Luke Williams: The Echo Chamber

Soon Rex no longer needed a broken watch to visit Evelyn. Three times a week, in between his studies, he rode his bike to the shop, leaving it propped against a lamp-post.

But I tell too much. It is not easy, with my failing memory, to relate every detail of my parents’ history. I keep a single picture of them in my mind. A simple scene, composed more of sound than image. They stand in the shop. Father’s left hand cups the pocket watch, his right index finger points to the space where the minute hand ought to be. It is three o’clock in the afternoon. My mother’s mouth is open as if to say something but all I can hear is the clangour of a thousand clock-calls.

…

Today I travelled to Edinburgh to visit my maternal grandfather, Mr Rafferty. He was in bed, surrounded by enormous white pillows. I decided to take him for a walk. He can cause trouble outside the institution, but I needed some information, and he is more receptive to my questions in the open. Mr Rafferty is an important resource for these first stories, my pre-history. He is old and his mind half-cracked; nevertheless, he may provide me with certain details I cannot know. For instance, what happened after he returned to Oxford.

As we began to walk I held tightly to his arm because I feared he might run on to the street. It had been raining, and the pavements of Edinburgh are broken, so we could not take a step without treading in a puddle. I tried as far as possible to cross to the drier sections, but I saw at once that Mr Rafferty loved getting into the water. It took all my strength to force him to walk by my side. Nevertheless, he managed to step on to a section of pavement where one of the slabs had sunk in deeper than the rest. By the time I realized what he was doing he was wet through and covered in dead leaves.

Mr Rafferty is often gloomy and inclined to silence. His gestures are furtive; the tips of his moustache droop, and his eyes sink into the grey rash of his face. In this mood he spends whole days in bed, falling in and out of heavy sleep. At other times he is excited and talkative. Sometimes he gets quietly to his feet and runs to the corner of his room where a sink and shaving mirror stand; there he argues with himself, staring into his reflection. Or else he will sit up suddenly, knock on the side of the bed and answer, ‘Come in,’ in various tones for hours on end.

He was nervous and animated as we walked. His eyes gleamed, and everything that shone caught his attention. I knew that if I could get him to George Square, where we could watch the pigeons and drink hot chocolate, he would answer my questions. We walked to the corner of Warrender Park. As we were passing the windows of the swimming pool, full of green shadows and refracted light, he didn’t want to carry on; he made himself heavier and heavier and, however hard I pulled, I could scarcely move him. Finally I had to stop in front of the last window. For several minutes we watched the bathers moving smoothly between bars of broken light. I grabbed hold of Mr Rafferty and tried to walk naturally. But every step was an effort as in those dreams in which one’s shoes are made of lead. In this way we proceeded down Warrender Park, through the Meadows until, finally, we reached George Square. He didn’t want hot chocolate, so I bought him a packet of crisps and this seemed to make him happy. We sat on the brickwork surrounding the square. The edge of my skirt was damp, and scraps of leaves clung to the lining. I asked him about the days before the war. I asked what my mother was like when she was a child. Was she very beautiful? Did she wear long dresses? He didn’t answer; he only stared up at the sky, placing crisps into his mouth every so often. But I could see that he was enjoying the day, the air which was sweet and unobtrusive.

‘What was Mother’s star sign?’ I asked. He didn’t seem to hear. All at once he turned his head towards me.

‘Who are you?’ he said.

‘Evie Steppman,’ I said.

‘Where were you born?’

‘Children’s Hospital, Lagos.’

‘Age?’

‘Fifty-four.’

‘Eyes?’

‘Green.’

‘Jew or Gentile?’

I didn’t answer but sprung back a question: ‘On what day did you return to Oxford before the war?’

‘It was at night,’ he replied.

‘On what night did you return?’

‘February 15th 1939.’ I started to ask him questions about his return to Oxford, quickly, one after another, in case he lost interest.

Suddenly, he interrupted me.

‘There’s no cure for a broken heart. For a weak one, there is. I have found it. In fact, I am currently in the process of establishing a patent for this cure.’

‘Yes?’

And he proceeded to tell me about the events after his return to Oxford.

Later, we walked without incident back to the institution, where we parted: he to his bed, I to Gullane. Now I am seated at my desk. Twilight is spreading through the attic, creeping into the corners, mouse holes and dusty spaces under the floor. Outside, leaves shiver in the gutter. The sea lets out a sigh, and at once everything turns sombre, lonely and late. In the relative quiet I will attempt to finish this third chapter, using what my grandfather told me earlier today, together with the stories I heard from Father in my childhood.

…

It was late evening on 15 February 1939 when Mr Rafferty returned to Oxford. Across Europe nations were building giant monsters of war. Engineers were dreaming dreams of destruction which those monsters could excrete and simultaneously raising defence lines against them. On my grandfather’s return he and my mother began a different kind of blockade adumbrated by the build-up of arms. They sealed the upstairs entrance to the workshop, spread a rug over the trapdoor. They hung heavy curtains across the basement window, scattered sawdust on the rough boards. Blankets, books, towel and tea-set each found a place there, in that nocturnal bunker where Mr Rafferty installed himself.

Whether or not my mother believed the predicament in which my grandfather claimed to be embroiled, whether she understood how deeply and inexorably he had retreated from practical affairs, she must have felt that he was in danger, because she made a great effort to hide him from the outside world. No one, she understood, was to know of his presence — not even Rex. In the waking hours Mr Rafferty was to remain silent, emerging from his hiding place at dusk for an hour or two, after which he would descend once again to the workshop, in whose dank light a strange, complicated and unnatural affair was taking shape.

It began with the reading of scientific treatises. Mr Rafferty concentrated on the writings of Jacques de Vaucanson, who in 1737 constructed a mechanism in the shape of a fawn, which could play the flute. Over the following weeks he consumed innumerable books and manuscripts. He noted particular sections on loose sheafs then pinned these fragments, to which he added illustrative diagrams, on to the walls. His reading matter became increasingly technical, including manuals on anatomy, alchemy and mechanics, the writings of the Italian Futurists and Pavlovian reflex theory. He ate infrequently, slept only for a few hours in the afternoon. His complexion acquired the tarnished hue of an old euphonium.

It was at this time that Mr Rafferty began to receive visitors (so he told me this afternoon in Edinburgh). Men wearing dark suits made their way to Ingolstadt Place, then vanished into the back entrance of the workshop. There they would remain throughout the night, drinking cocoa, conversing in hushed tones, observing demonstrations, remonstrating with one another, conducting their business with complicated handshakes. Later, when Mr Rafferty had ceased to appear above ground altogether, other darkly clad figures came to that fusty vault, human shadows conveying stiff and weighty packages.