The Science of Appearances

by Jacinta Halloran

  ‘I keep trying to remember what it was like to be a kid, playing in the mud and the sand. Finding a sheep’s skull in a paddock; those bleached bones, light as air. Pinecones, stones: all those things you picked up, dusted off and held.’

  ‘Yes.’ Mary strokes the bird’s neck. Around the moonlit room blocks of stone and wood stand draped in white, sleeping the sleep of the dead, but soon to be brought to life.

  ‘You have to reach back,’ Joyce says quietly. ‘That takes some courage.’

  ~

  Kingsley is waiting under a lamppost, his wild hair nebulous in the light. He raises his hand as Dom approaches. ‘There you are,’ Kingsley says, sounding relieved. ‘You’ve put on a tie, I see.’ He nods approvingly.

  Two months since Kingsley first mentioned a meeting, and now here he is, all spruced up at Kingsley’s side, a tentatively interested party.

  As they walk, Kingsley tells him about the Society. ‘We’re a diverse group. Scientists, doctors, anatomists, educators. Some with a keen interest in reproductive control — women, mainly, on that front. All coming together in a common goal.’

  ‘And what’s that?’ Dom asks.

  Kingsley nods approvingly. ‘What’s our goal? Yes, good question.’ He pauses. ‘We’ve long moved past the broad-brush approach of race and class. And we in genetics are just beginning to understand the complexity of the human genome — all the recessive traits we carry, the effects of mutations on genetic expression. But you know all this, Quinn.’ Kingsley falls silent. Their footsteps ring out on the footpath, and Kingsley picks up his pace. ‘We can easily eliminate dominant disease traits. All those affected can abstain from breeding.’

  ‘I’m not sure I understand,’ Dominic says. ‘Your goal is to prevent people with genetic diseases from having children?’

  The ruins of Wilson Hall appear through the shadows: the bluestone foundations still in place, and within their stone circle a pile of rubble rising up like a giant funeral pyre. ‘From the fire,’ Kingsley mutters, ‘we are reborn.’ They skirt the ruins and find the path again. ‘We plant breeders cross for disease resistance, don’t we?’ Kingsley asks. ‘Animal breeders, too?’

  ‘Yes, but —’

  ‘But humans are different?’

  Dominic nods.

  ‘Ah, Quinn,’ Kingsley says softly, ‘don’t default to reflex thinking.’ They stop in front of the School of Anatomy. ‘You have a fine brain. Come inside and see what you can learn.’

  The meeting room is behind the anatomy museum, Kingsley explains. ‘Are you squeamish?’ he asks.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Then you’ll enjoy this.’

  Dom follows Kingsley down a portrait-lined corridor and through a pair of swinging doors. The high-ceilinged room before them is crowded with objects that give off a dull gleam, as if lit faintly from within. Kingsley switches on the lights and Dom sees, encased in thick glass, body parts of every description: meaty cross-sections of thigh and heart, pale tendrils that float like long hair on water (he supposes these are nerves), a severed hand with its skin pared away. Three skeletons hang side by side, the middle one over seven feet tall. ‘What a specimen!’ Kingsley says admiringly behind him. ‘Come on, this way.’

  The meeting room is small and overheated. The attendees — ten men and two women — are all white-haired, older even than Kingsley. One by one they turn to look at Dom, smiling benignly in his direction, as if something about him has triggered a pleasant recollection: their Edwardian youth, perhaps; that golden age. He hangs back while Kingsley shakes hands. ‘This is Dominic Quinn, one of my genetics students,’ he hears Kingsley say. He reluctantly comes forward. ‘Professor Keith,’ Kingsley says in his ear. ‘Our chairman.’

  The professor’s a small man. His handshake is brief, his hand the size of a child’s but, as if by way of compensation, his head is huge. His eyes, magnified through his spectacles, look out at Dominic from beneath the shelf of his prominent forehead.

  ‘Welcome to our little society, Mr Quinn,’ says the professor. ‘Most interested to hear your ideas.’

  Dom glances at Kingsley. What ideas, exactly, might they be?

  The professor takes his seat at the head of the table, and the others hurriedly sit down. Apologies are being made — ‘Doctor Wallace regrets that his workload prevents him attending,’ says the man on the professor’s left — when a young man in a bowtie bursts through the door. Dom recognises him as the debater he met on that first day of classes, the bloke with the double-barrelled name. Many of the committee exchange disapproving looks across the table, and rustle their meeting papers in what Dom reads as a genteel protest against lateness. ‘Mr Reed-Hamilton,’ the professor says drily. ‘We are honoured.’

  ‘My apologies, Professor.’ Reed-Hamilton practically bows. He pulls out a vacant chair, and it scrapes against the floor. The white-haired man beside him winces. ‘I was unavoidably detained.’

  The meeting resumes. The main business, it seems, is the ongoing struggle to set up a birth-control clinic. ‘Mrs Patterson, where are we up to with our submission to the Richmond council?’ asks the professor.

  ‘I have a draft copy here.’ Mrs Patterson, a short, round woman in a tightly buttoned tweed jacket, holds up a sheaf of pages. ‘If people would care to read it?’

  ‘You don’t have spares?’ the professor asks. His expression is that of polite surprise, a cool, mild consternation. It’s clear he thinks the woman a fool. ‘Very well, Mrs Patterson. Pass it around.’

  While they wait for the letter to reach them, Kingsley fills Dominic in. ‘This has been going on for years. You wouldn’t believe the opposition out there. Other places in the world can see the sense in population control, but our government is convinced we still need to increase ours.’

  Dominic understands. Populate or perish: he’s heard the slogan many times.

  The man on Kingsley’s right has been listening, and now he joins in. ‘Of course population increase could be advantageous, if the right people were to reproduce.’ Kingsley nods in agreement.

  ‘The right people?’ Dom asks.

  ‘Those with good genes,’ the interlocutor replies, removing his horn-rimmed glasses and rubbing the bridge of his nose. ‘Fit, healthy, hardworking, intelligent people, free of inherited disease, feeble-mindedness and criminal inclination. Our only hope of betterment as a species is to decrease the defective gene pool while increasing the superior one.’

  Dominic frowns. ‘I don’t understand how this can be done. I mean, I understand how it’s done in plants, but you can’t line people up in a glasshouse.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Kingsley says lightly. ‘We don’t mean mandatory sterilisation. That’s well and truly off the agenda here. Unlike the United States, of course.’ He taps Dominic briskly on the knee. ‘We mean education, Quinn, that marvellous endeavour. We educate those with defective genes about the implications of breeding, the likelihood of passing on their disease to their children. Mendelian laws of inheritance, statistical data collected from extensive family analyses. And we counsel them appropriately, get the doctors and nurses on board to talk them through it.’

  The other man leans forward and speaks again. ‘So, a clinic is needed — a place where people can get sound scientific advice.’

  Dominic nods. ‘And increasing the pool of good genes?’ The word superior still rankles. He remembers Hanna’s disapproval when last they discussed his experiments. The master race, she’d said. The rattling of her cup against its saucer had set his teeth on edge.

  ‘Harder to achieve,’ the interlocutor says. His voice is reedy, almost feeble, but he has the air about him of one who’s used to being heard. ‘We have to appeal to the altruism of those who are genetically endowed. One child for each parent and one or two for the gene pool.’ He looks Dom over, as if assessing his genetic potential. ‘You’re not convinced,
I see.’

  Dom shifts in his seat. ‘I’ll have to think about it.’

  After the question of the letter is settled, a bald bloke describes his recent visit to the Eugenics Society office in London. ‘Our colleagues in Eccleston Square sympathise with our difficulties,’ the speaker says. ‘They are dealing with the same resistance there, and from very close quarters.’ He leans forward. ‘There are moves afoot at the Galton to change the name of the Annals of Eugenics to the Annals of Human Genetics.’

  ‘Penrose is behind this, I presume?’ someone asks.

  The bald bloke nods emphatically. ‘The main instigator.’

  ‘Francis Galton would turn in his grave,’ says someone else.

  ‘On a more positive note,’ the bald man continues, ‘they were most impressed with our newsletters. I presented them with the complete set in a decorative leather binder, as we discussed. Keep up the good work is the message from our parent organisation. Don’t be deterred.’

  ‘We are most indebted, Dr Southey,’ the professor says. ‘I trust you will also provide us with a written report?’ Southey nods. The professor surveys the room, and the place falls silent. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, it’s heartening to know that our British colleagues are behind us. They appreciate our efforts, remote and small a group as we are.’ He pauses. ‘Before I bring the meeting to an end, may I say how pleased I am to see young people at our table, especially those’ — his eyes rest on Dominic — ‘with an up-to-date knowledge of genetics. As our knowledge of this new science grows, so too will the rationale for the reform eugenics we espouse.’

  ‘What was all that about Galton and Penrose?’ Dom asks Kingsley at the end of the meeting.

  ‘You haven’t heard of Francis Galton?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Ah, but you have.’ Kingsley smiles. ‘That first lesson in the glasshouse. You were with your friend, the dizygotic twin.’

  ‘Yes,’ he says, uncomfortable. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Galton was a cousin of Charles Darwin,’ Kingsley goes on, ‘and an original thinker in his own right. He coined the term eugenics, and set up the Galton Laboratory of National Eugenics, which still runs to this day on the funds from his bequest. Lionel Penrose, the current head of the Galton Lab, is trying to distance the institution from its past.’ He pauses. ‘It’s too reactionary a stance. Eugenics and genetic research can co-exist harmoniously. Professor Keith is right. As our genetic knowledge increases, so too will our ability to change the course of human progress.’ His eyes take on that faraway look. ‘Exciting times, Quinn. Exciting times.’

  As he reaches the tram stop, Dom sees Reed-Hamilton waiting on the other side. He lifts his hand in greeting, and Reed-Hamilton picks up his briefcase and crosses the tracks. ‘What did you make of that?’ he asks.

  ‘I’m not sure.’ Dom doesn’t want an argument, intellectual or otherwise; not at this hour of night, and certainly not with a bloke who practically does it for a living.

  Reed-Hamilton takes a step closer. ‘You’re a geneticist?’

  ‘Not really. Still studying.’

  ‘But the genetics thing’s the reason you were there?’

  Dom nods dumbly. ‘What about you?’ he asks.

  ‘Testing the waters. You know, considering politics as a career, so I’m joining as many committees as I can. Some of those fogeys there tonight are very well-connected.’ Reed-Hamilton yawns long and loudly. ‘Boring as batshit, though. I might not be able to stick it out for much longer.’ He puts his hand on Dom’s shoulder. ‘Of course, that’s entirely between you and me. No point in pissing anyone off.’ He grins. ‘Not yet.’

  What did he make of that collection of old men and women, the anxious, almost secretive air that hung about the room? He looks around the tram and sees, in each of his fellow passengers, the potential for betterment. He thinks of Nuala Egan, and the winning lottery ticket she held up to him on that extraordinary Monday, her hand shaking with the sheer improbability of it all. Her money got him here. Is there some sort of message in that?

  Pollination requires a good donor plant. He looks for an ear with yellow extruding anthers — that is, already at anthesis — in the upper florets, for this, he knows, indicates good donor anthers lower in the ear. He plucks the intact anthers and rests them on the back of his hand. He waits for just a few seconds, watching as the anthers, brought quickly to maturity by the warmth of his skin, grow fat and white and motile until — pop! — they burst open, extruding a white powdery trail of pollen onto his hand. The emasculated plant, prepared three days ago, waits un-bagged beside him. With the forceps he takes each anther, one at a time, from his hand and taps them against an open floret of the female plant. The pollen swirls like fairy dust and drops to the stigma of each waiting floret. There, it’s finished. The breeder’s job is done; his God-like, interfering job. The rest is Nature’s work.

  He looks at his watch and realises he’s late to meet Hanna. He packs up and hurtles across campus and down Grattan to the cinema. She’s waiting outside. ‘I thought you’d forgotten,’ she says.

  ‘Got caught up with work,’ he answers between breaths. ‘The last pollination took ages. Has it started?’

  ‘Fifteen minutes ago.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Will we go somewhere else instead?’

  In the Blue Grotto, they drink red wine from teacups under candlelight. The artsy crew’s there, already loud and argumentative with booze. Hanna waves to one of them, a pretty girl rather more neatly dressed than her wild and shabby companions. ‘Faye Zeigler,’ Hanna whispers to Dominic. ‘Went to my school. She’s dabbling with subversion. It won’t last long.’

  A gangling fop in a fedora and a black cape stands on a chair and starts to recite. He can barely be heard over the laughter and jeers. Hanna leans forward and beckons Dom to do the same. ‘Harry Sandford,’ she says into his ear. ‘He came into one of our lectures at the start of the year to campaign for SRC president. At least, that’s what he said he was doing. His offsider plugged a toaster into the wall and, while Sandford rambled on about his policies — all completely ridiculous, of course — the other one made toast. It all ended in a huge food fight between them. Crumbs everywhere. When the lecturer eventually turned up, he made Sandford and his friend come back with a broom and mop.’

  Dom is not amused. ‘And so he should have.’

  Hanna purses her lips in comic disapproval, mocking him. ‘For you it’s all about the work. I happen to think that our time at university’s about other things, too. Creativity, fun, experimentation, to name a few.’

  ‘I’m experimenting all the time,’ he quips, ‘in the glasshouse.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘I have fun with you,’ he says. Another cheer goes up from the artsy crowd, and Sandford takes a sweeping bow. ‘We go to the pictures,’ he adds limply, when the noise has died down.

  She smiles, just a little. ‘When you’re on time.’

  Is she beginning to find him dull? He searches in his satchel and pulls out the leaflet Kingsley gave him that afternoon, for a lecture by Professor Keith. ‘We’ve booked the Ormond College dining hall,’ Kingsley said. ‘Please spread the word. He’s a most persuasive speaker. He deserves a good audience.’ Dom hands it across the table. He wants Hanna to see that he’s capable of surprises, intellectual bloody brilliance, maybe. His style is not poetry spouted from a tabletop — artsy-fartsy child’s play — but meaty, radical ideas.

  He watches her face as she reads and his heart sinks low. ‘What is it?’ he asks.

  She puts the leaflet on the table. ‘Why did you show me this? Don’t you remember what I said the last time we discussed this kind of thing?’

  He’s only glanced at the leaflet. Now he picks it up and reads again. The Relative Influence of Heredity and Environment: a lecture to be given by Professor Richard Keith. ‘Heredity an
d environment,’ he says. ‘What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘Dom, have a look at the name of the organisation.’ She tears the paper from his grasp, pointing to the small text at the bottom. ‘The Eugenics Society of Victoria. What are you thinking? How could you possibly be interested? This is fascism in our midst.’ She rips the leaflet in two.

  He folds his arms, irritated by her theatricality. ‘Not fascism, Hanna,’ he says patiently. ‘Socialism. A society in which everyone has equal opportunity, equal wealth and equal access to good genes.’

  ‘Fascism, socialism: call it what you will. It’s the political elite dictating to others.’ Her voice is strained to breaking. She jerks her hand into the air and calls for the bill. ‘Equal access to good genes,’ she scoffs. ‘It sounds like people queuing for bread.’

  His temper flares. ‘What’s wrong with wanting to help people become healthier and more intelligent?’

  ‘And how’s it to be done?’ she bites back, almost savagely. ‘Do we inseminate beautiful women with the sperm of Nobel Prize winners? Or Olympic athletes, perhaps? Inseminate them like cows on a farm? Is that how we create your super race?’

  The spite in her voice. She’s trying to tear down the things he believes in — the potential for betterment through deductive reasoning, experimentation, discovery, and sheer bloody hard work. He’ll be damned if he’s going to back down. He knows a thing or two. ‘That’s ridiculous,’ he says calmly. ‘I’m talking about eradication of inherited disease, not the quest for some perfect phenotype.’

  ‘And how exactly do you go about eradicating disease? Come on,’ she taunts, ‘tell me.’

  ‘You find the families who carry it and educate them about transmission. Birth control will be key, of course.’ He thinks of tweedy Mrs Patterson’s letter, passed around the meeting room. ‘There’ll have to be easy access to birth control.’

  ‘And what if they don’t listen to you, these poor, unenlightened people? What if they decide to go ahead and have children anyway?’