The Great Unknown

by Peg Kingman

  But then he had found something else; something that even the Annings might have rejoiced to find.

  Here, off an English shore, forty miles south of the mouth of the River Tweed, Mr Stevenson thought often of Scotland. As he worked, he sometimes would soothe and delight himself by counting over his native land’s long inventory of riches, for even Scotland—so poor in so many of the materials of life—is rich in stone; exceedingly rich in stone. He loved the resonant poetry of the names: travertine, serpentine, celestine. He loved the gems: garnet, malachite, amethyst, jasper, carnelian, cairngorm, chalcedony, agate, druzy crystal, and quartz. He loved the ores: ironstone, galena, talc. He loved the douce sandstones of Craigleith, Binnie, Humbie, and Kingoodie. And he loved and respected the granites of Aberdeen and Kirkudbright, adamantine as Scotsmen themselves; so much of which (and so many of whom) had gone to pave London and Liverpool.

  But his favourites above all were the limestones in their marvelous variety and utility: lithographic, bituminous, hydraulic, oolitic, crinoidal; marble in all its extravagant colours, veining, and variegations; alabaster; fluor; arragonite; gypsum, compact or fibrous; asparagus-stone; tremolite; lucullite; stinkstone; domolite; rhomb-spar; brown-spar, foliated or columnar; travertine; tufa; coquina; coral rock; chalk; Lias; clunch. Not to forget stalactite and stalagmite. All these were limestones.

  All of it, treasure. Requiring only to be found, then won; wrested from the grip of the earth. Best of all, this treasure was inexhaustible: the whole vast earth beneath his feet was made of stone. A farmer knows his soil is his treasure, but soil—especially Scottish soil—is only a thin deposit atop the underlying stone; only the merest skin, be it ever so comely, over the bony skull. The good honest stone which underlies everything is an infinitely deeper store, of stronger riches.

  Strong, but not invincible. A quarryman knows each stone’s secret weakness. He knows how to conquer it; how to break it; how to split even granite, basalt, gabbro, porphyry, quartz, gneiss, trap rock.

  I am Man; I can break anything. Anything.

  Working quite alone, Mr Stevenson was able nonetheless to move immense blocks of stone with ease and precision. His crane, brought from Paris at such cost and inconvenience, was a movable beam type, like that used by the celebrated engineer Robert Stevenson (a kinsman at some remove) when building the Bell Rock lighthouse. There was little space here for manoeuvre; finesse was indispensable.

  Mr Stevenson had not much use for books. The earth itself was his book. Who sees the earth as the quarryman does? Who prises apart the very layers of the past—teases apart the uncut pages of the earth’s history—as the quarryman does? The very limestone he splits into blocks is the remains of ancient creatures; indeed, some of it is nothing but the remains of ancient creatures. What tremendous creatures have quarrymen down through the centuries not cut into—carved up—and thrown away as useless rubble, rather than the good sound building-stone they seek?

  Though he had not much use for books, Mr Stevenson had been reading a borrowed book by brief fits and starts, in the few minutes before sleep overcame him each night. He read meticulously; therefore slowly. Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation had been pressed upon him by his friend Mr Darling, the keeper of the lighthouse at the south end of Coquet Isle. Mr Stevenson found the book moderately interesting, though perhaps a trifle belaboured and over-elaborate. Was it not familiar knowledge that various conditions, operating during immense periods of time, upon various materials, had produced the various species of stone?

  Was it not self-evident that the same must hold true of creatures? That those same conditions, varying as they did, operating mercilessly during those same immense periods of time, upon various living materials, must have produced the various species of plants and beasts, both surviving and extinct, which inhabit those very situations to which they have (in a phrase he had read somewhere) “superior adaptation and greatest power of occupancy”? There was another phrase that had been haunting him too, these last few weeks: “the weaker, less circumstance-suited, being prematurely destroyed.” Where had he read that? It marched, repeatedly, disturbingly, through his mind. It troubled him that he could not remember, for he had, generally, a capacious and tenacious memory. Indeed, this was one of the reasons he seldom read: He had already a vast store of matters to think of, and little need to pile up more such ore in his mind.

  Was it not familiar knowledge that the older the stone, the stranger are the creatures to be found embedded in it, and the less resembling living examples? The stranger the fossil, the older the stone. And the older the stone, the stranger the fossil. Thinking about this while he chiseled a dog-hole in a block of stone, he suspected a logical fallacy—but, fallacy or not, it was true; as true as anything that could be proved.

  When daylight failed, he laid down his tools in good order and drew a tarpaulin over them, to keep off the damp. From the rim of the gryke he surveyed the surrounding waters for boats tardily returning to harbour and, seeing none, climbed up and walked the length of the little island in ten minutes, toward the lightkeeper’s compound at the southern tip.

  As always, he paused at the dovecote to look for any newly-returned pigeon, which would be recognisable by having tied to one leg a ribbon; and to the other a message. He saw no beribboned birds, but only the usual un-ribboned residents chuckling and muttering to themselves as they settled for the night. He was not surprised, for it had been some time since he had received any bird-borne messages. Nor was he disappointed; indeed, he felt a small remission of dread, a brief reprieve—for any message was as likely to bring sorrow as joy. His dear wife!—his poor son! (prematurely destroyed)—his precious daughter! To be a married man and a father was a far weightier business, he now knew, than being a bachelor.

  In dusk, Mr Stevenson encountered Mr Darling at the bottom of the lighthouse tower stair. Mr Darling had just descended, having lit the lamps for the night. Together they walked down to the landing-place on the jetty, to unload the coble tied up there after Mr Darling’s quick crossing to Amble and back, where he had fetched the letters, and domestic necessities such as flour and milk. As Mr Stevenson shouldered a sack of flour, Mr Darling said, “I was asked in town about the smoke from that north end of the isle.”

  “And what did you say?” asked Mr Stevenson.

  “I said that will be Mrs Darling burning the refuse, a grand heap of it.”

  5

  ON A FINE CHAIN at her throat, Constantia wore a pearl. It had been her mother’s. Livia would reach for this pearl as she nursed, but Charlie took no notice of it. The pearl was no longer round; the back of it, where it lay against Constantia’s skin, was wearing flat.

  Until now, Constantia had cherished only a few authentic memories of her own mother. She had seldom indulged in bringing them out for contemplation, for fear of wearing them out, wearing them smooth; of rubbing off the sharpness of their features—for she had noticed that they, like the pearl, were becoming flatter over the years.

  But now, while she fed the two infants in nearly constant rotation, Constantia was surprised by floods of fresh memories that would whelm up and engulf her. The memories seemed to let down with her milk. Moments, hours, whole days from her past washed over her, as minutely detailed and complete as present moments. Some of the memories were joyous, or lovely; others very sad; some remained as frightening as to the young child she had been.

  Her earliest memory was of her own baby-hands and bare knees upon a tiger skin. Of being lifted off it, by her laughing mother. Of longing to touch it again: the dusty fur, the meandering streams of colour, of gold and not-quite-black, and the edges of the stripes where individual hairs of gold overlapped the dark, or dark overlapped the gold. She remembered the rumpled little tags of ears, too, and the long tail—all flattened upon the dark floor planks. Her mother lifting her off it. Her mother laughing, scarcely scolding at all.

  She remembered snuggling with her mother under a blanket, while thunder rolled and epi
c torrents of rain—rain that could drown you, there was so little air to breathe in it, only water, like a waterfall—crashed just beyond the edge of the roof thatch; of feeling safe, sheltered from the monsoon beneath thick muffling thatch, and tucked under her mother’s arm.

  It was a soft round freckled arm, most beautiful; and the smell of her mother’s skin and hair, and of her mother’s blanket, was wonderful. Oh, her mother’s hair! “Mamma’s hair . . .” the very small Constantia had used to murmur to herself, stroking that yellow springy hair when her beautiful mother would lie down beside her, to help her go to sleep; “Mamma’s hair . . .”

  Later, when little Constantia would awaken in the night, in darkness, she was alone; her beautiful mother—far more beautiful than all the other mothers—was not there. “Mamma’s hair,” Constantia would murmur to herself in the nighttime, for comfort; and she would stroke her own hair, finer than her mother’s; and think of her mother, and think of how glad her mother would be to see her, in the morning, in the daylight, in the sunlight.

  Constantia had been astonished when other children, her friends, claimed that their own mothers were the most beautiful. How preposterous! Had they not eyes in their heads? Constantia had pitied the other children not only for the inferior beauty of their mothers, but also for their mistaken judgment.

  Constantia sometimes now found herself humming to her own drowsy Livia a song that her mother had used to sing to her. She had not thought of it in years.

  On occasion a pair of squabs was brought upstairs to Constantia on her dinner plate, but no matter how hungry she might be, she could not eat them. It was the ribcages that appalled her; too like that final glimpse of the body of her son: his ribs deflated for the last time, his final agonised breath drained out of him. Stilled.

  The two infants, Charlie and Livia, throve, and grew fat cheeks and redundant chins, and creases at their wrists as though tight threads encircled them.

  It sometimes happened that both babies fell simultaneously into a frenzy for milk. It was all but impossible to peaceably give suck to one while the other was raging and howling five feet away, apparently in danger of bursting a blood vessel by the violence of its fury and need—but it was equally impossible to pick up the second, if the first was already suckling. On those occasions, Hopey would come in, if she was within earshot. She would pick up the second baby and place it within Constantia’s encircling arm, and help her uncover her other breast; help position the nuzzling furious baby at the nipple. Then she’d step back, hands on hips, and say, “Now, there is a pretty sight, Mrs MacAdam! I wish you could see for yourself, the pair of them, the round bald heads of them at you together. I mind very well how it was, when I was nursing my Jenny and Lizzy.” Once the babies were positioned, Constantia could hold and satisfy them both. She didn’t need more breasts; only more arms, as Hindu goddesses had.

  Afterwards, there was the difficulty of disengaging; of shifting one baby safely to a cradle or cushion, or sometimes, to the floor—without dropping or unsettling the other. If they had fallen asleep at the breast, they were sure to startle awake again.

  If they had not fallen asleep, it was because they had—or soon would—soiled their clooties, and required therefore to be undressed, cleaned, and reclothed. Again, it often happened that one screamed while she tended the other, gently wiping and cleaning the creases and folds of their surprisingly exaggerated infant sexes: so very male! or so very female! All that pale milk, changed into this: yellow curds. What strange creatures we are; and what a strange and disgusting process was this digestion! Could we not have been formed to live upon air, water, soil and sunlight—as blameless plants did? Humans might be a high caste: Kashitryas, the caste from which spring kings and warriors—but were not plants of the highest caste of all? Doing no harm, were they not the true Brahmins of creation?

  What a talkative, playful clan these Chamberses were! Often Constantia could not help but hear them chattering unreservedly beyond the thin partition wall.

  “Well, if it isn’t Mr Balderstone,” she heard Nina say one evening, as her father entered the day-nursery, “come upstairs to sit for a time with his daughters, the clever, good and beautiful Misses Balderstone. Is he come to glean material for his paper? Aye, the usual notebook emerges from the waistcoat pocket—and the usual dull pencil. ‘Shall I sharpen that for you?’ offers the eldest Miss Balderstone, as is her kindly habit.”

  “Ah!” sighed Mr Chambers; and Constantia heard his usual chair creak as he settled into it. “What a fortunate man he is, to find the eldest Miss Balderstone, in company with her charming sisters, and all of them prepared no doubt with acute remarks and clever mots—”

  “Do not forget her penknife, as keen as her wit—”

  “—for him to appropriate, and put into his paper, and pretend they are his own, and all without the slightest trouble to himself,” said he.

  “And if Miss Balderstone were to reserve her acute remarks and her bons mots to herself?” said Nina. “For her own use?”

  Said Mr Chambers, “Mr Balderstone, a man of some native wit and middling-quick understanding, cries, ‘Aha! Has Miss Balderstone a novel in progress to tuck them all into?’”

  “Well; and if she has?” said Nina.

  “She says it is not genteel to use her own name, whatever,” said Annie, “so we have been thinking up elegant noms de plume for her. I proposed ‘The Dove of Midlothian.’”

  “Too lofty and sentimental,” said Mary. “‘A Caledonian Gentlewoman’ is far better, and would look vastly well on a title page.”

  “But Daddy, why do you never sign your articles in the Journal?” asked Annie.

  “Sign them! Why should I?” said he.

  “Because I wish to know who wrote a thing.”

  “I should do so, then, merely to satisfy a vulgar curiosity?”

  “Oh, Daddy, never vulgar!” cried Mary. “The Misses Balderstone could never be vulgar, for there is no set of sisters so untainted by vulgarity as the Misses Balderstone! But their spirit of serious inquiry is not easily turned aside. Mildly, Miss Mary Balderstone repeats her sister’s question, with a most becoming and maidenly modesty: ‘Oh, Daddy, sir: Why not sign your own name?’”

  “It is a good question—but one that Mr Balderstone cannot answer. Mr Chambers can, however, if you saucy lasses will admit him to your presence.”

  “We will.”

  “I do not think I have ever told you,” said Mr Chambers, quite seriously now, “that I was present at that memorable public dinner—its purpose to raise funds for some worthy cause or other, though what it was I have forgotten—when Sir Walter Scott was for the first time publicly named and acclaimed as the Author of Waverley, and of all those subsequent works of his incomparable genius. It is true that Sir Walter’s authorship had been an open secret for some time. Ever since Ballantynes’ had failed during the distresses of ’twenty-five, everyone had known, though only in a private and not-to-be-spoken-of sort of way. It was Lord Meadowbank who breached the ban at last—not by any carelessness, or thoughtless slip of the tongue; nay, he was not fuddled by wine; scarcely even warm! Rather, having privately sought and received Sir Walter’s consent, Meadowbank got upon his legs after dinner and proposed his toast, somewhat in this vein: ‘The clouds are dispelled at last—the darkness cleared away; and the Great Unknown—the minstrel of our native land, the mighty magician who has rolled back the current of time, and conjured up before our living senses the conduct of men and manners of days which have long passed away—sits here among us. Distinguished for his towering talents, he has opened to the world not only the sublime beauties of our country, but also the selfless courage and gallantry of our illustrious ancestors. Before the world he has burnished the reputation of our national character, and bestowed on Scotland an imperishable name, were it only by her having given birth to himself. Gentlemen, I propose to you the health of—Sir Walter Scott!’

  “The assembled company climbed upon the tables—
of course no ladies were present—and the huzzahs went on and on, fit to deafen us all. Thus taxed, Sir Walter did not deny his authorship, but graciously received the acclaim. But when someone then addressed him as the Great Unknown, he said—and this has stuck with me ever since—‘No indeed, sir,’ he said. ‘Henceforth, I am only The Small Known.’”

  “Ah,” said Nina.

  “Nina understands me,” said he, “but Mary looks perplexed. The point is this: So long as the author of those prodigious books had borne no bodily shape in the eyes of his fellow-countrymen, he might indeed have been more than human; a very angel of literature. But once their authorship was known, were not those noble works somewhat diminished by their association with little—old—lame—mortal—flawed—bankrupt—Sir Wat? He thought so, at least: a modest and exceedingly amiable man, who tolerated me kindly, though he must have known that I—then an eager callant of twenty-five—dogged him with the intention of publishing a Life, so soon as he should oblige by dying—which he did, a few years later. That was the first of my books to sell quite well; due entirely to the excellence of its subject, however—and not, regrettably, to its own merits, nor those of its author.”

  ADAM’S GAME penetrated even the nursery. One cold morning when the east wind blew, Jenny said mournfully over breakfast, “I do wish we might have a fire.”

  “Aye, to toast our bread and cheese, in front of. How vastly agreeable that would be!”

  “And I long for a baked apple,” said Jenny. “It’s many a long day since we had any.”

  “Do you suppose that when Adam and Eve had their apple,” said Lizzy, “they baked it first?”

  “And with honey,” said Jenny fervently.

  “Ah . . .” breathed Nina; and then: “Is it only humans who cook their food? Do none but humankind use fire? I must tell Dad: Homo prometheum.”