The object is indeed an automaton, a clockwork tableau in tin and lead paint, with fabric to flesh out the figures and a brass-and-steel movement visible through the glass floor. A lusty gamekeeper sort of fellow with red cheeks stands on one side, and two ladies in riding dresses stand on the other, and when Billy Friend flicks a switch the figures move around one another in a decreasing spiral until the gamekeeper’s trousers come down and the ladies’ dresses come up, and a somewhat improbable object emerges from the gamekeeper’s burlap undergarments and goes smoothly into a matching aperture on Sister 1, while Sister 2 reclines on a wall and satisfies herself quite frantically, and then the whole thing starts to shake and Sister 1’s head goes all the way around and the gamekeeper suddenly gets what appears to be a hernia and cannot continue, and the whole assemblage grinds and stutters to a halt.
Joe is furious to find that he is blushing. Billy Friend smirks at the waitress, who is staring with wide eyes at the contraption and looking not entirely unlike a sort of Sister 3. She collects herself and smirks back, then wanders off to the kitchen.
“For God’s sake, Billy…” Joe says.
“Ahh, dear. Handsome fella like you, Joseph, you’re a bit young to be so old. Tell you, why don’t we go out together one night?”
“No, thank you. Tell me about the clockwork book.”
“You used to be a lot more fun, Joe. You’ve got sensible, is what it is. Terrible thing to happen to anyone, puts years on you. I know a place in Soho. No, not that kind of place, though if you’ve a mind… no, thought not. No, just a bar, matey, with convivial clients. Australians, mostly. Bored and up for it.”
“Billy, I’m only going to say this once more, and then I’m going to assume you are pulling my pisser. And then we’re going back to formal payments, cash on delivery. Right? Because I’ve got to open the shop. So, God help me: tell me about your doodah.”
Billy Friend measures Joe and sees, if not resolve then boredom, and knuckles down.
“Party wants it cleaned up and repaired, made ready for use, and delivered to a gentleman in Wistithiel. That’s Cornwall, by the way. Cash in advance, naturally, this being a hard and dishonest world.” Billy Friend, in his time both hard and dishonest, sighs the sigh of a disappointed philanthropist. “Party has also supplied a tool to go with. I have taken to referring to this object as the whojimmy. It resembles no tool the like of which I have ever seen, and I am to inform you that you are permitted to keep it as a souvenir or part-payment. The whojimmy is apparently necessary to gain access to certain of the moving parts of the doodah. Thus not, in fact, merely a twofer, as our American cousins would have it, meaning two-for-one, but a threefer, which I believe is heretofore unknown in the world but which I am proud to bring before you now in the spirit of commerce and collegial respect.” Billy smiles his winning smile.
“Who’s the party?”
“A gentleman never tells.”
“A lady.”
“I think we may say without fear of breaching the seal of professional confidence that she is of the female persuasion.”
“And there’s no question that she owns these items?”
“None at all. Very respectable old duck, I thought.”
“She acquired them in this estate sale you mentioned.”
“Ah. There, Joseph, you have me. It is my unfortunate habit to refer to any object whose origin I am not at liberty to divulge as coming from an estate sale. It defers questions and creates a proper sense of gravitas.”
He lifts his brows so that Joe can admire the clear, unquestionable honesty in his gaze. He waits. And waits. And waits, looking just a little hurt. Finally—
“Drop them round to me this afternoon,” Joe says. Billy Friend grins and sticks out his hand to seal the deal. He pays the bill and collects a phone number from the waitress. Joe wraps the erotomaton in its tissue paper again, for transport.
“They miss you at the Night Market,” Billy informs him from the door to the street, “ask after you. It’s not the same without… well. You should come by.”
“No,” Joe Spork says. “I shouldn’t.”
And even Billy Friend doesn’t quarrel with that one.
A tugboat hoots out on the river. Joe Spork puts Billy to one side—bad news always finds you in the end—and picks a key from the trolley and walks moodily across the road and down a narrow, mean little alley to a padlocked gate, and through a gap between two buildings, and finally to a row of rusted and barnacled doors facing the river. Traitor’s gates, perhaps, or boathouses for very small boats. Or maybe, when the river was lower, nuclear-hardened bathing cabins. He has no idea. Ghost architecture, hanging on when the reason for it is past. Now, though, one of them stores the remaining bits of his past he doesn’t wish to think too much about. He opens the door once every few months to make sure the water hasn’t risen above the level of the little red splot of paint he marks on the wall each autumn, but aside from that he lets the place keep its secrets.
And secrets, undoubtedly, it has. One of the other doors, he happens to know, is not for storage at all, but dips down into an old ammunition dump, itself connected by a bit of Victorian sewer tunnel to a medieval crypt, which in turn gives on to a brewery. A man with an accurate map might walk from here to Blackheath, and never see the sun.
And somewhere down there, though he has never seen it, is the hallowed den where Mathew Spork prepared his first assaults on London’s banking community. In a vaulted room of red brick and York stone, Mathew first fired his Tommy gun and learned to ride its kick. The young Joe, raised on a steady diet of comic books and tall tales, imagined that his father held off a Russian army in the sewers, killed aliens and monsters, and kept London safe for small boys. Every day was the day Dutch Schultz and Murder Inc. fought it out at the Palace Chophouse, and every day Joe’s father came away unscathed. Through blazing, worshipful dreams, Mathew walked like a titan, wreathed in cordite smoke and glory.
Joe wonders, from time to time, where the gun is now. It sat for years in its case in Mathew’s study, and the son of the House of Spork was not permitted to touch it. He would stare, wide-eyed, as Mathew cleaned it, and sometimes made bullets for it. But the gun was not a thing to be played with, not ever, not even on high days or birthdays.
One day, son, I’ll teach you the proper way. But not today.
And never, as it turned out. Perhaps the gun is waiting down there, somewhere.
London is old, and each generation has added to its mysteries.
The door sticks, and he has to kick at it. Muck and more barnacles, and a splash as something alive makes itself scarce. A sign the river is getting cleaner. Mind you, that also means the door will rust faster. Oxygen, a bit of salt, and plenty of bacteria. He’ll have to come down here and replace it. Or he could let the Thames have its way, and see Daniel’s last bits and bobs go sailing away to Holland, and maybe walk a little lighter. Emptier, but lighter.
There’s a wind-up torch hanging from a peg at shoulder height. It amuses him that crank-handle torches are all the rage now. He made this one under Daniel’s supervision when he was nine. They even blew a bulb together, a glass balloon with a filament, pumped full of inert gas. This almost immediately exploded and had to be replaced with a commercial one.
The white lamplight picks out a mess of odds and ends: a china cow; a red and black molasses tin which Joe knows is full of decaying rubber bands; a terrifying marionette with all the strings cut. And there, on the far shelf, a stern, upright leather case in a clear plastic sack to protect it from the damp: Daniel’s record collection.