualist scene. She had cleverly whetted his appetite for spiritual investigation as well as pulling on his emotional heartstrings. She had manipulated him completely.

All his feelings of insecurity about his marriage resurrected themselves. How little he had learned about life in his fifty-two years, to allow a twenty-five-year-old woman to deceive him on so many levels. But then, he thought, modern women mature much more quickly than their male counterparts. Georgie might not spend sleepless nights pondering metaphysical problems, but the light of wisdom shone clearly from her face. Perhaps life would be much easier if he simply allowed himself to be guided by that light.

He broke the silence. ‘My ghost-catcher tells me there are no ghosts, Georgie. Just you and me.’

A load fell from his shoulders immediately, and he decided to show all his cards when she didn’t reply. ‘It was you that sent me Rosemary’s letter, wasn’t it?’

He felt her stiffen. Clearly this was the question she least wanted to hear. She had been counting on his natural discretion to prevent him ever mentioning the subject.

‘Please don’t talk,’ she urged him. ‘You’ll tire yourself out. I can see the colour has completely left your cheeks.’

He savoured the small victory her response had delivered. Minutes before, he had been filled with the insecurity of a husband confronted by a woman who was more like a stranger than a wife. For her part, Georgie seemed to grow more vulnerable. She fidgeted distractedly with the edge of the blanket, the colour rising to her cheeks. For a moment, he feared he might have pushed her too far.

‘Is this what you’ve been thinking about during your fever?’ She talked as if she was trying to gain time.

‘Yes.’

They both sat in bed, saying nothing for a while. They listened to the wind blowing fiercely against the window pane. Somehow the remorseless wind was reason enough for them to continue lying together.

‘I’m not ashamed of what I’ve done,’ she said in a calm voice. ‘I was working to save my marriage.’

‘Is that meant to make me feel ashamed? Are you suggesting I am the one to blame for this tower of deceit?’ Any sense of satisfaction he had felt suddenly vanished. ‘If your aim is to shame me to make yourself feel better, then you are wasting your time.’

‘I wasn’t the only one who deceived you.’

‘Who else then? Who else had a hand in this mess of lies?’ He thought of Maud Gonne, Iseult, Charles Adams, the other members of the Golden Dawn.

‘You deceived yourself.’ She waited for him to absorb what she had said. ‘But don’t you see how necessary it all was? You merited a great lie, one designed to bring you back to Sligo, where your country and its people need you.’

‘And what about the automatic writing? Is that a complete fabrication, too?’

‘After we were married, you wouldn’t speak to me. You threw yourself into your books and letter-writing. I had to express myself somehow.’

‘By all means, a woman should express herself.’

‘But you made it impossible. Your ghosts and your past loves oppressed me. Marriage oppressed me. I was in dread of losing my identity. I needed some form of expression.’

‘You should have articulated yourself in verse or prose. Kept your feelings on record, if only for ourselves.’

‘I was afraid of your criticism.’

‘I would have understood.’

‘No. It is so different for you. You had the good fortune to be born a man. You have the automatic freedom to express yourself, without taboos. You can write whatever you want to write, say whatever you want to say. When you married me, I became the wife of a great poet. I was voiceless, a new bride trapped in a roomful of old ghosts. No wonder then, that I made them speak for me.’

Yeats sank his head back on the pillow, and stared at the ceiling with the look of a man watching his cherished dreams dissolve like mist into the darkness. How easy it is to be deluded by the wonders of the imagination, he thought to himself. He pulled the sheet up to his chin and closed his eyes. He was aware of Georgie settling down beside him, following the same sequence of movements as every other night, smoothing the bed sheet and plumping up her pillow, loosening her dark hair and placing the pins on the bedside table. He felt her seek out the familiar hollow of her pillow. Neither of them spoke for what seemed a long time.

‘Willie?’ She reached out to him suddenly.

‘Yes?’ He held her hand.

‘Am I demented?’

‘No more than any other human, I would say.’

They lay side by side, holding each other, until the drifting irrationality of their waking life dissolved into the cold sanity of sleep.

26

Page of Cups

GRIMES followed his men back up the tunnel, reluctant to leave, a man contentedly reflecting upon the end of another dangerous but profitable mission. It had been a good night’s smuggling rounded off with a satisfactory conclusion to the problems caused by the prying Englishman. He recalled the pathetic sight of Adams’ limp body as he was sealed inside the barrel, deriving a grim amusement from the watery fate that awaited him. He stopped suddenly, and crouched low in the tunnel. The sight of a strange light drifting against the cave wall had interrupted his self-congratulatory thoughts.

‘What’s that?’ asked one of his men. ‘Some sort of signal?’

Grimes snuffed out his lamp with his fingers and ordered his men to do the same. They waited as the light grew closer. A figure in plain clothes was illuminated. A man with a black cap and a long belted raincoat approached them. It was Marley, looking disappointed, as though he’d arrived too late at a much anticipated sporting contest. He was surrounded by other men in plainclothes, more British agents. They gathered around the smugglers quietly.

‘Where is our ghost-catcher?’

‘Floating out to sea.’

‘Like Captain Oates?’

‘Yes. He’s found what he came looking for. His trip to Ireland is complete.’

‘That is disappointing. I had hoped he would experience the full effects of the British justice system in this troubled land.’

The cave walls sighed with the echo of a wave rippling in from the sea.

‘What do you want?’ Grimes’ eyes glittered.

‘One less murder. I want to take Adams to Sligo gaol where he will face a summary trial for treason.’

If Grimes was surprised, he did not show it in his voice.

‘What do I get in return?’

‘The address of a house.’

‘Whose house?’

‘Maud Gonne and the Daughters of Erin.’

I lingered in a suspended state of shock, between amnesia and agony, shaking with the coldness of the water that leaked through the barrel’s cracks, tossing and turning within its creaking walls like a man falling a long way. The more I moved, the more the barrel rolled with the waves so that it felt as though I was floating far out to sea, but I could still hear the reassuring hiss of surf pounding upon a nearby beach. The water was stingingly salty, rising all the time around my cramped body, and I fought hard to find a breathing space. As each moment passed, it took more and more effort and concentration to get a breath. I was struggling to keep my chin out of the water when, above the grating of the barrel against the rocks, I heard what sounded like a commotion, voices shouting from somewhere nearby.

A muffled sound and a shaft of piercing daylight from above told me that someone had opened the barrel lid. I twisted round and fell through the opening into the sea, my arms still tied behind my back. A trail of air bubbles exploded from my mouth as I went under. Then a hand came through the water and pulled me by the neck back to the surface. More hands joined in, dragging me onto the beach. The hood fell off me, but I was so busy struggling for each wretched breath that I could not identify who my saviours were.

When I had finished coughing up seawater, I found myself lying on a flat beach under a calm sky. The sea was an expanse of unruffled blue, so silky it seemed composed of air rather than water. Waves rose and fell with the faintest of slaps upon the beach. Marley stood over my drenched body as though I was the reluctant subject of a complicated water ritual.

‘I hate to dash your spirits Mr Adams, but I’m not the rescue party you’d hoped for.’ His face looked genuinely sorrowful as he produced a pair of handcuffs. ‘I’ve waited a month for this opportunity.’

‘You could wait a while longer,’ I replied, rising to a sitting position, my body still shaking from the cold water.

‘It’s too late for you. I’ve come across men like you before, never knowing how deeply in the mire they’re stuck.’

Grimes and his men stood behind him like a group of harmless spectators, as though there had been no violence that morning, as though they were out for a gentle stroll on the beach.

‘You knew about the smuggling, too?’

‘Better than that. I helped orchestrate it. Why wait for a conspiracy to be hatched when you can create one yourself? I work for the British Admiralty. We spy on everyone, including the Irish Constabulary. We’ve known about the smuggling for some time, but we’ve tolerated it, even encouraged it, because it helps us achieve our aims.’

‘Which are what? To break the law and murder innocent people.’

‘To weed out misfits and troublemakers like yourself. Like Rosemary O’Grady and Captain Oates. In the greater terms of war and peace, smuggling alcohol and tea is acceptable, but smuggling weapons and plotting a rebellion is not. Which is why we tolerate Inspector Grimes’ little hobby.’

‘Does that mean tolerating murder, too?’

‘Inspector Grimes is a patriot, in spite of his murderous tendencies. Besides, we could never let it be known that he was involved in criminal activities. Think of the negative propaganda, the loss of trust in his Majesty’s forces that would ensue.’

‘Then why rescue me from the barrel?’

‘Just taking care of the loose ends. The murder of another Englishman might attract too much attention to this part of the coast.’ He placed the handcuffs around my wrists. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Adams. It’s time to give up the ghost. In fact, it’s time to give up everything.’

Men with guns half-dragged, half-pushed me into the back of a motor car, the leather seats of which were surprisingly warm and comfortable in the spring sunlight. Marley climbed in beside me, while Grimes and the other policemen crowded into the back of a lorry which we followed back to Sligo along the coast road. I tried to console myself with the thought that at least I had discovered how Rosemary’s body came to be washed ashore in a coffin. It was a fate I had narrowly avoided myself. I could have ended up a corpse in a barrel of water, I thought ruefully, rather than one hanging from the end of a rope in the courtyard of Sligo’s notorious gaol.

‘First I want to take you on a little detour,’ said Marley, as the car swung into a lane sunken between tall thorn hedges. The lorry rattled ahead of us until we came to a stately house overgrown with creepers. I watched as the policemen bundled out of the lorry and forced their way through the house’s red door. Gunshots rang out.

‘I warned the bastards not to use live rounds,’ cursed Marley. More gunfire and the sound of glass breaking echoed from the house, which I now recognised as the address Clarissa had taken me to on the night I met Gonne and her Daughters of Erin. The handcuffs forced me to sit hunched over, but I was able to crane my neck and look out the side window.

I watched with a sickening dread as the policemen tore the place upside down. Garments and pamphlets fluttered from the windows. A fire broke out in an upstairs room. I leaned back as the reflection of yellow and orange flames intensified across the car window. The sounds of wood splintering erupted from within the building. I listened intently to the trapped sounds of the fire, fearful of detecting a female shout or cry, but heard none. The policemen found a stash of poteen and were soon roaring drunk, waving the bottles wildly in the air. One of them staggered through the red door wearing a veil he had torn from a religious statue. The urge to add feminine touches to their uniforms was one of the less violent side-effects of their drunkenness. They discovered a pile of haberdashery and were soon dancing around the house with corsets over their jackets. Oddly, there was no sign of Gonne or any of her female militia.

Marley was scrutinising me closely. ‘Don’t worry, Mr Adams, your friends are quite safe.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I tipped them off before saving you from that barrel.’

‘Why?’

‘Because we belong to the same side.’ He ordered the driver to take off. My last view of the house was of Grimes prowling the grounds with his gun and a look of frustration on his reddened face.

‘Gonne works for the British Admiralty?’

‘No. Quite the contrary. She’s a true Republican, an evangelist in that regard. A woman of selfless character, even though she operates outside the normal rules of society.’ He leaned back comfortably in the seat. ‘When I first met Gonne at the Abbey theatre, I thought to myself, there’s the woman for me. But I wasn’t the only one to fall for her charms. You saw her take over that mail boat. Every man on board was enthralled by her presence. If she wanted to enlist you to her cause, she would have had you. If she has a weakness, it is that she cares nothing for men. That is her only flaw.’

The motor car headed back along the coast.

‘You should have come to me with your suspicions and spared yourself a brush with death,’ said Marley. ‘Don’t worry, we’re going to put a stop to that Ulster bastard Grimes.’

Maud might have been a professional in the art of disguise, but I realised I was now in the hands of a true expert at subterfuge.

‘There are many of us helping the Republican cause, working in the shadows,’ continued Marley. ‘I was on the mail boat to help Maud’s safe passage to Ireland. We came to Sligo to hatch a conspiracy plot.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Maud travelled to Sligo so that the Admiralty might believe a German submarine was due to make landfall soon along the coast. In fact, the actual submarine was supposed to land much further south, near Galway. I informed the British Admiralty office that the plan was underway, and waited for Grimes to detect the suspicious activities of the Daughters of Erin along the beaches because we wanted the army to focus its attention here, rather than in Galway. At first, I couldn’t understand why he didn’t collect the clues in triumph and proclaim to his superiors that he had uncovered plans for a German invasion.’

‘So Gonne came here to wait for a submarine that did not exist?’

‘Yes. A ghost submarine if you like. Men have died over less.’

‘However, Grimes did the very opposite of what we expected. He advised the Admiralty that the plot was a diversion. He guessed that the red herrings which had been laid were precisely that – a false trail. What we didn’t know was that the
raison d’être
of Grimes’ life is smuggling. Every piece of contraband that lands on this shore does so with his permission. He knows every cove and smuggler’s path and has them operating when the conditions are right. The last thing he wanted was the place saturated with soldiers looking for a submarine.’

I stared at Marley, trying to fathom why he was telling me all this. I concluded that he was too much in control of the situation to be lying.

The motor car swung round the coast road, and we suddenly found ourselves watching a startling mob of horsewomen tumble down the hillside. There were cart-horses, ploughing horses, donkeys, and ponies of all sizes and descriptions, mounted by women and girls in black rags and tatters, coats, shawls and fluttering cloaks. Some rode on saddles, others none, some had leather-like reins while others made do with straw ropes. They rode from hiding places in the high ground around the cliffs, and at first sight of the car came galloping down the hill-side in an avalanche, yelling, shrieking and cheering, knocking each other over, and jumping the ditch onto the narrow road with such galloping haste that many of them were sent across the road and into the bog land on the other side. However, enough remained on the road to form a thick cordon around the motor.

Marley’s face remained impassive as he unlocked my handcuffs.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked in confusion as the horses knocked against the car, heaving it from side to side.

Marley spoke almost to himself in wonderment, ‘Who’d have thought a secret society of young women, their blood vessels bursting with the urge to procreate, would prove such an effective ambush party.’

He removed a folder from his coat and opened it before me.

‘I am entrusting you with this important task, Mr Adams, because you have two advantages over me. The first is that you are an Englishman, which in the eyes of the authorities makes you a more credible witness. The second is your daft obsession with ghosts, which oddly makes you more politically reliable. I want you to present this evidence to the judge who is due to open Clarissa Carty’s murder trial this afternoon. He and the solicitors representing the prosecution and defence are all from Dublin and trustworthy. This is our best opportunity to have Grimes convicted as a criminal.’

He handed me the folder and I glanced through its contents.

‘What do they mean?’

‘You thought you were sent here to investigate a ghost. Instead, you’ve helped uncover a ruthless smuggling ring. This is a documentary record of Grimes’ activities over the past month, including copies of boat ownership certificates. If the authorities search the boats they’ll find evidence of smuggling.’

My hands were numb from the handcuffs and I struggled to sift through the folder.

‘Clarissa told me you found Rosemary’s journal. In it, she catalogued the movement of his boats, the amount of contraband, and the nights that the smuggling took place.’ He pointed to a thin piece of brown paper. ‘Here are notes from Sligo’s harbourmaster. They detail how Grimes’ boats sailed in the direction of Blind Sound on the nights Rosemary and Captain Oates were killed.’