Charles waves the interjection aside. “Yet speak of it, I must,” he says, very still in his manner, markedly sombre and altogether in earnest.
Wilkie takes another sup of tea; emboldened and distinctly curious, he says: “You may tell me anything. I am no stranger to keeping secrets. On the contrary, it is a business in which I am well versed.”
Dickens nods, distracted, as if having scarcely registered the remark. “I was only a boy,” he begins, “when I saw him.”
And Mr Wilkie Collins listens for a long while after that as he hears of the blacking factory and of its attendant degradation, of the man who was waiting for young Charles one longvanished afternoon, of their peregrinations and of that black-clad gentleman’s strange, prophetic remarks.
Once the tale is told there follows a silence, fraught with disquiet.
“And… forgive me…” Wilkie’s response is faltering, perplexed. “But are you sure that is was him?”
“I’ve no doubt that it was.”
“And not, say, his father or an uncle or some other relation?”
“Wilkie, it was him. It can have been no other than Cannonbridge himself.”
At the mention of the name, the room seems suddenly a little closer, the air thicker and more difficult to breathe.
“Wilkie, have you ever seen the man?”
“Once or twice. Yes. At parties. Soirees. On a single occasion only at the British Library. But never to speak to. His reputation and manner serve to discourage any friendly approach.”
“Yes. Yes, I see that.”
“Have you? Seen him since? This peculiar ageless man?”
“Somehow we had never been in the same place at the same time. Strange, perhaps, given our respective reputations. There were occasions upon which I have been assured that we missed just such a meeting by moments only. He is a singularly elusive fellow to be sure. There is, I fancy, something of the phantom about him.”
“Worse, perhaps, than that. There are, after all, no shortage of rumours.”
“Quite so, Wilkie. Quite so.”
“But you’ve not seen him yourself?”
“No.” How old the Inimitable looks, thinks Wilkie, how prematurely aged. “At least, not until last night.”
“Last night? Charles, what the devil has happened?”
“You will recall, I imagine, that, following the success of similar events, I am at present contemplating a further series of public readings from the most popular—one might even say beloved of my works of fiction.” Collins inclines his head in acknowledgement of this fact, considering that not only is he cognisant of the scheme but that his friend has spoken of little else this twelvemonth past.
“And you will recall that I required an investor so as to provide a little essential funding for the tour?”
Collins nods again, a little fuzzy in his head now, doubtless from the earliness of the libation.
“A… Mr Swaine-Taylor, was it not? Yes. Daniel Swaine-Taylor. A banker of some description?”
“It was. It was. Or so I thought. At shortly after nine last night, Mr Swaine-Taylor came to call on me at Gads Hill.”
“Rather late to call.”
“I thought the same and I said as much. But he was insistent and he would not be moved. And then, in my drawing room, his face lit horribly by the flames of the fire, he announced that he was not the true investor at all but merely a representative of he who had provided the wherewithal. Some secret and hitherto anonymous benefactor.”
“Remarkable news.”
“So I thought. Yes. I thought a good deal more too. I told him that I considered it to be a fraud and an infamous fraud at that. Nonetheless, this Swaine-Taylor told me that the real man of money wished to see me. That he was even now waiting for me in a carriage outside. Most impertinently, this benefactor bade me join him at the earliest opportunity.”
“And did you?”
“Of course. How could I not? I left the house at once and, at the urging of Mr Swaine-Taylor, stepped into the waiting vehicle.”
“Your investor was inside?”
“He was, Wilkie. He was.”
“And it was…” The volume of Collins’ voice decreases, with an odd, almost queasy kind of reverence. “It was he of whom we have spoken?”
“Yes. Yes, my dear Wilkie.”
“How extraordinary. And did he, did… Mr Cannonbridge—say why he had done this thing?”
“Because there would be profit in it. Those were his words. Nothing more. Nothing, certainly, to do with our… prior connection.”
“And as to why he wanted to see you?”
“Oh, he said he wanted to look at me. To see what I had become. Me, so changed from that tiny boy, him wholly unaltered in his appearance by the passage of years. The cab began to drive then and as we passed through the streets, shadows playing across his face, this Swaine-Taylor creature wholly subservient by his side, I saw that something had shifted in him. Oh, not to be sure on the exterior, so much the same did he look, but on the inside. At the heart of him, I can assure you, some terrible alteration has been wrought. There is such malice in him now, such greed and wickedness and worse, I fear, far worse even than these. He spoke of such curious things. He gave me such dreadful glimpses of the future. He spoke not only of mankind’s fate but of our successors. Of strange new forms of life. The journey cannot have lasted more than half an hour. They all but threw me from the cab at Vauxhall. I have walked here directly from there.”
Collins sighs. “A bad night, then. A bad night’s work to be sure.”
“Indeed. And yet I fear, my dear old friend, that the affair is not done with yet.”
“No?”
“Wilkie. I am very much afraid that you must play your part in it.”
“Me?” Collins reaches again for the teapot, wishing now that he had been still more generous with the brandy.
“My dear fellow, my greatest companion, I fear that I must ask of you a boon.”
Collins’ heart is beating faster. Sweat is trickling down his temples, down his cheeks, down his neck. He is suffused with a horrible suspicion that what is to be said next will, in some quietly dreadful manner, alter the course of his life. He feels, however, that he has no choice but, in a cracked half-whisper, to say: “Anything, Charles.”
Mr Charles Dickens leans forwards, smiles without mirth and steeples his fingers. “Very good,” he says, sounding more collected than he has for hours. “Now this is what I should like you to do.”
NOW
WHEN TOBY JUDD first sees the island—a low, dark smear against the horizon which thickens gradually into a bleak, immutable mass— his initial thought, which he knows, of course, to be completely impossible, is that he has seen the place somewhere before. Only in your dreams, he thinks, gripping the side of the dinghy as it surges wildly up and down, as he struggles to calm the lurching somersaults of his stomach. Only in your dreams.
The past hours have passed in a hectic whirl of activity, in which he has played an almost entirely passive part, yielding without complaint to the determined expertise of his companions, Nick and Gabriela, or, as he has almost come to think of them, caught up as he is in the strange, half-flirtatious energy that flickers between them, the Sergeant and the Corporal. From somewhere a small boat was procured, from somewhere the necessary equipment, before in some manner, slightly mysterious to the man with the doctorate, the three of them had found themselves speeding away from the mainland shortly after dawn, moving across the murky, churning sea towards the island of Faircairn. They are all now dressed in black, their faces smeared with war paint with soft dark hats pulled low over their brows. Not for the first time, Toby is wondering exactly which wing of the army these two had actually been in. They seem so efficient, he thinks, so assured, so inured to the danger of the situation. In his commando outfit, he feels utterly ridiculous—like a penguin forced awkwardly into a miniature suit.
Once, Toby had thought he’d heard the ominous, fara
way thrumming of a helicopter but, as they had approached their destination, the sound had grown fainter until it had disappeared entirely, leaving him to wonder if he had simply imagined it.
And now the island is getting closer and closer, coming inexorably into focus.
He looks round at the other two who stand close together at the rear of the vessel. Closer, he thinks, than colleagues of even the most intimate stripe would ever have chosen to position themselves.
Nick Gillingham holds up a hand. He turns, busies himself with the engine. A moment later the motor cuts out. From somewhere in the darkness, two oars are produced and he and Gabriela proceed to row stealthily and silently on. So sombrely do they apply themselves to this task, with such po-faced sobriety, with their smeared faces and little black hats, that Toby feels a sudden, overwhelming and quite inappropriate urge to laugh.
Just as he feels that he can restrain it no longer, however, he turns again to face the horizon and this spurious, hysterical mirth dies in his throat.
After this, the island seems almost to swallow them up. It cannot be large, Faircairn, not more than a couple of square miles in total, yet its sheer presence seems to belie its size. It has a minatory, monolithic quality—a statement rather than a question, a slab of ancient territory set down in the midst of the North Sea. And it does seem ancient, Toby thinks, as their little boat is sculled nearer to the dark hulk of it—like some prehistoric survivor, some grim relic of the age of Pangaea or even, the doctor considers with an odd, superstitious dread, from some still earlier, nightmarish epoch.
Faircairn seems dark even in the light of the dawn and Toby can make out only a black expanse of sand or soil, a hill which rises precipitously above the beach. There are no houses that he can see, nor manmade structures of any kind.
Closer comes the island, closer, and Toby finds, although he does not care to, that he is put in mind of some aquatic predator, which, feigning sleep, allows its unwitting prey to approach before its great eyes snap open, its jaws gape, its sharp teeth gleam and the darkness beyond, the awful finality of the gullet, beckons.
So close now, Toby thinks morbidly. The trap is almost sprung.
With a muffled thwump, the boat strikes the shore. Nick hurries to the prow and, showing off now, pulls the vessel high onto the ground, the outline of his biceps clearly visible. He motions with one hand and Toby finds himself moving unquestioningly over the side, tumbling inelegantly into the wet sand.
But is it truly sand? Or is it rather something else? As he rights himself and clambers to his feet, he sees that his damp palms are coated with the stuff.
Feeling at once revolted and blessed, Toby looks down at what is on his skin. Dark black granular matter. Like thick-grained ash. Like clinker. It is, he thinks, as though the place had long ago been consumed by fire. A volcanic island? Would that be possible?
As he hears from behind him the crunch of the others’ boots he looks up at the dark hill that lies before them. It is formed entirely from the same mysterious substance.
“What is this place?” he asks.
“And more to the point…” Gabriela is at his side. “How is it connected? To Cannonbridge?”
“Blessborough,” Toby murmurs. “‘The guardian of Faircairn’. And yet…” He gestures around him. “Who would ever live here? Let alone want to guard it? Hardly the most hospitable environment.”
From somewhere behind them, Gillingham sniffs with a robust haughtiness. “Man’s more adaptable than you’d think,” he says, stepping forward. “Aren’t a lot of places on the planet where he can’t scrape by. He’s a survivor—he adapts to his environment. But there’s something here. Everything I’ve ever heard about this place says that there’s definitely something here.”
Toby addresses him. “Interesting to hear you say so. Exactly what, I wonder, have you heard?”
A stony look in return from the soldier. “Only rumours. Daft stories. Pub chat. Something about the war. Something which keeps people away.” Nick pushes his shoulders back (he’s puffing out his chest, Toby thinks, he’s actually puffing out his chest) and says: “So let’s have a look, shall we? Get us on some higher ground.”
Without waiting for a response, he strides away and begins, with determined agility, to climb the hill.
Gabriela touches Toby on the arm and favours him with what he takes to be a smile of amused collusion. “Come on.”
Toby is looking again at the dark sand. “Strange,” he says. “This is just so strange. You must’ve noticed. I mean, what is this stuff?”
“You’ll figure it out,” she says with an odd, infectious brightness. “You’ll find the right connection.”
And she is gone, moving skilfully through the gloom, easily keeping pace with the corporal. She calls back: “Come on!”
Toby does as he has been instructed but not before, without quite knowing why, he crouches down, scoops up some of the black sand and slips it into his pocket. As a kind of souvenir, he supposes. A memento to prove that the day’s adventure has not been a dream or a product of complete mental breakdown.
A line from a play comes back to him as he trots after the others and he murmurs it to himself as he begins the ascent. “‘I shall show you fear’,” he says, “‘in a handful of dust.’”
The hill is steeper than it looks and the climb is tougher than Toby is expecting. The sun rises and the dawn has arrived in full by the time they reach the crest of it, the three of them getting there as one.
Later, they will wish that it had been less bright—that they might not have seen it in such unforgiving detail, that they might have told themselves that it was only the product of shadows and their imagination. That they might have looked away.
All of them, in their own ways, have experience of the uncanny. All of them know what it is to be confronted by the inexplicable, the unheimlich, by those things which seem to make a mockery of rationalism, to explode any sane reading of the world as a cruel myth.
Yet they are all of them rendered speechless by the sight that greets from the peak of that terrible hill upon that impossible island.
Nick speaks first. “It can’t be.”
Gabriela murmurs “My God…”
“You’re seeing this, aren’t you?” Toby asks, horrified yet fascinated, appalled yet utterly riveted, open-mouthed at the dreadful majesty of the thing, its awful intertwining of beauty and terror. “The guardian,” he mutters. “The guardian of Faircairn.”
For a long moment, not one of them dares to turn away.
It is Gillingham who cracks first, turning and running helterskelter back down the hill.
With one final, disbelieving glance, Toby and Gabriela do the same.
The rest is over very quickly—a giddy blur of panic and motion, down the hill, onto the beach beyond and into the boat, a frantic pushing off, a bout of demented rowing, the comforting roar of the motor, a swift retreat (though scarcely swift enough, it must be said) from the island of Faircairn.
Nick is swearing under his breath, other words interweaved amongst the profanity. “Sorry… I’m sorry… I can’t… Can’t help…”
Gabriela simply stares into the ocean, pale, thin-lipped, unspeaking, trembling.
And Toby?
Toby is lost in thought, feeling, not for the first time in recent months, on the precipice of his sanity, forging connections, trying to understand the shape of the pattern, asking himself over and over again the nature of that deepening evil which seems to compass him all about and which has come, very nearly, to eclipse his life.
1869
ALLEYNE WAY WAPPING
THE HOUSE OF Cannonbridge is not at all as Mr Wilkie Collins had imagined. The address, prised free from a rather shadowy acquaintance whose name is well known to Scotland Yard, lies in a distinctly low quarter of town, a crumbling mansion of dubious provenance deeper into the East than any man of good character and reputation might, of his own volition, wish to tread.
Mr Collins, howev
er, knowing his reputation to be rackety at best, had little fear as to how such an expedition might be seen by others and, in this as in so much of his life, he was happy to forego the rigours of convention. Of that house, however, of that bleak, dilapidated, dusty old house, and of the man who dwelt within it—now, about these things, he is very concerned indeed.
It is already dusk as he approaches the property, he and Dickens having talked for much of the day. Several further pots of that augmented tea having been by now consumed, Wilkie Collins finds himself rather unsteady on his feet and uncertain in his gait.
He does his best, however, to walk with deliberation and purpose down the dirty narrow lane which leads off the grey, neglected thoroughfare to the house of Cannonbridge. He holds his too-large head up high and steps on with as much confidence as he can muster between the shadows and to the front door of the old, disreputable place, painted, a generation past, with green paint, now ancient and peeling, and to the large brass knocker of more recent vintage and fashioned into the shape of some circular serpent, which stands beady watch upon it. Wilkie takes the metal, cold to the touch, in his clammy hand, lifts it and knocks once, twice, three times.
No sooner has the last of these gestures been completed than the door is swung open and the writer finds himself confronted by a man of about his own age, looking forlorn and cast down. The fellow’s eyes are bloodshot, his skin has a wretched pallor, his movements are blurred somehow and indistinct, like a person walking underwater, and his hands and arms are shaking as if from palsy. His entire being, it seems to our Mr Collins, can do little else than radiate the utmost despair.
Taken aback by this vision Wilkie, almost before he has done so, finds that he has asked the gentleman the following question of startling bluntness: “Who are you?”
At this, the man sniffs miserably, seemingly unsurprised by the enquiry. “Swaine-Taylor, Mr Collins,” he says. “Daniel SwaineTaylor. My friends,” he adds unhappily, as if that tribe has long since been extinct, “called me Dan.”
Cannonbridge Page 16
