“Don’t get uptight.” As this was not the first time he had said these words, there was no reason for him to think that he was crossing any kind of line.
He was a beautiful boy, with dark blue eyes and long lashes. He was tall and perhaps unfashionably broad-shouldered, and had appeared to me to have a not at all uneducated eye, and he was like a creature who should be forever celebrated in marble. Beauty to one side, he had appeared to me the most rational of young men. It was he who had patiently overcome my rather hysterical resistance to my studies of spectrographic analysis.
“Why do people spontaneously combust?” I was smiling, but I was looking him directly in the eyes and I was aware of a dangerously intoxicating buzzing in my ears.
“I don’t know.”
“Then why would you believe such rot?”
“Oh for God’s sake, Catherine, don’t be a bore.”
“But why do you think a person would just burst into flames?”
“Why not?”
Remembering this, years later, I judged myself prim and vain and self-important, but when Marcus Stanwood said “Why not?” I could not believe I had given my precious body to a man who would say such a thing.
“It’s mumbo jumbo. It’s ridiculous.”
“It cannot be explained,” he cried. “Jesus Christ rose from the fucking dead. People catch on fire and we don’t know why.”
Then, to my complete astonishment, he turned on his heels, and walked across the square where he was lost in the shadows of the plane trees. I saw then, too late, he was breaking up with me. I hadn’t meant him to. It had not been my intention.
It was soon after this that I gave up art school. I went to study horology in West Dean.
Amanda Snyde and I worked in leaden silence until lunch, by which time she had still not figured out that the missing ornaments had probably been reeds. The sun had gone and the studio blinds had lost their luminosity.
At exactly one o’clock she came and stood behind me.
“Please,” she said, and put her hand lightly on my shoulder.
“Of course,” I said. “I’ll eat myself in a moment.”
“No, please. May I have a peek at the blue cube, if I keep my metaphysics to myself?”
“Do you think you really need to?”
“I thought about it all night. How it got there. What it means.”
There really was no reasonable way I could stop her so I slid the LED torch across the desk. I could not have been more clear about how uninterested I was.
“Miss Gehrig.”
“I am working.”
“Miss Gehrig.”
I put the ring down with a sigh. “Yes, Amanda, what is it now?”
“Someone has been at it,” she said.
“Nonsense,” I said. “Show me.”
“Look for yourself.”
I took the flashlight from her and peered into a cavity which I already knew was empty of everything save a little borer dust. She was looking at me. I did not wish to look at her, but in that brief moment I found myself the subject of a rather impertinent enquiry.
I fled on the pretext of informing Eric Croft.
————
THERE WOULD BE NO discussion of blue cubes metaphorical, spiritual or physical. Indeed there would be little talk at all. I went to work with a pencil and paper, attempting to picture how the parts of the fish mechanism—the tracks on which the fish sat, mounts, levers, cam and rollers—might all work successfully together.
It took me almost two days to realize it was the swan’s neck which must directly control the motion of the fish. This connection, as I had previously understood and then discounted, was achieved by a series of small levers. I had assumed that the fish would swim either clockwise or anticlockwise and I wasted a lot of mental effort deciding which of these it was. But of course the strange Herr Sumper had not been interested in anything this simple, which was why seven of the rollers were double-action rollers. The fish had been designed to swim in two directions. That is, there were two “teams”: four fish would swim clockwise, three anticlockwise. They would, as Amanda Snyde put it, when I finally allowed her an opportunity to speak, give the appearance of “sporting about.” So ingenious was this mechanism that when the automaton’s neck turned and the head lowered (when the “swan” appeared to dart at them) the fish would hastily retreat. When she grasped this, my assistant jumped in the air and I dared to like her once again.
Then we had our usual visitor and my assistant took her micrometer away into a corner. Crofty had never quite got the hang of the Blenheim Bouquet Aftershave which was now gleaming from a recent application. This aftershave cost “twenty-five quid a pop”—it always gave him a rather sharp-toothed sort of glee to tell me this, but this morning he was odd and querulous. I expected this bad mood would evaporate the moment he understood my sketch.
“What’s this?” he demanded, referring to the bruise on my forearm.
“What an extraordinary question,” I said. “What sort of man asks a woman about her bruises?”
“Are you all right?” he insisted, all lemony, right in my face.
I did not like what “all right” was code for.
“I slipped in the shower, is that sufficient information?”
“How did you slip?”
“I slipped … in … the … shower … Eric.” Amanda seemed to be staring at her Frankenpod. Her pretty neck was pale and still.
I had no exact idea how I got my bruise, except I had been completely trolleyed. When I woke next morning I found my shower curtain all pulled down. I had only the vaguest memory of the fall, but it appeared that I had also emptied a vodka bottle and placed three wind-up clocks inside the fridge.
“You should get one of those rubber mats.”
“Quite,” I said.
He was still not paying attention to my drawing.
“Don’t you want to see what we’ve worked out?” I said. “It’s rather splendid.”
“Of course. I’ll drop in later in the afternoon. I’m just on my way to the dentist.” At this Amanda Snyde looked sharply up and Eric said, “Good morning.”
“Hello Mr. Croft,” she said, and returned immediately to her work.
“Are you in pain?” I asked Eric.
But his eyes were darting amongst the pieces on the workbench, as if he was trying to memorize them for a parlour game. “What?” he asked but had no interest in an answer.
I watched as he sniffed around the bench, examining the silver neck rings but not really looking at anything professionally.
“Just popped in. I’ll be off.” It was only then, on his way to the door, that he appeared to notice the dry rot although his “noticing” was completely bogus—the injury to the hull was not even visible from where he stood, and the strange twisting of his neck did not help his pantomime.
“I’ll have George look at that next week,” I said.
“Yes, George,” he said, but the cheeky bugger had brought an LED of his own and now he stooped to scowl into the cavity.
My laugh could not have been very pretty, but he did not seem to hear that either and he rose from his inspection looking both grim and guilty. As he left the room he slipped his LED into his trouser pocket.
When there was nothing remaining but his Blenheim Bouquet, I turned my attention to the Courtauld girl who was measuring a piece of track with her micrometer. With her thick fair hair held back by a Bakelite clip, there was nothing to hide the crimson glory of her neck.
I might have asked if her dear grandpa was a friend of Eric Croft’s, but there was no longer any need. You little spy, I thought. I was very frosty with her for the remainder of the day. When I left I did not say good night.
My fall in the bath had frightened me immensely but dusk found me as usual at the Kennington Road offy where dear soft-eyed Ahmad already had a bottle of cold Stoly waiting on his counter. Eric could ask, “Are you all right,” but Ahmad was the only man in London who had any idea of how much I was drinking. At least he did not know I had put the clocks inside the fridge. This was rather frightening. I had grown up with the sound of clocks and they had been a comfort to me, the whole orchestra of movements like the currents of the sea, an all-engulfing natural order. To refrigerate a clock was an extremely violent act, not one I could explain to anyone.