The Chemistry of Tears Part 11

"That's nice."

"I love him. I know that sounds rather odd, but I do." She rather glared at me. "Do you have a place in the country?"

I had been deleting JPEGs of the green at Southwold. I did not laugh or even smile, just shook my head.

"I'm sorry about your friend."

At first I was grateful for her intuition, and then, immediately, certain that she knew far more about me than she should.

Catherine.

SINCE REMOVING THE TARPAULIN I had lived with what the procedures minutes had inaccurately described as a cha.s.sis. It was better understood as a timber hull slathered with pitch. That it had once contained the clockwork engine was obvious, although this insight was of no use in the present exercise-our job was to restore the mechanism and mount it in and on a modern plinth.

It was irritating, therefore, to return to my workroom and find the Courtauld girl studying, not the huge feast of Sumper's wizardry, but this nasty hull which was as attractive as a squashed hedgehog on a country lane.

Three times I had reason to physically draw her away from it, and the fourth time I snapped, "Get back to b.l.o.o.d.y work."

In response she took my hand. "Go on, Miss Gehrig, admit you are just a little bit intrigued."

I could have slapped her face. G.o.d knows what would have happened had not Eric barged in. As usual, he ignored my a.s.sistant. He called me Cat and commanded me to wind up the music box. He then performed a touchingly graceless vaudeville dance to the time of the melody.

"Splendid, splendid," he said, rubbing his dry square hands together. "It is the sixteenth wonder of the world." Then he left.

Then I had Amanda help me remove the main spring and she seemed to forget about the hull. She got oil on her expensive sweater but did not seem to care. I gave her a big lecture about wearing a dustcoat and she listened with barely concealed impatience.

"Isn't it lovely," she said when I had finished scolding her.

"Yes it is."

"This is my b.l.o.o.d.y work, innit?"

The little imp. I had to smile.

The music box spring was extremely old and clearly hand-made. It was highly textured and very different to modern springs. Together we managed to get it to the bench and by then we were both very oily. Her sweater was ruined, but her face was flushed and her eyes were very bright.

This brief moment was the first time I felt alive since Matthew died. Of course I didn't notice until later, when all the warmth had seeped away.

It was already five in the afternoon, but I pretended not to notice and we set to work on the hammer frame and thus became the first people in a century to read the rather alchemical ciphers on the bells. This was a real secret. How delicious it felt. How nice also that I did not need to ask her to set up the lights so we could have a photographic record. She had already proven herself very capable with a camera.

While she was busy I turned my attention to the barrel-although some of the pins had been replaced many were original, meaning some of the music might also be original. I rolled the barrel on carbon paper and thus produced an image which I could scan. Then with two or three clicks I sent the pattern of the pins to a lovely chap at the Museum of Mechanical Music in Utrecht who would, one day soon, play the music on a piano and send me back an MP3 file. I imagined that Herr Sumper would not be at all astonished by these wonders.

When the photography was complete it was almost six o'clock but Amanda stayed while I loaded her images and was, quite rightly, praised. Her work was very crisp and detailed.

"You know that thing," she said at last. "The thing you don't like me looking at."

"Yes, Amanda." I busied myself on the Mac, rechristening the file numbers of the swan JPEGs.

"I have been looking at it."

"You have many more worthwhile things to study."

"You called it a hull."

"It doesn't matter. It needn't concern you."

One might reasonably have expected an underling to hear this message, but she persisted.

"I tried to work out if it would stay afloat with the weight of the engine."

I said nothing.

"I am hopeless at physics," she said pa.s.sionately. "Really awful."

"Well then, that's that."

"But it would be rather splendid, wouldn't it? If the imitation water of the swan had been contiguous with real water. I'm sorry. I know I am very irritating."

Yes she was irritating.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I cannot stay away from it."

I made no comment.

"I have done a drawing," she said, opening up her Moleskine book.

"Amanda," I said, "you are no longer at university. Our curiosity is not disinterested. We will not be having seminars. We are employed to do a very particular job." But of course I looked at her d.a.m.n drawing. She had shown the long staves and the double skin of timber. She had a lovely hand, extraordinarily confident for one so young, and that also was the general problem with her character.

"Black chalk," she said. "I know that's terribly pretentious."

"Why?"

"I'm not Giorgione."

I can't say how unusual it is when you find a young conservator with this degree of will. I saw it would now be my job, not only to reconstruct the swan, but to harness all this dangerous energy.

I took the book from her and closed it.

"Do you think you might manage to write a condition report? Might that occupy your mind productively?"

I was not simply being generous to a beginner. Indeed I never doubted that I would end up writing most of it myself, but if Crafty really had a catalogue in mind, this finely detailed drawing would reveal so much more than the very best photograph.

"Please," she said, "could I show you something now?"

Did she not understand the reckless favour I had done her? No, it seemed not, because she was back at the hull again. She was like a blow fly in a temple attracted only to a pile of s.h.i.t.

"I rather think this might be dry rot."

And yes, she was correct-here was a spot a few inches below what you might call the ridge beam, or keel. Here a scab of pitch had fallen away and thus exposed an area of grey timber.

"See." Before I could stop her, she picked at the broken edge of pitch which came free with a lump of flaking wood.

"No!" I was shocked by the ugly noise that had come out of my mouth, torn and ragged like a gull.

"I'm sorry." I had terrified her.

"Never mind," I said. "Do me a favour and forget it."

"Oh but I do mind. I mind awfully. I've totally screwed up."

I looked at the poor messy beauty with her pearls and oil and saw how queer we both must look. I began to laugh. She burst into tears.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I've hurt it. I'm sorry. Don't laugh. You mustn't-"

How could I not feel sorry for her? "Why don't you fetch me that little pen light from my desk."

"Pen?"

"It's a tiny LED, with blue nail polish on its switch."

She returned all black and smeary, holding out the light.

Examining the damage, it was clear that she was perfectly correct about the rot. This would be a perfect excuse to get the hull removed from her surveillance.

However, the hole was the size of a 50p coin and the LED had a tight sharp focus and when I played its very bright white light into the cavity I saw something most peculiar.

"Amanda, come here," I said, which was very stupid of me.

"What did I do?"

"Tell me what you see."

"Thank you," she said. "Thank you so much." She took the little torch between her thumb and forefinger.

"Oh, Miss Gehrig."

"Well?"

"It is a cube," she said at last. "A one-inch cube. It is cornflower blue. I am good with colour," she said rather fiercely. "I'll check the Pantone number but I'm sure it's cornflower blue."

I did not think, not for a second, of the effect this would have on her. I thought only of Carl's blue block, his clever trick. It took my breath away to find him buried in the hull.

I DELETED, FOREVER, THE celestial light through the pine forest behind Walberswick, the heath at Dunwich in full flower, a very tanned Matthew, that lovely English shyness in his smile, one hand in his pocket, his eyes hidden in the shadow of his brow. I deleted his white shirt, his baggy slacks, the surviving elm he leaned against. Dear Matty T. He was one of those physically graceful dishevelled beauties my country does produce so very well. Delete.

I also deleted JPEGs of Bungay and Walberswick and Aldeburgh and Dunwich, the melancholy concrete bomb shelter behind the stables.

Amanda entered, charging at me. I hid my business and I admired her hair clip, velvet-covered, very 1960s.

She, in turn, admired my silk pants. I would have expected her Sloaney aesthetic would have made her blind to such things as are produced in the rue du Pre aux Clercs, so I was rather pleased.

I then took her to the far end of the studio, right up against the washroom, furthest from the damaged hull. It was too late, of course, but I did not know that yet.

Here I had laid out the little silver fish which the swan would "eat" when it was finally mobile. The fish would "swim" along a track. I gave her time to discover something of what she had been given-the tamped punch marks on the tails, for instance. Her Moleskine was produced. Notes were made. I then left her to make a survey of the track, a task she quickly understood. I did not spoil it by telling her that there were only seven fish, although the pin holes indicated that there had been twelve further ornaments. I left this as a gift.

I set to work on the silver rings, removing a century of built-up oil. I had hardly begun when she abandoned her post.

I thought, what now? But she was at her rucksack, pulling out a dustcoat on one sleeve of which a word had been embroidered from cuff to elbow. She saw me looking.

"Boy," she said, meaning the embroidery was a name. She rolled up her sleeve to hide it.

"Gus," she said, colouring. I suddenly thought how lovely it had been to be an art student, to be so young. I myself had arrived at Goldsmiths College imagining I might make paintings which would give me peace of mind. I discovered s.e.x instead. Now I mourned my young girl's skin. It was sad and sweet to imagine this little creature sleeping with her face nestled in her young man's neck.

"I have been thinking all night about the cube," she said.

"Well now you have some fish to think about instead."

"Miss Gehrig, can I show you something?"

"I would rather you did the fish."

Instead the wilful little thing extracted a small plain cardboard cube from her rucksack. It might seem a simple matter to construct a cube, but this was very beautifully done, and when she set it before me I saw that it was immaculately clean. She would be a very good conservator when she learned to do what she was told.

"Open it," she demanded.

"Why?" I asked crossly.

"Please."

The cube was about three inches. "Yes, it's empty. Now please go back to your bench. You have a job to do."

"Yes, open it out, flat."

Once more I found myself doing as she asked.

"You see," she said.

"What?"

"When a cube is unfolded," she insisted, "it forms a six-part Cross. The Cube is Yahweh concealed. The Cross is Yahweh revealed. Isn't that cool?"

"No," I said, and gave it back to her. "You have mystery all about you. You don't need to invent it."

"Oh don't be angry," she said. "It's not invented."