The Blood Dimmed Tide (6 page)

‘Just lie there,’ he said sitting down beside me. ‘I’ll keep you company until the sickness wears off.’

Another wave of nausea made me sweat all over.

‘Tell me, Sir,’ he asked in a slow, almost absent-minded voice, ‘why aren’t you fighting in France?’

I explained that I had failed the army medical due to fainting fits.

‘Then are you a supporter of the Crown?’

I stared at him. ‘What do you mean?’ I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck prickle.

‘Do you hold the King and his loyal forces in contempt?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Then what were you doing tending to the prisoners below deck last night?’

‘They were starving and nearly freezing to death.’

He aped astonishment. ‘Starving? Almost freezing to death? I wasn’t aware that those bloodthirsty rebels were suffering to that extent. You should have reported your discovery immediately to the captain of the boat.’

‘Why are we discussing this matter?’ I asked.

‘Orders, Sir.’

‘Whose orders?’

‘Winston Churchill’s. My name is Wolfe Marley; I’m an agent of the British War Office.’

I tried to read his features, but his expression was dark and inward.

‘What did the prisoners say to you?’

I found myself unable to reply. My mind contracted with suspicion. His questions were surely an attempt to make me incriminate myself.

‘Did any of them try to engage you in conversation regarding future acts of treason?’ Again his empty gaze.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Why is this important?’

‘Spies, Sir. I’m hunting for spies. Infiltrators, agent provocateurs hiding in the hold. You’ve read the newspaper reports, I’m sure. The whole of Ireland is a powder keg waiting to be set off by the meddling of naive Englishmen and vengeful Germans.’

Sweat trickled down my neck.

‘Were there any other passengers from first class in the hold?’

‘No.’ My lie was too quick and it made him pause.

‘What are you reading?’ A faint contempt threaded through his voice. ‘William Butler Yeats? Now there’s an extraordinary poet.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Not many poets take an annual pension from the King, and then campaign to have his kingdom overthrown.’

‘Mr Yeats’ political beliefs aren’t that simple,’ I endeavoured to explain. ‘He has told me he doesn’t know which lies heaviest on his heart. The tragedy of Ireland, or the tragedy of England.’

‘And is that because of his poetic soul, or is he just muddle-headed?’

‘You’re trying to needle me. Mr Yeats is a friend of mine and a confidant.’

‘I’m only needling to find the truth. If Mr Yeats is your confidant, then what has he confided in you?’

A darkness squirmed in his eyes. A pitch-black, wriggling darkness.

‘You’re travelling to Sligo?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘To visit a paternal aunt,’ I lied.

‘You’ve been there before?’

‘First time.’

‘I’m baffled.’

‘Why?’

‘Why a young Englishman would suddenly decide to make his first trip to Ireland at the most dangerous point in six hundred years of occupation.’

‘I’m not interested in history.’

‘Then you’re not equipped to visit Ireland. History will surround you. And the hatred it has spawned. When this storm abates, you should take a good look at the coast. What civilisation exists is centred on the estates of English landlords, and even their substantial mansions and castles face out to sea, away from the forbidding land. The sea is their point of contact with the rest of the Empire, their all-important escape route.’

He lifted the book of Yeats’ poems, and felt its heft.

‘I’m not a literary critic, just a fellow Irishman. But tell Mr Yeats he should have the good sense of his compatriots Wilde and Shaw, who wear their nationality lightly, and dramatise the world they know, rather than spinning one out of their boyhood imaginations.’

When I did not reply, he stared at me.

‘You’ll find out soon enough that the real Ireland is nothing like Yeats’ portrayal. It has grown cruel and savage beyond belief.’

He handed me back the book. It fell from my grasp onto the deck, spilling its contents across the wet boards.

‘What do we have here?’ said Marley, lifting Rosemary O’Grady’s letter and the newspaper clipping. He gave them a furtive caress and read their contents with growing interest.

‘This is not my province at all,’ he murmured. He examined me closely. ‘I take it you are going to bring this letter to the attention of the Sligo police?’

Before I could reply, water came surging over the bow of the boat, forcing us to retreat below deck. The momentum of the waves rocked the boat back and forth in steep, sickening arcs. Overcome with seasickness, I slumped against a bulkhead. My stalker swung himself alongside.

‘Tell me, what are you doing with this letter?’

I felt my stomach dangle above the bottomless depths of the ocean, and then the motion of the boat hitting a sudden swell hurled it upwards again.

‘It was given to me,’ I said weakly, ‘by the Order of the Golden Dawn. The society has sent me to investigate her death.’

He handed me back the letter and news report. We took advantage of a brief lull in the boat’s pitching and staggered to the dining cabin, where the major, his wife and the Red Cross nurse were deep in conversation. I sat on a bench and pressed my head against the cold porthole. They were discussing English perceptions of Sligo, and my ears pricked at the mention of Yeats’ name. I tried to quell the surges of nausea sufficiently to concentrate on what they were saying.

‘Sleuth Wood, Glencar’s waterfall, Rosses Point, none of them are worth the detour,’ sniffed the major. ‘Their names rouse the fancy but Mr Yeats has romanticised them out of all proportion. When his readers think of Sligo, they see gaunt cliffs, wild woods and crystal cascades. His image of Ireland might delight English readers but it hides a grim truth. The disquiet that pervades the country. Houses ablaze and men with guns everywhere. If Mr Yeats visited Sligo today none of it would feel familiar or safe.’

‘Is it true they’ve started assassinating English people?’ asked the major’s young wife, who had yet to visit the country.

‘Only those who have lived there for hundreds of years,’ replied the nurse with a glint in her eye.

‘Tell me about Sligo,’ the major’s wife asked the nurse. ‘I’ve heard the landscape is impressive.’

The major grunted. ‘The rain is impressive.’

‘I’ve been that long in France I’m homesick even for the rain,’ said the nurse, a soft dreamy look filling her features, as though she were the queen of bad weather returning to her kingdom of rain.

‘The Irish seasons,’ said the major gruffly, ‘can only be distinguished by the temperature of the downpours. The cottages there and many of the big houses are so damp you could wash your face in the water streaming down the walls. The peasants and servants collect the drips in pots and pans and pour them into the rivers, which sweep the water out to sea where great clouds sweep it all back again. It’s an endless cycle of misery.’

‘But Sligo can be wonderful, in spite of the rain,’ said the nurse.

‘Thanks to its prosperous Protestant merchants and the great Anglo-Irish families who built it up from a muddy hovel,’ replied the major.

I felt another convulsion heave my stomach. I rushed from my seat and burst forth onto the deck. When I returned to the dining cabin, the mood of the conversation had darkened. Marley had joined in the discussion.

‘They’re all leaving you know,’ he said.

‘Who?’ asked the major’s wife.

‘The Burkes, the Butlers, the Gibsons and the Montgomerys. One by one, they’re going away. They’re forsaking their mildewy mansions and leaving in trains and boats and automobiles. Before the rebellious mobs take their estates apart.’

‘It’s true,’ said the major. ‘We were in Liverpool last week and the place resembled an aristocratic refugee camp. They even have their own solicitors and clergymen in tow.’ His voice took on a low grumbling tone. ‘This rising is nothing more than the whim of a lunatic population. Ireland has had countless rebellions in the past. Its peasants don’t know how to react from one day to the next except to oppose everything England affirms. The landlords will return with their entourages when the mood changes.’

The nurse interrupted. ‘This time it’s different. The Rising wasn’t a stray event. It marked a distinct stage in the development of the Irish nation. Everything has changed utterly.’

A silence greeted the vehemence of her words.

‘Shouldn’t you be tending to your patient,’ asked Marley, ‘rather than trying to justify an act of treason?’

The nurse’s jaw was clenched as she fought to control her annoyance.

‘What are you? A doctor? Whatever you are you’re not a gentleman.’

‘And what are you? A nurse or a revolutionary? Haven’t you grown tired of cradling the heads of dying Irishmen in France? Or do you wish to spend your days dressing the wounds of Irish men on Irish soil?’

‘One can be sick in peacetime, too,’ she replied. ‘An entire nation might be dying on its feet and not a drop of blood shed.’

The ship tilted and the door of the cabin flew open with an unseen force and then slammed shut again. No one spoke, and the tension in the cabin rose. Marley lit a cigarette and put his feet up on the bench opposite, right next to where I was sitting. He stared at me and blew out a long trail of smoke.

‘My young friend here has an interesting tale to share with us,’ he announced to the cabin. The walls began shaking with the reverberations of the rising waves; the glass lantern swung on its beam, and the glasses slid on the table, but all the passengers’ eyes were fixed upon me.

‘He tells me that he’s a ghost-feeler,’ continued Marley. ‘Do you know he’s travelling to Sligo in the hope of communicating with the spirit of a dead girl?’

The passengers looked amused. I turned away, suddenly shy at his mocking camaraderie and his careless revelation of my secret mission.

‘A ghost?’ asked the major’s wife.

‘Quite. Mr Adams is investigating the death of Rosemary O’Grady.’

‘The girl in the coffin?’

‘Yes.’

The major exploded with laughter and slapped me on the shoulder. ‘You go to Sligo at grave risk,’ he said. ‘The people there are sufficiently medieval to have you burnt at the stake.’

I felt a flush of humiliation.

‘You’ll have a job finding your ghost,’ continued the major. ‘The entire country is possessed. Banshees, ghosts, fairies, everyone is haunted by something.’

‘The Irish peasants have two things that can never be taken from them,’ said the nurse. ‘One is their hunger for justice. The other is their belief in the supernatural.’

There was a note of tension in her voice, but, fortunately, the subject of the occult proved a safer topic of conversation for her and her fellow passengers. Intrigued, they began to discuss what they knew of the case.

‘I gather this young woman’s body was found in mysterious circumstances, in a manner that cannot be explained by logic or common sense,’ said the major. ‘Then there’s the puzzling development concerning Captain Thomas Oates, the man who found her body. Apparently, the event so jolted his mind, he abandoned his posting and went into hiding.’

‘And what are Mr Adams’ thoughts on this?’

‘He believes we should look to the otherworld for guidance,’ said Marley.

The nurse’s eyebrow arched. ‘I believe Mr Adams is correct. No man or woman can claim omniscience in such dreadful matters.’

I was sensitive to every shade and nuance in their conversation and every flicker of expression on their faces, but my unwavering interest was undermined by another bout of sickness. I felt the room and their faces turn round and round, slowly at first, then quickening as though a wind had taken hold of them, spinning them further and further away.

‘Lie down.’ I heard the nurse’s voice suddenly beside me, magnified in my ear. ‘Take no heed of their contempt.’ Her voice was cracked with emotion. ‘Ghosts are our friends. They can tell us what we cannot see. They are our spies. I want you to listen carefully to what this ghost tells you, and record it carefully.’

She slipped a rolled blanket beneath my head, the first comfort I had received on the voyage. I felt that under her tender care, I might make slow but steady progress back towards good health, and lulled by her presence I drifted off to sleep.

When I came round, she had left the cabin. The attentions of Marley and the major, who leaned grimly towards me, destroyed whatever sense of ease I had gained. Relentlessly, they continued their interrogation.

‘Do you understand the political situation in Ireland?’ asked Marley staring at me eagerly.

‘Does anyone?’

‘I mean are you familiar with the pattern of the Irish rebellion?’

‘I’ve read the newspaper reports.’

‘You need to be careful with your English accent,’ advised the major. ‘The natives will instinctively feel something sinister is afoot when you start asking questions. And watch out for the Irish Constabulary. They’re a rum lot. They might decide you’re a troublemaker and fling you in gaol before you can cause them bother.’

‘Or give you a kicking just for the fun of it,’ added Marley. ‘Of course, you can always take refuge on the Isle of Innisfree. You’ll be out of harm’s way there.’

I tried to convey an expression of indignation rather than fear. It was what my education had taught me to do. As though a show of pluck might encourage them to desist.

‘We’re only warning you to be on the look-out,’ said Marley.

‘I don’t need a protector,’ I said, as a large wave struck the side of the boat. Through the porthole, I could see the sea, the dark horizon and the storm clouds boiling together. ‘And if you’re trying to frighten me it’s not working.’

He shrugged. ‘If you’re not afraid then that tells me two important things.’

‘What?’

‘That you don’t believe in the ghost of a murdered girl, and the Order of the Golden Dawn has sent the wrong man.’

At this point I shuffled off to my cabin. I was perspiring but my skin felt as icy as a corpse’s. The storm eventually blew itself out, and for the rest of the passage, I avoided association of any kind. I had heard enough about Ireland and its people, or at least the exaggerated tales of my fellow passengers, to make me want to shun their company. I saw Marley several times moping along the railings, his face set in a suspicious frown. Of the nurse and her invalid, I saw nothing more until we disembarked.