Doyle’s eyes swung back to the table and he picked up another of the photographs, looking down at it with a gratified sigh.
“They are really of quite excellent quality, Mr. Price.”
“Thank you,” Price replied, with a bow. “They are much better than I had anticipated. I can now say, with some measure of assurance, that they will form the basis of my book on Beasant.”
“It’s a book that needs to be written,” Doyle nodded gravely. “And I will, of course, do whatever I can to ensure that your work gets the attention it deserves.”
“That would be very good of you, Sir Arthur,” Price returned quickly, before adding upon reflection: “Not so much for my own sake, you understand, but it’s my firm belief that the world must know of Beasant…” He paused, as to allow for a greater gravitas. “…and of this miraculous event.”
“I agree entirely,” responded Doyle, resolutely. “As far as I am concerned, what we saw yesterday was most undoubtedly a miracle. And, despite Beasant’s modest and unassuming nature, he must come to terms with the fact that what he has is a gift—and, furthermore, that it must be used for the betterment of mankind.”
“What do you think?”
I turned to look at Billy. Having been so absorbed in my study of the photographs, I had quite forgotten he was standing at my side.
“I don’t know,” I said quietly, looking blankly at him. “I thought I was coming close to it yesterday. But now I’ve seen the photographs, it seems to have got away from me entirely.”
Billy nodded.
“What I’m seeing here…” I sighed. “Well, it’s looking quite impossible.”
“Mr. Hart, yesterday evening you intimated to me that you were able to explain how Beasant had performed this ‘trick’,” Doyle announced. “If this is still the case, I’m sure we are all attention.”
“My opinion has not changed, Doyle. You know as well as I that men can’t walk through solid objects.”
“Mr. Hart,” Doyle sighed. “I feel I should point out that of the four people standing around this table, three of us saw it happen. It is unfortunate that you were not present yourself—however, even though I know you’re a committed materialist and your mind is naturally set against such things, surely two hundred witnesses must mean something to you? And, of course, what of the photographs?”
“Well, I can agree with one point, I suppose,” I responded. “It is, as you say, unfortunate that I wasn’t there myself.”
Having intended my words to sound commanding, it was to my considerable irritation that they had, in fact, crossed my lips sounding hollow, and even slightly petulant.
Staring down at the photographs strewn across the table-top, I wavered suddenly, cupping a hand to the side of my face. The pictures were beginning to arouse such a fever of agitation inside me that my first urge was to get away from them. Yet, despite this, I remained where I was, rooted to the spot—as though another part of me wanted to experience the desperate feelings of conflict they provoked inside me.
I pushed my hand forward on the table, my fretful fingers scrabbling to pick up another photograph. When I brought it to my face, my eyes scanned a clear image of young builders I had seen earlier in the week constructing the brick monument on the beach.
Letting the photograph drop back onto the table, I once again pawed distractedly at the side of my face, feeling quite lost.
The photographs seemed to square entirely with the events that Doyle had described in his report.
Unable to process this information, I felt as though I had come to a complete halt. I knew that what they showed could not have happened—yet, evidently, it had done.
A panicky, nauseous feeling started to overtake me—a plummeting sensation that gripped my stomach, making me temporarily breathless. With my pulse beating fast in my cheek, I found myself grabbing hold of the table and bearing down heavily upon it.
“Are you all right, Mr. Hart?” Doyle asked from across the table.
Barely registering the words, it took half a minute for me to formulate a response.
“I’m fine,” I managed.
“What’s the matter?”
“I don’t know,” I responded blearily, dabbing sweat from my eyelids. “Must have drunk too much last night.”
Though it was clearly within his character to accept my statement at its word, as I looked up, I saw that Doyle was frowning and viewing me uncertainly.
“I should go outside,” I said on a sharp exhalation of breath. “I think I need some fresh air.”
Pulling up the collars on our coats, myself and Billy struggled along the wooden walkway that followed the chalk cliffs from the jetty.
The cry of the gulls mingled with the spray on the wind as we looked out, through the exposed ribs of old fishing boats jutting out from the sand, towards the dark waves advancing on the shore.
A vast grey cloud-bank was coming quickly from the east, working its way slowly over the water, and threatening rain.
Since leaving the hotel dining room, I had started to feel considerably better. It was my last day in Broadstairs and my mind turned naturally to London. Looking up at the grey cloud stretching out across the horizon, I could not help but think of how nice it would be to return to the warmth and comfort of the reading-room of my club, where life was untroubled and the minutes drifted by in happy boredom.
I was about to suggest to Billy that we repaired to some local hostelry for a last drink, when I suddenly realised that he was no longer with me. Turning around, I saw that he had come to a halt a little way back down the track and was now bent over, retrieving a pair of flattened dog-ends from between two of the wooden slats. Slowly, and in a way that belied palpable discomfort, he then returned to form and dipped into his coat pocket to retrieve his tin. Opening it, he placed the pair of cigarette-ends inside, with something approaching reverence.
Looking at Billy, with years advancing before my eyes, I wondered how much longer he could carry on living in such a way.
When he had caught me up, we continued along the walkway, until I paused before the peculiar mass of bricks standing in the middle of the beach, now silhouetted in the midday sun.
“Won’t be a minute,” I said, striking out across the sands. Reaching the shadow of the monument, I dodged through a gang of boys who were running about the sand firing toy pistols at each other, and went directly to the flagstones that surrounded the structure.
They were grey limestone tiles, swept considerably with sand. When I pushed my shoe onto one of them, it yielded slightly, wobbling beneath my heel, and I was able to ascertain that they had been laid straight onto brushed sand, but were not otherwise fixed. Evidently, it was their own weight that kept them in place.
Heading across to the section of the monument where I had seen Beasant’s podium placed in Price’s photographs, I again pushed down onto the stone slabs—but found little of consequence. The tiles had been laid down in exactly the same way as before.
For a moment I stood there, contemplating the structure again—but soon, my eyes dipped and, with a heavy sigh, I turned away.
Travelling back across the sands to Billy, I found him perched with his back pushed hard against the side of a beach-hut, with his heels dug into the ground, taking the weight off his feet. As I reached him, I nodded to the steps in front of the chalk cliffs.
“Do you think you could manage the stairs?”
Between my respiratory problems and Billy’s feet, it took some time before we finally reached the promenade. The ascent was a fitful one, and we were forced to pause on the levels between each successive set of steps in order to stagger the assault.
Finally, reaching the promenade, we both leant breathlessly over the balustrade and I looked back down at the beach below.
“Why can’t I get t
his?”
“How d’you mean?”
“Billy, what you, Doyle and Price saw yesterday was impossible. That means it didn’t happen. There’s a trick here—but I’m damned if I can see it.”
Billy made no response, except to look forlornly back at me.
“What is it?”
“Yesterday, before we came up to see you, Sir Arthur read out what ’e ’ad written down en that paper ’e gave you. What happened was just as ’e wrote down. I know you don’t believe that—but that’s just ’cause you weren’t there. If you ’ad been, you would say the same as everyone else.”
“That it was a miracle? No, I think it’s simpler than that.”
“What es?”
“Ten years ago, I would’ve worked this out in a minute. Now, I can’t think of a single way in which this could have been done. That can only mean one thing.”
“What?”
I turned and looked despondently at him: “Years of drinking have clearly been detrimental to the workings of my mind! I’ve clearly done something to my brain!
“A decade ago, this would have been nothing to me, you know? My late wife and I used to go and see conjurers perform all the time at the Egyptian Palace. She was very keen on David Devant.
“Sitting in the circle, I would look at the rest of the audience—who all looked utterly mystified by the performance on stage. I couldn’t understand it. Later, you’d see these same people milling about the auditorium and you’d hear them all swearing that what they had seen was impossible. None of them could fathom what was to me just so…obvious.
“I didn’t even have to work the tricks out—I’d just see them. The rest of the audience would be insisting they’d just seen a woman cut in half—whereas, all I could see was a woman in a wooden box and a pair of wax feet.
“This is a trick, Billy, you can be sure of that. But, for the life of me…” I trailed off. “How can a man walk up a set of steps, in sight of a crowd of people, and travel through a ten-foot box of bricks? Answer: through a tunnel, obviously. Except the only problem is—there isn’t one. Those walls are completely solid. So he can’t have done.
“So it must be a double?”
“I don’t think so,” responded Billy, quietly.
“Why not?” I demanded. “You heard him going on about having a twin in the pub? His ‘Spirit-Guide’? Well, wouldn’t it be simplicity itself if—instead of being dead—his twin was actually still alive and helping out with his magic acts?”
“When I came down ’ere to watch it, I did what you told me to do—I said to myself that it weren’t real. So, before the performance, I got thinking like you are. I thought it would either be a twin or at least someone dressed up to look like ’im. So, just before it all began, I got a bit of chalk from off the cliff-face and—whilst wishing ’im ‘good luck’—I brushed against the arm of his coat with et—a little white cross.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
“But, Billy, that’s brilliant,” I said with surprise. “What happened?”
“When ’e came out the other side, it was still there,” Billy said with slow emphasis. “In exactly the same place.”
“Then I’m sunk…” I responded slowly, shaking my head. “For the life of me, I can’t work this one out. I can’t work out how he knew my name at the séance the other night either. Or my wife’s name, for that matter…”
The first rain-drop crossed my cheek as I turned back to the sea. Despite this, I remained there for a minute, casting my eyes across the grey shifting waters below, for what was to be the final time. Then, adjusting my hat, I pulled its peak low across my eyes, and turned back to town.
“Come on, Billy…” I said wearily. “Let’s get a drink.”
Leaving the promenade, we walked back to the town and headed up the Broadstairs High-street. It was a slow progression, made slower still by our continually being forced to shelter beneath the canopies of shop-fronts in an effort to escape the now driving rain.
We had travelled little more than twenty yards up the hill when we came across a roadside tavern. With its dirty windows and faded signboards, the Mermaid Inn looked to be the lowest drinking-establishment that Billy and I had encountered yet.
“What do you think?”
Billy shrugged, and turning, glanced up at the rain clouds that seemed to be travelling up from the sea with unreasonable swiftness.
“Yes,” I murmured. “Fair enough.”
Passing beneath the low, heavily-lintelled door, we descended into the obscure parlour of the saloon bar. Standing just over the threshold, a moment passed before it was possible to make out anything amid the gloom—and, even when we could, our straining eyes hardly thanked us for the sight.
Through an atmosphere thick with a fug of cheap tobacco smoke, I perceived that we had entered a small, grey-bricked and subterranean chamber, scattered around which was an assortment of ancient tables populated by old men who all looked to be on the verge of complete physical collapse.
The landlord—a gaunt, unshorn bird with dirty teeth and a rotten vest—watched with interest as we cut an uneasy path to the bar. Unlike the rest of the bar’s habitués—who had met our arrival with the very keenest indifference—he was a sharp-looking creature. His narrow, bloodshot eyes had lifted from the newspaper that lay open on the bar before him, and he was now regarding us with an unrestrained and calculating leer.
However, despite my misgivings on approaching him, the man actually availed himself to us in a calm and methodical manner meeting our order, and delivering our drinks, in amiable silence—and I was forced to inwardly reproach myself. After all, it is unreasonable to assume that just because a man looks like a lunatic and a child-murderer, he definitely is one.
Accepting the proffered drink, Billy turned and gestured to an old ebony table inside the window. Drawing up to it, we put our drinks to rest and sat down upon two wooden stools, which tottered from side to side on the broken floor tiles. The table was in a similarly poor state of repair, furred-up with dust and sticky with rings from the bottom of ale mugs. Despite this, it had apparently been a good choice to enter the pub when we did, as the weather outside had grown considerably worse.
“Did you have a happy childhood, Billy?”
Raising his eyebrows, Billy looked at me with surprise. For a second his eyes drew back into private reminiscence, which he summarily dispelled with a forceful blink.
“No,” he replied softly. “Not really.”
“Neither did I.”
I looked away from him; my eyes shifted their focus from the rainwater drumming against the window to the powder-blue paint that was flaking off the pock-marked wall.
“Must be an awful thing to have a happy childhood,” I said absently, lifting my drink to my lips. “What terrible preparation for life.”
For a moment, Billy’s eyes remained on me, and he observed me with quiet intensity. “Did he drink?”
“Who?”
“Your father.”
“No, actually, he didn’t. I imagine things would have been better if he had done—perhaps he might have missed a few punches.” I gave a rueful smile. “He was an army man, you see? Liked to take hostilities home with him. Indeed, practically my earliest memory was of him performing the military two-step on my late mother’s head.
“He remains, of course,” I said, reaching in my jacket and retrieving my cigarette case. “God seems to do a good job in preserving bastards.”
Billy nodded lightly, before taking back another mouthful of brandy.
“What was your childhood like?” I asked.
Stirring uneasily in his chair, Billy clutched the tumbler between his fingertips. Wiping his mouth thoughtfully on the back of his hand, he then replaced the glass on the table-top.
“I don’t really wanna talk about et.”
With that, the moment passed and I dipped my eyes down to my own beaker.
Normally, when myself and Billy would drink, we would naturally become louder and more animated as the evening progressed. On this occasion, however, for some reason—though we applied a good number of long drinks—the conversation continued in a similarly stilted fashion throughout—until finally, it ebbed away completely and we occupied our time in either looking about the room or staring at the rain dribbling down glass to the base of the rotten window frame.
“You realise I’m going back to London to-day, don’t you?”
Billy’s eyes fell to the table-top and he looked utterly despondent. For a time, his mouth opened and closed and he looked as though he might say something, but, finally, his bearded chin crumpled, and he responded merely with a nod.
“I was only ever going to be here for the weekend, you knew that?”
Billy’s eyes glazed over, and for a minute he seemed to stare straight through me.
The table fell into silence.
“Thank you, Billy.”
Slowly, he engaged me once more. I noticed signs of weakness on Billy’s face and observed that his veined eyes were struggling to hold back their emotion.
“For what?”
“Everything.”
Billy pushed a hand forward and clamped it around the brandy beaker; in such a way that I noticed it had turned his knuckles white. Bringing the glass to his mouth, his lips parted and he finished its contents in a single draught.
“Wasn’t a lot, was et?”
Though it was only mid-afternoon, the overcast sky gave the impression that it was much later in the day, whilst investing the hour with an appropriately sombre quality.
Leaving the Mermaid Inn, we headed back down the hill to the doors of our hotel in silence, the taste of that very inferior brandy still hot upon our lips.
Conversations with Spirits Page 20