The Peppered Moth

by Margaret Drabble

  ‘Well,’ says Faro, over a cup of polystyrene in the canteen. ‘I call that pretty interesting.’ It was disappointing not to be the last of the Yorkshire Neanderthals—the result seemed to have ruled out that tantalizing possibility—but it was still pretty damn interesting to know where one’s greatest of grandmothers had lived. Tom Cooper agreed. As far as he was aware, nobody had ever tried to track his branch of the Coopers back beyond the middle of the nineteenth century. His great-granny had been born in Islington. Before her, all was obscurity.

  Faro drives on towards Queen’s Norton with a folder full of offprints and gene maps. She is looking forward to telling all this to her ailing mother, who may well be appalled by this new evidence. She is feeling more and more cheerful, the further she gets from London. She is resolved, in her heart, that she will break away from Sebastian. All she needs is a little encouragement from her mother.

  On the first evening, which is the eve of the anniversary of Nick’s death, all goes according to plan. Chrissie feels well enough to get up for a couple of hours, and she sits by the autumn fire in the pretty rose-pink country drawing room and listens to Faro’s stories. Faro relates first the story of the swab. Both Don and Chrissie, as archaeologists, find this fascinating. Don expresses satisfaction in finding he has married into so ancient a lineage. The Sinclairs go back a few centuries, but what are centuries to millennia? He congratulates his wife and his stepdaughter upon this momentous discovery. Will they hold land rights in Hammervale, he wants to know, and are there other claimants? Faro discloses that two others in the chapel test had indeed shared the same gene, but Dr Cooper hadn’t told her their names—he said he’d better leave the revelations to Dr Hawthorn.

  Faro shows Don and Chrissie some of Dr Cooper’s charts. She shows them a little sketch of nuclear and mitochondrial DNA in a glob of frog spawn, about to be attacked by a sperm tadpole. She reads, aloud, to her small audience: ‘There is a small possibility—about one in a hundred—that these minute changes that happen to genes with time might be happening under our very eyes in your family. This process is entirely natural and entirely harmless.’

  ‘A chance of one in a hundred doesn’t sound very small to me,’ says Chrissie.

  Don and Faro agree.

  ‘And I suppose “change” is a polite word for “mutation”, is it?’ asks Chrissie.

  ‘It certainly is,’ says Faro. ‘We try to avoid the word “mutation”, in the media, except when we want to frighten people. Mutation’s had a bad press, lately.’

  ‘Ah well, poor old Mother,’ says Chrissie obscurely.

  Don, at this stage, tactfully absents himself, leaving mother and daughter together, and Faro abandons the subject of the static and non-mutant Cudworths, and embarks on her tale of illness and bondage. She tells Chrissie all about Sebastian. Chrissie had guessed that something was amiss, for she can read her daughter’s voice through every distortion of electronic and digital distance, but she is shocked to hear some of the details which Faro now imparts. She takes exactly the line that Faro expects, which is why Faro has been so anxious to come to see her in the first place. Chrissie thinks that it is absolutely ridiculous for Faro to be wasting her young life running around after somebody she doesn’t even much like. Sebastian has no right to expect it, and she should tell him so at once. If Faro won’t, Chrissie will. Chrissie, naturally, doesn’t care tuppence for the misery or impending death of Sebastian Jones. Why should she? She’s never met him and is sure she wouldn’t like him if she did. She is much more concerned about her own daughter. Faro is far too kind-hearted. Look at all those years she spent shacked up with that old bookseller, simply because she felt sort of sorry for him. It is time she found somebody young, healthy and happy, with whom she can perpetuate Bessie and Chrissie’s long-lived unbroken mitochondrial DNA, which is otherwise in danger of dying out for ever. If Faro has a baby, she and Don will give her the Australian baby-food mixer. Faro has no right to let all that evolutionary energy go to waste and seep away into a black hole of nothingness.

  The baby-food mixer, she tells Faro, had nearly got them arrested at Sydney Airport. Apparently it looks just like the new kind of terrorist plastic bomb. Her hand baggage had been taken to pieces by the woman on the security conveyor belt. After causing all that trouble, it needs a baby. It’s up to Faro to have a baby herself, or give it to a friend with a baby.

  Chrissie delivers herself of these views with a somewhat fevered panache. Illness has fortified her and she speaks her mind. Faro laughs, and takes this maternal interference in good part. She agrees that she will have to break off her relationship with Seb. It is, like him, unhealthy. It is doing neither of them any good. He clearly isn’t going to die quickly, in fact he may not be going to die at all. She’s beginning to suspect that the whole charade really is something of a con trick. If Seb was as ill as he says he is, he’d be having chemotherapy, or something like that, wouldn’t he? She treacherously betrays to her mother Seb’s ghoulish necrophiliac Egyptian fantasies, and, treacherously, the two women laugh. The whole thing’s absurd, says Faro. Seb has now reached a phase where he says he wants his organs extracted and stored in canopic jars. He doesn’t want to be embalmed, thank you, but he would like his organs stored.

  ‘What exactly is a canopic jar?’ asks Chrissie. She had known once, but has forgotten. She’d never done the Egyptians, though Joe and Bessie had once given her Margaret Murray’s The Splendour That Was Egypt for a birthday present. She still had it, somewhere.

  ‘It’s a sort of pot. They used to put the lungs, liver and intestines in it, and store them along with the embalmed body. You usually have four, but Seb says he’ll be happy with two. He’s particularly interested in preserving his rotten pancreas. He wants his sweetbreads pickled in formaldehyde for posterity.’

  ‘What on earth does he want you to do with the jars?’

  ‘I think he’d like me to look after them. Put them on the mantelpiece. Talk to them from time to time.’

  Faro seems to find this funny, and so does Chrissie. Faro proceeds, with increasing hilarity, ‘They used to remove the brain too, you know. Through the nose.’

  ‘Of course they did,’ agrees Chrissie, whose own nose is sore with sniffling.

  ‘But they didn’t keep the brain, Seb says. They threw it away. They didn’t seem to have had much regard for the brain. Brains didn’t rate, in Egypt. They didn’t connect brains with thinking. Odd, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t think we’ve any right to call the Egyptians odd,’ says Chrissie. ‘When you think what they did with Thomas Hardy’s heart.’

  ‘What did they do with Thomas Hardy’s heart?’

  ‘They were going to bury his body in Westminster Abbey, but they thought his heart should remain in Dorset. So they hacked it out. It must have been quite an old heart. Thin, he called it. He was well over eighty when he died. Anyway, they put the heart to one side on the table in the kitchen at Max Gate, while they were tidying up the rest of him, and the cat ate it.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Probably not, but that’s how the story goes. Hardy would have liked it. So I don’t see we have much call to sneer at the Egyptians, do you?’

  ‘I wasn’t sneering. I was just laughing,’ says Faro.

  She hesitates, continues. ‘In fact,’ she says, ‘there is something beautiful about the Egyptian cult of death and their belief in immortality. Perhaps. I know we think it’s all a bit unscientific, and not even very spiritual, but maybe we’re wrong. They believed in a real bodily afterlife, in a real place, with food and drink and household furniture and musical instruments. With jewels and jars and bowls of cosmetics. They believed you could live there, in that place.’

  ‘So they believed the body was resurrected?’

  ‘I think they believed that you had to survive death both in the body and the spirit. I mean, they really believed it, they didn’t just think it was a nice idea. And I think that’s why those Roman portraits are so startling
and so beautiful. Because the painters truly believed that they could perpetuate life. They are so young, those young men and women. And they do live. The painters were right. Those people look at us. They tell us that they were beautiful, and that in life they were loved, and that they live on. I hate to admit it, but Seb is right. For those two centuries, belief fused with art. The believing artist created eternal life. Beauty was born of false belief. Eternal life was born of false belief.’

  ‘Who says that?’

  ‘I do,’ says Faro. ‘I do. I’ve just worked it out.’

  ‘It may be so,’ sighs Chrissie. ‘It may be so.’

  She is remembering the last time she spoke to Nick Gaulden, on the telephone, as he lay on his hospital bed: one year and three days ago to this day, she had said to him these words: ‘Undying love.’ Those had been her last words to him: ‘Undying love.’

  The Egyptians dined with the dead, relates Faro, in little pavilions. They sat among the mummies and conversed with them. And now, persists Faro, you can prise a bit of DNA out of a mummy, and find out who its closest relations were. Weird, isn’t it?

  A short silence falls. It is twenty past tne hour, and an angel passes.

  ‘Do you think,’ says Chrissie, ‘that DNA can suffer pain?’

  It is just as well that Sir Donald has left the room, for he is a rational man.

  ‘I think it might,’ says Faro.

  ‘Do you think the moment of mutation causes pain?’ asks Chrissie.

  ‘I think it might,’ says Faro.

  ‘Do you think that pain survives death?’ asks Chrissie.

  ‘I think it might,’ says Faro.

  They are both thinking that it is good that Nick Gaulden was cremated, and that he does not lie rotting in the earth.

  If you were to look in at these two, like a spy in the night, through the uncurtained window, you would not mistake the relationship of these two women. You would see at once that they share the same flesh, and that it does not belong here. What are they doing here, in this well-mannered country drawing room, in a house built of yellow-grey seventeenth-century Cotswold stone? They are traitors and deserters, they are on the run. The walls are papered with a rustic print, and on it hang watercolours and small oils. The furniture is padded and deep and comfortable, and wears pleasantly faded linen loosecovers. A somewhat tarnished silver teapot shines dully on a silver salver by a polished oak dresser. A brown earthenware jug is filled with dahlias from the garden, and displayed on a ledge over the open fireplace is a large cream oval Spode serving plate, decorated with a tender display of dark pink passion flowers. This is a room of deep Middle England, with all its drag and all its allure. In the river at the bottom of the garden trout swim, perpetually breasting the current. If they swim with the stream, they drown and die. That is the way of fish.

  Faro and Chrissie have abandoned the topic of pain and death, and are looking up the name of one of Faro’s motorway weeds in Chrissie’s Concise Illustrated Flora. She has pressed a sample, and brought it with her. It has a thick ribbed stalk, alternate leaves and small platelets of yellow flowers. Faro and Chrissie are turning the coloured pages together. This is what people do of an evening in houses in the English countryside. And so Donald Sinclair discovers them, as he returns with a tray of tisane and decaffeinated coffee. He tells Chrissie that she ought to go to bed soon, and that she ought not to breathe germs all over her daughter. Faro stirs her apple and ginger, and Chrissie swallows a couple of aspirin, and Don goes back to the kitchen to look for the box of chocolates he had hidden from himself earlier in the evening. The telephone rings. Faro has not told Sebastian where she is, so it can’t be him in pursuit of her. It must be for her mother. Maybe it will be Stella, or Moira, or one of those other Gaulden women, wanting an anniversary lament? Faro crosses the room, picks up the cordless receiver and hands it to her mother.

  Chrissie listens intently, gravely, says Yes, says No, says Oh dear. Is it poor Eva Gaulden, bewailing the loss of her son? Faro cannot pick up the content of this interchange, but does not see why she should leave the room. She is sure that Chrissie has no secrets from her. The content is bad, whatever it may be. Chrissie is running her fingers through her thick dyed red hair, and looking miserable. Oh dear, oh dear, oh I am sorry. She waves at Faro to bring her pen and paper, takes down a telephone number, repeats it. It is a Breaseborough number, but Faro doesn’t think it’s Auntie Dora’s. I’ll ring back, says Chrissie.

  Chrissie rings off, and blows her nose. ‘Damn,’ says Chrissie.

  Auntie Dora has had a stroke. At least, her neighbour thought it was a stroke, though it could have been a heart attack. Anyway, she’d been taken into the Wardale Hospital in Breaseborough. The neighbour didn’t know how serious it was. Dora had still been speaking as she was carried into the ambulance. You couldn’t understand what she was saying but she was trying to say something.

  ‘Oh God,’ says Chrissie. ‘I really ought to go. Poor Auntie Dora. Thank God she waited till I got back from Australia.’

  But she concedes that she is not fit to drive, and Faro at once volunteers to go for her.

  Chrissie and Don cannot understand why Faro is quite so keen to be helpful. Faro says that of course she will drive up to Breaseborough in the morning, visit the hospital, visit the neighbour, find out what’s going on, feed the cat, do whatever needs doing. Faro’s a kind girl, they know that, but she seems positively elated by the prospect of driving northward. Her eyes are glistening, her colour is high. Chrissie thinks that maybe she is keen to hit the road in order to keep moving in order to flee Sebastian Jones and Nick Gaulden, but Chrissie is wrong. Faro has, for the moment, forgotten all about her father and Sebastian. She is full of jubilation. Dora’s illness is, for her, a bizarre stroke of luck.

  Phone calls are made, numbers exchanged, and Chrissie manages to find her Yale key to Auntie Dora’s house, entrusted to her last Christmas for exactly such an emergency. And in the morning Faro holds her breath while she cautiously kisses her red-eyed red-nosed mother, and is escorted to her Toyota by her stepfather. This is really very good of you, Faro,’ he says, in his precise and gentlemanly Scottish way.

  Bad weather and high winds have been forecast, but a luminous autumnal morning so far defies these prophecies. Breaseborough is almost due north as the crow flies, but the road system urges her towards Birmingham. She drives crosscountry, along green roads, towards the Ml. The wayside trees are red with a scattered mist of blood drops of scarlet berries, and silvery-grey old man’s beard clambers through the hedgerows. She passes a ploughed field on fire with stripes of dazzling tawny-russet and orange stubble. It is the time of bonfires, and blue smoke rises from cottage gardens. When she reaches Chipping St Lawrence, Faro pulls into the verge, by the church, and to the sound of church bells reaches for her mobile. She hadn’t wanted to wake Steve Nieman too early at a weekend, but he’ll surely be awake by ten thirty?

  He is awake. He is more than pleased to hear her. They will meet.

  As she drives onwards, she scrabbles in her glove pocket for a tape, and hits on the Northam Choral Society’s recording of The Messiah, directed by Sir Malcolm Sargent, with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Grandpa Barron had given it to her for Christmas, many years ago. It was his favourite, he had said. It seems appropriate for a northern journey. She starts to play it, but it makes her cry so much that she has to eject it, and turn to the tones of Joan Armatrading.

  The Wardale Hospital isn’t as depressing as it was when it was opened in 1906, or in the 1920s when it was closed for an outbreak of smallpox. The forbidding core of the old building remains, with its leaded pipes bearing the Wardale crest, and its tall despairing windows, but most of it is new, built in a cheerful red brick, with a glass and steel circular watchtower like the lookout-post on a liner. Even the old building is freshly painted. The staff are friendly. They conduct Faro to Auntie Dora’s ward, which isn’t an intensive-care ward, so that’s reassuring. And Dora, alt
hough she looks pretty decrepit, is conscious, and immediately recognizes her great-niece. Faro, boldly, kisses her. Dora hates being kissed, and always recoils from any adult bodily contact, but that’s her problem, and now she’s stuck in bed she can’t protest very vigorously. Faro pulls up a chair, sits down and tries to ask Dora how she’s feeling. Dora’s speech has been affected, but not disastrously. One can still make out some sense. Faro explains that Chrissie is too ill to make the journey but will come when she’s better, and Dora seems to understand this.

  Faro stays for nearly an hour, during which she promises to go round to Dora’s house in Swinton Road and make sure the cat is OK and pick up a dressing-gown and a few toiletries. Dora seems very set on being reunited with her own hairbrush, which must be a good sign. On the other hand she is not all that pleased to find Faro already has a key to her home. This makes her suspicious. Is Faro going to steal her treasures? The paranoia of helplessness is setting in fast. Faro speaks to some kind of doctor, but he seems to be an ill-informed parttime Sunday doctor, not Auntie Dora’s regular GP, and she’s not sure if she trusts him. He tells her Dora may well make a good recovery. Who knows? She’s old, and overweight, and has a weak heart, but the stroke hasn’t totally disabled her. They may get her back on her feet again.

  Faro doubts this. Auntie Dora had looked ghastly. It’s time for the old people’s nursing home. Faro collects a list of them from the woman at the front desk, before driving off to Swinton Road.

  She has arranged to meet Steve later, in Northam.

  It is eerie, letting herself into Dora Bawtry’s little property. Faro feels like an intruder. But the marmalade cat Minton greets her, and Faro strokes him. Somebody has already been in to feed him. His bowl is overflowing. It also looks as though it hasn’t been washed in weeks. Faro throws away the old cat food, washes the dish, wipes it with a limp, threadbare and dirty tea-towel, and scatters a few dry pellets of Go-Cat into it. Minton politely crunches one or two morsels, but he is not very interested.