The Vertical Plane

by Ken Webster

  4

  16 February.

  A Saturday. The computer had been brought to the cottage once again but quite deliberately with the intention of obtaining, if possible, some more words from LW. I’d asked about his family and whether he went to Chester market and so on; I didn’t want to challenge him, I’d let it ride, give him enough rope, etc. I was also keen to get down to Rick Steele’s garage in Holt. I had bought an old XJ6 Coupe from Rick a little before Christmas. It was ready to be moved to another garage, in Ewloe, for some bodywork repairs. Being a Jaguar fanatic was a lovely diversion from teaching.

  It was bitterly cold at Castle Garage and the car wouldn’t start. They had to leave a fan heater on the engine for half an hour, and I wondered if it was an omen of things to come. But as I followed the Jaguar along the Chester southerly bypass it looked good and my spirits rose a little. Back to the cottage. A stack of three milk cartons on the kitchen floor. That was unexceptional but, by heavens, the monitor screen was full of text. More, two screens were full: evidently LW could cope with the scrolling action of the word processor. Gentlemen from other times can’t do this!

  But I thought it wonderful to see so much material. With this to work on we’d soon find out what was what. I saved the message to disk very carefully each time I looked at it. No mistakes.

  MYNE GOODLY FREEND, I MUSTE NEEDS SAY, HOW COMETH THIS, THAT THER ARE MANYE THYNGS FOR WHICHE I HATH NO REKENYNG. ME THINKETH IT, THAT IF THOU CANNOT TELLE THEE FOR WHAT ART IN MYNE HOME, THEN I CAN NAMOOR HELPE YOW THAN IF MYNE WITTS HAD GONE. I HATH NO KINFOLK TO FYND, MYNE WIF WAS WRECHED WITH THY PESTILENCE ANDMTHE LORD DIDST TAKE HER SOULE AND HER UNBORE SON (1517). MYNE FARME ’TIS HUMBLE BUT IT HATH A PRETTY PARCEL O LAND, IT HATH RED- STOON FOOTYNGS AND CLEEN RUSHES ON MYNE BEETEN FLOOR. THIS SEASON I HATH MUCH TO DO, I HATH TO SOW MYNE BARLY FOR MYNE ALE, ’TIS THIS THAT IS MYNE CRAFT AND FOR WHICHE I AM BESTE ATTE I FANCY. ALSO I HATH TO GO TO NANTWHICHE TO MYNE COWTHE FREEND RICHARD WISHAL WHOIS FARME BE SO GREET AS TO TURN A FOUR YEER ROTACION O FALLOW. I DO SO ENVYE HIM HE HATH MUCHE THER, BUT NOUGHT THAT DELITS ME MOOR THAN HIS CHEESE IT CANNOT BE EQUALLED BY ANY OTHER FOR PLEASANTNESS OF TASTE ANS WHOLESOMNESS OF DIGESTION. I SHALL ALS CALLE ATTE NANTWYCHE MARKET ’TIS NOT SO GREET AS CESTRE MARKET BY THY CRIOS BUT ’TIS OF SOM DESPORT I SHAL NEED TO GO TO CESTRE THIS SEASON TO GET MYNE SOES MYNE GOODLY FREEND TOMAS ALDERSAY, A TAILOR BY CRAFT, MAKES THEM SOMETYMES, I ALS MAKETH SOES BUT NON OF MYNE SWYNE ARE REEDY ’TIS FAR TO COSTLY UNLEST I NEED KIL O. DO YOW KNOWETH THE COUNTRY OF CESTRE THE WATER GATE IS A PLAS THAT BRINGETH MANYE TRADERS ’TIS A SHAME THE PORT DOTH SHRYNK I CAN RECORD GREET SHIPPS NOW THEY GROW SMALL BY EACH TYDE, BUT CESTRE PORT IS STILL GREETER THAN THAT O LEVERPOOLE I AM OFT TO THE EAST WALL OF CESTRE, COW LANE, ’TIS NOT SO TYRSOME THER THAN BY THE CROIS THAT IS WHEN MYNE FOWL OR SWYNE DOTH NOT TRIP UP MYNE POORE BODY I HEAR TELLE THAT THOU ART A (TEACHE) IN HAWARDINE DOTH YOW MEENETH HAODINE (?) DOTH THOU STIL EARN THY GREETLY SUM OF TWENTY POUNDS PER YEER(?) I RECORDE MYNE UNFAVOURABLE DEAN HENRY MANN, WHO IS LIKENED TO A FISSH ’IF ANY BOY SHAL APPEAR NATURALLY AVERS TO LEARNING AFT FAIR TRIAL HE SHALT BE EXPELED ELSE WHER LEST LIK A DRONE HE SHOULD DEVOUR THE BEES HONEY’. NEY I CANNOT MAKE MERRY ON HOLY DAY FOR FEER OF MYNE LIF MYNE FREEND WAS ONCE A FLOYTINGE ON A HOLY DAY AND DID HATH HIS EARS PINNED TO THY WOOD BLOC METHINKS WHEN THOU SAYETH DODLESTON YOW MEENETH DUDLESTUN MYNE QUEEN IS OF COURCE KATHRINE PARR

  LUKAS

  My goodly friend, I must needs say, how is it that there are many things of which I have no knowledge. It seems to me that if you cannot say why you are in my house, then I can no more help you than if my wits had gone. I have no kinfolk I can tell you about, my wife was taken with the pestilence and the Lord did take her soul and her unborn son (1517). My farm it is humble but it has a pretty parcel of land, it has red-stone footings and clean rushes on the beaten floor. This season I have much to do, I have to sow my barley early for my ale, it is this that is my craft and which I am best at I fancy. Also I have to go to Nantwich to my known friend Richard Wishall whose farm is so great as to allow him a four-year rotation of fallow. I do so envy him, he has much there, but nothing that delights me more than his cheese it cannot be equalled by any other for pleasantness of taste and wholesomeness of digestion. I shall also call at Nantwich market it is not so great as Chester market by the cross but it is of some interest. I shall need to go to Chester this season to get my shoes, my goodly friend Thomas Aldersay, a tailor by craft, makes them sometimes, I also make shoes but none of my swine are ready it is far too costly unless I need kill one. Do you know the country of Chester the Water Gate is a place that brings many traders it is a shame the port does shrink I can remember great ships now they get smaller by each tide, but Chester port is still greater than that of Liverpool. I am often to the east wall of Chester, Cow Lane, it is not so tiresome there than by the cross that is when my fowl or swine do not trip up my poor body I hear tell that you are a teacher in Hawarden do you mean Haordine(?) Do you still earn the great sum of twenty pounds per year(?) I remember my unpleasant dean Henry Mann, who is likened to a fish. ‘If any boy shall appear naturally averse to learning after fair trial he shall be expelled elsewhere lest like a drone he should devour the bees’ honey’. Nay I cannot make merry on holy day for fear of my life my friend was once a-fluting on a holy day and did have his ears pinned to the wood block I think when you say Dodleston you mean Dudleston. My queen of course is Catherine Parr.

  Lukas

  It was the work of an intelligent man. His first name appeared in this message: ‘Lukas’. Welcome to the puzzle.

  The phrase ‘red-stoon footyngs’ caught my eye. We had red stone blocks, sandstone blocks, in a heap by the damson tree. They’d been dug up during the renovation work. Indeed, Dave Lovell recalled that several lay in a line parallel to the pillar and old outshut wall. They were originally within three feet of the bathroom wall and the apparent centre of stacking and related activity alongside the pillar. They were certainly red sandstone. This meant nothing to the sceptic in me – well, it nagged perhaps. Anyone could see those stones whilst snooping around in the garden or house.

  It seemed from that third line that we were in his home. He was quite indignant that we were actually asking him to identify what items he possessed. It should have been obvious but it wasn’t. It was all quite confusing.

  There were a whole lot of things wrong with the communication. Since we had not given a thought to Liverpool why mention it? Was ‘Leverpoole’ a natural choice for comparison with ‘Cestre’ in Tudor times?

  The uncharitable found the line about his chickens and pigs tripping him up at every turn very twee. The punctuation still looked very modern, with its liberal use of full stops, commas, brackets and question marks. There were dozens of questions to be answered. For example, was it true that no one made merry on a holy day? I don’t think I wanted it to be a hoax anymore, I was so intrigued by it, but a clever hoax was still the only likely answer. After all we were always out when a message appeared, and it was becoming predictable that I would bring a computer home at weekends. There was opportunity for ‘Lukas’ but still not motive, for if the idea was to scare me away or drive me mad it was failing. I was becoming excited by the puzzle, so were Debbie and Peter Trinder who, interestingly enough, had traced a number of Lukas’s words and found them to be exactly right for the period, though naturally he was puzzled by the punctuation. As a result he was hooked on them.

  I was still more interested in 4.2 litres of Jaguar engine and the prospect of driving away from Deeside in the summer with all the windows down. My Mills and Boon adventure I called it. But, of course, I couldn’t resist the thought that what we were seeing might be from another time.

  Monday 18 February, half term

  Unfortunately the exact questions we put to Lukas in reply to his message of the 16th are not recorded because I accidentally left the five-and-a-half-inch disk I was now using in a pile of papers the caretaker threw out(!) Principally I asked him how he
could possibly use a computer if he was from the 16th century. Peter persuaded me to include a vague reference to Bristol, as the words he was using looked like a regional dialect form of the language of the time. How Peter found the time to discover this I have no idea but in the question went.

  Since Lukas went to market occasionally in Nantwich I asked him if he used a bridge at Aldford. There is a private bridge these days, just for the Westminster estate, but I thought it reasonable to assume some crossing at the point, especially with a giveaway name like Aldford (old ford).

  We left the message on the screen from around 9.30 A.M. on the 18th. Meanwhile an old friend, Peter Benbow, and I were making a dreadful row with drums and guitars in the living room. Nothing arrived while we were there. Debbie joined in on the saxophone. The neighbours were understandably pleased when we gave up about 4.00 P.M.

  I took Peter back to Hawarden. Still nothing on the computer, so at about seven we locked up the house and went for a drive. We came back an hour later.

  ‘Yes!’ I said, calling up a file called KEN1. ‘This is getting good.’

  I liked the way that if I put in a message on a file called LUK1 he’d pick a file name that echoed it in some way, as above, ‘KEN1’.

  MYNE GOODLY FREEND, MAYEST THOU TELLE THEE FOR WOTREASON ART THOU AXING MANYE QUESTIONS FOR WHICHE I NE CAN ATYNE I AM CONFUS MYNE SCRIT DEVISE IS A WONDEROUS THYNG SOMWOT UNKYNDE I FANCY UNNIST TO MYNE SELVE IT MAY BE BUT I HATH SEEN THEE MAKETH LEEMS ON THY BOYSTE AND ART SLYE. YEA I KNOWETH OF BRISTOW MYNE KINFOLK DIDST COME FROM BRIDEWALTER AND TANTUN BY THY RYVER TOON UNTIL THEY APASSED TO MAKE MERYE ME LIKS TO BE ATTE NALE YEA SOMTYMES I URES BRIDE ATTE ALDEFORD. YOW MERYE MAKYNG PLEASETH ME BUT TIS SOMWOT NOYSOM ATTE TYMES WILT THOU TELLE THOU WOMAN TO PLAYETH MOOR OF MYNE FLUTE THYN TIS A BLEELFUL SOOND METHYNKS, HOW DOTH THOU JOURNEY TO THY CHARGE HOUSE IN HAORDINE(?). I MUSTE MAKE HASTE MYNE LYME HOUNDS ART FREE A ART BEYNG TROUBLESOM TO MYNE FOWL.

  LUKAS WAINMAN

  My good friend, can you tell me for what reason are you asking many questions which I cannot understand. I am confused. The writing machine is a wonderful thing; somewhat unnatural I fancy, unknown to myself it may be but I have seen you make lights on the box and am cunning. Yes I know of Bristol my kinfolk did come from Bridgewater and Taunton by the river Tone until they died. To make merry I like to be at the ale. Yes sometimes I use the bridge at Aldford. Your merry-making pleases me but it is rather noisy at times. Will you tell your woman to play more of the flute thing. ’Tis a pleasant sound I think. How do you travel to your school in Hawarden(?) I must hurry as my dogs are loose and are being troublesome to my fowl.

  Lukas Wainman

  I’d hardly ever been inside Chester City Library but Debbie urged me to use it in search of some confirmation that ‘Lukas’ was talking history not bunk.

  I looked in on the 1980s interior: all chrome, cloth and air conditioning through its Edwardian façade. Perhaps Lukas’s messages were also a stylized pastiche. An inauthentic product of a clever little man with a few high-tech toys.

  I hoped we’d find all the people Lukas had mentioned in the local history section upstairs. The librarian told us that someone else had been looking into the history of Dodleston only recently. This reinforced my doubts and as I followed our guide to the appropriate shelves of red hardback volumes it became quite clear that whoever or whatever we identified in these volumes from the 16th February message would ultimately prove nothing. If we found them all then surely it was a hoax – what were the chances of Lukas knowing people who were all significant enough in some way to survive the randomness of history over four centuries?

  I became bored. The city people passed silently outside. How many of their lives will be recorded and endure four centuries? The hoaxer would have the same sources as ourselves and would, therefore, be revealed. If but a few turned up in obscure reference books it was no better. Anyone worth their salt would reach for, say, the references on ‘declared wills’ for the period, pick a few local surnames and invent the rest. One chap Lukas had mentioned, Aldersay, sprang to mind. The Aldersay Arms (now the Shropshire Arms) was next door but two to the library. A common name. It showed nothing but an ounce or two of scholarship.

  Debbie took more interest than me. I began to feel uncomfortable, stifled by the heating system. She found Richard Wishall, I think, or maybe his father, but don’t expect to find a reference about this. We weren’t interested enough to keep proper files or folders on the affair. Bits of paper littered the bookcase or got chucked out or used for shopping lists. This was the fate of Wishall. Debbie still refused to be discouraged. She couldn’t find Aldersay despite his being a skilled man and presumably, therefore, an important citizen; but there were a number of Aldersays to follow up. I was still looking out of the window at the people wrapped up against the cold. I wanted to go home, to read about something else.

  Deb said, ‘There has to be a way of proving it, doesn’t there? We could wait up to catch the intruder or something, we could do lots of things …’

  ‘Let’s go home.’

  Walking across the city up beyond the Northgate and the city walls I thought some more about John, the guitar player. He could break in quite easily … he wanted to upset me so that he could appear smooth and clearheaded to impress Deb out of my life and into his. I tried to dismiss such thoughts as nonsense.

  5

  21 February

  John Cummins’s flat is on the third floor of a large Victorian terraced house in Balfour Road, Islington. We had come to stay for a few days and I’d brought the messages with me in a red plastic folder.

  John had bought Colin Wilson’s Poltergeist. I realized then that I hadn’t read anything at all on the subject before this moment and as I read I began to feel a little uncomfortable. Poltergeists, according to Mr Wilson’s research, could remain for months and indeed could develop quite destructive tendencies. Some could even bite! I shuddered. This could be dangerous. A little later I read that this sort of behaviour is rare. Overall, their usual activities – stacking objects, rapping noises, etc. – are extremely well documented.

  It was hard to obtain any clear understanding of what ‘they’ were. An adjunct of our own personalities? Unconscious activity on our part? Elemental or primitive bundles of some kind, ‘entities’ feeding upon the anxieties and emotional stresses of recent months in such a way as to preserve and reinforce these emotional states? Much poltergeist activity is fraudulent, an adolescent’s prank, or perhaps due to someone slightly older looking for attention or developing an active fantasy world.

  A little knowledge is often said to be a dangerous thing. Debbie was nineteen; had I been paying her enough attention? Before reading Poltergeist I had felt confident that she was uninvolved. Now I was less so. But it was only a popular book; perhaps I needed to look into the subject more deeply – make fewer excuses.

  Poltergeist has very little to say on communication from such a source, which is rare and confined to the odd scribble on a wall. I was thinking of Matthew Manning’s experiences at this point. Apparently, he had been the focus of a great deal of poltergeist activity and on at least one occasion the walls of a room were covered in signatures. He also seemed to be able to transmit the writing of others, supposedly famous or articulate people long dead. So-called ‘automatic writing’. This train of thought led down the road marked mediums, seances and spirits. It was very hard to take it seriously. It all looked exceptionally dodgy and a long way from economics, the social sciences and education.

  But still John and Debbie pursued their ideas. The latest was ley lines, the old straight paths, the ‘lines of force’ supposedly crossing England – and elsewhere of course – which could be identified by lining up sites of antiquity. It was not a subject I should normally choose to discuss in company but since we had drifted as far as the ‘biting poltergeist’ and automatic writing, an excursion into ley lines seemed quite moderate and reasonable. On large-scale maps spread across the floor of the
living room Dodleston was easily accommodated by two lines and John had once read of an association between ley lines and the frequency of ‘parapsychological’ events, especially poltergeists.

  Our thinking led us to draw up this model: we had a rare type of poltergeist, a sophisticated entity, adept at word processing! Try again. We were experiencing activity commonly attributable to poltergeists about which, descriptively at least, quite a lot is known. The classes of activity commonly associated with this phenomenon were present: movement of objects, stacking of objects, noises and so forth. In addition the cottage may (or may not!) be close to a ley line, which supposedly increases the chances of this sort of occurrence. But we had no theory to offer about the genesis of the messages. This appeared to be unique – so it was just a big hoax!

  A friend of John’s, Rod Emberton, a gangling, intellectual, but talented architect, was the arch sceptic. ‘It’s obviously a hoax. You’re all being made fools of … Anyway I can prove it. There’s never been a bridge at Aldford over the Dee. If there was a bridge a town would have grown up around it.’ As an argument it sounded quite reasonable. Why mess around with pseudo-science when a little analysis, a little thought could bring you the answer?

  In the gracious presence of Bartok, the huge, friendly, but somewhat incontinent Balfour Road cat, we considered the messages as a group. The first message, the ‘Poem’, didn’t fit anywhere and was clearly unrelated, not only to the language but to the whole tenor of the later material. These later communications appeared to have one author, but the essentially modern punctuation cast a great deal of doubt on their authenticity. The message of 10 February was appallingly inaccurate chronologically, and contained the untraceable Edmund Gray at the then non-existent Kinnerton Hall.