Mr Darwin's Gardener (2 page)

The kitchen is steamy. Water boils in the saucepan and the lid shakes. Cathy lifts the frying pan on to the stove. Thomas touches his daughter's damp hair, pours hot water into a jug and goes to his room for a wash. The windows become shrouded with mist. Thomas washes his feet last. His toes look clumsy in the murky soap-water. Fish fins are more beautiful. Thomas puts on clean underwear and a shirt that Cathy has ironed and starched stiff. Clouds fleet low, and when Thomas opens the window, he senses the smell of smoke. Silence outside; no sound of birds, no clippety-clop of hoofs, no creaking of carriages.

Thomas looks at himself in the brown mirror-glass. What a grimace. Bacon wrote:
It addeth deformity to an ape, to be so like a man
. Thomas remembers his dream: a lot of soil was being tipped into a hole from a wheelbarrow. But the hole was no grave. There was no minister and no hymns were being sung. The villagers sit in church. Fear of God forces their backs to bend, but they believe the roof protects them from brimstone.

You can see the apple trees and cherry trees in Davies's orchard from the window. Drops of water gather on the tips of their black branches. Thomas has rigged nets round the trunks to keep hares at bay. Come spring, he will lime the trunks on the side where the morning
sun shines, so the sap will not rise too early. He will tie weights made of string and stones to the branches of the young trees, so the branches grow correctly and are strong enough, in time, to bear the weight of fruit. But spring is far away now. The old uphill climb to the turn of the year.

Cathy has laid the table. She pours milk and tea into a cup. She transfers sausages and eggs and slices of bread on to a plate. Sunday. Daughter brisk, egg yolks unbroken. Cathy watches Father's face; is everything all right? A sturdy girl with stark, black eyebrows, blue eyes and round cheeks, she wears the open, anxious expression of a small child. Slow wits in a body that is growing taller and broader.

Thomas smiles at Cathy, eats, drinks tea. All is well, all is well. All is well.

His daughter sits on the window seat in the kitchen. She uses her palm to rub an opening in the condensation on the glass. When Thomas turns, he sees that the wind has torn a gap in the layer of cloud. Silver light suddenly breaks through clouds. The bright beam sweeps over the landscape. In biblical pictures, people raise their faces to the sky and the light falls upon them.

Thomas shuts his eyes. In church, when the minister preaches, his words are a cooked chicken laid on a
spiritual
table for members of the congregation to sink their teeth into. You do not have the strength to think on a full stomach, nor to ask futile questions about the existence of diving wasps.

The stairs creak as John comes down them. He sits at the table, thin fair hair all tufty. Thomas spoons honey into a cup for the boy, pours in milk and hot water. He spreads butter and jam on bread. The honey and jam are
presents from the village women. John twirls his spoon in his cup, stares at the whirling liquid. He rests his cheek on his palm, pursing his lips.

The cloudy sky withdraws, closes. Autumn rides on nine horses.

The church service over, Eileen Faine dips nib into ink and writes:

Of human nature.

The pen stops.

The Greeks may have been right about bodily fluids, and sanguine and melancholy types. Here, though, the most common humour is probably a thick, sticky green slime. Induction and deduction, I can never remember which is which. From particular to general and from general to particular. Must think. You can shrink the human brain like the feet of noble Chinese women. Many women follow the practice out of vanity. After a church service I always try to think, for the talk of ministers fails to edify. My pen was scratching away nicely, but then my thoughts dried up. The yellow silk curtains are not quite closed and you can see a strip of garden: the black trunk and black branches of the maple tree, a couple of yellow leaves still fluttering there, about to fall off. Most of the leaves have been raked together and gathered up to make compost according to Thomas Davies's guidance. If anyone knows how to make compost scientifically, it's Davies, because he is Mr Darwin's gardener.

I do not know if rare species are cultivated in Mr Darwin's garden. The villagers jeered at the yellow
toadflax, but that was a long time ago, and I have seen nothing odder over the fence than common-or-garden lettuces and red cabbages and yellow onions.

Many women over sixty carry on behaving like little girls, presumably imagining that acting as foolishly as a seventeen-year-old makes them younger and more
beautiful
. I was at a party once, and in my irritation, I imagined all the women there wearing childish short frocks, tight plaits, crumpled socks and shoes with round toes. And instead of sitting and nodding their kiss-curls and bonnets, in my mind they were running around a circular table chasing each other. Some of them consider me haughty because I was beautiful in my youth. Now, though, I have a turkey neck and pouchy cheeks and wrinkles on my forehead like a pug.

Some women are unable to reconcile big eyes, a straight nose and full lips with a brain housed in the same head; something is superfluous. The brain. They shrink it so it is small enough for the head to accommodate thick curls and a lace bonnet.

When I think, I feel how my head seethes, and if I do not release this tingling by means of pen and paper my head starts aching. But perhaps my title is wrong.

The Greeks, the Romans and even the French have already written a great deal on the subject. I should deal with a matter pertinent to our times. Something important to do with Mr Darwin and the railways and electrical equipment and the position of the working classes etc. etc. etc., one that is the subject of polemics. They must be read. Should I write about God? No, it feels overwhelming, and that topic too has been much pondered upon already. I know about human nature from experience, but I do not know about God, because throughout my life I have
been swallowing all things ecclesiastical like a medicine that if not remedial is not damaging either – now Henry is shouting, and once again things get left undone.

Henry Faine prods the gravel in the yard with the end of his stick.

The gravel has been imported from France. Each stone the sea polishes is unique. Has anybody ever found identical stones, French or otherwise? Henry picks up a grey, oval stone that resembles a horse's head. He throws it down and picks up another, brick-red and round. We import coffee from Sumatra and Java, mahogany from South America. But Eileen's forefathers loaded a ship with gravel to cover a yard. And when the railways reach every corner of the world? How will that be?

I jump on to the rails of imagination. A waft of wind, warm and smelling of coal, brushes my head. The evening chill has raised a cloud of mist, distinctly pale even in the dark, into which I speed. But I cannot make anything else out, however hard I try. I know everything will be different in the future, but I do not know how.

When I open my eyes, the gravel swims before me. The stones appear to move. They form a long line and begin rolling towards the coast. On the cliff they halt, become rigid. That is what migrating lemmings in the north do. When the first lemming leaps, they all leap.

I cannot see the opposite shore. I am too old.

Great men are remembered, like Mr Darwin, a genuine monolith. We small folk are mere sand, washed by the waves as they go back and forth, back and forth.

My feet are cold. And where is my handkerchief? These shoes are good only for parquet.

I really had to get out and breathe. A life of
responsibilities
but no ambition makes you short of breath. I'm going round and round in a barrel that does not even have a bunghole.

How is that possible? You can put an unripe pear into a bottle and tie it to a tree. The pear will grow so big you can no longer squeeze it out through the mouth of the bottle.

Ah well, I handled the affairs of Eileen's father smoothly enough. And so I have managed other matters: wills, deeds of gift, contracts of sale. If you are not capable of great good, you should at least be capable of great evil, like Charles Peace, the fiddler and inventor, burglar and murderer, who was executed in February.

I am too old to do anything but die, all alone.

Ah, potpourri! The scent of dead flowers! Alice Faine moves the jar from the small table to the mantelpiece.

In Grasse I walked in fields of roses, lavender, jasmine. Young girls with baskets picked flowers. They had to gather them at just the right moment, Mother explained. The flowers were distilled into extract and blended into perfumes, which experts sniffed at vigorously.
Voilà, Madame, the soul of a rose!
When I stepped out of the perfumery into the street, I felt dizzy. The red afterglow of the setting sun fell upon the mountains. The light tinged the outline of the grey houses and tiled roofs. And suddenly I was sad, I do not know why. I did not feel pain or sorrow, but my chest was tight and my breath short. The sensation was horrible and wondrous. I was thirteen years old and I thought that I would die, but I did not die. And I do not yearn for death, but rather for that dizziness and that longing for everything. I arrange the flowers in the vase. Chrysanthemums have a sensible scent: cold air,
strong herbs. The stems are sturdy, the blooms bright. Chrysanthemums are everyday, like women who refrain from building castles in the air.

Robert Kenny is annoyed. After the church service, Mary starts crying before she has even taken off her hat. Where do the tears come from? Which organ produces them? I do not know, though I am a doctor. Grief and tears are quite different matters. The grief in my innards is hard as a nut. Soak it in beer or whisky or cognac, and a tear may squeeze out. But the liquid would surely be pure alcohol. Tears are seeds sown in vain; nothing will grow from them. I pay no heed to Mary's red-rimmed looks as I pour myself a brandy. It has been two years since Eleanor's death. Such a beautiful child, with such large eyes, such dark hair. She was so lively and quick-witted. Quite dead. Our shared grief has been divided into two: Mary cries and I drink.

Alone, I put my feet up on the arm of the sofa.

Where runs the limit of drinking? Round the rim of the glass.

Once Stuart finishes his funnel, I shall be able to tip a bottle into my mouth as if it were a glass. The
schoolmaster-inventor
is not short of ideas. He orders sheet metal and tin and nails from Rowe. Rowe farts tacks when Wilkes fails to pay his bills.

Jennifer, my aunt, uses onion milk and Beecham's Pills to cure people.
What ho! Sickly people
. Patients get better if it is meant to be. I use stronger stuff, but it's the same thing. Science medicates and nature tends.

The book rests on the table. Alice Faine has brought it for Lucy Wilkes to borrow. She sits in the parlour.

But Lucy runs hither and thither between table and kitchen. She musses her hair and smooths her frock. She tilts her head, scrutinizing the place settings. She sits down, remembers something else, jumps up. Alice tries to remember which bird it is that cannot settle, not on ground or tree. Instead it has to keep flying; it even sleeps in the air. Lucy has fair skin and freckles, round blue eyes and golden hair, a full pliant figure and a soft voice. If Lucy stayed still, she would in my opinion be as beautiful as an alabaster vase. But she is brimming with restlessness, and her talk runs on, an unbroken ribbon that slithers and meanders. Going into the kitchen, she raises her voice without sounding as if she were shouting. When she returns, carrying sugar tongs, I have already forgotten where the story began; maybe with her parents and grandparents. Now she tells of Charles, Lucy and Stuart's son. His mother talks of him with scolding tenderness. She tells anecdotes and laughs delightedly at them, inviting me to join the chorus. I do laugh, though I do not understand children who look like small, gloomy adults. You can already read the futures of boys in their faces – bank or law firm – whereas the faces of girls shine with pure, glossy stupidity. Their mothers smeared it on.

Stuart Wilkes is looking into an idea that was cut short earlier; Lucy and Charles, ready for church and waiting for him to accompany them there, had interrupted his thoughts. His shoelace had snapped.

At home, taking off my shoes, I remembered the
extensible
shoelaces in a flash. If new shoes were to have long laces rolled up under the tongue, then, when the shoelace wore out and snapped, you could extract a length of new lace wherever you were. You might be in a place with no
shops or laces, though it is hard to imagine there would be no shop somewhere a train stops. But late at night or early in the morning, nowhere would be open; no shoelaces to be found. You might be on your way to a dinner or an early business meeting.

I go to the workshop, which is in an outhouse next to the woodshed and the storehouse. I write down my idea. On the previous page there is a plan for an adjustable funnel. That would be useful, because bottle mouths come in different sizes.

The funnel would have to be made of very thin, flexible tin. It would have various rows of barbs and, by fastening these barbs on to hooks, you could adjust the size of the funnel. The best material would be thin and rubber-like, in which case the barbs could be replaced with press-buttons. Such material may not exist, though. I shall ask Harry Rowe to procure both thin tin and rubber. But rubber can be hard to get hold of and is expensive. Gutta-percha is durable but rigid.

Yesterday, Charles asked me: Who's a great man? I said: Aristotle, Copernicus, Shakespeare. Alexander the Great,
I added, for that is an answer that makes sense to a child. Is Mr Darwin a great man? Charles asked. I saw what he was getting at. Even a child knows that Mr Darwin is famous. A child does not know why, though, and nor do many adults. If Mr Darwin's name were Eugene or Jolyon, he would not interest my son. Yes, yes, I said, and Charles ran off. Hopefully he will grow to understand that greatness comes not from quick victories but from work and effort. And it is futile to strive if you lack genius.

I do have ideas.

Mr Whewell believes enthusiasm is an impediment to science, but Mr Tyndall points out that that only applies to those with a weak head!

You do not need to be a black-gowned academic at Oxford or Cambridge or the Royal Society to be able to put forward ingenious thoughts. For example, George Campbell, the Duke of Argyll, writes about the steam engine and Babbage's calculating machine and telegraphy. However, I am particularly interested in what he writes about flying.

Birds defy the law of gravity with every wing-beat, even big, heavy storks. A balloon is a mere toy that rises up into the air, but if not directed, it drifts at the mercy of an air current.

I believe Campbell to be right when he states that flying machines must be moulded according to the pattern the Lord used when designing birds and bats and dragonflies.