Our Hideous Progeny, page 21
Later that afternoon, we waited on the banks of the firth, the brisk wind whipping away the early warmth of summer. It was easy to forget that the firth was connected at one end to the sea; it saw plenty of traffic, of course – narrow canal boats and sharp little sailing ships, barges laid low with cargo – but those passed us by for the most part, headed for the harbour or the Caledonian Canal. As we watched, a small fishing boat broke from the main thoroughfare and skimmed across the waves in our direction.
Henry made a brief effort to convince me to stay ashore, but I refused, and rode out with the two of them in a little rowing boat to meet the ship. I would never have admitted it, but I regretted my decision almost instantly. Henry and Clarke had hefted the thing down only that morning from its place among the boathouse rafters, where it had sat mouldering for more than a decade, and I was not entirely sure of its seaworthiness. But there was no quantity of spiders prodigious enough to dissuade me entirely, for this was an important occasion.
‘Do you catch turtles often, sir?’ I called out to the captain as Henry and Clarke struggled to lift the creature, swaddled thickly in sailcloth, into the boat.
‘Aye, from time to time,’ he said. ‘No too common, though. It’s more dolphins you find in the firth. The odd whale, sometimes.’
I asked the man to send word if he captured any such creatures again – the skin of a dolphin, I thought, was likely close to that of a plesiosaur – and we rowed the boat back to shore. The turtle was a beast of a thing, quite easily two hundred pounds, and nearly too heavy for the pulleyed platform Henry had put together. It creaked and swayed alarmingly as they dropped the turtle on to it, but it seemed to hold. When we finally untied the rope and folded back the sailcloth, Henry drew in a breath through his teeth. Clarke let loose a curse.
The turtle bore welts and gashes from its time trapped in the net, and there was a deep scratch across the back of its shell; the remnant of some past altercation, perhaps. But that was not the worst of it – all of that could be fixed. No, the worst part was the immense chunk missing from the side of its head, exposing a mess of brain and bone beneath.
‘Swindlers,’ Clarke growled. ‘I should call them right back here and demand they return my money.’
‘To be fair, they probably assumed we wanted it to eat, not to bring it back from the dead,’ I said drily. ‘Is it even worth trying? It can’t possibly survive, with only half a brain.’
‘I beg to differ, my dear; a great percentage of the population survives perfectly well with less,’ Henry muttered. ‘We could use it as practice, I suppose? For our stitching?’
‘Or for the preservation of flesh,’ Clarke replied, his nose an inch from the turtle’s scaly skin. ‘Even when the icehouse is complete, cold alone will not keep our specimens fresh for ever. And for the construction of a creature so large, even scaled down as you propose, we shall have to find some way of preventing the pieces from rotting while we connect them all together.’
‘Arsenic is standard for the preservation of specimens,’ Henry cut in.
Clarke scoffed. ‘In Professor Grant’s collection, perhaps. For something we plan to bring back to life, injecting poison into its veins seems rather counter-intuitive.’
For once, he and I were in agreement. ‘Cuvier used alcohol, did he not? And I remember reading somewhere that arterial injections of turpentine have been used to preserve bodies before dissection; though that may be just as harmful . . .’
‘Yes, we shall have to see. I believe Monsieur Gannal conducted a study on embalming procedures some years ago. He used an acetate solution, if I recall correctly. Acetate of alum—or was it mercury? No . . .’
As Clarke muttered on about dichlorides and alcoholic solutions, I bent down to examine the turtle’s remaining eye. It was a noble creature, really; larger than I had thought it would be, with a kind of grace that even death could not strip away. Even though most every scholar in the field of natural history dismissed the theory of transmutation, I had to admit that, ever since I first read of it in Vestiges and in the writings of Lamarck, it had held a special place within my heart. It was a miraculous notion, that we all perhaps originated from the same simple seed, shifting and changing over countless millennia. I could not help thinking of it then, as I examined the delicate scales about the turtle’s eyelids.
What were you, once? I wondered. Was it your forefathers and foremothers who slithered, long-necked, through the Liassic seas? Do you remember what it was like to have teeth that rent and tore?
I shall give them back to you.
ON THE ROUGH stone wall of the boathouse, I fastened a sheet of fabric upon which I drew in charcoal the skeleton of the Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus. It was a sleek and beautiful beast, the first of its genus, christened as such by Conybeare and de la Beche. This particular specimen, unearthed by the same Miss Mary Anning whose exploits had sent me running off fossil-hunting along the shores of Wight, was the length of two men laid end to end. Such a monster would be far too big for our little boathouse, however, so we had decided to shorten ours to about seven feet. It was from Mr Conybeare’s own lithographs that I copied my diagram, writing the name of each bone in minute script – and, under each label, possibilities for substitutions.
These were a matter of near-constant debate. Ought the paddles to be those of a dolphin, or a turtle? Ought the skull be a turtle’s or a crocodile’s? How would we obtain a suitable tail, when nothing with such a magnificent appendage existed in the present day? And these were only the bones; the creature’s innards and skin would be another matter entirely, for we had no fossils with which to compare them. The easiest path, of course, would have been to sew a snake on to the headless corpse of a seal and be done with it, but that would not give us the correct skeletal or muscular structure – and it was this, after all, that we wanted to depict most accurately, in the hope that the creature’s natural posture would match Henry’s theories. It could not be denied, either, that the overall silhouette and texture of the skin mattered too; it would never gain popularity with the masses if it did not look right.
Summer came and went before I realized the season had even begun. There were many reasons I enjoyed Inverness – the peace and fresh air, the blooming yellow gorse across the hills – but I will admit to a twinge of despair when I asked Maisie when the warm weather would come and she replied, quite earnestly: ‘What do you mean? We had those three lovely days in June.’ I worried about what would become of her in this grim and lonely house, after we returned to London.
Yet another source of anxiety was the mouse; or, to be more specific, the first mouse. In between our debates over the construction of the plesiosaur, we conducted as planned a series of tests on the substitution of the organs and limbs of one being for another. None of us had any practical instruction in surgery, and though I had pored over every book on the subject I could find in preparation for this very venture, it revealed itself to be an even trickier and grislier business than I had expected. Moreover, with our unfortunate subjects being so small, it was nearly impossible for more than one person to work on them at once; thus, it was I who found myself doing the bulk of the stitching, while Clarke disappeared most days into his new icehouse to experiment with preservatives, and Henry took care of a variety of auxiliary tasks. In addition to readying each new subject and taking care of the old ones, he was kept busy brewing flask upon flask of nitrogenous solution, which had likewise proved to be an infuriatingly difficult task. The amount required to revive a rodent was far greater than that required to revive yeasts, and the solution was prone to curdling if not held in every stage at precisely the right temperature. As a result, we managed only a fraction of the dozens of tests we had initially hoped to perform.
Still, it was not long before Henry baulked at his relegation to ‘nursery maid for misfit mice’, and demanded that we dispose of our half-dozen former subjects. Most of these did, indeed, seem to be in good health, and I had to admit that there was little benefit to observing them longer – but the same could not be said, sadly, of our first mouse. From the start, it had been so docile as to seem almost unresponsive; it ate little and drank less, and was clumsy and uncoordinated. I had thought that it would liven up as time passed – perhaps, for some, it took more time to get used to operating a body again – but it had not. It was because of this, perhaps, some twisted sense of pity, that I argued we should keep it. There should be at least one subject, after all, which we kept on hand to observe the long-term effects of resurrection. Thus – in the hope that it simply needed more care and attention than Henry’s apathetic ministrations – I had given it to Maisie, telling her it was a leftover specimen we no longer needed. Though she had loved it at first, wondering aloud at its calm temperament and its habit of falling asleep in her lap, I think she began to suspect that something was wrong with it . . . particularly when it began to smell.
‘It’s decomposing, I think,’ said Clarke after Maisie had brought it down one evening, to sit next to her while she crocheted. The smell had lingered even after she had left the room, damp and rotten, like something dredged from the bottom of a lake. ‘It did die twice. There must be some part of the decomposition process that was set in motion at the moment of its death, and continues on even now.’
‘But it’s alive,’ Henry protested.
‘Living things can still rot. Take gangrene, for instance. And it is rotting more slowly than it would have done had it remained dead, I’ll grant you that.’ Clarke tapped a thoughtful finger on his chin. ‘It must be a matter of stopping the decomposition before it happens. Infusing the flesh with a long-lasting preservative that will stop the rot from taking hold. We should inject our next few subjects with the oil of turpentine and acetate of alumina I have been studying, and see how it affects them.’
I was grateful – begrudgingly so – that Clarke had taken such a particular interest in this aspect of the project. For one thing, every hour he spent shut up in the icehouse testing draughts of chloride of zinc or nitrate of potassa was another hour I did not have to see him – an hour I might spend instead in Henry’s marginally less infuriating company. And while the two of us had greatly increased our knowledge of chemistry since we had started this grand affair, there was still only so much one could learn in a year. Clarke’s expertise was . . . helpful.
These alone were the thoughts that soothed me in moments such as this, while Clarke chattered on about precisely which trials we should try next, and when. I am not following his orders, I reminded myself; he is not our master, merely our patron. Our consultant. However much he might think he owns this project – owns us – it will never truly be his.
‘DO YOU KNOW,’ Maisie said to me one day as she lay abed, in that strained voice of hers which I had learned meant she was only talking to distract herself from the pain of her head, ‘that I . . .’
‘That you what?’ I said, looking up from the book I’d been trying unsuccessfully to read for the past half-hour. It was a Saturday afternoon, and a listless one. For days now, the clever little traps that Oliver had set up in the old stable and the nearby meadow had come up empty. Forced into an unwilling holiday, I had occupied myself at first with research and then correspondence, copying out for Mr Jamsetjee a passage I had happened across about the actions of nerves (and a possible aid for palsy), but as the day wore on I found it progressively harder to concentrate. It was not just the waiting – though that was bad enough, my entire being consumed with the restless urge to continue the work to which I had devoted more than a year of my life. It was also . . . an anniversary. One that had largely passed us by the previous year, so lost had we been in our experiments. But now, with October looming just around the bend, I found myself increasingly drawn into the past.
As was Henry, apparently. For, only hours earlier, I had discovered him and Clarke in the under-stairs storeroom, each with a fan of cards in hand.
‘It’s only rummy!’ Henry had protested, as if I hadn’t seen the pile of coins he’d hastily slid under some papers a moment before. As if they weren’t playing in a cupboard. As if I were entirely without a brain.
Which was why I had retreated here, to Maisie’s room. Not only was she in sore need of company on days such as this, but it was one of the few places in the house where I could be assured of privacy. I was tired of arguing, even more so of arguing in front of Clarke. The way he’d simply raised an eyebrow as I raged, squashing me down to nothing – the way he’d turned to Henry and muttered quite audibly: ‘Good Lord, is she your wife or your mother?’
I closed my eyes for a moment, shaking such thoughts from my head. ‘What were you saying, Maisie?’
‘Never mind.’
‘Go on.’
‘No, I shouldn’t. It’s terrible.’
‘Ah, but I love it when you’re terrible!’ I got to my feet, picking my way around her scant furniture – a little desk, an end table, the old canary cage which housed the poor, sickly mouse – and perched on the side of her bed. ‘What is it?’
She was silent for a long moment, chewing her lip as she always did when she was thinking intently. ‘Do you know . . . that I think sometimes, whenever I hear you and Henry quarrel, how glad I am not to be married?’
It was a hard blow, though not necessarily a sharp one. Not an entirely surprising one, either. Like those great gusts of wind that blew up sometimes from the firth, strong enough to throw one off one’s feet. I always found myself thinking in the moment, as I teetered on my heels, Well, I ought to have seen that one coming.
‘Yes,’ I said quietly. ‘I suppose that’s fair.’
She gave a grim, humourless laugh and tugged at a loose thread on the sleeve of her nightgown. ‘No, that’s all wrong – you’re supposed to tell me it’s worth it. That you wouldn’t trade it for the world.’
‘Maisie . . .’ I sighed. Some weeks ago, unable to keep yet another secret from her, I had told her the truth of why Clarke had come to Inverness: that Henry owed him money, and that Henry had briefly intended to settle this debt with her marriage. I had expected her to be angry, but . . . no, that was not true. I had wanted her to be angry, longed for someone else to share my outrage, for her to cry: He would do such a thing? Play me like a chess piece? But instead, she had simply grown small and sad, and murmured: ‘Well, I might as well. It isn’t as if I have anything more worthwhile to do.’
‘Do you think one has to be able to spin properly in order to be called a “spinster”?’ she muttered now, her head falling back against her pillow.
‘Maisie, you wouldn’t have been happy with Dr Gallacher. And you certainly wouldn’t be happy with Mr Clarke.’
She gave another sharp tug on her sleeve. It dawned on me that I had seen her mend that same sleeve only the week before, and the week before that. I thought of the battered copy of The Odyssey I had once read in my grandfather’s study – of Penelope, weaving by day, unravelling by night.
‘I know, I know. But how will I know when I should say yes? Providing I ever get another offer, that is.’ There was a bitterness in her words which I had rarely heard before. She looked up at me suddenly, a rather desperate look in her eyes. ‘Why did you marry Henry?’
The first and most cynical answer that came to mind – because he was there – was far too harsh to utter aloud; and besides, it was not the whole truth. Even if things had soured since then, even if he had been my only real option to escape from Wight, things had once been good between us. It made my heart sink now to remember how I had once thrilled to receive his letters; how we had scrambled, laughing, up rocky bluffs on our fossil-hunting honeymoon in Lyme; how I had loved his snide wit, the way his tongue seemed to lash out at everyone but me. In that way we were alike, united in our anger at the world. I only wished I had seen it then for what it was: spite. Jealousy. The lingering effects of a childhood spent unloved.
‘He was interesting,’ I said now, quietly. ‘And I enjoyed his company. We could talk for hours, about all sorts of things. And he listened to me, when no one else would.’
‘And?’ Maisie pressed, looking as if she was waiting for me to reveal some grand secret, a universal test of men. Dip him in litmus; if he turns blue, let him go.
‘Well,’ I said drily, ‘it certainly didn’t hurt that he was handsome. One can overlook any number of flaws for a pretty face.’
‘Pretty?’ she cried, derisive, then slapped a hand over her mouth. I laughed, quite delighted.
‘So cruel! You don’t think so? Well, I suppose he is your brother.’ I leaned over to prop my chin upon my hand, peering at her sideways as I grinned. ‘Go on, then. What sort of fellow catches your eye?’
She blushed bright red, and I loved the sight more than I could stand. ‘Oh, I don’t know. I’ve . . . never really thought about it.’
‘You don’t know? Come, now. The handsome young postman, let’s say – you’ve never seen him come by, and thought, My, I wouldn’t mind if he stayed for dinner?’
‘Stayed for—? Of course not!’
‘I don’t mean you’d actually ask him! Only that you’d think it.’
‘No. I don’t think I’m very good at that sort of thing. At telling handsome men from not-so-handsome ones.’
I shook my head, bemused. ‘It’s not the sort of thing one can be good at – it’s a feeling. You can tell at a glance.’
‘At a glance?’ Her hands fell away from her face. In both of her eyes there shone a spark of gold, a reflection of the afternoon light that slid through the gap in the curtains. There was an odd weight to her words, somehow; something that teased. Something with . . . intent.
The breath caught in my throat. I turned away.
