Cannonbridge (20 page)

Wilkie stops and, realising that he is perspiring, wipes his forehead with the back of his hand.

“Charles?” he says.

The visitor turns, to reveal that famous face.

How white he looks, thinks Wilkie. How drawn and unrested and ill at ease.

“Charles, whatever is it?”

Mr Dickens, the Great Inimitable, sighs.

“Forgive me,” he says, “my dear fellow, for this too early and unwarranted intrusion.”

“Not at all. Not at all.”

“Yet I fear that there was no-one else to whom I was at all able to turn.”

“What has happened?” asks the little man. “You hardly seem yourself.”

“It is necessary that we talk.”

“About what, pray?”

The older writer swallows hard and Wilkie notices that he is sweating also, harder than he.

“No,” says Dickens. “Not about what, my dear Wilkie. But rather—about whom?”

A
LITTLE LATER
, over a pot of steaming Earl Grey, fortified more noticeably with brandy than might perhaps be considered proper in some less rackety household, as the light of new day creeps determinedly into the room, the two men are enacting the essentials of their, it has often been remarked, somewhat curious relationship. Mr Wilkie Collins is listening, with patient attentiveness, whilst the Great Inimitable holds forth.

“Wilkie,” he says, and despite the familiarity of the scene and the comfort offered by the liquor, he still seems profoundly troubled and disquieted, pale, bloodshot, skin slick with sweat. “You are, I have always said so, amongst the very first rank of my friends and acquaintances.”

Mr Collins, without making so much as a sound nonetheless contrives to convey the unmistakable impression that he is nothing less than immensely proud of this honour.

“More than that. We are, after a fashion, relations. We are bound by ties of blood and marriage. I know that we’ve not seen a great deal of one another lately, not perhaps as once we did, but I have never sought to neglect you in even the slightest way. There is much that we have shared together. There lies a glorious history between us.” He allows himself a sad smile of theatrical collusion. “Much, eh, that our womenfolk should not care to know?”

A nod, a crooked smile, a surreptitious glance towards the door to ensure that his mistress is not listening there.

“Yet there are certain parts of my life of which I have never told you. Matters, in fact, which I have never discussed with any living soul.”

A graver expression now, a resort to the teapot, a measured, pensive swig. “When... back now, oh some forty, forty-five, years ago. In the time of my childhood. When I spent that unhappy sojourn in the Blacking Factory...”

Mr Dickens’ speech tails off after this and at last Wilkie speaks up, shifting rather awkwardly in his armchair as he does so. “You need not speak of it, you know. I understand that it forms for you something of a territory of pain.”

Charles waves the interjection aside. “Yet speak of it, I must,” he says, very still in his manner, markedly sombre and altogether in earnest.

Wilkie takes another sup of tea; emboldened and distinctly curious, he says: “You may tell me anything. I am no stranger to keeping secrets. On the contrary, it is a business in which I am well versed.”

Dickens nods, distracted, as if having scarcely registered the remark. “I was only a boy,” he begins, “when I saw him.”

And Mr Wilkie Collins listens for a long while after that as he hears of the blacking factory and of its attendant degradation, of the man who was waiting for young Charles one long-vanished afternoon, of their peregrinations and of that black-clad gentleman’s strange, prophetic remarks.

Once the tale is told there follows a silence, fraught with disquiet.

“And... forgive me...” Wilkie’s response is faltering, perplexed. “But are you sure that is was him?”

“I’ve no doubt that it was.”

“And not, say, his father or an uncle or some other relation?”

“Wilkie, it was him. It can have been no other than Cannonbridge himself.”

At the mention of the name, the room seems suddenly a little closer, the air thicker and more difficult to breathe.

“Wilkie, have you ever seen the man?”

“Once or twice. Yes. At parties. Soirees. On a single occasion only at the British Library. But never to speak to. His reputation and manner serve to discourage any friendly approach.”

“Yes. Yes, I see that.”

“Have you? Seen him since? This peculiar ageless man?”

“Somehow we had never been in the same place at the same time. Strange, perhaps, given our respective reputations. There were occasions upon which I have been assured that we missed just such a meeting by moments only. He is a singularly elusive fellow to be sure. There is, I fancy, something of the phantom about him.”

“Worse, perhaps, than that. There are, after all, no shortage of rumours.”

“Quite so, Wilkie. Quite so.”

“But you’ve not seen him yourself?”

“No.” How old the Inimitable looks, thinks Wilkie, how prematurely aged. “At least, not until last night.”

“Last night? Charles, what the devil has happened?”

“You will recall, I imagine, that, following the success of similar events, I am at present contemplating a further series of public readings from the most popular—one might even say beloved of my works of fiction.” Collins inclines his head in acknowledgement of this fact, considering that not only is he cognisant of the scheme but that his friend has spoken of little else this twelvemonth past.

“And you will recall that I required an investor so as to provide a little essential funding for the tour?”

Collins nods again, a little fuzzy in his head now, doubtless from the earliness of the libation.

“A... Mr Swaine-Taylor, was it not? Yes. Daniel Swaine-Taylor. A banker of some description?”

“It was. It was. Or so I thought. At shortly after nine last night, Mr Swaine-Taylor came to call on me at Gads Hill.”

“Rather late to call.”

“I thought the same and I said as much. But he was insistent and he would not be moved. And then, in my drawing room, his face lit horribly by the flames of the fire, he announced that he was not the true investor at all but merely a representative of he who had provided the wherewithal. Some secret and hitherto anonymous benefactor.”

“Remarkable news.”

“So I thought. Yes. I thought a good deal more too. I told him that I considered it to be a fraud and an infamous fraud at that. Nonetheless, this Swaine-Taylor told me that the real man of money wished to see me. That he was even now waiting for me in a carriage outside. Most impertinently, this benefactor bade me join him at the earliest opportunity.”

“And did you?”

“Of course. How could I not? I left the house at once and, at the urging of Mr Swaine-Taylor, stepped into the waiting vehicle.”

“Your investor was inside?”

“He was, Wilkie. He was.”

“And it was...” The volume of Collins’ voice decreases, with an odd, almost queasy kind of reverence. “It was he of whom we have spoken?”

“Yes. Yes, my dear Wilkie.”

“How extraordinary. And did he, did... Mr Cannonbridge—say why he had done this thing?”

“Because there would be profit in it. Those were his words. Nothing more. Nothing, certainly, to do with our... prior connection.”

“And as to why he wanted to see you?”

“Oh, he said he wanted to look at me. To see what I had become. Me, so changed from that tiny boy, him wholly unaltered in his appearance by the passage of years. The cab began to drive then and as we passed through the streets, shadows playing across his face, this Swaine-Taylor creature wholly subservient by his side, I saw that something had shifted in him. Oh, not to be sure on the exterior, so much the same did he look, but on the inside. At the heart of him, I can assure you, some terrible alteration has been wrought. There is such malice in him now, such greed and wickedness and worse, I fear, far worse even than these. He spoke of such curious things. He gave me such dreadful glimpses of the future. He spoke not only of mankind’s fate but of our successors. Of strange new forms of life. The journey cannot have lasted more than half an hour. They all but threw me from the cab at Vauxhall. I have walked here directly from there.”

Collins sighs. “A bad night, then. A bad night’s work to be sure.”

“Indeed. And yet I fear, my dear old friend, that the affair is not done with yet.”

“No?”

“Wilkie. I am very much afraid that you must play your part in it.”

“Me?” Collins reaches again for the teapot, wishing now that he had been still more generous with the brandy.

“My dear fellow, my greatest companion, I fear that I must ask of you a boon.”

Collins’ heart is beating faster. Sweat is trickling down his temples, down his cheeks, down his neck. He is suffused with a horrible suspicion that what is to be said next will, in some quietly dreadful manner, alter the course of his life. He feels, however, that he has no choice but, in a cracked half-whisper, to say: “Anything, Charles.”

Mr Charles Dickens leans forwards, smiles without mirth and steeples his fingers. “Very good,” he says, sounding more collected than he has for hours. “Now this is what I should like you to do.”

NOW

W
HEN
T
OBY
J
UDD
first sees the island—a low, dark smear against the horizon which thickens gradually into a bleak, immutable mass—his initial thought, which he knows, of course, to be completely impossible, is that he has seen the place somewhere before.
Only in your dreams,
he thinks, gripping the side of the dinghy as it surges wildly up and down, as he struggles to calm the lurching somersaults of his stomach.
Only in your dreams.

The past hours have passed in a hectic whirl of activity, in which he has played an almost entirely passive part, yielding without complaint to the determined expertise of his companions, Nick and Gabriela, or, as he has almost come to think of them, caught up as he is in the strange, half-flirtatious energy that flickers between them, the Sergeant and the Corporal. From somewhere a small boat was procured, from somewhere the necessary equipment, before in some manner, slightly mysterious to the man with the doctorate, the three of them had found themselves speeding away from the mainland shortly after dawn, moving across the murky, churning sea towards the island of Faircairn. They are all now dressed in black, their faces smeared with war paint with soft dark hats pulled low over their brows. Not for the first time, Toby is wondering exactly which wing of the army these two had actually been in. They seem so efficient, he thinks, so assured, so inured to the danger of the situation. In his commando outfit, he feels utterly ridiculous—like a penguin forced awkwardly into a miniature suit.

Once, Toby had thought he’d heard the ominous, faraway thrumming of a helicopter but, as they had approached their destination, the sound had grown fainter until it had disappeared entirely, leaving him to wonder if he had simply imagined it.

And now the island is getting closer and closer, coming inexorably into focus.

He looks round at the other two who stand close together at the rear of the vessel. Closer, he thinks, than colleagues of even the most intimate stripe would ever have chosen to position themselves.

Nick Gillingham holds up a hand. He turns, busies himself with the engine. A moment later the motor cuts out. From somewhere in the darkness, two oars are produced and he and Gabriela proceed to row stealthily and silently on. So sombrely do they apply themselves to this task, with such po-faced sobriety, with their smeared faces and little black hats, that Toby feels a sudden, overwhelming and quite inappropriate urge to laugh.

Just as he feels that he can restrain it no longer, however, he turns again to face the horizon and this spurious, hysterical mirth dies in his throat.

After this, the island seems almost to swallow them up. It cannot be large, Faircairn, not more than a couple of square miles in total, yet its sheer presence seems to belie its size. It has a minatory, monolithic quality—a statement rather than a question, a slab of ancient territory set down in the midst of the North Sea. And it does seem ancient, Toby thinks, as their little boat is sculled nearer to the dark hulk of it—like some prehistoric survivor, some grim relic of the age of Pangaea or even, the doctor considers with an odd, superstitious dread, from some still earlier, nightmarish epoch.

Faircairn seems dark even in the light of the dawn and Toby can make out only a black expanse of sand or soil, a hill which rises precipitously above the beach. There are no houses that he can see, nor manmade structures of any kind.

Closer comes the island, closer, and Toby finds, although he does not care to, that he is put in mind of some aquatic predator, which, feigning sleep, allows its unwitting prey to approach before its great eyes snap open, its jaws gape, its sharp teeth gleam and the darkness beyond, the awful finality of the gullet, beckons.

So close now, Toby thinks morbidly. The trap is almost sprung.

With a muffled thwump, the boat strikes the shore. Nick hurries to the prow and, showing off now, pulls the vessel high onto the ground, the outline of his biceps clearly visible. He motions with one hand and Toby finds himself moving unquestioningly over the side, tumbling inelegantly into the wet sand.

But is it truly sand? Or is it rather something else? As he rights himself and clambers to his feet, he sees that his damp palms are coated with the stuff.

Feeling at once revolted and blessed, Toby looks down at what is on his skin. Dark black granular matter. Like thick-grained ash. Like clinker. It is, he thinks, as though the place had long ago been consumed by fire. A volcanic island? Would that be possible?

As he hears from behind him the crunch of the others’ boots he looks up at the dark hill that lies before them. It is formed entirely from the same mysterious substance.

“What is this place?” he asks.