The Smell of Telescopes (6 page)

Telegram Ma’am

The Queen sits on her throne, writing telegrams. There is a knock on the door. It is Perry, the inventor. “What do you have for me this time, Mr Perry?” He holds up a slim object, dripping like a snake fang. The Queen frowns. “Well what is it?” 

“A fountain-pen, your majesty.”

“Is it faster than a quill, Mr Perry?”

“Much faster, ma’am.”

The Queen discards the quill, which tickles the floor.

Many more things have just reached their hundredth birthday. There is a frayed glove in the second drawer of a maple desk in a forgotten room in a cheap hotel in Brighton. There is an octahedral ruby cut from a flawed stone by a myopic jeweller with a blunt chisel in Winchester. There is a saying among the folk of Bideford, Devon, which declares, “Better to dip an organ in cider than a piano in rum,” and another in Folkestone, Kent, not recorded—they have both turned one hundred. And a vast telescope in the roof-garden of Sir William Herschel. And the silver ring used by Prince Albert to restrain his erections, hidden in a rococo box when not in use, and the box itself, or rather its lock, and in the pocket of the locksmith’s grandson, a farthing. There is a bicycle lying under a gorse bush on the North York Moors, where Joan Bailey lost it after her lover struck her on the head with a mallet, and she went wandering without her memory to Coventry, eventually becoming the manager of a puppet theatre, while the bush grew to help the lover avoid suspicion. There is a plough nailed to a wall in an Oxford tavern. 

These have existed for exactly a century, and telegrams must be sent out to all of them.

The Queen is still sitting on her throne. Throughout the palace, the clocks are striking midnight. She covers a yawn with a hand. “Oh why must I congratulate
everything?
”

The people are growing agitated, politely. Agents ride out beyond them, disdaining the clamour. “Our monarch has abandoned us!” The agents say nothing, except the younger ones, who reply, “No she hasn’t!” But the people will not listen. There is discontent in Dover. There is a hubbub in Huddersfield. There are murmurings in Manchester. The agents gallop faster. There is a gnashing in Grantham, not of teeth, which are rare there, but of groceries, pears gnashed against plums. “The monarch is neglecting us!” “No she isn’t!” 

An agitator mounts a soap-box in Leeds. He has a speech prepared. A republican agenda. He opens his mouth, but an agent rides up to him and delivers a slip of paper.

“What’s this? A telegram?”

The lowest button on his shirt must celebrate.

Prince Albert sits with the Queen in the bedchamber, holding hands. There is an aspidistra in a pot. The pot has recently received its telegram, the aspidistra has not. 

“I can’t take much more of this!”

She strokes his moustache. “Our duties must be fulfilled, dear. It’s the constitution, you know. A secret part of modern government, vital to the integrity of the state.”

“I am a man. I have desires. You are never here, in my arms, like a wife. What shall happen when my erection restraint wears out? It was forged over ten decades ago.”

“We will order another, from the Sheffield Kama Sutra Co.”

“I am sure to die of frustration!”

The Queen sits on her throne, writing telegrams. The fountain-pen is faster than the quill, but the workload does not lessen. There are more things in the world now, more objects to grow old. And as the Empire continues to expand, it gets worse. A gold-mine in Natal. A brewery in Australia. A religion in Rajasthan. There is a knock on the door. It is Stephenson, the inventor. 

“What do you have for me this time, Mr Stephenson?”

“A locomotive, your majesty.”

“Is it faster than a horse?”

“Much faster, ma’am.”

“Kindly demonstrate, Mr Stephenson.”

“It is too large to bring indoors.”

The Queen cocks an ear and hears a distant whistle and the scrape of a shovel on coal. The years chug past.

The Prime Minister is arguing with the Lord Chancellor. 

“But the tradition is doing wonders for our economy. Think of the technological offshoots it has created!”

“The Queen is exhausted. Remember what happened to George III. He went mad. And William IV took to drink.”

“Nonetheless, the tradition must continue. Too much time and effort has been invested to cancel it now. I have personally meddled with the archives of the Patent Office, altering dates and names so that future historians will not perceive a link between progress and the tradition. You know which tradition I mean.”

“The tradition which is kept secret from the people?”

“Yes, precisely that tradition.”

“The tradition which has been indirectly responsible for numerous inventions, including the cantilever bridge, tarmac, the dynamo, sewing machines, the gyroscope, the compression refrigerator, corrugated iron, dirigibles, and the first-class stamp?”

“That’s the one! Strike this from the record!”

Agents sit in the buffet-cars of locomotives. Behind them, they tow nine carriages full of telegrams. At various points along the route, they open the doors and leap into the night, clutching a message. One has a trowel concealed under his hat. He lands awkwardly, shuffling toward a nameless village. The locomotive turns a bend and leaves him alone. He enters a churchyard, searching mossy headstones for the correct name. Here it is! He crouches and hacks at the fog-drenched earth with the trowel. At last the coffin is revealed. Pausing for breath, he glances around. An owl in a blasted yew returns his look. The agent jumps onto the coffin and inserts the edge of his tool under the lid. Rusty nails yawn from crumbling wood. Spiders flee. He throws back the lid like the cover of a Penny Dreadful and gags as a moonbeam, challenging a cloud to a duel and running it through, impales a madly grinning skeleton, bones jutting from mouldy suit! Hurriedly, the agent pins the telegram to the collar of the skeleton’s shirt, replaces the lid and soil and dances the plot flat with his lame leg.

Prince Albert has sickened and died of frustration, or typhoid, it is not clear which, possibly both. “Now I will have more time to devote to the writing of telegrams!” sobs the Queen.

The agitator squats in the hold of a prison-ship. A warder approaches, checking cells with a lantern. Something is wrapped around the glass, casting a stream of words over beams and bulwarks. At regular intervals, for no discernible reason, the warder lashes at his captives with a cat o’ nine tails. The agitator counts ten stripes on his legs when it is his turn. He notes that the extra tail is a length of paper, dangling from the handle of the antique whip.

The Queen sits on her throne, writing telegrams. There is a knock on the door. It is Littledale, the inventor. 

“What do you call that thing, Mr Littledale?”

“A typewriter, your majesty.”

“Is it quieter than a locomotive, Mr Littledale?”

“Slightly, ma’am. It is powered by ribbons.”

“Can it do the writing for me?”

“Not at this stage. In a century or two.”

“It must write a telegram to itself when that happens.”

The French President is worrying his Chief of Police. 

“What are the English playing at,
mon cher
?”

“I don’t know, Monsieur President.”

“They are cutting down trees at a furious rate. Obviously to make paper. But paper for what?”

“English novels, perhaps?”

“Ah yes! Do you like English novels,
mon cher
? I ordered one from London last week. A Defoe. The seventh word in the twelfth line of the sixty-third paragraph of the ninety-fifth chapter had a telegram glued to it. With noxious fish glue!”

“An extraordinary coincidence, Monsieur President! I also ordered a Defoe from London last week. At the centre was a compressed oak leaf and stapled to the leaf was a telegram.”

“Rosbif! Barbarians! Louts! We must consider forging an alliance,
mon cher
, to discover the meaning of this.”

A gold tooth under a pillow in a Padstow cottage, still waiting, without an owner, for a fairy. A wig in a box at the rear of a kennel in Durham, guarded by a dog with the morals of a cat. The belief that some cherries contain real stones, probably flints, held by the farmers of Thetford. A picture of a summer day in the Cotswolds, painted with clotted cream and magenta jam, in an unhygienic bakery in Winchcombe. A pistol in the hand of the very last man to fight a legal duel in Breckland, eating cherries to ignite the charge. A rotten hymn.

The Queen sits on her throne. Telegrams, knock on the door. A figure who wears his sideburns like camshafts. 

“Who are you? I have no inventor called Babbage!”

“With respect, ma’am, I have been seeking an audience with you for thirty years. Allow me to demonstrate this analytical engine here. It is an early type of computer and can be programmed to perform a large body of functions, such as writing telegrams.”

“How dare you talk of bodily functions in my presence?”

“No ruler can afford to be without one.”

“I am busy! Take it away!”

Tears in the palace. A silver ring taken from a box, lovingly pressed to lips. “Once I was your barrel of sauerkraut. You whispered to me,
‘Liebe Kleine. Ich habe dich so lieb, ich kann nicht sagen wie’
, and I presumed you were asking to visit the bathroom. But now you are gone. And my life has become a telegram without news.”

“You sent for me, your majesty?” 

“Yes, Prime Minister. We have a problem. The tradition of sending telegrams to everything is one hundred years old.”

“Then you must send a telegram to the tradition.”

“But how? How can one send a telegram to a tradition? Who can carry it? Where will they go? I am bewildered.”

“You must try, ma’am! You must try!”

The Queen tries:

Dear Tradition,

Congratulations on reaching the centenary of being yourself.

     Best wishes,

       The Queen.

No, it is too absurd. Something must be done. The law will have to be altered so that only old people receive telegrams, not everything. A secret bill must be passed.

The Prime Minister weeps at the thought of change.

A dream: a world where inanimate objects can rest in peace. Unemployed agents race nowhere in automobiles. Paradise! But a cloud looms on the horizon, cooling the idyll. There will still be much work to do. Wines, books, spoons, piers, guitars, floods, hearths, stables, gutters, pots, vendettas, crotchets, cuffs, doors, accidents, comets—these and many other items have been set free, but the population is increasing at an exponential rate. What if people come to outnumber things? How can this be avoided? Only a war, the like of which has never been imagined. That will stall the trend. But with whom? 

On nights when the silver ring was kept in its box, Prince Albert gave her children. And these children have also produced children. One is named Wilhelm. Machine-guns, gas.

We are not amused.

Depressurised Ghost Story

My soul lives on a ledge. I have always been a climber: my first conquest was the north face of our family home in Colchester. Alarmed by the sight of her only child scrabbling among the ivy, my mother rushed out and held her apron to catch me. But I succeeded in gaining the highest chimney and remained there until starvation compelled me to descend to my punishment, which turned out to be more hunger—I was exiled to bed. Always prudent, my father nailed my window shut, but I spent an intrepid night clambering over the precipitous furniture. 

Later, at Eton, I forsook lessons to begin a passionate relationship with the gables and turrets of the college buildings. At this time, I was introduced to the telling of ghost tales, courtesy of our Provost. Though untroubled by his morbid fables and anecdotes, I never became a confirmed sceptic of the paranormal. My fellow pupils exchanged the Provost’s tombic romances like farthings, but I was simply uninterested in anything which could not be scaled and it seemed unlikely a spectre would afford a grip for boots, even those fitted with crampons.

After my wholly inadequate schooling, I attended university to study engineering. I excelled at mathematics whenever a quantity had to rise up the gradient of a steep formula; the rest of the time my failures were as immense and unlikely as a glacier. My tutor chided me one afternoon: “You have the loftiest intentions, but they reside in your feet.” Over my door I fixed an ice-axe, a symbol of reality cooler than any abstract logic. I was not alone; other acrophiliac students joined me in expeditions around the dour peaks and chalk cliffs.

I graduated with a poor degree and immediately started out on a life above the clouds. First I wandered over the Alps, rolling down one peak only to ascend another, like a snowball which has gathered infinite momentum. [
This is untrue. Had I really gathered infinite momentum, my mass would also have been infinite. The immense gravitational field set up around my body in such circumstances would have made me the centre of the universe. Obviously this did not happen.
] My allowance was soon cut, but I did not return to face my father. I applied for a job in East Africa as a technical consultant. I found time to climb a number of equatorial mountains, though I was mauled by a leopard on the summit of Kilimanjaro and forced to rest on a plantation. One of my close neighbours turned out to be an explorer by the name of Shipton. Within an hour of meeting we were planning an ambitious expedition to Central Asia to explore the unknown G— N— Range.

We shared a philosophy of light travel. He was a more lyrical fellow than I, the sort of climber who writes up his adventures in books. I have an idea he did actually publish his memoirs in several volumes. I have no reason to suppose he remembers me; our collaboration was rather brief. We argued over the exact location of the forbidden Q—— valley, mentioned in a Tibetan folktale, one of those translated by X.D. Laocoön. A scuffle broke out; we exchanged blows with a map of the area. He threw me off his premises. I staggered away, silently vowing: “You have beaten me to a pulp, but I shall beat you to fame.” [
Then I returned to his villa and shouted the words through his window. He attacked me with a globe. At this point I discovered that small scale maps inflict more painful bruises.
] I was fired with a determination to reach the valley before he did.

I spent five years saving money for the mission, collecting climbers and equipment, getting myself in shape for the arduous task. Eventually I was fit and rich enough to feel reasonably confident. Crossing the horrid peaks of the G— N— Range would cost a fortune in leather soles: I hired a Polish cobbler to accompany me. Other hopefuls applied, from England and continental Europe. We arranged to meet in Calcutta. Arriving there after a rough sea-voyage, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that all but one of my recruits had turned up. The missing chap was our radio-operator. Later in the Hotel D——, fiddling with a short-wave wireless, we picked up his attenuated signals, drowning beneath the civilised accents and restrained static of the BBC World Service.

We set off on August 5th, 19—, after a hearty breakfast of rice and lentils, heading north on the 09:05 express. We had an entire carriage to ourselves, for since my disagreement with Shipton I intended to do my exploring in the opposite way to him—if he planned to take little on an ascent, I was determined to carry up as much as possible. It chaffed with my real principles, of course, but my pride outweighs my sense. And while my story is rattling along the rails, let me introduce you to the prosaic souls who formed the core of my party. Because I am quite modest, I shall refrain from saying which of the following names is mine, though it has the sweetest ring to it: C. Bowman, J. Tolkien-Twigge, O. Eckenstein, R. Darktree, M.A. Zimara, C. Weasel, H. Melmoth, E.S. Abbott, A.G. Woden, B. Cadiz, D. Delves, I. Evans... (The remainder of the list has just been obscured by smoke from the train).

I can hardly see the paragraphs in this fog. The quality of our coal must have been very poor. Having studied Hindoo ceremonies, I made a joke which raised blisters but no smiles—the stoker had died at his post and his wife jumped into the furnace. I repeat it here because I know readers have a darker sense of humour than climbers. Actually you are a very good audience: I wish you had come with me instead of those miserable fellows. But you would have grumbled about the cold in S——, where we disembarked and hired ponies to take us over the B—— Hills. Right to the borders of M—— we rode. (I know you are trying to reconstruct my route. You are bored with the pace of my document and want to make a dash for the end. I do not advise this. The narrow passes of L—— are infested with bandits. Please stay close to my prose).

Months of hardship and weak tea sapped the energies of my followers. We stopped in the shadow of R— D—— and bathed in the thermal springs. Some of my team, rather less educated than the others, had never heard of X.D. Laocoön and the forbidden valley of Q——, nor were they overeager to learn the mythology of this region. I taught them anyway. Every valley in Tibet is filled to the brim with ruined cities, sorcerous treasure and immortal lamas. Q—— was the only empty one. It was remarkable because of the things it did not contain. I suppose you might say that the places of magic which surrounded it gave it a lustrous presence and outlined the mystery: like depicting a tree by painting the sky which lies between its branches. According to Laocoön, it was the only place on the planet never trampled by any kind of feet, not even when there was only one continent and all the mountains were flat.

I was not entirely convinced by this, for I knew there are areas of Colchester equally untrodden, though these are generally very small. Yet the allure of Q—— was excessive. I reserved for myself the first step onto its soil. Ringed and supported by a circle of jagged mountains, like a bowl of soup guarded by a dozen grumpy waiters, the valley was surveyed many centuries ago by a levitating monk. That, at any rate, was the tale related by Laocoön. I was too suspicious to query the word of one who has been criticised by doubters. Closer to our objective we lurched, pressing our destination into a corner. We traversed the Y—R— Glacier, losing our supply of teapots down crevasses while I cut spiral steps in the ice. At the end of this stage it was apparent we needed to employ porters from local settlements. There were caves in the bottom of the Glacier: muffled troglodytes played dice with frozen tears. They shouldered our cases with a stoicism exhausting to behold.

The porters were fine chaps, but they were difficult to address. The leaders of our initial group were Tsongkhapa and Dromtönpa. We soon added Langdharama and Shantarikshita to the ranks. Entering a remote village on the Z— P— Plateau, [
For anyone who mistrusts my geography or believes I am being coy about cartographical detail, let me add that the Z— P— Plateau lies between the R— and J— Rivers. It is — miles long and — miles broad and contains the villages of B— and O—. In the latter village lives a chap called  A— M— who distils a brandy from the  W— plant. I suggest you try it some time, it may do you good.
] I was extremely grateful to be able to hire Bertie. He was old and frail, but the simplicity of his appellation was a crucial factor in our offer of employment. Besides, feeble porters totter most carefully and are ideal for carrying scientific equipment. After two or three weeks of his dedication, I asked him how he came by such a name. It emerged his father was a Scottish engineer working in Bengal who decided to construct a bamboo bicycle and pedal home. This eccentric resolution carried him no further than the Himalayas.

“What happened there?” I inquired.

“He lost his way after turning left at Lhasa,” Bertie explained. “He wobbled into our village with a puncture and a fever. After we tended him and restored his health, he became a shamanic figure, devising all manner of apparatus for our convenience.”

These, Bertie went on to expound, included attaching electric motors to temple prayer-wheels in order to accelerate local devotion. The engineer had an idea that the efficacy of these devices corresponded to the rate of spin. There was a threshold of so many millions of revolutions per minute above which a prayer would actually work. Unfortunately his career was finished when his sporran was caught in an axle. He was pulled in and rotated to a pious demise, leaving unfinished his dream of converting the entire world into a prayer-wheel by rearranging the mountains to spell out a mantra. I insisted that a single rotation every day would scarcely be enough to satisfy the highest Heaven. Bertie agreed.

“I did not say he was sane, merely my father.”

There is no time for more extracts from the conversations we enjoyed along the way. They were wholly of this quality. But I am already exactly 1669 words into my account and at this point it is good manners to reward my readers with some action (with this parenthesis the total has increased to 1708 words—dash it! I am overwriting. Better edit the next line.) As we approached the serrated peaks... lucky to be alive. I have never seen any sunset to compare with that one. The slopes shimmered like enormous fires put to bed in clean sheets but rolling around. I was overawed. One of the English climbers fell to his knees and started muttering that these peaks were impenetrable. I wanted to shoot him like a mad yak, but mastered the impulse before dusk. We set up camp.

Before retiring, I made a speech: “We have braved many dangers since leaving the luxuries of home. But the peace of mind afforded by good food and wine will shortly be eclipsed. For on the far side of these mountains the serenity of Q—— is waiting.”

Bertie came to my tent after midnight. “The men are frightened. They have no problem with serenity, but ghosts might also be waiting. There is no lonelier or remoter spot on the surface of the Earth. Where better for evil phantoms to take up residence?”

I laughed. “That is a common misconception of mountaineers. Actually the opposite is the case. This is probably the only valley in Tibet which is not crowded with the wispy dead.”

“How can you be sure? No-one has been here before.”

“Exactly! Ghosts tend to hover near the place where they originated. In lonely and remote areas, where there are few beings to expire, hardly any can exist. Here there are none.”

Pointing out the relevant passage in Laocoön, I sent him away with a relieved smile on his weathered face. My Polish cobbler, I decided, would be able to use Bertie’s skin as leather if anything happened to the tough old McSherpa. As I lay in the fresh dark, I thought about my own logic. A valley without people is a valley without spectres. It seemed too obvious for comfort. Something was wrong. Unable to sleep, I lit a lamp and tired myself anew by catching up with my diary. Wonders avoided Q—— with an unnatural consistency. Its ordinariness was miraculous. This is a paradox also true, I am told, of charladies.

The following morning I was shattered, but I insisted on leading the final push up the sheer wall of soft snow and slippery rock. More ancient than a stupa, Bertie bulged with exertion. Halfway up, he admitted he was not a Buddhist but a follower of the original Tibetan religion, Bon, with special protection from one of its obscure demons. I was pleased with his confession, as it released me from a moral obligation to assist him. When a devil watches over you, a more spectacular descent is usually reserved. It may be of interest to record that I was first to the top, though I did not boast of my achievement aloud, contenting myself with a little dance. The consequences of this action were... (yes, an avalanche has swept away the rest of this paragraph. It has taken one of my readers with it. There he goes! Him with the beard).

I was also first to descend into the valley proper. The inner slopes were gentler than the outer. (While you dig your way out, let me reassure you that none of the team lost our balance in the accident. We were above the fracture, whereas readers tend to lurk at the base of a story. I pity you. But it is your own fault for coming this far. Next time you must try to be more careful.) I planted the flag of my nation in the frost and sat in the slash of its shadow, trying to ignite a portable stove. There were no teapots so I brewed coffee while my colleagues joined me. Bertie, last of all, delivered the precision instruments to my feet. I set up a number of regulation experiments with the barometer and manometer, measuring the pressure differentials. There was a roaring pain in my head and the edges of my vision were indistinct.

I ignored my ailments. “Well, this is it!” I announced. “The last of all solitudes; the hymen of the planet. Now we are here, the world really has lost its virginity. Look around. Apart from a floating sage, no human has ever seen this fastness.”

“I feel a trifle dizzy,” answered Bertie.

“Altitude sickness,” I replied. “The pressure is quite low. [
I am disgusted with the way you always complain about the pressure of work. Try to remember what a lack of pressure entails: nausea, confusion, haemorrhaging. Reconsider before asking your boss for extra leave. Do you want to bleed from the ears and eyes?
] If the feeling persists you must open a vein. Now then, I suggest we rush around like lunatics, in order to trample most of the unblemished spots before tiffin. An expedition must be thorough in its desecration. Otherwise our claim to be first will be open to doubt.”