by Ian McDonald
In the end, I know my curiosity will drive me to find out what they want with me. To know the answer, I will have to go to them.
Extracts from Edward Garret Desmond’s Notes and Commentaries on Project Pharos toward an uncompleted paper to be submitted to the Royal Irish Astronomical Society.
… On August 8 at 12:15 A.M. it was observed that the transtellar vehicle had ceased generating explosions, having shed sufficient velocity to match the pedestrian pace of our solar system. Its final proper motion was approximated to be fifteen miles per second.
The vehicle maintained course and velocity over the days preceding perigee. It was not until the night of September 2 that conditions were suitable for the experiment to commence. That night the sky was clear, Sligo Bay uncommonly calm, and the extrasolar vehicle two days from perigee of 156,000 miles. At 9:25 P.M. the signal was activated, and for a period of two hours the primary communication code was transmitted—that is, pi expressed as the approximate ratio of twenty-two over seven. This sequence was repeated every two hours for two hours until local dawn at 6:25 A.M. Simultaneous with the operation of the stellagraph, the vessel was closely observed through the Craigdarragh eighteen-inch reflector telescope. No change in luminosity was observed.
After nightfall on the following day, September 3, it again being clear and calm, the floating stellagraph was again activated, transmitting the pi ratio for an hour, then changing to the natural exponent e expressed as the approximate fraction of nineteen over seven. As before, this cycle was repeated every two hours for two hours. As before, the spatial object was closely observed through telescopes—both those of the experimenter, and of the invited witnesses in Sligo town.
No response was observed from the transtellar vessel on these dates.
On the third night, September 4, communication was once again attempted.
Dr. Edward Garret Desmond’s Personal Diary: September 4, 1913
I ANTICIPATED LAST NIGHT with the thrill of a child at Christmas. I could hardly wait for darkness to descend and my attempts to communicate with the Altairii to commence. My to-that-date lack of success had in no way discouraged me; as a gentleman of science, I know that triumph is not always immediate. I was confident, however, that this night I would succeed in breaking through their alien silence.
At the prearranged hour, Mr. Michael Barry down in the Harbour Commissioners office operated the floating stellagraph and transmitted my recognition signal. From the observatory dome I could see the floating cross of pontoons filling all of Sligo Bay, flashing our proud message of will and intellect to the star travellers.
Then the first of the night’s calamities occurred. At 10:23 P.M. the observatory was plunged into the most profound darkness. By now accustomed to these failures of the electrical supply, I lit the oil lamps I had installed with just such a contingency in mind. Then Mrs. O’Carolan came rushing in from the main house in a terrible to-do, flustered and flapping and gabbling about having heard on the telephone that the current had failed in Rosses Point, too. Alarmed, I abandoned my telescope and reached the window just in time to see the lights of my fine floating stellagraph plunged into extinction. Just as abruptly, the glow from Sligo town vanished, as if some vast hand had snuffed it out. As I was later to learn from the pages of the Irish Times, the electrical supply was blacked out from Donegal Town to Enniskillen to Ballina for a period of four hours. At the time, ignorant as I was, I was greatly fearful, imagining that my signal attempt had brought some dreadful star doom down upon our Earth.
Then the second peculiarity occurred. The star vehicle, which I had kept under observation in my telescope, suddenly emitted a pulse of light bright enough to be visible with the naked eye. It continued to emit these bursts of brilliant light at the rate of one per minute until 12:16 A.M., at which time the object flared so dazzlingly that I was momentarily blinded, though I have learned from witnesses that the entire sky seemed to turn white. When I regained my customary clarity of vision, I was unable to find the vehicle in my telescope eyepiece. It had vanished as utterly as if it had never been. No conjurer vanishing a lady into thin air upon the Dublin stage could have matched such a feat of prestidigitation, and the vacuum of space is thinner by far than the most rarefied of airs.
I searched the heavens frantically for some trace of the great star vehicle—some nebula, some nimbus one might expect in the aftermath of an explosion. Nothing. It might never have existed. As I was pondering upon what fate might have befallen the valiant star travellers (and rueing bitterly that it had befallen them before I had made contact with them), Caroline burst in upon me to inform me of the most dreadful news of that calamitous evening: that Emily had been found wandering in a state of great distress upon the Sligo Road by a police constable.
From the Report of Constable Michael O’Hare, Drumcliffe R.I.C Station
UPON THE NIGHT IN question I was proceeding upon my bicycle along the Sligo Road toward Rosses Point, where there had been concerns expressed by certain well-to-do householders at the sudden failure of the electric supply. At approximately eleven thirty, as I was passing the point where the boundary wall separating Bridestone Wood from the Mullaghboy estate comes down to the road, I heard a noise like crying and sobbing coming from the foot of the forest wall. I advanced with caution, and by the light of my bicycle lamp saw a young lady huddled in the ditch in a state of great and obvious distress. She was quite unclothed, which somewhat unnerved me, and covered in cuts and bruises, as if she had been running through briars and brambles. I was unable to offer consolation to the young lady, so great was her distress, but for the sake of decency and the coolness of the air I persuaded her to cover her modesty with my police cape. I decided to take her to the O’Bannon residence, Mullaghboy, not a quarter mile distant, where a doctor might be fetched. The young lady would not, however, consent to be moved from the side of the road. I attempted to glean some inkling of what dreadful thing might have happened to her, but she would not so much as give me her name. I persisted with my questions, and, between sobbing fits, she mentioned the name of some person, possibly of foreign extraction or origin, whose name I took to be Lew. More significantly, she spoke of violation, stolen maidenhood, ravishment, and unfaithful lovers. Clearly, some form of indecent assault had been made upon the unfortunate young lady. It was therefore imperative that I remove her to a safe place from which I could summon the necessary medical, police, and priestly assistance. Knowing that any attempt to force her to accompany me would only increase her distress, I finally persuaded her to mount my bicycle and with her as passenger, I cycled to Mullaghboy House, where Mrs. O’Bannon recognised the young lady as Miss Emily Desmond of the neighbouring household, Craigdarragh. While I went to fetch Dr. Campbell from Dromahoe, she telephoned to inform Mrs. Desmond of her daughter’s plight.
September 8, 1913
The Sligo and Leitrim Impartial Reporter
POLICE HUNT FOR MYSTERY ATTACKER CONTINUES
The search for the mystery assailant of the Drumcliffe schoolgirl, Miss Emily Desmond, has been extended to include the Bundoran and Dromahair constabularies. Following house-to-house inquiries in the Drumcliffe area concerning the movements of the locals on the night of September 4, Inspector Patrick Gorman of the Sligo police, spearheading the manhunt, now believes that the mystery attacker is not of this locale. Though he would not comment on how widely the dragnet for the assailant might eventually be cast, Inspector Gorman did not rule out the involvement of police forces as far afield as Galway and Athlone.
Miss Desmond, daughter of the celebrated local figure Dr. Edward Garret Desmond of Craigdarragh House, was most brutally and viciously violated in the vicinity of local landmark Bridestone Wood in the parish of Drumcliffe. The constable who discovered Miss Desmond upon the road described the attack as “Frenzied—that of a madman, or wild beast.” Miss Desmond is currently recuperating from her ordeal at the Fitzwilliam Street clinic of Dr. Hubert Orr, the renowned Dublin psychological practition
er. Dr. Desmond was today unavailable for comment upon the incident, save that he had every confidence that the police were exercising all possible diligence in their efforts to bring the attacker to justice. However, it has come to the notice of this newspaper that, prior to the assault, there had been several slaughterings and mutilations of chickens and small livestock on the Craigdarragh demesne.
Local women have been advised by the police not to travel unchaperoned, especially after nightfall.
Extracts from the casebooks of Dr. Hubert Orr, Fitzwilliam Street Clinic, Dublin.
MY PHYSICAL EXAMINATION OF the patient proved that she had indeed been subjected to repeated and forceful sexual penetration, without doubt upon the night in question by person (or persons) unknown. As yet it is impossible to ascertain if conception occurred; the patient is too deeply shocked to supply information concerning her periods. I shall recommend that she remain here at the clinic until some degree of certainty is possible. It will be some time before she will be capable of receiving the news if it proves positive.
Rape is a particularly detestable crime—it is a violation of the whole person. The physical damage may be small (though not to be dismissed) compared to the wounds inflicted on the mind; it may take many weeks of counselling in a conducive atmosphere before she is ready to return home, and many more until she is fully healed from the experience, if ever.
The psychological wounding may be deeper than I thought. My initial presumption was that Miss Desmond’s youth would have blessed her with a natural resilience; that, like a rubber ball, she would rapidly spring back into her natural character. Rather, it seems that her tender years have rendered her all the more emotionally fragile and vulnerable. Since her arrival with us she has not spoken a word. Though she submits meekly to Nurse O’Brien’s and my medical examinations and treatments, she has maintained an unbroken silence under all conditions. That she hears and responds to my questions is apparent, but she refuses adamantly to answer them with even so much as a nod or shake of the head. She is eating, but meagerly, and never in the presence of the staff. Nurse O’Brien reports that her favourite occupation is sitting by the window for hours on end, looking out at nothing. Long after darkness has fallen, she may be found in the same chair by the window, staring into the street. In the absence of concrete answers to my gentle probings, I am forced to hypothesise, a thing I am loath to do. Is her blank preoccupation a self-inflicted, selective amnesia, a hiding away of the pain of violation behind multiple locked doors, or is it an obsessional playing over and over and over the events of that September night, a memory burned like a brand so deep into her mind that it colours every thought, every feeling, every experience? Certainly, it is not healthy, but faced with a stone wall of silence, I am unable even to begin to help.
The silence has at last broken, but only partially; light streams through the cracks in the masonry but the wall still stands. The key that partly released her from self-imposed incarceration was a simple request for her diary. Nurse O’Brien entered her room yesterday morning and found Miss Desmond sitting up in bed, wringing her hands in agitation. When Nurse O’Brien asked what was wrong, Miss Desmond replied that she wanted her diary. Nurse O’Brien at once summoned me, and the question was repeated to me. I replied that I was not in possession of her diary, would some loose paper and a pen suffice? Miss Desmond insisted that she wanted her diary, her own diary, and would accept no substitute. By this stage she was becoming quite forceful in her demands, and I deliberately fostered her anger and frustration to prevent her from lapsing back into her near-catatonic state again. Finally, she agreed to be content with a pen and some foolscap in return for a promise that I would obtain her diary from her mother at my earliest convenience.
Several volumes of those diaries arrived last post this evening and I will shortly study them for the key that will fully unlock the mind of Emily Desmond.
At present she is answering some direct questions, mostly of the “Are you hungry?” “Are you thirsty?” “Do you want me to open a window?” kind. Questions that impinge too closely upon the rape she meets with a blank silence. Her sensitivity and subtlety are phenomenal. My least attempt to steer the conversation in that direction causes her to retreat into sullen, withdrawn silence. Yet it is these very subjects that must be brought to mind and dealt with openly if we are to progress to a true psychological healing.
To the Man On The Clapham Omnibus, Emily would seem to be making a first-rate recovery—she is writing in her diary every day, expresses an interest in the outside world, and will engage in casual conversation. She is restless indoors and has expressed to Nurse O’Brien a desire to go on a shopping expedition to Clery’s to buy a new autumn outfit. At the end of the week, weather permitting, I may prescribe short walks in the clinic gardens, or Fitzwilliam Square. Certainly, while the current labour unrest continues to make the streets and squares unsafe for any citizen, there will be no shopping expeditions. Current civic woes aside, I am not convinced that Emily’s recovery is as total as she would have us believe. There is, for want of a more exact term, a leadenness about her features, her gestures in unguarded moments. Her general demeanour is colourless and unanimated. Her conversation displays the same concealed accidie. Though she no longer refuses to answer point-blank any question bearing on the night of the rape, her replies are reluctant and often evasive. She refuses to accept the rape as having been an actual event, at times treating it as if it had happened to someone else, at others incorporating it into her elaborate fantasy life as some terrifying supernatural experience divorced from everyday reality.
My role is clearly now that of guide and shield: guide from this stage of denial through possible subsequent anger and depression into acceptance and regeneration; shield from the revelation of current events that could catastrophically retard her progress. The first of these traumatising events is the news of her father’s failure, disgrace, and doubtless financial ruin in the wake of the collapse of his experiment to communicate with purported extrasolar beings. The second, and perhaps the more devastating, is the confirmation of her pregnancy. This second event cannot be long concealed; she is young, but by no means naive. I can only hope that I can guide her to the point of acceptance before she guesses herself.
Always in the science of psychology there is one set of symbols, one golden key, that opens the patient’s mind and unrolls it like an ancient map of a far country to the explorer of the psyche. At last, drawing on the notes I have taken from Emily’s diary, I feel I am close to unlocking that chest. Repressed sexuality is the key. The monastic regime of the Teaching Sisters at Cross and Passion has been well testified to in both the diaries and in conversation with Emily. Doubtless the juvenile dalliance in illicit sexual play inevitable in such establishments, coupled with the attentions of the young Mr. O’Byrne (how forthright Emily is in her diaries! Nothing withheld, nothing concealed!), would certainly drive her need for sexual expression deep into the subconscious and seal it there under layers of guilt. Such volcanic forces are not so easily penned: her sexual desire, her need to escape from what she perceives as social restraint, found expression in her creation of the imaginary Otherworld, a place without restraint, restrictions, without recognisable social mores. This Otherworld, a country created in considerable detail, for which she has formulated a sophisticated rationale, is a place of symbol and analogy, where her need for sexual, sensual, emotional, and artistic self-expression may be indulged without fear of censure, without guilt. Many of the kings, warriors, goblins, faeries, poets, harpers, even lovers, with which she populates it are clumsy recapitulations of her mother’s mythological studies, the works of W. B. Yeats, the folklore of the locality as imparted to her by Mrs. O’Carolan the housekeeper, and her own “literary” aspirations. It is a ripe and ready medium in which to sow the seeds of sexual frustration and guilt, and for them to reach fruition into a personal, even sinister, symbolism and significance.
Is it therefore proper to conclude that th
e events of the night of September 4 may not have been rape at all, in the purely legalistic sense of the word; that Emily may in fact have deliberately gone searching for a partner, a “faery lover,” and found instead an experience which turned so sour for her that she could only reject and deny it?
It is important also to incorporate the role of the father in any hypothesis. At an early age, Emily clearly idolised her father, yet at the time of the Craigdarragh incident she had grown hostile to both him and his work. That the rape commenced with the night of her father’s hoped-for vindication of Project Pharos cannot be insignificant. Emily’s response to her fifteenth birthday is crucial here. Again, from her diaries, it is obvious that she considered herself to be a woman in the fullest sense of the word. Her father, perhaps in response to needs and motivations of his own, refused to consider her anything but a little girl—sexually and emotionally immature, utterly dependent, a child. Certainly her retreat into the imaginary Otherworld of distorted mythology and superstition can be seen as a strike back against her father and his rigorous, rational, scientific world view. Tragically, even at this late stage, her diary entries hint that she was desperately striving for his approval, while at the same time attacking his vision for her life, and punishing him for his supposed inadequacies as a father. That she should have succeeded is the capstone to the entire tragic episode.
However, I am utterly at a loss to proffer any explanation for the photographs of the faery folk.