tide just like the stairs above him were creaking now, sharing a cigarette across a table full of fruit and baklava, while someone leaned against his left side. He could remember being happy; the kind of happiness that hurt because it couldn’t last and tomorrow it would be gone.
‘You’re going mad,’ he said aloud, and got up fast, though he wanted to stay and see more imaginary things. He surprised Kite, who had just been coming down the stairs.
‘I doubt you’re mad,’ Kite offered. He must have heard him through the knotholes.
‘You’re not going already?’
‘It’s past eleven.’
‘Let me walk with you,’ Joe said, in every bleak expectation that Kite would say no.
‘Thank you,’ Kite said. He smiled. ‘Just as well. I don’t know the way.’ He gave Joe the card of a Knightsbridge hotel.
‘I’ll get you there, come on.’
‘Why did you think you were going mad?’ Kite asked as they went out into the cold, Joe still shrugging into his coat.
‘I … see things,’ Joe said. He shook his head. ‘Hence the Psychical Society. It’s just epilepsy visions, but they’re …’ He trailed off, feeling stupid. ‘I get déjà vu too, a lot. Even now. I feel like I know you. I’d swear I do. I’ve been jealous about you all evening.’
Kite didn’t veer away or look doubtful about being taken through London by a madman. ‘From where?’
‘I don’t know,’ Joe said tiredly. ‘Like I say, it’s just déjà vu. I have hallucinations too. A lighthouse. Having dinner on an old ship.’ He sighed. ‘A man who waits by the sea. I mean it’s clear, very clear. I can see him skimming stones.’
‘Yes. That’s right.’
Joe looked up sharply. ‘What?’
‘Yes,’ Kite said again. ‘You’re not mad.’ He looked as afraid as he had holding Beatrix. ‘I lied before. You do know me. It’s you I came to see.’
Joe’s breath caught in the back of his throat and so did all his words. ‘I can’t make any of it join up, it’s – more real than dreams but not so real as real.’ He caught Kite’s arm, probably too hard. ‘Please. Do you know what happened to me?’
Kite nodded. He let his breath out slowly. ‘I’ll tell you what happened, and you ask me anything you don’t remember.’
49
Edinburgh, 1805
It was only a few months after the fall of London that the order came from the Admiralty. Someone at the whaling station on Lewis and Harris had sent round word that the French seemed to be building some kind of tower on a rock out to sea, supplied by ships like no one had ever seen. Once Agamemnon was refitted, they were to investigate straight away. Kite didn’t see at first that Jem had dropped down onto the floor. He was bent forward with his hand against his chest, his colour gone. It took him a minute or so to say anything and when he did, he promised it was only nerves, and then explained what the tower was.
Jem knew what had happened as soon as he saw the lighthouse. It took a while to find where the time difference was, that it was between the pillars in the sea, but when they went through, the town turned from a healthy whaling station to bones on the beach and one lit lodging house.
‘What the hell are we meant to do about that?’ Kite said finally.
Agamemnon was waiting in the lee of the lighthouse island, unable to get any closer because of the rocks under the surface of the sea. Kite and Jem had rowed out, and now the boat was rocking just on the future side of the pillars. If Kite leaned to the left, to see outside a pillar, the lighthouse looked ruined. Lean to the right, to see it through the pillars on the past side, it was brand new and not even quite finished yet. The new one was on the wrong side.
Jem was quiet and tight. He was holding the oars, because Kite’s fingers were broken. Kite couldn’t remember breaking them, but they were getting painful in cold weather. ‘We sailed through here in the Kingdom. None of us realised anything was different. I always thought it was that fog. You know, when … you found us.’
Kite didn’t know what to say. He knew what he wanted to say, but it was all questions. Just what Jem’s life had been before: had he been married; did he have children. The things Jem had never told him. But none of