This Thing Of Darkness (96 page)

FitzRoy could not help but reflect bitterly on the tide of condemnation that had greeted the publication of
The Vestiges
in polite society, as compared to the praise heaped upon Darwin’s own books.
If people only knew the truth of his views, he would be a pariah; but instead it was my book that was slaughtered in print, by his friends in the liberal scientific establishment, and his that received all their good notices.

A harsh crow-croak came from the chalk-fields beyond the sand walk thickets, heralding the approach of winter.

‘Shall we go in for luncheon?’ suggested Darwin. ‘It is getting cold.’

 

They lunched in the old-fashioned Regency dining room, overlooked by eighteenth-century portraits of long-dead Darwins. The miserable, long-haired butler served the meal with an indifference bordering on dissent, dishing up inelegant servings of boiled mutton on a dainty Wedgwood dinner service decorated with a waterlily motif. Gazing at the dough-faced Darwin ancestors that lined the walls, it occurred suddenly to FitzRoy that his host was always looking backwards, always unhappy with the past, always trying to unravel it; whereas he, by contrast, quite secure in his knowledge of how mankind had arrived at this point, was always looking forward, always trying to better the future.

Two daguerreotypes stared balefully at them from the sideboard at the end of the room. The larger one showed a curiously dark-eyed, sad and thoughtful Darwin, a young boy in long clothes perched upon his lap.
That must be William,
thought FitzRoy,
the eldest son
. The other showed a sullen, fat-chinned girl, splayed awkwardly on a sofa in a chequered frock, her hair scraped into corn-dolly plaits about her ears.
That must be Anne, the child that died.
Emma Darwin followed FitzRoy’s gaze, and caught him in mid-inspection. ‘She is beautiful,’ he told her quickly.

‘We have lost the joy of the household and the solace of our old age, Captain FitzRoy,’ said Emma. ‘I always thought that, come what might, we should have had one loving soul whom nothing could have changed.’

‘My daughter was generous, handsome and unsuspicious in all her conduct,’ added her husband, ‘free from envy and jealousy, good-tempered and never passionate. I only hope that she knew how much we loved her.’

‘I hope that she does know how deeply, how tenderly we do still,’ returned Emma, ‘and how we shall ever love her dear, joyous face. May God’s blessings be upon her.’

‘May the Holy Spirit bless your endeavour to honour the Redeemer’s name,’ offered FitzRoy, who could see the excruciating pain of the Darwins’ loss cut into their faces as if by a lancet.

‘My lady is served, sir,’ interjected Parslow, piling an inopportune mound of potatoes on to his mistress’s plate.

‘What of your own children, Captain FitzRoy? What is to become of them? They cannot remain in your household without a woman present.’

‘No. My son, Robert, is joining the Service. He is old enough now, at twelve, and I have secured him a berth. Thereafter, I hope he will attend the Royal Naval College. My sister Fanny and Lady Londonderry have kindly consented to look after the three girls. I will still visit them, of course, but it will be the most tremendous wrench. Emily is the very image of her mother.’

‘You poor man,’ said Emma. ‘I know exactly how you feel. I miss my own dear Annie so. She was so popular in the whole household, Captain FitzRoy. All the servants adored her. I wish you could have seen it.’

‘After her death, her nurse, Brodie, became quite hysterical with grief,’ Darwin recounted. ‘In the end I decided it best that she leave the family service. The woman was quite inconsolable.’

‘Have you yet composed Anne’s memorial?’

‘There is no memorial,’ said Darwin bluntly.

‘No memorial?’ FitzRoy tried and failed to hide his surprise.

‘No memorial, and no stone angels on her grave. Only a plain head-stone in Malvern churchyard, inscribed, “A dear and good child”.’

Emma Darwin looked unhappy.

‘It must be a pity for you both that she is buried so far away. I find it a great consolation to visit my wife’s grave every day. I talk to her, and give thanks to God for her life, and give thanks that she is undoubtedly sitting at His right hand even now.’

‘It is all right, FitzRoy, you may disapprove of me if you wish,’ said Darwin. ‘Heavens, I have known you long enough not to be offended by now. Say that you disapprove of my not providing my child with a memorial.’

‘Of course I shall not say it. It is up to everyone to grieve for the loss of a loved one exactly as they wish.’

‘It is just that, no matter how hard I look, I cannot see
any
divine purpose behind the loss of my daughter.’

‘Nor can I see any divine purpose behind the loss of my beloved wife. But there must be one, must there not? Or why should a kind and much-loved child be taken away from you? Why should a kind and much-loved woman in her fortieth year be taken away from me? It occurred because it was the Lord’s will, that is why, and the Lord’s will is exercised only for good, even if we may not know all His reasoning. So you may be assured that your daughter is by His side.’

‘Oh, I assure you, FitzRoy, I dearly want to believe in an afterlife for my daughter. I want it as much as you do. But what is belief? Belief is no more than instinct. What is belief in an afterlife? Nothing more than a primitive being - man - deflecting his terror and helplessness in the face of death.’

Darwin was looking to provoke FitzRoy now. FitzRoy’s calm face, his damned piety, his absolute certainty that he
knew
, were provoking him, and he wanted to provoke the man back.

‘It is a view that leaves no room for divinity or moral redemption,’ replied FitzRoy, softly.

‘She was ten years old. She died in agony, for God’s sake. Why should I have anything to do with a God who delights in such cruelties? I am not a savage!’

‘Mr Darwin,
please!
’ breathed his wife. ‘The servants!’

‘I think you need to decide,’ said FitzRoy, ‘whether you actively blame God for what has happened, or whether you are merely finding it difficult to believe in Him.’

‘Go to the devil!’ Darwin burst out angrily. ‘You just do not understand, do you? The pair of you!’ He rounded on his wife. ‘Our daughter is
dead
. She is rotting in the
ground
. She is not “sitting at God’s right hand in heaven”. Why? Because heaven does not exist, and because God does not exist. There - I have said it now.
God — does — not - exist.
He is just our pathetic fears made flesh. Are you happy now? Do you want me to say it again, and then maybe perhaps it will finally sink in? GOD DOES NOT DAMNED WELL EXIST!’

Emma Darwin, tears stumbling from her eyes, stood up and fled the room.

Parslow, who had been about to offer FitzRoy a second helping of cabbage, thought better of it.

Captain William Parker Snow raised a hand, and let silence fall across the decks of the
Allen Gardiner.
His instincts, which had never yet let him down, were of the opinion that he was being watched. By whom, or what, he could not tell. Not a living thing stirred outside the ship. They had left the crowds of Fuegians that had chased them up the Beagle Channel panting helplessly in their wake. It was a bountiful evening, the first they had enjoyed since leaving the tropics, the water was glass, and a warm sun illuminated a row of blue-grey serrated peaks that jutted up in the distance like whales’ teeth. In fact, the entire landscape put him in mind of his whaling days in Greenland. The peaks, he knew from FitzRoy’s maps, were the Codrington Mountains. He had to take off his hat to his predecessor: FitzRoy’s charts and sailing directions had proved nothing short of amazing. They were exact in every detail. It was as if the old captain had taken him by the hand and led him down here in person, a guardian angel guiding him safely between the frowning cliffs and snarling rocks.

Suddenly, a little splash caught his attention, and he glanced across in time to see the head of a seal dart beneath the surface. At least, he thought it had been a seal’s head: it had flashed black and shiny for a moment, caught in the sunlight’s slant. Certainly, no human being could survive in these freezing waters. A stark but momentary image, of two white eyes staring intently at him, was now imprinted upon his memory. He stroked the massive black beard that lay across his barrel chest like a slumbering bear, and pondered.

The silence was broken again, by a spontaneous outburst of hymn-singing from the prow, and for the thousandth time, Snow had reason to curse the missionaries and the crew they had recruited. The outbreak of war in the Crimea had meant that, for the first time in decades, it had been impossible to find experienced seamen in England’s ports, but the Patagonian Missionary Society had compounded the problem by insisting that every crew member in the
Allen Gardiner
pass rigorous tests of Christian devotion. The result was a crew of fanatics, who couldn’t sail, couldn’t patch a leak, and who regarded his authority as secondary to that of Garland Phillips, the society’s chief catechist on board. One of the men hailed from Stockholm, and could barely speak a word of English; two of them shared the same name, for heaven’s sake, both being called John Johnstone; and the only one who wasn’t an out-and-out zealot, Coles the cook, was a certified half-wit. The city of Bristol, apparently, had contained not a single Christian cook.

Phillips had decreed that there should be two services a day, even in the heaviest seas; when Snow had attempted to reduce the number to one, the ship’s mates had simply refused to obey his orders. On one occasion in the South Atlantic, the crew had abandoned their stations and foregathered to pray, all dressed in their matching guernseys with ‘Mission Yacht’ sewn at the breast, in the midst of a howling gale: if the
Allen Gardiner
went down, ran the prevailing wisdom, then so be it, for that would be God’s will. So helplessly had the ship yawed back and forth, that a passing French man-of-war had stopped to help, assuming her to have lost her rudder. In his entire professional career, Snow had never been so mortified.

‘Mr Phillips!’ he called, as much to put a stop to the hymn-singing as to attract the catechist’s attention. Garland Phillips stalked up the maindeck, his tailcoat and long black hair flapping, a look of irritation replacing the self-confident sneer that served as his customary expression.
How very much I detest this man
, growled the captain to himself.

‘Yes? What is it, Snow?’ demanded Phillips.

‘This is it. Woollya Cove. Journey’s end.’

Phillips’s eyes gleamed with excitement. Cupping his hands to his face, he began to call out,
‘Oo-ee! Oo-ee!’

The mountains caught his yodel and tossed it nonchalantly between themselves, but answer came there none. If they were indeed being watched, then the watchers remained cautious. Whereupon, a bright idea occurred to Captain Snow.

‘Johnstone!’

‘Aye aye sir!’

Two voices had answered in unison.

‘No, not you, Johnstone, I meant the other Johnstone.’

‘Aye aye sir!’

‘Run up the Union Jack.’

‘Aye aye sir!’

A moment later, as the familiar red, white and blue jerked limply into the foretops, two packed canoes emerged cautiously from the tussock grass of a nearby island and began to paddle towards the
Allen Gardiner.

‘Jemmy Button? Jemmy Button?’ bellowed Snow.

In the lead canoe, a portly, dishevelled, middle-aged man stood up, quite naked, and began to gesticulate wildly at the ship. ‘Yes! Yes!’ he shouted. ‘Jemmy Button! Me Jemmy Button!’

‘God be praised!’ said Garland Phillips.

An incredulous Snow called for sail to be shortened, and all hands on deck. Before long, the entire crew stood transfixed at the rail.

‘Capp’en Fitz‘oy? Capp’en Fitz‘oy come back for Jemmy?’ called the pot-bellied figure in the canoe.

‘Captain FitzRoy is not here. I am Captain Snow.’

An air of panic suddenly pervaded the two canoes. The little Fuegian was gesturing to the rowers to stop. Garland Phillips seized Snow’s arm.

‘Captain FitzRoy has sent us,’ he called out. ‘He has sent us to bring you to him.’

Astonished, Snow turned to stare at Phillips. The catechist hissed at him, ‘FitzRoy has given the expedition his blessing. It is the same thing. Look to concentrate upon sailing the ship, and let me deal with the natives.’

The Fuegians had resumed their rowing.

‘If you please, where is the ladder?’ called out Jemmy.

‘Well, I’m blowed!’ said Coles the cook. ‘This beats me out and out. What a queer thing! There’s that blear-eyed, dirty-looking, naked savage, speaking as clear to the skipper as one of us, and I be hanged, too, if he isn’t as polite as if he’d been brought up in a parlour instead of born in this outlandish place!’

‘I can’t make it out,’ agreed one of the John Johnstones. ‘Lots of wild barbarians civil to us, and now one of ’em talking as plain a‘most as ourselves! It knocks me down quite.’

‘Be silent!’ hissed Phillips. ‘Throw him down a rope.’

A rope was tossed down, whereupon Jemmy Button and a twelve-year-old child, possibly his son, stood up in the canoe and enacted what now appeared to be a familiar ritual.

‘After you, Wammestriggins.’

‘No, no. After you, Jemmy Button.’

‘No, no. Me insist. After you.’

‘No, no. After you.’

Eventually, Jemmy grasped the rope and hauled himself up with difficulty, followed by the rather more agile youth.

‘Pank you,’ said Wammestriggins, as helping hands leaned down to pull him aboard. Both Fuegians wiped their feet politely.

‘Me
know
Capp’en Fitz‘oy come back,’ said Jemmy proudly. ‘Me
tell
them. Where is Capp’en Fitz‘oy?’