Then Crofty turned to the minister and I was rather taken aback to see him relieve the great man of his cup and saucer. Then, gesturing towards the swan he said, “I rather thought you might like to do the honours, Sir.”
This was not his boon to grant. Only the conservator should touch or “work” the object.
With the crank in his hand, the minister was left to look useless and confused. Meanwhile Eric, in a great flourish, removed the drop sheet and produced the hum of admiration we so desired.
The swan was Zeus. The border of silver leaves was spectacular in that morning light.
The minister approached with the crank.
I thought, dear God, he does not know where to put it, and then I realized—I was dealing with Crofty and all this had been briefed and planned. The minister was not miffed. He was very pleased. To fit the crank he must give a sort of bob. “Your Highness,” he joked, and everybody laughed too much. To Crofty he said: “How many turns?”
“Three,” Eric replied.
It was a number that meant nothing. He made it up.
As the boy from Eton wound the easy mechanism, I could smell the sweet light mineral oil. When he withdrew the crank the glass rods rotated, catching the reflected light. He smiled around the room but why would we look at him? The Brahms had begun, and the suits were all bewitched. Henry, your silver swan was beautiful and pitiless as it turned its head to the left, towards the minister, then to the right towards the man from the Guardian, and then it set to preen and clean its back. No one moved or spoke. Every eerie movement was smooth as a living thing, a snake, an eel, a swan of course. We stood in awe and, no matter how many hundred hours we had worked on it, this swan was never, not for a moment, familiar, but uncanny, sinuous, lithe, supple, winding, graceful. As it twisted to look into one’s eyes, its own stayed darkest ebony until, at that point when the sun caught the black wood, they blazed. It had no sense of touch. It had no brain. It was as glorious as God.
The fish were “sporting.” The swan bent its snakelike neck, then darted, and every single human held its breath.
Henry & Catherine
PERCY, PERCY, THE FINAL page began.
Percy, it is done, loaded on this cart, what we at home would call a dray. It is a rough and heavy platform. Bolted to it is a cubic structure without a lid, and inside the cube is the boat in which the creature is contained. The entire clockwork mechanism is inside its hull, all fitted neatly, ready for the crank handle, for the blue tiled cistern which, having tortured you so long, will now be your continual source of joy.
But for now it is still in Germany, and all its mechanisms are in its boat and the boat is in its box and all around it is packed hard with soil and rocks and turf, and I would suppose there will be a poor German earthworm that will be accidentally exiled to Low Hall where it will get to know the English earthworms and probably do far better at it than your papa has done in this foreign land where I have been laughed at a good deal. The English worms, I am sure, will be ever so polite and charitable to the stranger.
It is late at night, but the whole village is awake, rattling bells and cracking whips. The fairytale collector told me it was a festival called Fasching. Then he said it was something completely different. The truth is that the clockmaker has offended the villagers by his lack of faith in Jesus Christ. I cannot blame the Christians. We at home would also be offended, although never quite so much, I hope, as to burn effigies and set the forest trees on fire.
There is a Baron, I am told, but in all the uproar I have seen no evidence that he insists on the orderly behaviour of his people. I will not be sorry to leave here, and if it must be tonight, then it will not be too soon. Imagine your papa riding high beside our splendid creature, galloping down the forest road with flares blazing in the darkness, all the taunts and beastliness behind, all your splendid health ahead.
They burn the witch. I saw them too. She was only straw but it was a frightful sight.
Soon in Low Hall you will see this wonder—and your hair will rise and your blood will race. Hail Cygnus. Salt tears and burnished silver. Oh Lord, you will watch the Great Creature as he takes a silver fish and holds up his head and goes through that complex swannish dance of swallowing.
There, I have confessed. It is a swan.
Dear Percy, I did not really want a swan. In spite of what I said, I did not even wish to leave your side. I never wanted more, darling boy, than to make you well.
Dear God, may he still be there and waiting for me. Dear Lord I pray, let him be saved. May I deserve admittance, in your sight.
Catherine
PUBLICITY AND DEVELOPMENT WERE very happy. The magnificent swan had its place by the grand front doors of Lowndes Square. It was on the BBC and CNN and television sets and servers and podcasts around the world. Eric took me to dinner at the Ivy where I had never been before. The maître d’ made a fuss of Eric and we had a fabulous flinty Chablis and oysters and of course we talked about Matthew, and I cried.
Eric handled all this rather well. He told me that tears produced by emotions are chemically different from those we need for lubrication. So my shameful little tissues, he said, now contained a hormone involved in the feeling of sexual gratification, another hormone that reduced stress; and finally a very powerful natural painkiller.
“What is that one called?” I asked.
“Leucine enkephalin.” He smiled. I wrote it down.
The leucine enkephalin did its job and I laughed to hear how Eric took my darling to his club to learn to swim.
We did not talk about Amanda’s “enthusiasm” and I did not ask if her grandfather had been amongst the loots and suits at the viewing of the swan. I spoke only about the sense of awe that a wind-up machine had induced in men you might have thought beyond all human feeling.
I told my anthropological stories about growing up in Clerkenwell and then being dumped in the not quite posh school in High Wycombe. I said my sorries. He was kind and funny and when we had tottered out onto West Street he got me a cab and kissed me very sweetly, very chastely, on the cheek.
I came over Waterloo Bridge and did not cry too much.
I gave the cabbie a ridiculous tip, and as the taxi departed I noticed that awful old car backed down in the neighbours’ parking space again. This time, seeing the front of the old ruin I realized it was an Armstrong Siddeley, a grand English dinosaur from 1950. The paints of the period were all toxic toluene nightmares, polluting the air even as they began their life. In 2010 its skin was cracked and chalky, more like dead fish than a dinosaur, a skate, dead shark skin amongst the sand and seaweed.
I was at my door when the hand touched my shoulder. My scream must have echoed all the way to Waterloo.
It was Angus, frail and ghostly.
“All right down there?”
That was the neighbour two doors up. “Sorry,” I said.
He slammed his window down and Angus flinched. Then a young woman in dark grey overalls emerged from the shadow. Of course it was Amanda, her hair stretched back off her face, and looking excited enough to give one pause.
We never think something unusual is happening, even when it is. When they were side by side on my Nelson day bed, I offered them a cup of tea.
“We’re good,” said Angus, leaning forward and gazing at me intently. “How are you?”
Amanda was also studying me. She had her sketchbook on her lap and I thought—in the middle of all this—that we must get those drawings back from her because they, the ones she had done at work, were the property of the museum and would be needed for the glossy catalogue. It would be something, really something, and it seemed that we would now really get the money to produce it. Crofty had won his bet. The silver swan had pleased the patron of the British Arts. It would be a “profit centre.”