Margaret McGill
Miss Margaret Mary McGill (a.k.a. Maggie, Meg, Megan, Madge, Peg, Peggy)
“Maggie’s a good girl, just...makes some daft decisions sometimes, it seems like. She’s got so much potential -- that’s why I got her that scholarship to King’s College. I may not be much myself, but I’ve met more than a few gents through the museum what are always looking for a noble cause to sponsor, and that Maggie, she’s a cause and that’s for sure, noble or not remains to be seen. I knew she could make something of herself; more than any of the rest of that family, an’ that’s not saying much. Bless her, she was learning the bookbinding trade same time as she was learning about “The Bard” and all those old poets and such, met a nice young man, second son of Lord Somethingorother, I forget. She had such a bright future, and then? I’ll never understand what got into her head, stealing an exam like that. Thought she had more sense - she was always so serious about her books and her studying. Got sent down, and of course the young fellow wasn’t about to have naught to do with her after that.
All that time working in the library was well-spent, though, and in spite of leaving under a cloud, as they say, she was able to pick up a good job at a print shop, putting type together into -- well, she explained to me once, but alls I know is that she puts the words together to go on the pages, and then puts the book together after all’s done. A good job, was making a tidy sum and got a place of her own. Why she wanted to work for less at some dusty old bookshop, I’ll never know. Says she’s a “document restoration specialist” now - sprucing up old books to make ‘em look like new. I’d’ve thought that the money wouldn’t be much doing that, but every time she comes over it’s new earrings or a new scarf or what have you, so she can’t be doing too badly for herself.
She comes over most Sundays for dinner, and I’m glad she’s been able to make something out of herself. I do worry sometimes that the only fella she ever mentions is that layabout cousin of hers, “Mistah Hughes” he calls himself. That whole side of the family is trash, if I’m not to be mincing words, and as long as she’s spending time with him there’s no hope of her finding a decent husband. Still. She’s my granddaughter, the only one I’ve got and that’s the truth. I wish her naught but good, and if she can just get out of her own way she might just get somewhere in the world.”
William McGill, Security Guard at the British Museum
Physical Description
General Physical Condition
Fairly athletic, as she goes out dancing several nights a week.
Body Features
Irish pallor, with a spritz of freckles that come out when she's been out in the sun a lot
Apparel & Accessories
Tends to dress a half step above her station, albeit in secondhand wares most of the time. Likes brightly colored blouses.
Mental characteristics
Gender Identity
Tomboyish female
Sexuality
Got her heart broke and never wants to go through that again.
Education
Most of a Literature degree at King's College
Accomplishments & Achievements
Had a straight-A average in college...until she was expelled.
Failures & Embarrassments
Expelled from King's College in senior year of a Literature degree
Mental Trauma
Soon enough.
Intellectual Characteristics
Very perceptive and detail oriented. Can get hyperfocused on the details, especially when working on her art. Fails to see the forest for the trees and is oblivious to anything else going on when she's working. The kind of person who gets working on a project and forgets to eat.
Morality & Philosophy
Maggie believes money corrupts, and that it is impossible to be rich and a good person. She prefers to scam people who are demonstrably bad, but "careless" is enough of a sin that she'll snip the purse string of a well to do lady coming out of the opera.
Taboos
Cruelty to animals or children
Destruction of art or literature
Personality Characteristics
Motivation
Adventure: Maggie loves the thrill of the con, the feeling of having put one over on some rich toff who won't miss it anyway. She wilts when things are predictable, ordinary, stable.
[Secondary]Arrogance/Vengeance. Money corrupts and therefore all rich people are evil if you dig deep enough.
Savvies & Ineptitudes
Knows a good bit about early modern printing practices and drama. Gifted at book restoration...and forgery.
Fair to middling at shoplifting, pickpocketing, etc. She's bad enough at it that it is always a challenge, but good enough that she very rarely gets caught.
Likes & Dislikes
Likes: Jazz, Marlowe, gin
Dislikes: Professors, condescending rich people.
Virtues & Personality perks
Codeswitches easily between lower class and educated speech.
Vices & Personality flaws
Bit of a kleptomaniac/adrenaline junkie.
Sometimes has a hard time concealing her contempt for the university system.
Hygiene
Her appearance always suits the situation; working in the back of the shop she's completely unselfconscious, doesn't notice if she's spilled ink or if her hair is a mess. But if she's going out in "public," she will always have her hair combed, makeup on point. Nicer clothes when dealing with clients in the shop, shabbier stuff when out on the town.
Social
Family Ties
Shaw Hughes - cousin
William McGill - paternal grandfather
Religious Views
Raised CoE, stopped going long ago. Ex-BF was staunchly atheist - if God exists, why would he allow suffering? - and a bit of that rubbed off.
Social Aptitude
Prefers to be invisible whenever possible, blending in to whatever situation she is in. When in her element, talking about her areas of expertise she is confident bordering on arrogance and condescension - after all, how could these people possibly know as much as she does? Has pretty major trust issues, but will have a drink and a laugh with friends.
Hobbies & Pets
Pretends the bookstore cat is annoying but loves having him curl up on her lap.
Speech
Defaults to received pronunciation, but code switches fluently to lower-class (becoming more pronounced when hanging out with Shaw).
Wealth & Financial state
Maggie's income fluctuates wildly from month to month, depending on how much "freelancing" she's doing. Her typesetting job had her making a relatively good living, but it was mind-numbingly boring. Her income at the Bookstore is significantly less, so she supplements with the occasional pickpocketing/shoplifting/game of "It'd be a shame if..." with Shaw.
Birthplace
London
Children
Current Residence
London
Gender
Female
Eyes
Green
Hair
Short, wavy, auburn
Height
5'5"
Weight
130
Quotes & Catchphrases
"He'll never miss it."
Character Prototype
Jenna Coleman - Clara from "The Snowmen"
Scandal
18 October 1934
October 18, 1934
Early
Can’t sleep. Weird dreams. Books that are paintings that break apart into puzzle pieces and become different books, even though it seems like the pieces shouldn’t fit together that way.
So. There’s lots of bits in the middle I haven’t worked out yet, but if we DO let anyone have a copy of the play, I am not alright with it being performed again, ever. Now, thing is, it occurs to me that I probably could persuade him - or, actually, any number of people, to….well do anything. Give the play back to us. Set it on fire. Whatever.
Why have I been limiting myself to books? And the odd side project like the badge for Shaw (which was SO much fun, let me tell you!). I can do letters. Contracts. Accounts books. All these rich toffs, they’re so awfully terribly worried about reputation. Tawdry letters of passion to wholly inappropriate people. Contracts for services one would not want anyone to know about. Evidence of embezzlement, heaven forfend! Confessions, heresy…. I really hadn’t thought about it, because I’ve just been so focused on books.
We could sell him the book…. Or maybe we set out two books, one’s the play, and the other is….who knows? Something about him? Something about someone he hates? Someone he loves? So which one does he want?
I wonder what snooty Mr. Golightly wants? What he’s afraid of? What he wouldn’t want anyone to know? Alexandra’s in Bedlam, not in prison, and if I recall what Shaw said there was no proof of who killed the father and brother. Well, what if there was?
No, I know. Books are my thing, and I don’t have practice with any of those other things. But with most documents, you don’t need something that’s flawless, just enough to get a rise out of someone. It’s just now my brain is full of all the things I could do, and…. The thought of making something that could hurt people, innocent people, when instead I could be churning out piles and piles of scandalous documents?
Blasphemy?
17 October 1934
Ben Travers gave us tickets to his new play, and… I like the guy, but there’s something really wrong with him. It was terrible - really, really objectively terrible. I thought I got what he was trying to do in terms of production design, with having the different periods and settings and what not all jumbled up, but…
It really seemed like a ritual, and when I realized that it made me feel dizzy and like I was going to throw up. It involved the symbol from our basement, the weird “yellow sign” thing. Shaw and Ann and I all saw different things at one point in the play - and not just different things on stage; I remember this really rude couple in front of us talking and then getting up and leaving, and they swear it didn’t happen. It was as if there were a whole bunch of plays - from different times and places, even - that were all happening at the same time and overlapping.
Like that girl that we went to see at Bedlam. Talking with all those different accents… and she wasn’t even an actress or anything. It was like different people, broken up and patched together. And she had read the play too...
It reminds me of those awful paintings - I think I wrote about them before? That’s what I thought was going on with the design at the start of the play, that it was a deliberate juxtaposition, that they were saying “this could happen anywhere” by jumbling up the times and places that the different costumes and set pieces and whatnot were from. Tom saying about how it’s supposed to bother you, the surrealist paintings. Well, if that was Travers’ aim he sure hit the mark.
The thing is, after there was a huge row - a riot, more like. I mean, we were all a bit shaken up, but there were people who were so upset, they just lost it and started attacking each other. The play did that. I know it did. It made people so afraid, so panicked, that they were hurting other people. Art is powerful, I know that. But…. this is just wrong.
And now there’s some big shot director at the Old Vic looking to get a copy of the play - the original one, that Travers’ version was based on. And sure, we could probably get it for him. The thing is….. I really don’t think we should. I know, I know - Shaw would go completely off his head and probably Ann too at how much money we’d be giving up. But there’s got to be a reason it’s so hard to find. Yeah, censorship, I know. But….it’s hard to get rid of something printed that completely. The last time it was performed, people burned the theater and salted the earth. I’ve seen the newspapers.
And of course there’s an easy answer to that, right? Just do a little of my own creative magic and whip up a completely authentic looking version. And that would be great - I’d love to work on something like that, and I’d love to soak some rich producer even more. Except… I know, as soon as I see this written down in front of me I’m going to think it’s complete rubbish. But…there’s this rumor going around. There’s a book Jackie’s looking for a copy of, the Necronomicon, a specific edition - the Dee (as in John)-Endicott (?) edition. But there’s a story that’s been going ‘round about it, about how the one that’s supposedly in circulation right now was created by a master forger - still haven’t heard a name, but I haven’t dug that much on it up until now. It was a forgery….until it wasn’t. Something about the weird magic in the book itself made it start to change. What Travers did, that was just based on what he remembered of the French play. I could make a forgery, change things around so it wasn’t the same as the original….and if the rumor about that other book is right, it could become the real thing. Not to mention I’d have to read it, or at least some of it, right? And someone would have to translate it out of French to read to me, and translation… that involves some serious, deep investment with the text. Can I ask someone to do that, after seeing what it did to that poor girl at Bedlam?
I mean, that part would be pretty great. I just… don’t want it to hurt other people. And I don’t know if I could make it different enough to prevent it from doing that. Wow, that absolutely does sound daft when I look at it written down.
Things do change between the idea and the page though, don’t they? I sat down and I was going to write about how art doesn’t have to be “original” to be brilliant after I had a tiff with Ann. And this is what came out.
So that’s the thing with keeping a journal - you can go back and see what you were thinking before. And reading what I wrote last summer, that whole thing about art and truth…? I’m sure there’s more I need to think through there, but… the whole thing just makes me queasy. Like this is a deliberate perversion of power. A…. almost like a blasphemy. That’s not the right word, but there aren’t words for this. I don’t feel like I can in good conscience bring another copy of this into existence. If I was positive I could make a fake version then that would solve all the problems, but…the idea that a magical text can start off fake and become real is outside of anything I’ve ever had to think about before. I mean...it doesn’t seem like that should be possible. But Von Kant’s “dog” shouldn’t be possible either, and it was very, very real.
I’m going to have to think about this. I don’t want to go against the interests of the store - or my friends. But this is something that can get other people hurt. It’s taking something that has the potential to be beautiful and wonderful and making it twisted and wrong. How can I be a part of spreading that to more people?
A Page from the Past
15 August 1934
I was shelving books today and… it was the strangest thing. It must have been one of Tom’s books, though how it ended up in the shop I have no idea. It was a collection of Elizabethan poetry, the one we used in the class where we met. I have a feeling this is going to sound funny because I’ve been reading, and thinking about school, and… I feel like I’ve clicked back over onto that track.
There was a sheet of notebook paper, folded up as a bookmark. I knew the page it was going to be on, but I looked anyway. Christopher Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Lass”. I’m sure he thought he was being terribly clever when he sent it to me, without the title or attribution, as he’d written it himself. I couldn’t stop laughing when I got it, but I thought surely, this must be a test? He wants to know if I’ll respond with the Reply. And far be it from me to step down from a challenge, for surely that was what this was.
Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,
That Valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.
And we will sit upon the Rocks,
Seeing the Shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow Rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing Madrigals.
And I will make thee beds of Roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of Myrtle;
A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty Lambs we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;
A belt of straw and Ivy buds,
With Coral clasps and Amber studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.
The Shepherds’ Swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May-morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me, and be my love
And so I did, on the very paper tucked between the pages. In my best handwriting (this was before I was good at doing other people’s), I copied out Sir Walter Raleigh’s “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd”. I say copied, but really it was mostly just checking the punctuation, double checking the exact wording, because I had it nearly memorized already. Wrote it out in my best penmanship, with an old fashioned pen and bright violet ink. No attribution - wasn’t that part of the game he was playing?
If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee and be thy love.
Time drives the flocks from field to fold,
When rivers rage and rocks grow cold;
And Philomel becometh dumb;
The rest complain of cares to come.
The flowers do fade, and wanton fields
To wayward winter reckoning yields;
A honey tongue, a heart of gall,
Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall.
Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy bed of roses,
Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies,
Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten,
In folly ripe, in reason rotten.
Thy belt of straw and ivy buds,
Thy coral clasps and amber studs,
All these in me no means can move
To come to thee and be thy love.
But could youth last and love still breed,
Had joys no date nor age no need,
Then these delights my mind might move
To live with thee and be thy love.
Well, as it turns out, he had no idea that there was a Reply. To him, “The Passionate Shepherd” was just a poem he found in a book. He knew nothing of Marlowe, the pastoral tradition, the way poetry manuscripts circulated. Nothing of Marlowe’s work for the crown (though he did later remember having heard that he was an atheist), of “Marlowe’s mightly line,” his death over the reckoning of a bar bill in Deptford - nothing! Nothing at all! And certainly not that Sir Walter Raleigh had written a reply, tongue quite firmly in cheek, mocking not only Marlowe but the whole pastoral tradition - “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd”. And quite rightly so!
Unfortunately, or fortunately? It wasn’t a game, and he was quite entirely ignorant of the entire context of all of it. What he was, was smitten, well and truly. The letters kept coming, slipped under my door in the middle of the night. He tried to actually write poetry, and - it was so dreadful, I just told him please not to, just say what you feel. And did he ever. I’m not [scribbled out]
I’m glad I burned that, all of it.
At any rate, that’s how it all started. He thought I was some kind of genius because I knew a poem he didn’t. But I’d never had someone to pal around with other than Shaw, who’s my cousin. And we weren’t just friends; he made me feel….ugh. It’s hard to put into words, and it also just makes me so angry, to think about how stupid I was. How could I believe him?
And to be fair, he never said he was going to propose. I just assumed…. Isn’t that what you do? Courtship, and then marriage, and then children? Living in a manor house, with servants probably, going to balls and dinners and….argh! My chest actually hurts thinking about this, like…. Well like when a cat steps on you, and you think how is it possible that this little tiny creature can put SO much weight on such a small area? Like that, but crushing my chest. This awful tight pain, it just makes me want to curl up and cry. Even years later, he can still hurt me.
No, not him. This is me doing it to myself. For my own stupidity at thinking he could ever love someone like me. Uneducated, uncultured, un-everything that he is. Rich bastard, so stupid that he can’t even steal a test without cocking it up.
[several lines scribbled out]
I should have thrown out the page that was in the book, but I didn’t. It’s still on my desk. I’ll write some more about him at some point to get it out of my system, but for now I just want to put it behind me.
So why can’t I throw away that page?
Color and Light
21 June, 1934
So there’s this Irish pub, the Harp and Something (it’s always a harp and something). I heard the music was good there, and generally that’s not my thing, but I figured what the hell. I thought maybe I could get Ann to go with me, but she was training the new kid, Alfie. So I went and I got a drink and settled into a spot at the end of the bar.
It was loud - like you wouldn’t believe. There were so many people there that sometimes you could scarcely hear the band. Then they took a break, and it started to clear out - it was getting late, and apparently the earlier band had quite a following that was only there to see them. A new batch of people got up on the tiny little stage squashed into the corner, and… yeah, I got distracted for a bit. Bunch of university boys in there, slumming it as it were. I spent a good ten minutes scoping them out, and if I’d had a mind to I could have walked out with three wallets, bare minimum, probably more -- just from that lot, not even counting all the other blokes in the place. But they were alright. Just having a good time, didn’t give any girls any guff or anything. Lord, I was tempted, but I kept my hands to myself. And then I heard this sound.
It was a flute, I guess? Not a tin whistle, I know what that is. It was silver and very complicated, lots of little buttons that would raise a little hat off one of the holes when you pressed it. But it was beautiful - like, heart-achingly beautiful. I don’t know what else to call it. And I was just transfixed. Lord, it would have been the easiest thing in the world for someone to get my wallet right then, because I just stared at the girl with the flute, her eyes closed, frowning in concentration as she played. There weren’t any words, of course… just feelings, but it was saying more than you can ever get across with words.
I wrote a bunch a couple months back about all the weird stuff that was happening, magic and monsters and things. But straight up - this was the real magic. Not coming from blood or Latin words, or funny scribbles. Just people, and sound. By the end of that song there was not a dry eye in the place, and even the college boys had shut their traps and were just listening.
I’ve never been much of a churchgoer, I admit. It’s always such a chore, and I always feel worse about myself and the world when I leave. But this….this is what I always imagined a good church would be. I felt connected, to the other people in the room, but to something larger too. Not like a God (or a monster), but just… people. Just the essence of what it is to be human. There was something True in that music, something more real than the everyday world. It was pure, and Good with a big G, and...essential, like the essence of a thing.
This is what art does -- true art. It draws a circle in the sand, makes a sacred space apart from the rest of the world, and says here? Here we will speak things that are True, things that can only be said through music or through paint or through clay. Here we are safe and can let something of our true being shine through, and it will be so pure that it will call to something in everyone who perceives it, and they will feel it too.
They played another three quarters of an hour after the first flute song was over, and it was more the standard fare, drinking songs and story songs, including some really dark stuff about dead lovers, but all of it had something of that essence -- like a vibration that had existed for all of time, that was all around every day but we couldn’t hear. It’s just that with all the other instruments and singing, it complicated things, dressed it up. The core was still there, but it was harder to see it - to hear it, I should say.
Tom took me to Paris one time. I think he wanted to make sure I was sufficiently cultured before he took me home to mum and dad, back when I thought that was still something that could happen. I wanted to go and see the Impressionists, but he said that was “so very tired”, that no one cared about lily ponds and fields of weeds. No, now it was about ideas, thoughts, truths - not who could paint a garden without their glasses on, things that were, well, like I was saying before: essential. So we went and looked at lots of stuff that was… it was just weird. Cubism, he said it was called, and then the really “good” stuff according to him - surrealism.
He went on and on to me, his face all lit up, more than he ever was when he was talking about anything else, really. I said the paintings bothered me and he said yes, it’s supposed to. That’s how you know that it’s true, if it troubles and disturbs something in you, something you thought you knew about the world and then you realize it’s not that way at all. It has to take the everyday and strip it down, lay it bare, turn it upside down and inside out until you don’t recognize it at first, and only by actually putting in some effort could you see back to where it started -- before the face or the guitar or whatever it was was cut up into pieces and put back together. I still have no idea what he was talking about, or at least I didn’t until I heard that music. But in every way that those paintings were weird and unpleasant, this was every bit the opposite -- beautiful in a way that defied words. Maybe it’s by taking the language out of a song that you strip it down to its essence, just like he was saying the painters did by jumbling everything up, making clocks melt and putting peoples’ bodies together the wrong way. Maybe that is what it means to get at the essence of who we are, to find that which is eternal and common to all people, to all living things, and to get you to open your eyes and see in a way you never have before. We all have something that unites us, some common humanity, even if we don’t like each other - Lord knows, I hate Tom with the fire of a thousand suns and [scribbled out several lines]. But there’s something true, something that’s real about all people.
And I think that’s what art does. It wakes us up to that essence, the way a song played on a different instrument or with a different meter can become something so different, and yet it’s core stays the same. I guess that’s what Tom meant about his painters; I think that really he was just saying all that because it’s all the rage and he wouldn’t know the essence of humanity if it bit him in the arse. But maybe there’s something to it, I don’t know. I’d rather get my truths through Water Lilies and Sunflowers and whatever that song was, personally. I would rather see truth through Beauty than through… pain, confusion, ugliness, or fear, or whatever it was those paintings were supposed to be doing to you. God, he was such a bastard. Of course that was where he saw “truth.”
And now I have a whisky hangover, and those are the absolute worst. Stick to gin, Maggie. Gin has yet to do you wrong.
A River in Egypt
1 April 1934
Things are finally returning to normal around here, and thank heavens for that. We’ve been sprucing up the shop, and it’s actually looking a bit posh now -- too posh for my tastes, really. But we’ve got all these society types coming in now, and I’ve never seen Ann happier. Well, as happy as she gets, anyway. What an odd duck she is. I just stay in the back when I can, and put on my best public school accent when I have to work the front. And boy does it ever make a difference. If I go out to lunch with Shaw it’ll start to slip and you can just see their face start to pucker as you’re talking with them when they hear that East End accent start to slip in. They’ll just turn away from me and talk to the Professor and it’s like I’ve turned invisible. Stupid toffee nosed bastards. Well joke’s on you, your account’s got your home address on it, doesn’t it? I haven’t done any second story work in years, not since I was working with Jackie, but boy does it ever seem tempting some days.
I stayed over at Grandfather’s Saturday night. At one point in the night I woke up and I was panicked and I couldn’t move. I was sitting up and my throat was raw and sore again and someone was screaming “make it stop looking at me” and then I was awake all of a sudden. Grandfather was hugging me so tight I thought I’d break and he said I had woken him up with screaming and he was worried I was going to hurt myself, and he didn’t know what else to do except to hold onto me. He asked me if I needed to go to hospital and I told him I was fine, it was just a bad dream. He made me some hot chocolate and put a couple shots of cream de menthe in it. Why haven’t I ever thought to do that? God, it was amazing. I have to do that again sometime.
But in the morning he asked me about it, and… I felt so completely foolish. I couldn’t tell him I’d been breaking into someone’s office of course - wouldn’t he have gone through the roof then! So I made up some nonsense about someone making fun of me in primary school. He hmmed and nodded, like he always does whenever he knows I’m lying, but he didn’t press it. I thought about it though, and it’s so easy for me to make up stories like that in my head. I was awful (or so brilliant depending on how you look at it) about just making things up for fun when I was younger, and I really made myself stop and think about what happened at Dives’ office.
I know when I was dating Tom if we got in a huge row over something, I wouldn’t remember the details. It would just all turn into a scratchy red blur for me. I remembered how I felt very clearly, but not the things that were said, precisely. And that day there’s no two ways about it, I was scared. I mean, it was thrilling and all, but I worked myself up into quite a state. I tried to think about what was in the room - the map of London, the vesica piscis (fish symbol thingy), the jars with the air and the water and the earth. The markings on the ground. It was dark because the shades were down, and of course we’re not daft enough to turn on lights in a dark building, even in the middle of the day. But in trying to reconstruct it, I think there was a poster, or a painting or something. Yes, on the wall, opposite the door. Of a giant [scratched out] monster thing. That’s right, because I remember thinking at the time it was like blokes who put “pin up girls” in their locker, thinking this was probably who (what) Dives was worshiping, the sick bastard.
But somehow I was in such a state that I thought the thing in the picture was actually there. Something about the lighting, I think, because it looked so bright...so vivid. But I can absolutely “remember” the made up story I told Grandfather about too, and the more I think about it the more details my brain adds to it. I remember that horrible burning feeling, but I know I just imagined that because I’m absolutely fine. Ugh! Thinking about it makes it start up again. So I’m just not going to. Von Kant’s “dog” was bad enough - I think I was thinking about that, and I got scared and blew it up into -- whatever it was that I thought it was. No. Putting it out of my mind. Hell of a scary picture and further proof that man is not right in the head, but that’s all it was.
At any rate, I gave Shaw a diary today - actually bound it up myself, and I’m pretty proud of how it came out. This writing has helped me suss some things out, and it might help him. He got his bell rung hard, and that’s the truth. Gave him a couple fancy fountain pens to go with it, too. Fun fact, though: apparently barristers don’t generally carry pens in their pockets. Apparently, they’re in their briefcases. So… I gave him the briefcase they came in too. We could probably file off the initials, or not. Either way we’re going to have him looking like quite the proper catalog agent to go along with our quite proper little shop!
Wizards
25 March 1934
Right, I’m just going to write to get the words out of my head because I can’t think words inside my head right now. It’s just a tangled mess, like some kind of sticky wasp’s nest, papery and gloppy and stingy and buzzy all at the same time. I hurt everywhere, like the time I got that sunburn in Brighton, only it feels like the burned part is on the inside of my skin. I look at my skin and I know it’s not, but I close my eyes and I’m sure that it is, blackened and cracked and peeling. I get distracted and I don’t notice it anymore, and then my mind wanders back and it hurts so much I want to cry. The side of my face and down my right arm and on my back, especially. Where it looked at me.
Oh god.
No, got to think about something else.
XX XXX XXX XXXX XXX XXXX XX XX XXXX [several lines scratched out]
Shaw has had a rough time of it. Another one of those dust devil things tried to kill him, and might have succeeded if the Professor hadn’t happened upon him. He was a mess, the way I was yesterday after going to Dives’ “office”. Yesterday when I got to granddad’s, my stockings were torn and there was mud on my dress. I must have fallen somewhere along the way but it was a complete blur, and I don’t remember any of it. I think sometimes especially with this magic business, the mind just can’t take it and it shuts off. That’s how Shaw was. Just Not There.
He’s a little better now, and he was on top of things enough to save all our lives at the auction, when that guy had - what was it, some kind of bomb? By the time I got over there, he was covered with splatter from where Mallet had just pulped the guy. Now Shaw’s been in a lot of fights. He’s a scrapper and he knows how to fight dirty when he has to. I’ve seen him break a guy’s arm before in a fight, and I wouldn’t expect him to bat an eyelash at blood but...this was bad. Mallet does not play. It barely seemed like he even moved, but Shaw dove onto the guy and immobilized him and then STOMP and the side of the guy’s face was just gone. All of it right onto Shaw. The room was dark, but… you could just tell. Mallet just straightened his tie and walked out, only stopping to scrape his boot on the doorjamb on the way out.
The whole thing was over before it started. We couldn’t have been there more than five minutes. And then off to the shop, the Pimander, and … who are we now, even? The Professor’s a wizard, wants to apprentice himself to Dives I reckon. There is something really off about him, and it’s creeping me right the hell out. Trying to open one of those suffocating dust devil letters, but not quite. Just light it up and be done with it! But no, he wants in with those society toffs at the Pimander so much, just so he can get at their books. And it’s not like me with books, or Ann or whatever - it’s a hunger with him. I guess everyone’s got their vices, and he doesn’t smoke or drink or gamble so far as I can tell. Got to have something that gets you out of bed in the morning, am I right? But something in his eyes, looking at that book. All those science types get weird about their research, not sleeping or eating anything, and I guess that’s what I’d written it off to in the past. I’m not going to get between him and his magic, though, because I know what’d win out every day and twice on Sundays.
And then there’s Ann, of course. Pretty sure she doesn’t like Dives any more than I do, but she still shook his hand and looked him in the eye, handing over the book. I was mostly looking at Shaw, just making sure he was OK - well that and I didn’t want to look at Dives either. Just out of the corner of my eye, though, seeing Ann smile that businessy smile of hers and take his arm, as he walked her off to talk to this person or that person, all the “right” people. The gracious smile fixed on her face as she laughed politely, and handed out her card to people. An hour before and she’s telling me she doesn’t trust him, saying things about accidents happen and all that….but once that cheque was in her hand, he was her good chum again. Never mind what I had told her about what he did, that didn’t matter.
I don’t think any of them believe me, but they didn’t see him -- or it. No waistcoat or shirt, bare as the day he was born from the waist up (and that’s a mercy), chanting and waving and being all wizardy. Talking to that XXXXXXXX [crossed out, scribbled out, the paper almost torn]. I can’t picture it in my head because every time I start to try I… I just can’t. I can’t think and I start to panic, and then I feel it start to burn….
Of course, I’m not burned. I know that, rationally. I make myself look at my skin, at my shoulder in the bathroom mirror, and the side of my face because… when I close my eyes and try to think about it, the burning comes back, like acid or fire and I can feel exactly where it looked at me. XX XX XXX XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXXX X XXXX XXXX XXXX. [The last line is scribbled out violently in a different color ink.]
Monsters
23 March 1934
I don’t know what it is I saw today. It’s hard to even think about it. Any of it.
It was dark inside the house, and it took a minute for my eyes to adjust, so the smell was what hit me first. Like rotten eggs and matches, a sharp smell but one that would turn your stomach if you didn’t get a breath of clean air pretty quickly. But by the time I’d been in there a minute, before I could really get my bearings, that was when I realized I couldn’t -- couldn’t breathe, that is.
Everything was happening at once. There was a body, a woman I think, which would make sense since it was his mum’s house. Who knew how long she’d been dead, but that was probably part of what the smell was. There were scraps of paper on the ground, and my first thought was to grab them but then...something was happening, like a dust devil or something, but inside the house. And it had an intent to it - is that the right word? And at the same time, I was panicking, because I couldn’t breathe. It was like I imagine drowning to be like, where both consciously and unconsciously you’re trying to take air in, and it’s not happening, and that doesn’t make any sense because why would that not work?
I remember words in the air. Physically, the letters, suspended there, but not on paper. They just… were. Made of light. Or flame. Yes! They were letters made of fire.
“WHERE IS THE BOOK”
And then we ran. Oh yes - Shaw was there with me. He grabbed a scrap of paper off the floor. We looked later - it was all math, and angles, and locations. Some church, the Isle of Dogs, I forget what else.
We got outside, and everything was a blur still. I remember that the edges of my vision were starting to go dark, and there were little sparkles -- I guess I was close to passing out? I almost tripped coming down the steps but then I blinked and… I could breathe. I stood there - we both did- just gasping for a minute. The air was cold and I could feel it all the way down into my chest. I was shaking still, and didn’t stop for a while yet after that.
We got back to the shop and I was beyond tired - but that’s just it. I’d gone past tired and I was super awake again. Shaw and I were just telling Anne and The Professor about what happened, and they thought we were completely taking the piss and I was trying to tell them no, it did happen.
And then there was a crash from the back hall, by the supply closet. And this thing….
OK. Going to keep writing just to get this out of my head but even now it doesn’t make sense and I can’t…. I can’t think.
There was this thing. Bigger than a dog, but we’ve been calling it “the dog” because….we have to call it something, right? I think it was the thing that saw me last night, the one I wrote about before. This….awful shrieking, croaking sound. And the eyes. And...arms? Were they arms? They were sharp at the ends, and there was this mouth. I can’t think about the way it looked any more, my hands are shaking again.
Alright, some gin helped a bit. I swear, my next paycheck is just going straight into gin at this rate.
The Professor tried to throw a typewriter at it. Thanks for that, Doc. I’m sure he doesn’t have the first idea how much that cost, but I do, and now it’s smashed to bits and of course he didn’t even come close to hitting it. I threw a stool at it, and it seemed like it hurt it at least a little. Anne had her gun out because some of Mallet’s boys had been sniffing ‘round the shop earlier, and so she went for that and shot it. I heard the shot, anyway, but it didn’t seem very hurt. So then Shaw runs up to it, because of course he does, and slashes at it with that little tiny flick knife of his. I think one of the… arms? Tentacles? Tongues? Some long thing had cut him, and then when he cut the thing back it just sort of chomped at him with that mouth. I think he screamed, or maybe it was me. It probably was me. He went down like a sack of potatoes and I knew we had to get him out of there or it was going to kill him. So I ran up and grabbed a leg, and then Miss Anne snapped to and got the other one. The Professor opened the door and we got out of there.
The Professor patched him up a bit, but the thing had poisoned him and he was in a bad way. Worse than pale, he was practically grey. And so much blood, but blackened where the poison had gotten into the cuts. I knew we had to get him to hospital, and fortunately there’s one right close by to where we wound up when we stopped running.
We got him to hospital, and there was a detective there who took down our information. Why did I give him my actual name? I wasn’t thinking straight, clearly, because I just babbled out the entire thing. To a copper! Me! Well not quite the whole thing, because Anne and I sort of agreed without saying anything that we were going to say it was a dog. He gave us his name but I’ve no idea now what it was. Anne probably does. She’s good at remembering details like that.
The Professor went out for milk, because of course he did, and finally they let us in to see Shaw. Still in a bad way, but actually alive and breathing and no longer poisoned. Mr. Genius Professor decided to see if he could get any of the goo from the thing off of Shaw’s knife, and apparently poisoned himself just from touching it. So they were both a mess, but we decided to go back to the shop and clean things up anyway.
More of that slime, but we knew now not to touch it. Got it cleaned up, and all the blood. No sign of the “dog”.
There’s a hole in the supply closet floor. The “dog” had broken up through the floor from a tunnel. Boards just splintered - how strong was that thing? And the door was smashed to bits too, just hanging at an angle, barely. I told Anne we need to fill in that hole with concrete or something.
So now I’m home and I’ve stopped shaking finally. Shaw’s asleep in the living room - bless him, he has had a day of it and I didn’t want him to be alone. Me too, but I didn’t get munched on by some dog/snake/toad thing, and thank heavens for that.
But you know what?
The world is so much more brilliant than I thought. It’s not just stupid ex-boyfriends and drafty apartments and jerks like Drummell (I didn't even get to the bit with him, right bastard he is).
There’s monsters. And magic.
What else is there?
PS - I’m glad I’m getting this out of my head and on to paper. Last thing I need is spilling all this to Grandfather when I see him this weekend, like I did to that copper tonight.
Too many eyes...
22 March 1934
Right. Got to get this out of my head, Shaw doesn’t believe me, Grandad would worry. I’ll have to burn it later.
Hit Hathaway’s tonight, picked up a couple of things. Went smooth as butter getting in, getting the stuff (well making some notes was about all we did), and then as we’re walking out, I got distracted and - this never happens to me - I tripped hard and had to catch myself on the door frame and kind of swing ‘round it to keep from going face down into the pavement. I think I might have had some choice words to say, and Shaw looks at me like I just blessed out the King. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so completely mortified, but he’s a pro and seconds later he was back to work locking it back up again.
I look ‘round to make sure no one’s heard me, and there’s one of those grates across the street, where they’ve got a sidewalk up a few inches from the pavement. I thought I saw something, and I thought maybe a cat’s gotten stuck in there, so I keep looking. And sure enough, there’s two eyes. But they weren’t cat’s eyes. Not unless it’s a lion or something, but this wasn’t a lion. And it was just looking at me, staring at me and it… I’m trying to find the words and I can’t put them together. It was like an animal, like it was a cat hunting or something, but there was something else. Patience. Intelligence? Not precisely, but [there is a smear indicating a broken pencil lead] Blast it, why is just thinking about this making my hands slick? I feel like I did that time Shaw and I hit that candy shop and I ate so much I got sick.
Anyway. This thing’s looking at me, and I give Shaw the elbow so he’ll look, and he waves me off. It was taking him forever to do that damn door. Or maybe it wasn’t. It felt like forever, like those eyes had me pinned up against the wall or something, and then there’s another eye. I’m thinking it’s another whatever that is, right? It was too close, though. Whatever it was in there, that thing had three eyes, and I will swear on a squiz First Folio, it was three eyes in one head and [a word here scribbled out and then erased]. And then the sound it made. This hoarse croaking, it must have been coming from the thing because there wasn't anything else there. Shaw was finally finished and turns around, and at that point I’m thinking finally, he’s going to see it and I’ll know I’m not imagining it… and then it turns. Maybe it was gone, maybe it just moved so it’s eyes weren’t reflecting, but I know all three of those eyes moved as one. I don’t know what that was but it was nothing natural.
So now I’m home and I’m thinking about it, and trying to think if I could have been wrong. A couple pennies stuck on a clot of mud or something catching the light just so. Every time I think I’ve logicked myself out of it I think of [another erasure] it and then I just don’t know.
Going down to Whitechapel tomorrow to follow up on some things from last night. During the day, so hopefully no bogarts or goblins spying on us this time.
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