Swiftly: A Novel (GollanczF.)

by Adam Roberts

  Eleanor breathed more deeply. She was free on these walks. It was a feeling inexpressibly fine and elating, as if she had escaped from her cage. It was something about the lower orders, their lack of restraint; or else it was the privileging of her position as observer - the scientist’s superior vantage-point, examining animalculae through the optic glass. She saw ugliness in the vulgarity of these people, and yet it made her heart dance in her breast. The sky plum-black, the stars shrinking like sphincter muscles of light puckered up in fright. The streets like gashes cut in the fabric of house and business and prison that constituted the city. The moon surveilling every illicit step.

  She crept through the streets, moving from doorway to doorway, alive and excited with the fright - although she could not have said what frightened her, exactly. The dark, perhaps. The city itself. At Blackfriars Bridge she stood and stared at the lights of Borough, over the river. She would have gone over there, but she could not afford the toll. It was pennies, but she could not afford it. Instead she looked down upon the black rushing slick of the Thames. Its ceaselessness. Apart from the half-moon, the lantern from the tollbooth was the only light reflected in the dark water. The river could have been ink flowing. The lanternlight showed the miniature ripples, like tiny dunes in the fluid.

  The day of the wedding approached.

  Burton took Eleanor and her mother around his manufactory. It was located down a street running from the Strand down to the river, a teetering old wooden building, its back parts were actually over the water, supported on wooden pillars that had been carved by the Thames’s flow and painted green with algae. Burton’s own office was spacious and well furnished, the walls hung with heavy cloth. It was situated at the rear of the place, with a south prospect. His door opened onto a little platform overlooking the body of the manufactory, from which a stair ran down to the desks and boxes, the machines and tanks. Burton’s assistant, Mr Pannell, had a smaller and dingier office on the opposite side of the building. His windows gave out over nothing more than the grimy brickwork of Villiers Street.

  What struck Mamma the most was the low manners of Pannell, who bowed and scraped in a positively oriental manner, flattering both women implausibly and leaning too close. After Burton had led them away and taken them amongst the machines, Mamma kept dropping sotto voce disparaging comments. ‘You’d think Mr Burton would employ a better class of worker,’ she hissed. ‘A most unpleasant fellow.’

  ‘Hush, Mamma.’

  ‘Did you see the look he gave me?’

  ‘Hush now! Mr Burton will hear!’

  ‘He’s no Englishman, that fellow,’ said Mamma, more to herself than Eleanor. ‘I’d wager a guinea he’s not.’

  But Eleanor was fascinated not by the machinery, nor by the evidences of Burton’s wealth. She was fascinated by the little people themselves. They were arrayed in a variety of cubbyholes and boxes, working at all manner of miniature tasks. Many were confined, but some seemed to have the run of tabletops or open spaces.

  Eleanor had seen such little folk before, though not very often. Some of the people in her circle of acquaintance owned them as pets, but they were expensive pets, and only the very wealthy could afford them - the wealthy, or those (like Burton) who required the specialist skills the Lilliputians brought with them. Eleanor had never examined one properly, had never been able to pin one down and bring an enlarging glass over it and have a proper look. She resolved that, after she was married, she would have Burton give her one of the little people as her own, her pet. She began to think of experiments she might undertake upon the creature.

  Burton was saying something. She forced herself to pay attention. ‘Highly specialised,’ he said. ‘Their hands are so small and dextrous that they can undertake very fine work indeed. The flying machines would be quite impossible to manufacture without them.’

  ‘Oh those machines,’ shrieked Mamma, without thinking. ‘Vulgar things. Buzzing up and down the streets, like busy bees. Vulgar and horrid.’

  ‘But,’ said Burton, ‘important, my dear Mrs Davis. Important and valuable.’ There was the faintest shadow of rebuke in his tone. For the first time Eleanor caught a glimpse of some part of the man not entirely despicable. She turned to him and smiled - and the manliness wilted and evaporated before the heat of even that small sign of approbation.

  ‘That is to say,’ he stammered, ‘not . . . to be rude. I’m sure you’re right, Mrs Davis. Vulgar and low. Not for the . . . genteel.’

  Eleanor’s heart sank again. ‘This,’ she said, to cut off his abysmal gush rather than because she possessed any actual interest in the device. ‘What does this do?’

  ‘It ’s a fascinating object, Miss, eh, Eleanor,’ he said. ‘These machines wind up, like watches, you know. The springs - four of them - provide the motile power. It is only possible to make them of a small size, you know; larger and the devices become disproportionately heavy. It’s the square-cube law, you know.’

  ‘I know the square-cube law,’ she said, severely.

  At this Burton smiled, and Eleanor realised that he considered this mutual knowledge of essential scientific principles to be a sort of bond between them. She might have shuddered with disgust, but she had more control over her body than that.

  Later that day it occurred to her that this belief of Burton’s that there was a special connection between the two of them made the prospect of the marriage less tolerable than otherwise. When her mother had first persuaded her to accept the man, pressing the many benefits financial security would bring to their lives, Eleanor had thought of Burton as distant, as a theoretical husband rather than an actual mate with saggy flesh, with hair growing on the backs of his hands like mildew and smut. An actual man with the odour of perspiration always about him. She had considered him as a theorem, a mathematical abstraction (so many minutes together at breakfast, so many together at supper, a total of so many hours in his company each week). The marriage seemed almost bearable on such terms. But now she had a horrible premonition that Burton would expect the two of them to share all manner of intimacies. That he regarded the transaction not in the light of a mutually advantageous business deal, but rather as the coming-together of soulmates.

  That night, in her bed, she could not sleep. A sensation akin to panic kept her awake. Was she consenting to being truly buried alive? As she half-slept, the very cloth covers on her bed seemed to assume prodigious dimensions, pressing down upon her like the weight of cold soil. She felt, with that bizarre sensation of corporeal dislocation that sometimes creeps over us when we are half asleep and only half in touch with our bodies - she felt as if her limbs were thickening and elongating, as if her head were swelling like a vitreous globe puffed out by a glassblower. The sensations were so unsettling, as if she were being transformed into one of the gigantic Pacificans, that she twitched herself into movement to dissipate it. But this brought its own difficulties. She grew hopelessly fidgety. She turned on her left side and turned on her right side and turned to her left side, wishing that she had some third side onto which she could turn, some comfortable and restful side on which she could settle. There was a ticklish warmth in her lap - low down, in her lap, where her waste waters were voided, the necessary process of kidney, bladder, and expulsion. It was not the sensation of a need to pass water, though. This was something else. It was a sensation that sometimes came upon her, an incommoding thing. She lay on her back and separated her legs a little, and using the flat of her four fingers pressed together, she smacked it, as if it were a naughty child. The buzz caught and faded.

  Sleep.

  [4]

  Thoughts of the wedding merely depressed Eleanor; but her mother became more actively anxious, convinced that some disaster would intervene to wreck it. ‘The consummation,’ she said, one morning, ‘is so near. So near! We must make sure nothing destroys all our hopes, at this late stage.’

  ‘What can go wrong, Mother?’ said Eleanor, sourly, resenting the way in which her mother was dra
wing her in to the role of co-conspirator.

  Mamma could not be definite; yet her fears grew as the date agreed on approached. ‘What if he should withdraw from the arrangement?’ she fretted.

  ‘Then he would breach his contract, Mamma.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Mamma, as if hoarding the fact to herself. ‘That’s true. He’d not dare breach his contract with you.’

  And yet, at a meeting of the Fitzroy Society, something occurred to screw Mamma’s anxiety up to an extreme pitch. The lecture had been upon ‘Interplantetary and Vacuum Travel by Means of Artillery Propulsion’, the talker a religious man from Yorkshire who insisted that it would be possible to project a chamber into interplanetary space by means of a large cannon.

  Burton, wearing yet another new coat and hat, accompanied Mrs Davis and Eleanor, sitting uncomfortably all through the talk. Afterwards drinks were available, wine for those who desired alcohol, Vichy water for those who preferred sobriety, in the adjoining room. This was the usual pattern for the Society’s weekly talks. Burton seemed in a good mood, and had chattered out his opinion of the science of the proposal (which he regarded as fanciful) with hardly a stammer. Mamma, clutching her glass of wine, nodded and cooed at every one of his words.

  Eleanor, her smile locked in place, was looking about the room, and so noticed a newcomer amongst the usual society members: a tall and handsome man with an air of greater breeding than many of the attendants. He looked up and caught Eleanor’s eye, and instead of nodding and averting his gaze he looked at her - practically stared at her - with a sly smile on his face. Eleanor looked away, a little startled, but when she looked back the fellow was making his way across the room towards them.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said, drawing himself up before Mamma and bowing. ‘I apologise for intruding.’ His words betrayed a slight Continental accent.

  All three turned to look at him.

  The stranger said: ‘I believe I knew your late husband, Madam.’ He was smiling. A well-made man of middle years, his blocky face made all of flat planes like a carpenter’s model; pale yellow hair and skin of a uniform pinkness all over from his chin and forehead to his eyelids and lips. Handsomely made, in a conventional manner, except for his eyes, which were much more than handsome. They were amazingly blue eyes, as blue as the spurt of a lighted match. To notice them was to find oneself drawn to them.

  Mamma turned. ‘You knew him, sir?’

  ‘A fine man, Madam. A great loss.’

  Burton squared up to the man. ‘What’s that? You knew Mrs Davis’s husband ?’

  ‘Davis?’ said the stranger, a twitch of puzzlement about his eyelids. ‘Ah, I understand, you have changed the name.’

  Mamma sucked a breath in with a little panicky noise.

  ‘Changed the name?’ queried Burton.

  ‘From Davidowic,’ explained the stranger, smiling again and pronouncing the ‘David’ in the French style and drawing out the remaining syllables of the name, ‘Da-vede-of-each’.

  ‘And who are you, sir ?’ blurted Mamma, in a more forceful and higher-pitched voice than perhaps she intended to use.

  ‘I beg your pardon, Madam. I am Count Baron Idigon von Leloffel.’ He tipped his head smartly in salute. ‘I admired your husband very greatly.’

  ‘Your husband was a Hebrew?’ asked Burton, a slightly pinched expression on his face.

  The Count noted Burton’s expression, and smiled more weakly. ‘But perhaps Madam you were wise to change the surname. There is, I think, some prejudice amongst many English people against...’

  ‘I am no Jewess,’ shrilled Mamma. ‘Please understand the circumstance.’

  ‘Mother,’ said Eleanor sharply. ‘You embarrass me. You embarrass yourself.’

  ‘Nor is my daughter,’ added Mamma, her voice becoming louder by degrees. ‘Jews inherit through the female line, and I am no Jewess.’

  ‘I beg your pardon most sincerely,’ said Von Leloffel, bowing his head again. ‘Sincerely, I did not wish to cause offence.’

  ‘There is no offence,’ said Eleanor hurriedly. ‘I believe there to be no shame in a Jewish ancestry. Rather, surely, it is something of which to be proud. Many great men of science and philosophy have sprung from that race.’

  ‘Eleanor!’ cried Mamma.

  ‘I agree with you completely,’ smiled the foreigner, tipping his head one further time. ‘Your father was not least amongst them.’

  ‘We are communicants at the Anglican Church of Saint Giles,’ said Mamma, piercingly.

  ‘Please excuse me,’ said Eleanor, as smoothly as she could. She gripped her mother by the cheese-soft upper part of her arm and pulled her away. A few yards off her mother wriggled free, like a disobedient child. ‘This could bring ruin on us!’ she hissed. ‘Burton will desert you!’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Eleanor said, although she felt a little bubble of hope float up through her body. What if Burton were indeed one of those who hated the Semitic peoples? He might break off the arrangement. And then (her thoughts leaping ahead of her) they might be able to extract some money from him - the threat of a court action for breach of promise would be enough, surely. Perhaps a sizeable sum. They could get at his money without her having to actually marry him. Perhaps—

  But Burton had stepped over to join them. ‘Mrs Davis?’ he said. ‘Eleanor ?’

  ‘Mr Burton,’ said Mamma, hurriedly. ‘Please understand that . . .’

  ‘It ’s quite alright, Madam,’ said Burton, a little stiffly but with a certain dignity too. ‘I assure you it makes no difference to me - no difference at all to the deep love I feel for your daughter - whether there be any Jewish blood in the family or not.’

  Eleanor smiled as her castle-in-the-air collapsed.

  It took a moment for Burton’s words to penetrate Mamma’s carapace of anxiety. She almost sagged with relief. ‘Sir,’ she said, ‘you are kind, sir. Kind.’

  ‘Not at all, Madam. I’ll confess that I was a little startled. But I had not known your husband to be the celebrated Davidowic.’

  ‘You have heard of my departed husband?’

  ‘Indeed, Madam. Some call him a mere gunsmith, but in my eyes he was nothing less than an artillery scientist. One of the greatest. The grand cannon he forged for the Prussian king ...’ Burton expressed his admiration for this notable triumph with a wordless shake of his head.

  ‘This was before our marriage,’ said Mamma. ‘Before he came to this country, though he told me of it.’ Her relief was manifesting itself in an incontinent stream of words. ‘He often told me of those great guns, la!, as if a lady would take interest in such a thing! But I understand that he was greatly esteemed by the crown prince of Germany, of Prussia I mean to say, and royalty is royalty after all, though it be foreign royalty.’

  Burton bowed, awkwardly.

  ‘My family,’ Mamma rushed on, as if Burton has not heard this narrative twenty times before, ‘are of the oldest English stock, however. Domesday Book, they are mentioned thrice in the Domesday Book. The Mintos of Shropshire. My cousin thrice removed is Lord Minto, you know.’

  Eleanor excused herself. She made her way through to the rest room, fitted with one of the new-model water-closets, and relieved herself of some of the wine and Vichy water she had drunk. The suddenness and the intensity of the hope she had experienced at her mother’s absurd fears - the almost visceral hope that Burton would disappear from her life leaving behind only a satchel of money as fat as his belly - now dejected her. These spurts of potent feeling seemed to rush upon her, out of nothing, and to consume her whole body in an instant, like a taper gobbled by flame. They departed as quickly, leaving her shuddery. Why did it happen this way? One day, she feared, the rush of emotion would overcome her. She would shout out. Or do something worse.

  It disturbed her.

  Returning to the main room, she was again intercepted by Count Baron Idigon von Leloffel. His face wore a strange, unreadable smile. ‘Miss Davis,’ he said, bowing and - wit
h Continental floridness - kissing her hand.

  ‘Count,’ she returned.

  ‘I trust I did not incommode your . . . situation?’ he said, the sly smile giving the words a brimstony, dangerous aspect.

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘It was not my intention. You are affianced to the gentleman?’

  ‘I am.’z

  Von Leloffel’s smile widened.

  ‘Pray why do you smile, sir?’ she asked, trying for a severity of face but barely able to prevent a smile coming to her own face. How handsome this German Count was!