They Do the Same Things Different There (5 page)

She didn’t visit for a while afterwards, and it wasn’t surprising at first, he knew how easy it was just to get lost in the work, but after a bit he began to wonder whether he might have offended her in some way—he couldn’t remember what way that might have been—and he supposed it didn’t matter if he had, he didn’t like her very much (or did he?—he didn’t
recall
liking her, that had never been a part of it, but), but, but then he realized he missed her, that her absence was a sad and slightly painful thing, that he should put a stop to that absence, he should set off to find her. So he did. He left 1574 behind and went looking for 1660, and he couldn’t work out how to get there; he walked up and down corridors of the twelfth century, and then the tenth, it was all a bit confusing, there were Vikings every which way he looked. And it began to bother him that he couldn’t decide where 1660 came in history—was it after 1574, was it before? And he thought, sod it, I’ll turn back, and he walked in the direction he had come, but somehow that brought him to the fifth century, and there were no Vikings now, just bloody Picts. He didn’t think he could find 1574 let alone 1660, and he started to panic, and he was just about to resign himself to the idea of settling down with the Anglo Saxons, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad—when he turned the corner, and there, suddenly, was Charles II restored to the throne, there was Samuel Pepys, there was
she
, there she was, sitting at her desk, paintbrush in hand, and all but dwarfed by the Renaissance in full glory.

“Hello,” he said.

But she didn’t reply, and he thought that maybe she was concentrating, she didn’t want to be disturbed, and he could respect that, he’d have wanted the same thing—so he waited, he bided his time, so much time to bide in all around him, and he bided it. Until he could bide no more—“Hello, are you all right?” he asked, and he went right up to her, and she still didn’t acknowledge him, he went right up to her face. And her eyes were so wide and so scared, and her cheeks were blotched with tears, and her lips, her bottom lip was trembling as if caught in mid-stutter, “No,” she said, or at least that’s what he thought it was, but it might not have been a word, it might just have been a noise, “nonononono.” “Do you know who I am?” he asked, and she looked directly at him, then recoiled, it was clear she didn’t know
anything
, “nonono,” she sobbed, and it wasn’t an answer to his question, it was all she could say, each “no” popping out every time that bottom lip quivered. “Do you know who I am?” he asked again, “I’m. . . .” and for the life of him at that moment he forgot his own name, how ridiculous, “I’m your assistant, yes? I’m your
friend
.” And he moved to touch her, he wanted to hold her, hug her, something, but she slapped him away, and the tears started, she was so very frightened. “I’m your friend,” he said, “and I’ll look after you,” and he knocked aside the slaps, he held on to her, and tight too, he held on as close as she’d let him, and he felt her tears on his neck, and they weren’t warm like tears were supposed to be, oh, they were so
cool.
“I’m your friend, and I’m going to look after you, and I’ll never stop looking after you,” and he hadn’t meant to make a promise, but it was a promise, wasn’t it?, and “Just you remember that!”, but she didn’t remember anything, not a thing—and he held on to her until she
did
, until at last she did.

“Andy?” she said. “Andy, what’s wrong?” Because he was crying too. And she looked so surprised to see him there, and so glad too—and he thought,
Andy
, oh yes,
that
was it.

One day, as Andy was sponging down a particularly anonymous Huguenot, she came to him. She looked awkward, even a little bashful.

“I’ve been thinking,” she said. “You can give me a name. If you like.”

Andy turned away from 1574. “I thought you didn’t want a name.”

She blushed. “I don’t mind.”

“All right,” he said. “What about Janet?”

She wrinkled her nose.

“You don’t like Janet?”

“I don’t,” she agreed, “like Janet.”

“Okay,” he said. “Mandy.”

“No.”

“Becky.”

“No.”

“Samantha. Sammy for short.”

“Tell you what,” she said. “You give it a think, and when you come up with something you like, you come and find me.”

“I’ll do that,” said Andy.

He resumed work on his Huguenot. The bloodstain on his dagger-gouged stomach shone a red it hadn’t shone in hundreds of years. Andy worked hard on it, he didn’t know for how long, but there was a joy to it, to uncover this man’s death like it was some long lost buried treasure, and make it stand out bold and lurid and smudge-free.

Next time she came she was wearing a ribbon. He didn’t know why, it looked odd wrapped around her shiny bald forehead. Why was the forehead so shiny? Had she done something to it? “I’ve been thinking,” she said.

“Oh yes?”

“What about Miriam?”

“Who’s Miriam?”

“Me. I could be Miriam.”

“You could be Miriam, yes.”

“Do you like Miriam?”

“Miriam’s fine.”

“Do you think Miriam suits me?”

“I think Miriam suits you right down to the ground,” said Andy, and she beamed at him.

“All right,” she said. “Miriam it is. If you like it. If that works well for you.”

“Hello, Miriam,” he said. “Nice to meet you.” And they laughed.

“I love you,” she said then.

“You do what, sorry?”

“I think it’s so sad, that no one ever loved you.”

“I don’t know that
no one
ever loved me. . . .”

“And at first I thought this was just pity for you. Inside me, here. But then it grew. And I thought, that’s not pity at all, that’s love.” She scratched at her ribbon. It slipped down her face a bit. “I mean, I might have got it wrong, it might just be a deeper form of pity,” she said. “But, you know.”

“Yes.”

“Probably not.”

“No.”

“Probably love.”

“Yes.”

“I want you to know,” she said, “what it feels like to inspire love. You inspire love. In me.”

“Well,” he said. “Thank you. I mean that.”

“Do I inspire love in you?”

“I hadn’t really thought about it,” said Andy.

“Would you think about it now?”

“All right,” he said. “Yes. Go on, then. I think you do.”

“Oh good,” said Miriam.

She left him then. He got back to his dying Huguenot. The Huguenot seemed to be winking at him. Andy didn’t like that, and swabbed at the Huguenots’ eyes pointedly.

When Miriam returned the ribbon was gone, and Andy thought that was good, it really hadn’t looked right. But, if anything, the forehead was shinier still. And there was a new redness to the lips, he thought she must have spilled some paint on to them.

“If it is love. Not just pity on my part, confused politeness on yours. Would you like to
make
love?”

“We could,” Andy agreed.

He hadn’t taken off his clothes for years now. But they were removed easily enough, it was just a matter of tugging them away with a bit of no-nonsense force. Miriam’s clothes were another matter, they seemed to have been glued down, or worse—Andy wondered as they tried to peel them off whether some of the skin had grown over the clothes, or the clothes had evolved into skin, or vice versa—either way they weren’t budging. It took half an hour to get most of the layers off, but there were patches of blouse and stocking that they couldn’t prise away even with a chisel.

They stood there—he, naked, she, as naked as they could manage without applying some of the stronger solvents.

“You go first,” she said, and he thought he could take the responsibility of that—but then, as he came toward her, he stopped short, he couldn’t recall what on earth he was supposed to do. He looked at her, right at her egg face, and she was smiling bravely, but there were no clues offered in that smile, and he looked downwards, and it seemed to him that both of her breasts were like eggs too, perched side by side on top of a rounded belly that was also like an egg—her whole hairless body was like a whole stack of eggs inexpertly stitched together, God, he was looking at an entire omelette! And though she wasn’t beautiful, it was nevertheless naked flesh, and it was vaguely female in shape, and his prick twitched in memory of it, in some memory that it ought to be doing
something.

“I do love you,” he said. “I love you too,” she replied. And they approached the other. And they reached out their hands. And their fingers danced gently on each other’s fingers. And he stroked his head against her chest. And she bit awkwardly at his nose. And they bounced their stomachs off each other—once, twice, three times!—boing!—and that third bounce was really pretty frenzied. Then they held each other. They both remembered that part.

The next time she came to visit him in his studio, they had both completely forgotten they’d once tried sex. And perhaps that was a blessing. Andy was absorbed in an entirely new Huguenot corpse, and she seemed to have grown new clothes. But she remembered her name was Miriam now, and so did he; they clung on to that, together, at least.

1574:

In February, the so-called Fifth War of Religion breaks out in France between the Catholics and the Huguenots; the Fourth War had only ended six months previously. War Number Four didn’t, as you might gather, end very conclusively. The Huguenots were given the freedom to worship—but
only
within three towns in the whole country, and
only
within their own homes, and marriages could be celebrated but
only
by aristocrats before an assembly limited to ten people outside their own family. King Charles IX dies shortly afterwards. He was the man responsible for the slaughter of thousands of Huguenots in the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. Reports say that he actually died sweating blood; he is said to have turned to his nurse in his last moments and said, “So much blood around me! Is this all the blood I have shed?”

And then:

In November, the Spanish sailor Juan Fernández discovers a hitherto unknown archipelago. Sailing between Peru and Valparaíso, and quite by chance deviating from his planned route, Fernández stumbles across a series of islands, no more than seventy square miles in total area. Fernández looks about him. There are bits of greenery on them. They’re a bit volcanic. They’re not much cop. He names them after himself, and you can only wonder whether that’s an act of grandeur or of self-effacing irony. For the next few centuries they serve as a hideout for pirates; then the tables are turned and they make for an especially unattractive new penal colony.

And then:

In December, Selim II, sultan of the Ottoman Empire, dies. Named by his loving subjects as Selim the Drunkard, or Selim the Sot, he dies inebriated, clumsily slipping on the wet floor of his harem and falling into the bath. His corpse is kept in ice for twelve days to conceal the fact he’s dead and to safeguard the throne until his chosen heir, his son Murad, can reach Istanbul and take power. On arrival, Murad is proclaimed the new sultan, and there is much rejoicing, and hope (as ever) for a new age of enlightenment; that night he has all five of his younger brothers strangled in a somewhat overemphatic attempt to dissuade them from challenging his new authority.

And then:

Andy’s hair fell out. It had been a slow process at first. For weeks he’d had to keep picking out stray strands from the solvent, he kept accidentally rubbing them into the picture—Juan Fernández’s beard seemed to grow ever bushier, Charles IX died sweating not just blood but fur. And then, one day, it poured out all at once, in thick heavy clumps that rained down on his shoulders—and Andy was fascinated at the amount of it, it seemed he wasn’t just losing the hair he already had but all the potential hair he could
ever
have had, the follicles were squeezing the hair out in triple quick time, as if his skull had contained nothing but a whole big ball of the stuff just waiting to be set free. The hairs would bristle out toward the light, thousands of little worms making for the surface, now covering his scalp and chin, now turning his head into a deep plush furry mat—and then, just as soon as the hairs seemed so full and thick and
alive
they’d die, they’d all die, they’d jump off his head like so many lemmings jumping off cliffs—and Andy couldn’t help feel a little hurt that all this hair had been born, had looked about, and had been so unimpressed by the shape and texture of the face that was to be their new home they’d chosen to commit mass suicide instead.