Recovering fast, Jackie spoke up. “It’s not that, Uncle Joe. It’s all right here.” He flashed a shy glance at Gosling. “And I reckon if Mr. Gosling can stick it, I can. No, I wanted to say, when Mummy arrives, she’ll want to see you. I wondered if, with Easter coming up, she could bring me to Auntie Lydia’s and we could all have a talk.”
Dorcas came around the table and took his hand. “Excellent idea, Jackie!” she said. “There’s a great deal of talking to be done. I’ll bake a few extra hot cross buns. Can’t wait to meet-Nancy, is it? Now, push off, old thing, and leave us to get on with our packing up. We’ll see you again before we go. Perhaps-as there’s no headmaster to say no-we can sneak you out for supper at the roadhouse this evening? What about it?”
CHAPTER 32
APRIL 1933. SURREY.
“Dorcas! Come here and help me test out the hammock!” Joe stood back and checked his handiwork. He enjoyed a bit of estate work at the change of the seasons: repairing the fences, cutting the grass on the croquet lawn, assembling the garden furniture. Lazy old Marcus could never be bothered even to give the instruction to the men to do it.
He’d changed into a pair of rough gardening trousers and an Aran lifeboatman’s sweater so old he remembered his father wearing it. He knew what Gosling would have said he looked like: a ratcatcher.
“Oh, hello, Joe. Look at you! Now I know it’s true-Lydia’s story that you’re descended from Ragnar Hairy-Breeches, Man of the Borders. Does she know you’ve been busy doing this? It’s only just spring, you know.”
“It’s sunny, isn’t it? Go and fetch a woolly if you’re not up to braving the elements. I’ve decided I’m not going to waste another day of my life. There may not be much of it left, professionally speaking. I’ve got two weeks leave while they decide what to do with me, the bluebells are thick on the ground-my favourite flowers-and just breathe in that wild garlic! I’m enjoying every moment of it. I’m anticipating summer.”
Joe settled down on the hammock and patted the space by his side. “Come on. Jump up. You can do it.”
Dorcas looked at him doubtfully. “You never used to let me sit with you.”
“You’re much bigger now. The balance will be better.”
Dorcas settled herself awkwardly into the space he’d left.
“I thought you’d be needing a bit of company,” she said. “I was watching your face when you said good-bye to Jackie after lunch. You looked like a father waving his oldest son off to school for the first time. You know, the tears bouncing off the stiff upper lip. You got fond of him, I think. Well, we all did. I know how you must feel. I’ve lost people.”
“More than your fair share, Dorcas.” Joe smiled. “But then, you’ve found some too. And, speaking of your latest acquisition, was that your Truelove on the phone just now? That’s the third time today.”
“Not funny, Joe. And it was the second. James is not ‘my true-love,’ so you can forget the nasty jibes. Married man, as you know.”
Joe rolled his eyes. “Since when was that an obstacle to skulduggery? I’ve decided to speak to Orlando. It’s time your father told him he was aware of nefarious intentions towards his daughter and warned him off.”
Dorcas groaned. “Not horsewhips and club steps?”
“Yes. And I shall hold his coat while he does it.”
“And a very silly pair you’d look.”
Dorcas wriggled and hitched herself closer. In a voice that was almost a whisper, she asked: “Would you really like to know how things are between me and James? You’re never going to ask me, are you?”
Joe shook his head.
“He’s attractive, friendly, funny, and he likes female companionship. He likes me. He wants to take things further. I’m considering it.”
“That all?”
“All I’m prepared to say to you.”
“And is that what he had to say just now? I wondered what had put that secret smile on your face.”
“No. James had some good news he wanted me to pass on to you. He’s been given a new department.”
“I think I can guess which.”
“Education. With Aidan Anderson under investigation, not to say a threat of imprisonment, James is taking over. Since you stormed into London, flinging accusations and handcuffs about and generally tearing down the pillars of the Temple, there have been resignations and reshuffling in several departments of state. Starting, of course, with the spider at the centre of the lethal network: Aidan Anderson, alumnus of St. Magnus, member of the Eugenic Society and minister in the Education Department.”
“I was pleased to corner him and rip his mask off. And I don’t regret it, whatever happens. Dorcas, there was no family resemblance, was there? I didn’t miss that, did I? Between the minister and his cousin? Our first lost boy, the study in sepia?”
“No. I couldn’t see one either. As boys, they must have known each other, Joe. They were at St. Magnus at exactly the same time: between 1895 and 1900. But there were no features in the photograph you could possibly have identified.”
“But Aidan thrived and went on to Oxford and a political career. Arthur sickened and sank under a debilitating nervous illness. Precisely what we’ll never know. Was it unintentional, that first disappearance? It could have been, you know. Or was the child put down? Whichever one, the idea of a convenient disappearance with the blessing of a eugenist philosophy was planted, one must assume, by that occurrence. And the notion of a cull in the name of eugenics passed on down the generations.”
“Well, Aidan now finds himself culled. James has been given his department, and he’s incorporating Reform into it, so I suppose he’s doubled his empire. Well, he deserves it. He’s kind and clever. I told you so.”
“It rather depends on who he’s trying to make up to at the time. If you were to ask his brother-in-law Bentink’s opinion on Sir James, the response would be unrepeatable. It might include the words ‘traitor,’ ‘conspirator,’ ‘bolshy police-poodle,’ ‘marriage-wrecker’.…”
“The first three, fair enough. But James wasn’t to know that his sister would begin divorce proceedings.”
“And leave her husband in the lurch? She made her mind up pretty quickly to stay in London when he slipped bail and headed for the continent. Don’t imagine I’m unaware that strings were pulled and officials looked the other way. I’m quite certain you were in there from the beginning, aiding and abetting, if the truth were known.”
“Does it matter? Bentink’s out of the country and can do no more harm.”
“Rubbish! I can’t imagine what evil the man’s perpetrating in the name of science over there where his views and methods are supported and encouraged.”
Dorcas was squirming with excitement. “I can! James told me just now. It’s why his sister decided to pull the plugs on the beast.”
“I’ll try not to glaze over while you tell me. But I don’t expect I shall understand a word.”
“Oh, you will! You of all people,” she said. Then added quickly: “The word is a made-up one. Bits of Greek. You’ll work out the subject of his new scientific enthusiasm when you hear it. It’s … um.…” She took a run at it: “… eutelegenesis. You won’t find it in a dictionary. Or even in a scientific paper yet. It’s one of those fashionable words scientists murmur to each other.”
“Not another eu word! Lord! This one sounds even more dastardly than the rest. Let me think. Tele-that’s ‘at a distance,’ as in ‘telephone,’ so we’ve got ‘good breeding at a distance.’ Sounds like something a stockbreeder might have need of. I mean transporting bull’s-er-essence, in a glass jar a hundred miles to a suitable recipient. No! Dorcas! Tell me I’ve misunderstood.”
“You probably haven’t. ‘Artificial insemination,’ an animal breeder would have called it when it was invented in seventeen hundred and something. Some wise men are beginning to say: We can breed the very best in plants and animals-why do we ignore the needs of humanity? The brightest and best of our men are not rema
rkable for their fecundity. Bentink actually calculated that fewer than a hundred babies are being born to men of calibre in this country every year. I do wonder what sources he used! He estimates that, given the right number of women prepared to oblige-and Joe, they are coming forwards! — he could increase this tenfold. Already there are five hundred on the waiting list in England and two thousand in the United States. In three or four generations we would be looking at a race of supermen. They say.”
“My God! I’ve never heard such tripe! Who are these silly women? What do they think’s on offer? They’d sign up for a Rupert Brooke or a Douglas Fairbanks, and that’s understandable, but when I look around at our brightest and best brains, what do I see? I see the ugly bodies, the unattractive features that seem to be part of Mother Nature’s sly deal. To use Bentink’s own words: ‘You wouldn’t want to breed from them.’ Anyway, what man would be so arrogant as to volunteer his seed anyway?”
Dorcas snorted. “Well, Bentink for a start! It was at this revelation that the relationship with Mrs. Bentink began to curdle. Imagine-walking in the park and seeing dozens of baby Bentinks out in their prams!”
“No bonnet big enough!”
“James says his sister was only too glad when he ducked off to Germany, where they take him seriously. Well worth the loss of the bail money.”
“No waterworks over there, I expect.” Joe sighed. “You know, I’d give a lot to hear Francis Crabbe’s views on-what was it? No, I won’t say the misbegotten word, and I hope never to hear it again. Though perhaps I might share the thought with Francis next time I visit. Just the sort of nonsense he’ll appreciate.”
Deep in thought, they sat on in companionable silence interrupted only by a loud cuckoo in the hedge.
“She’s arrived early this year,” Joe commented.
“I’ve never seen the point of cuckoos. One of Nature’s barmier ideas,” Dorcas said. “Laying her eggs in some poor unsuspecting sparrow’s nest.”
A minute later: “I was thinking of Jackie. I know Nancy’s his mother but-”
“But what?”
“She’s the most awful cow. Lydia thinks so too, I know, though she’s much too loyal to say so.”
“Sad to hear you say that. I loved her once.” He’d been meaning to tell her, try to explain how it had happened but hadn’t known how to phrase it and here he was blurting it out in four words without warning.
Dorcas appeared unmoved. “Thought so. Well, she didn’t love you. Too self-centred. Nancy gets what Nancy wants, I imagine. Sensible woman, though. She combined scooping up Jackie with extending her stay with her sisters and booking into the hospital in Brighton. Had you any idea she was six months pregnant?”
“No. It makes a lot of sense. Childbirth can be tricky in India. Much better to get it over with while she’s in England.”
The conversation was proving more painful than Joe had anticipated, and the hammock had been a bad idea. They always were. But he ploughed on. “I never knew her very well. I feel I know her husband, Andrew, much better. He’s very like me, you know.”
Dorcas nodded.
“I didn’t, for instance, know that Nancy had had a second child, two years after Jackie was born. A girl. She died when only a few hours old. Nancy’s determined that this time things will go better. She claims she’s rather elderly for childbirth anyway. What an idea! I thought she was looking quite splendid.”
He was remembering the walk he’d taken along the cliffs with Nancy when the storms had subsided. Jackie had repeated his decision to continue at St. Magnus, again citing the example of Mr. Gosling.
When he’d relayed this to Gosling, instead of the shout of scoffing laughter he expected, the young man had gone silent for a moment, then admitted he felt he wasn’t cut out for the Service. He’d even thought about-and pleaded with Joe to talk him out of it-staying on and doing a bit of schoolmastering. Much to be done, and he thought he could do it better than the men who were presently at the school. With Farman in clink and a new head on the horizon, perhaps St. Magnus would be a different kettle of fish. Joe would not even try to talk him out of it.
Nancy had chattered on about Jackie and the school, about their friends in India and had repeated warm messages from Andrew. She’d left it until the last moments before the walk ended to say what he really wanted to hear. “I’m so sorry, Joe. I thought you’d have forgotten. If you’d ever realised. But it was bad of me. I should have told you in case you were concerned. He’s not your son, you know. He’s Andrew’s. My doctor told me that this does happen. A childless woman has an affair and soon after, a baby is born. But a careful study of the dates reveals the unbelievable has happened. One of Nature’s little jokes? When she goes on to produce further children, there can be no more doubt. The husband is the father.”
And into his stunned silence: “Jack thinks the world of you, Joe. We’d all be very happy if you would consider visiting him at the weekends. For manly pursuits-you know, swimming, riding, shooting. The stuff an English gent has to know.”
Joe had fled back to Lydia’s and drunk a bottle of whisky. He made a raging and drunken vow that if he ever saw Nancy Drummond again he’d push her off a cliff. Marcus had caught his glass as he dropped it and agreed to help him do just that.
And, well into April in the Easter holidays-under pressure from Jackie, Nancy admitted with a tinkling laugh-she’d accepted Lydia’s invitation to bring her son to spend part of the holiday with them.
The few days had felt more like a month with Dorcas about the place, dark eyes seeing more than they should. Still, he’d had a good time teaching Jackie to ride and play badminton. Sod the woman, he’d be a devoted uncle. Not difficult.
Dorcas gave him time with his thoughts then said quietly, “Jackie is your son, Joe, isn’t he?”
“No. He’s not. I had thought so. I mean, there was every chance that he was, but Nancy explained exactly why he couldn’t be.”
Painfully, awkwardly, he gave her Nancy’s account.
Dorcas considered it and came to a decision. “Then she’s mistaken or deliberately deceitful. I’d guess deceitful. She tricked you into paternity, why shouldn’t she be tricking you out of it? One sees why-she wouldn’t want you to have any claims on the boy. And you can’t argue with her, of course you can’t. But you need to know.”
“I have to believe what the lad’s mother tells me!”
“No, you don’t,” said Dorcas stolidly. “She’s a lying hussy, I thought we’d established that. Anyway, there’s proof she can’t suppress. A proof from Nature, and I’d trust Nature before Nancy Drummond.”
“What are you talking about, Dorcas? You know nothing of this.”
“I use my eyes and my common sense. Have you ever noticed how Jackie, when he’s worried-and that’s been quite frequently over the past weeks-has a gesture he can’t suppress? Not that it would occur to him to try. He smooths down his left eyebrow with the knuckles of his left hand. Like this. It’s a self-soothing gesture.”
“I’d noticed. When he’s agitated. Yes. Doesn’t every boy?”
“No, they don’t! The only other person I’ve seen doing that is you, Joe.”
“Me?”
“It’s so automatic you don’t even notice. I used to think it was because your brow wound was itching, but it wasn’t. You do it when you’re upset.” She turned his troubled face towards her and peered at him.
“Like now. Go on, Joe, you know you’re longing to do it.” Her lips curved into a teasing smile. She was so close he could smell peppermint toothpaste on her breath.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Scratch your eyebrow. You’re as tense as a bowstring, but you can’t release the tension because I’m sitting on your left hand.”
“You don’t think the two might be connected?”
“You can’t use the right. The family trait doesn’t allow for that. I think it has most probably a genetic origin, passed down the generations like blue eyes or pigeon toes
.”
Joe swallowed, closing his mind to the shaft of hope that stabbed suddenly through him. “I don’t believe a word of it. That’s the sort of mumbo-jumbo that gets psychology a bad name. But it’s strange, he felt like my son. Didn’t look the least little bit like me, but I think I knew, and Nancy’s denial didn’t make me sad and disappointed. It made me want to wring her neck.”
The thought seemed to cheer Dorcas. She patted his arm encouragingly. “Glad to see that specter from the past howling off back into the woodwork. But look, Joe, no need to indulge in whimsicality. Do a bit of detective work! Women always think men know nothing about the cycle of generation and pregnancy and birth-”
“There’s a reason for that.”
“Well, it’s time you found out. Science is on the march, and you must keep in step. Dates, Joe! I can’t possibly help with this but I’m sure you kept a diary of some kind in 1922. Blushing? I see you did! Well, just work out the date, ask Jack the date of his birthday, and I can tell you whether you can be excluded from the equation-or not. It’s not everything but.…”
“I know about collecting evidence.” Joe smiled. “Never investigated myself before, but I’ll do what you suggest.”
“Poor Joe. You must be in turmoil-family pressures on one side, heavy court cases looming on the other, the enquiry coming up, and political storms brewing. You don’t know which way to look. I expect you’ve called me out here for a good reason.”
“A reason?”
“Yes. Time, I think, for a bit of distraction. Like the great crested grebes. When it all gets too much, just ignore it, and go off and find some seeds to peck. Stop fidgeting!”
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