by John Pipkin
The observatory is no place for a young woman.
He had only needed to say it once for her to know that she would seek to prove him wrong. And she knew what he really meant: that the observatory was no place for her. She rubs the sharp knuckles of her clenched fist and again recalls the cold metal screwed tight against the joints and the drop of sweat trembling on the red-faced physician’s nose and how heartened her father had seemed every time a new contrivance was strapped to her arm. She would show him that she could be as good an astronomer as any man possessed of two good hands, and she would do so without need of splints or clamps.
Seamus and Sean fill the washtub until the water reaches the brim. Rimmed with the slaver of old launderings, its surface shimmers like polished silver. From her pockets Caroline pulls three pairs of stones tied with thread, and she tells Seamus and Sean to drape them across the washtub with the stones hanging over the side. She measures an equal distance between each and makes adjustments while the wind hums across the taut threads. Peg, Martha, Seamus, and Sean face her with their hands slack-folded before them. Everything is just as she planned. According to her pocket clock, only three minutes remain, but already she can sense their impatience. Earlier in the month, the moon had risen so large it seemed overfull, and there had been much talk of its closeness and of how it had appeared drenched in blood, but it was the moon’s complete absence from the sky the previous night that was of more significance to what Caroline would show them today.
“We have work to do and no time for nonsense,” Martha says, “and I’ll suffer no complaints if tonight’s pudding has no sausage.”
Caroline tells them to step closer to the washtub. An extra shadow stretches out between them and she knows it belongs to her father, watching from behind, though still he has said nothing. She measures his shadow with her thumb and she tells Martha that today they will see a marvel worth placing the pudding in jeopardy.
“How long must we stand in the full sun?” Peg closes her eyes, presses the heel of her palm hard against her pale forehead. “Can you hurry it along?”
Caroline reaches into her coat pocket and pulls a small yellow card looped with string and consults the chart penciled on one side.
“It will happen soon,” she says.
Martha’s lips tremble. With her right hand she touches her forehead and next her breastbone and then each shoulder in quick succession. Caroline has seen her make this same gesture whenever she comes upon her unexpectedly in the hall or startles her in the kitchen.
“The moon is our happy companion throughout the year,” Caroline tells them. She takes a deep breath and tries to mimic the cadence of her father’s voice when he describes some unassailable fact. “But today the moon will pass over the sun, pitching us into the shadow of our inferior.”
“And a terrifying thing it will be,” Martha interrupts, pointing the spoon at the tub, “a foretoken of evil.”
“We cannot look directly,” Caroline says, “for even in shadow the sun can scorch the eye.”
Seamus looks away and tells Sean to do the same, and Caroline reassures him, “The reflection will cause no harm, though you may catch your breath at its brilliance.”
They wait in silence, and it is Sean who is the first to notice the change. He turns his head toward Caroline, makes a small sound in his throat and then she notices it too, an altering of the light, as imperceptible as the first second of autumn’s arrival, a thing more felt than seen. The air grows jaundiced and seems to taste of leaf-rust. Caroline points to the washtub. The water’s surface reflects the bright sky and the sun’s shining disk and the dark prow of the moon slowly creeping over its edge. Peg squeals and Martha folds her hands at her lips and whispers into her fingers. Sean turns his face toward the sky and Seamus pulls his sleeve and reminds him of Miss Ainsworth’s warning not to look at it straight on.
Within minutes the shadow reaches the first string, and even though everything is happening just as she calculated, Caroline is not prepared for the motion she feels in the bones of her feet, in the hard certainties of hip and jaw, even in the dull framework of her ruined arm, an implacable cartwheeling of worlds slow and indifferent. She feels dizzy and turns toward her father, not to lean on him but to see if he too feels as though the ground were rolling beneath him. But he appears unaffected, wholly absorbed in his own observation. He stands with his legs set wide and he holds the box to his eye and faces away from the sun to let the light enter the tiny pinhole in its side.
Caroline knows it is not possible to feel the turning of the earth—it is that rare sort of fact that is not disproved by contrary experience—and yet her dizziness increases as the shadow creeps over the sun, and her legs grow unsteady until she feels as though she were standing on the rolling deck of a ship, and it seems like a betrayal, that her imagination should be so determined to find evidence of what her reason knows to be imperceptible. She slides the yellow notecard between the fingers of her clenched fist and retrieves her pencil, marks the time and the progress of the shadow passing over the threads. Every so often the wind flusters the water’s surface, scattering light and shadow and then the image comes together again and Caroline realizes that what she is showing them might easily be mistaken for a parlor trick, an illusion floating on the surface of the water. The temptation to look directly at the sun, to prove to herself and everyone gathered around the washtub that this is actually happening, is almost too much to resist.
As the eclipse progresses, a confusion of chattering birds sweeps low in search of dusk and their shadows skip over the water’s surface and it makes perfect sense that these small creatures should be so moved by events beyond their reckoning. Caroline compares the width of her thumb to the blighted disk on the water and watches the darkness skim the sun’s edge and she thinks she can hear the thunderous roar of massive objects sliding slowly past each other. The ground shudders under the strain, and in that moment she is as much a part of the vast and yearning fretwork as any bright speck above. She stoops and seizes a crooked stick near her feet to steady herself against this wild spinning.
“When does the day become night?” Seamus asks, grinding his heel.
Martha holds the big wooden spoon in front of her while Peg half-crouches behind.
“You said nothing about night taking the day,” Peg says, the tremor in her voice causing Martha to take her hand. “What are we to do?”
Before Caroline can answer, her father grunts, the pinhole box still at his eye, and he shuffles a step closer. “There is nothing to be done,” he says sternly, his voice flattened by the box blocking the top half of his face, “and there is no cause for worry. This not a full eclipse. The shadow will advance halfway and then retreat.”
The gardener twists the limp brim of his hat. “Then I expect I can imagine the rest,” he says, “and there’s manure needs spreading.” He tells Sean to follow, but his son is transfixed by the reflection, and he seems ready to plunge headfirst into the washtub. Seamus shakes him by the arm and pulls him away. Sean looks at Caroline before he goes, then he turns and follows his father.
“I’ve plenty to tend to before evening comes in its proper way,” Martha says, waving the spoon.
“And I’ll be needing the washtub,” Peg says, barely above a whisper. “When you’re done with it.”
Caroline does not reply but her father sends them away with a flutter of his fingers. Peg trails close behind Martha with her eyes to the ground, muttering how she hopes never to see such a terrible thing again.
“They do not understand,” her father says when the others have left. He lifts his chin and tilts the long box to keep the pinhole trained on the sun. “To grasp the working of the infinite demands years of careful observation. But they will not soon forget your demonstration.”
Caroline presses her clenched fist hard against her breastbone, feels her pulse throb against the knuckle. He has not noticed the discrepancy. The thought is more exciting than the eclipse itself or the sh
uddering beneath her feet. Without looking at her father she says, “The forecast from Greenwich was incorrect by three minutes and seventeen seconds.”
Arthur lowers the box and looks at her sideways in the yellow daylight.
“That cannot be.”
Caroline pulls the rolled copy of the Philosophical Transactions from her coat pocket—a page marked with a blade of grass—and hands it over. She retrieves her pocket clock, shows her father the time, then gives him the little card filled with times and looped with a bit of string, just like the cards he carried. He fingers the chart in the journal and shakes his head.
“Perhaps it is a printer’s error, or a decimal point misplaced.” He looks at her card, at the reflection on the water and the taut threads marking the progress of the eclipse. He lifts the card to his uncovered eye. “These reductions are your own?”
Caroline nods and rubs her knuckles. She can still feel the rolling of the earth and the wheeling of sun and moon overhead and it is only the chain of numbers she has handed to him that keeps her tethered beneath the void.
Arthur lowers the card and looks again at the page of the Philosophical Transactions, squints at the calculations as if he missed some obvious explanation.
“Surely there is an answer for it,” he says. “Otherwise, the man responsible for the miscalculation, if he is a computer for Greenwich, will be held accountable.”
Caroline stirs the water with the crooked stick and watches the half-eaten sun break apart and tremble on the shimmering surface. She holds back her smile. There is no need for her to point out that her father’s timetable was incorrect as well.
“I should think,” she says slowly, “that an observatory is no place for such a man as that.”
Chapter 10
THE SHUDDERING OF THE SPHERES
He insists that she tie herself to him.
The short length of thick-braided hemp is already knotted at his waist when he holds the fretted end toward her in the cramped attic. She words her refusal in terms he will appreciate.
“While there is a comfort in having you anchor my steps, if you were to falter, the fall would carry us both.” She considers adding that a larger object will ever hold a smaller in its sway, but decides that this would overstate the point.
He warns her that even now, in the light of midday, there are still shadows ready to deceive, and that she must heed the sharp angle of the roof and hold fast to the railing with her strong hand.
“And there will be wind,” he says.
Caroline has imagined this moment often—her first visit to the observatory—but it seems odd that her father has chosen to bring her here during the day when there is nothing to be seen but blue sky and white clouds. As usual he wears the patch over his left eye, and when she asks him if it is a hindrance in getting to the roof, he explains that he has grown accustomed to climbing the stairs half-blind, that he has learned to translate two dimensions into three, that preserving the eye for the telescope is worth incurring some unsteadiness in his step. Caroline closes one eye and at once she feels unsure how to occupy the space before her. It seems a hindrance she would not easily tolerate.
When she does not take the end of the rope he hesitates. “Perhaps we ought wait for another day,” he suggests, tugging at his cuffs, white and stiff beneath his dark blue coat, “a day when the gusts are not so sharp.”
He says they should wait for calmer skies, but Caroline is already climbing the short ladder into the rafters, determined that they will not turn back now. She opens the small door set between the crossbeams, and when she steps out onto the roof the brightness of the sun and open sky and the blast of wind are stunning. Her father shepherds her ascent from behind with stern cautions, but she can barely hear his voice with the wind in her ears.
“… heed the third step … I must take a hammer to it … keep on until the top …”
The boards creak underfoot and Caroline clings to the rail with her good hand as the wind wrestles her skirts and whips her hair about her face. She cannot admit her sudden terror at being so fully exposed and high above the ground, for she knows that this moment is already dividing itself from everything that has come before. To turn back would ensure that her father would never allow her to come again. For several years now he has relied on her to copy out his scribbled notes, and she has filled thick ledgers with tracings of the constellations and asterisms he has described from his long nights at the telescope, and more often than not she has corrected his careless mistakes—small miscalculations that would nonetheless misshape the heavens—and he has applauded her accuracy in all of this, but he has never permitted her to accompany him to the roof. He has told her that the night sky teems with distractions, and that they must first document the clutter. Making an accurate record is the only way to find what does not belong. Caroline sometimes worries that she has erred in her own calculations or failed to correct some small error in his, and these pestering thoughts wake her in the night, her head noisy with sums while the silent sparkling sky teases earth’s slumbering half. She has spent many sleepless nights this way, chin resting on the windowsill, the darkness broken by the glow of chimneys and the small fires of itinerants winking beneath the trees. The quiet brings to mind the multitude of men and women living out their days in solitude—each convinced that their fears and wants are unique to themselves—and she longs to press herself into their fold and be counted among those whose lives are meshed with the turning of the world. The fields and towns and cities beyond her window have ever seemed unreachable places where other people lived. Now, as she climbs the stairs along the roof-slope, she imagines tipping the observatory’s telescope toward the horizon, so that she might pretend to walk among the people digging the fields and thronging city streets.
She looks over her shoulder at the roof edge and the green sweep beyond, and her stomach flutters, her knees go rigid.
“Do not look down,” her father calls from behind.
She can feel the throb of her pulse in her withered arm as if it were trying to alert her to the danger. She has tied the arm in a sling close against her chest and she presses her fist to her heart and its pounding travels her bones.
“Is anything the matter?” her father shouts. “Shall we go down?”
The wind tugs at her skirts, billows her coat. She will give him no cause to turn back. They are almost there, but now she cannot move her legs, cannot force her good hand another inch along the railing until she closes her eyes, lifts her foot a quarter step, half step, and before it lands she feels her father’s hand at her elbow, gently pushing her up the final step and when she opens her eyes again she is standing on the deck surrounding the circular closet.
Her father pulls a key from his pocket, though it seems a needless thing to lock a door so far from the ground, and then he hesitates. “I should have turned out the clutter,” he says, tapping the large key to his chin as the wind buffets his dark hair across his face. “Perhaps we ought come another time.”
“I will sort it.” She touches his forearm, guides his hand to the door.
The key grinds in the lock and the door swings into the darkened space and he enters first, disappears into the shadows and kicks something aside. Next comes the screech of a chair, the clink of bottles, the shush and clap of toppled papers and the susurrations of what seemed a host of small creatures stirring at their approach. Her father mutters as he navigates the cramped space; and he tells her to wait by the door. She hears the squeal of metal wheels and then a blade of light divides the darkness and he is standing on a chair cranking open a shutter in the curved dome. Along the walls, hundreds of little pasteboard cards looped with string dangle from crooked nails, row upon row rustling like leaves yellowed by autumn. The cards spin and whisper in conspiring tones, as though uncertain whether to take her into their confidence, and after Caroline closes the door the cards continue murmuring in the draft that curls through the open dome.
The observatory is nothing like
what she expected. She had pictured a tidy space hung with detailed maps of the night sky and orderly rows of books and equipment, but what she finds is chaos. It seems impossible that anyone could find their way to clear thoughts amid such confusion. Her father collects scattered papers from the floor, rights an overturned lamp, stacks tumbled books. He shakes out a gray blanket specked with feathers and hangs it from an upturned nail. Along the walls, shelves sag under stacks of damp-swelled books. A small table sits buried under a mound of papers weighted with a brick, and next to the brick, a mold-flecked rind of cheese. Loose scraps litter the floor and they scuttle mad circles in the gusts. Arthur pulls a notebook from a shelf and steadies an empty bottle of green glass teetering near the edge. Caroline spots another empty bottle at his feet.
“Here we are, then,” he says, splaying the notebook on the table.
He pulls back the oilcloth draped over the telescope at the room’s center. The slender tube is twice as tall as her father, the wood burnished to a deep walnut, the brass fittings tarnished at the seams. It sits on a circular plinth so that the eyepiece is at shoulder height.
“You were too young to remember the day,” he says, running his hand along the wooden tube, “but I had to wait five years for the delivery of this telescope. It is a very fine refractor, with Dollond lenses.”
