He is a strange one-his intent dark eyes flicking from one he loves to one he worships. I cannot be held responsible for the damage done to him.

His mother ladles out the potatoes which she mashes so brutally but which, with the addition of salt and b.u.t.ter, make the most delicious meal I have ever known. She serves furiously-splat!-and her nostrils contract in pa.s.sion. There is an angry burn like a knife blade along her lower arm.

"I need Carl to finish," Sumper says. I think, where will the money come from? Blood floods the boy's face. With his bright wide eyes and his wheaten hair he might be a choir boy in our village church.

The thick man's appet.i.te is never gratified, his thirst never slaked. He drinks, he eats, he makes the law. "When the boy is finished here, he will return to the city of the wheel and do what he is born to do."

How could I have not understood his strangeness the first day at the inn-the map of Karlsruhe, the Baron with the Drais? Frau Helga says now that his mind is broken and she hates him, but later I hear them thumping in the night, dragging at each other like wild creatures, snorting and panting like the partners of a crime. Dare I admit-I would sell my soul for less.

In the morning I am shaken awake. Sumper has shaved, smooth as rock, and gleaming. His eyes are pebbles in a stream.

What he wishes me to understand, before the day's work begins, is that all this is exactly as Albert Cruickshank had foretold.

He lays his hand against my cheek. Who would not shrink from him? He repeats that Cruickshank had predicted my arrival in Germany and my particular role in Sumper's life. My eyes are stuck with sleep but his are clear, without the tiniest ripple of doubt.

This is one more lie. I have everything recorded exactly, as he told it-he has not seen Cruickshank since he set out for Buckingham Palace on that rainy night. At that time there was no talk of me. How could there be? Then he was deported and finally returned to Furtw.a.n.gen from which place he despatched the ledger of drowned people to his former master. He received in return the blasphemous automaton with a "charming note" which indicated Sumper might now need the laughter more than Cruickshank.

If there had been some "prophecy" I would have noted it, just as I have noted all the other symptoms.

But Sumper, as from the start, is slippery as a Rhine fish. "I cannot tell you everything that ever occurred." He opens the shutters, raises the windows to admit the howling wind. "No, I am not relating what Cruickshank WROTE to me but rather what HE SAID. Please pay attention to what I am telling you. When I left for Buckingham Palace the Genius already saw what my fate would be. I imagined I would save the Engine, but he knew the truth. At the moment, when I shook his hand, he said do not despair, another Englishman will come along. Only later did his words come back to me. I might lose him, but another Englishman would come along."

I rise and stand with my back to the window to keep the storm at bay. He pushes himself towards me, eyes too close, too insistent.

He says: "Do you not remember how I sat waiting for you in Frau Beck's inn? You did not know it yet, but I already had your foolish plans."

"Herr Sumper," I say, "this is not sensible. Mr. Cruickshank never knew me, nor could he know my circ.u.mstances, or the character of my wife, or the sickness of my son, or the artists overrunning our home. To speak in his own language, Mr. Cruickshank had insufficient data."

"Henry, you have not the least idea of what that great brain thought. How could you?"

I am two inches taller but when I look into those jet black eyes I am but a snivelling beast. I pray that he will release me soon.

It is clear now that Frau Helga has let the villagers see the laughing Jesus. It is my fault that she sold it, but is the price enough for my own purpose? Certainly I saw Frau Helga counting money in the stable. I saw the fair down on her arms. Once I dreamed I might kiss her. Long ago.

I was at the stream washing, naked, teetering on razor shale which can amputate your toes. When Sumper touched my shoulder I jumped in fright. My private parts shrivelled like gizzards in a stockpot. He was armoured in his leather ap.r.o.n, a beak in his hand, but I did not know that then.

He said, "You will have been responsible for something far finer than you could ever conceive."

"I wanted only a duck."

"You were not born to have a duck. You were born to bring a Wonder to the world."

And then he turned away and left me in my nakedness.

That night the mother threw the mashed potatoes across the floor. "You have no right to steal my son." There was more of it, all very distressing, particularly to watch the Holy Child wring his hands, his long warty white fingers. In the lamp light his chin looked long, his knees high and these fingers entwining like a nest of baby eels.

"I have not come so far to hurt this boy," said Sumper. "He is a Genius."

"You shall not hurt him," she said. Yet she surely knew what dangerous situation she had created at the inn where they had presumably witnessed Jesus rolling across the floor and laughing. "He is just a little boy."

"He is a Genius," repeated Sumper. "Here," he said, "read this." And from the pouch of his ap.r.o.n he produced the ebony beak on the underside of which I saw there was silver script inset in the coal-black wood.

"I cannot read." She drew back from it. "You know I cannot."

So he thrust the object to me.

Those awful eyes were upon me, waiting for me to understand the meaning.

I am a dunce, I thought, a total dunderhead.

"Quite," I said. "Exactly."

Catherine.

ANNIE h.e.l.lER KICKED ME out at seven with the final pages still unread. I walked down the narrow Danish stairs, all golden at that time of day. Outside there was a warm wind lifting vagrant pamphlets in the air.

I arrived at the Annexe studio five minutes before lockdown, and there, in what we called the "Ikea box," the swan's beak was waiting amongst all those odd screws and washers, the mostly leftover pieces from our rea.s.sembly. Why I had treated it so offhandedly is a question for a psychiatrist. I had not even a.s.signed it a catalogue number. M. Arnaud's handiwork was exactly as I had last seen it, black as black, on a bed of cotton wool, inside a small cardboard box, with the word BEAK in magic marker on the lid.

Contrary to Henry's account, nothing was written on the beak itself. I found this extremely, even excessively, disturbing, as if I had been lied to by a lover. Then I understood the obvious: Arnaud had inlaid the words in silver which would now be silver oxide, that is, the words would be black on black. I could have taken the mystery to the window. I could have used the raking lamp, but it was lockup time and I was agitated and frightened of being caught with my secret. So I wrapped the beak in Kleenex and popped it in an envelope and belted out of the building as if I was late for some grand, imaginary event.

It was a very strange evening, far too hot, with a strong dry wind that suggested Buckinghamshire had turned to desert. At Olympia, as at Lowndes Square, there were papers everywhere adrift, the Evening Standard wrapping itself with a nasty slap around the lamp post. AMERICA'S MESS NOT OURS. One could easily read it upside down.

There was an odd ammoniacal little pharmacy in a side street where I had already bought deodorant and shampoo. There was no cashier or shop girl, only the grey stooped little pharmacist who had a nasty cold. It was a shambles of cardboard boxes, electric fans and menstrual pads, and it took him a while to locate the cotton buds and methylated spirits.

"No bag," I said, and tried to grab my purchases. But apparently a receipt must be written. When the old man spiked his yellow carbon copy I thought of my father, changing batteries, then upstairs to have a dram.

Finally I was in the street, and the Rose and Crown was just ahead, occupying its renovated corner with its blue tiles and bright green umbrellas and a surprising cl.u.s.tering of drinkers outside-English skin, sunburned half to death.

I attracted some attention which was a little bit OK. That is, one did not wish to be s.e.xually invisible just yet. On the other hand there is something very nasty about a braying pack, and it was this sound that followed me up the stairs of the "Residence."

I opened the window of my room and set up on the sill-it was quite wide enough to accommodate the meths bottle. I unpacked the cotton buds and laid them on a tissue. I sited the beak beside the buds. The rest was hardly brain surgery. Within three minutes the meths had revealed the silver inlay on the under-beak.

Then I understood why Henry had written "Dunce."

Faced with Illud aspicis non vides I also was a dunce.

I sat on the slippery synthetic quilt and wondered who I could call on to translate. It was then, staring at those framed pink and pale blue prints one finds only in hotels, that I realized I really had no friends at all.

For years and years I had lived in the lazy conceited happy world of coupledom, something so deliciously contained by private language and its own sweet intolerances of everyone outside. I knew a lot of people, of course, and was habitually affectionate with many, but I had locked the door when Matthew died. I was a sudden spinster. My mother and father were dead. My sister would no longer talk to me.

Illud aspicis non vides.

In all those years of being a secret mistress, I had fancied myself at home with solitude but I had never once felt this stone weight of loneliness inside my throat. There was now no one to call but he whose kindness I had abused already.

When Crofty answered I heard music, something rather difficult, I thought, by which I meant-beyond my education.

"I'm sorry," I said when he answered, but of course I was much relieved.

"Hang on."

The music was turned down. He was slow in returning.

"I interrupted you. I'm sorry."

"My darling," he said, "there is nothing to interrupt." I remembered that he had once been part of a couple too.

From my open window I could see two men support a very drunk young girl, a poor wobbly creature with silly shoes, plump legs, short skirt. Jesus help her. I could not watch.

"Where are you? Not still at that b.l.o.o.d.y pub?"

"It's what they call Happy Hour."

There was a pause. Crofty said, "Would you like me to come and sit with you?"

It would have been such a great relief. But of course I could not.

"How is your Latin?" I asked.

"Rusty."

"But probably serviceable?"

"Possibly."

"What does this mean: Illud aspicis non vides?"

"Where is the beak?" he asked and I realized he was slightly squiffy.

"You know where the beak is," I said. "And I would be astonished if you had not read it."

"Do you know, my dear," he said, and it was clear to me that he was topping up his gla.s.s. "Do you know, I find the notion that mysteries must be solved to be very problematic. You know what I mean? Every curator finally learns that the mysteries are the point."

"Please don't tease me."

"No, I am serious. Why do we always wish to remove ambiguity?"

I thought, why do you always want to polish silver half to death?

"Without ambiguity you have Agatha Christie, a sort of aesthetic whodunnit. But look at any Rothko. You can look and look but you never get past the vacillations and ambiguities of colour, and form, and surface. This is so much ahead of the 'a.n.a.lytical clarities' of your Josef Albers."

"He is not my Albers."

"He was Matthew's Albers."

"He was, yes."

There was another pause.

"This is my project," I said. "You gave it to me."

"Indeed I did. I hope I was not too meddlesome?"

"Eric, I lost everything I lived for. You gave me this. If it is a mystery, that's fine with me. But you gave it to me."

"Yes, dear girl, I did."

"Then why give it to her?" I hadn't meant to say that, but I had. The swan was mine. Henry was mine.

Eric gave himself a splash. "What do you mean?" he asked wetly.

"This is mine."

"Indeed," he said, "but what is 'it' exactly?"

"The Latin."

"So you wish to know how it translates?"

"Yes I do."

"You want to know what it says?"

"Yes."

"Illud aspicis non vides. It means, You cannot see what you can see."

"Oh shut up," I cried.

"It means, You cannot see what you can see."

"No," I said. "No it doesn't."

"Sweet Cat," he said. "Call me whenever you wish."

The phone went dead.

The marrow of my bones was filled with hurt, envy, rage that this mad rich girl was stealing everything from me, including Angus, that is, the carrier of that same spiralled mechanism that made my beloved's upper lip, that wry funny taut muscle in the shadow of his famous nose.

You cannot see what you can see, said Sumper. What a load of rubbish.

WHEN I WAS AWOKEN it did not occur to me that such an enormous noise might be made by rain. But rain it was, the most unimaginable torrent cascading off the roof and falling, backlit, like Victoria Falls, deep and blue.

I had told Eric to shut up.