The Chemistry of Tears (29 page)

I saw the shadow of a ladder, waving, slamming against the wall. I thought they will break the glass and I have no slippers to protect my feet. Then there was a very wide white man in shorts, crawling up against the weight of water, his body flat against my glass. I saw his belly button and the black hair on his skin, as if some creature of the unconscious was breaking through the membrane of a dream. I
could hear thunder through the rain. I sat holding my sheets across my breasts.

The water roared. I thought, I am totally alone in some hellish place; of all the people on the earth, Eric Croft has been the kindest, the most forbearing, bending when he had no requirement to bend, giving without expecting thanks.

Shut up, I had said.

The world will end like everything must. I think the ladder fell off the roof. The rain kept pouring. Men were shouting. There was nothing I could do that was not ridiculous.

There were now flashing yellow lights in the streets. Then another ladder. Men in bright blue waterproofs climbed past my window. Who in London wore blue waterproofs? I did not know the stigmata of disaster.

At two o’clock I was alone at my window, observing the empty flooded street. Next morning I departed, with a light soft bag of clothes on one shoulder and my handbag underneath my arm. My clothes were no longer clean, and if I selected a white linen shirt it was only because I knew I could use hydrogen peroxide to remove the sweat stains once I was at work.

A greater olfactory challenge was presented outside the pub where I found surface water rushing down the road. Basements had been flooded. The drains in the street were bubbling with very nasty-smelling water.

The old pharmacist had his doors open and I caught a glimpse of him, standing on a high and dangerous ladder. He had thrown sodden cardboard boxes into the street and from them rose what was, I suppose, sulphur dioxide, although there was ammonia as on the day before, and I was forcibly reminded of all those rich sulphur compounds that accompany human decay. I thought of the bacteria, fungi, the protozoa, the way our bodies attack themselves when we die. I did not like this idea, not at all. I preferred to think of us as something dry and crumbly, with no relation to the moisture-laden sheen of our decay.

Security inspected my dirty laundry, bastards. Later, in the fume cupboard I removed my shirt, applied the hydrogen peroxide and finished the job with a hairdryer. Done. Fresh, not really.

Amanda had not logged off. Her big screen was filled with spewing spill and a chain of protesting voices. Were they children or adults? Dessgirl, Mankind40, Miss Katz, Ardiva, Clozaril—who would know? To read their comments was to live inside a howl. Was this Amanda’s underworld?

Clorazil wrote, Who made the machine that kills the ocean? Whose interest did that serve? Not humans, that’s for sure. Ardiva believed that flames were coming out together with the oil. Sheread2 conjectured that there was a volcano involved. Much is not being told to us, she wrote. Mankind40 thought we should just nuke it shut. Below, the lowest circle, the voices of the damned continued. I didn’t know it had affected me. I didn’t even know that all this saline was washing down my cheeks, but when Amanda’s arms came around me, hugging from behind, I began to cry in earnest. There was no point in disguising it.

“Miss Gehrig, I’m so sorry.”

I accepted her clean white handkerchief. I blew my snotty nose and went to my computer to generate the work orders for a busy day.

OF COURSE THE PR
people have been “psyched” about our project all along and I have driven them nuts with my postponements and delays. Yes, they must have the website ready, but they are museum people too, and surely they must know that completion always takes longer than one expects or, to be more honest, longer than Publicity anticipates.

Finally we agree to announce the swan in two stages, one public, one more private. The restoration does not need to be totally complete before we show it to the “loots and suits” as Eric quaintly calls them.

I have been required to sign off a “safe date” with the publicity
director and the prickly website manager, but when the day arrives it is not safe at all. Later, on the morning of the appointed day, the music box refuses to stop playing when the swan’s cycle of performance is at an end.

“Does it matter, darling? Think seriously.”

We have not yet had a full rehearsal, which is cutting it finer than either of us would have ever dreamed.

“We will fix it,” I tell Eric. “I am only telling you in case.”

“In case what?”

“I will have it done in half an hour.”

Ninety-five minutes later I call back to say it’s done. I have made Eric unnecessarily anxious but he does not protest or complain. He asks if I can be finished, not finished-finished, by the end of the day. He will cancel now if I tell him to, but clearly he cannot bear the thought of it.

“Don’t cancel.”

“You are certain darling?”

“Yes, really.”

“If you need more time I’ll deal with Publicity.”

By half past three everyone can see that my calculation is correct—we have our creature set up on a large grey steel mobile cart, which we can spin around as needs dictate. The mechanism is still exposed. Above this the reflecting plate is in place, the glass rods, the ring of silver foliage, the silver body and the articulated neck on which the silver rings lock neat and tight and gleaming.

At four o’clock the poor darling cannot stay at Lowndes Square any longer, and there he is in his crepe-soled shoes, shaven to the bone, gleaming with Penhaligon’s, in that tight pinstripe suit straight out of Beckmann. In fact, the suit gives him a morally ambiguous appearance, and one meets him rather as you meet the men in Beckmann, uncertainly.

“No beak?” He peers into the clockwork, staring hard at the pinned music drum.

“Would you have rather we hid the clockwork?”

“No, no. Far better like this.” But he is clearly tense.

“I could have had Harold build a plywood case. We’ve still got two hours.”

He stares at me. I imagine he is considering it and am sorry I made the suggestion.

“Where is the beak, Catherine?”

Last week I would have been insulted by this. Today I smile. “Don’t worry about the beak, look at the movement.”

Amanda is wearing a strange white lab coat for the occasion. With her blonde hair pulled back and a pair of spectacles she gives off a fabulously Teutonic air.

“Miss Snyde,” I say, “would you wind the mechanism?”

“Yes Miss Gehrig.”

After all our horrors, we are actually having a nice time.

“You do have the beak?” Eric says.

“Wait.” I take his arm. “Watch.”

Of course he will love it. He is crinkling up his Sing-song eyes already.

I am the conservator, but I grant my assistant the privilege of winding the mechanism for our first proper run-through. When I nod, she releases the pin. As the neck begins its first quite complicated sequence, the Brahms melody accompanies the curious predatory twisting.

“Stop.”

“No,” cries Eric. “No, no, Catherine, please.”

“Did you see that?” I ask Amanda, although of course the old Sing-song has seen it too.

“In the first sequence, yes.”

We play the first sequence again and there is no doubt there is an irritating shudder in the movement. Before the neck rings were fitted this somehow did not show, but now it destroys an effect which must be creepily sinuous, sensuous.

“We have time,” I say.

“No,” says Eric. “Leave the bloody thing alone.”

He thinks this is a risk but he is wrong.

The caterers and publicists arrive together. I send Amanda to deal with them. Eric holds my arm. “Don’t punish me like this.”

“You know it’s just old museum wax. It will be perfect.”

“You’re not going to take the bloody rings off.”

“Yes, I am.”

Eric watches for a moment but then he walks away.

Amanda is perfect, or her meds are perfect. She returns to my side and we remove the rings together, and I am so proud of us, the choreography.

It takes approximately thirty minutes to remove the wax, and it is during this long quiet period I hear Eric in exasperated conversation with the publicist, a strange Colman Getty boy with a towering plume of hair.

When we finish, exactly twenty-eight minutes later, I discover Eric is watching me.

“Now, the beak.”

“Yes,” he says without excitement.

I unhook my thief’s bag from its hook behind the door. In clear sight, I produce the beak, remove the Kleenex, and, using the two brass Whitworth screws Amanda places in the dry cup of my hand, attach it to the clean steel nub of the undead.

It is 5:55 p.m. when I go to wash my hands, and only when I return does Eric divulge the news that Publicity aborted the mission half an hour ago.

The canapés are very nice. One bottle of Veuve is already open so we have no choice but drink to our success.

THE DAY DID COME
. The studio was flooded with morning light which, being filtered through the blinds and reflected from the opposite wall, contained the very slightest wash of gold. Our object could not have looked more precious. We hid it beneath a muslin cloth, praying that the light would last.

It was half past eight when the “loots and suits” began to arrive for the unveiling, and perhaps it was a tribute to the Conservative’s sense of business that everyone was assembled when the Minister of Arts, he of the boyish polished face, arrived at exactly 8:45 a.m.

As was usual at the Swinburne, no one introduced anybody properly, so Amanda and I were left alone and unexplained. My assistant had gone Sloaney for the occasion but I did not, not even for a moment, see her as more tame.

Eric was very jolly and extremely charming, sprinkling his learning about like holy water and shifting from individual conversation to his general address without missing a beat. He was rather like the swan himself, the way he paused to watch his prey. They became little girls in their communion dresses, these heartless men with polished Eton cheeks.

Crofty gave me no public credit for my work, and I was disappointed but not at all surprised. When it came time for me to wind the mechanism, this lot would think I was some sort of quiz-show hostess.

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.

P
ERCY, 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.