They Do the Same Things Different There (4 page)

“But in this instance,” she went on, and prodded at 1574 with her finger, so disdainfully that Andy thought she’d punch a hole right through it, “it’s worse than that, because we can’t even begin to
see
how badly the pigments have been discoloured. They’re buried behind so much dirt and grease. And soot, actually, that’s my fault, I probably shouldn’t have stored it next to the Industrial Revolution. Dirt has clung to the year, and that’s not the fault of the year itself, but of the varnish painted over it. For centuries all the great works of art were varnished by the galleries, they thought it would better protect them. And some people even preferred the rather cheesy gloss it put on everything. But a lot of the varnishers were hacks—the varnish wasn’t compatible with the original oils of the year itself, it’d react to them. And that’s when you get smearing, and blurring, and dirt getting trapped within the year as if it’s always been there.

“And that’s just for starters! Look at the cracks. Dancing through the night sky of March 1574 there, do you see, they stand out so well in the moonlight. Now, I admit I like a bit of craquelure, I think it lends a little aged charm to an old master. But here, yes . . . these aren’t just cracks, they’re
fissures
, they’re causing the entire panel to split out in all directions. Pretty soon March won’t have thirty-one days in it, it’ll end up with thirty-two. And that’s all because of the oils drying, yes? The oils go on the canvas nice and wet, then they dry, the very months dry, the days within get brittle and flaky, the whole year contracts and moves within its frame.”

“And what can we do to stop that?” asked Andy.

She very nearly laughed. “Stop it? We can’t stop it! Oh, the arrogance of the man! Do you think
any
of the years here are in the same condition as when they were created? They’re dying from the moment the paint has dried, all the sheen and brightness fading, the colours becoming ever more dull, the very tinctures starting to blister and pop. These are precious things, these little slices of time we’ve been given—and from the moment a year’s over, from the moment they all start singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ to usher in the new, the old one is already beginning to fall apart. The centuries that pass do untold damage to the centuries that have been. There’s no greater enemy to history than history itself, running right over it, scraping it hard, then crushing it flat. And some days I think that’s it, all I’m doing is kicking against the inevitable, I can do nothing to stop the decay of it all, all I can do is choose the method of decay it’ll face. And that’s on the good days, the ones where I fool myself I’m making the blindest bit of difference—on the others, and, are you listening, Assistant, there’ll be so
many others
, I feel like I’m surrounded by corpses and pretending I can stop the rot, and I can’t stop the rot, who are we to stop the rot, we’re working in a fucking morgue.”

“Oh,” said Andy. “That’s a shame.”

She blinked at him. Just once. Then pulled herself together.

“Frankly,” she said, “1574 is a dog’s breakfast. And that’s why I’m setting you on to it. You’re hardly likely to make it much worse. Off you go, then, 1574’s not getting any younger, chop-chop.”

Andy pointed out he had no idea where to start conserving and cleaning a year. As far as he knew, he was supposed to run it under a tap! He chuckled at that; she didn’t chuckle back. So he asked, very gently, whether he could watch her work for a while, to see how it was done.

She took him to her studio.

“This,” she said, and she tried to keep a nonchalance to her voice, “is my current project.” But Andy could see how she was smiling, she was just happy to be back in front of her work again—and then she gave up trying to disguise it, she turned round to him and
beamed
, she ushered him forward, invited him to look, invited him to see how well she’d done. She’d mounted a section of the year, the rest was rolled up neatly, and it seemed to Andy that she’d made an altar of that section, that it was a place of worship. “1660,” she said. “Most famous for the restoration of the Stuarts to the throne of England and Scotland, and I think that’s why the Curator will like this year especially, he’s very keen on the triumph of authority. But there’s so much more to 1660 than dynastic disputes, really—December the eighth, there’s Margaret Hughes as Desdemona, the very first actress on the English stage! And that’s Samuel Pepys, the diarist, September twenty-fifth, drinking his first ever cup of tea! All the little anecdotes that throw the main events into sharp relief, history can’t just be kings and thrones, if you’re not careful it becomes nothing but a series of assassins and wars and coups d’état, and the colour is just a single flat grey. And that’s not what we’re about, is it? We’ve got to find the other colours, Andy, we’ve got to find all the colours that might get forgotten, what we’re doing
is
important after all!” And she suddenly looked so young, and so innocent somehow, and Andy realized she’d bothered to remember his name.

He watched her as she worked, and she soon forgot he was there, she was lost in bringing out the light in Pepys’ eyes as his first taste of tea hit home, his questing curiosity, his wonder (his wrinkled nosed disgust!)—and she was happy, and she even began to sing, not words, he didn’t hear any words, she seemed at times to be reaching for them but then would shake her head, she’d lost them. And she didn’t notice when he sneaked away and closed the door behind him.

Over the following weeks, Andy began to fall in love with 1574.

It wasn’t an especially distinguished year, he’d have admitted. It was most notable for the outbreak of the Fifth War of Religion between the Catholics and the Huguenots—but this was the
fifth
war, after all, and it wasn’t as if the first four had done much good, so. It was marked by the death of Charles IX, King of France, and Selim II, Sultan of the Turks, and try as he might, Andy couldn’t find much sympathy for either of them. The Spanish defeated the Dutch at the battle of Mookerheyde—when Andy picked off the surface dirt he could see all the surviving Spaniards cheering. And explorer Juan Fernández discovered a series of volcanic islands off the coast of Chile, and he named them the Juan Fernández Islands, and it was a measure perhaps of how little anyone wanted these islands discovered in the first place that the name stayed unchallenged.

But none of that mattered.

For research Andy had looked at 1573 and 1575, the sister years either side, and they were really very similar at heart, with a lot of the same crises brewing, and a lot of the same people causing those crises. But Andy didn’t like them. In fact, he despised them. It was almost as if they were both faux 1574s, they were trying so hard to be 1574 and just falling short, it was pathetic, really. He’d dab away with his cotton swabs, removing the muck that 1574 had accumulated, and he poured his soul into it, all his effort and care; he gave it the very best of him—1574
was
the very best of him. And he loved it because he knew no one else ever would, this grisly year from a pretty grisly century all told, twelve unremarkable little months that had passed unmourned so many centuries before.

He would dream of 1574 too. Of living in 1574; he could have been happy there, he knew it. It wasn’t that he needed to sleep; no one needed sleep anymore, sleeping acted as a restorative to the body and it wasn’t as if his body could possibly be restored. But he went to sleep anyway, as useless as sleeping was. He slept so he could dream. 1574 would have been perfect for him, so long as he’d kept away from all those Catholics and Huguenots, they were a liability.

One day his boss came to see him. He was so enjoying the work, he was rather irritated that he had to put a pause to it and give her attention.

“You’ve completely smudged that night sky in October,” she said.

“I was a bit too free with the solvent,” Andy admitted.

“And God knows what you’ve done to the craquelure in Spain, it’s worse than when you started.”

Andy shrugged.

“You’re really very good,” she said. “I’m impressed.”

“Thank you.”

“You don’t need to thank me.”

Her newfound respect for his work meant that she began to visit more often. Every other day or so she’d come to peer at his 1574, clucking her tongue occasionally (in approval or not, Andy couldn’t tell), tilting her head this way and that as she took it in from different angles, sometimes even brushing key areas of political change and social unrest with her fingertips. Andy minded. And then Andy found he’d stopped minding, somehow—he even rather looked forward to seeing her, it offered him the excuse to put down the sponge and give his arms a rest.

“What was your name again?” she asked one day.

Andy thought for a moment. “Andy,” Andy said.

“I like you, Andy. So I’m going to give you a piece of advice.”

“All right,” said Andy.

“There’s only so much room in a head,” she said. And she smiled at him sympathetically.

“. . . Is that it?”

“That’s it.”

“Fair enough,” said Andy. And she left.

She came back again a day or two later. “It occurs to me,” she said, “that the advice I offered may not have been very clear.”

“No.”

“You remember that I came by, offered advice . . . ?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Good,” she said. “Good, that’s a start. I like you, sorry, what was your name again?”

Andy sighed. He lay down his cotton swab. He turned to face her. He opened his mouth to answer. He answered. “Andy,” he said.

“It’s an absorbing job, this,” she told him. “It kind of takes over. You fill your head with all sorts of old things, facts and figures. And memories can be pushed out. Personal memories, of what you did when you were alive, even what your name was. There’s only so much room in a head.”

“I’m not going to forget my own name,” Andy assured her.

“I did,” said his boss simply, and smiled.

“I’m sorry,” said Andy.

“Oh, pish,” she said, and waved his sympathy aside. “Names don’t matter. Names aren’t us, they’re just labels. Names go, and good riddance, I don’t want a name. But who we
were
, Andy, that’s what you need to hang on to. You need to write it down. I did. For me, I did. Look.” And from her pocket she took out a piece of paper.

“1782,” the message read. “Tall gentleman, wearing top hat. Deep blue eyes, the bluest I’ve ever seen. And the way the corners of his mouth seem to be just breaking into a smile. Special. So special, you make him stand out from the crowd, you give him definition. Make him count.”

“I carry it with me everywhere,” she said. “And if I ever lose myself. If I ever doubt who I am. I take it out, and I read it, and I remember. That once I was in love. That once, back in 1782, there was a man, and out of all the countless billions of men who have lived through history, against all those odds, we found each other.”

And she was smiling so wide now, and her eyes were brimming with tears.

“You don’t know his name?” asked Andy.

“I’m sure he had one at the time. That’s enough.”

She put the paper away. “Write it all down, Andy,” she said. “Don’t waste your efforts on all the unimportant stuff, your job, your house, whether you had a pet or not. That’s all gone now. But your wife, describe your wife, remind yourself that you too were once loved and were capable of inspiring love back.”

“Oh, I didn’t have a wife,” said Andy.

The woman’s mouth opened to a perfect little “o.” She stared at him.

“I never quite found the right girl,” Andy went on cheerfully.

The mouth closed, she gulped. Still staring.

“You know how it is. I was quite picky.”

By now she was ashen. “Oh, my poor man,” she said. “My poor man. You must have already forgotten.”

“No, no,” Andy assured her. “I remember quite well! I had the odd girlfriend, some of them were very odd, ha! But never the right one. Actually, I think they were quite picky too, ha!, maybe more picky than me, ha ha! Look, no, look, it’s all right, it doesn’t matter. . . .”

Because he’d never seen her egg white face quite so white before, and her eyes were welling with tears again, but this time she wasn’t smiling through them. “You must have forgotten,” she insisted. “You must have been loved, a man like you. Life wouldn’t be so cruel. Oh, Andy.” And impulsively, she kissed him on top of the head.

“You’re beginning to lose your hair,” she then said.

“Am I?” asked Andy.

“You should watch out for that.”