Empire Dreams (11 page)

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DR. EDWARD GARRET DESMOND’S PERSONAL DIARY: MAY 28, 1909.

WORK IS PROCEEDING
apace on the signalling device. The laborers are addressing themselves to their tasks with an enthusiasm I would like to attribute to their desire to communicate with higher intelligences but I fear is due rather to Lord Fitzgerald’s generous purse. Already the first pontoon sections have been floated into Sligo harbor and the lanterns have been tested and found to work satisfactorily. Such successes are heartening after the delays and confusions of the early weeks. The plan is to assemble the cross from one hundred and seventy-six pontoon sections each one hundred yards long. This sounds a daunting proposition, given the brevity of time before the space vehicle attains perigee, but the sections have been largely preassembled in the town boatyards and only remain to be floated and bolted into their final form. Observing the great legion of laborers (of which there are no shortage in this poverty-stricken county) I have no fear that “Project Pharos” will not be completed by the allotted date.

My outstanding concern, that of devising a universally comprehensible mode of communication with which to converse with the Wolfii, has been recently resolved to my complete satisfaction. It is a universal truth that the laws of mathematics are the same upon the worlds of Wolfe 359 as they are upon this one; to wit, the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its radius, which we call
pi
, must be as familiar to the Wolfii as to us. Therefore I have designed an electrical relay whereby one arm of the cross will flash its lights twenty-two times for the other’s seven, this being the approximate fractional ratio of
pi
. Such a signal cannot fail to attract the attention of our stellanauts and pave the way to more intimate conversation, a code for which I am currently devising using primes and exponents.

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Craigdarragh
Drumcliffe
County Sligo

My dearest Constance,

Just a brief note to express my heartfelt thanks for your generous invitation to visit you at Lissadell House to attend a reading by Mr. W. B. Yeats of his most recent poetic works. I shall certainly accept your kind invitation and, if it is not presuming too much upon your generosity, I wonder if perhaps I might bring my daughter Emily? She will shortly be returning from Cross and Passion School (where, I fear, she is far from happy, the dear child, constantly fretful and distressed in her work, and, so I am informed by Mother Superior, given to strange delusions and fantasies) and I know nothing would thrill her more than to hear Mr. Yeats reading his own incomparable poetry: she, like myself, is a great admirer of Mr. Yeats, especially his earlier works: his mythological world of gods and fighting men has quite stimulated her! I was recently sent a copy of a poem she wrote in English class; not bad, quite racy even, and showing definite promise, though it was not this promise that prompted Mother Superior to send it to me, I think, but the overtly sensual content of some of the imagery. Honestly, Constance, these church schools! I cannot understand Edward’s insistence that she be educated by the sisters, this is the twentieth century, this is the age of the new Renaissance, the Celtic dawn! Forgive me, the affair has made me quite flush with outrage. What I am trying to convey is that if it is acceptable, I will bring Emily on the date you suggest, and I thank you once again for your kindness, generosity, and hospitality,

yours sincerely,
Caroline Desmond.

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EMILY’S DIARY: JUNE 29, 1909.

OH, TO BE
in Craigdarragh now that summer’s here! I do declare that the moment the train steamed out of Kingsbridge station I could smell the wild honeysuckle and the purple heather on the slopes of Ben Bulben! Despite the warnings of the guard I must have travelled almost the whole way home with my head out of the window, just breathing in the smell of wild summer.

After I said hello to Mama and Papa (what a strange mood he is in still, the silly man!) the first thing I did was to revisit Bridestone Wood and taste again the ancient magic that I have felt calling me, calling me, every hour of every day I was imprisoned in Cross and Passion. And now, as I try to write about what I experienced, my hand trembles and I feel guilty, though I should not, for then I did not care, not one bit.

Today Bridestone Wood was alive as I have never known it before. Every leaf, every twig, every blade of grass, every drop of dew breathed magic, the Old Magic of stone, sea, and sky, and it was so quiet I could hear the trees breathing. The air was full of the perfume of green growing things and the soft green grass was calling out for the touch of my bare feet. I imagined I was a fair princess, a woman of the de Danaan, the Ever-Living Ones, and I slipped, quickly, willingly, under the spell of the greenwoods. In an instant I had cast off my horrible, tight, constricting clothes and I ran naked and free as a sunbeam through the summer glens. How wonderful I felt! It was like the poem I had written for the school magazine, but this time there was no Sister Assumpta, black and white like a folded-up newspaper, to tell me I was proud, sensual, and sinful. I was beautiful, I was proud, I would not be driven onto my knees to pray and pray for deliverance from the sins of the flesh; I loved the flesh, I loved the grass beneath my feet and the thin willow wands which whipped my body did not scourge me for my sins but blessed me with their golden pollen. I did not care if I ever saw my clothes again, I wanted to be like this forever, free from the petty, jealous restrictions of the human world, free from the sterile bleakness of Cross and Passion and my poor father. At length I collapsed onto a bank of moss beneath an ancient druid oak.

When the voice called my name I was afraid and ashamed of my nakedness, but it called again, my name, Emily, in a voice so sweet I thought it was the singing of a bird. Three times the voice called before I could reply with a “Who’s there?” Then I saw a golden glow moving through the trees towards me. I should have been frightened but I was not, I could not be, I knew that no harm was intended me. As the light drew nearer I saw that it was a golden wheel, rolling by its own power, with five spokes, like a cartwheel, only smaller and finer, much as I have always imagined a chariot wheel to be. It rolled towards me and spoke to me, telling me not to be afraid (and indeed, I was not afraid, not one bit), that the time was not yet come for me to meet the wheel’s faery master, but that it would come soon and now I was to follow it so that I might return to the realm of men again.

I cannot remember, dear diary, where I followed that magical wheel, nor the least part of what transpired until I found myself upon the south edge of Bridestone Wood, but it must have been something strange and exceeding wonderful, for clasped upon my left arm was a golden horse-shoe torc of the kind that faery kings give to their faery queens as token of love and faithfulness. The torc I have hidden in my secret hidey-hole, for no one would understand it, but I am setting everything down in your pages, dear diary, so that I will never forget the wonderfulness of it. But diary, my secret, most trusted friend, if it was so magical, so wonderful, why do I feel I have sinned?

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EDWARD GARRET DESMONDS PERSONAL DIARY: JULY 8, 1909.

I HERE PAUSE
in my records of “Project Pharos” (which is proceeding to my complete satisfaction) to comment upon a matter of a personal nature which is causing me not inconsiderable distress. I refer of course, to the increasingly irrational behaviour of my daughter Emily. Since her return from Dublin she has floated around Craigdarragh as if in a daydream, paying only the scantest attention to her father and his epochal work, head filled rather with fantastic nonsense about faeries and mythological creatures haunting Bridestone Wood. And as if this was not enough, she has borrowed (taken without permission, rather!) one of my portable cameras which I was using to photograph the Wolfii vehicle to take a series of photographs of these “faery folk” at play in the woods around the demesne. I have seen these photographs, they are doubtless forgeries of greater or lesser skill; what I cannot understand is my daughter’s absolute insistence upon the objective truth of these fantastical notions. She believes utterly that she has taken factual photographs of supernatural creatures! Is she doing this out of spite for me and my rational, scientific philosophy of life in a pique of adolescent rebellion? We had the most fearful row, Emily demanding that she was not a little girl any longer, that she was a woman and that I treat her accordingly, and I, arguing with gentle persuasiveness and calm rationality, maintaining that to be treated like a woman she cannot revel in the childish hysterias of little girls. Alas, nothing was resolved, and worse still, Emily has won Caroline over to her side.

Caroline intends to take Emily to Lissadell House and show these photographs to Mrs. Gore-Booth and Mr. William Butler Yeats, the famous poet, who will be delivering a reading there. Mr. Yeats is a man for whose poetry I have the highest regard but for whose superstitious fancies of gods and warriors and mythological hosts of the air I have no time, and I know with sure and certain knowledge that no good will come of his involvement on these ludicrous proceedings.

But that I had more time to spend with Emily! Maybe then she would not have wandered heedless into the realms of fantasy and whimsy! I fear I have not been a proper father to her, but the advent of the star-folk will turn all our human relationships upon their heads.

Finally, the electrical fluctuations that bedevilled the house at Easter have resumed and are more frequent and of longer duration. I shall have to have words with Mr. Michael Barry of the Sligo, Leitrim, Fermanagh and South Donegal Electrical Supply Company, and his dour employee Mr. MacAteer. What is more disturbing, and mystifying, is that objects have been moved around my observatory at night after I have locked up and left. Papers, books, chairs, tables, all have gone stray, and, most perplexing of all, my antique brass orrery, weighing nigh on a ton, was moved right out of the observatory into the gardens! The lesser items I could attribute to Emily in a pique of spite, but the orrery takes ten strong laborers to even budge! Alas that I have not the time for such mysteries at present; the demands of the Wolfii are paramount.

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Craigdarragh
Drumcliffe
Co Sligo
16th July 1909

My dearest Constance,

Just a short note to let you know how thrilled I was to read in your letter that Mr. William Butler Yeats in person will be coming to talk with Emily about the faery photographs, and what is more, bringing with him Mr. Hannibal Rooke, the celebrated hypnotist and investigator of supernatural phenomena. Of course I would be delighted to accommodate Mr. Yeats and his colleague for a few days towards the end of this month, if they, for their parts, will excuse my husband’s small insanities and the somewhat chaotic state of the house; my husband’s experiments, you understand, he has everything quite topsy-turvy. Quite frankly, Constance, I cannot see any benefit from what he is doing; are not our photographic proofs of another world co-existent with our own more significant than his fanciful communications with the inhabitants of another star? Poor Lord Fitzgerald, I sometimes think he agreed to this quixotic escapade merely to humour Edward. Be that as it may, I must once again thank you, Constance, for all your support and hard work and I look forward enormously to seeing you on the 27th when Mr. Yeats comes.

Yours sincerely,
Caroline Desmond

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Excerpts from the Craigdarragh interviews: July 27, 28, and 29, 1909, as transcribed by Mr. Peter Driscoll, B.A., of Sligo
. (The first interview: 9:30 P.M., July 27. Present: Mr. W. B. Yeats, Mr. H. Rooke, Mrs. C. Desmond, Miss E. Desmond, Mrs. C. Gore-Booth, Mr. P. Driscoll. Weather: windy with some rain.)

(The second interview: 9:50 P.M., July 28. Present: as above. Weather: wind gusting from the west, with showers.)