by Andrew Brown
Jane had started jogging recently, and this was her route, up Observatory Hill from Clifton and along the edge of the gorge, through the village and back home. Gabriel had joined her on only one occasion when she had first started, about six months earlier, gasping as she strode out in front. He was sure that she had deliberately chosen a lengthier route for his debut, first crossing the suspension bridge over the gorge before doubling back and then dropping down the zigzag path. Gabriel had needed a rest near the toll booms on the bridge, resting his head up against the sign for Samaritans Care, the hotline for potential jumpers who found the combination of the cliff edge and the pain of life irresistible. Jane waited for him impatiently, hopping from one leg to the other.
‘Come on, slow coach,’ she teased, though she did not let a smile crease her tight lips.
Her recriminations only made him feel more sluggish as she set off down the path towards Hotwells without him. Gabriel elected rather to sit on a bench and wait for her return, steeling himself against her scorn at his lack of fitness. A few dog-walkers and cyclists passed, nodding a good morning to him, before she came back up into view, sweating freely and puffing at the exertion of the uphill. They set off again along the cobbled sidewalks of Clifton Village, the delis and bakeries still closed, but the smells of ovens and dough already filling the air. The village shops were twee and overpriced, but the collective sense they created was one of splendid isolation from the rest of the city – that together with the daunting steepness of the streets that snaked up to the exclusive hilltop suburb.
They lived off Percival Road in Clifton, in an elderly but supposedly ‘charming’ two-storey semi with slate roofs and a gravelled area in front for the Vauxhall sedan – a reminder of unrealised plans that might once have included a dog, or perhaps even offspring. It was not as grand as the freestanding homes – the roofs arrayed with chimney pots as a statement of the number of fireplaces within – but there was more than enough space for the two of them. The pre-war plumbing was atrocious and the pipes shook when the hot water was turned on upstairs, but Gabriel was contented with their home. He realised that perhaps he lacked the vision of how their domestic situation might be improved; Jane insisted that there was a huge difference between this and mere ‘complaining’, but Gabriel felt a burden descend upon him whenever she engaged him on ‘how things could be different’. What things were these that needed changing? Under scrutiny, the scope narrowed from ‘everything’ to more mundane matters of housekeeping, ultimately alighting on his poor contribution and ending with ‘well, at least take the rubbish out on Thursdays’. It left behind a stale dissatisfaction, he felt, but he had no desire to stir up the silt once more.
Jane was an austere blonde, intimidating in her meticulousness, the way she held her hair just so, a slightly metallic feel to its groomed edges. She had remained slim, despite no previous exercise regime, whereas he had started to puff a little around the midriff. He did query her sudden desire to improve her fitness, and her response had been characteristically calculated: ‘It amazes me that as a nation we have such high expectations of our soldiers and sportsmen, and such low standards for ourselves,’ she’d said as she left him in front of the television set one morning.
There was truth in that, Gabriel had mused, while eyeing the replay of the England captain falling prey to a deft googly delivered by a Sri Lankan bowler with an unpronounceable name. He didn’t follow sport generally, but the repressed intrigue of cricket held some interest. His enjoyment – love would be too strong a word – of the game stemmed from the ever-present possibility of the best batsman in the world falling to a single good ball bowled by a teenager on debut. By contrast, football seemed thuggish. It was ridiculous that such loutish players should fall so easily and thrash about on the ground as though mortally injured, only to rush back into the fray and stomp on someone else’s ankle moments later. There seemed an indecent, almost foppish, melodrama to the game. And that someone could be paid so much and still not hit a target the size of a barn door remained inexplicable to him.
The running in the early morning was but one of a few noteworthy changes in Jane’s lifestyle, Gabriel thought as he pushed the image of Mrs Pilkington’s diseased citrus back into its envelope. Clearly enamoured with the new tone in her muscles, she had started changing her attire in the direction of less is more. And she had discarded her department store underwear in favour of more frilly undergarments. Though for their marriage, the bedroom remained a draughty chamber.
* * *
The lecture hall was surprisingly full already and Gabriel glanced at his watch to see if he was late. Some students were waiting outside, enjoying the dregs of takeaway coffee or the last inhalation of nicotine. He felt a strange unease as he pushed through the throng, suddenly claustrophobic. A young man in a knitted jersey was staring at him. Gabriel glimpsed in his face something of the driver of the car that had knocked him over, and his fingers drifted to the small scab under his nose. The student turned away and started chatting to a friend. Gabriel sensed that he was being ignored while also being the focus of attention. He couldn’t quite locate the source of his disquiet, but made his way into the amphitheatre all the same. Once inside, there was more space to breathe and he felt his uncharacteristic panic ease. The long rows of desktops and swing chairs were tiered, extending from the presentation area up towards the back of the hall, with a central aisle for access. The pro-vice-chancellor was waiting for him at the podium, nodding his head inanely at the gathering crowd. He was a weedy-looking man with pockmarked skin and facial features that appeared to have been taken from a much larger character and stuck to his small frame. His huge ears stood out, giving him a startled look. The whole effect would have benefited from robust exfoliation.
The man greeted Gabriel enthusiastically, his ears waving in the wind, and informed him that he was looking forward to the lecture. The man had a master’s degree in marketing, or something equally tawdry, and Gabriel doubted that he would follow a word. He was dreading the introduction. He looked at the floor and took a slow breath. As the double doors at the top were closed, the pro-vice-chancellor was on his feet, beaming with self-congratulatory warmth, welcoming the gathered ‘folk’ to another ‘marvellous’ event. He managed to get Gabriel’s title correct and pronounced his surname without incident. But the description of the lecture topic was a mangled piece of marketing melodrama.
‘Associate Professor Cockburn will be giving us a taste of the cutting-edge research that is about to explode onto the world stage. Our understanding of evolution, of the very beginning of life, will never be the same again. We’re unlocking the greatest mystery of life on earth’ – Gabriel wasn’t sure where the inclusive pronoun came from – ‘and exploring the fundamental questions concerning life’s origins and the threats to our continued existence.’
The lecture was actually titled ‘Spontaneous leaf albedo increase and the potential significance for bioengineering’. In truth, bioengineering was the least of Gabriel’s interest in the new strain of Arabidopsis, but the lecture was meant to cater to populist appeal, at the insistence of the pro-vice-chancellor. Gabriel was tempted to delve immediately into the latest results his research team had obtained from map-based cloning to isolate the mutation on nucleotide 2317 on chromosome V of the altered phenotype irm2. It would be like watching a Labrador shake the mud from its body, casting the dirt off to reveal the luxury of its coat beneath. But those few who understood the work, who appreciated the brilliance of the posited suggestion and the closeness of the race with the infernal Chinese, they were absent from the lecture, unwilling to subject themselves to its required lay-hype. Gabriel was deserted, alone before the steep-rising audience of his underlings. The lecture was obligatory for the postgraduates, but many of the undergrads had also sought to ingratiate themselves by attending, though already he noticed their lids drooping as their thoughts prepared to stray. Even the hammy introduction couldn’t stave off their impending boredom.
There was a polite smattering of applause as Gabriel stepped up, thanked the pro-vice-chancellor and smoothed his notes out on the lectern before him. He looked up into the lecture hall and launched off, like an Olympic diver from the high board, all caution cast aside.
‘Global warming may constitute the greatest threat to life on the planet as we know it,’ he opened dramatically. ‘The challenge for us is that it cannot be combatted by one nation alone: its solution lies in the ability of disparate peoples, enemies perhaps, to unify and place their more immediate interests to one side. This makes the panacea more a political undertaking than anything else. But if we’re unable to unite, it seems increasingly likely that we will perish.’
It was the obligatory politically correct opening, belying the competitiveness of his research. He followed up with the explanation of the two potential solutions to climate change: the reduction in CO2 emissions and the reflection of radiation from the sun back out of the atmosphere.
‘The reduction in emissions is primarily the political issue,’ he explained, ‘while the reflection of radiation beyond the atmosphere is something that we, as scientists, are required to address …’
Gabriel hesitated for a moment, embarrassed to be pitching his introduction at such a juvenile level. The pro-vice-chancellor was beaming and nodding as if in time to some unheard rhythm.
Gabriel ploughed ahead: ‘The world has been presented with some absurd propositions. The Americans debated the idea of monstrous atmospheric umbrellas to shield the world from the sun’s rays. Japan proposed laying out fields, not with crops, but with mirrors to return heat back into space.’
A pleasing murmur of amusement raised his spirits and he trotted through the next three models: reducing atmospheric CO2 using soil sequestration, using afforestation and fertilisation of the oceans to increase primary productivity and CO2 drawdown.
‘And lastly, and for our purposes the most interesting, is the proposition that predicted increases in global surface temperatures may be reduced, or combatted, through the increase of leaf albedo – the solar reflectivity of the waxy leaf layer – in crop plants. The proposition is that an increase in the reflective waxy layer of certain plants can result in a natural ‘mirror’ that will reflect a greater amount of radiation back into space: if the subject plant is also a useful food crop, then this presents a beneficial synergy of interests.’
A coven of anti–genetic modification types in the top corner appeared to be warming up for a bout of lentil-induced heckling. Gabriel was confident that his change in tack would beat them into intellectual submission.
He doubted they would understand his next point, his explanation of the role of iron in plant physiology and cellular functioning, that iron deficiency leads to chlorosis while iron excess results in oxidative stress and toxicity, with resultant permanent damage.
‘As with all things in nature, the goal is the maintenance of balance,’ he said. ‘The management of iron homeostasis in plants is one of the central battlegrounds of the new research in botany.’
He despised the war motif, reducing research to a military conquest against an unnamed evil. It was his attempt to titillate his audience, who were wilting after only the first page. In truth, the only enemy was the unmitigated stupidity he witnessed around him, the fashionable acquiescence to the lowest common denominator. Journalism, film, literature, political debate … they had all been debased by the increasing tolerance of banality and ignorance. The world should be divided into those who articulated what they thought and those who spoke in the hope that their words might unlock some thought. The former were in rampant decline, the latter apparently simply rampant.
He nevertheless continued with the military metaphor: ‘Our unit at Bristol is at the very forefront of this assault, with our research on mitochondrial ferritin in the iron hyperaccumulator Arabidopsis thaliana.’
The department head, Professor Symington, had positioned himself on the side toward the top of the lecture hall. He was an elderly man with wispy grey-white hair and a mottled complexion that made him something of a professorial caricature. A file lay open before him, waiting for the scratching of his pen, but its master nodded genteelly forward, as if in silent prayer. There was no doubt that retirement had been too slow in arriving, the last few years spent in idle dotage, devoid of serious contribution. There had been no publications from him in the Annals and the commentary in the parochial Botany Review had been of the blandest kind, nostalgic and superficial. The position of head of department yawned before Gabriel. He knew the senate questioned his own ‘human resources management skills’, but his current research would place the department squarely on the global map, establishing him as a leader in evolutionary physiology and placing the unit at the edge of international research. With the conclusion of his work on Arabidopsis, full professorship was assured. With that, only he would be considered eligible to replace the head of department. Management skills be damned. His would be a new era of scientific excellence, where funding would flow – not because of the number of Hispanic students and disabled lecturers wheeling around in the corridors – but because of the novelty and significance of the papers produced by its senior leadership.
‘We also know that petroplinthic soils pose particular challenges to plant life,’ he continued, ‘exposing them to the dual difficulty of iron excess and a paucity of humus. The interest for us lies in the fact that these soils occur in the transition zone between wet tropical forest conditions and drier savannahs, also some of the zones in which global warming has its most exacting influence. To put it simply, global warming results in desertification, and desertification results in vegetative denusion and significant increased exposure to UV, sunlight and heat. The three horsemen of the apocalypse, if you will.’
He allowed himself a small smile. A young student in the front row was unusually alert, watching him with apparent fascination. Her skin seemed permanently blushed, her cheeks rosy in contrast to the light hair that fell in a curtain across her face. Gabriel wondered for a moment whether his injury had not started to bleed again and he allowed the back of his hand to momentarily brush over his upper lip. He placed his hand on the lectern and glanced downward as he proceeded. There were no telltale stains.
‘However, this transition zone provides us with a unique opportunity to study the stress response in plants to an increasingly demanding soil and atmospheric environment. It provides a window, if you like, on evolutionary pressure and mutation-triggering in a world increasingly governed by climate change. Perhaps one of the least studied, and yet most dramatic, transition zones is to be found in the Bahr el Ghazal region of Sudan.’
Gabriel paused for a moment.
‘And it is precisely here that the new subspecies is to be found.’
It was intended to be a dramatic moment in the lecture, but it evinced little response. Gabriel let his focus travel about the room, seemingly undirected, but ultimately looping back to the pretty undergraduate. The temperature in the hall was controlled and she had taken off her jacket, her sweater tight across delicate arms and shoulders. She was wearing a short denim skirt with woollen tights beneath, plunging down her legs into green boots with a fluffy trim. It reeked of sexual adventurism and Gabriel suddenly yearned for the decline of his sexual appetite. He found his libido endlessly distracting, part of the clutter that emanated from sex and marriage. It prevented the development of novel and uncontaminated ideas by disrupting the required internal silence and balance.
The young woman uncrossed her legs, as if in response to his agitation, tantalising him with the shadowed triangle beneath the taut edge of her skirt, before smiling, and shifting in her seat. The drumming of lust was immediate. It was infuriating, the base control that momentary flirtation could exercise over cognitive effort. He felt his eyes drawn, as if pulled by weights, back towards her seat. Already he could feel the prickle of unbidden fantasy in his groin. Pushing her back onto his desk, journals flung open to the
floor as he yanked her tights down to her porcelain feet, the excitement as she opened her thighs for him and he buried himself in her succulent youth. He felt the heat rise in his neck. God, how Jane would mock him now.
He heard himself hesitate in his lines and he turned it into a deliberate pause. When he started again, it was with renewed vigour, addressed loudly in the general direction of the sleeping Symington.
‘Three years ago, the curators of the herbarium in Khartoum sent us samples of a particular Arabidopsis plant, first discovered in the transitional zone near Yei by a Chinese team from the University of Zhejiang. We assumed this plant was a member of the subspecies thaliana, having originated from further north where it has become endemic. As you’ll be aware from your early undergrad studies, thaliana is a particularly useful species in which to examine the role of ferritins in iron homeostasis. It has more recently also been one of the plants relied upon in bioengineering and albedo research. This coincidence is certainly a happy one.’
