by Ann Harries
‘Good God, woman!’ I exploded, my meekness evaporating in a trice. ‘Have I not done enough for you? You are asking me to commit a crime not only against the State but against my host! I can scarcely believe what I am hearing!’
Miss Schreiner was unmoved by my outburst. ‘I can assure you you would be doing your host the greatest favour by revealing the contents of the telegrams. He would have liked nothing more than to drag the Colonial Secretary down into the mire with which he was now so thoroughly coated!’
‘So why didn’t he release the telegrams at the time?’ I enquired irritably.
‘There is no simple answer to that question,’ replied Miss Schreiner. ‘But judging by the outcome of the Inquiry, I would guess that Chamberlain had promised the survival of Ozymandias’ beloved Chartered Company and railway plans in return for the withholding of the telegrams. By rights the Charter should have been withdrawn and Ozymandias should have found himself in gaol.’
I tried to be patient. ‘But surely all this is buried in the past now? The Inquiry was heard over two years ago –what benefit is there in producing telegrams that everyone’s forgotten about? Who would be interested?’
I realised as I spoke that I was allowing myself to be ensnared in her grotesque plans simply by discussing them. Perhaps something in me wanted to find out just how far she was prepared to go, and what her crazed expectations were of this unlikely burglar.
‘Don’t you understand? I’ve failed with the High Commissioner, so now I must go a step higher. If I can prove to the British public that their wonderful Brummagem Joe, Pushful Joe, was lying to save his career, their sympathies will shift to the Boer cause – where there is considerable sympathy already! If the telegrams are published, Chamberlain will have to resign! The British government won’t be able to survive his fall, and in the confusion war will become impossible!’ Her eyes blazed with furious triumph, but I could hear that her breathing had become a battle which she could not win.
‘Miss Schreiner, calm yourself. You will have another attack. Let us drop this fruitless subject. I cannot hunt for missing telegrams.’ I kept my speech plain, in the vain hope that she would listen to me.
Once again she seized my arm. I could feel her fingertips burn into my flesh and was certain there would be bruise marks by evening. Her face had assumed a new seriousness.
‘Professor Wills, people think this war is a straightforward conflict between the British and the Boers. Let me tell you, something far larger is at stake. Six million people stand to lose their freedom, their land, their social organisation, for the greater advantage of gold-greedy ghouls! The indigenous peoples of this country will be cast into the position of near-slaves; they will be utterly deprived of the franchise; and the ghouls, whether English or Afrikaner, will be assured of an endless source of cheap labour which they need if their deep-cast mines are to be profitable. Though the white men may do battle, it is the black men, women and children who will be vanquished, whoever wins the war! And then, God help us all, such a gulf will open between the races, and this country will be cursed by every nation that believes in justice to all men. Believe me, Professor, the catastrophe will endure from one generation to the next – but we can prevent it yet!’
If Miss Schreiner expected this argument to cause me to change my mind, she was indeed mistaken. ‘I’m afraid I am not much interested in the fate of the natives of this land – they mean nothing to me,’ I said coldly. ‘They are an alien race. And now I must return to attend to my birds. That is my responsibility.’
At this Miss Schreiner fell upon her knees and flung her arms about my legs. I was utterly trapped as she spoke in a low, sobbing voice, quite unlike anything I had yet heard from her.
‘Professor Wills, I will do anything to help you in return for the telegrams. You will find them somewhere in his bedroom, where he keeps everything of any value to him. I have considerable influence in Great Britain: there must be some way I can be of assistance to you in return.’
For a few moments I considered her wild offer. Then I disentangled my legs and stepped backwards.
‘In fact, there is something you could do for me.’
She stared up at me from her kneeling position, her grief-stained face suddenly transformed by joy.
‘Professor, I will do anything! Anything!’
And so did we square each other that fateful afternoon.
Back at the aviaries, Salisbury and Chamberlain were playing their games in the gravel, and moving their mysterious pebbles into new positions. As usual they leapt up and began whistling and chirruping in an attempt to convince me of their dedication to the task for which they were being generously paid.
I looked down at the weaving patterns in the gravel, and in an inspired flash I guessed their meaning.
‘Ah-toh-mah-beel?’ I pointed at the motor-car pebbles and road-grooves.
‘Beep-beep!’ giggled Chamberlain. ‘Vroom-vroom!’ cried Salisbury. I heard myself chuckle rustily. Was I growing fond of them? Could it be true that I was a dear, good Englishman who loved children and birds? A sinew in my heart gave a pleasant flicker.
Six corpses were laid out by the cages, two of them nightingales. The remaining birds drooped. All except, of course, the European starlings, who seemed relaxed and confident, singing with gusto and imitating the sounds they heard around them – including the ring of the Colossus’ telephone. The boys continued to whistle to the non-singers. I could see they thought it was pointless.
My fob-watch told me it was already four o’clock. My stomach had not reminded me about lunch – perhaps because the koeksuster still sat undigested upon my sensitive duodenal lining. In fact, I felt an overwhelming desire to sleep after my crowded day, and soon made my way to the front steps of the Great Granary, deliberately avoiding the back verandah where I saw the Kiplings’ family nursemaid playing with the two children who had not gone on the seaside trip.
A profound and dreamless sleep was granted to me almost as soon as I entered my bedroom.
Oxford 1898
With the delicate precision that only Japan can offer, Mitsubishi removed the cochleas from the ears of newborn nightingales in 1895. He performed the same operation on five-week-old and four-month-old birds. Half had been exposed to their parents’ song: a control group had not. The deafened nightingales were minutely observed, and their songs – mere sketches for songs – were notated by a professional musician who could be trusted not to gossip. After three years the all-important questions could be answered: to what extent would the crucial length of time for which they had been allowed to hear normally influence their song pattern? Would all song patterns of birds deafened at birth be exactly the same? How would their subsongs differ from those who had heard only cymbals clashing during their lifetimes?
The answers to these questions are to be found in my book: On the Song of the Nightingale. The real song, utterly unaffected by family, is revealed in this book, which, in my opinion, has the poetry of truth, if not rhyme, about it.
The publication of the book was the result of twenty years of investigation. My chief experiments could be performed only during the months of April and May, the short-lived period of nightingale song in England, though the subsequent behaviour of the deafened birds was closely observed throughout their lives. They could not, of course, be released into the wild.
I do not know how Desmond Philips discovered the existence of Mitsubishi’s birds. The Anti-Vivisectionist League, of which I learnt he was a leading member, had kept up their resistance to the physiology laboratories, distributing pamphlets and posters in which my name continued to be unflatteringly mentioned. Although the removal of the nightingale cochleas was as nothing compared with the scale upon which vivisection was being practised on the Continent, I recognised that deliberate sensory deprivation as an experimental technique would be regarded by these fanatics as the worst form of torture, such as practised by notorious authoritarian regimes across the world. Accordingly th
e deafened birds were housed in a room in the laboratories to which I alone had the key: I can only assume that the laboratory caretaker with his master key was bribed.
My book was well received by the scientific community, elevating me to the world’s foremost expert on nightingale song. Letters of commendation poured into my college, where my position of Fellow was elevated to Professor: I received requests to deliver speeches at conferences on the Continent, and in America and Japan. I could ask for no higher accolades.
It is my practice in Oxford to start my day at the full-length Queen Anne windows of my study, once Saunders has drawn the curtains. From this vantage point I can gaze down into the geometrically arranged Fellows’ Garden which at once imposes a pleasing sense of order upon the thought patterns of my brain, all too often recovering from nightmares of the most vicious nature. I stare down into the Jacobean symmetries, the miniature topiaries, the white blooms (no other colour is admitted). In the very centre of the garden stands an ancient monkey-puzzle tree, the branches of which are arranged with mathematical precision. I sip my cup of China tea, and begin to feel in control. I can hear Saunders preparing my ablutions: the pleasant smell of soap and steam wafts past.
A few weeks after the publication of my book I awoke to find Saunders in an uncharacteristically agitated state of mind. To my astonishment he tried to divert me from my ritual, and suggested, in a shaking voice, that he bring me my cup of tea in bed that morning. Noticing his deathly pallor and haggard eyes I enquired after his well-being, to which he replied that it was not his well-being with which he was concerned, but my own. This response made me leap out of bed to prove to him that, though I might complain to him every day about the state of my bowels, the aches in my head, the pains in my chest and so on, the sum of health is larger than its parts, and I was very well, thank you. Poor Saunders, not given to improvisation, had tried to prevent me from striding across to the study windows by the simple expedient of not opening the curtains. The unaccustomed darkness of my study at once alerted me to the fact that something unusual had happened, and with a violent gesture I flung back my damask hangings and gazed truculently into the Fellows’ Garden.
The monkey-puzzle tree is an intellectual challenge. Its branches fork out from its trunk much like the passages of a maze: the philosopher may run his eye over its angular and unexpected progressions, and feel some answering call in his own thought processes. The branches are covered in the sharpest of needles, designed, according to the inhabitants of its native Chile, to prevent monkeys from reaching the tasty nuts at the branch tips (a further puzzle as there are no monkeys in the tree’s native forests).
On this morning a circle of gardeners, scouts and one or two dons, including the Master of the college, were gazing up into the maze of branches, shaking their heads, even scratching their heads. Some underling hastened through the topiary, a full-length ladder upon his shoulder.
Whoever had scaled the tree that night had been undeterred by needles.
The effigy which had been suspended from the highest branch bore a representation of my own facial features, though the body bulged grossly, unlike my own trim lines. Twisted beneath the instantly identifiable grey beard was an exaggerated hangman’s knot: a gigantic tongue, livid purple, had been made to protrude from my pink lips.
‘I must tell you, sir,’ murmured Saunders, passing me my cup of tea with quivering fingers, ‘they have released all your birds. They have destroyed your papers, sir, in a bonfire in the cages. It is a miracle that the laboratory did not burn down.’
‘Saunders,’ I enquired, ‘why does my father hang from the tree?’
Saunders placed his hand under my elbow and steered me away from the window. I allowed him to lead me into the adjoining room which looked out over a cobbled street.
‘Drink this, sir,’ he urged. I sipped obediently, my olfactory nerves recognising good malt whisky in the fumes.
‘He hangs, he hangs,’ I said, wondering if I was about to break out into song. ‘Elspeth thinks I kept to my room, but I can climb out of mouseholes. He hangs among the moths. His tongue is black. Yet he grins, does he not?’
‘That was a long time ago, sir,’ replied poor Saunders. ‘It does not do to dwell upon the past.’
‘He hangs because I have left half-winged messages in his safe place.’ It was a relief for me to explain to Saunders. For the first time in all the years I had known him I gazed directly into his eyes, and held my gaze.
His rheumy old eyes filled with tears. ‘They are wicked men!’ he exclaimed. ‘And women. They will be arrested and sent to prison. All your files. Quite, quite destroyed.’ He blew his nose loudly into a very large handkerchief.
A knock sounded on the door. While Saunders scurried to attend to this summons, I sipped thoughtfully at my tea. With each swallow I felt myself change shape, grow smaller, until, with the last swallow, I observed myself disappear altogether.
‘So that is why we drink tea!’ I exclaimed as I faded from view just as Saunders rushed into the room in the company of the distraught college Master.
Great Granary 1899
He was slumped in a large wicker chair, his long legs crossed, a glass of something dark and frothy in one hand, a Turkish cigarette in the other. His massive head sagged. Beside him stood a trolley of crystal decanters and glasses. The long verandah had been cleared of children and nursemaids, though I saw Huxley vanish through a far door as I approached.
Yes, I suppose there is a look of Napoleon, even Caesar, in that florid face. The big nose, hooked and slightly askew. The meaty cheeks. The working mouth. The glaring eyes. Which were turned upon the darkening mountain-face but which I knew had registered my arrival by their slight tremor.
‘Pull up a chair, Wills.’ His falsetto voice soared. ‘No, not that way – look what you’re missing, man. And pour yourself a drink. I’ve got something to say to you.’
Though I did not normally drink alcohol at that early hour, I felt that a strong whisky would give me the courage I would probably need during the exchanges to come. I turned a wicker chair to face the mountain so that we sat side by side, sipping our drinks. I could not bring myself to lift my eyes, and focused instead on the formal Dutch garden immediately before me. A cicada began to shrill from under one of the great wooden chests behind us.
‘Great things are done when men and mountains meet, Which are not – which are not what, Wills?’
‘Which are not done by jostling in the street.’ I swallowed the entire contents of my glass and wished I had poured more into it.
‘I’ve never heard a truer word. I’m not what you call a practising Christian, Wills, but the church I’d like to meet is up there, made of cliffs and ravines and waterfalls and trees. I have some of my best Thoughts in some mountain kloof, when I’m alone with the Alone.’ (He had forgotten that I’d already heard all this mystical claptrap.) After a melancholy pause: ‘What time is it, Wills?’
I informed him that it was a quarter past six.
‘You’ll have noticed that the sun has already set on this side of the mountain. People told me I was crazy to build my house in the mountain’s shadow, but I like the shade, Wills, I like the shade.’ He shifted his great mass in the chair. ‘If we were in Cape Town itself we’d be sitting in bright sunlight, watching the sun still quite high above the ocean’s horizon. Magnificent sunsets you get there. Pinks, oranges. All reflected in the sea. Pity you haven’t got time to see them.’
‘This is indeed a land of extraordinary beauty,’ I murmured.
‘And all the more beautiful for being British, Wills. And the whole of Southern Africa could be beautified in the same way: a united South Africa under the Crown, through peace and gold. Now I fear it will be federation through blood and gold.’
I remembered Milner’s words and said: ‘Once you have Africa, what of other continents?’
He was ready enough to reply, though his voice slurred a little. ‘I would recover America if I could – just
think, if we had retained America there would be millions more English living. Yes, I would procure the Holy Land – China – Japan …’ He threw out his arms at the darkening sky. ‘Why, man, I would annex the planets if I could!’
He flung his head backwards so that it rested on the upper rim of the chair, and fell silent. A cricket in the garden struck up a dissonant counterpoint with the cicada. I myself had no inclination to speak. Minutes must have passed. When he spoke again his voice was calm.
‘See that pine up there, Wills? The solitary one. Apart from all the others.’
A very fine, exceptionally tall specimen of Corsican Pine stood alone behind the Dutch-styled gardens, separated from the forest that darkened the lower slopes. ‘I wonder how that happened,’ I mused politely. ‘Was it a gardener’s decision, or a careless act of nature?’
He ignored this contribution and drew on his foul-smelling cigarette. ‘A few years back a Dutch Member of Parliament and I were sitting on that old Chesterfield back there, admiring the view. In those days I had many Dutch friends, strange as it might seem now.’ His voice quavered in the upper registers, but a gulp at his glass steadied him. ‘Suddenly the Dutchman turned to me and said, “Do you know, Meneer, who that tree reminds me of?” I replied in the negative. He laughed and said, “Meneer, it reminds me of you!” It was my turn to laugh. “I don’t follow. Why do you compare me to a tree?” He then said: “Because it stands out by itself; and do you not stand out by yourself in comparison with other men?’”
Privately, I wondered what the Dutchman wanted from my host – free scab disinfectant for his constituents’ sheep, or something like – but I allowed my vocal cords to release a non-committal grunt which could have been interpreted as admiring agreement. However, he was not interested in my response and continued with his somewhat immodest ruminations.
