He watched her as she worked, and she soon forgot he was there, she was lost in bringing out the light in Pepys’ eyes as his first taste of tea hit home, his questing curiosity, his wonder (his wrinkled nosed disgust!)—and she was happy, and she even began to sing, not words, he didn’t hear any words, she seemed at times to be reaching for them but then would shake her head, she’d lost them. And she didn’t notice when he sneaked away and closed the door behind him.
Over the following weeks, Andy began to fall in love with 1574.
It wasn’t an especially distinguished year, he’d have admitted. It was most notable for the outbreak of the Fifth War of Religion between the Catholics and the Huguenots—but this was the fifth war, after all, and it wasn’t as if the first four had done much good, so. It was marked by the death of Charles IX, King of France, and Selim II, Sultan of the Turks, and try as he might, Andy couldn’t find much sympathy for either of them. The Spanish defeated the Dutch at the battle of Mookerheyde—when Andy picked off the surface dirt he could see all the surviving Spaniards cheering. And explorer Juan Fernández discovered a series of volcanic islands off the coast of Chile, and he named them the Juan Fernández Islands, and it was a measure perhaps of how little anyone wanted these islands discovered in the first place that the name stayed unchallenged.
But none of that mattered.
For research Andy had looked at 1573 and 1575, the sister years either side, and they were really very similar at heart, with a lot of the same crises brewing, and a lot of the same people causing those crises. But Andy didn’t like them. In fact, he despised them. It was almost as if they were both faux 1574s, they were trying so hard to be 1574 and just falling short, it was pathetic, really. He’d dab away with his cotton swabs, removing the muck that 1574 had accumulated, and he poured his soul into it, all his effort and care; he gave it the very best of him—1574 was the very best of him. And he loved it because he knew no one else ever would, this grisly year from a pretty grisly century all told, twelve unremarkable little months that had passed unmourned so many centuries before.
He would dream of 1574 too. Of living in 1574; he could have been happy there, he knew it. It wasn’t that he needed to sleep; no one needed sleep anymore, sleeping acted as a restorative to the body and it wasn’t as if his body could possibly be restored. But he went to sleep anyway, as useless as sleeping was. He slept so he could dream. 1574 would have been perfect for him, so long as he’d kept away from all those Catholics and Huguenots, they were a liability.
One day his boss came to see him. He was so enjoying the work, he was rather irritated that he had to put a pause to it and give her attention.
“You’ve completely smudged that night sky in October,” she said.
“I was a bit too free with the solvent,” Andy admitted.
“And God knows what you’ve done to the craquelure in Spain, it’s worse than when you started.”
Andy shrugged.
“You’re really very good,” she said. “I’m impressed.”
“Thank you.”
“You don’t need to thank me.”
Her newfound respect for his work meant that she began to visit more often. Every other day or so she’d come to peer at his 1574, clucking her tongue occasionally (in approval or not, Andy couldn’t tell), tilting her head this way and that as she took it in from different angles, sometimes even brushing key areas of political change and social unrest with her fingertips. Andy minded. And then Andy found he’d stopped minding, somehow—he even rather looked forward to seeing her, it offered him the excuse to put down the sponge and give his arms a rest.
“What was your name again?” she asked one day.
Andy thought for a moment. “Andy,” Andy said.
“I like you, Andy. So I’m going to give you a piece of advice.”
“All right,” said Andy.
“There’s only so much room in a head,” she said. And she smiled at him sympathetically.
“. . . Is that it?”
“That’s it.”
“Fair enough,” said Andy. And she left.
She came back again a day or two later. “It occurs to me,” she said, “that the advice I offered may not have been very clear.”
“No.”
“You remember that I came by, offered advice . . . ?”
“Yes, I remember.”
“Good,” she said. “Good, that’s a start. I like you, sorry, what was your name again?”
Andy sighed. He lay down his cotton swab. He turned to face her. He opened his mouth to answer. He answered. “Andy,” he said.
“It’s an absorbing job, this,” she told him. “It kind of takes over. You fill your head with all sorts of old things, facts and figures. And memories can be pushed out. Personal memories, of what you did when you were alive, even what your name was. There’s only so much room in a head.”
“I’m not going to forget my own name,” Andy assured her.
“I did,” said his boss simply, and smiled.
“I’m sorry,” said Andy.
“Oh, pish,” she said, and waved his sympathy aside. “Names don’t matter. Names aren’t us, they’re just labels. Names go, and good riddance, I don’t want a name. But who we were, Andy, that’s what you need to hang on to. You need to write it down. I did. For me, I did. Look.” And from her pocket she took out a piece of paper.
“1782,” the message read. “Tall gentleman, wearing top hat. Deep blue eyes, the bluest I’ve ever seen. And the way the corners of his mouth seem to be just breaking into a smile. Special. So special, you make him stand out from the crowd, you give him definition. Make him count.”
“I carry it with me everywhere,” she said. “And if I ever lose myself. If I ever doubt who I am. I take it out, and I read it, and I remember. That once I was in love. That once, back in 1782, there was a man, and out of all the countless billions of men who have lived through history, against all those odds, we found each other.”
And she was smiling so wide now, and her eyes were brimming with tears.
“You don’t know his name?” asked Andy.
“I’m sure he had one at the time. That’s enough.”
She put the paper away. “Write it all down, Andy,” she said. “Don’t waste your efforts on all the unimportant stuff, your job, your house, whether you had a pet or not. That’s all gone now. But your wife, describe your wife, remind yourself that you too were once loved and were capable of inspiring love back.”
“Oh, I didn’t have a wife,” said Andy.
The woman’s mouth opened to a perfect little “o.” She stared at him.
“I never quite found the right girl,” Andy went on cheerfully.
The mouth closed, she gulped. Still staring.
“You know how it is. I was quite picky.”
By now she was ashen. “Oh, my poor man,” she said. “My poor man. You must have already forgotten.”
“No, no,” Andy assured her. “I remember quite well! I had the odd girlfriend, some of them were very odd, ha! But never the right one. Actually, I think they were quite picky too, ha!, maybe more picky than me, ha ha! Look, no, look, it’s all right, it doesn’t matter. . . .”
Because he’d never seen her egg white face quite so white before, and her eyes were welling with tears again, but this time she wasn’t smiling through them. “You must have forgotten,” she insisted. “You must have been loved, a man like you. Life wouldn’t be so cruel. Oh, Andy.” And impulsively, she kissed him on top of the head.
“You’re beginning to lose your hair,” she then said.
“Am I?” asked Andy.
“You should watch out for that.”
She didn’t visit for a while afterwards, and it wasn’t surprising at first, he knew how easy it was just to get lost in the work, but after a bit he began to wonder whether he might have offended her in some way—he co
uldn’t remember what way that might have been—and he supposed it didn’t matter if he had, he didn’t like her very much (or did he?—he didn’t recall liking her, that had never been a part of it, but), but, but then he realized he missed her, that her absence was a sad and slightly painful thing, that he should put a stop to that absence, he should set off to find her. So he did. He left 1574 behind and went looking for 1660, and he couldn’t work out how to get there; he walked up and down corridors of the twelfth century, and then the tenth, it was all a bit confusing, there were Vikings every which way he looked. And it began to bother him that he couldn’t decide where 1660 came in history—was it after 1574, was it before? And he thought, sod it, I’ll turn back, and he walked in the direction he had come, but somehow that brought him to the fifth century, and there were no Vikings now, just bloody Picts. He didn’t think he could find 1574 let alone 1660, and he started to panic, and he was just about to resign himself to the idea of settling down with the Anglo Saxons, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad—when he turned the corner, and there, suddenly, was Charles II restored to the throne, there was Samuel Pepys, there was she, there she was, sitting at her desk, paintbrush in hand, and all but dwarfed by the Renaissance in full glory.
“Hello,” he said.
But she didn’t reply, and he thought that maybe she was concentrating, she didn’t want to be disturbed, and he could respect that, he’d have wanted the same thing—so he waited, he bided his time, so much time to bide in all around him, and he bided it. Until he could bide no more—“Hello, are you all right?” he asked, and he went right up to her, and she still didn’t acknowledge him, he went right up to her face. And her eyes were so wide and so scared, and her cheeks were blotched with tears, and her lips, her bottom lip was trembling as if caught in mid-stutter, “No,” she said, or at least that’s what he thought it was, but it might not have been a word, it might just have been a noise, “nonononono.” “Do you know who I am?” he asked, and she looked directly at him, then recoiled, it was clear she didn’t know anything, “nonono,” she sobbed, and it wasn’t an answer to his question, it was all she could say, each “no” popping out every time that bottom lip quivered. “Do you know who I am?” he asked again, “I’m. . . .” and for the life of him at that moment he forgot his own name, how ridiculous, “I’m your assistant, yes? I’m your friend.” And he moved to touch her, he wanted to hold her, hug her, something, but she slapped him away, and the tears started, she was so very frightened. “I’m your friend,” he said, “and I’ll look after you,” and he knocked aside the slaps, he held on to her, and tight too, he held on as close as she’d let him, and he felt her tears on his neck, and they weren’t warm like tears were supposed to be, oh, they were so cool. “I’m your friend, and I’m going to look after you, and I’ll never stop looking after you,” and he hadn’t meant to make a promise, but it was a promise, wasn’t it?, and “Just you remember that!”, but she didn’t remember anything, not a thing—and he held on to her until she did, until at last she did.
“Andy?” she said. “Andy, what’s wrong?” Because he was crying too. And she looked so surprised to see him there, and so glad too—and he thought, Andy, oh yes, that was it.
One day, as Andy was sponging down a particularly anonymous Huguenot, she came to him. She looked awkward, even a little bashful.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said. “You can give me a name. If you like.”
Andy turned away from 1574. “I thought you didn’t want a name.”
She blushed. “I don’t mind.”
“All right,” he said. “What about Janet?”
She wrinkled her nose.
“You don’t like Janet?”
“I don’t,” she agreed, “like Janet.”
“Okay,” he said. “Mandy.”
“No.”
“Becky.”
“No.”
“Samantha. Sammy for short.”
“Tell you what,” she said. “You give it a think, and when you come up with something you like, you come and find me.”
“I’ll do that,” said Andy.
He resumed work on his Huguenot. The bloodstain on his dagger-gouged stomach shone a red it hadn’t shone in hundreds of years. Andy worked hard on it, he didn’t know for how long, but there was a joy to it, to uncover this man’s death like it was some long lost buried treasure, and make it stand out bold and lurid and smudge-free.
Next time she came she was wearing a ribbon. He didn’t know why, it looked odd wrapped around her shiny bald forehead. Why was the forehead so shiny? Had she done something to it? “I’ve been thinking,” she said.
“Oh yes?”
“What about Miriam?”
“Who’s Miriam?”
“Me. I could be Miriam.”
“You could be Miriam, yes.”
“Do you like Miriam?”
“Miriam’s fine.”
“Do you think Miriam suits me?”
“I think Miriam suits you right down to the ground,” said Andy, and she beamed at him.
“All right,” she said. “Miriam it is. If you like it. If that works well for you.”
“Hello, Miriam,” he said. “Nice to meet you.” And they laughed.
“I love you,” she said then.
“You do what, sorry?”
“I think it’s so sad, that no one ever loved you.”
“I don’t know that no one ever loved me. . . .”
“And at first I thought this was just pity for you. Inside me, here. But then it grew. And I thought, that’s not pity at all, that’s love.” She scratched at her ribbon. It slipped down her face a bit. “I mean, I might have got it wrong, it might just be a deeper form of pity,” she said. “But, you know.”
“Yes.”
“Probably not.”
“No.”
“Probably love.”
“Yes.”
“I want you to know,” she said, “what it feels like to inspire love. You inspire love. In me.”
“Well,” he said. “Thank you. I mean that.”
“Do I inspire love in you?”
“I hadn’t really thought about it,” said Andy.
“Would you think about it now?”
“All right,” he said. “Yes. Go on, then. I think you do.”
“Oh good,” said Miriam.
She left him then. He got back to his dying Huguenot. The Huguenot seemed to be winking at him. Andy didn’t like that, and swabbed at the Huguenots’ eyes pointedly.
When Miriam returned the ribbon was gone, and Andy thought that was good, it really hadn’t looked right. But, if anything, the forehead was shinier still. And there was a new redness to the lips, he thought she must have spilled some paint on to them.
“If it is love. Not just pity on my part, confused politeness on yours. Would you like to make love?”
“We could,” Andy agreed.
He hadn’t taken off his clothes for years now. But they were removed easily enough, it was just a matter of tugging them away with a bit of no-nonsense force. Miriam’s clothes were another matter, they seemed to have been glued down, or worse—Andy wondered as they tried to peel them off whether some of the skin had grown over the clothes, or the clothes had evolved into skin, or vice versa—either way they weren’t budging. It took half an hour to get most of the layers off, but there were patches of blouse and stocking that they couldn’t prise away even with a chisel.
They stood there—he, naked, she, as naked as they could manage without applying some of the stronger solvents.
“You go first,” she said, and he thought he could take the responsibility of that—but then, as he came toward her, he stopped short, he couldn’t recall what on earth he was supposed to do. He looked at her, right at her egg face, and she was smiling bravely, but there were no clues offered in that smile, and he looked downwards, and it seemed to
him that both of her breasts were like eggs too, perched side by side on top of a rounded belly that was also like an egg—her whole hairless body was like a whole stack of eggs inexpertly stitched together, God, he was looking at an entire omelette! And though she wasn’t beautiful, it was nevertheless naked flesh, and it was vaguely female in shape, and his prick twitched in memory of it, in some memory that it ought to be doing something.
“I do love you,” he said. “I love you too,” she replied. And they approached the other. And they reached out their hands. And their fingers danced gently on each other’s fingers. And he stroked his head against her chest. And she bit awkwardly at his nose. And they bounced their stomachs off each other—once, twice, three times!—boing!—and that third bounce was really pretty frenzied. Then they held each other. They both remembered that part.
The next time she came to visit him in his studio, they had both completely forgotten they’d once tried sex. And perhaps that was a blessing. Andy was absorbed in an entirely new Huguenot corpse, and she seemed to have grown new clothes. But she remembered her name was Miriam now, and so did he; they clung on to that, together, at least.
1574:
In February, the so-called Fifth War of Religion breaks out in France between the Catholics and the Huguenots; the Fourth War had only ended six months previously. War Number Four didn’t, as you might gather, end very conclusively. The Huguenots were given the freedom to worship—but only within three towns in the whole country, and only within their own homes, and marriages could be celebrated but only by aristocrats before an assembly limited to ten people outside their own family. King Charles IX dies shortly afterwards. He was the man responsible for the slaughter of thousands of Huguenots in the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. Reports say that he actually died sweating blood; he is said to have turned to his nurse in his last moments and said, “So much blood around me! Is this all the blood I have shed?”
They Do the Same Things Different There Page 4