Elizabeth writes from a stormy Bay of Biscay and later from Alexandria where they are anchored offshore. Are the strange lights over the desert a good omen for her task or a warning?
Jon remains in Waterford, recovering his health, looking after George and visiting Lily in the asylum.
Additional sound:
Music: Signs To Nowhere by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com
If you like THWDY, tell people about us! It will help us grow!
Elizabeth writes from a stormy Bay of Biscay and later from Alexandria where they are anchored offshore. Are the strange lights over the desert a good omen for her task or a warning?
Jon remains in Waterford, recovering his health, looking after George and visiting Lily in the asylum.
Additional sound:
Music: Signs To Nowhere by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com
If you like THWDY, tell people about us! It will help us grow!
THIS HOUSE WILL DEVOUR YOU: THE HUNGRY TOMB Season Two
A Podcast concerning love, madness, mystery, murder and dead gods in 1920's Ireland, England and Egypt.
THWDY Episode 2.01
'Strange Times'
----------------------------------------------------------------------
At Sea,
Bay of Biscay,
3rd January, 1926,
My dear Jon,
It was so wonderful to see you on the quayside at Cork last week, even if only for such a brief interlude. Of course I understand that in your current state of health it would not have been prudent for you to travel with me, and at present the seas are so rough and dreadful I can fully sympathise. In fact this morning I have barely been able to manage breakfast and I think will keep to my cabin most of the day.
Nonetheless, I am grateful to Aunt Edith for persuading Mr Murphy to bring you to the port by car, even though I realise her motives were otherwise intended – that indeed you would dissuade me from this current venture and I would jump ship. It was lovely to see you and to have you hold me in your arms, and reminded me of our forthcoming marriage and how I long for that joyous day! But with George and Lily in their current parlous state, how can we think solely of ourselves? I know I must succeed in this mission that Dr Rookfield has suggested, which will restore my brother fully back to health, and we can all move into the next sphere of our lives together!
It did however come as a shock that Dr Rookfield decided to disembark in Cork, supposedly going to check something at the university there, when I had expected him to be accompanying me all the way to Egypt! With that surprising news I fully expected you to try to persuade me to alight in Cork, rather than complete the sea voyage alone. I was intrigued to sense you felt it was beneficial that Dr Rookfield would not be accompanying me. Perhaps you still believe him to be a charlatan, despite the undoubted powers and assistance of the Kronos amulet, and my gratitude to him in not revealing my part in its disappearance. He said will travel overland and meet the ship perhaps at Marseilles. We shall see.
That first night at sea in the Channel, he did however make an impression on one of our dining companions, Irina, who is a Polish Countess, I believe, displaced by all the post-war upheavals in eastern Europe. We found ourselves sat near her and a rather noisy crowd of youngish chaps who were joshing each other and seemed keen to be placed near any of the few ladies at dinner. Irina and I found some solidarity in numbers and managed to break the ice with standard conversations about dress, accessories etc. She was wearing a very fine lace blouse exquisitely embroidered with intricate roundels which oddly enough made me think of triskelions and amulets. I was relieved when some of the loud chaps dispersed and our table was left in comparative peace.
But Dr Rookfield seemed to have eyes and chat only for Irina! I was somewhat taken aback. He did ask her a lot about war-torn Poland and the demise of Prussia and the Grand Dukes and a lot more in this manner, which I must confess I struggled to keep up with. I think Irina did too as she said her main interests lay in art, that she was very enthused by the Bauhaus group and the Cubists and was seeking to contribute to the evolution of post-war Europe through the medium of sculpture. She is en route to Egypt as she would like to get some Near Eastern expressiveness into her work. Irina had a dog-eared copy of a new Egyptian cultural magazine called Rose al-Youssef. It was in Arabic which none of us could read but what excited Irina was that it was published in Cairo by, and indeed named after, a woman. She felt that that this was a sign that Cairo was where she needed to be.
I am looking forward to meeting her again at dinner although the thought of eating as we are tossed and turned in this great oceanic turbulence is far beyond me at present. I have taken a couple of Beecham’s Pills and while I want nothing more than to bury my head in the pillow and hang on tight to the bunk, I look forward to the day when I can take a stroll on deck and take in some fresh air. We have a port call in Gibraltar in a day or two, I will post this letter then.
Meanwhile I comfort myself with the thought that beside seeking the cure for George among the ancient mysteries of the Nile Valley, I will be able to visit the cloth markets of Cairo where I believe the cottons are of particularly good quality. I am looking forward to gathering together a trousseau for the wonderful day when we will be wed!
With my love and best wishes for your speediest recovery,
Elizabeth
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Wrenville Hotel,
Waterford
January 3rd
1926
My dearest Elizabeth,
It greatly lifted my spirits to see you, if only so briefly, in Cork. I do wish though you were not travelling on your own to Egypt of all places. How cruel is it that the long shadow of that damned house, destroyed as it is, still keeps us separated? I remain lodged at the hotel, though that will change shortly, and in fact am writing this by the fire in the public lounge. After the isolation of Kilphaun Hall, I am quite enjoying the hustle and bustle of strangers.
Someone I wish would stay a stranger, is Rookfield. The cad travelled up to Waterford and insisted on buying me dinner. If only I was a ruder man and could have told him where to put his attempt at ingratiation. I have not forgotten or forgiven his incarceration of you at his Esoteric Club. For your sake though, I put on a reasonably friendly facade and we dined, admittedly quite well, in the hotel restaurant.
Rookfield’s excuse to me, for not travelling onward with you, is that on hearing first hand of what had happened here, he felt it behoved him to investigate further. I am honestly unsure whether he means to profit from what he may unearth or whether he wishes to ensure that the terrible story of Clonlaw and Crom is truly closed. Probably both, in my estimation of the man.
At least he has a plan for your sojourn in Cairo.
“Sir Malcolm is a capital fellow,” Rookfield told me over port, “I’ve known him the better part of a decade, though I must admit I’ve not seen much of the man in recent years. Tragic personal life, but a very successful businessman. He will look after Elizabeth well, have no doubt! Sir Malcolm can introduce her into the proper British circles in Cairo and make sure the Residency is aware of her, so you need not worry on that score for her safety and well being, Jon. He has built up extensive contacts in Cairo in the last few years and will be able to help find what she needs for her poor brother.”
Well, hopefully this Sir Malcolm chap lives up to his billing and sees you safely and quickly off back home with whatever items are necessary to restore George. I wish there was another way but the doctors here are at a loss for why George has not woken up. He remains comatose and unresponsive. Having seen first hand the power of these trinkets, I am not about to try and forestall your efforts. But even so, I do not like it.
The same doctors are leery of George being transferred to England and how it might affect his condition, so I have arranged a short let on a townhouse here in Waterford and a day nurse to look after him. We will move in later this week. There will be room enough also for your mother if she chooses to travel over.
Rookfield of course was not just here to visit me, but wanted to see George and Lily. I accompanied him to see the former and there was much taking of the pulse and shining lights into eyes and even a polished stone on a chain that Rookfield dangled over George, to no effect that I could see. He said it was meteoric iron as if that was answer enough to my raised eyebrow.
I didn’t go with him to see Lily, having other business to attend to, but visited her separately. My heart goes out to the poor girl. The doctor there has prescribed electrotherapy which should cure her of her hysterics. We can only hope.
The mental asylum is situated where the city gives way to farmland and is set back from the road by a long approach, so one may drive past and pretend it and its wretched inhabitants are not there. As I pulled up outside and paused to stare uneasily at the uninviting facade, I admit I questioned how I had acquired such responsibilities and obligations towards all these people, when all I want is you? The building, an ugly victorian monstrosity mouldering in the rain and gloom, was exactly apposite of what one would expect such an institution to be. Inside, it is a prison masquerading as a hospital. Crossing the threshold, it is hard not to repress a shiver and wonder if you will be allowed out again.
It is frighteningly easy to be committed to these places and while I am sure there are many who ought to be here, it is also a convenient way of getting rid of a disagreeable relative, especially if there is property involved. There are patients everywhere, some loud but most are quiet and shuffle aimlessly in the corridors. God knows what they have been given. In fact the first time I went, it was a shock to me how overcrowded the place was. When I had mentioned this to Rookfield at dinner, he had paused, knife and fork in hand, and looked at me as if he despaired for my naivety.
“Jon”, he said, “You have to think of them as businesses. The patients are the goods, or perhaps catalysts is a better word, given how many spend their lives there without improvement. They provide local employment and a market for the local tradesmen and farmers. Nobody wants them closed down. ”
Elizabeth, I hope I never end up as cynical as Dr Hugh Rookfield, and I can do without his patronising.
I added to the bedlam as I had to kick up quite a fuss to be allowed speak privately to Lily. We met in a damp spartan room, a wall clock the only decoration, that at least gave a veneer of civility to the conversation, if one ignored the muffled sporadic shouting and muttering outside and the sheen of condensation on the cabbage green walls.
Lily is only in there a couple of weeks but is thinner and exhausted looking, nothing like the elegant creature who flirted with George. She accepted a cigarette from me and closed her eyes as she drew hard on it. Then she leaned forward, something of the old Lily in her gaze.
“Jon, you’ve got to get me out of this madhouse,” she whispered, as if afraid the orderlies were listening outside the door.
I said I was working on it with Rookfield. In truth, Lily’s status there is ambiguous. She was originally quickly committed out of concerns for her safety, given the state of mind she was in after those calamitous events at the Hall. But with her uncle dead, she does not have family in Ireland and she is danger of becoming a ward of the state and permanently committed. It is not clear how much say she has in the matter. It is easy to enter these places, a different matter entirely to leave. I have written to her mother but am still awaiting a reply.
I held back finishing this letter until I received today a note from an old army acquaintance in London. Unlike me, he moves in the kind of circles to have knowledge of Sir Malcolm (and no, I did not just take Rookfield at his word where you are concerned, my love).
He tells me that Sir Malcolm is a widower who made his fortune speculating on the Egyptian cotton trade, courtesy of inside contacts within British Administration in Cairo. A shady but common enough enterprise for the well connected, I am assured, with many an English fortune made from being privy to commercial secrets, but one which is now threatened by Egypt’s independence, such as it is. Sir Malcolm is well thought of and indeed is a patron of the British Museum amongst other charitable endeavours.
The discovery of Tutanhkamun’s tomb four years ago seems to have inspired in Sir Malcolm an overriding fascination with all things ancient Egypt and he has spent increasing amounts of time in that country. My friend writes that ‘his interests are in the more exotic end of the whole enterprise and he has forged an obsession with both forgotten and probably apocryphal pharaohs whose tombs lie waiting to be discovered in the deep desert and also of course for fabled Zerzura.’ This latter he mentions as if I should know who or what this Zerzura was.
It sounds like you will be in safe and, god help me, likeminded hands.
The lethargy that has lingered since the fire is finally lifting from me and I hope to be fit to travel soon. I am not coughing so much now from all the smoke my poor lungs inhaled. I am very much looking forward to being soon able to enjoy my pipe or even just a cigarette! In the meantime I’m sending this post restante to Malta where with a bit of luck and the RAF mailplane, it will reach you before you leave that port. Write soon!
All my love
Jon
----------------------------------------------------------------------
At Sea,
Eastern Mediterranean,
10th January 1926
My dear Jon,
Thank you so much for your letter and news of home. It was wonderful to pick it up in Malta and g ave me a great sense of belonging, which I must confess I needed as our ship has taken us ever further from home into stranger waters. Of course I have never been abroad before apart from that little excursion to Dinard, and our stop at Gibraltar was more exotic than I had expected. The noise and chatter in the crowded streets, so many strange voices and pungent odours, the glaring sun, so intense after the drear autumn in England and such a contrast even to the heavy weather of the Bay of Biscay.
Meanwhile at sea my dining companions have spared no detail in telling me how wild, how outlandish, how dangerously foreign, Cairo would be, and how an unaccompanied young lady like myself should take the strongest precautions against everything from stomach ache to seduction to having my throat slit! In the end I gave up listening to their tall tales, which I think were over-sensationalised to have an intimidating effect on me, and spent more time in Irina’s company, assisting with her artistic endeavours. She is to make a small sculpture, initially in wax and then in alabaster, of me, using the Cubist principles much championed by the avant garde Spanish artist Mr Picasso. I must confess I am excited to be considered a muse and in fact I greatly enjoyed holding a pose while Irina made her preparatory sketches.
But after Marseilles, where Dr Rookfield failed to show, I was still feeling homesick and apprehensive, and so when in Malta I received the letter from you and saw your familiar wonky handwriting on the envelope and the Waterford postmark it was a great thrill! I must confess I sobbed with relief that I had not been forgotten. I am glad you are recovering and taking good care of George and Lily. Once we have got the Egyptian talisman I know George will be better. I am glad too to hear we will have some assistance in obtaining it and once in Cairo I will waste no time in seeking out Sir Malcolm. Do you know where he is from? Might he be a member of the Society of Esoterica? Cotton trading and ancient mysticism do not strike me as normally going hand in hand, but as I am hoping to make some purchases of cotton both for dress and soft furnishings, I think he will be a most helpful companion. And of course tell me all about the fabled Zerzura!
Anyway your letter so cheered me, both in the knowledge that you are well and that I have a reliable contact in Cairo on arrival, that the final leg of the voyage to Alexandria and Port Said has passed quite serenely. I have acclimatised into the warmer air of the Mediterranean, and have been spending more time on deck, getting the sea air and playing deck quoits with some of the young men who are travelling onward to Aden and India. In the meantime Irina had enough sketches of me to start her sculpture and I’ve seen less of her, as she continued the work in her cabin.
As I write this we are anchored just off Alexandria and due to disembark at dawn tomorrow. I am very excited! Earlier, after dinner I took some air on my way to my starboard cabin and paused to look out over the still, dark sea to the low, flat coastline. Suddenly there was an eerie silent lighting in the heavens, I think above the desert lands to the west of Cairo. It was a distant, greenish flickering, like a lightning storm but the wrong colour and no thunder or indeed clouds. It can’t be the Northern Lights! I’ve heard of St Elmo’s Fire but I really don’t know what it is, and whether it is a good omen or bad.
As I stood there transfixed, I realised another passenger, a well dressed, rather stern looking Egyptian gentleman, had also stopped to observe the strange lights and was leaning on the railings about ten feet left of me. He saw that I’d noticed him and dipped his hat to me and said, “Strange times are coming, madame.” With that gnomic utterance, he turned and wandered off up the deck.
Well! It was quite uncanny and, I do hope most fervently, is not an inauspicious start to my venture. I find I no longer feel like retiring. I will seal this now and take to the Purser for postage, before having a final soiree in the saloon bar with the chaps and hopefully Irina too.
I will write again from Cairo.
With much love and warmest wishes,
Your affectionate fiancée,
Elizabeth