"Worse things happen at sea," Vaz says. And certainly, the battle for life may be fought more fiercely elsewhere; yet there is something peculiarly uncomfortable about the Work. Something unnatural about the numbers themselves. I do not know how to describe it.

Mr Vaz himself suffers headaches, and fainting fits, from which he once woke up quite convinced that, through a window that had opened in the ceiling, an unfriendly eye was staring at him.

He does not have a family, and says cheerfully that he never intends to be burdened with one. His ambition is to one day own his own little ship, and have a crew to call him sir, and to trade back and forth across the ocean; in pursuit of this ambition he is willing to endure Gracewell's Work with less complaint than most. He had already been there for nearly two months when I arrived, and that makes him something of an old hand. Few last that long.

"Before this place," Vaz once told me, "there was another place. It was lost in the storm. That's what the real long-service men-longer even than mine-say, but they won't tell you anything more. They're not supposed to talk about it."

I shall record the story of how he came to be working for Gracewell.

"I told this same story," he said, "to the fellow who used to sit where you sit now."

"Where did he go?"

"I don't know. One morning he didn't come in. The nightmares, I suppose. But please, you asked to hear my story. I'll tell you. I'm a sailor. That has always been my profession. I could climb a rope before I could walk. It'll be my profession again when Mr Gracewell's lunatic enterprise here collapses. Perhaps they'll come for him and put him in a hospital for madmen. Perhaps they'll ship him out to India to govern something. In the meantime I am making more money than I have ever heard tell of in my life."

The room idled. Mr Irving chalked up new instructions. Simon, the medical student, sat with his head in his hands and moaned.

"I was between services. This was shortly after the storm, which I am sure you know was a bad night for ships. The Viceroy lost her top mast to lightning! Well, that was not such bad luck for me. I was bound in service for another two years to the Viceroy. If the storm had come a few days later I would already have been at sea, far from here; and I suppose I would never have heard of Mr Gracewell."

"It's an ill wind that blows n.o.body any good," I said.

"I was enjoying my freedom in a lodging-house over a shop in Shadwell, where I shared a room with three or four very good friends. And one morning, as we were playing skittles in the garden, and arguing about money, Mr Dimmick interrupted us. I suppose he climbed the fence; one moment we were alone, the next he was there, leaning on the fence and tapping his stick for our attention."

He shook his head sadly. "No Englishman had set foot in that garden in years. You can't be too careful in London these days, Mr Shaw. Get out, I said, whoever you are. Get out. We did not kill your b.l.o.o.d.y Duke and we do not know who killed him. I mean no offense to the Duke, but there has been trouble of that sort lately. He said, shut up. Tapping his stick on the cobbles-shut-up-like so. Anyway-he said that he was looking for me. He knew my name, Mr Shaw. I said, What do you want, and he said that he had heard it said in the pubs that I could tell fortunes."

Vaz shook his head. "I said certainly not, because I thought perhaps he was a policeman. But it's true, I have made a little money here and there telling fortunes. Sailors appreciate a glimpse of the future. I have picked up a trick or two in this port or that, and when I was a boy I could roll my eyes back in my head and speak in strange tongues. I consider it an honest profession, though the law of London disagrees."

I explained that recent events had caused me to have an open mind on the subject of clairvoyance.

"I said that he should leave, because I was not in the business of telling fortunes. He said that he was a sure hand at fortune-telling himself and so he could tell that soon I would be working for him. I said that I wished him good fortune in his endeavours, and he said what did I mean by that, was that a sort of curse? He said that he supposed that, as a heathen, I probably had all kinds of charms and amulets lying around, and I probably thought I could put the evil eye on a man and was probably accustomed to communicating with devils."

Vaz shook his head.

"Now, my friends are not the kind of men who take such insults lightly. I thought it was very bad manners myself. So they said some harsh words of their own to Mr Dimmick, and they approached him roughly. Mr Shaw, Dimmick's stick struck like a snake-I hardly saw it move."

"A nasty-looking implement, that stick."

"My friend did not like it either. Dimmick had knocked him to the floor. Peace, I said, peace, we are all reasonable men here. I said that I was only a sailor, and that if he wanted to hire a sailor I might work for him, but if he wanted to hire a mystic he should go somewhere else, and quickly. Plenty of frauds in London would take his money! He said that he did not want sailors, and was I deaf, had he not been clear? He wanted clerks. I said that perhaps he was deaf, because hadn't I said I was a sailor. Shut up, he said, and I'll give you two pounds to come with me and let the boss explain. Well-I was afraid of him, but I have done more dangerous things than follow a madman to Deptford, and for less money."

Others tell much the same story as Mr Vaz-the unexpected visit from Dimmick, that is. One or two were recruited from jail, I regret to say.

Mr Vaz has shared his cure for the headaches.

"When it gets too painful," Vaz advises me, "I close my eyes and think of G.o.d; and when that does not work, I think of women."

"I think of Josephine," I say. I have told him about Josephine.

"Aha!" he says.

"Sometimes I think about food."

"Ha! Food!"

"Ham," I say. "Bacon. Oxtail soup, curried fowl, meat puddings, pea soup, roast-"

We have these conversations two or three times a day. Talk of food makes poor Simon moan.

-April 24 Graves was gone today. Coe left us on the nineteenth of the month. Parrington and Singh on the fifteenth-Singh had been suffering from something that resembled consumption. I forget other names.

A letter from Josephine. Could hardly make sense of it.

Awful confession-her letters pile up beside my bed, unread-unopened. Can hardly think about a thing but the Work.

-April 26 Dimmick gave me a long hard look this evening, as if he suspects that I have been keeping notes. But then that's Dimmick's way-the scowl, the menacing tap-tap-tap.

Yesterday, Dimmick caught me trying to sneak into a room not my own. I was confused, I said, b.l.o.o.d.y place is a maze, isn't it? The scowl, the tap-tap-tap.

-April 27 Starry night as I walked home. Struck by a quite unreasoning sensation of utter terror, I clutched to a lamp-post as if to a mast in a storm, and was mistaken for a drunk. A light in Josephine's window, but I did not know what to say to her. All this is for her; and yet I cannot tell her. Not a Had to put this away. Could hardly read the page before me. Troubled all day by visions and now the symbols of the Work dance before my eyes.

-May 10 Quite forgot this thing. Not a great success. The Work leaves little time to reflect; and for a while there I was unwell. Let me try again.

Every morning the ledgers contain numbers, written in the left-hand column of the leftmost page. Numbers is something of a simplification. They are dots and dashes, somewhat like Morse code, though so far as I know, it is not. We think of them as representing numbers. It is rather like learning a new language. In amongst the dots and dashes are a few other symbols. Today I encountered , , , and . My cla.s.sical education was poor, but I know those to be Greek. There are a few other symbols-not many-that my education had not equipped me to recognise at all, such as , or , or . Over the course of the day, the job is to perform certain operations on those dots and dashes et cetera, transforming them as they march across the columns from one side of the ledger to another.

Vaz believes that the ledgers circulate among the rooms, so that operations that began in Room 1 might be continued in Room 6 and concluded in Room 12 and revolve back to begin again in Room 2.

The instructions Mr Irving chalks on the board set the rules of the game.

Mr Harriot, who works at the back of the room, advised me to think of it as a game. He says it's trying too hard to understand what it's all for that causes headaches and worry and sickness, and the thing is to play the game the best you can. He is a rugby man.

The operations that we perform are generally not very difficult, but there are a great many to be performed in a day. Mr Irving never makes threats or speeches, and Gracewell never shows himself in Room 13, but no one doubts that errors will not be tolerated, and speed is of the essence. There is a spirit of compet.i.tion in the room.

The instructions are sometimes very simple: DESKS ONE TO TEN: COMBINE THE FIRST AND SECOND ROWS.

Often we are little more than overpaid scriveners. The instructions tell us to copy one ledger into another, or to do it in triplicate.

Sometimes the instructions are more complicated: IGNORE THE SECOND COLUMN IF YOU ARE IN DESKS ONE TO TEN. OTHERWISE THE SECOND COLUMN IS THE SUM OF EACH NUMBER IN THE ROWS BELOW THE NUMBER IN QUESTION IN THE FIRST COLUMN AND CONTINUE IN THE THIRD COLUMN ETC ETC ETC ETC ETC ETC.

Tedious, and so far as I can tell, pointless, but at least clear. Sometimes the instructions are merely exhortations: FASTER.

And sometimes they are utterly obscure: ONE IS WHITE. TWO IS BLACK.

Or: ONE IS YES. ZERO IS NO.

And besides, how precisely is one supposed to add to , or subtract from ?

"Do what seems right," Vaz says. "If you have done it wrong, I expect they will let you know."

Every so often Mr Irving summons someone out of the room, for a conversation from which they return silent and pale. I confess that it worries me. I fear error. Most of what the instructions call for is nonsense, so far as I can tell, and the remainder is pointless; therefore there is no way to know if it's being done right, or wrong, or even if there is such a thing as right or wrong, or if we are being judged on some other ground, or not at all. Sometimes I worry that the Work doesn't make sense even to Gracewell, and that at the end of the day Irving shovels it all into the fire, laughing at our wasted efforts.

When the instructions call for an impossible or absurd operation, I take Vaz's advice and simply trust to intuition; I close my eyes and let my hand work. I think it is these leaps of intuition, not the long hours or the close airless room, that cause the headaches et cetera. It is no doubt significant that quite a number of the men believe themselves to be sensitives, in one way or another-fortune-tellers, weekend mediums, table-rappers, fairy-spotters.

One feels that the Work has a shape, somehow. One has a sense of forging into airless heights; of the numbers as spiralling-revolving-a pattern forming of which my work is but a tiny, tiny fragment. A thing being woven together out of dots and dashes, my work a single thin filament; turning and turning, rising up, bearing us with it. As if we are measuring something, or mapping something, or filling some volume of empty s.p.a.ce with numbers so that one can plumb its depths. From time to time I have thought of that famous painting of the Tower of Babel, spiralling around and up in an endless procession of arches and ladders and scaffolds.

"Come let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens."

-May 16 Waugh and Heath called round while I was at work, leaving a note. It occurs to me that I have not touched a drop of drink since I began at Gracewell's. No doubt it does me good. There is a kind of discipline to the Work that does away with other distractions. Rather like one imagines soldiering might be, or being a monk.

Towards the end of the day Simon stood quite suddenly at his desk and announced that he would not do it any more. He would not, he said, he would not, he simply would not, he had decided that he would not, would not, would not, would not. Then he started to scream. His eyes rolled back in his head and he cried out as if he were lost, alone, in some dark starry emptiness, beset by monstrous spectres. I held the poor fellow by his shoulders and tried to talk some sense back into him, but it was no go. Strong, as they say men in a fit often are. In the end he had to be removed from the room by Mr Dimmick, who appeared out of nowhere and forced him into submission, as if he were a rabid dog and not a frail medical student, and then led him out with his arm twisted behind his back, muttering now then now then come along hup hup my boy hup. Then a long idleness as the ledgers and instructions were rearranged to account for the new configuration of the room.

Hardly a week gone by since the fire. Already it seems like some awful dream.

G.o.d, what a mess.

What on earth have I got myself into?

Chapter Eight.

Martin Atwood's house-number 22, according to the card he'd given Josephine-stood on the south-west corner of Hanover Square. It was palatial, in a discreet, rather austere way. Five rows of white windows were set into a grey immensity of brick. The door was set back behind four square white pillars, a fence of black railings, a moat of bas.e.m.e.nt windows. The windows and the golden letter-box in the middle of a large black door caught the last violet light of the evening.

At first n.o.body answered Lord Atwood's door-bell, for so long that Josephine began to wonder if n.o.body was home, not even the servants. After all, she'd come unannounced, on a whim that had surprised even her, after ignoring Atwood's invitation for several dutiful weeks, just as she'd promised Arthur she would-having, in fact, gone so far as to lose Atwood's card in a desk-drawer, so that when she'd decided that afternoon to pay Atwood a visit, she'd had to spend an hour searching for it, and was now later than she'd meant to be.

She tapped her foot. One or two pa.s.sers-by looked curiously at her. While she waited, halfway across London, a little flame hatched in a rusted bucket in a cupboard at the back of Mr Gracewell's Engine and began to explore its surroundings, feeding itself on greasy rags and old ledgers and newspapers.

When the door opened it revealed Atwood himself, not a servant. She felt instantly shabby and poor, and she flushed. He smiled at her as if-it was not quite friendly, though not unfriendly either-as if her presence confirmed a hypothesis.

"Josephine! I thought you might come."

"I hope you don't mind. You said-"

"I extended an invitation; you accepted it. And with auspicious timing, too-there must have been something in the air."

He led her into a long hallway, lined with paintings, of mostly Arcadian subjects-women in flowing white silk draped about green willows-she didn't do more than glance at them. She supposed they were all very fine, and very tasteful. She was already intimidated enough. She'd rehea.r.s.ed what she meant to say on the way over, but now, in the face of Atwood's obvious wealth and station, she nearly forgot why she'd come.

She allowed him to lead her towards a staircase. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything."

"Not at all. I have some friends here. Members of my company. We were almost ready to begin-but they'll be delighted to meet you. It will be better with nine."

"Begin?"

"You'll join us, won't you? A seance, of sorts. The hour is very nearly upon us. No doubt you sensed it."

"Your Lordship-I didn't come here for a seance. I came to talk about Arthur Shaw."

"Arthur Shaw? Oh, yes. I recall."

Yet another of her letters to Arthur had gone unanswered. The final straw. She had been in the dark for altogether too long, and it seemed she would be in the dark for ever, unless she did something to bring light to it. Perhaps Atwood was dangerous-but if so, it was Arthur who was in danger, not her. It was Arthur who was becoming so hopelessly caught up in Atwood's and Gracewell's affairs that he might never be able to extricate himself from them-whatever they were. She remained certain that Arthur would have had nothing to do with anything truly criminal, or thoroughly wicked. But it was plainly undesirable, and unhealthy; and she had decided that it was time to swallow her own misgivings about Lord Atwood and pay him a visit to tell him so.

As Atwood led her downstairs-first unfastening a red rope from the top of the staircase, then refastening it-she launched into her case. It was her right to be told what was going on, as Arthur's fiancee and, she hoped, as Atwood's friend; furthermore, whatever was going on in Deptford was quite clearly harmful to Arthur's health, not to mention his sanity; and besides, it was a waste of his talents; and so on, and so on. Atwood was quite plainly not really listening.

"Josephine, Josephine-this is not a night to discuss money."

"Sir! It's not a question of money, it's a question of-of simple decency."

"Is it? How dull."

"I thought you might help."

"I thought you'd come to help me. We have very little time, and a great deal to do to prepare."

She was curious despite herself. "For what?"

Atwood smiled, and pointed the way forward down a low-ceilinged, electric-lit corridor.

"I recall Mr Shaw," Atwood said. "I recommended his services to Mr Gracewell, didn't I? It's very important work, Josephine, very important; but I grant you it's unpleasant. I wasn't aware of Mr Shaw's finer qualities, which you have so eloquently adumbrated. I'll speak to Gracewell."

"Who is Gracewell? What on earth is he doing? What-"

"He a.s.sists the Company with calculations."

"But what does that mean? Why is all this secrecy necessary?"

"Will you permit me to show you?"

For a moment she was afraid he might open a door to reveal Arthur chained up in a cupboard, shovelling coal or something of the sort.

"You're just in time to witness one of our experiments. Our company-you can see what it's all for, and why it's so tremendously urgent. You're not superst.i.tious, are you, Josephine?"

"Superst.i.tious? I don't think I am."

"Good! It's a source of constant surprise to me how many people can't tell psychical science from ghost stories. So many sensitives waste their gifts, led astray by superst.i.tion-and I think that you have a quite remarkable gift, Josephine. I don't say that lightly. Why, if every girl in London who claims to be sensitive really were, it would be a wonder that London doesn't levitate! Fortunately, I have an excellent sense for the real thing. I dare say you feel it too; when two true sensitives meet, there's an undeniable spark, isn't there? The uninitiated might mistake it for something baser, something carnal. And what a waste, when such energies could be put to higher purposes."

It was impossible to deny that her heart was pounding.

He paused with his hand on a doork.n.o.b.

"I can't say more unless I know you'll join us. Will you?"

"Mr Shaw-"