Despite his surprise at finding himself there, Wells was not unaware of the mining activity undertaken by the British forces. The Germans had pioneered the practice of burrowing tunnels all the way under enemy lines, packing them with explosives, and then detonating them—the previous December, not fifty miles from Calais, they had set off ten mines beneath an unsuspecting brigade—but, as Churchill had confided in him on a walk through Whitehall, “we’ve recruited the best lads from the coal pits in Manchester and Newcastle and they can dig all the way to Berlin if need be.” Indeed, two of them, so begrimed that they looked to Wells like chimney sweeps, emerged from the tunnel, pushing a barrow full of dirt and clay along the tracks. They touched the brim of their caps, but went on about their business as if they were merely excavating a sewer main under Camden Town.
“How far does this one go?”
“Far enough. There’s a pillbox on a hill—we call it the Beehive—and it’s damn near impregnable. Can’t take it out from the front, so the idea is to take it out from below.”
Very sensible, Wells thought, though the amount of labor and planning must have been immense. “Can we go in?”
“My orders are to let you see whatever you want, with two provisions.”
“Which are?”
“To get you back alive.”
“Admirable.”
“And to remind you, this can’t be written about until you get the go-ahead from HQ. We’ve got to blow up the Beehive first.”
“Of course. Any idea when that will be?”
Stubb glanced over at one of the sappers who was just pulling on another pair of filthy socks over his boots. “When’ja think, McCarthy?”
McCarthy, a short man with a drooping mustache, shrugged. “A week? Maybe less? Depends.”
“On what?” Stubb said.
“On whether Jerry hears us stomping about and blows us all to smithereens first.”
Now Wells understood the precaution of wearing socks over the boots. Putting on a pair himself, he followed Stubb and McCarthy—the latter showing no curiosity whatsoever about who he was—out of the cavern and into the tunnel proper. The ground—sandy topsoil at first, yielding then to firmer clay—sloped lower and lower, to a depth of at least twenty or thirty feet, and the passageway became narrower, before leveling off. Wells was stooped over, and had to move slowly, his hands grazing both walls at once. It was a claustrophobic space, poorly lit by guttering candles in makeshift stands, with a thick hose, carrying fresh air to the working end of the tunnel, strapped to brackets in the wall. It was all, by necessity, a hasty job, but Wells was impressed by the sturdy work, the timber frames meeting each other in butt joints without tongues and grooves. Progress was slow, and at any point he knew he could turn around, but he did not want to show any less bravery than the men he was accompanying, and besides, the story would gain from it. He was reminded of the network of eighteenth-century tunnels that had lain beneath the country house, Uppark, where his mother had once worked as a housekeeper; they had fascinated him as a boy, and he had made use of them later on in his art when he created the subterranean labyrinth inhabited by his Morlocks. These wet clay walls, spurting mud through any chink in the wood, could well have been his monsters’ lair.
The farther they went, the thinner the air became and the dimmer the glow from the candles. Even a match, struck to light one of them that had gone out, burned a ruby red without actually catching flame. Wells was having trouble getting his breath, and when he started to say something to Stubb, the sergeant whirled around with his finger to his lips. Just ahead, Wells could see two sappers, crouched and absolutely still, at the face of the tunnel, and McCarthy pressing a geophone against the wall, looking for all the world like Dr. Gruber back home with his stethoscope.
Wells, too, remained stock-still, the ceiling so low that he was virtually bent double. Stubb jabbed a finger toward the wall and mouthed, “Boche.”
If he listened very intently, he could swear he heard, only a foot or two away, the sound of a tool scraping at the clay. The Germans were digging in the opposite direction, either to intercept the British tunnel or to plant their own mines under the enemy’s trenches. No one moved, or said a word. Wells clapped a hand over his mouth to stifle a cough. The digging continued.
McCarthy motioned for them all to retreat up the tunnel, including the two sappers who had been excavating at the face, but the passageway was too narrow for them to do anything but back away, single file. McCarthy removed an electric torch from under his belt and shone its beam down the corridor to help light their way.
But now it sounded as if a pickax were being used—a chopping noise, and to Wells’s horror, a hunk of clay fell from the wall, followed by another, and another, until a hole suddenly appeared. A muffled voice blurted something—unintelligible, but unmistakably German—then abruptly stopped.
McCarthy waved at Stubb to extinguish the candle flickering in the holder against the wall, but not before Wells saw a hand, in a fingerless muddy glove, snake its way between two of the bracing planks and grope about. As abruptly as it had appeared, it was yanked back, and McCarthy started to urgently shove them all back up the tunnel. Stubb grabbed Wells by the sleeve, dragging him, but his boot got caught beneath one of the iron rails and he dropped to his knees. Stubb hauled him up, and by the faint light of the candle hanging a few yards farther down the tunnel, Wells glimpsed something that looked like a truncheon emerging from the hole; at one end, a grenade was attached.
McCarthy made a lunge for it, shoving it back where it came from, but it was not more than a few seconds later that the blast rocked the ground. For a moment, Wells thought that the tunnel would hold, the timbers swelling and shivering, but then he felt the shock wave as everything around him collapsed at once. The ceiling caved in, crashing down on his helmet, knocking him flat, his mouth in the pitch dark filling with wet clay and his shoulders pinned under a fallen support beam.
He heard some cries, then nothing but a pounding in his ears and the labored struggle of his own lungs to find some oxygen . . . with little success. Each gasp he expected to be his last . . . until one of them was, and utter silence descended on the darkness where he lay.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Every day, the office of the Freewoman magazine received dozens of invitations to concerts, plays, and gallery openings, from artists and promoters all over the city, in the hopes of generating a review or related publicity. Rebecca, like the other writers, was always on the lookout for the ones that might provide a story, or at least a diverting event. The plays in the West End had already been grabbed, as had the seated dinners, but among the few solicitations that remained, she spotted one that immediately piqued her interest.
Arthur Machen, the journalist for the Evening News who had written the much talked-about story of the angels of Mons, was giving a talk for the Spiritualists’ National Union on Great Russell Street. It seemed that the tale had been reprinted in a new volume of short stories called The Bowmen and Other Legends of the War, and the speech was meant to both celebrate its publication and, of course, increase its sales. (She had known authors so desperate to gain some notice for their books that they had resorted to marching up and down the street wearing sandwich boards.) This, however, held some promise—not so much because of the book itself, but because of the way in which Machen’s work had also tapped into the greater current of spiritualism, which was experiencing a sudden boom.
“Mind if I report on this one?” Rebecca asked Mrs. Marsden, the editor in chief.
“Which one?” Marsden shot back, her blue pencil flying across someone else’s piece, making quick corrections and edits.
“The Machen event.”
“We’ve already sent the book out for a review.”
“To whom?”
“Arthur Conan Doyle.”
Rebecca let out an inadvertent laugh. “That’s like asking Dr. Watson for an impartial review of Sherlock Holmes.”
The pencil
paused, and Mrs. Marsden looked up over her bifocals. “Fine. Then you can put on your skeptic’s hat, since it fits you so well, and go hear what he has to say. But not in more than 750 words; your work is becoming entirely too prolix.”
Assignment in hand, Rebecca had virtually skipped out of the dingy offices, and navigated the increasingly difficult streets—with the threat of an aerial bombardment hanging over the city every night, the streetlamps were hooded, if lit at all, and every window had its curtain drawn, admitting only a sliver of light at one edge or another—to the dilapidated headquarters of the Spiritualists’ Union. A costermonger’s cart, with the leftover vegetables of the day, was parked at the curb, the weary old horse, head down, slurping from a bucket of water.
At the entryway to the union, a boy was handing out flyers to passersby—“Come hear the man who first reported on the angels of Mons!”—though any number of others were flocking inside already. In the vestibule, a table was set up, with a cashbox and a stack of books for sale. Guarding it was a fearsome-looking brute with a mop of thick blond hair and a bored expression.
The assembly room was at the back, and had seats for perhaps a couple hundred spectators. There were pews instead of chairs, and high casement windows along both walls with stained glass depictions of scenes Rebecca did not recognize. They weren’t the traditional biblical scenes, but resembled instead the kind of pictures you might see on tarot cards—women in horned helmets sitting on thrones, knights riding haggard white horses, castles crumbling, men hanged upside down. A grim catalog, all in all, and Rebecca had to wonder who would willingly become a congregant of such a place.
“If time permitted, I would be only too pleased to explain the pictures to you,” a man said, blocking her passage down the central aisle. Although under six feet tall, he gave the impression of looming over her from a much greater height than that, and she was transfixed first by his face—pockmarked and fleshy, with incisors that she could swear had been filed to a point—and then by his garb. He was dressed like some Scottish laird in a story by Robert Louis Stevenson, from the tartan thrown over his shoulder to the hilt of the dirk sticking up from his heavy woolen sock. “The Earl of Boleskine,” he introduced himself.
“Cicily Fairfield.” Sometimes, when reporting, it was best not to use her pen name.
“I’ve never seen you here before,” he said, in what she suspected was an exaggerated Scottish burr, “and I would surely remember someone so young and beautiful.”
“This is my first visit.”
“I hope it won’t be your last.”
Several people were anxiously trying to get around them to claim seats, and Rebecca stepped aside to let them pass. Some of them bowed their heads to the man in the kilt.
“Are you interested in spiritualism, or simply in Mr. Machen’s book?”
“I’ll know once I’ve heard him speak,” Rebecca replied. The earl was overly fond of his aftershave, she noted. And where, she wondered, was this putative earldom of his?
“Fair enough. But if I may give you one piece of advice, sit toward the middle tonight.”
“What? Why?”
“Acoustics,” he said, before turning to a wiry, ferret-like man, wearing tiny round spectacles, who was tugging at his sleeve.
“Yes, what is it this time, Anton?”
Anton murmured something about the time.
Excusing himself, the earl moved off to take a seat in the front row, just below the raised stage. There, at the podium, a solitary figure somewhere in his late fifties and dressed in a funereal black frock coat, was clutching a sheaf of papers; he looked like a nervous undertaker, and she took him to be Machen himself.
She was not proven wrong. With the notable exception of H. G. Wells, who, despite his thin voice, reveled in public discourse, most authors were solitary creatures, unused to presenting themselves to their readers. They were like moles suddenly exposed to the sunlight. The lights in the room had been dimmed, and black muslin curtains had now been drawn across the stained glass windows. Machen looked out across the crowd—and to Rebecca’s surprise, all the seats on both sides of her in the pew were filled—and gripping the podium like a man on a storm-tossed sea, he started to speak in a quavering voice.
“I’m gratified, and somewhat overwhelmed, that you have all come out to hear me,” he began. “Going abroad, and at night, is a hazardous undertaking at this unfortunate epoch in time.”
From his lilting accent, he was Welsh, Rebecca surmised. For all she knew, the whole United Kingdom might be represented tonight. She made a note of it, in shorthand, on the pad she held discreetly in her lap.
“I am here, of course, to introduce my new book, a collection of stories containing one of my most recent and celebrated tales.”
“Speak up, man!” someone shouted from the rear. “Can’t hear you!”
“Oh, I do apologize,” he said, and the Scottish laird stepped up onto the stage, moving the podium forward and, with an arm around Machen’s shoulders, offering him some hushed and overdue advice on the art of public speaking.
Holding his head higher and speaking up, Machen launched into some of the most self-effacing, even apologetic, opening remarks Rebecca had ever heard an author unwisely utter. When he wasn’t asking forgiveness for the brevity of the famous tale, he was denigrating it as “an indifferent piece of work,” a story that had nevertheless “had such odd and unforeseen consequences and adventures that the tale of them may possess some interest.” She almost had to laugh at the man’s utter lack of salesmanship. No wonder most authors were as poor as church mice.
“It began on a hot Sunday morning between meat and mass,” he said, when he had first heard of the ignominious English retreat from Mons. “I seemed to see a furnace of death and agony and terror seven times heated, and in the midst of the burning was the British army—in the midst of the flame, consumed by it and yet aureoled in it, scattered like ashes and yet triumphant, martyred and forever glorious.”
In the space of a few seconds, and to Rebecca’s surprise, he had utterly transformed, going from a mouse of a man to an apocalyptic prophet. She didn’t want to miss recording a single word of his sudden eloquence.
“So I saw our men with a shining about them,” he rolled on, “and so I took these thoughts with me to church and, I’m sorry to say, was making up a story in my head while the deacon was singing the Gospel.”
But the more he explained away the tale as one that he had made up out of whole cloth, the more Rebecca could sense a growing resistance in the audience. Looking around, she saw young women already in widow’s black, and older couples, misty-eyed and holding hands, perhaps the parents of soldiers now lost to the battlefields of the Western Front. They had come in search of assurance, and like so much of the country, moral uplift. They wanted to hear that God was on their side, and that their lost loved ones—defended in Belgium by a heavenly host led by none other than St. George himself—were now enjoying their just rewards in paradise. Machen was offering cold comfort indeed.
“All ages and nations have cherished the thought that spiritual hosts may come to the help of earthly arms, that gods and heroes and saints have descended from their high immortal places to fight for their worshippers and clients. And having written my story, having groaned and growled over it and printed it, I certainly never thought to hear another word of it.”
That, as everyone in England knew, was not the end, but only the beginning, of the saga. One journal after another had picked up the story, pamphlets were printed, sermons given from pulpits in every parish church, citing Machen’s account as fact, and insisting he provide even more detail. What British regiment was involved? How were the angelic bowmen deployed? Specifically, what commands did St. George give? Several times someone in the crowd threw out a question, or issued a challenge, one elderly pensioner claiming that his own grandson had sworn to having witnessed the apparitions himself. “With his own eyes, he’s seen ’em, and he’s nowt one to tell a li
e!”
It was only when Rebecca thought things could not get much worse that Machen, finally, made another, and rather abrupt, about-face. While sticking to his original story, he observed that some persons “judging by the tone of these remarks of mine, may gather the impression that I am a profound disbeliever in the possibility of any intervention of the superphysical order in the affairs of the physical order. They will be mistaken if they make this inference.”
In other words, he did believe in the supernatural and the occult, Rebecca jotted down. Machen was not an easy man to categorize.
“They will be mistaken if they suppose that I think miracles in Judaea credible but miracles in France or Flanders incredible. I hold no such absurdities.”
He was expatiating on that notion, certainly more in keeping with the spiritualism angle and venue of the night, when from the distance Rebecca could hear an eerily familiar wail. So could the others in the assembly room. Only Machen, intent on his remarks, seemed oblivious.
The wail was picked up by sirens closer to the hall, starting low and then rising in volume, before again descending. Rebecca knew, without being able to look out the curtained windows, that the keening would be accompanied even now by white, anti-aircraft beams frantically probing the sky, in search of the approaching zeppelins.
People looked to each other, quickly consulting what to do. Some grabbed their hats, buttoned up their coats, and bustled up the aisle, no doubt heading for the shelter of the nearest underground station. Others might be making for their own homes; Rebecca’s mother always insisted that the safest place for them was under the front stairwell. But home was far from here, and she did not relish the idea of descending into the crowded and fetid tube tunnel. Some of the audience, possibly thinking along the same lines and putting their faith in the stout timbers of the hall, hunkered down in their pews, or crouched down onto the floor.
The Haunting of H. G. Wells Page 11