Horatio Lyle

by Webb, Catherine

  ‘You all right?’

  ‘It’s . . . it’s Faraday.’

  ‘Father of modern science? You said.’

  A little later a voice whispers hoarsely, ‘What’s he doin’?’

  ‘I think he’s demonstrating the interaction between electric and magnetic forces.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s a static generating thing. It uses a lot of static to generate . . . things.’

  And a quiet voice says, ‘It’s a static discharge generator, Thomas.’

  ‘Erm . . . quite. A static discharge generator, Teresa.’

  ‘Oh. Is it complicated?’

  ‘Well, obviously there’s a lot going on.’

  ‘I made one out of a kettle once,’ says the quiet voice.

  ‘Really? How?’

  ‘I’ll tell you when the lecture’s over.’

  In the darkness, an electric crackle, and an ‘ooooh’ from the audience. Tess hisses, ‘How’d he do that?’

  ‘Well,’ begins Thomas’s edgy voice, ‘there’s a lot of charge things on the dome, because of static and . . .’

  ‘Do you mean there’s a build-up of negative charge rubbin’ off from the belt thing what’s carryin’ the positive charge from the metal comb inside the insulatin’ tower?’

  ‘Yes. How do you know? ’

  ‘I read it,’ Tess says simply. ‘In a book.’

  Next to her, Horatio Lyle starts to smile.

  And the moon rises and sets over the streets of London, looking down on a million lives bumping into a million other lives, a million shoulders brushing against a million others in the street, transferring static charge from one jacket to another as they go, until the whole city buzzes with it, until every street hums with life and noise and the cries of the street sellers rise up: ‘Bunch’a turnips, not sixpence, not threepence, but ’cos I see my lucky stars, today just tuppence!’ ‘Come ’ear the ballad of the Dutch sailor, lost at sea . . .’ ‘Hot cross buns! One a’penny, two a’penny . . .’ ‘You wan’ it, I’ve got it . . .!’ ‘Birds’ nests, magpies and sparrows . . .’ ‘Penny cures, penny cures for all ills, you ma’am . . .’ ‘Snakes, shillin’ a snake . . .’

  . . . And the cries rise, spread out across the slanting rooftops and the crumbling chimney stacks, wake the pigeons and scare the cats, set the dogs barking and bounce off the still brass bells of St James’s and St Anne’s and St Mary’s and St Giles’s and St Paul’s, and echo away, to leave just a few voices, climbing through the air.

  ‘Mister Lyle?’

  ‘Yes, Teresa?’

  ‘’Bout breakfast . . .’

  ‘You can’t be hungry again!’

  ‘No, no! It’s just ’cos Thomas has been tellin’ me ’bout this thing called chocolate . . .’

  ‘Thomas.’

  ‘Sorry, Mister Lyle.’

  ‘. . . an’ I was thinkin’, seein’ as how I help look after Tate an’ ’ave been so good with all the books an’ how I ain’t picked your pocket once . . .’

  ‘Teresa, that is not a recommendation towards moral enlightenment . . .’

  And the voices fade away, into the slowly spreading dawn.

  In the east, the sun is rising.