ON MONDAY MORNING I rang the bell beside the Annexe gate and the turnstile pivoted at the centre of its ungiving heart. From that moment a camera held me.

Reception was to my left and there was Arthur. I could not reasonably ask him where the tea chests had been stored.

"Good morning Mr. Phelps." He lifted his face and I saw the puffy boozer's eyelids.

"You were working on Sat.u.r.day on my behalf. I am in your debt."

The old codger rubbed his foxy silver hair. "I would say that Mr. Croft has settled that, Miss Gehrig. He nearly killed me with his bleeding settlement, if you'll forgive me saying so."

I swatted my ID card. A second turnstile. The camera observed me, but there was nothing in my bag except a pashmina, purse, and Lorazepam. I carried emptiness. Doors opened. Another camera recorded my progress. Doubtless there were thousands of my days repeated thus, interred digitally in limbo. I ascended two steps with nothing to look forward to, and swiped my card one final time.

I opened my studio door to meet, not emptiness, but tea chests.

I think I made a small cry. Perhaps it was recorded. A moment later the rat's nest of Daily Mail opened up its crumpled innards, and there were Henry Brandling's notebooks in their careful raffia string.

At my bench, I found the first book completely filled with handwriting, every page. All the books, every one. In all that sharp sea of waving lines there was not one blank. Although I wanted all of them at once, I slid only four of them inside four ziplock bags and these I hid inside my handbag. Then I shifted the remainder to the high shelf above the fume cupboard where no one would ever think to look. There were precisely nine more instalments for me to read.

Only as I hung my booty on the hook behind the door did I realize things were not at all as they had been on Friday night. In the left-hand corner of the room, nearest to the door and therefore behind my left shoulder when I first entered, was an iridescent grey tarpaulin thrown across some objects, the largest one of which stood about four foot high.

I thought of a beached sting ray, some undead thing washed ash.o.r.e in La Dolce Vita. When the rational brain woke up, I understood what must lie beneath the tarp-an upper and a lower cylinder driven by a weight, thirty levers that could be connected with different parts of the duck's skeletal system to make it drink, et cetera, a la Riskin. This was not going to be a smoking monkey, that was clear when I took away the shroud. If, a moment later, I was replacing it, it was not because of the ingenious mechanism, but because of a wooden object placed beside it. Even that was nothing, of course, nothing at all. It was just a sort of wooden hull that had probably once contained the mechanism, but I was in a waking nightmare and the brain reported a failed cremation, a burned roast dinner, a black and formless fear. Professionally I understood the pitch-black underside, but what I saw was the sh.e.l.l of a huge bivalve, crusty, flaking, disinterred from tar. I smelled napalm, creosote, burned pig, death.

TO: [email protected] FROM: SUBJECT: Bronchitis Sorry. Diagnosis confirmed.

A very short time later I was signing out downstairs.

"You're shivering," Arthur said.

I hurried through the turnstile with my booty tight beneath my arm. I thought, Henry Brandling, what happened to you? How much money did they steal?

Henry.

ALTHOUGH FIRMLY INTERROGATED, Frau Beck affected to have no memory of the man in the parlour.

"If Herr Brandling means the Englishman, that gentleman has settled his account. That is all I know."

"I am the Englishman."

"Yes Herr Brandling," said Frau Beck (rhymes with peck, a pecking little person). "Mr. Brandling you are also an Englishman. But that Englishman." She held apart her wiry little arms to indicate the scoundrel's shoulders. "He paid."

Clearly I had been duped by a confidence man of the type that preys on travellers. I slammed my hand down on the counter and this displeased Frau Beck.

"He was a German," I said.

"No, an Englishman."

I was eviscerated. I had abandoned my son for what? A playing card?

"What of the maid?" I asked.

The maid? What maid? Etc. Was Frau Beck a member of the gang?

"The maid of my room."

"The maid of your room," Frau Beck said, as if mocking my English grammar. "The maid of your room has departed."

"Clearly," I cried, seeking her behind her lenses. "Clearly, these criminals do not work alone."

"Herr Brandling, it is the springtime. The maid goes to her family in the Schwarzwald. It is to be expected. Each year the same."

"She has taken my plans to the Black Forest!"

"Herr Brandling, we know this is not possible."

"It is so, Frau Beck, believe me."

"And these plans, were they the same plans you showed Herr Hartmann?"

"They are my plans. I have no others."

Dipping her pen in her ink well, Frau Beck dismissed me.

At home I would have sent a man to summon the police, and they would have frightened all the servants (as they did both times my wife lost her wedding ring).

I informed Frau Beck I was going to my room to write a complaint. I doubt she knew what I meant, and how could I know myself? What would I write? In English? To whom would I address my charges? No, I must bite my tongue. I had no recourse but to order new plans, and of course the firm's draughtsmen would copy the London Ill.u.s.trated News again, although my brother would make it clear to them that "Mr. Henry's" request was even less welcome than the first.

And yet, was not my little boy himself the most important family enterprise? He was a Brandling, which is also the name of a salmon before it has gone to the sea, a parr, a pink, a smolt, a smelt, a sprag, or brandling. My brother must be made to see that Percy was our future. He had none of his own.

I returned to my eyrie and lay upon my bed. How long I slept I have no idea. I was roused by a mousey skittering as someone attempted to slide paper beneath my door. I was on my feet in a trice.

I surprised the maid's son kneeling, envelope in hand, blue eyes wide with fright. I caught him by his long white wrist and hauled the limpy creature into the room. I felt his magnetic life surge as it shook my arm, jolting, kicking like a hare or rabbit in a trap. I booted the door shut as I shackled his other wrist as well-if he had lice eggs under his fingernails they would not find a home beneath my skin.

Trapped-my little criminal, in the middle of the white-washed room, shaking, crying, crumpled letter in his hand. Then it was knock knock knock and rattling on the handle and here was the accomplice, "The maid of the room," a red kerchief around her wheaten hair. This second party required no dragging. Indeed she rushed to embrace her offspring. There, by the foot of the peculiarly austere bed which she had so recently made herself, she kissed his crown and glared at me. I was a brute. The boy pressed himself hard against his mother and regarded me with fear and hatred, his fierce eyes revealing a will much stronger than my own. I wanted him to like me even so, this tiny enemy.

The mother I had earlier thought to be quite pretty, but now I saw, in that wide and delicate mouth, the knowledge that all happiness was conditional. Her complexion was as fine as an English woman's but her thief's hands were used and hard.

"Give me back my plans," I said.

She showed the perfect understanding of the guilty.

"Sir, your plans are safe," she said, and the quality of her English was not of the natural order. That is, she was revealing herself to be a maid so dangerously well educated that, apart from the eccentric Binns, no one of my acquaintance would have employed her.

I said: "They will be safe when they are with their lawful owner."

She dared to contradict me.

Said she, "They must not be allowed to remain in Karlsruhe."

I fear I may have snorted.

"It is better the plans go to where they can be understood."

Her craven manner had slipped from her. I thought, yes, I am correct, a gang.

"And where might my plans be understood?"

"In Furtw.a.n.gen."

Who had ever heard of such a comic place?

"But even Furtw.a.n.gen is filled with mediocrities."

I would have grilled her on the sources of her strong opinions had not the child slyly produced a number of small brightly painted wooden blocks, and then-from where?-a length of thick steel wire perhaps a quarter of an inch in diameter. I watched in silence, while he swiftly a.s.sembled an ingenious bowed bridge along which his red and yellow blocks were made to slide and hop, all under the power of their invisible or magical engines.

It was a delightful contrivance. What lovesick father would not be charmed by such a child?

The boy had a voice like a little bell. When he spoke he was so tuneful that I did not immediately understand he spoke my tongue.

"He has made it for your son," his mother said. "You will send it to England and your son will play with this while he waits for his father to return."

How do they know I have a son?

"It is very kind," I said at last, "but your son does not need to buy toys for mine." They had seen Percy's likeness. That was it.

"He does not purchase," she said, cupping the back of his head with her hand. "He makes. In the night." How she loved him-she was alight with it-but given the dexterity of the manufacturer and the ingeniousness of the invention, I had to make clear my scepticism.

"You wrong him," she said, all respect now vanished. "He made it. He cut himself and he will be punished for his carelessness."

He was clearly a very serious boy and he wore a white bandage on his forearm. Indeed his unwavering gaze defeated me and I retreated to the contents of the envelope, a very calligraphic English-"Herr Brandling, we will make the duck. A coach we have prepared to take you to the clockmaker."

"There is no cost to you," the woman said hurriedly. "We will take you to Furtw.a.n.gen and there your duck will be constructed as you wish."

What could I do but laugh at her?

"Why would I lie to you, Sir? You would put me in prison if I cheated you. I would be ruined. Please, Sir, do come. You cannot have a fine machine constructed by a common shopkeeper."

"How could one manufacture such a thing without a shop?"

"You will meet him. He is Herr Sumper."

"It is Mr. Sumper has robbed me?"

"No, he is gone to Furtw.a.n.gen to await you."

Since my first day at Harrow my trusting nature has been a source of amus.e.m.e.nt, and it is curious to me that these judgements have inevitably been pa.s.sed by those who are untrustworthy-why be so boastful about your own appalling character?

But consider a moment. Would you, in my place, have refused to go with the thieves? Then what injury you would have caused your son. What an extraordinary journey you would have missed, one such as many have trouble crediting, and the very first stage of it, south along the Rhine, was both aesthetic and pacific. That is, I gave charge of my life to a child and his mother, and permitted myself-a rather dull chap really-to be transported, nay, elevated into the Black Forest which I had previously known only from the Brothers Cruel, as my mater called them. A great deal of my journey-which I experienced alone inside the coach while my little gang sat on top, often singing at the tops of their voices-was rather lonely but so much more peaceful than the previous two years during which I had dreaded the appearance of blood stains on the nursery pillow.

The first inn was hospitable although not clean. I called for candles and wrote to Percy, telling him all about the clever crippled boy, his luminous invention, the adventure that would take me into Ali Baba's cave. By previous arrangement I sent this letter to my friend George Binns who had agreed to come and read to Percy on Sat.u.r.day and Thursday afternoons.

On the second day we journeyed deep into the Schwarzwald. The forest road was picturesque, although very steep. All was particularly un-Grimm. Everywhere was beauty and delight-dark green forests, bright meadows, the well-kept gardens, an extraordinary abundance of mountain streams, brooks and rills, not to mention the quaint houses with their heavy overhanging roofs, bright rows of glittering windows, carved verandahs, and their inmates-a distinct and peculiar race of people-the women with bodices and bright skirts, ap.r.o.ns, neat little pointed caps from which dropped those ma.s.sive plaits it was their husbands' privilege to see set free. I wished I were once again a husband in that private sense.

So, sad sometimes, often lonely too, but never in my entire life had I essayed a real adventure and I thought a great deal about my automaton and how, before it had been brought to life, it had already proved its power to realign the stars.

The swaying coach continued upwards until the sunlight showed that melancholy whiteness distinctive of the very highest alt.i.tudes. Then we were in country which forbade all growth except of gra.s.s and shrubs. Silence reigned upon the roof and I began to fear that the landscape of our destination might be in no way like that of the journey. Now the gra.s.s was blighted. We were in a land of peat, although as far as I could see the inhabitants had found no use for it. The timber houses were bleached like bones. And in the queer white light I became my own worst enemy, my own best hope, one of those unstable Brandlings who would always be in the market for a miracle.

IT WAS ONCE SAID: "Brandling would see the gla.s.s half full even when it lay in shards around his feet." Ha ha, indeed. But has no one bothered to observe that the optimistic view is commonly correct? That is why our fearful prayers are so often "answered." That is why, when we descend from one of life's barren mountain tops, we almost always enter a pleasant valley where there is an inn, very clean and white-washed, its window boxes filled with flowers in bloom.

And to that inn I surely came, and my natural "naive" spirits were immediately restored. And from that inn's airy stables the wall-eyed coachman would soon set off, carrying my trunk on his broad back. First, however, he joined us around a bowl of moist ham hocks and mugs of creamy beer. There were no fearful intimations, no mortal shadows; every leaf of privet was bright and green and barbered.

Not even the weight of a Harris tweed suit could distract one from the pretty harvest scene through which our little party strolled and stumbled. And who could not be affected by the mood of one's companions, particularly the boy who ran and limped and gambolled and called to the harvesters? They knew him-Carl.

We were now on our way to the place where a powerful cure might be constructed. I was a-tingle with impatience yet also, paradoxically, much elevated by the delays. Who would not be happy to see a much-loved boy have his weight guessed? When he performed a clever tumble, he never once pitied himself his crippled leg. Yes, I felt the absence of my own son-an awful ache-but only love provides the lucky man such symptoms.

As for the German mother? Who would ever imagine that distant figure in the wheat field to have poor hard hands, red elbows, and a mouth that did not dare hope for very much at all?

In the winter (as was apparently well known to everyone but me) the Furtw.a.n.gen men all worked on their cuckoo clocks, and in the summer they laboured beside their wives. They were Alemannians and Celts and they were large and strong and showed a bright and cheerful speech and temperament. I liked them even when they clearly did not give a fig for me.

Our path soon joined a brook and young Carl paused by the muddy bank to once more display his wooden trick; the leap of red and yellow produced the desired effect; the performer said goodbye; and we followed the brook as it traversed two pathless valleys and a cool ravine where the black needles of the tall silver firs ma.s.sed in whole mountains or sometimes mingled with the brighter green of oak and beech. A narrow path then led us down a cliff at which point the gentle stream soon revealed its secret nature as a roaring beast, rushing, and foaming, and hurling itself into a deep cleft, where it spun the high wheel of a mill. From here we followed steps cut in the living rock.

At the top we found the mill stretching itself across the plateau, a muddle of high-pitched deep-eaved roofs. The air was unseasonably damp here, and green and mouldy. On the shadowed fascias were visible many carvings, a clear evocation of the cuckoo clock and, in this sense, encouraging to the seeker.

"Sumpy," the boy cried.

Although it was now early summer and therefore past the season for logs to be floated to the bigger rivers, we found abandoned fir trunks stacked untidily. In the deep shadow between mill and dwelling everything was sour and damp. Piles of old grey sawdust and freshly murdered logs sometimes blocked the path. Copper cables, like guy ropes, ran from the peak of the mill house to the surrounding earth at which point they were enclosed in wooden boxes. Not everyone, I realize, would be comforted by this unscientific mess, but to me it was further evidence that my thieves might be angels in disguise.

"Sumpy, Sumpy." The boy's eyes were bright with expectation. I thought, how wise I had been to accept this new adventure. I felt like G. L. Sanderson: When life was all but over, so this silver seam began.

We opened a bright black door and, without so much as an elephant's foot or coat rack to prevent our immediate arrival at the heart of things, stepped inside a cavernous kitchen with a low ceiling and small deep windows. It was the middle of the afternoon but two candles and a lamp were already burning. Various pots steamed on the stove and I detected the very welcome aroma of baking apples.

"Sumpy!"

At a large square table beneath a window, sat two men, one as small as a pixie and the other-well, it was, of course, the big thick-necked fellow from the hotel, he who espoused the romantic doctrine of the Karlsruhe wheel. That improbable creature, with his b.u.mpy bald head gleaming in the candlelight, was the object of Carl's love. I adjusted. It was my character to do so.

Then off, hey, ho, and up the stairs, the pair of them, man and boy, in a great rush together, like chums reunited at the start of term.

No one had cared to introduce me to the delicate man in lederhosen, so I did the honours myself. I presumed him a clockmaker, and his high-pitched precise way of speaking was exactly what one might expect-one does not antic.i.p.ate wonders to be made by men with gardener's hands. He said his name was Arnaud.

Henry, I thought, you have arrived at a place you could never have pictured. I began to mentally compose another letter to my son.

A balmy breeze flowed through the open shutters. One could hear the hissing of the apples, the persistent river, the unrelenting echoing conversation between Herr Sumper and the adoring child.

The coachman delivered my trunk somewhere or other. I tipped him and he set off. Frau Helga busied herself around the kitchen and I sat at table to play host to myself.