The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

by Natasha Pulley

  ‘No, no, nothing like that,’ her mother said quickly. She tugged her shawl closer around the shoulders, though she was in a broad sunbeam. ‘Goodness, what are you wearing?’

  ‘My clothes are in the laundry – what is it, then? Papa?’

  ‘No.’ She took a deeper breath. ‘Francis Fanshaw is going to be at the Foreign Office ball on the fourteenth.’

  Grace felt the lines draw themselves across her forehead. ‘What?’ she said helplessly.

  ‘Francis. You were children together, don’t you recall? You used to fish for tadpoles in the lake at his father’s estate in Hampshire. He’s a few years older than you.’

  ‘I – yes, I recall. Is … he ill?’

  Her mother looked blank. ‘No? He’s going to the Foreign Office ball, I told you. You know his first wife died some years ago?’

  ‘I read about it I think,’ Grace said, still floundering. She sat down opposite on the horsehair couch, which creaked and brought her into a familiar haze of violet perfume.

  ‘Well, the old earl is very sick now,’ her mother said quietly. Her eyes were watering in the bright light and with a small noise she took out her shaded lenses and put them on. The case had been made with antique blackwork. ‘And your father of course has been invited to the ball too. It really couldn’t be better timing, could it?’ She smiled, a real, joyful smile. Because sugar and coffee both made her feel ill, she still had pristine white teeth that looked strange in her lined face. She had put earrings on to come out, Grace noticed suddenly. At some point recently, though, her earlobes had lost their elasticity and the gold studs pulled them downward. She was an old woman. She wasn’t yet fifty.

  She misinterpreted Grace’s expression. ‘Don’t you see? It will be so romantic. You can meet up again after all these years and dance, and if you’re lucky he will have proposed by the end of next month. It’s a very good match, very straightforward.’

  ‘Yes, I see. Mama, I’m not … this is very sudden.’

  Her mother nodded sympathetically. ‘These things always are. You know, I didn’t want to marry your father, I had a horror of him at the time, I thought he looked ferocious in his army clothes. I should have much preferred to marry a parson, and lived somewhere pretty in the countryside. But of course I came to get used to it, and I should never have it any other way now.’

  Grace chewed her tongue and didn’t say anything about imagination or lack of it. ‘No, no. I know. Of course. But—’

  ‘Oh, Gracie!’ her mother burst out, and there was a soft thump from behind the door. Grace didn’t look that way. It seemed unkind to let Bertha know she was spying less secretly than she thought, especially having been rude once today already. ‘You’re far too old to live with us! You need your own house, your own husband. You’ll stop fighting so with your father the moment the two of you don’t share a roof, don’t you see? And you’ll be able to continue … whatever it is you do here, once you have your aunt’s house.’

  ‘It’d be simpler if I could have my aunt’s house without having to marry somebody to carry the keys for me.’

  Her mother took off the dark glasses again, her eyes full of reproach. ‘That can’t be helped. Of course if it were up to me you should have it in an instant, but I don’t know a thing about it. It’s very complicated, the law. I’m certain your father knows best, I really am.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I’m sorry. I was only being waspish. What I meant to say was, I’d much rather support myself. I’m about to do an experiment and it might be important. If it goes well, I won’t need to marry anyone. I’ll have a fellowship here, and rooms.’

  ‘Yes, but what if it doesn’t?’

  ‘Well, I … I think it will.’ She swallowed and tried to think of a way to explain that wouldn’t sound as though she were speaking downward. ‘It’s been done before, but not done well. I’m correcting bits of it now. It should be fairly simple.’

  ‘But what if it isn’t?’ her mother insisted. ‘Just say you’ll come to the ball. Then I shall be happy. I hate to think of your having to come home and moulder.’

  ‘If I do have to come home, I’ll find some teaching work at a school,’ she said, and tried to sound enthusiastic about the idea.

  ‘And that would be better than marrying Francis Fanshaw, would it?’

  Grace’s carefulness cracked. ‘Look, if I get married, I’ll be someone’s wife. Wives have duties. If I have children I’ll go insane for a year and a half – don’t look like that, you did, with James and with William, it was terrifying – and that will be a year and half of weeping over nothing and a brain made of soup in which I can’t work. And then it will happen again with the next child, and then slowly I won’t want to work at all, and I’ll always be soup, and I’ll just be … ’

  ‘What?’ her mother said, her voice rising. ‘You’ll be what? Just like me? Is that so very awful? You have such scorn for me, but I got myself here, didn’t I, to tell you about it all? There are plenty of women who wouldn’t want to venture out fifty miles from home quite alone!’

  Grace didn’t argue, because like always, it felt like slapping a kitten, and now she could feel how frail its bones were under her hand. She apologised and apologised instead, and then, slowly, because her mother could not walk fast, took her into the empty dining room to order a pot of tea. While it brewed and steamed between them, Grace reflected aloud, trying to sound offhand, that perhaps it would be fun to go to the ball.

  All seemed to be mended then. Since Lady Carrow had not booked herself into any hotel but was too tired to go back immediately on the train, Grace put her in the guest house opposite the college. Knowing that the new place would unsettle her, she stayed with her the rest of the day. By the time she came back to the college, the night was gathering. A grasshopper had come in through her open window to sit on the ether essay. She nudged it out again. Still bent awkwardly over the desk, she stood staring down at the pages for a long time. Her back began to hurt. The bed had been freshly made while she was out, and it had developed a magnetic pull, but she had lost too much time already. She dropped into the uncomfortable chair again and lit the lamp, and pinched herself awake to finish reading.

  It was only when she stopped, after midnight, that she found her watch sitting on top of the stack of books she had already finished. She picked it up, annoyed with herself, and flicked it open to wind it up. It was already wound as much as it could be. The time was correct. Somebody had polished it, and inside the lid, cut tiny and circular to fit, was a new copy of the original guarantee from the maker. She looked over at her own closed door, perplexed, and meant to ask the porter in the morning. Because she had to take her mother to the train station, she forgot.

  TEN

  LONDON, JUNE 1884

  The senior clerk glided by on roller-skates. Thaniel didn’t ask why. He had got up that morning to find Katsu nesting in his suitcase, which had altered his gauge of strangeness for the day. The suitcase was already missing some socks and collars. He couldn’t bring himself to mind. It was like being by the sea, sitting in the clean kitchen with the workshop door open and the clicks and sighs of the clockwork coming through. After Spindle had made his report and Williamson’s men came, it would all be gone.

  He pushed his fingertips against his eyelids and watched the colours of the incoming code while he drew in the will to visit Williamson again. He wanted to be sure he had received the telegram, and to mention Katsu’s diamond workings. He had not gone yet because he had a clear sight of his future self, who would have to go back to the shadow of the prison and the damp riverside after making a hanged ghost of a man who used his diamonds, however ill-gotten, to make clockwork. He jumped when a hand landed on his shoulder.

  ‘By George, it is you! What are you doing hiding away here?’

  It was the gentleman from yesterday, Mr Fanshaw.

  ‘Oh – morning,’ Thaniel said. ‘If I’d known you worked here, I would have said something yesterday.’

  ‘I�
��m not really here,’ Fanshaw stage-whispered. ‘I’m a Foreign Office minion, I’m scrounging people.’ He gave Thaniel an intrigued look. ‘I’m surprised we haven’t recruited you already, with your oriental experience.’

  ‘My what?’

  ‘Croft! Croft, I’m stealing this one. Last one, I promise.’

  ‘I don’t know why the Home Office must fall prey to the Foreign Office’s parties,’ the senior clerk said waspishly.

  ‘Any particular reason for the skates?’

  ‘Conservation of motion.’

  Fanshaw grinned. ‘You’ll have him back by next Friday, don’t worry. This way, Mr … ’

  ‘Steepleton.’ He had to hurry to keep up. Fanshaw walked quickly. Soon they were on the ground floor again, in the long, ornate gallery that connected the Home and Foreign Offices. A full-length portrait of the Queen hung on the wall above the staircase, which creaked with stately echoes. Mahogany. ‘I’m sorry, sir, I don’t know what’s going on—’

  ‘What’s going on is that the Foreign Office is having a ball,’ Fanshaw said, ‘and Foreign Office balls come with a Himalayan range of administration. It’s vital that various ambassadors come, but that they each speak to so-and-so or such-and-such at a particular time, and no, they can’t sit with the Indians, and what, we haven’t got green tea, and is Italy coming, because if so, Hungary isn’t – you understand the gist.’ He shot an arch look at the Queen. ‘And that of course takes priority over whatever coup might be developing in China, or whether Kiyotaka Kuroda wants to invade Korea again. The diplomatic negotiations surrounding the ball inevitably leech staff away from areas considered less key. If we don’t have British citizens in the country, no one cares. That of course is a stupid view, so I’m drafting people in from other departments. No one here speaks Japanese, and we need someone other than me on the desk.’

  ‘But I don’t speak—’

  ‘Yes, but you’ll know what it sounds like, which is a start, and you’re in a position at home to learn quickly,’ Fanshaw said, turning sharply left into what could have been a war-room. The walls were covered entirely with maps, and six or seven men worked at desks lined up as they would have been at school. Stacks of books stood everywhere, and somebody had even made a serviceable ottoman from one, on which now stood a tray of tea-making equipment. One of the men was on the telephone to what sounded like a journalist. Fanshaw motioned Thaniel to the spare desk in the corner. ‘Japan there. I’ll be around, of course, and when you aren’t busy, you’ll be doing the usual. Telegraphy, accounts, and so forth.’

  ‘Hold on, learn quickly? You said I’d be back at the HO by Friday.’

  ‘I lied, obviously.’

  ‘What? I don’t know what you do here.’

  Fanshaw waved his hand. ‘Sit down. Mostly you’ll be talking to the chaps who own the Knightsbridge village, but there are other Japanese scattered about London, and since there aren’t enough of them to open an embassy, they come straight to us if they get stuck. The ambassador – that’s Arinori, he isn’t here today but mind out for him or he’ll have you signed up for foreign service by Tuesday – keeps office hours here three days a week. You’ll help with lost papers, advice about housing, language – anything, really, that people might have difficulty with. That stack of paper there is requests filed in the last week. Work through those you can, and hand on to me those you can’t. Johnson here will explain how to fill out any forms and suchlike.’

  The man he had motioned to, Johnson, looked up and noticed Thaniel for the first time. He smiled the brief smile of a busy person. ‘Morning.’

  ‘Johnson, this is Mr Steepleton, I’ve stolen him from the HO telegraphy boys.’

  ‘Oh, thank God,’ he said, throwing down his codebook and motioning to Thaniel to come over. ‘Here, send this for me. I’m talking to Shanghai, but it’s taking an age, and Fanshaw’s stolen our telegraphy chap for the fellows dealing with America. See you, Francis,’ he added.

  Fanshaw had gone. Thaniel sighed and sat down at the telegraph, automatically sideways, and drew out the transcript paper gently. This telegraph was a far superior machine to the battered ones in the Home Office; it was running faster and more smoothly, and he could hear from the precise clicking of the mechanisms that the paper was not going to screw itself up after three and a half inches. He held it from habit anyway. The message was a request for a form that confirmed Britain knew about a Mr Feversham’s lost passport, and would let him through the gate at Dover.

  Once he had sent a message back via the operator at the main exchange, he wound the transcript spindle tighter to keep it from rattling as it had done before. He was clicking the machine closed again when he became aware that Johnson was watching him.

  ‘I don’t suppose you could do this one for me too?’ the man asked meekly. ‘I’d soldier on myself, but our last chap wasn’t half as quick as that and it won’t take a minute at the rate you go. Can you hear the code?’

  ‘Yes. You start to after a while.’

  ‘Is that so? That’s remarkable.’

  ‘It’s not difficult.’

  ‘Oh, yes, and I’m sure pure mathematics isn’t so difficult once one gets the hang of it,’ Johnson laughed. ‘Anyway, glad to have you with us. Nice break from the norm to have a working chap who knows what he’s doing, rather than some duffer fresh out of Eton and killing time till Pater gets him an embassy post.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ Thaniel said, shaking his head once. He quite liked boarding-school men; there were plenty of them around Whitehall, and though they were a different species to everybody else they spent a good deal of time good-naturedly pretending not to be. He glanced up when Johnson did not dictate anything and saw that the other clerks were all exchanging significant smiles over his head, although he didn’t understand exactly what the signification was. ‘Ready?’

  ‘Um – yes. Yes. So: hello Henry, stop. I have a new fellow on the telegraph now, stop—’

  ‘You can just talk,’ Thaniel said to the key.

  ‘Really? I thought it had to be specially phrased … you know?’

  ‘I’ll do it for you, we’ll go quicker.’

  ‘Oh. Splendid. Gosh, you know your work, don’t you?’

  ‘There are monkeys that know it. Telegraph, stop … ’

  After that, Johnson was off. Not infrequently, he stopped his dictation so that he could explain what he was talking about, and the others chipped in. They seemed pleased to have somebody to show off to, and Thaniel listened and remembered everything, because he had never heard of any of it. The message to Shanghai was a reply to diplomatic dispatches, and therefore long; there were Chinese customs scams to address, and a strange cult in the east, and the problem of British botanists sneaking into forbidden regions in order to collect tea samples. After the Shanghai message, the dispatches from Tokyo ticked through, only half intelligible because the minister there spoke in a mad English-Japanese pidgin full of gozaimases and shimases that Thaniel had half-heard at the show village the day before, but whose meaning he couldn’t tell. After a while, Johnson wrote out a list of them.

  Despite their enthusiasm, the others seemed oddly wary of him, and he was not invited to wherever they went for lunch. He didn’t mind. The quiet was a chance to catch up with himself. He sat alone at the Japan desk and learned the list of words. The more he looked at them, the more remarkable it seemed that Mori managed to speak with no accent. He was still reading when his eye caught on the filing cabinet opposite him. It was marked ‘Japanese Aliens’.

  He stood slowly and opened the drawer for N–R, which was dominated by Nakanos and Nakamuras. There were only two people whose name was Mori. Keita was the second. Inside the thin file were copies of immigration forms. The forms were a sort of printed certificate divided into columns, where the information was written by hand and signed by the Customs Officer of, in this case, Portsmouth. He read through the details.

  Name: Baron Mori, Keita b. June 14, 1845

  Countr
y of citizenship: Japan

  Country of embarkation: Japan

  Occupation: Governmental aide to Mr H. Ito, Minister of the Interior

  Certificate date: January 12, 1883.

  There was nothing else except a letter of reference from Mr Ito that acted as proof of identity. It was sealed with something official-looking in Japanese, and the paper had the crest of the Emperor at the top. Thaniel let the file tilt down on to the top edge of the cabinet. Mori had mentioned his cousin was lord of somewhere. It should not have been a surprise to learn his name began with ‘baron’, but the thought had never occurred. With his heart tightening, he read the letter and certificates again and realised he had to let Williamson know, before the police tried to arrest a nobleman for having diamonds.

  The telegraph clicked.

  Scotland Yard c/o Foreign Office …

  The Home Office machines printed code only in pencil lead, but this one produced text in a pretty, flowing script like handwriting. Soon the first message was followed by a second, and a third. The main exchange must have collected everything for the Yard and sent it on all at once, like ordinary post.

  To A Williamson I had the watch examined by Spindle as you asked and—

  He tore out the transcript paper and sat with the reel clamped between his hands while the rest of the message played out. The telegraph carried on printing letters straight on to the paper roller, which, being small, soon developed three or four layers of illegible palimpsest before the ink ran together and turned it black. As if the message were completely unremarkable, the next message followed it, and the next. He took them down by hand. Once they had stopped, he unclipped the roller and rolled it over a spare sheet of paper to clean off the ink. He clipped it back on. Having put the transcript reel back in too, he sat still with his hands pressed together between his knees, looking at the ink smudges on the piece of paper in front of him.

  ‘Everything all right?’ Fanshaw had arrived silently. ‘Your face is rather dark.’