“Come, Cuckoo,” said Thigpen, “follow me.”
He led the way through bench-loads of clockmakers, at their prayers like seminarians, and then down beside the outhouse and into another factory which ran all the way to Northampton Road and here, in a long cold workshop with a ceiling made of glass, loomed some immense scientific instrument, like a giant’s abacus, like a locomotive engine, as astonishing as an elephant of brass and steel. Sumper claimed that this strange machine would completely change his life, but at the time he could not afford to see it. He was occupied with being a vise and lathe man.
“Herr Brandling, you cannot imagine the hatred toward a stranger.” The English lathe men drew their hands across their throats, meaning either that they would kill Sumper or the machine would do it for them.
Yet when Sumper was introduced to the bench lathe it did not seem so terrifying at first. Thigpen explained that the other tools in his workshop were of great delicacy, requiring accurate adjustment every occasion they were used. In many cases the time employed in adjusting the calibration was longer than the time of production.
I told Sumper I was not a mechanic. I could not understand him.
“The same for me, exactly, Herr Brandling. There was no time to even memorize the names of things.”
Broadly speaking, Thigpen explained to Sumper, it was good economy to keep one machine constantly employed in one kind of work. No fiddle-farting, he said. One lathe, for example, should be kept constantly making cylinders. His men were proud to spend their hours in fiddle-fart, but those days would soon be over on Bowling Green Lane.
“One lathe, one job,” he said.
Sumper was a foreigner and he was doing what the English would not do. He was not scared of them. He said this many times.
If he was to be killed it would be by tedium. Work at that pre-set lathe required the murder of all intelligence and skill.
Yet even if he was of the lower orders, he soon noticed that there was a higher game being played. As he became more skilled he had time to look around, and then he understood that there were gentlemen, lords and dukes coming and going all day long, members of the Royal Society.
“The Royal Society,” I said. “I suppose they came to give you Instruction.”
The joke was not well taken and I leapt to make things right. “And what did you learn in Bowling Green Lane, Herr Sumper?”
“What did I learn, my little one? Only that there were worlds beyond my knowledge and your imagination.” He lifted the swan’s steel bones and danced them before my eyes in such a menacing way that I regretted my silly joke. With his long, long arm, like a dancer, he mimicked the motion of the neck and, standing on his chair, all fifteen stone of him, essayed a vast and fearsome raising of the wings.
Catherine
AMANDA HAD CLEARLY TOLD her grandfather I had stolen Carl’s blue cube. The grandfather had then told Crofty. I could see them as vividly as I could see Brandling and Sumper in the inn—Amanda, her grandfather, Eric all gathered in some decaying Suffolk sitting room—glass-fronted bookcases and a portion of the ceiling fallen in—the spy reporting, the three of them making decisions that were not theirs to make.
The Courtauld girl must be taught that she reported to me, not her grandfather or Eric Croft.
So I spoke to her, not about the cube of course. I punished her. I forbade all work “beyond the limits of your job description.” I was a total bitch. I separated her from her beloved silver rings (which she had been cleaning very well) and set her to inputting all the measurements and functions of each numbered part. This was a stupid use of her time as she was clumsy with the micrometer and emitted despairing little cries with every error. This was upsetting for both of us, but I was determined to have her accept who was in charge. I suppose I made a hash of it. I confused her more than anything, especially when I said she could not use her so-called Frankenpod, not even at lunchtime which she spent nibbling on dried fruits and nuts and peering at some stormy image on its screen.
“What is it?” I demanded as we ended our rather sweaty interview. “A music video?”
“You don’t know?”
“I have no other reason to ask you, Amanda.”
“It is the oil spill. It is a webcam of the oil spill.”
Thus: Catherine Gehrig was the last person on the planet to learn that millions of barrels of oil were spewing into the Gulf of Mexico. This catastrophe had apparently occurred on the day before Matthew died.
Amanda was teary. She packed her things, and took her Frankenpod away but I, being a sneak and a hypocrite, had already memorized the URL. When I was home that night, I watched the sickening image for hours on end.
When I entered the studio next morning Amanda was waiting and I saw she now wanted to push our conflict out into the open. But I could no more reveal my personal relationship with the cube than I could confess my horror at the filth spewing into the waters of the gulf, an “accident” that seemed the end of history itself.
I immediately made myself busy, looking through the Excel charts Amanda had prepared for me.
“These charts are very good,” I said. It was true. They were perfection. But I still would not forgive her betrayal.
This must have been the moment when I finally understood Amanda was Amanda, and therefore she would not go away. When I had finished with the charts, she compelled me to deal with her.
“I have been so stupid,” she said. “I am very sorry for talking out of school. I apologize.”
She was so young and her lovely skin so tight and clean. Who would doubt her contrition?
“You love your grandfather,” I said.
“But I do understand what I did wrong, Miss Gehrig. I should not have gossiped with my grandfather.”
“Mr. Croft pays visits to your grandfather I suppose.”
And there it was—some curious fear or sense of honour made her step away. “Oh I don’t know anything about Mr. Croft. Really.”
“Amanda! Surely he helped get you this job.”
“No!”
She was now red, crimson really. “No. My grandfather would never do a thing like that. He despises influence-pedlars.”
I didn’t believe her, but it was clear she believed herself, and the result was that our conversation calmed us down.
We shared a sandwich at lunch. Afterwards I presented her with the multi-function cam. It would be hers to dismantle, clean, photograph and document. It was a very handsome gift.
In the early afternoon the sun came out and our blinds were suddenly soaked with light.
At five she asked if she could leave for a “stuffy drinks.” Who could imagine where she went, but her eyes were clearer and brighter and I rubbed her angora shoulder.
“Did you watch that webcam thing last night?” I asked.
“I suppose so.”
“Does everybody watch it? Your friends.”
“Not everyone.”
“It’s horrible.”
“Yes,” she said. “Please can I go, Miss Gehrig?”
When they invented the internal combustion engine, they never envisaged such a horrid injury. It did not occur to anyone that we would not only change the temperature of the air but turn the oceans black as death.
Henry’s saw-tooth pen strokes had cut wormholes into time. I had been there. I had witnessed Herr Sumper unwrap the articulated neck. I had glimpsed Carl’s exploding toy roaring past the inn, his voltaic mouse, his blue cube, Thigpen’s immense scientific instrument the size of an elephant. Through one of these wormholes, as thin as a drinking straw, I had seen all that bright and poisonous invention.