The Blood Dimmed Tide (19 page)

‘Is everything alright?’ I asked.

‘Do I look alright?’

‘You don’t sound too worse for wear.’ I enjoyed the comical sight of the celebrated poet and dandy upside down in a ditch full of mud and dandelions.

‘Just smelling the delightful hedgerow flowers,’ he said, picking himself up.

He looked a little shaky so we changed mounts, my horse being the more restful of the two. A short while later, we met Grimes and his men emptying the contents of the barrels into a road-side stream. The policemen had been working hard. Their beards were matted with sweat, their uniforms covered in dust and straw, evidence that they had been rummaging deep in hidden corners and crevices. Behind them, a tall lean figure stood urinating into the hedge. The yellow stream sprayed over foaming branches of whitethorn blossom. The figure turned and did up his buttons. It was Wolfe Marley, his collar raised higher than usual against the fresh mountain winds.

‘What are you searching for?’ inquired Yeats.

‘Barrels of buttermilk,’ said Grimes.

‘Why the show of strength?’

‘Because they belong to the devil.’

Marley grinned. ‘Inspector Grimes is an Ulster evangelical. To the true Bible Protestant, the devil’s buttermilk is whiskey and porter.’

‘We’re rounding up illegal contraband and smugglers,’ explained Grimes, his eyes burning with the fire of the zealot. ‘The coves and creeks of this coast are ideal for smuggling. On moonless nights, a train of ponies climb the local cliffs laden with gallons of brandy and chests of tea. The contraband is concealed throughout the country in run-down houses or hidden in haystacks. Sometimes buried in graves, painted black and disguised as rocks, or dug into holes in gardens and meadows.’

The Inspector examined the horses carefully. I could see his eyes searching for illicit goods, hidden weapons, a secret stash of brandy. His eyes lighted on the wooden instrument case strapped to Yeats’ saddle. Exhibit ‘A’ were the words about to form on his lips.

‘We carry no smuggled goods,’ said Yeats. ‘And have declared our dutiable merchandise. Good day to you.’

He squeezed his horse through the policemen. Marley and Grimes stepped back quickly. They watched us intensely as though convinced we were wrong-doers, as though we might be loaded with a supernatural cargo that could not be confiscated.

We drove the horses over haggard bog land scarred with turf-diggers’ trenches. A few dead trees raised their heads like the antlers of tussling stags. We trotted to the crest of a hill from which we could see the silver strand and black cliffs of Blind Sound hovering in a sea mist. Nothing moved in the soaked landscape. Yeats’ face looked exhausted, shot through with the fatigue of the previous evening’s spiritual trials. He hunched forward as if about to nod off to sleep.

‘Tell me, is Georgie aware of what happens during a séance?’ I asked.

‘No.’ His answer was curt. After a few paces, he elaborated. ‘While the spirits’ critical powers are awake, hers sleep. She is quite literally a medium, the conduit through which the spirit guides deliver their instructions.’

‘Instructions?’

Yeats flinched. ‘Yes.’

‘I thought their messages were a font of metaphors for your poetry, the foundation of your philosophy on the afterlife.’

‘Yes. But, unfortunately, the spirits have proved highly inefficient,’ he said ruefully. ‘Three-quarters of what they deliver is devoted to matters so personal it is completely unusable in any book of philosophy or poetry. At least one that will pass the censor’s eye. When I press them on intellectual matters, they tell me I am not yet ready to know the truth. They say it will take time.’

‘How long?’

‘A thousand years,’ he said with a despairing sigh. ‘In the meantime they are strangely preoccupied with the marital bed. In fact, if they were alive I’d suspect them of being avid proponents of the theories of Marie Stopes.’ Yeats’ gaunt throat twitched a bitter laugh that never reached his lips.

The horses stopped and scuffed their hooves on a narrow bridge over a stream running wild between black rocks. The play of shadow and reflection agitated the animals. They sidled nervously. Yeats opted for a few calming words of poetry, reciting several times ‘Smooth flow the waves, the zephyrs gently play’, until we were able to steer the animals across. Unfortunately, he was unable to cure himself of a similar affliction. The note of protest in his voice expanded.

‘After the first few dazzling days, when great truths seemed to emerge from their messages, the negative spirits began to take over the séances. And then our marriage bed.’ The horses stopped unexpectedly, ears twitching. Then they moved on.

‘For instance, at a particular time of the month, they order us to make love twice in a certain position, so that a child might be conceived. They have promised me a boy, a reincarnation of a Butler ancestor, as long as I keep satisfying Georgie. As long as I love her and don’t leave her. As long as I stay with her and ignore the distractions of Maud and her daughter Iseult.’

I had seen Georgie furtively reading reports on Marie Stopes’ research in the hotel sitting room. Her theories stressed the husband’s duty to give his wife sexual satisfaction. Yeats was too much of a scholar, I feared, to ever become a happily married man or a devoted father. He needed clues, signs and instructions, even in his relationship with women, but in home life there were none.

Georgie’s bouts of magical writing were a ghostly form of therapy, I began to suspect, a cunning wifely strategy to ensure that her sexual appetites were being met by her middle-aged and reluctant husband. It was no secret among occult circles that Yeats suffered from sexual inhibition and shyness. I had often heard him after several glasses of wine refer to the female’s nether regions as ‘those dark declivities’
.

‘Shouldn’t a marriage be based upon freedom rather than coercion?’ I asked.

‘Precisely. But I am being suffocated by these spirits. I shall not submit to their authority any longer. I don’t care what tactics they deploy, what warnings or threats they issue. And I refuse to submit to a woman, to be a slave to her demands.’

His cheeks were flushed with colour. At first, I thought that his vigour was returning but then I worried for the state of his mind. His emotions were threatening to well up and overpower his reasoning.

‘I want the life I had before marriage. I want to be able to make mistakes, to have faults, to be selfish, to be human.’

We were passing Lissadell’s stables and the high whinnying noises of horses recognising each other filled the air. Our mounts snorted and stretched their necks, their tails afloat behind. We leaned forward and with considerable effort managed to settle them.

‘I think her spirit hates me,’ said Yeats. ‘She is full of anger. Female anger.’

‘Whose spirit?’

‘Rosemary O’Grady’s.’

‘She entrusted a vital mission to you.’

‘Why me? What do I know about her life? What do I know about murder?’ He laughed bitterly. ‘My country is descending into chaos, my wife is desperate to conceive while I am not, and here we are forced to play the roles of Sherlock Holmes and Watson. We’ll be lucky not to end up with knives in our backs.’ A sick look came over his face as if he were suddenly suspended over a precipitous cliff. It struck me that since he had fallen from the horse he had been unusually garrulous and forthcoming on personal matters.

‘How do you feel from your fall?’

‘What fall?’

‘You came off the horse about twenty minutes ago. Abruptly. You must have struck your head.’

He glared at me indignantly. ‘But we’ve been riding splendidly all afternoon.’

‘We changed horses after the fall. You’re on the quieter beast.’

Yeats examined his horse’s head. He closed his eyes and went deathly pale. I pestered him with several medical questions and diagnosed a mild concussion. I advised him we should head back to the hotel immediately.

‘Nonsense,’ he replied. ‘I’ll walk it off.’

He dismounted and pressed his head against my saddle. ‘Are you alright?’ I asked, my anxiety for his health rising.

‘Of course,’ he replied. His long arm reached round to check that the wooden box was still in place. He unslung it and tied it round his shoulder. We secured the horses to a tree and walked the final stretch to the beach at Blind Sound.

19

Seven of Cups

I HAD discovered, as part of my induction into the Golden Dawn, that Yeats was fascinated by mechanical contraptions and outlandish inventions, which might be used like Marconi’s radio to tune into the invisible world of spirits. In the past year, he had carried out experiments on all manner of devices from adding machines to gramophones and radios powered by glowing crystals. However, his poetic genius was amply matched by a complete lack of scientific understanding, and even his most rigorous investigations and autopsies on the machines failed to reveal any genuine secrets.

On the beach at Blind Sound, I watched him remove from the box a long golden trumpet with copper wands and buttons running along its sides. Inscribed along the horn of the instrument were the words ‘The Soul of the World’.

‘Another talking trumpet,’ I remarked.

‘Yes,’ replied Yeats. ‘But this one has been tuned to pick up a sound that never stops. One that constantly rings out from mountain tops and cities, from the upper realms of the sky to the depths of the sea. The spirit of the world as it changes from moment to moment.’

I took a step back. Yeats’ occult claims no longer dazzled me but this one was blinding. ‘The spirit of the world will speak through this piece of metal?’

‘You can smile with incredulity but I’ve seen it used for that very purpose.’

‘Where?’

‘In an attic overlooking one of the busiest thoroughfares in London.’

‘How does it work?’

‘The details are shrouded in absolute secrecy.’

‘There’s a surprise.’

‘A secret to which the trumpet maker has made me privy.’

Yeats began adjusting the controls of the instrument, and explained to me what he had been told. Assuming that I understood metallurgy, he spoke some gibberish about the alloys of rare metals used in the moulding of the trumpet, and a ground-breaking Teutonic theory on pistons and communicating chambers, which the instrument used to amplify vibrations beyond the range of human hearing. He held the trumpet aloft as though he were the champion of a new technology that would revolutionise the world of spiritualism. Then he lowered the instrument, and dropped his voice. ‘Of course, there is a risk of embarrassment and failure. The creator might be a fraud after all. Which is why I have elected to trial it on this far western shore.’

He readjusted the copper wands and tapped at a glass dial positioned next to the instrument’s mouth. The grey light of the waves illuminated his face as he laid the trumpet on a makeshift altar of stones. Mumbling in Latin, he traced a pentagram around the structure.

My patience snapped. ‘What is the point of all this?’ I shouted above the wind. ‘Why is there a need for such gadgetry and dramatics? Why so much spectacle and ritual? Why all of this just to hear a ghost speak. Isn’t it enough that we just listen? Shouldn’t the mode of contact with miraculous beings be simpler and less artificial?’

Yeats did not reply.

‘I no longer wish to be part of this pointless spectacle,’ I announced. ‘I shall climb the cliffs and observe your folly from a distance.’

‘Quiet,’ ordered Yeats. ‘I want spectators not critics. Your ticket of admission is your silence. When the show is over, you will have your opportunity to applaud or boo.’

If there had been a door to slam on that empty beach, I would have done so. Instead, I walked briskly to where the sand gave out to rocks and the debris of landslides. The cliff looked unassailable but I felt strangely braced after my outburst. I took a final glance back at Yeats, who stood motionless, arms raised before the churning sea. A flock of seagulls materialised out of the spray and then disappeared. If Blind Sound was his temple then the cries of the gulls were the ringing of its discordant bells.

I found a precipitous path, worn smooth by the passage of nailed boots, and clambered my way upwards. The path was virtually invisible from the beach, but it cut an unmistakable route along the south-facing cliff. Small boulders had been assembled to help one negotiate gullies, and treads cut into the rock where the path fell away, just wide enough to hold a man-sized boot and allow one to sidle across, face pressed to the wet stone. On a small promontory, I rested for a moment. Gulls and cormorants swooped feet away, against a churning backdrop of waves and grey oblivion. The sound of hungry chicks in their nests echoed from higher up the cliff. I felt a piece of wire dig into my back, and turning to the cliff face, found a crude handle, suspended above a small crevice. I pulled the handle and uncovered a string of tin cans filled with turf ash and reeking of something that smelt like paraffin. It was a makeshift string of lights, I realised. I sat down and contemplated my discovery.

I could follow the line of the path below me by the shine on the rocks upon which countless boots had sought footholds. Who had used the crooked path? I wondered. Who had left behind the fine web of their repeated journeys? A short-cut for fishermen to a favourite perch, perhaps. But why the string of lights? Something to do with the night. Smugglers signalling from a vantage point to boats out in the bay? Perhaps, but I lacked the evidence to prove my supposition.

The sound of Yeats’ incantations disturbed my thoughts. His shouts, carried in snatches by the wind, sounded childlike in their glee and enthusiasm. I made out the names of several mythological deities and familiar invocations in Hebrew and Latin. The wind rose and his chant merged with the tumult of the waves into a single pulsing voice, as though the black cliffs themselves were speaking in a restless tongue.

I checked for any sign of Captain Oates on the beach, but the only figure was Yeats. I pushed off again, following the rest of the oblique track until it petered out in a lichen-covered cleft. I was about to turn back when out of the corner of my eye I saw a shadow swinging erratically against the cliff. I crouched as a horrible clacking sound filled the air. I glanced up in time to see a cormorant swoop, its beak opened in attack. I ducked as it flapped its wings, beating the air about my head. Waving my arms in self-defence, I shuffled along the narrow ledge, but the bird’s violent movements knocked me off my balance. I grabbed at empty air and fell into a roaring wind, which drowned my bellow of alarm. The air was sucked from my lungs, and I fell more than twenty feet. My last vision was of an upended beach with a dark figure running sideways towards me, dimming to a hazy sea-green and then deep blackness.

I must have slipped into some sort of dreamland, for the next thing I knew the ghost of my friend Issac was lifting me to my feet on a beach by an alien sea, a floating bazaar of mysteriously crested waves and changing shapes rising and falling in the wind-whipped foam.

‘Look how the waves are in constant motion, ebbing and flowing with the tides,’ said the ghost. ‘You still don’t understand the force that drives them. It is the key to understanding the mysteries that beset you.’

He pointed with a bony finger, and I saw the black-haired head of a young woman bob above the waves, and then another. Soon the sea was full of girls, faces pale and skeletal, rising out of the water, their breasts covered in seaweed, their pale legs riding the swell of the waves. A cry sprang into the air, a rallying call, and then the charging women began to chant and whoop. The sound of their howling overwhelmed the roar of the sea. It came from everywhere, filling the air, demanding vengeance for some unmentionable crime. I cowered on the sand, unable to move, as the white wall of their bodies tumbled around me. I braced myself for the impact but their agitated forms passed right through me and dissolved into the sand.

When I came to, I could sense the presence of someone close by, gazing at me intently, speaking a strange language. I tried to understand the figure through its eyes but it was like trying to search for a way out of a maze.

‘Are you still in one piece?’ asked the voice.

My eyes fluttered fully awake. To my relief I found myself lying a safe distance from the breaking waves. Yeats stood over me with an anxious face. ‘I turned and saw you fall,’ he said.

I struggled to my feet, but a wave of lightness kept me on my knees. My fingers clawed at the wet sand.

Yeats stared up at the ledge from which I had fallen. ‘What happened, Charles? What made you forget that your body is subject to the draconian law of gravity?’

‘A cormorant knocked me off my feet.’

‘These cliffs are heavily populated with their colonies. Many’s the fine feather pillow has been plucked from their nests.’

I told him of the strange vision I had experienced while unconscious.

‘What else did you see?’

‘That was it.’

‘Let me hypnotise you.’ His gaze was greedy, penetrating.

‘Hypnotise me?’ I replied in alarm.

‘I want you to return to your unconscious and reveal the symbols hidden there.’

‘You think the dream contained a message from the otherworld?’

‘Without doubt.’

I thought of Clarissa, and it struck me that the vision might have more to do with my repressed fears and desires concerning the Daughters of Erin.

‘My role is that of an investigator. I have no wish to become a channel or a medium.’

Yeats looked hurt. His thoughtful expression became grave and vaguely threatening.

‘Forgive me,’ I said, ‘but I have been infected with curiosity over what happened to Rosemary O’Grady. Not curiosity over whether her spirit has returned but a desire to discover how she was killed and who her killer was. And that is not possible if you insist on turning me into a vessel like Georgie.’

‘Then I’m tempted to knock you unconscious again. For the good of this investigation.’

‘For the good of the investigation or your own good?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m not the one seeking answers from spirits about my personal life. Nor am I gnawed by self-doubt and fears of madness. That is why you ferret out every half-sighting of a ghost, every shilling séance, every new contraption to communicate with the dead, because you are unable to make up your own mind, because you are haunted by ghosts of your own making.’

Yeats stared away deep in thought.

‘I fear you will interpret what I have said as the harshest of criticism,’ I said, ‘but I speak from the heart. Out of friendship.’

‘It’s true,’ he said. ‘I may be wracked by indecision from time to time. But is that not the case with the male of the species in general? We’d rather have our gods make our decisions for us.’

Or our wives, I thought to myself.

The wind dropped and a jagged whining sound rose above the crash of the waves. I tried to pinpoint its source, as it echoed against the cliffs in a broken rhythm, coming and going like a strange wail. Yeats stared at the trumpet with a triumphant gleam in his eyes as though the sound was emanating from its golden mouth.

‘What is that?’ I yelled.

Yeats held his breath, afraid to make a sound. The wail grew louder, fulsome as a chorus, and then faded altogether.

‘What on earth?’ I said.

‘Wonderful,’ breathed Yeats. ‘Here is evidence at last that the trumpet works.’

‘But what does it mean?’

‘I have no idea.’

Whatever it was, it sounded the very opposite of an angelic choir. It started up again, with greater rage and intensity, the harsh, grating sound of something trapped in the cogs of a machine. I wandered off, leaving Yeats holding the trumpet, muttering incantations under his breath.

The sound grew louder as I approached the caves. The dark cliff chambers magnified the noise, drawing out its twisted melody. I clambered along a wet terrace of rock to find a wooden barrel thrashing in the waves, its metal bands grinding rhythmically against the rocks. On its sides, the words ‘The End is Nigh’ had been daubed in white paint.

A voice from behind spoke with a panting breath. ‘That piece of contraband is now the property of His Majesty’s Crown forces.’ I turned and saw Inspector Grimes’ cold blue eyes as he climbed over the rocks, a battalion of his policemen in tow, while, beyond them, Yeats hurried in our direction, the wind flapping the dark wings of his coat.

‘We thought we’d follow you to see what little games you’re up to,’ said Grimes. As usual, there was something gloating about his sweating face. He spoke as though his arrival on the beach had been a triumph of police detection. ‘This is a dangerous coast, Mr Adams, the haunt of smugglers and rebels. That barrel might be full of brandy or gunpowder.’

His men surrounded the barrel and rolled it onto the beach. They sat it upright, and began working on prising open the lid with knives. They were eager to discover what bounty the sea had delivered. However, the wooden lid had expanded in the water and sat clamped tightly in place. Grimes pushed his way through, grabbed one of the knives and applied the pressure of his substantial frame to the makeshift lever. With a final ferocious heave, the lid gave way. Immediately he staggered backwards.

I peered into the barrel and saw the roughly curled head of Captain Oates floating in a dark pool of water. His shoulders were slumped, his hands tied behind his back, his knees tucked up, like a crippled puppet spinning slowly from its few remaining strings.