Pantheon

by Sam Bourne

  London

  He remembered this feeling sharply. The same hot blend of nerves and pleasure, of fear and excitement. The last time he had experienced it had been in his junior year at St Albans. A few of the seniors had got hold of some ‘erotic’ pictures, a set of photographs rumoured to be utterly depraved. Everyone in his class was desperate to see them and it fell to young Taylor Hastings to get his hands on them.

  He had done it through a series of negotiations, trades and promises — but he had done it. As he left the seniors’ dorm that night, his satchel containing the all-important ‘documentation’ slung over his shoulder, he had felt his face grow hot. He was aroused in anticipation of seeing those pictures, most certainly — indeed, he made a stop at the squash court bathrooms in order to have his own, personal private viewing — but he was also engorged with the thrill of the forbidden. His bag contained a set of photographs of women in a variety of poses, some acrobatic, others shocking — including one of a bare backside greeted by the smack of a cane — but all in violation of at least a half-dozen school rules and perhaps a couple of state obscenity laws into the bargain. What’s more, he had, through a rather smart sleight of hand, taken more pictures than the seniors had agreed to. The result was the pleasure of a deception, the kick of committing a small, but elegant crime — and that, he understood at that moment, was a sexual pleasure too.

  He felt it now as he walked across Grosvenor Square, his bag once again weighty with illicit cargo. He had staged this heist with much greater sophistication than his little trick at the expense of the St Albans senior year. He had had to use his hands — switching papers from one pile to another with the panache of a magician producing the ace of spades from a handkerchief — but also his wits.

  He had created a distraction, summoning his colleagues to huddle over an intriguing cipher that had just come in, asking them to pool their collective knowledge to work out what it could possibly mean. And, while they were puzzling over it, Cellucci scratching his ear with the eraser-end of his pencil, Taylor had salted away carbon copies of the key papers right there and then, inches away from their very eyes.

  That, he complimented himself now, was the genius of it. At the moment he had chosen to strike, he had not ushered the dullards of the cipher room out and away. No, no, no. Nor had he done anything so cheap or pedestrian as wait for them to leave. On the contrary, he had beckoned his fellow decoders over to his very desk. As they gathered in a knot around the bait he had laid for them, he had taken one pace back before calmly and quietly taking exactly what he wanted. He had turned potential witnesses to his crime into alibis for his innocence.

  As he walked back through Hyde Park on this bright summer evening, he felt the blood rush to his loins. He was hardening at the thought of what he had done. He pictured himself with Anna, looking at the papers together, tonight, in bed. He would read them out loud, impersonating the authors’ voices. He imagined her praising him, calling him ‘her clever little boy’, rewarding him with her tongue, starting at his chest and working steadily downward…

  Or perhaps he would forego that particular delight, exquisite though he knew it would be. Perhaps he would show restraint and wait for the greater prize. It would mean going straight home now, stashing these documents where they would never be found — until he was ready to show them to the man who would understand their true power. The man, indeed, who had already entrusted him with his own great secrets, held together between the covers of the magnificent Red Book. Imagine what Rawls Murray could do with these papers. He would be overawed the instant he saw who had written them — but once he had digested their substance, well, he would fall to his knees.

  Taylor Hastings would become an instant hero to Reginald Rawls Murray, that much was obvious. He would, of course, be a hero to the Right Club. But the young American dared dream of a greater accolade still. By his actions he, Taylor Hastings, would become nothing less than a hero to history.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Eugenics? James squinted at the sign to make sure he had read it properly. Eugenics? How on earth did the science of human breeding — improving the quality of the human race and all that that implied — fit into everything that had happened these last few days and weeks? Unless, of course, it didn’t. Unless he had simply followed a random member of the Wolf’s Head Society with a scholarly interest in eugenic ideas and no connection at all to Lund, the Dean and his niece or, crucially, Florence and Harry…

  Reason told him to walk away and to think again. And yet he had learned since that early morning in Oxford that reason did not always deserve the last word, that there was more to him than the power to add up logical propositions, one following another. He was made of flesh and blood, with instincts and intuitions — as well as rages and sorrows — that he had tried to deny for too long. And so he listened to his gut as it told him to ring the doorbell and attempt to get inside the New Haven branch of the American Eugenics Society.

  He did not have to wait long. A bespectacled man, his glasses misting up in the heat of this last day of July, answered the door. Judging from his expression, and the sound of voices coming from within, he had been letting people in for a while: it seemed a meeting was underway.

  Once again, instinct intervened. Instead of offering his name, James simply nodded and stepped forward.

  ‘Are you on our list?’ asked the man with the foggy glasses.

  ‘I should be,’ James said, in what he hoped was a tone that was part supreme confidence, part lightness and affability. The man on the door pointed James towards a table where two women were taking names. James thanked him and headed in that direction, only to drift away the instant the bell rang, summoning the sweating man on the door back to his duties.

  The interior was cool and bright, like a London townhouse. He was standing in the hall on a floor made of stone tiles of black and white, like a diamond-shaped chessboard. Off it he could see a meeting room, the door open, the chairs already set out in rows in a fashion that recalled similar sessions at Oxford. This, he guessed, was that peculiar creature, the early-evening seminar: glass of wine, a show-off presentation, more show-off discussion.

  He milled around, noting a crowd that looked utterly familiar: men, most of them middle-aged, in the crumpled linens and tortoiseshell spectacles of the academic. He avoided eye contact, fearing to be drawn into a conversation that might require him to explain himself. Instead, he chose to linger by one of the display tables covered with material relating to tonight’s talk. The title was ‘Eugenics, the next steps’ and the speaker was a Dr William Curtis of Yale Medical School. Was he another of McAndrew’s proteges?

  Also on the table was a neatly-stacked pile of copies of a thin red volume which James took to be a kind of manifesto for the society, apparently offered free of charge. All true believers did this, James had noticed: communists giving away Marxist texts, evangelicals handing out bibles to passers-by. He wondered if this would be a scholarly seminar or an exercise in evangelism.

  He picked up the book and saw that it was, in fact, a primer on the topic: What is Eugenics? by Major Leonard Darwin. The book did not mention what James already knew: that this Darwin was the son of Charles.

  Not that he knew much more than that. He had long been aware of eugenics; it would be impossible to be an educated man in the 1930s and not be aware of it. There had been a Eugenics Society at Oxford, though whether it was still in business he would be hard pressed to say. There was the occasional lecture on the topic as well as frequent letters and articles in the periodicals. And yet James had let it pass him by. The language of the subject did not appeal to him and its leading advocates he found especially grating: so often well-born, busybody types all too ready to condescend to a scholarship boy from the provinces.

  Now James ran his eye over the contents page of the junior Darwin’s book, picking out the chapter headings. Domestic Animals; Hereditary Qualities; The Men we Want; Inferior Stocks; Birth Control; Sterilizatio
n; Feeble-Mindedness; The Deterioration of our Breed, Eugenics in the Future; Selection in Marriage.

  He glanced up to see that the room was filling up and for a while he eavesdropped on the greetings and handshakes taking place around him, with their talk of delayed trains from Boston and long drives from New York. This was, James understood, a meeting of scholars from beyond Yale, one that appeared to bring together colleagues from several Ivy League universities: Harvard, Princeton, Columbia and the like. When James sensed that someone was looking in his direction, he quickly ducked back to the book, reading the first line of the first page:

  When the time comes for the old dog to die and when with sorrow we shall have to replace him, will not the breed of our new companion be our first thought?

  He jumped ahead.

  Owners of cattle have always known that care in the selection of stock for breeding purposes will pay them well in the long run… And if men, however savage or however cultivated, have always given so much time to the study of the breed of the animals they own, why have they not paid equal or more attention to their own breed? Before a marriage is contracted many questions may be asked as to the amount of money likely to be inherited by the bride, while no consideration is usually given to the qualities of mind or body which she is likely to pass on to her children — to her breed, in fact. The aim of eugenics is to prove that the breed of our own citizens is a matter of vital importance…

  James wondered again if he was wasting his time. Could there be any connection between Harry, Florence and all of this? All he could think of was that his wife’s field was academic biology and eugenics was, he supposed, not too far away from that. Was it possible that she had been drafted here to Yale as a scholar on a research project, one that had to be kept secret, even from him? The thought made him shudder: it would have meant everything he had been told about her fear of invasion, her desperate desire to protect Harry, would have been a lie. He could not believe it; he would not believe it. If she had had work to do that entailed travelling to the United States, even highly confidential work, she would have told him about it, of course she would. And what kind of work on eugenics would demand secrecy? It was not exactly a matter of war or peace.

  He felt an unspoken shift around him. People were no longer chatting or greeting friends, but slowly shuffling their way into the meeting room. The seminar was about to begin. He took a seat at the back, next to a man who had already produced a notebook, running his pen in a clean vertical line down the page to create a margin.

  The speaker appeared. He was no older than James: sandy-haired, with an easy, smiling manner, dressed in a summer suit that hung lightly on him. To James’s untutored eye, he looked as if he came from old money.

  The man cleared his throat. ‘I’d like to begin by thanking you all for coming on this warm summer evening. Some of you, I know, have come from far and wide.’ There it was, the same accent as Dorothy Lake. Reflexively, James looked around the room, just in case she was here.

  ‘As you know, this is an invitation-only gathering. Our usual discretion applies, but it is especially pertinent tonight. Some of the items on our agenda would be open to… ’ He paused, ‘… misinterpretation, were they to be disclosed more widely than I intend. I hope I have your co-operation.’

  There was a murmur of assent.

  ‘Good. Some of you will have seen the copies of the Darwin book in the foyer. Of course, I don’t mean to insult anyone here in making such a well-known text my starting point this evening. But I thought it might be useful to return to first principles.

  ‘Let me begin with this important statement from What is Eugenics? ’. Curtis lifted the book to his eye-level as if he were an actor declaiming from a script, and read aloud: ‘“ In order to improve the breed of our race, we should now take such steps as would result in all who show any natural superiority producing a greater number of descendants than at present, whilst making all who are definitely inferior pass on their natural inferiority to as few as possible.”’ He lowered the book. ‘From that single paragraph we derive what we know of as the two different strains of eugenic thought. So-called “positive eugenics”, encouraging procreation by the fittest and most intelligent-’ here he made a sweeping gesture as if to encompass his audience, which elicited a warm chuckle of approval, ‘and also so-called “negative eugenics”, which seeks to stop the unfit from reproducing. Forgive me for teaching grandmother to suck eggs in this way, but I hope my purpose will become clear in due course.

  ‘Put simply,’ Curtis went on, ‘the eugenic idea holds that if we have more of the strong and fewer of the weak, then the nation itself will end up stronger. It’s true of a herd of prize cattle and it’s true of us. Note Darwin’s own language in his summary of eugenics’ primary aim.’

  Curtis raised the little red book once more, in theatrical style: ‘“ A lowering of the birth-rate of all the naturally inferior types and an increase in the birth-rate amongst the naturally superior.”’

  With each word he heard, the more James remembered his aversion to the whole eugenics business. It came back to him not as a thought, but as a feeling, a creeping sensation across his flesh.

  Curtis was reading again, from the Darwin chapter entitled ‘The Men we Want’.

  ‘“ It has been suggested that, whilst getting rid of these extremely undesirable types, we should endeavour to create a group of supermen at the other end of the scale. If a few perfect individuals were to appear on earth, and if their perfection were to be acknowledged by all, this would be very good. These supermen would rule over us to our great contentment.”’

  Curtis lowered the book. ‘It’s quite a thought, is it not, ladies and gentlemen? Imagine it, a latter-day pantheon of the gods, human and yet blessed with the strength of deities.’

  The man at James’s side was scribbling furiously. No one had so much as raised a hand in objection, apparently unfazed by the notion of this ‘group of supermen’ ruling the world.

  Curtis too was moving on. ‘The question arises, how exactly is society to get rid of these “extremely undesirable types”? Here Darwin’s chapter on eugenic methods is extremely helpful, though he eliminates what would of course be the easiest solution from the start.’

  Another knowing laugh rippled across the room.

  Curtis raised the book once more. ‘“ As to the inferior types, we cannot, as we have seen, reduce the number of their descendants by the simple expedient of murder. All that can be done is to lessen the size of their families.” He makes it sound so easy, doesn’t he? Easy enough for Major Darwin, sitting there in his study in Kent or Staffordshire’ — he pronounced it Stafford-shy-er — ‘or wherever it was. But not so easy for those of us who wish to translate these ideas into practical policy. So what should we be doing? What action should we be taking to, in Darwin’s words, “lessen the size” of those inferior families?

  ‘We’re all familiar with the obvious methods: birth control, sterilization and so on. These are all useful, and indeed I’m proud to say the United States has been a leader in sterilization. But we are rapidly being overtaken, thanks to laws permitting involuntary sterilization or its variants right across Europe: Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, even little Estonia. And of course the true lead is now set by Germany, where forced sterilization has become a matter of state policy, the preferred methods being vasectomy for men, ligation — or tying — of the ovarian tubes for women and, in a few cases, the use of x-rays. Hundreds of thousands of Germany’s feebleminded or otherwise abnormal population have been prevented from reproducing under this programme. I hope it is clear that the old debate — on whether this range of available, medically-established methods should be used simply to persuade rather than to compel the naturally inferior to refrain from parenthood — is becoming rather out of date.’

  James was watching the faces in the room, not one of which had so much as demurred. They were listening to this without a word of dissent, many nodding as Curtis moved onto d
efinitions, quoting Leonard Darwin on what groups constituted the inferior: ‘“ These include the criminal, the insane, the imbecile, the feeble in mind, the diseased at birth, the deformed, the deaf, the blind, etc, etc.”’

  The man on James’s left had now filled two pages of his notebook and was beginning a third, listing those whom Major Darwin, quoted by Curtis, further defined as undesirable for reproduction: the unemployed, those on low wages, who had thereby proved their lack of value to the wider society, as well as those who had experienced consumption or epilepsy. The lecturer helpfully spelled out Darwin’s exact words on the matter: ‘“ No one who has had unmistakable epileptic fits should become a parent.”’

  ‘ What, though, of those who seem sound enough in mind and body, but who have what Darwin calls “many defective relatives”?’ asked Curtis, affecting to sound genuinely vexed by the conundrum. ‘The answer is not immediately obvious, which is why such people, cursed by a family tree laden down with so much rotten fruit, should consult a doctor.’ Apparently Darwin was clear what the wise physician would propose in such a situation: ‘“ a marriage which should result in no more than one or two children.”’

  Suddenly James knew, to the depths of his stomach, why he had declined the Oxford invitations to hear Miss Marie Stopes speak on the merits of contraception — yet another leaflet about that had landed in his pigeon-hole the day after Florence disappeared — why he had turned the page at the first sight of an editorial in praise of the eugenic approach to population control, why the idea had repelled him.

  What right did these people have to say how many children he, or anyone else, was allowed to have? To them it was no more than arithmetic, a matter of simple utilitarian calculus, working out what set of arrangements would result in the greatest happiness for the greatest number. On that measure alone, it made perfect sense to reduce the number of criminals, lunatics and imbeciles along with the deaf, dumb and blind. But couldn’t they see that ‘utility’ could never be the only measure, that every one of those ‘defectives’ was a unique person, a person with a life and needs and desires and loves?