The Chemistry of Tears

Catherine

THE LAST THING I require is human company, but there she is, my unwanted assistant. She is appallingly young and eager, with long fair hair and dark eyebrows, a slim figure made for jodhpurs and wind-cheaters and a white plain shirt.

“You are Amanda?”

“Yes.”

“You are the Courtauld girl?”

“I suppose so, yes.” The voice is upper-upper but has some wobbly vowels, a weird mélange of Faubourg St. Germain and Essex. It makes my teeth ache, the pitch of it.

“Come in,” I tell her carefully, treading around the edges of my hangover.

Piercing voice or no, she is very pretty, with a porcelain complexion and very blue eyes and long lashes. She waits obediently while I turn on my computer but when I realize the museum server is now functioning, all I can think of is how to get to Matthew’s emails. This is far more important than the resuscitation of a swan.

“You can hang your umbrella over there.”

I have had an idea about Matthew’s password. It will be a secret no one else would ever guess.

After I have tested my idea, I will be extremely nice to her, take her to Fortnum’s for tea—she looks like she might enjoy that. For now I am very agitated but I force myself to ask how long has she been with us, what has she done so far.

“Nothing very much I’m afraid. I must say those glass rods look fascinating.”

I really, really do not wish to talk. “Do you know what they are?” I ask.

“I think so, yes. That is, of course not. Do they rotate to simulate water?”

Has Crofty planted her? Is she someone’s daughter? “You went online?” I suggest.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve been researching automata online?”

“No, oh no, I wouldn’t do that.” She seems so shocked, I smile. “They will be jolly hard to clean, won’t they? I was thinking how you would manage it. Is there a trick to it?”

“Only to have Ceramics take care of it.”

“Oh.”

“You are disappointed?”

“I like to clean things. I think that’s why they sent me.”

So that’s how I will get rid of her. She can fetch Hilary from Ceramics. She pays very close attention to the complicated instructions—the normal response to Swinburne directions is to panic, but she listens, alert, her head cocked. I expect her to ask me to repeat. She leaves. A moment later I am attempting to access Matthew’s account.

Username: MTINDALL

Password: CATHERINE, and my lovely man opens like a flower. And here it is, everything I want, me to you, you to me, years of them. Dear God in heaven. I love you, Matthew. How sad to have to throw this out.

I have only begun when the two women return and I am forced to quit. My guilt and excitement must be obvious but the Courtauld girl is starring in her own movie. Her colouring is very high and I know that she is, quite reasonably, very pleased with her success.

The glass rods must now be carefully loaded on a long steel trolley, a process that takes them no more than five minutes, but I must wait and wait beyond endurance before, finally, I am left alone.

“Meet you outside the place.” Delete.

“See you there.” Delete.

“I kiss your toes.” Delete.

“I love you. Sorry I was a beast.” Delete.

There are thousands and thousands of them. I should keep them every one, I do not dare. I have no idea of time. I do not even hear the girl return and it is a shock to realize she is by my shoulder.

“You must get an awful lot of email?”

I am aware my eyes are peculiar. “I don’t like to talk very much,” I tell her as I quit again. “I hope that won’t make you feel uncomfortable?”

“No,” she says, but clearly my appearance is unnerving.

“Very well,” I say, “you might as well unpack the tea chests.”

“By myself?”

I speak without engaging her. “Do you think you can manage?”

“Oh yes. As long as that’s OK.”

“There will be some rather heavy pieces. If you have any doubt about anything, you fetch me.”

“May I ask what it is?”

“A swan apparently.”

She remains, startled, staring at me. She says, “Do you wish me to begin the inventory,” and I can see the pink of her tongue behind her teeth. The vowels on inventory are slightly odd.

“No. Just remove them very carefully. Keep all the newspaper they are wrapped in. Watch out for any documentation at all, even a postage stamp.”

“How will I arrange them? I mean, what is the principle of order?” I cannot talk.

I will not look at her. “I don’t care. Any way you like.”

My colossal lack of curiosity is completely inconceivable. In real life this would never happen, but even in the middle of my own personal rollercoaster ride, I do manage to keep some sort of eye on her. I realize she is ordering the components by size, smallest to largest. You little pickle, I think, you cheeky little thing.

“How is your day?” Delete.

“I hate everyone, not you, my sweet.” Delete.

“I am a genius. Come and see what I have done.”

The girl unpacks and classifies. I slice away my heart. Delete, delete, delete. There may be a faster, less painful way to do this, but I doubt I would use it even if I could. It is a field of electric turbulence, bone-breaking updraughts, emails from his wife. Delete. I never asked him if he had sex with her. I trusted him completely. Just the same I always sniffed his skin. Delete. There are emails to women I do not know. These I cannot help but open, and every time I am ashamed. Delete. I dig deeper and the Courtauld girl digs in the tea chests.

“Now are you up to this?” I ask her.

But I see she is listening to music on some device I cannot even see. On another day this would annoy me.

There are so many emails to his sons. I have to read them. I cannot delete them.

“Did your pills arrive?” he writes.

“You need a warm coat?”

“I’ll pick you up at six. Set two alarms.”

“Love Dad.”

“Love.”

“Love always.”

Around noon I abandon Amanda Snyde “to have a smoke.” When I return I have been crying. I also have a fresh flask of vodka in my perfect bag. My assistant is eating an egg sandwich and bent over what I later learn she calls a Frankenpod, having cobbled it together from abandoned pieces.

“You can eat with the others in the caff if you like.”

“I’m sorry. I’m not very used to being around people.”

“Surely you went to school.”

She removes the single ear bud and I catch sight of a black billowing image on the screen.

“Actually my grandfather tutored me.”

“Had he been a teacher?”

“He was a sort of soldier.”

“You were in London?”

“Actually, in Suffolk.”

I do not ask where in Suffolk. She might say Beccles or Southwold or Aldeburgh or Blythburgh, the litany of love names, private, ours. I would not have our private Suffolk stolen or polluted.

“But then at the Courtauld?”

“Then West Dean. I’ve become quite civilized, learned to use a key and so on.”

Learned to use a key? Well, I am rather strange myself, for I cannot acknowledge the body parts of swan she has laid so carefully upon the bench. I am a highly specialized creature and I could have identified much of this jumble in my sleep. Even whilst reading heart-wrenching emails it is impossible not to see the tarnished silver, some pieces rather like napkin rings. I have noted the reflective backing plates which are made to fit below the glass rods and are a common convention in these automata. Their function is to make the “water” sparkly. These plates on the bench are in a most unsparkly condition. They really need to be covered with reflective silver leaf which can, of course, be removed in the future. I cannot deny the barrel of a music box, a very familiar object for a horologist. I do not wish to count but of course it has about a thousand pins. This Herr Sumper made, not for Henry Brandling but—this is very clear to me—for himself. Most of the pins are brass, but have sometimes been replaced by steel. I have no curiosity at all, but I cannot help knowing that many of the pins have been moved to new positions.

It is like leaving a child to walk alone on a busy high street, but I am near her, watching her with my peripheral eye. I wonder who her grandfather was or is? When posh people say “soldier” they mean a field marshal or a spy.

She continues to dig up the bones. I continue to burn my past.

In the midst of this Eric “pops in” wearing that ridiculous tight striped suit, all waist and wide shoulders. It is too hot for this costume. He stinks of the Ivy—the wine list, not the shepherd’s pie.

I secretly watch to see how he will react to the Courtauld girl. He affects to not see or know her and that pretty much proves he has planted her. I wonder if the “soldier” is a trustee.

Eric rushes around the room like a dog at the airport and then rushes out again.

A moment later I ask the girl, “Did he say ‘Toodle pip’?”

She giggles.

“Who says ‘Toodle pip’?”

“Bertie Wooster, I think.”

“You’re too young for Wooster.”

“Stephen Fry is Jeeves,” she says. “I saw him once, in the pub in Walberswick.”

Walberswick. Delete.

“Why do you think Mr. Croft says ‘Toodle pip’?”

She smiles.

Everyone thinks it is Americans who make themselves up, but it is we English who are the fantasists, not only Crofty either. There is a strange meld in Amanda Snyde’s voice when she says: “I think this is the neck of something.”

Poor Henry Brandling. He never got his duck. When I read the invoice I was rather pleased it was a swan but now, in the studio it has some other creepy quality—a life, a penis, the neck of a goose on Christmas Day. It is spooky, dirty, an unearthly blue-grey. The fine articulation of steel vertebrae could not be achieved anywhere in London in 2010.

She holds it out for me.

“No, put it down.”

For no good reason, I begin to cry.

“Oh dear,” she says, and through my blurry eyes I see the afternoon light catching her pretty face, her hope and hurt. She is too sane and generous for this room.

“Miss Gehrig.” And that is when I see, beneath the hair, she has an ugly plastic hearing aid, and I recognize her accent as belonging to a class of injury. This is why she uses just one ear bud.

“It’s all right,” I say, “I have lost a family member. That’s all it is. It’s nothing.”

“Are you all right?”

“Completely. Someone died. That’s all. It happens every day.”

“May I ask questions?”

“No, you may not.”

For the rest of the day I have her follow me around with a notebook while I dictate functions and allow her to allocate the numbers.

I make a rough sort of classification of the unpacked components—a beginning anyway, although we have not come to the main engine.

“Wear gloves,” I say.

“Yes,” she says, looking at me suddenly. “The parts leave a funny feeling on your skin.”

I think, she can see my pain in colour, poor girl, but I suppose she can deal with almost anything.