A Proper Education for Girls (42 page)

“Vive la revolution!”
cried Aunt Statham. “I knew Talleyrand, you know, when I was a girl.”

The aunts entered the ballroom. The men within were seated before the podium. Behind it, Mr. Talbot was holding forth.

“The mixture is quite simple,” he was saying. “Sulfur and iron filings are mixed with water in equal quantities and buried beneath the ground. The heat of the sun, combined with the warmth to be found in the earth at a depth of a few meters, is generally sufficient to start the reaction. Once the reaction starts it is self-perpetuating.” Behind him, projected by Dr. Cattermole's magic lantern, was an artist's impression of an erupting Mount Etna.

“I myself was lowered into the crater of this very volcano a number of years ago,” cried Mr. Talbot, gesticulating at the image. “A most interesting experience and one which I have recounted in my unpublished monograph
Sights and Science in Southern Italy.”
He fell silent, frowning at the procession of elderly ladies tottering toward him up the aisle between the rows of occupied seats. Heads turned to see what the distraction was.

“What is it, Mother?” said Mr. Talbot impatiently. He glared at Aunt Lambert but did not address her directly. “Can it not wait?”

“No, it most certainly
cannot
wait,” snapped Aunt Lambert. The aunts halted beside the magic lantern. Aunt Lambert turned to Aunt Rushton-Bell. “Eliza, my dear, do you have it?”

A buzz of animated perplexity broke out from the members of the Society. Frowns were also bestowed in the direction of Mr. Talbot. Could he not do something to remove this rabble of ancients from their most august and scientific midst?

“Really, Talbot old fellow,” said a voice, “this is most unacceptable. Surely you are familiar with those regulations of the Society regarding the presence of
women
at our meetings?”

“Indeed,” bellowed Mr. Talbot. “Mother, be so kind as to remove yourself and take your sisters with you!”

“Wait!” cried Aunt Lambert. “Eliza, if you please.”

Aunt Rushton-Bell, recumbent in her bath chair like a Guy Fawkes in a wheelbarrow, rummaged beneath her skirts. At last she drew out a fold of grubby oilskin. She handed it to Aunt Lambert.

Aunt Lambert handed the package to Aunt Statham. “Wait until I am in position,” she hissed. “And when I give you the signal”—she raised her stick and knocked on the ground with it twice—“you know what to do.”

“My dear aunts—,” cried Mr. Talbot, his face crimson.

“Oh, be quiet, Edwin,” said Aunt Lambert, stepping up beside him at the podium. She cleared her throat and looked out at the sea of faces before her. Aunt Lambert's eyes and ears were not as good as they had once been, and she was unaware of the hostile glares of
her audience and almost deaf to the murmur of disquiet that now infected the air like the sound of a disturbed beehive.

“What I have to say is for the benefit of all of you,” she began, waving her stick. “You are all acquainted with Dr. Cattermole, are you not? A man considered to be a most principled and honest fellow, a doctor no less, and a man of science whose search for truth, whose quest for knowledge, has both inspired and delighted you.” The buzz of uneasiness died down to a curious murmur. Aunt Lambert pounded the podium with withered fists. “Lies!” she cried. “Gentlemen, you have been deceived!”

There was an audible gasp. It was clear that she now had their attention, and when Mr. Talbot went to seize her arm and steer her from the podium, there was a groan of disapproval.

Aunt Lambert prodded Mr. Talbot away with the end of her stick. “Deceived, gentlemen, and most sorely imposed upon,” she shouted. “But not anymore!”

“Is it now?” cried Aunt Statham from her position beside the magic lantern.

“Not yet!” said Aunt Lambert.

“Not yet!” shrilled Aunt Pendleton.

“I have proof,” cried Aunt Lambert. “Gentlemen, the man you think of as a man of knowledge and learning, the man you understand to be one who seeks to further your knowledge of the natural world, the man who claims to be working for the good of humankind in his offices as a doctor—gentlemen, this man is
not as he seems.”

A man in the front row leaned forward like a starving dog, his eyes wide, his mouth open, hungry for more.

“How blind you have been!” cried Aunt Lambert. “How duped and betrayed! But be assured, gentlemen, those times are now
over
. We, my sisters and I, we are here to
expose
this deceiver.” Aunt Lambert banged her stick on the floor.

“Is it now?” cried Aunt Statham.

“Not yet,” hissed Aunt Lambert.

“Not yet!” shrieked Aunt Pendleton, her bony fingers clutching at her throat, her eyes wide and fixed upon Aunt Lambert. “Not yet!”

Aunt Lambert hooked her stick over her arm and gripped the podium. “We are here to show you his most vile secret,” she cried, “a secret he has kept from you. A secret which demonstrates more clearly that
anything else
that your most worthy society has been harboring in its midst a man of the most debauched, the most depraved and corrupt personality. A man whose morals, and those of that most licentious lady, his so-called
wife
, are no better than those of a sensualist, a panderer,
a pornographer.”

Aunt Lambert pounded her stick up and down on the ground, as though crushing an invasion of beetles.

“Now?” shouted Aunt Statham.

“Now!” cried Aunt Pendleton and Aunt Lambert together.

Aunt Statham thrust the plate-glass slide into the magic lantern. On the wall behind the speechless Mr. Talbot appeared the sepia image of Mrs. Cattermole. Mr. Talbot staggered backward, and collapsed into a chair. He gaped at the magnified photograph, his mouth opening and closing like a landed trout, his eyes fixed on that dark undergrowth that sprouted like gorse above the rolling hills of Mrs. Cattermole's gargantuan thighs. Aunt Statham, stationed beside the magic lantern, could not help but notice that some members of the audience looked more embarrassed than shocked, as though they had seen it, or something very similar, before.

And all at once a clamor broke out. Members of the audience rose to their feet with cries of outrage and disgust. The magic lantern rocked to and fro on its stand like a lifebuoy as the Society for the Propagation of Useful and Interesting Knowledge surged about it. Someone extinguished its light (anything to get rid of that splayed and globular image). The room was plunged into darkness. At least, the room would have been plunged into darkness had it not been illuminated by an unexpected red glow that danced and flickered through the windows, as though someone had opened the door of a huge furnace somewhere far below.

Aunt Lambert, still standing behind the podium on the raised platform at the front of the ballroom, surveyed the scene with some surprise. “Edwin!” she cried above the noise of shouting and the screech and clatter of chairs being pushed hither and thither about the floor. “Edwin!”

Mr. Talbot was still slumped in his chair, his eyes gazing at the space on the wall where the image of the naked Mrs. Cattermole had been displayed.

“Come, come, man,” shouted Aunt Lambert. “Pull yourself together.” She poked him with her stick. “Edwin! Cattermole is discredited. And in front of the Society too. You must release Alice, and release her this instant.”

Mr. Talbot blinked, and shifted red-rimmed eyes to stare at his aunt. “Was that really her?” he said. “Was that really Sophia Cattermole?” Why, on his last trip to London, as he sat at the doctor's table he had eyed Mrs. Cattermole's bulging cleavage with unconcealed greediness as she leaned in close to hear him speak. What a lovely young woman she was, he had thought. Always so animated. And so comely too. He'd had no idea she was so shameless, so brazen. What duplicitous creatures women were, that they might conceal their very natures from those around them.

“Poor Cattermole,” whispered Mr. Talbot. He turned to his aunt, his expression filled with distress. “He saved her from the Magdalene asylum, you know. Out of the goodness of his heart he made her his wife.” He shook his head. “And this is how she repays him. I can only assume that Cattermole has been taken in by her also. His life's work has been to save women from their vices, not entice them into degradation! After all, the man works with fallen women, does he not? He works with them every day.” A little voice in Mr. Talbot's head told him that this was not really an argument in the doctor's favor. “Perhaps it is not her,” he added suddenly. “The image was displayed only briefly. Hardly long enough to recognize her face. I did not look at her face.” He blushed. “There are many women who are as … amply endowed as she. It must be some other person.”

“Of course it's her,” cried Aunt Lambert. “Really, Edwin, you don't mean to tell me that you had no idea?”

Mr. Talbot shook his head, wordlessly. “But who took that photograph?” he croaked.

“Dr. Cattermole,” said Aunt Lambert.

“Mind you,” said Mr. Talbot, “perhaps it was Mr. Blake who took it.” Mr. Talbot's frown of disgust and perplexity left his face as his mind seized this handy explanation. “The fellow had something of a reputation before he came here, after all. It's as well we found out his proclivities before he did any harm.”

“What about Alice?” Aunt Lambert tugged anxiously at his sleeve. “Edwin?”

“Why, she is quite safe with Dr. Cattermole.” He frowned. “Cattermole is a scientist. Did you not see the photographs he showed us this evening?
Those
are the sorts of pictures he takes. It is Mr. Blake who is responsible for this … this
shamelessness
, and I will chase him from this house the instant I see him.”

All at once, as though seeing it for the first time, Mr. Talbot's gaze fell upon the red flickering light at the windows. A plume of orange and yellow matter sputtered into view in a steaming fountain. A cloud of jaundiced smoke belched into the night and the air within the ballroom filled with the unmistakable stench of sulfur. The members of the Society began streaming from the ballroom.

Mr. Talbot gave a cry of delight. He pushed Aunt Lambert aside and sprang to the podium. All thoughts of Dr. Cattermole or Mrs. Cattermole, of Mr. Blake, of Alice or any kind of photograph, slipped from his mind.

“It's started,” he cried, his face illuminated like a carnival mask by the diabolical light of the artificial volcano. “I was beginning to wonder if it would work.” Mr. Talbot pounded the podium. “Gentlemen, please,” he shouted above the din. “If you would like to make your way out of the building and onto the terrace at the front of the house, I can assure you the best view of the unfolding spectacle can be had from there. Gentlemen?” But no one was listening.
Mr. Talbot was addressing the retreating backs of an already dwindling crowd.

“What about Dr. Cattermole?” cried Aunt Lambert. “And Alice? Where are they?”

Her words were drowned by the sound of an explosion. The windows rattled as a shower of earth was flung against them. And then Mr. Talbot too was gone.

A
LICE COULD HEAR NOISES AROUND HER, THOUGH THEY
seemed muffled, as though heard through a wall, or from-underwater. She tried to move, to raise herself up, but her head was heavy and her limbs leaden. She felt her senses sharpening, her mind gradually making sense of the sounds she could hear as though she were emerging from beneath a still, dark pond. It was the voices that she had noticed first: the sound of men talking. But then a door opened and closed somewhere. Curtains were drawn, a poker rattled on a grate, and coals were tipped from a coal scuttle. She could hear grunts, and the sound of something large scraping across the floor. Alice forced her eyes to open, though part of her would much rather have let them remain closed so that she might sink back into oblivion. The room was dark. The only source of light—a lantern on a dressing table—was obscured by the figures of two men, who appeared to be wrestling with a large seabird. Alice closed her eyes (perhaps she was dreaming) and opened them again.

“If you would lift it backward,” hissed a voice, “and get the thing's beak out of my eyes. Thank you.”

Alice groaned and struggled to sit up.

“Miss Talbot.” One of the figures dropped the seabird and hastened to her side. “Please, you must not get up yet.”

Alice recognized the voice of the photographer. “How dare you touch me,” she mumbled, struggling to express the anger she knew
she should feel. “Get your hands off me. I shall stand if I wish.” But her words came out blurred and sluggish, and she was not sure that he had even understood her. Tears of rage and frustration sprang into her eyes. She tried to lift her arm, to slap him in the face, but she seemed to lack the strength, or the conviction, to do so effectively. Mr. Blake patted the hand she had hoped to swing at him. “Rest, Miss Talbot,” he said. “The ether will leave your body soon enough.”

“You would be advised to do as Mr. Blake suggests,” said Dr. Cattermole. He dug two thin white fingers into a pocket of his waistcoat and extracted a key. “Although I would be most surprised if you were able to reach the door in your current state, you would not get much farther without the help of this little fellow.” He tucked the key back out of sight beneath his ribs. “Clearly, you would be well advised not to bother trying to escape. Now then, I suggest you lie back and rest. Mr. Blake, if you would be so kind as to return to assisting me with this albatross? After all, we don't want to be operating in a cramped space, do we? I would hate to knock my elbow on something and make a larger incision than necessary.” He smiled, his brown teeth appearing almost absent in the dim light. “And I need room for the camera too, don't forget. It must face the patient directly, its eye trained upon the area to be excised.”