The Chemistry of Tears

Catherine

MY FATHER, WHEN A boy, had read right through the terror of the Blitz. At three o’clock, as they buried my beloved man, I too was reading: Dr. Jessica Riskin, “Artificial Life and Intelligence, circa 1730–1950.”

Cams in the upper cylinder activated a frame of about thirty levers. These were connected with different parts of the Duck’s skeletal system to determine its repertoire of movements, which included drinking, playing in the water with his bill, and making a gurgling noise like a real living duck, as well as rising up on its feet, lying down, stretching and bending its neck, and moving its wings, tail, and even its larger feathers …

I also read Abbé Desfontaines who described the duck’s wings: “Not only has every bone been imitated, but also the Apophyses or Eminences of each bone … the different joints: the bending, the cavities, and the three bones of the wing are very distinct.”

Had Henry Brandling any inkling of the size and expense of the object he had promised to his child? The Karlsruhe clockmaker had surely known—the plans published in the London Illustrated News were only the tip of the iceberg. Below the preening “actor” there would have to be a main-frame “chassis.” The chassis would be at least the size and shape of an English telephone box. That was the revelation: a telephone box will not fit inside a tea chest.

I was no equal to my father. At a quarter past the hour, I had retreated to the studio where I felt Matthew’s absence in the hollow of my bones. My lungs collapsed. I could not breathe.

Eric Croft was at the graveside. He had his BlackBerry tucked inside his pocket. I was sure he imagined the duck would be a crowd-pleaser, something to satisfy the Ministry of Arts. But the chassis is not here, Eric. The guts are missing, so there is no point.

To: e.croft@swi.ac.uk

“Hi Eric,” I wrote, as people do, even in the Swinburne.

I then informed the man who dared stand at my lover’s graveside that the automaton was disastrously incomplete, and until such time as its chassis was found there would be no point in even unpacking. Then, because I was under the influence of Lorazepam as well, I told him that it was highly “inappropriate” to give a grieving woman the task of simulating life. If he had wished to give me nightmares he had already had a huge success.

I pressed “send” and turned off the computer.

It was then, high on grief and rage, I stole two of Henry Brandling’s exercise books. What would happen if I was caught? Burn me alive, I didn’t care. I tucked them inside my copy of Antiquarian Horology, and walked straight past Security and out into the London street which was now, in late April, hotter than Bangkok.

It is beyond argument that at the moment I unlocked my own front door, Matthew’s body was beginning to decay. Inside the flat it was awful, awful, hot and stuffy. Effluvium. Booze and cigarettes. I threw open the windows at the front and back. I sprayed Aveda lavender in every corner, lit a cigarette and stabbed it out, poured a glass of whisky and retched. I did not like red wine, but I uncorked a bottle of Matthew’s Bourgueil and smelled him. I closed the windows so no one would hear me cry.

I had owned, since my dear grandfather died, this basement flat. It was on Kennington Road, diagonally opposite the Imperial War Museum. I have heard north Lambeth called an “unlovable” corner of London, but I have always known myself blessed by the walled garden which, as the wealthy New Labour owners of “upstairs” were mostly in Ibiza, was often mine.

In the days when there was still a future the garden had been magical. As recently as last week we had lain in bed and watched a family of foxes frolicking in the backlit uncut grass.

“Look. Watch. Shush.”

The foxes were not exactly cute. Their earth stank and they brought fast-food wrappers and soaking Pampers onto the lawn. We knew we were meant to telephone “Bert in Putney” who would come and shoot them. Of course we disobeyed.

Now I read, slowly and carefully, giving all my attention to the evasive puzzle on the page. I could not doubt Henry Brandling’s real desire to keep his promise to his son. But he did not seem to have imagined what would happen when the duck was finally made. Did he really expect his wife to fall in love with him again? Or was he, without knowing it, building some mad monument to grief, a kind of clockwork Taj Mahal? Or was that me?

Henry Brandling did not seem hugely bright, but given that some of England’s most unpleasant men have Firsts from Oxford, I was not at all put off.

The more I read the more I drank, the more I drank the more I was moved by Henry Brandling. He, like my beloved, suffered for his children heart and soul. I began to imagine that he had anticipated me, that he had bequeathed these notebooks personally. I finished the scotch. I began to drink Bourgueil. The tea chests could go back to whatever dark hole Crofty had found them in, but before they left my studio I would remove each and every exercise book and bring them home and keep them in a place where they would be loved and understood. My sense of ownership was like that created by my first viewing of Fellini’s 8½. Then, like now, I believed I was the only person on earth who could understand the thing before my eyes.