The Smell of Telescopes (15 page)

While the engineer mused thus, he became aware of a clatter outside his compartment door. For some minutes he sat and pondered over possible reasons for this disturbance. There had been a movement, he was sure, in the empty connecting corridor. Might rats be playing about in it? It was quiet now. No! the commotion began again. But was it with rats? I should not ask, because in this case it was not. Besides, there was a rustling and shaking: surely more than any rat could cause.

Pin was off his seat in one bound, and made a dash toward the door, with no better weapon than a template for gingerbread men. The rustling turned into a flurry of footsteps; the engineer poked his head into the passage just in time to catch a glimpse of a bobbing black object vanishing into an adjacent compartment. With its back to him, it was anonymous; yet Pin felt that its frictionless gait was familiar. With many misgivings as to incipient failure of eyesight, overworked brain, excessive smoking, and so on, he resigned himself to making a search of the carriage. He slowly crept up to the compartment into which the figure had jumped, and peered through the glass at the interior. It was quite devoid of personages: as he’d assumed he was alone on the express, this revelation afforded Pin a crumb of comfort. But there was a blanket of some kind resting on one of the tastelessly upholstered seats—a previous passenger must have left it there—and this travelling adjunct bore a distinct human appearance, with a crumpled, and intensely horrible, face. Furthermore, it seemed to be quivering, as if panting after some exertion.

For a moment, the engineer was at a loss to account for this. There were no open windows in the room; the wind was not disturbing the cloth. Then he remembered his notion of rats loose on the train; this proved to be the likely explanation. After all, ragged and mouldy bedclothes often heaved like seas, with the rats under them. Why not travelling rugs? Pin congratulated himself on his logical approach to mysteries, and returned briskly to his own compartment and fidgetings.

The journey ended about midnight. Between the houses, Pin could see the tents of the Eisteddfod, with the monumental Grand Pavilion towering over the other structures. No cheerful country porter came to greet him. He was forced to carry his luggage onto the platform himself; as he took a rest on his suitcase, the aching engineer was almost knocked down by a trainspotter who collided with him at the very top of his speed. Instead of running away, the misfit remained hanging on to him, speechless with fright. It is dangerous to give a hobbyist such a scare as this one had had, and Pin, knowing this, sought the bottom of the matter.

“What have you been up to? What have you seen?” he demanded.

“Duw, I seen it wave at me out of the window,” wailed the spotter. “And I don’t like it. It wasn’t a tidy boyo.”

Pin sent the man on his way with a shilling and frowned. The window indicated was the one next to his own; the compartment into which darted the faceless shape. There was nothing there now. Can rats wave? At least the fellow had not seen fit to throw a stone. Dismissing the incident, the engineer made his way through the dark streets to his lodgings.

The place which the reader is asked to consider is Lladloh. It is different now from what I remember it to have been. An ancient mortuary chapel, with a cemetery shaped like a goat’s tear; tall trees smothering domestic buildings; crooked lanes made not with cobbles but flint nodules, so that pedestrians with hobnailed boots light their way without recourse to expensive public illumination. There was a glum black windmill just after you left the station, which looked like it had lost a joust with a deluded knight... Also shops of dull red brick, with roofs of dirty straw... but why do I encumber you with these commonplace details? Is it because dots are a good substitute for effective writing? Or because I am writing a guide book...?

Walk away from the mill and turn down the road on the left. It runs parallel to the railway, and if you follow it, it descends into a smelly sort of hollow, at the bottom of which can be found the village square. Here Pin encountered the nameless tavern which was to be his home for as many weeks as it took for him to revolutionise the power ratios of steam engines and redeem himself as a tutor of merit. As he walked, he had the traditional feeling of being followed; but he resisted a growing urge to look over his shoulder and spoil the story.

Before dropping into the urban pit, he cast a glance at the site of the Eisteddfod. Not all was quiet at this late hour; flickering lamps of paraffin moved to and fro, as if the stall-owners were preparing for the morning’s entertainments. For any reader who is interested, let me state that the Royal National Eisteddfod is the major Welsh festival, and must not be confused with the International Eisteddfod, which has a permanent site in Llangollen. The Royal is a nomad, whose venue is proclaimed one year and a day in advance by the Gorsedd of Bards. It is fundamentally a cultural tournament, with overblown pageantry and a wealth of aesthetic events, including Druidic competitions. The Grand Pavilion is a marquee worthy of a Mongol Khan, so large that fifty-six blows of square-headed iron mallets are needed to secure each peg.

Pin was made welcome at the squalid inn, was installed in the large double-bedded room of which we have heard, and was able to arrange his materials for work in crab-apple-pie order upon a narrow table standing in the wide end of the room. There was a single window which looked over the filthy street. After resting awhile on a chair, Pin returned to the bar for a strong nightcap. The tavern’s interior was far too spacious to be illuminated, as it was, by a dozen or so candles. The engineer made a remark to the barman to the effect that atmosphere was one thing; seeing where you were going was quite another.

The barman, who went by the name of Emyr James, was affable. “These are not our preferred arrangements. The generator which provides us with electricity has been broken for many years.”

“Well,” said Pin, “but it appears to me at that rate, sir, that you must be little better than a Cimmerian.”

“Perhaps I am,” the barman answered; “but the laws which govern our generator are really not at all perfectly known. No mechanic has managed to fix it; thus the village exists without electric light or heating. In view of this, and the fact it seems likely to turn rather colder, would you like any extra blankets on your bed?”

Pin declined the offer and ordered a glass of porter. “As an expert with engines, I wonder if I may be of assistance? What sort of generator do you use? Pour this pint first.” Interval.

“About that generator you were asking. It’s rather a curious one. I have it in my cellar. As a matter of fact, I was polishing it yesterday. Beautiful model, astounding performance. Man-sized but with a water-tube boiler and a double Kylchap exhaust. Delivers a pressure of 666psi, more in summer. Fully portable—in a wheelchair.”

Dr Pin was stupefied by these specifications, at which he was tempted to laugh, but his incredulity was greatly modified with another pint, and the reaction to his next question. He wondered aloud whether a certain Noisette had manufactured the device.

In front of the hearth, seated on a Gothic chair with a candle set in either arm, an ample and malignant youth with brass-rimmed spectacles quietly laughed with unimaginable cynicism.

“Never mind him,” whispered Emyr; “that’s just Mr Homunculus, local poet, embittered and drunk as a study-toad.”

But the youth suddenly muttered: “Poor Noisette! Lots of hobbies, a comfortable home, all his time to himself. Took his work so seriously he lost himself in it! Never found his way out!”

“Hush!” warned Emyr. But Pin was not at all deterred by the cryptic utterance. He was pleased to receive confirmation of his belief that the village of Lladloh was indeed the home town of the legendary inventor. I can imagine him rubbing his palms together once he returned to his room after consuming a third glass. Before he went to bed, he took out of his suitcase the whistle he had stolen from Parkins. Crushed seashells still clogged the mouthpiece, and the pea was a pearl, but he managed to clear it out with his toothbrush. Tidy as ever in his habits, he stepped close to the window to throw the brush out. Opening the casement, he noticed a belated wanderer coming down the hill into the square, wearing something in the manner of a
djellaba
, trotting with swiftness and irregularity, a startling and terrifying speed. Then Pin closed the window, surprised at the odd cloaks people wore at Lladloh.

Later, he thought he heard voices conversing outside his door. Emyr was ushering a late arrival into a room. They talked as if they were old acquaintances who had been reunited.

In the morning, Pin woke and dressed, putting the finishing touches to his corset, when one of the maids came in. “If you please,” she said, “would you like extra oil on your cogs, sir?”

“Ah, thank you,” said Pin, casting a glance over the spare parts he had arranged on his cankerous dressing-table. “Yes, I think I would like some. They seem likely to turn rather rusty.”

“Are you employed at the Eisteddfod, sir?” she asked.

“Dear me. My arrival here has nothing to do with the festival. I’m a scholar exiled from his college for some minor offences. For example, my Wankel engine was caught in the act.”

“Really? How very absurd!” said the maid, departing to giggle with her colleagues, while Pin set forth, with a stern determination to enjoy an ethnic breakfast. And sure enough, he ate a double helping of chunky cawl with a plate of bara-brith, followed by a Red Dragon Pie
^*
which is usually baked for half-an-hour at 180 degrees centigrade. Onions, beans and carrots are the chief ingredients, topped with potatoes. But I’m not writing a recipe-book—unlike Dr Pin, who is.

He left the dive and returned up the hill to the Eisteddfod. He was disappointed to learn of a hefty entrance fee for the privilege of being admitted into the festival. Pin’s experience on this occasion was a very distressing one. Transactions were conducted in Welsh and he was snubbed by a mob of language activists, who delighted in spelling out words they thought unfamiliar to him—such as c-o-b-l-y-n coblyn, and the like. I heard the whole story from him some months later. He wandered through the dirt and muddy puddles, finally coming to the entrance of the Grand Pavilion. Then, with a nervous shrug, he disappeared into the maw of the cyclopean tent—where the Bardic recital was in progress.

For an hour he endured the strict rhythms and soft mutations, until the Arch-Druid, Barrington Burke, announced the competition’s winner. In Pin’s phrase, Mr Burke, dressed in a gown of crumpled linen, was so Arch he was practically Ctesiphonic. Pin left the marquee in bewilderment and horror, emotions I can figure to myself, for I have in the flesh thirty years back seen the same thing happen; but the reader can hardly imagine how dreadful it was to him to see first prize awarded to a poet whom he had known to be an empty talent. He sauntered in search of the exit, was set upon by charity fund-raisers and was forced to pause and feel in his pockets. But he only drew out the whistle.

“Well, that’s curious,” he said; “I remember that before I started this morning, I intended to leave it behind.”

But the fund-raisers would not accept it as a substitute for money, and after an alternative pocket was ransacked, his redundancy payoff was further depleted. In disgust, he decided to return to his lodging, where he might be more assured of solitude. As he neared the tavern, he caught sight of something playing tricks in his room—a hint of bundled up and twisted bedclothes moving about on their own behind the glass. “Now,” he thought aloud, “if this is one of the servants going into my room when I am away, I can only say that—well, that I don’t approve of it at all.” Unless, he amended, it was a frisky maid.

While he was in the act of rushing into the building, and demanding an explanation from the barman, he was detained on the threshold by the youth who had chuckled at him in the bar. Mr Homunculus, as Emyr termed him, snatched Pin’s sleeve and hissed: “So you’re interested in Kingdom Noisette? Come with me, sir, into the cellar.”

“I’ll go down in a moment. It’ll be a pleasure, both to you and to myself. First we must get to the bottom of this: what do you know about Noisette and where his designs came from?”

“Honest, sir, I don’t know the source of his inspiration, or how he arrived at the finished product—that nobody could guess. But I’ll go as far as to say this, that he’s not a hundred feet from this place. Quite whole, in a perfectly undecayed state.”

“You’ll forgive me, I hope,” started Pin, “if I sound impertinent, but are you quite sure he’s near here? I thought it was just an example of his work which was kept in the cellar.”

“Right down there, sir. That’s the truth what I’m telling you, that is; if you don’t believe me, ask the barman.”

Saying nothing, the engineer followed the youth under a low archway and down a steep spiral staircase. Half aloud Pin counted the steps as he went down, and he got as far as the thirty-eighth before reaching the floor of the cellar. It was very dark and there was some foulness of air which nearly extinguished the matches he lit in sequence. The dank room under the tavern went some little way back, and on the right and left of the entrance, he could discern rounded objects which might be barrels. A taller shape loomed straight ahead; he reached out and touched something curved, that felt—yes—more or less like skin. This discovery made it absolutely certain to Pin’s mind that he was on the right track. Putting both hands out as well as he could, he pulled it to him, and it came. It was heavy, but moved more easily than expected.

Bumping into an unseen obstruction, it tottered and then slipped on to Pin’s chest, and wrapped its arms round his neck. He was conscious of a most horrible smell of garlic, and of a cold kind of face pressed into his own, and of moving slowly over it, and of several—I don’t know how many—pistons or crankshafts or pendulums rotating against his body. He would have screamed out like a beast, but Homunculus, running quickly up the steps, returned with a lantern, and the vista was illuminated in the fashion of supernatural melodrama. By this time, of course, Pin realised he was in the presence of an automaton.