The Chemistry of Tears

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.

At home, I put water on the stove and lit the gas. I would cook. Dry pasta, sardines, capers, stale bread, olive oil. I would eat, macerate, excrete.

And then the door bell rang—Eric, come to have his cube returned. I fetched a plate and fork for him. “No, no,” he said.

“I made too much. I can’t stop doing it.”

“I have a dinner engagement,” he said.

Still, I made a place for him. The blue block was wrapped in a handkerchief. I set it beside his plate.

I thought, surely he wants to see the cornflower blue.

“Brought it home for some tests?” he asked.

I smiled.

“Crazy bugger,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Swap you,” he said, also smiling. I liked his crinkled eyes. I imagined him playing poker. Indeed the envelope he now produced was the size of a playing card. Inside I discovered one of those cardboard-mounted Victorian portraits.

“Your man,” he said, making me remember why I liked him—that impish quality. “This is the man who commissioned your swan.”

He was looking at me strangely. I thought, yes, he has actually taken the time to read the notebooks. He had read them at the very start.

“His name was Henry Brandling,” he said.

“Oh, how do you know?”

Again that smile.

He could not have the least idea of how deeply invested I was in Henry. He would have expected me to be curious, but how could he possibly anticipate what it meant to me, to find my author so very tall and handsome, holding a baby in his arms? I was happy, uplifted, to meet him in this way, to understand his nobility and tenderness.

“Percy,” I said.

“Henry,” he corrected. “Henry Brandling.”

“The child.”

“Oh, I know nothing of the child.”

There was something rather odd about the photograph, and I removed it from its plastic to examine it more closely.