“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 canapes 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
