The Glass Ocean (3 page)

And my father, where has he gone? Honestly, I don’t know. He’s still there somewhere, in Felix Girard’s lodgings. I can hear him, the soft little rustlings. Keeping himself busy among the collection. If only Harry Owen had that knack.

But he lacks it, and having waited half an hour, is just pulling himself together to leave—first shifting in the hams, a tensing of the knees—when, with great tumult, my grandfather, Felix Girard, arrives.

There’s always tumult when Felix Girard arrives. He’s a large man, coarse and broad, with a fierce feral thicket of red whiskers interspersed with sparse tendrils of grey; often he’s loud, sometimes drunk, usually dirty, and peculiarly dressed—bombachas, bolas, a moleskin coat, all stuff he’s picked up in his travels, affectations in anybody else but in my grandfather unself-conscious, worn to suit the weather; no moleskin today, because of the heat probably, but still remarkable enough, in his unraveling yellowed shirtsleeves, all unbuttoned and awry, and exuding an unmistakable sweaty musk.

There are two people with him. One is a man, wiry, thin lipped, upright, with steel-grey hair and a cool, severe, unblinking predator’s eye—this is Hugh Blackstone, captain of a small ship for hire,
Narcissus,
at anchor in the Thames. The other is a young woman, pale as a flame is pale, white gloved, elegantly muslined, with a cunning, sharp-toed boot and a pert yellow flounce. Seeing Harry Owen sitting there in the murk with his rodent companion, she immediately lets forth three melodious trills of laughter, crying,
Oh, Papa, it’s a new specimen! Did you stuff it yourself? Oh, no, of course not—that’s Johnny Twomey’s rotten handiwork—I’d recognize it anyplace!—
pointing at the pendulous ash clinging to the tip of Owen’s cigar—
You can tell by that funny little fringe left hanging loose there!

Laughter then, among the three. Even Hugh Blackstone’s stony visage contorts in that muscular rictus meant, by him, to signify a smile.

•   •   •

Hilarious, isn’t she, my mother?

•   •   •

And irresistible as well, for not a moment after she’s insulted him she’s offering Harry Owen her hand, saying, with a charming absence of guile,
You must excuse me, Dr. Owen. I’m afraid my father’s new assistant, Johnny Twomey, isn’t working out very well, and I can’t seem to stop myself making jokes at his expense! Please forgive my very poor manners. I am Clotilde Girard.

Then she touches his hand, just barely; or rather, she does not quite touch it, creating, instead, by her motion, a small, warm current of air, suggestive of a touch, at the same time looking steadily into Harry Owen’s eyes with her own, those distinctive eyes, pale grey-blue, like a sea held close beneath cloud, as if to say,
There, this is just between us!

Oh, she’s expert, my mother; expert at making it all disappear. Harry Owen will forgive her anything in that moment, and he does, taking her hand, squeezing it, pleased to meet her, my dear, despite her quick, small, triumphant smile; or maybe he doesn’t see that, so speedily is it replaced by another of such sincere friendliness and cordiality as to belie the first.

Dr. Owen, I am so glad you have come.

She leans very close when she says it, her breath warm on his cheek, her skin with its sweet, soft scent—she’s fresh pastry, my mother, warm croissants, meringues, Bath buns with orange icing.

•   •   •

She’s irresistible all right, delectable, oh mother mine. What chance will poor Leo have, scrabbling creature that he is, with all his antennas twirling, confronted with such as she?

None. None whatever.

It attracts sometimes, that which ought repel.

•   •   •

Awright now, Tildy, leave Dr. Owen alone. Don’t let her tease you, doctor. She gets the best of us all with that stuff. Tildy, you go out for our supper. I gave you the list, remember?

Yes, Papa.

And make sure the bread’s fresh this time—none o’ that moldy stuff.

Naturally, Papa.

And keep away from the cat’s-meat man today, eh, Tildy darling?

He winks, my grandfather, the bear, and presses a coin into her small, gloved hand.

Oh, Papa!
says she, with a blush.
Now it is you who are teasing!

Ah, Tildy!
cries Felix Girard, gripping her arm, holding it tight in a sudden, fond, yet melancholy rapture,
what won’t you do, my dear, to add another penny to your pretty little bank, toward that pretty little hat you are wanting? You see, your Papa knows you truly, my dear, no matter what these gentlemen might think! Only the best for our guests this time, petite!

Yes, Papa.

Now off with you.

Yes, Papa.

And obediently she hurries away, the flounce of her skirt sliding demurely down the stairwell behind her, like the lowered tail of an exotic bird.

She is a naughty girl, but good
, says Felix Girard, gazing affectionately after.
Where does she get it from, gentlemen? From her mother, of course! Don’t they all, eh? You have already met Dell’oro? Gone back down his rabbit hole, has he? We shall ferret him out quick enough. Dell’oro! Show yourself! Now then, gentlemen, this way. We will talk.

•   •   •

He leads them then down the hallway, past all those mute reproachful gazes, into the room he calls his workroom.

•   •   •

I like this best of all the rooms in my grandfather’s lair.

Here a dim and sultry daylight filters down through three stingy windows set high up in the wall; some enterprising person has propped these open, just barely, with broken shards of renegade terra-cotta—casualties, no doubt, and rejects, from Petrook’s shop—so that the sashes rest heavily upon the cracked foreheads of the gods. Slack, battered window shades hang limply up there, stirring, with an eerie, papyrus rustle, in the infrequent and unrelieving hot zephyrs of air. Just beneath—arranged along the wall, for maximal light, I suppose, in this vague and dusty place—stand Felix Girard’s worktables, with his many incomplete projects spread out upon them: the rusty, red skull of some small reptile, who knows which, its teeth bared in a perpetual impolite snarl, vertebrae laid out beneath, like broken links in a lady’s necklace; a bowl of water in which brightly colored snails are crawling; nearby, empty shells, recently denuded of their occupants and stuffed with white, antiseptic tufts of cotton wool; beetles and butterflies and dragonflies, recently treated with prussic acid, pinned in their setting boxes, the sparkling wings fastened down with little cardboard braces; and plants as well, nothing escapes him, laid out flat to dry on sheets of coarse brown paper. In a long, low cage on the floor, pea doves bow and coo; in another, jewel-bright lizards cling to the mesh, lazily expanding and deflating their red and yellow throats, like gentlemen about to utter unwise remarks of which they have suddenly thought better. Orchids growing on clumps of wood hang from pegs in the walls, some displaying dreamlike, colorful blossoms, others the roots alone, tangled and knotted, with spidery, delicate filaments reaching out for props to cling to, finding only each other or themselves, intertwining to form weird webs, miniature dangling forests. Lines have been strung from the walls and run in various directions just above the guests’ heads; from these hang innumerable cones of paper, bobbing gently, with an aura of muted festivity, like small, enigmatic Japanese lanterns. Inside are the skins of birds, hung up to dry, safe beyond the reach of pests. A pronounced and disturbing buzzing, like the buzzing of bees, fills this peculiar, junglelike space; these are my grandfather’s hummingbirds, battering themselves cheerfully against the window shades, hovering in the high, hot corners of the room. Felix Girard has placed a cup of sugar water on the edge of the table for them; every now and then, one darts down, drinks, sits for a moment on the edge of the cup before once again taking flight, with a flash, ruby red, emerald green.

Get out! Hey! Get out of there, you, Johnny Twomey! We gentlemen must talk in private, eh? Gather your bits and get out. Where? How should I know where? All of London is at your disposal! But see you are back before seven if you want your pay!
cries Girard; there is a sudden, frantic stirring at the far table, and a small man, about fifty years old, dressed in a smeared smock and apron, pushes past, softly muttering—whether apologies or imprecations, I don’t know; nor does anybody else; so let it go, let it go. It is my grandfather’s ill-fated assistant, Johnny Twomey, who will be fired for incompetence before the end of the month. On the table he has vacated lie a dozen dead birds he was in the process of skinning, along with the tools of his grisly trade: scissors, knives, nippers, needles and thread, cotton wool, a jar of arsenical soap—and several more of those paper cones, idly awaiting their occupants.

He is bad, very bad
, says Felix Girard, carefully picking up, and then lovingly rubbing, between his thick forefinger and thumb, a delicate skin with feathers of deep cobalt blue, which he then turns, exposing a large bald patch, like a scorched tract in a forest, which Twomey has left on one side.
Careless. It is ruined! I have hired him as a favor to my friend Petrook, but . . .
he shrugs mournfully . . .
What more can I do? He ruins too much. Some can learn, some cannot, is it not so, Dr. Owen?

Harry Owen in his tweeds gapes slightly, hung now on my grandfather’s hook.
Some persons have more potential than others . . .

Ah! You are an idealist at heart, I see, doctor! You would like to say to me that poor learning is often the fruit of poor teaching, and that the pupil’s failure is the teacher’s fault, but you fear to offend! Anyone can learn, eh? It is a good thing, this idealism, it does you credit. But I, well—

He sighs, shrugs. Great eloquence of shoulders.

I am an idealist no longer.

Then pushing aside the table’s contents, he plunges beneath it, broad back exposed, like an island, like the hump of a seal, and emerges with a large book bound in black leather, which he spread-eagles on the tabletop, contemplates, with eyes moist, red rimmed, while fingering the blazing thicket of his beard.

Yes. This is the one.

Looking up sharply.

Where is Dell’oro? Is he still not here? Leopoldo Dell’oro! Come out, shrinking violet, come out! It is time, and past time, to show yourself!

•   •   •

Honestly I expect no result from this. My father has interred himself in some secret space, he is lost, I can hear him rummaging, rummaging; no one will extract him; but my grandfather knows him better than I, for here he is; he has emerged; evidently he was nearby all the time; sheepishly now he insinuates himself into the room, still overdressed, hot, disheveled, sleepy. Tugging still at cuffs and collar. Nervous twitching.

•   •   •

Very well. Now we shall begin.

•   •   •

They gather around the table where lies my grandfather’s map book, opened to the sapphire Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea, there where the Greater and Lesser Antilles, the Leeward Islands, and the Windward Islands sweep, like the snap of a serpent’s tail, from the southernmost tip of Florida to the north coast of Venezuela.

Gentlemen
, my grandfather says,
she is here.

Gently he lays his great thumb on the green protruding bulb of the Yucatan.

Let me explain. As reported by my colleague Lord Willoughby in the
Proceedings
of 1840, which I for you now quote
,
“The fossil remains of an ancient cetacean, measuring thirty feet long, were found here imbedded in a sheltered plateau approximately three miles inland from Punta Yalkubul; but could not be excavated due to difficulties of approach and terrain and resistance from the native peoples.”
There, gentlemen, she lies; and so she shall continue, unless we go, and dig her out.

Beatific smile then, rapture of the beard, so incongruous, he radiating joy, drooling with it practically, this big, rough man, my grandfather.

I propose we shall go in October. Harry Ellis of Montagu House has agreed to fund us. Hugh, what do you say?

Blackstone narrows his expressionless yellow eyes, cocks his head, says,
It could be done.

From Hugh Blackstone, it is an endorsement. And you, Dr. Owen?

Some dithering now.
Willoughby’s reports are still unconfirmed . . .

So you do not believe our colleague Lord Willoughby? His word is not enough for you?

Wicked provocative gleam of eye from Girard, the angelical banished, now the devil behind the beard.

It could prove unfortunate to undertake such a venture without proper confirmation and corroboration
.

Laughter at this from Girard, Blackstone meanwhile following, with his cool glance, a hummingbird’s trajectory along the perimeter of the wall; brilliant green, bumping and bobbing beneath the moldings. As for my father, Leo Dell’oro, he glances anxiously from one party to the next, antennas twirling; rubs, quickly, one wrist against the heel of the opposite hand. Rub himself raw he would; and did, when I was a child.

•   •   •

But that’s not yet. Not yet. I don’t exist as yet, not even as a gleam in my father’s eye. Maybe I’m the intimation of a gleam.

•   •   •

Dr. Owen
, says Felix Girard, stifling his laughter,
you are the soul of caution! It is you who will save us all from our doom. If Harry Ellis, and the museum, trust Lord Willoughby’s report, what more is there to think about? If they will pay, what else is it to us?

It should matter very much to us.

Ah.

Disappointment now, a frown among the russet fronds. Yet warmly he grasps Harry Owen’s elbow.
Promise me at least to think about it, Dr. Owen. I would like to have you with us. It will be a very great thing for us, and a very good thing, I think, for you, too, if you would come. But now I think I hear my Tildy in the salon. We will talk more later.