The Watchmaker Of Filigree Street Part 24

'You're going to be busy.'

'With what?'

'It's ... you know. Ordinary things pile up.' He knocked the drawer beside him shut with his elbow. Thaniel had not seen what was inside, but the little b.u.mp made whatever it was hum, very quietly. It was a distinctive noise; it was what you got when you closed the lid of a music box.

He didn't let his expression change. 'I'll never be that busy,' he said, because it was what he would have said if he hadn't heard the hum. 'You'll see. You've been wrong before, you're wrong all the time. Anyway: tea.'

Mori looked relieved. Thaniel closed the kitchen door after himself, and stood still while he waited for the kettle to boil. He liked children. The house in Kensington would be a good place for a child to grow up. But he wanted to lock himself upstairs and sleep until he could wake into something else.

The weather stayed cold all week. The mudbanks along the Thames froze, and then so did the shallows. Near Westminster, the ice was b.u.mpy where the c.o.c.kle-pickers knocked holes in it and the river water seeped up again. The newspapers became excitable about the possibility of a winter cold enough for frost fairs, although he had his doubts. A cold snap so early usually meant one of those zigzagging winters that saw everyone buried under snow one minute and going about without coats by Christmas, only to catch pneumonia at New Year. But the wind was sharper than ever when Thaniel went to King's Cross to meet Grace's friend Matsumoto. As the train from Dover applied its brakes, it slid on the tracks and slammed into the b.u.mpers. The bang made everyone wince. A woman spilled some tea that froze into a sheet of amber. Not for the first time, he wondered irritably why trains ran on the same level that people walked. If they were to have been even two feet down from the platforms, they would be safer.

He was meeting Matsumoto in Grace's place; she had been cornered by her mother, something about the dress, and since the man was coming back from France for the wedding, it seemed ungrateful to leave him to do his own welcoming. Grace had told Thaniel to look for an overdressed socialite, so he did, and quickly found him. Matsumoto shook his hand and clapped his arm and called him Thaniel, which, after months of being Steepletoned by Mori, felt like being called ducky. Thaniel spent the cab ride studying him. He was much younger than Mori, and, like Grace had said, almost inappropriately well dressed. The iris in his b.u.t.tonhole was more than enough to put Thaniel off trying to talk much.

Because he had a.s.sumed Matsumoto would stay at a hotel, he was puzzled when the cab pulled up by the red gate of the show village. In fact, Matsumoto's family had a London flat. It was on the top floor of the same pretty block of townhouses where Yuki's father had his workshop. Since Thaniel had last been that way, scaffolding had gone up the side of the building. Some workmen were sitting on the roof with their legs dangling, sharing something from a small flask. They had been working on the chimneys, where the half-constructed brickwork was new and bright. One of the men put the flask in a bucket and wheeled it down on a squeaking pulley to a boy on the ground, who giggled.

There was an elevator inside. At the flick of a lever, they glided five floors up to the carpeted hallway where the best suites were, pa.s.sing flashes of flower-arrangements and differently coloured carpets on the way.

The flat was large enough for Matsumoto to show him around while they waited for the kettle to boil. It must have been recently done over, because the floors shone and smelled of beeswax. On the walls were ancient Chinese prints, except for one modern corner where there were four paintings in almost the same style as the one Mori had bought months ago from the depressed Dutchman. Embarra.s.singly, theirs was hanging in the parlour beside a sketch Thaniel had made of the Kyrie from Mozart's Requiem. Mori had rescued it from a wastepaper basket and then hovered with a packet of watercolours and a hopeful expression until Thaniel had painted the other movements too. He had tried to say you couldn't put up pictures of a requiem in a parlour, but Mori had proven selectively deaf. Whenever Thaniel intended to take them down, Katsu poked him with a pin. He was coming to the very gradual conclusion that Mori hadn't only been being polite, but really wanted it. Why was still a foggy point.

The tea was brown. Matsumoto was as English as Francis Fanshaw.

'It wasn't too much trouble to come, was it?' Thaniel said at last, when they had exhausted the weather and the paintings.

Matsumoto shook his head once. 'No, no. But I really must get straight home afterwards.' He sighed. 'Truth is, I'm rather anxious about Matsumoto Castle. My father's there by himself and the government have been bullying him about selling it for a while. I didn't think they were serious at first, but his letters are becoming more urgent, so I shall be hopping it straight after the party, I'm afraid. There's a thing called the Castle Abolition Law that-'

'I know, I know,' said Thaniel. 'What will happen if they do take it?'

'New house in Tokyo, I suppose. Gosh, no, the Emperor isn't in the habit of making beggars of his n.o.blemen. He's not as bad an egg as all that,' Matsumoto said, but he looked bleak. 'G.o.d, it's cold in here. I didn't tell anyone I was coming, there's no wood.'

'Let's go and stand outside for a few minutes, then. It should feel tropical when we come back in.'

'I shouldn't have said anything, should I,' Matsumoto said, but he picked up his tea and came obediently outside.

The balcony had a wide view over the show village, then far across Hyde Park, although it would have been better had the scaffolding not blocked out everything on the left. The sky was indigo around the horizon, and lights sparkled in the village below. Not far away, the paG.o.da was being decked with paper lamps and streamers. Carpenters hammered up a wide stage before it. They had already erected a copy of the village's gaunt, curving gate on the stage to make a proscenium arch, and now some boys flicked their brushes at each other while they painted it red.

Grace let herself in behind them. She had a sparkler from Nakamura's shop downstairs. As she came across to them, she spun the light in spirals.

'Escaped at last,' she said.

'What's going on down there?'

'Gilbert and Sullivan's show,' Thaniel said. 'The debut will be here on Sunday.'

'Thaniel's playing the piano,' Grace explained to Matsumoto, who only murmured something generally polite in a way that made Thaniel think he hadn't heard.

The three of them watched the women with the lamps. They stood on ladders to reach the rafters of the paG.o.da, while the men pa.s.sed up lit candles to test the integrity of each paper shade. The firelight made the folds of their kimono sharp, and rippled in black hair and silk belts. The lights were bringing late village visitors over to see what would be happening.

Directly below them, Yuki's familiar, ramrod figure emerged from the firework shop.

'Oh, I say!' Grace called down. 'I left some change on the counter, I took a sparkler!'

Yuki looked up and nodded, and then his eyes caught on Matsumoto. 'Western monkey,' he said in j.a.panese.

'Monkey yourself,' Thaniel called after him. 'You live in London, you little b.a.s.t.a.r.d.'

Matsumoto's shoulders twitched back. He was still young enough to be fl.u.s.tered by the disapproval.

'Look, when in Rome,' Thaniel said.

Matsumoto shook his head. 'I'm not so sure. I feel like such a popinjay in these clothes, sometimes, and I wonder if in wearing them I'm not helping chip away at what makes us ourselves.'

'What are you talking about?' said Grace.

'That boy was rude to him because he's wearing Western clothes,' Thaniel explained.

'Why?'

'Because he's a fledgling nationalist lunatic, so he wants everyone from j.a.pan to dress like a samurai and go about snarling. That's his father's workshop, there. I've said it isn't clever to leave him with fifty tonnes of gunpowder and a grudge against anyone in a jacket, but apparently it would be wrong to boot him out for something he only might do,' he said, thinking that he ought to mention to Mori that Yuki showed no sign of changing his mind about his politics. Mori would already know, but there was value in making it clear that he knew as well.

'Better a jacket than those idiotic kimonos,' Grace said.

'I'm going to talk to him,' Matsumoto said.

'Matsumoto! You can't bear it, can you, not being completely adored by everybody who sets eyes on you ... no? Not listening? I was only talking to myself anyway,' she muttered as the elevator whirred.

Thaniel leaned his forearms on the balcony rail so that he wouldn't miss any explosions if there were any. He saw Grace's hands flatten slowly on to the stone too.

'I upset you before, didn't I?' she said. 'Because of the trees.'

'No. Leaving home jitters is all.'

She paused. 'Mori still won't come?'

'He won't come.'

'I know you'd like him to, but I'm glad.'

He looked side on at her. 'He's not a witch. He's a lonely man with no one to talk to except a machine in the shape of an octopus.'

Her eyebrows lifted. 'Thaniel. Wake up. He can remember anything but a random process. That's anything except coin tosses and dice throws. Spinning magnets, like Katsu's random gears. He's sensing ether disturbances. He knows the moment you intend to do anything, because the electricity moving through your brain is pus.h.i.+ng ether as it goes. Is that not remotely worrying for you? It means he knows how to make you trust. He knows how to make you change your mind, because he can isolate the second in which you could change it.'

'I know he can. I wouldn't have touched a piano again if he hadn't put me in front of Arthur Sullivan when he did. A thing done on purpose isn't necessarily bad.'

'But you wouldn't know if he didn't want you to. I'm afraid of him because if he ever gets tired of me, he will be able to convince you that you are too.'

'It would be interesting if we could imagine for half a minute that I'm in possession of more common sense than a chicken,' he said quietly. 'I live with him, I can see when he's arranging things.'

'I don't mean that you're stupid. I mean that you're an ordinary man who works in an office and sometimes plays the piano, and Mori is a genius who could engineer worlds. I'm ... explaining why I'm worried, that's all.'

Thaniel absorbed that in silence. Down by the paG.o.da, Matsumoto had found Yuki. There was a photograph to be had there, he thought, with the one in a morning suit and an iris, the other in a faded robe, sleeves tied back, though the wind was spitting snow now. 'I know what you mean. But I think you've got him wrong.'

'I don't. I don't think you'll make any real choices until you're away from him.'

'Grace. We're getting married. He doesn't want us to. But we still are.'

'Yes. That makes me immeasurably anxious,' she murmured. 'I feel as though I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.'

He shook his head.

She was quiet for a while. 'Has it occurred to you that clairvoyance and bombmaking aren't mutually exclusive? You know he could have made it to bring you to Filigree Street. In any case, he knew it was there and didn't disarm the thing.'

'You could always throw him off a roof somewhere just in case.'

She sighed. 'I wish Matsumoto would hurry up. I'm freezing to the tiles.'

'Let's go down, then. I should be getting back anyway.'

'Why? Plans?'

'Reservations,' he lied, because it would have been needling to say he wanted as long a last night at home as he could have.

He found Mori trying to tempt Katsu from one of the top cupboards, where there was a new nest of stolen foil wrappers and springs from the workshop. The octopus had developed a love of s.h.i.+ny things, which he had cunningly installed well out of Mori's reach. Thaniel stretched up and lifted him out with both hands. Katsu wrapped himself around his arm and refused to let go.

'It must be your cufflink,' Mori said helplessly. 'I'm sorry, I really didn't set him to do any of this, it's his random gears, it's like throwing tails twelve times in a row on a coin toss ... '

'Or he's alive,' Thaniel suggested.

'If he were really thinking, he would have intentions, so I would know what he'd do next, but I don't.' He tried to reach the panel that would expose Katsu's inner workings, but Katsu only cooed at him and skittered off over the floor. They both watched the lamp under the stairs go on, and a fl.u.s.tered spider hurry out. Then, 'Oh, I almost forgot: I've got an early wedding present for you. I would give it to you after the ceremony, but that would defeat the point.' He led the way into the workshop, where the lights hummed on as soon as he crossed the threshold.

Thaniel followed, curious. 'What do you mean, defeat the ... '

Mori stretched to lift down a fine cherry wood box from the shelf above his workbench. He set the box gently in front of Thaniel and put his hands behind his back to show who should open it. Thaniel lifted the lid. Inside, cus.h.i.+oned on a blue velvet lining, were three gla.s.s vials. They were all corked and sealed with glossy wax, and they all seemed empty, except for very faint differences of colour. Moulded around the vials were tiny bronze labels etched with ornate, miniature borders of the same pattern as Mori's watchpapers. They were marked in English and in j.a.panese. The first was 'sun', the second 'rain', and finally, 'snow'. Thaniel looked up.

'What are these for?'

'You can choose the weather tomorrow.' He lifted out the 'sun' vial and held it up to the light. The gla.s.s was tinted yellow and inside a faint powder floated weightlessly, winking like dust motes. It cast a golden shadow across his hand. 'If you release these particles into the air from a sufficient height the church tower would do nicely they will take effect within a few seconds. This one will disperse cloud. These two will gather it. The new conditions last a few hours.'

Thaniel touched the vials one by one, watching their coloured shadows on his fingertip.

'Whichever you want, half a vial should do the trick. And if you save some, you can decide what you want for the operetta too. That building where Nakamura lives is high enough. Obviously the sun mixture will only get you a clear sky at night. Personally I recommend that you rain the whole thing off and make them do it in the Savoy, like civilised people.' He dipped his eyelashes at the rain vial.

'What's wrong with outside?' Thaniel said absently. The vials weren't made of gla.s.s. They glinted differently, and they didn't feel fragile. He had thought, when the box first opened, that they were jewels, and he wondered suddenly if they might be made of diamond. He had dropped some of the stuff before, he realised, when he had been searching the workshop; G.o.d knew what would have happened if he had done that outside. Mori was good at his unbreakable inventions. He put his hands behind his back. The vials looked as though they belonged in a gla.s.s case in a museum, or locked in a vault.

'This is England. It will be horrible, whatever the weather.'

'But you'll come? Your friend Ito will be there, so ... '

'Of course I'll come; I've been looking forward to it. And forget Ito, you will be there.' He had lifted both hands impatiently when he spoke, and as he let them drop again suddenly in his broken-doll way, Thaniel caught his elbow to keep him from b.u.mping his wrist on the corner of the desk. Mori took his arm back, and Thaniel thanked him too formally for the present.

Grace s.h.i.+vered by the paG.o.da while she waited. She had come down from the balcony by way of hinting that Matsumoto ought to hurry along, but he hadn't noticed. Yuki had scowled at first, but he was talking now, and Matsumoto showed no sign of stopping him. He was enjoying having tamed somebody. Behind her, the smell of hot wax from the lamps reminded her of Christmas. It was still two months away, and she hoped the weather would continue as it was. She liked frost fairs.

Matsumoto came back at last, looking irritatingly happy. 'How would you like to come with me to a nationalist meeting in town?'

'There are j.a.panese nationalist meetings in town?' said Grace.

'No, Irish, but a few of the men here go. The sentiment's the same.'

'It is the night before my wedding,' she said. 'I'd prefer not to spend it with the Irish Republican Brotherhood of Twaddling about the Oppressors.'

'Yes, of course, how silly of me. You'll be out with all your other friends.'

Grace slouched. 'All right. It won't be long, though, will it? I'm frozen already.' She dug her heel into the layer of packed-down ice on the ground.

'We can leave early. It's only in Piccadilly, we'll take the train.'

She lifted her head. 'No, we will not take the train, unless you'd like to die of bronchial failure-'

'Nonsense,' said Matsumoto. 'I'm in London; I must go on the underground.'

'You do understand that the trains run on steam, produced by coal, which, when burned, gives off sulphuric vapours?'

'Are those bad?'

'Do you know, let's go. The onus on the j.a.panese public school system will be much relieved if I can kill you off before you have a chance to breed.'

'Splendid,' he said, and beckoned to Yuki.

The station was not far, and as soon as they were below ground the cold lost its bite. Even before they reached the platform, she could taste the soot in the air, which was gloomy with it. The people were too. She was surprised by how many there were. Of course, it was cheaper than a cab and less horrible than the omnibuses, but still it was bleak. In his j.a.panese clothes, Yuki attracted curious looks, which he ignored. His expression was faraway, as though he could see something in the distance that n.o.body else had noticed.

As the train roared through, hot air plumed ahead of the engine and set the soot particles whirling. Matsumoto handed her up into a first-cla.s.s carriage. It was otherwise unoccupied. Just beyond the window was the tunnel wall, pasted with a decrepit poster for throat lozenges. Matsumoto looked out as the train moved off again, delighted with the novelty. For a long time, there was only pitch darkness, but then there came a flit of dim light. It was the drillers' lamps in a half-finished tunnel, leading steeply downward. Although they pa.s.sed it quickly, she saw the light gleam on the circle of a tunnel s.h.i.+eld, and the men working in its square compartments. Since the beginning of the standard use of the s.h.i.+elds, which edged forward foot by foot as the men inside dug out the s.p.a.ce ahead, it had become impossible to track the progress of the underground. There was no more cutting up streets; the tunnels ran too deep for anyone above ground even to hear the digging. The carriage jerked suddenly and her hands closed of their own accord over the edge of her seat.

'I hate trains,' she murmured.

'I'm sure they rarely crash,' Matsumoto said, laughing.

'Anything that moves at forty miles an hour and crashes is fairly catastrophic, however rare. There's no such thing as a mild train crash, is there?'

'Oh, buck up, Carrow.'

The meeting was in a town hall that smelled of varnish and damp coats. They sat at the back, Grace on the end of a row and Yuki beside a group of men who greeted him warmly. Hoping that Matsumoto wouldn't notice, she took out a book from her coat pocket. She had bought it earlier that day. It was by Oliver Lodge, the Liverpool man working on weather control. He had, apparently, had some more successes in laboratory conditions, but as usual, a lack of funding was getting in the way of anything like commercial application. Between pages, Grace paused to listen, but always faded out of it again. She didn't much like Irish republicans for the same reason she didn't much like suffragists. There was a lot of talking, and little understanding that the problem would not go away if one only complained sufficiently.

'I want to leave,' Matsumoto said.

'Hm? What? But we've only just-' She stopped. 'I'm not complaining. Let's go.'

'Aren't you listening to him?'

'Of course I'm not listening to him.'