This Thing Of Darkness (100 page)

The steamer docked at Westminster Pier and disgorged its contents on to the misted cobbles. He made his way west, the crowd thinning, past the half-built stump of the new clock tower, to his cramped office in Parliament Street, in an overspill building for the Board of Trade. His two clerks, Pattrickson and Babington, who had much less far to come, had already pulled off their coats and were jabbing the fire in the tiny grate to life. He had appointed Pattrickson, the more able of the two, his deputy; Babington, who should have taken precedence by social rank, was a loyal and enthusiastic youth and did not seem to object. A third clerk, Simpkinson, a
protégé
of Lord Derby, had proved so vain and useless that FitzRoy had released him; pointedly, the boy had not been replaced. It mattered not. The three of them would manage. The weather statistics they collated, FitzRoy knew, were read by nobody: their office existed only to fulfil Britain’s obligations under the Brussels Marine Meteorology Conference of 1853. But however perfunctory the assessment of their work, he was determined that the work itself would be of the highest order. He always sent his clerks home at five, and - generously — at lunchtime on Saturdays, but he himself sometimes laboured until midnight, perfecting and fine-tuning the British Meteorological Register. He had even invented the FitzRoy barometer, a slender, elegant, Gothic, glassed-in device that measured temperature, humidity and atmospheric pressure; it had been mass-produced and loaned to more than a thousand merchant and Royal Navy ships. A network of agents around the British Isles had been paid fifty shillings for every skipper persuaded to contribute information. The results were remarkably comprehensive: within a month or so of any given weather pattern occurring, his office could produce an exact chart of its progress. The endlessly repeating weather patterns had not escaped his notice. As always, he had his eye on a bigger goal than merely recording the past. He had his eye on the future.

‘The old dry stick wants to see you, sir,’ announced Babington cheerily. ‘The messenger came by just before you got here.’

FitzRoy halted in the act of throwing off his coat. The ‘old dry stick’, as the young clerks referred to him behind his back, was Admiral Beechey — Chief Naval Officer, head of the Marine Department and their immediate superior - who worked a couple of minutes away at the Board of Trade itself. Beechey was a stickler for instant obedience. It would not do to keep him waiting.

‘Thank you, Babington. I shall pay my respects to the admiral forthwith.’

It was not a bad nickname, he reflected, as he plunged back into the yellowy soup. Beechey had served under Franklin in the Arctic, and had even been made president of the Royal Geographical Society, but he was no fur-booted adventurer. Rather, he seemed like a dead tree, rooted to the spot but devoid of all vitality, gnarled in his disapproval of the budding efforts of his subordinates, but producing little of substance himself.

Admiral Beechey made him stand like a junior officer. Only ten years FitzRoy’s senior, he specialized in heavy-handed sarcasm.

‘Ah, Captain FitzRoy, I am so glad you are here. I was rather hoping you might enlighten me. Your latest chart appears to have been overrun by spiders. What, pray, are these markings intended to be?’ He gestured to a map of the British Isles that lay unrolled across his desktop, which was festooned with tiny hubbed wheels trailing spokes of uneven length.

‘It is a synoptic chart, sir. The markings are wind stars, a diagrammatic system I have devised for recording weather observations.’

‘Why the deuce can’t you enter them into a log as you’re supposed to?’

‘Seen on a chart, sir, distinctive patterns emerge. Storms appear to be rotary in construction, and to move in a principally easterly direction at about five miles per hour. For instance, sir, the storm that wrecked the Allied supply fleet off Balaclava had travelled eastward all the way across Europe. It occurred to me, sir, that if such storms could be tracked quickly enough, we could use the electric telegraph to send warning of their arrival. My plan is to set up barometers at coastal observing-stations, and lay telegraph cables directly from those stations to the Board of Trade. We could collate meteorological information almost instantly, sir.’

‘Your job, Captain FitzRoy, is to collate meteorological information for statical purposes, not to feed some fantastical notion of foretelling the weather. I do not know if you have been informed of it, but you are employed as a statist, not a sorcerer.’

‘But if we analyse the statical facts, sir, we can deduce a dynamical, observable pattern. Weather currents are as predictable as ocean currents - we are all of us living in an ocean of air. And when these currents oppose or pass each other, they cause eddies or whirls on an immense scale in the air, not only horizontal but inclined to the terrain or vertical. That is how storms occur, sir - I am certain of it. Especially where heated air from the tropics encounters cold air coming down from the polar regions.’

‘I would remind you of your position, Captain FitzRoy,’ said Beechey coldly. Two diamond eyes gleamed in his small, shrivelled face. ‘You were appointed to the post of statist through the good graces of the Earl of Derby, no doubt on account of your misfortunes in New Zealand, misfortunes that I have heard were occasioned entirely by your own failings. Do you really think the best way to repay that gentleman’s kindness is to abuse your position in this manner? You have already caused his lordship considerable embarrassment by dismissing Mr Simpkinson, whose father is a highly influential gentleman and a personal friend of his lordship.’

‘Mr Simpkinson had no scientific knowledge whatsoever, sir. He was not up to the job.’

‘You are in no position to be the judge of such matters. I have considerable doubts as to whether you are up to the job yourself.’

FitzRoy tried again: ‘If you please, sir, I am merely attempting to investigate the import of our meteorologic research. The influence of the heavenly bodies, for instance: if you will allow me to show you my findings, I can produce convincing evidence that solar activity may be influencing the earth’s weather. Sunspots, in particular — ’

‘Enough,
FitzRoy,’ ground out Admiral Beechey. ‘You are becoming impertinent. There shall be no more “synoptic charts”. No more “wind stars”. No more arrogant nonsense about being able to “foretell the weather”. Not while I am the head of the Marine Department. Is that completely clear?’

‘Yes sir.’

FitzRoy turned smartly and left Beechey’s office without a word. In former times he would have felt defiant, would have worked out a way round the problem. Now he merely felt defeated and despondent. Making progress at Whitehall was like wading through a Falklands peat bog.

 

FitzRoy bought a copy of the
Daily Telegraph
for a penny at the W.H. Smith news-stand at London Bridge, then settled back into his seat on the Sydenham train. A skull, apparently belonging to a primitive branch of the human species, had been unearthed in the Rhineland; Fuhrott, its discoverer, had named it
Homo neanderthalis.
The news brought an ironic smile to his face, in the light of his destination. He had no idea why Darwin had demanded to see him, but he guessed that it was not for friendship’s sake, not now, not after five years. He sensed, rather, that a specific purpose lay behind the invitation. Once, perhaps, he would have objected to venturing forth in ignorance, or even to being summoned in such a manner at all. Now, he realized ruefully, his was a life of being led.

The old phaeton collected him at the station and ferried him at a snail’s pace across the chalk-fields to Down House. A housemaid opened the door - the lugubrious butler was obviously off on some errand - and FitzRoy was immediately assailed by a revolting, sickly reek, the unmistakable stench of the charnel-house. While his senses reeled, he saw Darwin hobbling forth from his study to welcome his guest.

‘Ah, FitzRoy. Please excuse the smell. It is the rather regrettable result of my experiments. Mrs Darwin will scarcely forgive me.’

‘My dear Darwin, it is nothing,’ lied FitzRoy. ‘But what on earth ... ?’

‘Pigeons. Hanging in the cellar and the outside sheds, waiting to be defleshed. Parslow and I are falling somewhat behind. I have become a pigeon-breeder.’

‘A
pigeon
-breeder?’

Pigeon-breeding was the preserve of lonely clerks with clay pipes, who gathered in smoky beer-halls in Spitalfields and the Borough to discuss the relative merits of the turbit and the trumpeter, not of respectable gentlemen scientists residing with their families in country parsonages.

‘Yes indeed. Pigeons. Fascinating. Why, if they only knew the amazing amount of solace and pleasure to be derived from the Almond Tumbler, then scarce any noblemen or gentlemen would be without their aviaries. It is a majestic and noble pursuit.’

Downy white feathers, FitzRoy observed, had drifted like snowflakes, undusted, into the darker recesses of the mantelshelves and the more obscure corners of the staircase. Through the open doorway of Darwin’s study he could see out on to the lawn — or, at least, what had once been the lawn: row after row of vertical wires filled the horizon, each row an elegant prison for a feathery inmate. These, it appeared, were condemned cells, for whereas most breeders cosseted their pigeons like newborn babies, Darwin was apparently engaged in wholesale slaughter. Anyone else would have presumed the philosopher to have taken leave of his senses, but FitzRoy knew his man. All these cages, he guessed, were merely further means to an extremely familiar end.

Parslow chose that moment to materialize at one end of the corridor, carrying a still-smoking shotgun and a score of dead partridges slung over one shoulder.

‘More partridges, sir.’

‘Oh! Yes. Put them in the cellar, would you, Parslow, with the rest?’ Parslow assumed an expression of extreme forbearance and trudged away.

‘Let me guess,’ said FitzRoy. ‘Wild birds — for the purposes of comparison?’

‘Oh no no,’ replied Darwin quickly. ‘A quite different experiment. Seed propagation. My son Georgie counts the seeds in the mud that adheres to their feet. I am trying to estimate the spread of plant species through animal hosts. Where is Georgie, by the way? Georgie!’

There was an almighty crash from upstairs, and a snub-nosed eleven-year-old face poked through the banisters above.

‘Georgie, what are you
doing?’

‘We’re playing soldiers, Pappy. We’ve hung two trapezes from the ceiling so we can charge each other. I’m the British dragoons and Bessy is the Russians.’

‘Are you sure Bessy wants to play this game? She is only nine.’

‘She did want to play, Pappy, until she fell off the second time.’

‘Well stop it at once and come downstairs.’

‘Pappy, may we play cricket in the corridor?’

‘No. Come downstairs at once. There are partridges.’

‘Partridges? Huzza!’

George Darwin shot down the staircase on a tin tray, narrowly missing his five-year-old brother Horace, who had chosen that moment to wander past the bottom step.

‘Pappy, you know the fireworks for winning the war?’

‘Yes, Georgie?’

‘Will there be any more?’

‘No, Georgie. The war is finished.’

‘Oh. All right then.’

Apparently unfazed by this news, Georgie vanished into the cellar, followed by Horace, leaving FitzRoy and Darwin alone in the corridor once more.

‘My dear FitzRoy, you must excuse my atrocious manners. Where was I?’

‘Pigeons.’

‘Oh, yes — pigeons. I have joined two clubs. The members call me “Squire”.’ Darwin preened, ever so slightly.

‘Might I ask why?’

‘Only if we shall not argue about it.’

FitzRoy smiled. ‘You have my word.’

‘Very well. I shall tell you on the sand walk. Fetch your coat.’

It was only then that Darwin noticed FitzRoy was still wearing his coat: none of the servants had thought to take it from him.

 

They set off through a cacophony of squawking, barking, bleating, oinking and droning, which came not from the pigeon cages, but from a variety of pens further back, containing sheep, pigs, cats, dogs, poultry and peacocks. There were phalanxes of beehives, and glass tanks crowded with fancy goldfish. The droning came from Darwin’s eight-year-old son Frankie, who was making a fearful noise with a bassoon in the bushes.

‘An unusual place for bassoon practice,’ remarked FitzRoy.

‘Oh, he’s not practising it. He’s playing it to the leaves of that plant to see if it will respond to the vibrations of the music. All the children help me with my experiments when they are old enough. Etty dusts the bees with flour, to trace their movements, and Bessy germinates hazel and asparagus seeds that have been immersed in salt water for several days.’

‘Let me hazard another guess. Seed propagation?’

‘On the mark!’ Darwin looked pleased.

‘And the pigeons?’

‘Oh, yes - the pigeons!’

A shabby-jacketed pair of gardeners marched past, uncut hair straggling from beneath their battered bowler hats. Darwin waited diplomatically for them to salute and move on; then he leaned in towards FitzRoy and adopted a furtive tone: ‘What I am doing is picking birds with a particular characteristic, then trying to exaggerate that characteristic by selective breeding.’

‘But, my dear Darwin, is that not what all pigeon-breeders do?’

‘Precisely.’ Darwin looked rather impressed with himself. ‘It is my intention, over several generations of selective breeding, to create a new species.’

Great heavens
, thought FitzRoy.
He actually intends to usurp the role of the Creator
.

‘It should not be too difficult,’ Darwin continued. ‘After all, Mr Bult has achieved considerable gains in size, simply by crossing his pouters with his runts. It is my belief that pigeon species derive from a common ancestor. That Mother Nature is no more than a breeder herself, albeit on a remarkable scale.’