They Do the Same Things Different There (3 page)

For a while for the marriage improved. They had conversations when they did the shopping, he picked movies to watch on DVD she might actually like. And the lovemaking was never exciting, not exactly, but it wasn’t a ritual anymore, it felt at least like making love. “I didn’t know what I was missing,” he said. “I’ve been such an idiot.” And yes, in time, it all sank back into routine again, but they’d shown each other it didn’t always
have
to be like that, they could make it all work so easily if they could just get round to bothering, and maybe that was enough. And Colin was an excellent father, he knew just what to do; Juliet rather envied him that, it took her a lot of thought to decide how a mother should behave. “We’re happy,” he said one night to her, quite unexpectedly. “We’re actually happy, aren’t we?” And she agreed. They were.

One day, about twenty years later, he told her he had cancer. It was eating away at him, it had been for ages apparently. The doctor had told him that morning, that’s why he had to speak to her like this, that’s why he had to sound so serious, oh God, don’t be upset, oh God. Because it wasn’t too late, the doctor had promised him, there were treatments, they mustn’t give up hope. But the doctor was wrong; it was much too late. And all the treatments in the world could do nothing but make Colin’s death terribly slow. Juliet was always there for him. She drove him to the hospital. She fed him soup, even when he wasn’t hungry, she told him he had to keep his strength up. And she mopped it when he threw it all up, she never commented, never made him feel bad. As she watched, he got older and weaker; his hair whitened then went altogether, his paunch disappeared into thin air. And she wished he’d vanish with the paunch. She wished she could wake up one morning and know he’d just evaporated whilst she’d slept, so painless, so simple. She now knew how to react, she could do the grieving thing now, she’d been right, it
was
easier when there was a body. And this time everyone came to the funeral, all the family were there to see him off. Not Dave, of course. Dave had died from a stroke two years previously. Juliet hadn’t mourned; she’d decided then and there to save it all up for Colin.

A few weeks before he died, Colin told her he had something to confess. He didn’t want to hurt her, but this was something he had to do. She waited patiently as he tried to find the words. “I was never in Luxembourg,” he said.

She asked him what he meant.

“I was having an affair,” he told her. And he explained how he’d lied the whole time, invented business trips just to get away from her. He’d seen this woman on and off for years, he wouldn’t say her name, it didn’t matter anymore—and Juliet agreed, it didn’t. When Luxembourg vanished it had seemed like a godsend. His life had changed overnight, he was free, and there’d be no need for a divorce, no need to make Juliet feel bad, because it had never been her fault, it had been him, all him. A break, clean and simple. He’d moved in with his lover. They had barely lasted a month. Some relationships are better at arm’s length, he said. Sometimes the reality of living together just gets in the way. He knew he couldn’t go back to Juliet. How could he explain where he’d been? And then one day Luxembourg had returned. It had given him a second chance. He began to cry.

“It’s okay,” she said. “It doesn’t matter now.”

And she could barely make out his voice through the tears. “That’s not it,” he said. “I miss her. I’m sorry. I miss her. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” And she held him in her arms, and she kissed him. And she cried too, because she knew what he meant—it was wrong, but sometimes she felt exactly the same thing.

One day she decided to take a holiday. Her husband was dead, her son was at college. What was to stop her? She renewed her passport, had a new photo taken for it. The old one looked so young now, so gauche; the picture that looked out now at the customs officials was confident, and hard, and expressive, that was a face that had
felt
things.

There wasn’t much tourist interest in Luxembourg. Even after twenty years of good behaviour, it still had its reputation. And people said they felt seasick there, especially near the edge—you could see the whole country rise and fall on the water. Juliet liked Luxembourg. She liked the architecture. She knew it wasn’t the
real
architecture, of course; the surface of Luxembourg was so thin all the heavy buildings had been torn down and replaced with balsa wood replicas. But that was okay, Juliet knew that Luxembourg had to have changed, that there’d have to be a Luxembourg Mark II. She was wise enough to know that’s what happened to things that come back, things you’d thought had been lost forever.

She bought herself a caffè latte, and sat beneath the light flat board spires of Luxembourg’s very own Notre Dame Cathedral—not as grand looking as the one in Paris, but perfectly okay as far as cathedrals went, perfectly acceptable, they’d done a good job. She wondered whether she was tempting fate by coming here. She wondered if it would all disappear, and take her with it, and this time there’d be no going back, no reprieve discovery in the Pacific, no last minute returns, they’d all vanish forever and never be heard of again. Well, she thought to herself, we’ll see. And she decided that if she vanished, she’d just accept it. And if she didn’t, she’d go home, and get on with the rest of her life. Either way, she wouldn’t complain. She’d give herself, and Luxembourg, and their twin destinies, until she reached the end of her coffee. She sipped at it, without rush, and admired the architecture, and smiled, and enjoyed the day.

The Curator said that it was the responsibility of every man, woman, and child to find themselves a job; that there was a grace and dignity to doing something constructive with the long days. The purity of a simple life, well led—everyone could see the appeal to that. But the problem was, there really just weren’t enough jobs to go around. This made a lot of people quite unhappy. Not so unhappy that they gnashed their teeth or rent their garments, it wasn’t unhappiness on a biblical scale—but you could see them, these poor souls who had nothing to do, there seemed to hang about them an ennui that could actually be smelt.

Some people said that it was patently unfair that there weren’t enough jobs. The Curator could create as many jobs as he wished, he could do anything, so this had to be a failing on his part, or something crueller. And other people admonished these doubters, they told them to have more faith. It was clearly a test. But they thought everything was a test, that was their explanation for everything.

Neither group of people liked to voice their opinions too loudly, though. You never knew when the Curator might be listening. The Curator had eyes and ears everywhere.

When the job at the gallery came up Andy applied for it, of course.
Everyone
applied for it, yes, man, woman and child—and though Andy hadn’t been there long enough yet to realize the importance of getting work, he still knew the value of joining a good long queue when he saw one. He obviously hadn’t expected to get the job. That he might was clearly absurd. And so when they told him he’d been selected he thought they were joking, that this was another part of the interview, that they were monitoring his response to success, maybe—and he decided that the response they were looking for was probably something enthusiastic, but not
too
enthusiastic—and he managed to pull off a rather cool unsmiling version of enthusiasm that he thought would fit the bill, then sat back in his chair waiting for the next question—only starting when they made him understand there really
weren’t
any more questions, that that was it, the job was his.

Andy didn’t know why he’d got the job. But he still had his own hair. Or, at least, most of it—and perhaps that’s what made him stand out from the other applicants. Certainly there were others he’d queued alongside who were far better qualified, and more intelligent too, who had even done revision so that they’d give good answers at the interview. When Andy had been quizzed he hadn’t known what to say, and he’d just nodded his head a lot, he fluttered at them his brown and quite unremarkable curls, unremarkable in all ways save for the fact he had so many of them; he showed them off for all they were worth, that’s what did him well in the end.

Andy hadn’t even been to an art gallery since he was a child. He’d been taken on a school trip. He’d been caught chewing gum, and had got into trouble; then he’d lagged behind the main party and got lost somewhere within the Post-Impressionists, the teacher had had to put out an announcement for him, he’d got into trouble for that too. He knew that the gallery here would be much bigger, because everything was bigger here—but he still boggled at the enormity of it as he walked through the revolving doors. There were no small exhibits here. A single work of art would take up an entire room, and the rooms were
vast
, as you walked into one you had to strain your eyes to find the exit at the far end—the picture would run right round all the walls, and extend right up to the ceiling a hundred feet in the air. Andy couldn’t stand back far enough from the art to take in the sheer scale of even a single picture; he always seemed to be pressed up close to the figures caught in the paintwork, he could honestly marvel at the extraordinary detail of each and every one of them. But seeing these figures in context, that was much more difficult. He read the plaque on the wall for one picture: “1776,” it said. And now he could see, yes, the Americans jubilantly declaring their independence, and the British all looking rather sinister and sulky in the background. He went into the next room, and presented there was 1916. And 1916 was a terrifying sight—the work took in the one and a half million soldiers dying in the trenches, in Flanders, at the Somme, and it seemed to Andy that every single one of these casualties was up there stuck onto the wall, shot or blown apart or drowning in mud. It was a dark picture, but yet it wasn’t all mud and blood—look, there’s Charlie Chaplin falling over at a skating rink, there’s Al Jolson singing, Fred Astaire dancing, there’s the world’s first golf tournament, that’d be fun for all.

Andy shuddered at the carnage in spite of himself—because, as he said out loud, it wasn’t really there, it wasn’t really
real.
And he couldn’t help it, he chuckled at Chaplin too, he grinned at all those golfers putting away to their hearts’ delight.

There was no one to be seen at the gallery. The rooms were crowded with so many people living and dying, but on the walls only, only in the art—there was no one looking at them, marvelling at what they’d stood for, marvelling at the brushwork even. There was a little shop near the main entrance that sold postcards. There was no one behind the cash register.

“What do you make of it?” asked the woman behind him.

He didn’t know where she’d sprung from, and for a moment he thought she must have popped out from one of the pictures, and the idea was so ludicrous that he nearly laughed. He stopped short, though, because she was frowning at him so seriously, he could see laughter wasn’t something the woman would appreciate, or even recognize, this was a woman who hadn’t heard laughter in a very long time. He presumed she
was
a woman. Surely? The voice was high, and there was a softness to the eyes, and to the lips, and there was some sagging on the torso that might once have been breasts—yes, he thought, definitely woman. Her head was completely smooth and hairless, and a little off green, it looked like a slightly mildewed egg.

Andy tried to think of something clever to say. Failed. “I don’t know.”

“Quite right,” said the woman. “What
can
you make of it? What can anyone make of anything, when it comes down to it?” She stuck out her hand. Andy took a chance that she wanted him to shake it; he did so; he was right. “You must be my new assistant. I don’t want an assistant, I can manage perfectly well on my own, I do not require assisting of any sort. But the Curator says different, and who am I to argue? The best thing we can do is to leave each other alone as much as possible, it’s a big place, I’m sure we’ll work it out. Do you know anything about art?”

“No.”

“About history?”

“No.”

“About the conservation and restoration of treasures more fragile and precious than mere words can describe?”

“No.”

“Good,” she said. “There’ll be so much less for you to unlearn.” And she gave at last the semblance of a smile. Her egg face relaxed as the smile took hold: the eyes grew big and yolky, the albumen cheeks seemed to ripple and contort as if they were being poached.

“How did you know,” said Andy, “that I was your new assistant?”

“Why else would you be here?”

She said she’d take him to her studio. She led him out of the First World War, back through the Reformation, through snatches and smatterings of the Dark Ages. She walked briskly, and Andy struggled to keep up—as it was, it was the best part of an hour before they reached the elevator. “I’ll never find my way through all this!” Andy had joked, and his new boss had simply said, “No, you won’t,” and they hadn’t talked again for a while.

She pulled the grille door to the elevator shut. “Going down,” she said, and pushed the lowest button on the panel. Nothing happened; she kicked at the elevator irritably, at last it began to move—and fast, faster, as if to make up for lost time. Andy was alarmed and tried to find something to hold on to, but there was only the woman, and that didn’t appeal, so he stuck his hands tight into his pockets instead. The woman did not seem remotely perturbed. “Now, you might think that the gallery upstairs is huge. Well, it
is
huge, I suppose, I’ve never been able to find an end to it. But only a small fraction of the collection is ever on display. Say, no more than two or three per cent. The rest of the art, the overwhelming majority of it, we keep below. We keep in the vaults. And it’s in the vaults that we care for this unseen art. We clean it, we protect it. We restore it to what it used to be. What’s up top,” she said, and she jerked a finger upwards, to somewhere Andy assumed must now be miles above their heads, “is not our concern anymore.”

Andy was still catching up with what she’d said fifty metres higher, his brain seemed to be falling at a slower rate than hers. “Just two or three per cent? Christ, how many paintings have you got?”

She glared at him. She thinned her once feminine lips, she showed teeth. “They’re not paintings,” she said. “Never call them paintings.”

“I’m sorry,” said Andy, and she held his gaze for a few seconds longer, then gave a single nod, and turned away, satisfied.

The elevator continued to fall.

“My name’s Andy,” said Andy, “you know, by the way.”

“I can’t remember that. I can’t be expected to remember all that.”

“Oh.”

“You’ve got lots of hair. I could call you Hairy. Except that won’t last long, the hair won’t last, it’ll just confuse me. Tell you what. I’ll call you ‘Assistant.’ That’ll be easy for both of us.”

“Fair enough,” said Andy. He’d been about to ask for her name. He now thought he wouldn’t bother.

And then he was surprised, because he felt something in his hand, and he looked down, and it was
her
hand—just for a moment, a little squeeze, and then it was gone. And she was doing that macabre poached smile at him. “Don’t worry, Assistant,” she said softly. “I used to call them paintings. I once thought they were just paintings too.”

“All right, Assistant. I’m giving you 1574 to practise on. 1574 is a very minor work. If you damage 1574, who’s going to care?” And she unrolled 1574 right in front of him, across the table of his new studio, across
all
the studio—she unrolled it ever onwards until 1574 spread about him and over him in all directions.

“Is this the original?”

“Who’d want to make a copy?”

What surprised Andy was that the archives down below were in such poor condition. The art was stacked everywhere in random order, although he was assured by his new boss there was a system—“It’s
my
system,” she said, “and that’s all you need to know.” Some of the years were in tatters, the months bulging off the frame, entire days lost beneath dirt. “You might suppose they’d be irreparable,” she told him. “1346 was in a terrible state when I started here, there was a crease in the August, running right through the battle of Crécy. But with diligence, and hard labour, and love, I was able to put it right.”

It was odd to hear her talk of love, that such a word could come out of a bald, ovoid face like hers. She seemed to think it was odd too, looked away. “But diligence and hard labour are probably the most important,” she added.

And although Andy had no affection for these works of art, had no reason to care, when she told him that the collection wasn’t complete he felt a pang of regret in his stomach for the loss. “Ideally,” she agreed, “the gallery is meant to house a full archive, from prehistory right up to 2038. But there are entire decades that have vanished without trace. Stolen, maybe, who knows? More likely destroyed. Some years were in such a state of disrepair there was nothing I could do with them, some years just decomposed before my eyes. 1971, for example, that was a botched job from the start, the materials were of inferior quality. It crumbled to dust so fast, before the spring of 1972 was out.”

“What does the Curator think of that?”

She sighed heavily through her nose, it came out as a scornful puff. “The Curator’s instructions are that I take responsibility for the entire collection, the whole of recorded history.” She shrugged. “But I can’t work miracles. That’s his job.”

And now here was Andy with his own year to take care of. He gave 1574 a good look. And his boss gave
him
a good look as he did so; she just folded her arms, watched him, said nothing. “It’s not too bad,” said Andy finally. “It’s not in as bad a condition as some of the others.”

“It’s in an
appalling
condition,” she said. “Oh, Assistant. You’ve been looking at all the wrong things, you don’t know what’s good and what’s shit, but never mind, never mind, I suppose you have to start somewhere. Look again. Now. The year is
filthy
, for a start. Look at it, it’s so dark. Do you think that 1574 was always this dark? Only if it had been under permanent rain clouds, and in fact, the weather was rather temperate by sixteenth century standards. Now, that’s not unusual, you have to expect the original colours to darken. Natural aging will do that—pigments fade and distort from the moment the events are lived, as soon as they’re set down on canvas. Rich greens resinate over time, they become dark browns, even blacks. The shine gets lost.