The Inventor

The Inventor

Henry entered 'The Works' young and stayed there a long time. The job had taken over his life. After the one passionate affaire of his life, the woman he had hoped to marry went abroad. Henry had married the job and, at sixty-six years of age, it was too late to divorce it.

Customers' requirements were unpredictable. Could you run up a tee shirt that is proof against knife attacks, for the undercover guys in the clubs? Can we have a mug with a microphone in it, and use it to send cups of tea in to hostages? Henry sometimes expected to be asked to fashion an empty top hat from which a beat officer could produce a live rabbit, and when nobody asked him to produce one he made it anyway, in his spare time. Sometimes the requirement was simple: Henry had only to make the physical effort. Sometimes it took research, ingenuity or even discovery.

The yellow Scottish dawn woke him at 9 a.m. The living room was cold. The coal fire had burned itself out, and the Atlantic wind found its way effortlessly past doors and windows. He sat up in his armchair, noticing the remains of a bottle of Lochanagar on the floor. His hand rested loosely on a pair of steel-framed half spectacles, which at first he did not recognise. He must have been drinking more heavily than usual, for his mouth tasted vile. He could recall solving a problem, though he was not sure which problem it was. His record book was on the table in front of him, between the ashtray and the glass, resting on a pile of letters which he would file one day. Henry kept hand-written records of everything he built: no two objects were the same, so without such notes it would be impossible to repair or copy anything. He had kept the same record book throughout his engineering life: a huge ledger of the kind that companies used before the invention of the typewriter.

Having been opened at the same place hundreds of times, the book always fell open at the same entry. He had written the problem statement years ago. There were several entries under 'General approach,' none of which had worked so far as he knew. Then, at some time, he had written 'Solution', underlined it, and left a blank space to be filled in later. When working with enthusiasm and dirty hands one is not inclined to stop, clean up, write a paragraph of notes and then continue, so he wrote records a day or so in arrears. He could not remember whether he had written 'Solution' last night, or years ago. But his memory of the manufacture was missing too. He cursed alcohol.

This problem had tormented him since the fifties. The eccentric Director, Parkinson, an affable, tall, grey-haired fellow, approaching retirement, had briefed him when he was a staff engineer. He had described the problem as though bequeathing it from father to son. There was no known technology for solving it, of course. Nevertheless, making a feint of fulfilling the customer's exact requirement, Henry bought a copy of The Times and took it home to experiment on. It was 2 May 1954.

This problem had haunted Henry in all the years since. Again and again he returned to it, worried it, turned over the issues in his sleep or on the road. He would hunt out this particular copy of The Times and read the classified advertisements over and over again, thinking, trying to come up with some novel and useful approach.

Now it was 1998. Henry was no longer an employee: although he was still strikingly talented, his age, his infirmity, his work habits, and above all his drinking made him unemployable. He was now a freelancer, but he preferred to call himself a consultant. He had bought a cottage on Colonsay with his redundancy payment and some savings, and equipped a workshop: electronics, metalwork, and the inevitable component cabinet full of tiny bits and pieces that might, possibly, come in handy one day. Commissions had come from the Home Office, Mossad and the FBI, and he had made a living from them. Even the Russian NKVD had once approached him but, unwilling to burn the candle at both ends, he declined their offer and suggested a colleague who he knew was excellent.

Henry waited for his head to clear, but it didn't. Shakily, he put the half-spectacles down, stood up and looked around him, trying to reconstruct last night's events forensically, from the evidence. He could recall searching in the dresser for that copy of The Times. He must have found it, for the paper was lying on the floor. In the fifties, The Times carried classified advertisements on its front page, and the paper was front page uppermost. He wandered into the workshop: a couple of drawers of the component cabinet were open, and some jeweller's screwdrivers were lying around. The soldering iron was still running: he turned it off, put the lid back on the open flux tin, and dropped the screwdrivers back into their clips.

It must have been after midnight, and freezing cold, when Jock had knocked at the door.

'It's Jock!' explained the voice, 'I lost a lamb hours ago and I just found it. I was bringing it back, but it's so chilled it'll freeze unless I can bring it indoors for a time.'

'Come in.' Henry opened the door. This happened regularly in winter. Jock's lambs were always getting under one fence or another. 'Put the wee creature in the kitchen, it's warm enough there. You'll have a drink?'

The drink must have been his mistake. The unfinished bottle on the floor was Lochanagar, good stuff. He must have opened it to spare Jock the liquid sandpaper ('Caledonian Canal Blend') that was his usual. Or maybe he opened the good whisky to celebrate, after solving the problem. Either way, the Lochanagar was the second bottle of the evening, unless it was the third. He guessed that he must have been so drunk already that he explained the problem to Jock, which was strictly forbidden. Jock must have made some suggestion that had prompted him to stagger into the workshop and knock something up, to see if it worked.

Henry sat at the table again, unable to recollect any more. Jock was away with his lamb: he must have left in the wee hours. How good a solution had it been? Henry poured the last of the Lochanagar into the glass and gulped it. He found the half-spectacles and put them on again, pulled The Times for 2 May 1954 onto his lap, and settled to reading the classifieds for the thousandth time.

'Property for sale', he read, then 'Births, Deaths and Marriages.' Nothing seemed unusual, except the forty-four-year-old property prices. He kept reading. Had he imagined it? 'Mrs. Helen Springer wishes to thank all her kind friends who, etc.' Next: 'The London Ignatius Society will meet in the Free Trades Hall at 7 p.m., etc.' It was the next advertisement that startled him. 'Jonathan, please collect the proceeds of your stolen jewellery from my shop. All the best, Arthur Sutton.'

Henry kept his right index finger on the advertisement while raising the half-spectacles with his left hand. He read it again: 'Mary, please phone soonest, we need to talk about Carol. Ted.'

Even though the spectacles were of his own design, Henry was astonished and bewildered. He put them on and read the advertisement again. He took them off and read it. The spectacles worked. He couldn't remember how they worked, but they worked. Were there any other duplicitous advertisements on this page? He read each in turn with his half-spectacles on, and again with them off, but found nothing.

Henry reached dizzily for the phone. Thank God for friends still in the ranks. Archives? Get hold of Sam for me, would you? Urgent. Sam, I wonder if you could look something for me.' Henry broke into a cough and could not continue for a minute or so. 'Yes, it's damn urgent. Find out if there was anyone called Arthur Sutton done for reset in the late fifties... Reset. Knowingly dealing in stolen goods. Might have been jewellery, watches or something. No, I don't know how many criminals are sentenced for petty offences each year. Some time between 1954 and 1960, I expect. Yes, I'd be grateful.' He got Sam's promise to call back, and hung up. While he waited, was there any more Lochanagar? He looked at the shelves. There was no more Lochanagar. It was Caledonian Canal again, or the shakes.

It was after eleven when Sam rang. The archives before 1960 were not all computerised, so the search had taken forever. Arthur Sutton had been convicted of dealing in stolen goods in 1957 from a shop on George Square. Parkinson had passed away years ago. Henry could still hear him explaining that the underworld communicated, among other methods, by means of coded classified advertisements. Henry thought then that the idea was born out of watching B-movies, but still imagined the man saying 'Well, well, well!' and congratulating him on such a simple, elegant device for decrypting them. But Henry also knew that without a complete account of the steps involved in the solution, the half-spectacles were almost worthless, since they could not be copied and manufactured. He could neither remember nor fathom how the spectacles worked. He looked at them, turned them round, examining them as closely as he was able. They just looked like spectacles. The metal frame came out of his component cabinet. The lenses just looked like glass. There were no unusual components, as far as he could see. Henry picked up the bottle again and stared at it. 'Damn you,' he cried, almost weeping with fury, as though addressing the Devil himself, 'damn you to Hell.'

As Henry stared at the bottle, he noticed on the label the phrase 'Of Poor Quality,' just beneath the company's crest. Of course it was of poor quality, he thought. What do you expect for three pounds ninety-five? It took a moment for him to realise that he was reading through the half- spectacles. Tilting his head, he looked at the label over the top of the lenses. 'A Traditional Blend of the Highest Quality,' it said. 'My God!' he breathed, realising the implications of his work. In a sudden frenzy he grabbed the nearest piece of paper on the table. It was the red electricity bill, the one they send if you don't pay the blue one on time. He scanned it, searching out the effects of the half-spectacles. At the bottom of the bill he saw a phrase he had not noticed before: 'You have about six months to pay this,' it said, 'so don't get too upset. Send us a fiver and a promise.'

His bank statement gained a hand-written note. 'You don't know the first thing about money. All this talent, enough work to kill a strong man, and you still never know where your next month's mortgage is coming from.' It was true. He was too busy earning a living to make money, he supposed. In an instant, Henry realised what he had to do next. Again he walked over to the dresser and fumbled in the left drawer for a while. Sometimes he felt as though he had spent the whole of the last ten years wandering between the table, the dresser and the workshop. At the back he found an envelope. He could remember the letter exactly, and he recited it in his head: 'Bearsden, 27 January 1953. My dear Henry,' it began, 'I have to tell you that my father has decided to accept an appointment in Canada, and after much thought I believe I have no choice but to go with him and leave the country. I am simply in no position to make my own way, so I must go with him. I love you desperately and I am sorry beyond measure to hurt you and disappoint you in this way. Henry, I will never forget you. I know that one day I will come back to Scotland and seek mountains and heather and eagles and salmon and small boats and you, and when I do, we shall be together for all time. Your faithful and ever loving Susan.'

He pulled the letter from the envelope and noticed again the rip where the enclosed engagement ring had torn the notepaper. 'Dear Henry,' it began, 'I do not want to live with you. I am out of your class and we both know it. For God's sake, when I was at school some of my chums got more pocket money than you do salary. Phil's been sleeping with me for the past month. He got a Jag for his twenty-first. Goodbye. Susan.'

Henry sat miserably staring at the letter. It was what he had expected, but still he tried to force himself to weep. The half spectacles fell to the floor and broke.