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.
I crossed Kennington Road without being run over. Once inside I opened all the windows and lit lavender candles to destroy the stink. The vodka went in the freezer, then came out a moment later.
I sat on the sofa, a very plain Nelson day bed, a prime example of that rather Quakerish modernism which I have always adored. From there one could look up through the high back window and enjoy the silhouette of a chestnut tree, listen to the blackbirds quarrelling about their places, and watch the sky turn to ink, never quite black, always London’s suicidal engine burning in the night.
Against the wall beneath the windows was a low Bruno Mathsson bookshelf. On its normally bare surface I appeared—during my adventures of the previous night—to have exhibited a blue wooden block. Why not? It was a very pretty colour. I clearly had fussed a great deal with the lighting, using the same tiny reading light Matthew had bought from the Conran Shop on Marylebone High Street. Now I fiddled with it until the facing surfaces of the memento were completely shadowless.
Then I sipped my vodka.
It glowed, my stolen jewel, deeply evasive, sad and melancholic, a study in blue but also something like a small boy’s slippers placed beneath his bed three thousand summer nights ago. Soon, but not immediately, my mind began to drift down Henry Brandling’s paths, narrow lines in the meadow where the grass was bent, broken yellow and bruised, fresh tracks that led to little hopping Carl the hare, clever clever Carl now dead as dead could be. Carl calcified and crumbled and the brain that had made and known the cube had vanished, less than a glow worm in the night, not even a dried cicada in a case. At this point, as I drained my glass, I heard the music of my clocks as I had heard them last night. The wind-up orchestra had always meant Clerkenwell, comfort, safety, peace. I had spent my entire life foolishly seduced by ticking clocks, never bothering to hear the horror underneath.
I sought Henry, Henry alive, good-hearted Henry. How essential was his company in this endless night. I read. He wrote.
