Woodbury pointed at her with a finger, as if he were going to scold her for being a naughty child.
‘And yet… palmistry, isn’t it?’
‘Sir, I trust by now our cards are plainly laid on the table. If I am not mistaken, you clearly know a great deal about me already.’
‘No, you are not mistaken.’
‘Still, you chose to expose Madame Florence, and not me. Why?’
Charles Bale snorted.
Woodbury said, ‘You ask why? You, who have been helping the police with the children’s disappearances from the beginning? There was not much we could in truth do; she had been too clever covering her tracks! All we could achieve was humiliating her in the eyes of her many followers, so as to not cause a major uproar. Her crimes are bad enough. Sad, so very sad. She has been apprehended for fraud; no doubt your friends from Scotland Yard will devise a clever way to keep her locked up for a very long time.’
‘I see.’
‘All we do is our public duty, my dear.’
‘And now you are doing it again, setting the trap to “unmask” those poor academics.’
‘Ah! The Little Trianon affair! Time-slip! Time travel? I could accept that much, but meeting Marie Antoinette?’ He was trying very hard to contain a laugh. ‘My dear friend, we will not need to do much at all to ridicule the two ladies; they are perfectly capable of managing that all by themselves.’
‘Why?’
‘Why, what?’
‘Why do you like to see them ridiculed? And why is it that there are always women who need to be ridiculed, Mr Woodbury?’
He looked at her, momentarily at a loss.
‘Women, you say? I certainly have no idea what you may mean! We do unmask whoever needs to be unmasked—’
‘I spent the whole of yesterday going through my past issues of Light, Two Worlds, The Open Door. I could not find a single case in which a male medium was reported, “unmasked”, or simply accused of being a cheat.’ Woodbury did not say anything. He was looking at her with what seemed like fury. Nevertheless, she continued. ‘It is a curious coincidence, is it not, Mr Woodbury? Curiouser and curiouser. As if being curious was a disease, a malady, that needs to be remedied. Only when it affects women, that is. Although, I’m sure you both will agree with me: there are no coincidences.’
‘My dear Miss Walton! What we do here follows the scientific method! We—’
She dismissed him with a wave of her hand.
‘That is not why I am here, John,’ she cut across him. ‘Have you not tried to find out how to help Samuel Moncrieff?’
The old man sighed heavily; Charles Bale moved uncomfortably in his chair.
Eventually Woodbury spoke, ‘Miss Walton, let me ask you a question: do you know when Charles became interested in Spiritualism? Exactly when Sam appeared in his life. It is true that, with the years, he had covered much ground in the sciences, become interested in many of the different strands of knowledge, and certainly helped a great deal of people in the community. But it all started that day, and with only one idea: to help the child one day. That was foolish, you see,’ Woodbury paused. ‘Sam could never be happy, not here,’ he concluded.
This made Helena think of her complicated feelings about her grandmother, of her fantasies of abandoning everything to go to Seville, her recognition that she would not entirely belong there. Not fully belonging here did not mean she would fit in that world either.
‘That doesn’t mean that you can decide where he will be, Mr Woodbury,’ she said presently. She felt exhausted.
‘Miss Walton, if I may, do you know how I myself became interested in the Spiritual world? Perhaps I will tell you the story one day. It suffices for me to say now that I was very much like yourself, you see. Not an inch of anything connected with the supernatural, only a science-led young boy. But then something inexplicable happened, something that worked to explode my pompous highblown stupidity. Afterwards I did what I could to organise this knowledge, sort it out the best I could. I needed to return to a world ordered and understandable, one that made sense, where that event could be classified into one more category, be studied and analysed.’
‘I see.’
‘Perhaps it won’t have a place in the Round Reading Room with its cubicles and the clerk seated at its centre. But it does in a place like this,’ he waved his arms around, indicating the SPR headquarters. ‘It can be rationalised in a place like this. Or at least we are trying to rationalise it. The necessary accumulation of knowledge, the order carved out of the chaos… Our society demands it, the political and social events demand it, the scientific discoveries, exploration, even the Empire demands it!’
‘I’m sorry. I’m afraid you’ve lost me.’
‘It is possible that I am talking nonsense; I am old, after all. But the years have also taught me some things. For example, it is always easier to solve a labyrinth when you see it from above, don’t you think? What we are doing here is to domesticate that other nature, to classify it, to impose different categories on our individual achievements; and in the process we give solace, we give comprehension.’
Helena had to make a tremendous effort not to get up and leave; she needed whatever information she could obtain from the man. But the narrative was an old one, heard so many times before: order, chaos, domesticate… Words that only meant one thing: men like Mr Woodbury, desperately trying to keep control of women like herself.
‘Although there is so much still that we don’t understand, that perhaps we will never understand,’ the old man was saying.
‘What about Sam? How can we understand Sam’s nature?’
The old man laughed shortly with a sad face.
‘We do have a theory.’
Helena’s face brightened. Woodbury’s grew sombre.
‘You will not like it, I am afraid.’
‘Try me.’ She sounded fiercer than she had intended.
‘I do not doubt your capacity for processing shocking information, Miss Walton, that is not what I am saying. I am just trying to stress that you may find it difficult to accept our theories; but also, importantly, that they are only theories.’
Woodbury walked slowly towards the desk, grabbed the handle of some kind of communicating machine, pressed a button, and talked to someone on the other end of the line. Presently the same clerk who had ushered her into the room appeared, so quickly that he must have been waiting in attendance in the adjacent room, with a presentation folder.
‘Everything we know is there.’
Helena took the folder and weighed it in her hands: it was so light, so thin. Too thin to contain, as it did, the truth. She tried not to laugh: it amused her to see that it was red, and very similar to the one that Mr Bale had put in her charge not so long ago.
‘Mr Bale, your factory,’ she said, finding her overcoat and preparing to leave. ‘It is polluting the coast; it may be closed, but there is something still coming out of it. It is vomiting a pernicious substance that is affecting people, places. You need to do something about it.’
‘It has already been dealt with.’
Helena was surprised.
‘How? When?’
‘The flood. The factory doesn’t exist anymore.’
‘But, my dear sir… even if I and my associates haven’t been able to draw final scientific conclusions, we do know that whatever you were doing there twenty years ago was connected with the strange occurrences, perhaps even the vanishings…’ Helena stopped talking. By the manner in which Charles Bale sat there—motionless, holding his hands over his lap, avoiding looking up at her—she knew it immediately: he was aware of this. And perhaps he and Lady Matthews had been aware all along.
‘I’m sorry, I need to know. What were you trying to achieve there, Mr Bale? Before you felt compelled to close it down, that is.’
‘Energy,’ was all Bale said. Suddenly, his face changed, and Helena had a brief glimpse of lunacy dancing upon the old features. ‘Do you not know? Heat-death, Miss
Walton! The world is going to end, but not before we use up the sun! We were very lucky to have the stone; the stone was all we needed, the stone was the future!’
‘What stone? Do you mean the rhyolite? What happened then?’
The man sounded so tired when he spoke.
‘We could not harness it, as simple as that. We were looking for energy, and found instead… something different.’
So that was it.
‘Good luck, my dear,’ put in Mr Woodbury. ‘I am sorry to say that I, we, cannot help beyond this point. Where you are heading is a dangerous place, uncharted, a veritable terra incognita we surely do not possess the necessary means to venture into.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Miss Walton, would you consider working for us?’
Facing the world under the power of the SPR’s patronage would surely simplify things a great deal, Helena considered for a second. Then she thought about what she would be representing: order, chaos, domesticate.
‘I am truly sorry, sir, but I prefer to make my own way.’
Mr Woodbury doubled himself in a little bow, with great trouble. Helena left the room, opened the folder almost at once, and found herself, all of a sudden, alone with the truth.
* * *
Helena tried to calm down, and to gather her thoughts. After perusing the folder, she had felt that she simply could not breathe, and had to run outside of the building as fast as it was possible. She knew she was close to Regent’s Park, and started walking briskly in that direction. She needed to see trees, green grass; she needed to breathe pure air.
She was also trying to keep a grasp on the world somehow. In Celtic mythology, she remembered for some reason, fairyland was just one step aside from the human world; one didn’t need to open any hidden door, go deep into any mountains. There were no mountains in Norfolk either; but still, she thought, a place did not exist anywhere where one could feel more acutely that one was crossing unseen thresholds, where the boundaries were as capricious as the tides, where the churches and the dwellings that today sat in our world could be swept away by the mist tomorrow.
She was walking mechanically, in a sort of trance. Or something similar, a kind of numbness that quenched the pain.
She reached the park breathing heavily, and looked frantically for a bench to rest. She was asking herself if Sam knew, if he could possibly know, the horrid truth that she had just learnt about him.
* * *
It was that evening when Helena and Jim met again. At the appointed time, Helena arrived at a disused train station in a borough at the south of the capital. It was an eerie suburb, a liminal space not yet swallowed by London, but almost deprived of any identity of its own. She had no idea where she was to be taken. They both greeted each other briefly, and Jim led the way.
‘What do you suppose you are going to learn with this meeting?’
‘To tell you the truth, I am not sure. But Sam and I need to talk.’
Jim had not managed to delve deeper into Sam’s mystery, but he had recounted to Helena in a letter the events that happened in Yorkshire. This document, although fascinating, proposed more questions than answers.
The two men were staying in a half-derelict building occupied in greater part by workers and immigrants, and Helena followed Jim there. Outside a man was roasting chestnuts, and he gave Jim a little packet and murmured a brief thank you when he passed by. He received the offering in silence and put it in the pocket of his coat. The canals divided the street into little islands, their black water shining in the darkness. There were fewer street lamps here, pouring a little bit of light over the filth formed by the recently fallen rain.
Once inside they climbed a steep set of stairs into a main passage, lit by a single oil lamp. It smelled of spicy food being cooked in a stove that ought to be behind one of those grim-covered walls. Jim opened the door to an attic room and motioned her to enter. When she did she found herself inside a large space in semi-darkness. The smell inside was a strange mixture of alcohol, herbs and sweat, and something else that she couldn’t identify. She could hear pigeons very near, and assumed she was smelling their droppings. It was very cold, and she kept her coat on.
Samuel Moncrieff was sitting on a wooden chair, with his feet, still with his boots on, upon a desk, reading a book by a candle. As they entered he pushed the chair forwards, and stared fixedly at Helena. She eyed the book he was reading. It was Towards a Science of Immortality, by Bévcar. It made Helena shiver.
‘What is she doing here?’
Jim did not reply. He crossed the room, and started lighting a little fire in the grate. Helena rubbed her hands, trying to revive her numb fingers. Jim took out a little pot from somewhere, and soon the smell of coffee filled the attic. He started busying himself with bread and cheese, roasted chestnuts, eggs and butter. He continued to prepare the meal in silence. Helena felt she had been abandoned to the explanations. It did not matter now.
‘Mr Moncrieff, we need to talk. Whatever happened to you in Oxford, and whatever happened in Norfolk all those years ago, is all somehow connected.’
Sam seemed to find this amusing.
‘You don’t know anything, Miss Walton.’
‘I know that you are scared of ruins.’
He turned to look at her; she had finally gained his attention. He considered her again with a curious expression. Meanwhile Jim produced a cup of steaming coffee in her hands and a plate of cheese and bread next to her.
‘I can help you, and you can help me,’ she insisted.
‘Ah. You were always a great talker, Miss Walton,’ he offered.
‘Please, call me Helena.’
She took in her surroundings. There was an impressive assortment of glass bottles and jars, dried flowers and herbs hanging in odd receptacles, stones on the windowsill of a little round window, laid out like a dark smile. The walls, an indeterminate light-brown colour, were covered by complicated diagrams in which the sun and the moon and the stars took prominence. A tree of life was painted on the wall in one corner, each of its branches sprouting what she identified as charms, against the evil eye, perhaps. She didn’t know really what they were, but some lost knowledge stirred softly within the deep crevasses of her mind.
‘What are these?’ she asked.
He answered without turning to face her:
‘A prayer to quell the pain of unrequited affection. The means to come back to life. Other things as well.’
From the walls hung more charms and amulets made of twigs and dried leaves and pieces of rags and birds’ claws, and other things impossible to name. A table was covered in the wax of candle stubs, which Jim was now lighting. Old newspapers and books littered the floor. On a shelf, next to some books, a skull.
‘How did you get that?’ she asked, pointing at it.
‘A friend of a friend of a friend,’ he said, turning towards her, and fixing her with that odd stare once more. ‘And for everything you ask me, I will give you the same answer.’
‘Sam,’ Jim intervened, ‘there’s no need to be rude.’
Samuel Moncrieff laughed.
Now that some candles flickered a frail golden light, she could see the floor at the centre of the room. It was carved with some kind of round maze pattern. Some twists and turns were punctuated by little offerings, and she moved around it carefully, not wishing to disturb their silent meaning. She recognised the dry sempervivum: not only were they Dot’s main pastime according to Eliza, but the abbey had often been dressed with bouquets of the flower.
‘What is this for?’ she could not help herself asking.
‘Protection,’ was the answer.
‘It is meant to keep away the demons.’ This time it was Jim who replied.
The silence was dense.
‘Mr Moncrieff,’ she started.
‘Sam,’ he corrected her. He was serving three drinks and presently came back holding a shot glass with something darkly red. ‘I apologise, Helena. I’m not used to visitors these days. Please, take a seat,�
� he said, and she saw he was pointing at the only armchair, a tattered piece of furniture that surely had been thrown out in the street. ‘I think we are going to need something stronger than coffee, don’t you think, Jim, old man?’ Jim did not answer, but took a sip of his mug.
‘I don’t mind where I sit,’ responded Helena, and sat down on the floor exactly where she was standing, cross-legged beneath her ample skirts. Sam chuckled, and sat down in the same position, right in front of her. He had brought the bottle over and left it on the floor next to him. The label was in Cyrillic.
‘Za zdorovye,’ he said.
They drank, he at a gulp, what turned out to be some kind of berry vodka.
‘What do you want to know?’
‘I think I have connected most of the dots.’
Sam laughed at this.
‘Sam, please, listen to her.’
‘What happened in Yorkshire?’
The two young men exchanged looks but did not answer. Eventually, Sam served himself a second glass, clicked his glass against hers, and looked directly into her eyes.
‘You had better run, run far away from here, from me.’
‘Why?’
He served himself a third glass, in silence. Then he said, ‘Because I’m dangerous. I cause harm. Even to those I care for.’ He offered this odd answer without looking at her. Jim had got up and walked to the other end of the room, where he busied himself with something.
‘Go away, Miss Walton,’ Sam repeated.
She sighed. Behind her, Jim spoke.
‘Show her the book,’ he said.
‘Which book?’ asked Sam.
Jim had rekindled the fire, and it now burnt cheerfully. He walked in the direction of the little collection of books over the mantelpiece, took a copy of Phantastes from the shelf.
‘What are you doing?’ Sam asked.
Jim did not reply. He threw the book on Helena’s lap.
Helena went to her light travel bag and rummaged inside it. She picked something from it, walked towards Sam, and dropped it in front of him. It was a tattered copy of the same book.
‘It’s the Matthews girls’ copy,’ she said.
The Golden Key Page 20
