Luke Williams: The Echo Chamber

And slowly, during the course of this midnight activity, this sinful undertaking brought to my grandfather the subtle, strange-smelling vapour of death; slowly — Evelyn did not notice the change — 16 Ingolstadt Place became enveloped in a blue haze. This strange mist originated from the small hearth Mr Rafferty had set into the wall and from which he drew brightly gleaming substances. By April, when Rex was nearing the end of his civil service training, the mist had started to creep up into the shop. Rex told Evelyn that he was to travel to Nigeria, his first posting abroad, but she hardly took in the news. She had too much to think about, keeping the shop by day, tending to her hideaway at all other times. What is more, she was harbouring a pair of secrets in the shape of my father and grandfather.

Secrets are like shadows; they transform the one who bears them, they flit and flicker behind the eyes, grow longer and more difficult to command by evening-time and disperse at night, only to appear with renewed authority during the day. Perhaps it was for this reason — the incorrigibility of secrets and shadows — that one afternoon my mother closed the shop early and invited Rex to supper. Perhaps it was good fortune that Mr Rafferty was working at the hearth. Maybe Evelyn really did feel faint and go to bed, telling Rex to show himself out. Whatever the truth, chance (chance yielding to my mother’s will) led Rex towards the trapdoor. A great heat was emanating from beneath his feet as he stepped on to the rug. There was a sulphurous smell whose pungency grew stronger as he raised the rug, prised open the trapdoor and walked down the basement stairs.

He saw nothing at first, or nothing tangible, since the room was filled with smoke. As it dispersed, Rex made out a figure bent over a large wooden table, a broad, round-faced semblance of a man with unkempt hair and black shiny eyes under-arched with greying bags, eyes which, as they turned towards the stairs, Rex knew immediately. Basements, unlike attics, rarely accentuate sound; rather everything that stirs is muted, dampened by the inevitable moisture in the air, so that as Rex stood staring into the eyes of the stranger Mr Rafferty he felt strangely calm. Despite the muted though frankly appalling scene — a woman, or rather the likeness of a female form, white, bloodless, prostrate on the table, parts of her covered with a sheet, others simply missing — Rex spoke.

‘Good evening,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think we’d …’

‘We have never formally introduced ourselves,’ said Mr Rafferty.

‘You already know my name. I know several of yours.’

‘My name,’ said Mr Rafferty, ‘is Mr Rafferty.’

He held out his hand. Rex stepped back and lowered himself into the armchair, averting his eyes from the hideous form over which Mr Rafferty now drew a sheet. He spent a few minutes poking the fire, with his back to Rex, then joined him in a neighbouring armchair, and, settling, declared, ‘Before you say anything more, please allow me to explain. Much has happened since that day on the train to London. If you recall, I was in a keen state of anticipation. I had conceived a plan that would enable me to return to Oxford, where, as you will hear, I could restore my former happiness.’

Mr Rafferty paused and gazed out into the distance. After some time he said, ‘In the weeks following Julia’s death, you see, I had been unable to forget one thing. The fact that my clockwork heart had functioned perfectly. I had managed to manufacture a human heart, one of the most complicated anatomical structures — why should I not repeat the feat for each of the vital organs? After all, what is a lung if not a sanguine bellow? And the eye — how faithfully it corresponds to a scientific instrument! Might I not forge each of the vital organs and clothe them in the likeness of my wife!

‘I faced a major difficulty. I needed a base from which to begin my work, yet I was on the run. I had to get back to Oxford. For several months I considered this problem. It was not until, several days before our meeting on the train, I came across an article in The Times, that I saw my opportunity. In 1935, said the article, a group of scientists and engineers had developed a method for detecting flying objects by shooting invisible waves towards the sky. And the government had supported this absurd idea! They also, it was said, offered £1,000 to anyone who could demonstrate a ray that would kill a sheep at a range of 100 yards. How far the government errs! What desk-ridden imbecile supported this mad imagination? Still, I thought, I could use this governmental madness to my advantage. Such is the fear of conflict in Europe, so inadequate is our readiness for war, that Whitehall is willing to assist anyone who volunteers to help. So I contacted the Chiefs of Staff. After explaining my state of affairs, that is my enforced itinerancy, I proceeded to describe my skills as a maker of clockwork and automata. I put to their dreaming minds the image of a battalion of soldiers, each like the next, a defence force to which fear was as alien as hunger, an army of expendable automata whose glassy eyes would strike fear into the enemies of our little island. I arranged for the reply to be covertly announced in The Times . The reply came. I returned to Oxford and into the arms of my daughter.

‘Of course, I concealed my true motive: to realize the plan to which, ever since Julia fell sick, I have dedicated my life. So, I first set about making each of the components necessary for life, all of which I have either built from clockwork or plucked from the corpses of criminals, which the War Office have brought me. You see, I cannot hope to forge every part of Julia from metal. There are certain structures, such as the organs of reproduction, not to mention the hair and skin that, through a strange alchemy, I plan to integrate with the manufactured articles. I do not expect Julia, upon waking, to function as before. I imagine her to be like one who enters into life for the first time. And just as the new-born learns to call his creator Mother, so Julia, with the right instruction, will learn to call me Husband. But there is more! I will not simply replicate Julia — that’s the easy part — but improve on her! Just as our missionaries bring the torch of culture and progress to the dark people of the earth, so I, a Stanley in my own right, will mould Julia in my own image. Soon I will have a perfect simulacrum of my wife, the true likeness of myself in female form, Julia, my love!’

I have prepared myself a writing table: a wardrobe door, unhinged from its body, laid horizontal and supported at each corner with pillars of books — yellowing volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica , 1911, whose pages come apart like pressed flowers in my hands. Upon the desk sits my laptop computer. Purring, it emits a bluish haze, faintly lighting the darkness. It is the brightest colour in the attic. Everything else is dulled by dust, moth-eaten, mildewed, encrusted with grime, carious, verdigris, flaking. The most decrepit item in the attic is also the largest. It hangs on the far wall via a single hook attached to its top left corner. It is an early example of cartographic dreaming. A mappa mundi.

Stolen from Waltham Abbey late in the fourteenth century, it was acquired by Sir Henry Wrecksham in 1448 for his collection of unica , later sold to an unknown German, who, during the Thirty Years’ War, buried it then died; it lay four feet under earth for the next three hundred years, outlasting countless conflicts, including two World Wars, until it was discovered in 1948 by an American soldier in a field outside Nuremberg. Unsure of what it was, but perceiving its great age, the soldier brought it back with him to America. He showed it to an expert at the Metropolitan Museum, who verified its authenticity. This is the story my father chose to believe on purchasing the fake in 1963, not long after returning from Nigeria. He was suffering because the British had been ousted from the country. Half crazed on account of the loss of his illusions, he spent almost two-thirds of his inheritance on another kind of fantasy. Since then the mappa mundi has hung in the attic.