This Thing Of Darkness (95 page)

There was silence in the fusty drawing room.

‘Well? Do we have your blessing, Captain FitzRoy?’

FitzRoy hesitated. He had no enthusiasm for Despard’s fantasy. When he was younger, perhaps, untouched by bitter wisdom, he might have embraced the sheer ambition of the idea. New Zealand had changed all that: perhaps it was truly impossible to attempt to civilize the heathen without bringing about his destruction in the process. That process was something he no longer wished to be part of. He saw now, in a flash, that Despard’s grand scheme was to be planned and executed not so much to the greater glory of God as to the greater glory of the Reverend George Packenham Despard. And yet - how could he possibly refuse Sulivan? Even if Sulivan was wrong to blame himself for Gardiner’s fate, what right had he to block the path his old shipmate had taken towards redemption? Reluctantly, he felt that he had no choice but to acquiesce.

‘Very well, Mr Despard. It appears to me that your present plan offers a fairer prospect of success than many other missionary enterprises at their commencement, and that it would be difficult to suggest one less objectionable in the circumstances. I give you my assent.’

Despard stood up and pumped his hand delightedly, and as he did so, a terrible foreboding seized hold of all FitzRoy’s senses, and caused the hairs on the back of his neck to stand on end.

‘You won’t regret this, Captain FitzRoy,’ gushed Despard.

 

Mary FitzRoy died that night, towards three o’clock in the morning.

Her husband sat alone with her, his eyes rimmed with wet light, watching her life ebb to nothing, his children and servants scattered throughout the house, sleeping their undisturbed sleep of blissful ignorance.

Death came so quickly
, he thought,
so cruelly.

Even in the final ravages of cholera, his wife had lost none of the serenity that had marked her out in life: her pale, waxy beauty seemed to suit her in death as much as it had when living. Unable to speak, she had opened her dark eyes in her final moments, had fixed them upon his, and had fiercely grasped his hand.
I love you,
she had been trying to tell him.

And now she was gone, her soul uplifted to heaven.

How he wished that Despard had not chosen that day to turn up and steal some of his precious final moments alone with his wife; had not chosen that day to tell him the story of Allen Gardiner’s futile, idiotic self-sacrifice. Was Gardiner in heaven? He supposed so. Had there been a purpose to Gardiner’s death? It was hard to see it, unless that purpose was merely to galvanize others.

Now the Lord had taken his darling Mary from him. For what reason, he could not fathom; but there had to be a reason, he was sure of it. For without a reason, what point was there to her life, to his life, to anyone’s life? He owed it to her own piety to believe. He owed it to her memory to defend the Holy Spirit against those who would deny the message of the Gospels, that man was created by God in His image and would find salvation in heaven. By defending the path to heaven, he would defend her place there, and would keep the route open for himself to rejoin her one day. He would fight for her, would protect and love and cherish her, every single day that remained of his life. That was the promise he made her, there and then by her deathbed.

‘I love you too, Mary,’ he told her silent, unheeding form, the tears streaming down his face. He had never addressed her as Mary before.

Then the tears turned to sobs, until his whole body was racked with them, his chest heaving until he thought it would burst. And he remembered her whirling beneath a golden chandelier, a blob of molten wax congealing against her white skin.

 

With summer gone, the Darwin family phaeton waited patiently at Sydenham station for the Croydon train, originating at London Bridge. Theirs was not the fastest of carriages, and its slow, elderly horses, chivvied on by their slow, elderly coachman, frequently took longer to cover the few miles back to Downe than the train had taken to steam down from London. It did not matter. FitzRoy was in no hurry. Another few minutes would make no difference. The phaeton jogged its way across bare, chalky fields, and trotted gently down damp, winding lanes, where dew-beaded spiders’ webs clung to passing hedgerows, until it came at last to a rambling, ivy-covered parsonage concealed by trees. The walls were criss-crossed by trellises, as if the building were trying to cover its own modesty. A newly constructed earth bank hid the front of the house from the road. The phaeton crawled to a halt, and FitzRoy alighted. A gloomy butler came to the door. The man’s hair, he noticed, was far too long. Nor did any of the maids seem to be wearing mob-caps. The philosopher, it seemed, was as sloppy as ever.

Darwin had watched FitzRoy arrive, in the mirror he had erected by his study window, which pointed up the drive so that he might screen unwelcome visitors. Now he stood up and hobbled out to greet his former friend. At close quarters, though, he halted again, shocked by what he saw. This was not the FitzRoy he had once known. Of course, there were the expected sartorial changes - the shapeless black clothes and sprouting side-whiskers that had become the benchmark of civilized men everywhere - but, far more dismayingly, FitzRoy looked crushed by his loss. This was a beaten FitzRoy, his face a sagging picture of defeat, barely recognizable as the dashing, tireless young captain who could once have endured any ordeal, however taxing, without showing the slightest sign of fatigue.

For his part, FitzRoy was equally surprised to see that the philosopher’s beetling brows had now become mere foothills beneath a gleaming dome-shaped summit, as if his thick triangular side-whiskers had yanked down the roots of all the hair above; and surprised, too, to see the philosopher’s once huge and athletic frame reduced prematurely to a shambling wreck, bent for support over a carved walking-stick.

They embraced wordlessly.

‘My friend,’ said FitzRoy, at last. ‘I am sorry for your loss.’

‘And I for yours,’ said Darwin.

‘I must thank you, too, for proposing me as a fellow of the Royal Society. I consider it to be the greatest of honours.’

‘It was not merely I who proposed you - Beaufort was instrumental as well - but it was thoroughly well merited.’

‘I cannot deny that it is a welcome relief, at last, to receive some recognition for one’s efforts.’

‘It was the least we could do.’

Darwin put a friendly hand low on FitzRoy’s back. ‘Come, come. You must meet Mrs Darwin and all our children.’

As if on cue, an apple-box to which four wheels had been attached came hurtling into the corridor, propelled by one of the younger Darwins, with two even younger Darwins inside, both gleeful with excitement. They did not slow down, and FitzRoy had to leap out of the way to avoid being run over.

‘Three o’clock from London Bridge coming through!’ shouted the seven-year-old driver of the contraption as it passed. FitzRoy was mildly surprised that there were no words of admonition for the miscreants from their father.

They went into the drawing room, FitzRoy still clutching his top hat - for no one had taken it from him - where Mrs Darwin sat working at a piece of worsted with baby Leonard and Horace, her newborn, propped awkwardly on her lap. Like her husband, she was robed in black. She and FitzRoy were introduced, and for a while made polite conversation.

‘Have you yet visited the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park, Captain FitzRoy?’

‘Indeed. It is a quite remarkable testament to our nation’s ingenuity. Clothes made by machines - who would have thought it?’

‘Not just our nation’s ingenuity, but our nation’s enterprise,’ said Darwin proudly. ‘My wife’s family mounted a stand at the exhibition.’

‘We spent a whole week in London during the summer,’ explained Emma. ‘We visited the Crystal Palace every day. We saw the Great Globe in Leicester Square as well.’

‘And your father?’ said FitzRoy. ‘Is he still ... ?’

She shook her head, and her husband answered for her: ‘I’m afraid not. Uncle Jos died of a stroke while you were in New Zealand.’

‘I am so sorry to hear it. What of your own father, if I might dare ask?’

‘He, too, has been taken from us, some four years past.’

The doctor had died slowly and agonizingly, his immense frame no longer able to lever itself from its bed, his breath coming in purple gasps.

‘We must give thanks that two such very great friends were taken by the Lord to His bosom at such a short interval,’ said Emma.

‘Quite so,’ agreed FitzRoy.

Darwin said nothing.

With an awkward pause brewing, he suggested that FitzRoy accompany him on the sand walk before luncheon, the children being instructed on this occasion to stay out of their way. The two men put on their coats and headed down through the allotments, FitzRoy having to reduce his pace to match his companion’s painful hobble.

‘So why did you leave Gower Street?’ he asked his host.

‘For the sake of my family’s safety, principally. The Chartist mobs are getting bigger. London is getting bigger. Did you know there are now a million more Londoners than when we set sail on the Beagle? The rebellion can only be a matter of time.’

‘It will not succeed.’

‘It will not succeed, but how many innocents will die in the crushing of it? Or what if there is a general strike? Gentlemen and their families might well starve in their houses. Then there is the filth. Coal dust on the washing, horse dung in the streets, and the fog getting worse every winter.’

‘You do not miss the Athenaeum Club? The Royal Geographical Society?’

‘Sadly, my health does not permit me to keep up my duties at the RGS, or at the Geological Society.’ Darwin ran mournfully through the list of his afflictions. ‘But the penny post enables me to carry out most of my researches via correspondence.’

‘And the play? Concerts? You do not miss those?’

‘Oh, I was never one for the theatre. My own dear womankind plays Rossini and Beethoven to me on the piano of an evening, and reads me endless foolish novels.’ Darwin smiled. ‘I have all that I might want to entertain me right here at Down House. It may not be the most attractive dwelling in the district, but with a few modifications it has suited my needs ideally.’

‘Oh yes? What modifications have you made?’

‘Back stairs, so that we do not have to see the servants unless strictly necessary. A bedroom for my wife, for her use during pregnancy and accouchement.’

That must be very nearly all the time,
thought FitzRoy.

‘And the earth bank before the house, so that we are not disturbed by the general public. I do have a certain notoriety, you know.’

‘I know.’

‘And yourself, FitzRoy? Do you have a situation at present?’

‘Not presently, no. I did not finish the South American charts and sailing plans until I returned from New Zealand. It was such a mammoth task, I confess I felt rather bereft when it was finished. Then, for a little while, I assisted the Admiralty in testing HMS
Arrogant,
a warship driven by a small screw propeller at the stern. It is the invention of a Swede, named Ericsson. But the design has been scrapped. The Admiralty came to the conclusion that it could never work and, indeed, that steam could never supplant sailpower.’

‘And were those your own conclusions?’

‘No ... no, my conclusions were entirely the opposite. I resigned from the project in somewhat awkward circumstances.’

Typical FitzRoy
, thought Darwin.
Always inflexible. Never prepared to bend a little before the prevailing winds.

‘Since then, I have been trying without success to get the government to listen to my ideas regarding the feasibility of weather prediction. What about yourself? What researches have you undertaken of late?’

‘I? I have been studying barnacles.’

I will not ask why,
thought FitzRoy,
for it shall undoubtedly prove something to do with transmutation, and I do not wish to argue with him. Not today.

Darwin, who was thinking along similar lines, went no further, but he found himself wanting to confide in FitzRoy, wanting to tell him all about the incredible variations he had discovered, all the proofs he had found that variation was a continuous process and not just the result of fixed geological events. He wanted this one person above all others, this stubborn mule, to assimilate the sheer weight of his arguments and concede defeat. He jabbed out a question: ‘Have you read
The Vestiges?’

‘Hasn’t everybody?’

The Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation
was a popular transmutationist tract, trashily written by an anonymous author, that had dumbfounded the scientific world by selling forty thousand copies. British society, it seemed, was ready for a carefully reasoned argument postulating man’s descent from the higher apes; but
The Vestiges,
unfortunately, wasn’t it. The book’s author had failed to come up with any sort of convincing mechanism for transmutation.

‘I thought the zoology and geology were hopelessly amateur,’ huffed Darwin. ‘It was so bad, it could almost have been written by a woman.’

The Vestiges
had shaken Darwin. At first, he’d feared that he had been beaten to the punch; then, when he’d realized he had not, he had been frightened at the sheer vitriol poured upon the author’s head by the scientific community. Sedgwick, for instance, had called the transmutationist argument ‘a filthy abortion, full of inner deformity and foulness’. No wonder the man - or woman - had remained anonymous.

‘An extraordinary book. It claimed, if I remember, that cheese mites could be spontaneously generated by electricity,’ said FitzRoy, wonderingly.

‘There is no accounting for public taste,’ said Darwin. He held himself back. How he wanted to present FitzRoy with a
real
transmutationist argument, convincingly thought through and backed up with detailed research. How he wanted to admit FitzRoy to the dark burrow of his study, reveal to him the semi-hermaphroditic barnacle beneath the microscope and shout:
‘There! There is the origin of the male and female sexes! Adam’s rib does not even enter into it!’