“I would like to see inside your office,” he said. And I let him in. He was interested in two pictures and a photograph that hung on the wall. The largest painting above my desk was a watercolour of a Norfolk view, a white sail boat drifting lazily along the river. Near the window, the detective then examined another smaller watercolour of a dragonfly trapped in a jam jar. “Who painted these?” he inquired.
“I did. I was rather an amateur artist and photographer before I studied psychoanalysis. Sometimes I feel as though I have had two lives,” and I instinctively touched my watch. For a moment I thought he saw this gesture and looked at me curiously.
He moved over towards the photograph behind the door. And he stood there for some time, examining it, then he plucked it off the wall.
“Tell me,” he said, “about this photograph.”
“It’s a picture of me with Albert Chimes in Paris. We are standing on a bridge.”
“Tell me about your relationship with him.”
“I met him twenty years ago, in Paris. That picture was taken shortly after we met. He had an exhibition of his clocks in a small gallery. They were beautiful things.”
Detective Sergeant White held the photograph in his hands like a holy object.
“Is there something wrong, detective?”
“Yes,” he said softly. “There is something wrong with this picture. You say this was taken twenty years ago and yet neither of you have aged. How is that possible?”
“I really don’t understand what you’re trying to insinuate. You are accusing me of not aging. Are you going to arrest me for it?” and I laughed.
Detective Sergeant White looked very seriously at me. “I believe that somehow these clocks are extending your lives. Children are being murdered and you are involved.”
I sat myself down on the sofa intended for my patients. “You can prove absolutely nothing. And you have now placed yourself in a very dangerous position.”
Detective Sergeant White placed the photograph on the desk and left with his constable. I put the photograph back on the wall and brushed the dust off. Albert Chimes smiled back at me, that wicked old alchemist.
October 1887
Mirror in Egypt
When Goliath rescued me from the clock and lifted me deep within his arms, I remember closing my eyes, keeping them shut. Soft darkness in my head, pounding, fizzing pressure. A sheep’s head boiling in the pot. For the light was burning my eyes; like grandfather striking matches to ignite his tobacco pipe, gripped by his great fingers, those dirty sausages. The flame, a phosphorous green glow with something alien underneath. He spat on the flame to put it out.
That’s what you do with fire
* * *
put
it
out.
Goliath had lifted me out of the clock, my coffin. An alien whiff surrounding me, as the hinges creaked open. I had been swimming, I had been drowning, I had been with the dead, talking with ghosts. But he carried me away, far away. My eyes shut tight. To Egypt, to Egypt.
I was holding his hand, under a sun that looked like a lemon floating in the sky.
“Why is it so bright?” I said, peering squinty eyed.
Goliath squeezed my hand. “To sizzle up the demons.”
We were standing outside a lopsided wooden bookshop in Cairo. It was painted orange and pink with little balconies and pot plants with creeping greenish fingers. Goliath showed me around Cairo while we were staying with his father, the archaeologist: he is a man who digs up the dead and finds secret things.
I know I am supposed to be with Goliath. I am sewn into him, the threads in my tummy criss-crossed with his. If you cut us apart we fall to pieces.
In the street was a man with a donkey, the saddlebags loaded up with books for delivery. I patted the donkey’s nose. He smelt of earthy things and warm fuzzy fur. Wet tongue, black flies buzz like wicked angels around his eyes. I slapped them away. We walked onwards down the street, the air smelling of sweet-shit and honey. A sort of fairy stench. I liked the smell of this place, I liked the feel of Goliath’s great hand and its black fuzz of hair. He held me so tight, a bearish grip. That is what safety feels like. Safety is a great bear standing beside you.
always
a wall of muscle
a great row of teeth
I would think, If you touch me again, Grandfather, he will crush you with his great paws. Chomp on your bones. Lick your blood from his fur. Leave no trace of you.
We passed a café where men were sitting smoking tobacco with their snake pipes. They watched us pass, I think the colour of my hair caught their eyes. Grandpa always said my hair was too red. The Devil likes red, he said. The Devil likes red and little girls.
“They are staring at me,” I said.
Goliath rubbed my head with his great hand, so my hair would stick up. “Because you look like a little fire imp,” and then he picked me up into his arms and carried me onto his shoulders. I got a whiff of the tobacco and its hot, smoky beetle-scent. I waved at the pipe smokers, who wore long white nightshirts, as though sleepy and ready for bed. I thought, I am a fire imp. I am a fire imp. I am fire.