The Revolutions Read online

  “A nasty-looking implement, that stick.”

  “My friend did not like it either. Dimmick had knocked him to the floor. Peace, I said, peace, we are all reasonable men here. I said that I was only a sailor, and that if he wanted to hire a sailor I might work for him, but if he wanted to hire a mystic he should go somewhere else, and quickly. Plenty of frauds in London would take his money! He said that he did not want sailors, and was I deaf, had he not been clear? He wanted clerks. I said that perhaps he was deaf, because hadn’t I said I was a sailor. Shut up, he said, and I’ll give you two pounds to come with me and let the boss explain. Well—I was afraid of him, but I have done more dangerous things than follow a madman to Deptford, and for less money.”

  Others tell much the same story as Mr Vaz—the unexpected visit from Dimmick, that is. One or two were recruited from jail, I regret to say.

  Mr Vaz has shared his cure for the headaches.

  “When it gets too painful,” Vaz advises me, “I close my eyes and think of God; and when that does not work, I think of women.”

  “I think of Josephine,” I say. I have told him about Josephine.

  “Aha!” he says.

  “Sometimes I think about food.”

  “Ha! Food!”

  “Ham,” I say. “Bacon. Oxtail soup, curried fowl, meat puddings, pea soup, roast—”

  We have these conversations two or three times a day. Talk of food makes poor Simon moan.

  —April 24

  Graves was gone today. Coe left us on the nineteenth of the month. Parrington and Singh on the fifteenth—Singh had been suffering from something that resembled consumption. I forget other names.

  A letter from Josephine. Could hardly make sense of it.

  Awful confession—her letters pile up beside my bed, unread—unopened. Can hardly think about a thing but the Work.

  —April 26

  Dimmick gave me a long hard look this evening, as if he suspects that I have been keeping notes. But then that’s Dimmick’s way—the scowl, the menacing tap-tap-tap.

  Yesterday, Dimmick caught me trying to sneak into a room not my own. I was confused, I said, bloody place is a maze, isn’t it? The scowl, the tap-tap-tap.

  —April 27

  Starry night as I walked home. Struck by a quite unreasoning sensation of utter terror, I clutched to a lamp-post as if to a mast in a storm, and was mistaken for a drunk. A light in Josephine’s window, but I did not know what to say to her. All this is for her; and yet I cannot tell her. Not a

  Had to put this away. Could hardly read the page before me. Troubled all day by visions and now the symbols of the Work dance before my eyes.

  —May 10

  Quite forgot this thing. Not a great success. The Work leaves little time to reflect; and for a while there I was unwell. Let me try again.

  Every morning the ledgers contain numbers, written in the left-hand column of the leftmost page. Numbers is something of a simplification. They are dots and dashes, somewhat like Morse code, though so far as I know, it is not. We think of them as representing numbers. It is rather like learning a new language. In amongst the dots and dashes are a few other symbols. Today I encountered α, φ, ψ, and Ω. My classical education was poor, but I know those to be Greek. There are a few other symbols—not many—that my education had not equipped me to recognise at all, such as , or ≈, or . Over the course of the day, the job is to perform certain operations on those dots and dashes et cetera, transforming them as they march across the columns from one side of the ledger to another.

  Vaz believes that the ledgers circulate among the rooms, so that operations that began in Room 1 might be continued in Room 6 and concluded in Room 12 and revolve back to begin again in Room 2.

  The instructions Mr Irving chalks on the board set the rules of the game.

  Mr Harriot, who works at the back of the room, advised me to think of it as a game. He says it’s trying too hard to understand what it’s all for that causes headaches and worry and sickness, and the thing is to play the game the best you can. He is a rugby man.

  The operations that we perform are generally not very difficult, but there are a great many to be performed in a day. Mr Irving never makes threats or speeches, and Gracewell never shows himself in Room 13, but no one doubts that errors will not be tolerated, and speed is of the essence. There is a spirit of competition in the room.

  The instructions are sometimes very simple:

  DESKS ONE TO TEN: COMBINE THE FIRST AND SECOND ROWS

  Often we are little more than overpaid scriveners. The instructions tell us to copy one ledger into another, or to do it in triplicate.

  Sometimes the instructions are more complicated:

  IGNORE THE SECOND COLUMN IF YOU ARE IN DESKS ONE TO TEN. OTHERWISE THE SECOND COLUMN IS THE SUM OF EACH NUMBER IN THE ROWS BELOW THE NUMBER IN QUESTION IN THE FIRST COLUMN AND CONTINUE IN THE THIRD COLUMN ETC ETC ETC ETC ETC ETC

  Tedious, and so far as I can tell, pointless, but at least clear. Sometimes the instructions are merely exhortations:

  FASTER.

  And sometimes they are utterly obscure:

  ONE IS WHITE. TWO IS BLACK.

  Or:

  ONE IS YES. ZERO IS NO.

  And besides, how precisely is one supposed to add ψ to , or subtract from Ω?

  “Do what seems right,” Vaz says. “If you have done it wrong, I expect they will let you know.”

  Every so often Mr Irving summons someone out of the room, for a conversation from which they return silent and pale. I confess that it worries me. I fear error. Most of what the instructions call for is nonsense, so far as I can tell, and the remainder is pointless; therefore there is no way to know if it’s being done right, or wrong, or even if there is such a thing as right or wrong, or if we are being judged on some other ground, or not at all. Sometimes I worry that the Work doesn’t make sense even to Gracewell, and that at the end of the day Irving shovels it all into the fire, laughing at our wasted efforts.

  When the instructions call for an impossible or absurd operation, I take Vaz’s advice and simply trust to intuition; I close my eyes and let my hand work. I think it is these leaps of intuition, not the long hours or the close airless room, that cause the headaches et cetera. It is no doubt significant that quite a number of the men believe themselves to be sensitives, in one way or another—fortune-tellers, weekend mediums, table-rappers, fairy-spotters.

  One feels that the Work has a shape, somehow. One has a sense of forging into airless heights; of the numbers as spiralling—revolving—a pattern forming of which my work is but a tiny, tiny fragment. A thing being woven together out of dots and dashes, my work a single thin filament; turning and turning, rising up, bearing us with it. As if we are measuring something, or mapping something, or filling some volume of empty space with numbers so that one can plumb its depths. From time to time I have thought of that famous painting of the Tower of Babel, spiralling around and up in an endless procession of arches and ladders and scaffolds.

  “Come let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens.”

  —May 16

  Waugh and Heath called round while I was at work, leaving a note. It occurs to me that I have not touched a drop of drink since I began at Gracewell’s. No doubt it does me good. There is a kind of discipline to the Work that does away with other distractions. Rather like one imagines soldiering might be, or being a monk.

  Towards the end of the day Simon stood quite suddenly at his desk and announced that he would not do it any more. He would not, he said, he would not, he simply would not, he had decided that he would not, would not, would not, would not. Then he started to scream. His eyes rolled back in his head and he cried out as if he were lost, alone, in some dark starry emptiness, beset by monstrous spectres. I held the poor fellow by his shoulders and tried to talk some sense back into him, but it was no go. Strong, as they say men in a fit often are. In the end he had to be removed from the room by Mr Dimmick, who
appeared out of nowhere and forced him into submission, as if he were a rabid dog and not a frail medical student, and then led him out with his arm twisted behind his back, muttering now then now then come along hup hup my boy hup. Then a long idleness as the ledgers and instructions were rearranged to account for the new configuration of the room.

  * * *

  Hardly a week gone by since the fire. Already it seems like some awful dream.

  God, what a mess.

  What on earth have I got myself into?

  Chapter Eight

  Martin Atwood’s house—number 22, according to the card he’d given Josephine—stood on the south-west corner of Hanover Square. It was palatial, in a discreet, rather austere way. Five rows of white windows were set into a grey immensity of brick. The door was set back behind four square white pillars, a fence of black railings, a moat of basement windows. The windows and the golden letter-box in the middle of a large black door caught the last violet light of the evening.

  At first nobody answered Lord Atwood’s door-bell, for so long that Josephine began to wonder if nobody was home, not even the servants. After all, she’d come unannounced, on a whim that had surprised even her, after ignoring Atwood’s invitation for several dutiful weeks, just as she’d promised Arthur she would—having, in fact, gone so far as to lose Atwood’s card in a desk-drawer, so that when she’d decided that afternoon to pay Atwood a visit, she’d had to spend an hour searching for it, and was now later than she’d meant to be.

  She tapped her foot. One or two passers-by looked curiously at her. While she waited, halfway across London, a little flame hatched in a rusted bucket in a cupboard at the back of Mr Gracewell’s Engine and began to explore its surroundings, feeding itself on greasy rags and old ledgers and newspapers.

  * * *

  When the door opened it revealed Atwood himself, not a servant. She felt instantly shabby and poor, and she flushed. He smiled at her as if—it was not quite friendly, though not unfriendly either—as if her presence confirmed a hypothesis.

  “Josephine! I thought you might come.”

  “I hope you don’t mind. You said—”

  “I extended an invitation; you accepted it. And with auspicious timing, too—there must have been something in the air.”

  He led her into a long hallway, lined with paintings, of mostly Arcadian subjects—women in flowing white silk draped about green willows—she didn’t do more than glance at them. She supposed they were all very fine, and very tasteful. She was already intimidated enough. She’d rehearsed what she meant to say on the way over, but now, in the face of Atwood’s obvious wealth and station, she nearly forgot why she’d come.

  She allowed him to lead her towards a staircase. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

  “Not at all. I have some friends here. Members of my company. We were almost ready to begin—but they’ll be delighted to meet you. It will be better with nine.”

  “Begin?”

  “You’ll join us, won’t you? A séance, of sorts. The hour is very nearly upon us. No doubt you sensed it.”

  “Your Lordship—I didn’t come here for a séance. I came to talk about Arthur Shaw.”

  “Arthur Shaw? Oh, yes. I recall.”

  Yet another of her letters to Arthur had gone unanswered. The final straw. She had been in the dark for altogether too long, and it seemed she would be in the dark for ever, unless she did something to bring light to it. Perhaps Atwood was dangerous—but if so, it was Arthur who was in danger, not her. It was Arthur who was becoming so hopelessly caught up in Atwood’s and Gracewell’s affairs that he might never be able to extricate himself from them—whatever they were. She remained certain that Arthur would have had nothing to do with anything truly criminal, or thoroughly wicked. But it was plainly undesirable, and unhealthy; and she had decided that it was time to swallow her own misgivings about Lord Atwood and pay him a visit to tell him so.

  As Atwood led her downstairs—first unfastening a red rope from the top of the staircase, then refastening it—she launched into her case. It was her right to be told what was going on, as Arthur’s fiancée and, she hoped, as Atwood’s friend; furthermore, whatever was going on in Deptford was quite clearly harmful to Arthur’s health, not to mention his sanity; and besides, it was a waste of his talents; and so on, and so on. Atwood was quite plainly not really listening.

  “Josephine, Josephine—this is not a night to discuss money.”

  “Sir! It’s not a question of money, it’s a question of—of simple decency.”

  “Is it? How dull.”

  “I thought you might help.”

  “I thought you’d come to help me. We have very little time, and a great deal to do to prepare.”

  She was curious despite herself. “For what?”

  Atwood smiled, and pointed the way forward down a low-ceilinged, electric-lit corridor.

  “I recall Mr Shaw,” Atwood said. “I recommended his services to Mr Gracewell, didn’t I? It’s very important work, Josephine, very important; but I grant you it’s unpleasant. I wasn’t aware of Mr Shaw’s finer qualities, which you have so eloquently adumbrated. I’ll speak to Gracewell.”

  “Who is Gracewell? What on earth is he doing? What—”

  “He assists the Company with calculations.”

  “But what does that mean? Why is all this secrecy necessary?”

  “Will you permit me to show you?”

  For a moment she was afraid he might open a door to reveal Arthur chained up in a cupboard, shovelling coal or something of the sort.

  “You’re just in time to witness one of our experiments. Our company—you can see what it’s all for, and why it’s so tremendously urgent. You’re not superstitious, are you, Josephine?”

  “Superstitious? I don’t think I am.”

  “Good! It’s a source of constant surprise to me how many people can’t tell psychical science from ghost stories. So many sensitives waste their gifts, led astray by superstition—and I think that you have a quite remarkable gift, Josephine. I don’t say that lightly. Why, if every girl in London who claims to be sensitive really were, it would be a wonder that London doesn’t levitate! Fortunately, I have an excellent sense for the real thing. I dare say you feel it too; when two true sensitives meet, there’s an undeniable spark, isn’t there? The uninitiated might mistake it for something baser, something carnal. And what a waste, when such energies could be put to higher purposes.”

  It was impossible to deny that her heart was pounding.

  He paused with his hand on a doorknob.

  “I can’t say more unless I know you’ll join us. Will you?”

  “Mr Shaw—”

  “We can discuss him later. Will you join us?”

  “I confess, Lord Atwood—I’m curious.”

  “You’ll have to stop calling me that. Call me Mercury. It’s a game, but rather an important one—we don’t use the names of ordinary life here. All are equal. All seekers in the dark, aren’t we? Our common goal is understanding, and we are all equally distant from it. Besides, you can’t have Mr Smith the butcher or Mr Boggs the bank clerk stamping about in the astral stuff, knocking things over. Or Lord What’s-his-name of What-have-you, for that matter. So—you need a new name.”

  “A nom de magicienne? Something Latin, I suppose?”

  “As a matter of fact, I was thinking Venus.”

  Josephine thought that was very inappropriate, and said so.

  Atwood smiled, and opened a door onto an upper gallery of a large library.

  A wrought-iron staircase led down to the library’s floor, where a little group of men and women stood, making conversation, or carrying out obscure preparations. A large circular table occupied the centre of the room. In the middle of the table there was an arrangement of spherical electrical lamps glowing in a variety of odd hues; the room was otherwise gloomy. A man in a black coat bustled around, wiping the glass of the lamps, adjusting their flames and nudging them in sl
ight orbits around one another, with the care of an artist. Every time he moved a lamp, ripples of dim glinting light ran across the book-bindings on the walls of the room, shimmering like schools of fish.

  There was a pattern painted on the parquet floor, in blue and red, green and purple and gold. It had something of the look of a star-map rendered by an astronomer in the grip of either hysteria or genius. Thick curving lines, with arrow-heads pointing in all directions; lines made of characters that Josephine couldn’t recognise; a series of concentric circles, the outermost of which reached all the way to the feet of the bookshelves at the edge of the room. The table sat near the centre of these circles, nearly but not quite at the heart of the pattern.

  On one wall there was an immense grandfather clock. In a corner there was an untidy collection of musical instruments; in another corner lay a heap of tools—a broom, paintbrushes in a bucket, a ladder, a rifle.

  Atwood leaned over the railing. “Now, that’s Jupiter down there, in the black dress. She has a temper, and considers herself one of the great brains of England—which she may very well be, for all I know! I don’t consider myself more than a stumbler in the dark, after all—and so I make up for my deficiencies by having a circle of talent always around me. And that chap there in the green, the bald one with the philosophical beard, he’s a theologian—he goes by Uranus, when he’s a guest here. The chap who resembles the Prime Minister goes by Neptune. Do you see the rules of the game? We have a vacancy for a Venus. Now that I think of it, we’ve never had a poet before! Ah, and the Indian fellow there—”

  “Mercury.” The woman Atwood had named Jupiter called up from below. Her voice was sharp, ringing, impatient. “Can we begin?”

  Atwood glanced at Josephine and rolled his eyes. Then he turned back to the door behind them and performed a quick series of gestures with his hands, rather like the stations of the cross, and muttered something too quiet and quick for Josephine to hear.