Gears of Brass

by Jordan Elizabeth

  “No.”

  “So how will you see to it?”

  I looked away. The walls of the archive room seemed to press down on me.

  “I could help,” Anthie said. “Why didn’t you tell me before? I’ll come with you, of course.”

  “We can’t possibly both go—”

  “You can’t do something like that on your own, Elisabeth. There must be a way.”

  Anthie’s words hung in the air. I wanted to deny the possibilities, but the words seemed to stick in my throat and I found myself speaking their opposite. “I’ve got to run some projector transparencies over to the Leonard Mahn building. I suppose we could think of a reason for you to come too. So that you’ll know the way, and the people to see for next time, when you can go alone. Yes. That could work.”

  “And walkway crowds hold us up on the way back? Street-snatchers?”

  I sighed. “I’m making a liar of you. And your first day not even half done.”

  Anthie smiled enigmatically for all the world as if we were planning an adventure. It’s ironic now to think how protective and responsible I felt for her.

  Two o’clock. My agitation had calmed a little. There were two of us to finish the outstanding duties, two of us to face down the likes of Gretta and Gaynor, and even the Personnel Officers, if any more appeared. So now the task before us was both sweet and sour.

  The Leonard Mahn building is a trudge across to Bloomsbury Square, then a cut through Bury Place. There’s a different atmosphere down there; it’s full of pewter and smoked glass, the smell of new timber and new carpets. It always makes me feel faster, more modern and efficient, and I enjoy that change of pace occasionally.

  Anthie put on her wool cape, I put on my coat and we took to the walkway, clutching a set of transparencies each and grinning at each other.

  “Down there,” I told her as we jostled through the crowds over Theobald’s Road. “Those are the famous reading rooms.”

  We pressed on for another ten minutes, but it was hopeless. We would have to go down to street level to make faster time. Anthie made an exaggerated wide berth for a rough-looking man, who muttered, “Don’t give yourself so much credit, girl,” but she seemed lighter altogether now, and we fairly bowled down Bloomsbury Way. Autumn leaves blew around our feet, rolling out ahead of us as if we were charmed.

  Anthie didn’t seem ready for the steam cleaner. I had to warn her to jump to a standing platform. “Pavements are steamed-cleaned on the half hour in this borough,” I said. It occurred to me then that I had no idea where she lived. “How about where you live?”

  “Not more than three times a day out near Clapham Common,” she said lightly. Something in the carefully casual way she’d answered made me wonder: was she one of those caravan people? I’d often thought how thrilling it would be to live in one of those vast caravans high above the ground, slowly moving as the gears and cogs on the clockwork mechanism gradually wind down. Encased in iron, you’d be impenetrable.

  “Here we are.”

  Anthie looked up at the glass and steel building in front of us. “This is the Leonard Mahn building?”

  “This is it.”

  We made the journey through the dramatic granite arch and onto the glass walkway under which flowed an offshoot of the Thames with tree-lined, manicured banks. Anthie smiled at the sight of it all, awed. Just seeing her face diminished some of my dread of three o’clock, but time was short. “Another day, Anthie,” I said, “we can take our time. But today…”

  She nodded and we picked up speed again, leaving the transparencies at the mirrored reception desk with the usual girl and scurrying away to the south.

  Two-fifty. We climbed the stairs to my rooms with softer steps. Time had been kind. And inside, my father. Anthie tried to keep her face neutral when she saw him. Perhaps this was the first time for her. Street people are quickly covered, and my father’s barrel-chest must have looked quite frightening.

  “I think I’ll light the lamp,” I said, fumbling with the mantle. “It’s such an overcast day…”

  Anthie placed a light hand on my arm and took the spirit lamp out of my hands. I watched her light it. She didn’t look at my father, but of course, that was all she looked at. My father. I wanted to tell her that the expression on his face was not even one he ever wore.

  Two fifty-eight. Heavy footsteps on the stairs and a knock at the door, and the time was over. They looked like undertakers should: stooped shoulders and three solemn, jowly, old faces. There was an iciness to their courtesy as if something ran beneath it, as if everything was staged and their spotless black and white suits were costumes. When they finally lifted him from the bed and took him from me in one perfectly coordinated movement, I found I was gripping the edge of the table hard, and that was the only thing keeping me from heaving my stomach out.

  Anthie put a hand on each of my shoulders and guided me to the chair. “He would be so proud of you.”

  In that week between my father’s death and his cremation, Anthie was my comfort. Twice, she accompanied me home after work. She helped me straighten out the parlour and move my father’s bed. On our breaks, she made me laugh, referring to Dr. Holmgren as “that goat” and made sure I was never alone for longer than half an hour. So when Gretta caught me in the post room and started making scurrilous remarks about Anthie, a chill settled next to my heart.

  “There’s some trouble around her,” Gretta insisted.

  I shook my head.

  Gretta folded her arms. “Trouble,” she repeated, “definitely. One of her friends is black, according to Saira.”

  I didn’t let her see my surprise and intrigue. Married to an engineer herself, it wouldn’t be long before Gretta shook off the institute and climbed almost parallel ladders. “Well, these days anything goes. I saw a black woman working as a messenger a few weeks ago.”

  Gretta looked incredulous for a moment, then shook her head, her expression sour again. “What’s she doing here if she’s got friends in such high places?”

  “One black friend isn’t enough to get you into the nobility,” I said. “Anyway, she’s sharp as a pin and willing as anything. She’ll do fine.”

  “Willing in the wrong way if you ask me.”

  This chilled me to the marrow. I didn’t believe a word, but my stomach churned for the rest of the day.

  Not half an hour later, I found Anthie asleep in the archive room, curled up on the floor with her head in the crook of her elbow. There were footsteps outside, not far away, and voices too. Quickly, I woke her and bundled her to her feet, then hurried her along the corridor. The footsteps turned out to be a pair of chattering teenage messengers. Side-stepping them, I took her to the simulacrum room and got her started on some routine tasks in case anyone disturbed us.

  “Get on with the memos,” I told her. “Then take Dr. Holmgren his coffee and warm his greatcoat by the boiler. He’s out at twelve-fifteen. What if someone else had found you? What if the Personnel Officers go on the rampage again?”

  “Those insects? I’m too fast for them.” Anthie had lifted the sluice-gate on the ether-shuttle, slotted the first memo into the tube, and pressed it home, but the blundering movements of sleep clung about her, and I didn’t hear the suction take hold.

  “Anthie, are you sure that message went? What’s the matter with you? Why are you so tired?”

  She stopped what she was doing and looked at me. “Elisabeth, when I told you I was heading out of this type of work, I wasn’t exactly truthful. I am heading out, but not into editing. I’m going to be a chef.”

  Automatically, my mouth widened into a smile. “Anthie! If you were rich enough for that, you wouldn’t be here.”

  “I’m not rich,” she said, her voice quiet and serious. “And I’ve made a start. More than a start—I’ve mastered the tourtiere and clafoutis already.”

  There was a silence while I digested this.

  “But however did you get the ingredients?”

  S
he looked at me, eyes as dark as the peat on the heath, and I could see her searching my heart. “I have a meat supplier.”

  I think I must have held my breath for a moment. I hope I didn’t gape at her, but it felt like the world was spinning away from me like it does in a dream. Or a nightmare. “But how can you be sure it’s safe meat? And what do you use to cook with?”

  “I have a meat oven.”

  I didn’t speak. Only the hum of the magnets on the ether-shuttle made a sound.

  “And the meat is safe.” She fixed me with a steady stare. “It’s safe.”

  “If you’re caught…” I didn’t need to spell it out. Only trained people are allowed to cook meat. Licences cost thousands of pounds. I was horrified, of course, but there was something spellbinding about a person who just didn’t care about the penalties, or the food-borne pathogen that had brought about our strict laws. Food-borne pathogen. That phrase we’d all grown up with, learned inside-out, and which instilled a fear of food so severe that malnutrition was common. Was common. Things were changing. Could there be more like Anthie?

  “I won’t be caught. I was up all last night, then on the way in to work I was struck by a cloudburst. It numbed me through, that’s why I fell asleep. Normally I’m as bright as anything on two hours a night. The coffee keeps me going.”

  “How do you afford enough of that to stay awake?”

  “It’s worth it. Especially if I get into The Alexandra.”

  Of course, it happened again. I filled my waking hours with speculation and questions about Anthie and her tall tales. Did she fall asleep in her last job? Perhaps she’d made mistakes due to lack of sleep. She looked less tired since confiding in me as if relieved of a burden, and I felt duty bound to help her as much as I could.

  These things happen in stages. By the end of the week, I’d become Anthie’s accomplice. I kept watch for her when she needed to sleep. We moved a row of files and made space on a bottom shelf in the archive room. We stacked boxes in front of the makeshift bed to buy time, and surprisingly, it worked for the most part. There was one terrifying near-disaster when I opened the door to check on Anthie only to encounter Boris wheeling out a voice projector. Heart thundering in my chest, I breezed past him with a half-grin on my face. Later, back in the main office, he held out his hands to me and shrugged as if he had something to give to me if only I would take it. That gesture haunts me still.

  There were compensations. She was animated and entertaining, passionate about her ambitions and full of details about spending the night working butter into flour and pulverising almonds into powder for some mysterious paste. I heard about remoulade and daube of beef. She talked of dishes made of foodstuffs I could never even have named and things I knew a little of, like lemon soufflé.

  But still she refused to tell me where her illicit apprenticeship took place. I had the feeling she was protecting me. And yes, she smelled of food. Her clothes were permeated with meat vapours. I was so afraid somebody would guess.

  Three more days passed, and then came the day I think of as the last. From Dr. Holmgren’s window there’s a fine view of the skyrail network as it skims the yellowing plane trees, and on this particular afternoon, Anthie seemed besotted with it. I had to nudge her before Dr. Holmgren noticed her idling. We were preparing a presentation for him, and it took all my wits just to keep her attention where it needed to be.

  “If you stack the transparencies in order, I’ll load the stereopticon,” I said. “But be careful of the mini-copier, parts fall off it. You have to slot them back in each time.”

  Anthie started the task, but seemed more interested in watching Dr. Holmgren converting his rat brain samples into slides with his expansion machine. I might have guessed that would be a magnet to her. I’ve never been sure how those things work. I only know it involves a mirror with a bevelled edge, some shiny copper paper, and a phial of quicksilver. Anthie watched the lissom liquid slip inside the carrying tube. I could see her inhaling the smell of the lubricating oil. So could Dr. Holmgren. From time to time he looked across at us through his reinforced goggles. They gave him the appearance of a baby owl, which was at odds with his general nastiness. I knew he was taking everything in. And I knew he had a special eye on Anthie.

  Dr. Holmgren took his slides and transparencies to his meeting upstairs and left us to tidy up. I never did see what Anthie took from that room. Piecing the jigsaw together, I can only assume that it was Dr. Holmgren’s seal. Her sleight of hand must have been beyond perfection, because all I had was a vague sense of misgiving. I felt that she loitered, took risks with her irreverence, and this may have been the disguise with which she covered her deed.

  “Hurry, Anthie, don’t drag that out,” I said.

  “Surely he isn’t likely to return just yet?”

  I glanced at the dark gray bulk of Dr. Holmgren’s greatcoat on the stand in the corner and his hat above it, for all the world like another sentinel version of him, and almost as threatening. She saw my glance and skipped over there, put on his hat and danced around the room.

  “Anthie! Work-pace. Keep-up. We’ll mess up the timing on our outing if we’re not careful.”

  Another outside errand was due, and although I wanted her with me, I was too tired to be enthusiastic. I’d grown weary of tasks left over from yesterday, and those still to be heaped on top of them.

  In the end, Dr. Holmgren thwarted all our plans. He came down partway through his meeting and gave us fresh orders.

  “Miss Janz, you will accompany me upstairs and assist with my presentation. Miss Bell, please continue to Collier Street with this file. Dr. Reese is waiting.”

  There was nothing to be said. There wasn’t even time for me to communicate with Anthie; no time for a single word, not even a glance.

  I loathe being sent to Collier Street for the master there is creepy and frightening. Dr. Holmgren said time was short, so I nipped through Coram’s Fields. Most people steer clear of it, but I find it romantic and atmospheric and free from street-snatchers. It’s often misty; I don’t know why. The fields are six square miles and quite wild in places. At one time, my father told me, they were much smaller and held a foundling hospital, but since the meat scare, they’ve been extended to contain the gypsies.

  The gypsies don’t bother you if you don’t bother them. I like the smells from their fires. Roasting meat, burnt fat—all the smells we’ve lost. A low breeze stirred the fallen leaves and chilled my ankles. I thought about Anthie and her meat supplier. Could it be a gypsy? Nobody else—at least, nobody of ordinary means—has been able to get hold of meat since the butchers went out of business after the outbreak. I remember a time when we could. I remember sinking my teeth into a meat and potato pie back in the old house on the heath, back when we had a little house rather than just rooms. I must have been about six. My father told me there were once things called cafes where ordinary people could sit and eat and be waited on by other ordinary people, not by demi-gods.

  “Where have you been? I needed that report by noon!” Dr. Reese, virtually bald and always in a grubby white overall, had yanked the door open while I was still knocking.

  “I came as soon as Dr. Holmgren gave it to me—”

  “Wait here.”

  He shuffled into the vestibule and lifted a box from a desk top. The laboratories were very close, just behind a side door. A monkey screamed and I flinched. There was a rasping sound, and a rank smell, and when he handed the box to me I held my breath.

  “Can I rely on you to ensure that Professor Dodd receives these by hand? That you will not leave them with his secretary? That if he is absent, you will wait and secure them close to your person and deliver them to him upon his return? There are important plant samples inside.”

  I’d nodded throughout his rant and now I swallowed and took a deep breath. “Of course.”

  Coram’s Fields again. It was almost dusk and the atmosphere was very different, especially now that I carried a heavy box. The pla
nts rested deep inside it. Gazing in, I could only make out their tips; oily, pungent minty smells rose from them as I trudged along the center path. Those plants slowed me down, but I wasn’t to know the nature of the moment they kept me from. Not until I’d delivered the box to Professor Dodd and made my way back to our department to find Anthie gone.

  The department was in an uproar and full of suspicious eyes. There were whispers everywhere I went. When Anthie still hadn’t returned two days before my father’s cremation, I started to worry. What if she never came back? Was she, as I’d supposed, a caravan person? Had she now rolled away to some romantic new life?

  I tried to make sense of it. Nobody is allowed to cook meat without a licence, and licences are only granted to the few after a rigorous and expensive apprenticeship. Meat cooking is vital in the fancy food halls where the money is, and that was what Anthie was aiming for. Was there a chance that she’d forged her way in? Could she have taken Dr. Holmgren’s seal, bearing his unique crest, used it to stamp and seal a letter of recommendation, then returned it? All under my nose?

  It’s the night before they’re due to cremate my father with a batch of other dead Londoners, and she still hasn’t returned. I’m going to look for her. Am I deluded? Hadn’t there been an understanding between us, that Anthie might help me, too, once she’s established? Anthie is surely a reformer. It’s six-thirty and I’ve managed to complete all my tasks, despite all the bad feeling around me. I step out into light rain. The roads and pavements are slick and the air is dense with silvery light, and I’m going to The Alexandra come what may. That’s where I think she’s gone. Why else would she have mentioned it by name?

  Street level is the fastest way, so I stick to the pavements for as long as possible. At the outer edge of Belgravia I take the walkway—the only way into Kensington. The interconnected bridges between buildings are heavily policed and cleaned, so that they don’t become a mirror of the streets below. They are narrow, and I’m feeling conspicuous, despite what I had to do to even enter the opulent borough of Kensington. I took off my uniform in the washroom at work and shuffled into my mother’s wedding suit. It’s cream cambric, and it’s the smartest outfit I own. They say you must have the right residency papers to get past the guards. If you’re turned away, they have the power to handcuff you until a police officer comes to issue a caution, but I know from rumour that it’s more severe than that. I’ve copied Anthie. I haven’t got residency papers, but I’ve used Dr. Holmgren’s stamp and typed myself an invitation to a fictitious address.