Dead as a Dodo

by Jane Langton

  Here Oliver was more confident. He smiled modestly and mentioned a pair of eighteenth-century admirals, a nineteenth-century Bishop of Warwick, and another eminent forebear, Sir Wilfred Clare, who had been admitted by Queen Victoria to the Most Noble Order of the Garter. “My family once owned land in the neighborhood of Burford, but of course it’s all gone now.” Oliver rose to go, still reeking of sherry. “I’m afraid the end of the story is rather sad. Now it’s just my mother and father and me. My illustrious family has dwindled down to this poor vicar of the Church of England.”

  “Honor enough, surely,” said William politely. He watched through the curtains, as Freddy escorted Oliver down the front walk. Oliver was doing all the talking. At the end of the walk Freddy stood head down, staring at her shoes.

  William smiled grimly. He knew that stubborn look. Oliver was asking something of her, and she was refusing, shaking her head violently.

  Poor old Oliver! William watched him turn away, looking heartsick, and walk in the direction of the Banbury Road.

  Freddy wasn’t heartsick. William grinned as he heard the scramble in the hall. She was chirping at Fluffy, fastening the leash to his collar. The door slammed, bang, and they were off, dog barking, Freddy whistling, trotting away from the house, away from Oliver Clare, away from William Dubchick, away, away!

  CHAPTER 16

  The rattlesnake has a poison-fang for its own defense, and for the destruction of its prey.

  Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

  Margo Shaw was carrying out her job in the museum, in the two spirit storerooms, Vertebrate and Invertebrate, unsealing the jars with their human embryos and coiled snakes and mollusks, filling them to the brim with alcohol, then sealing them up again.

  This morning, in the Invertebrate Spirit Store, she was disgruntled. She had won an argument with Hal, but it had been nasty and uncomfortable. Hal had given up at last and fallen silent, and then he had left the house without a word. Just because she didn’t want to spend another couple of days at Aunt Peggy’s! And miss the party in the master’s lodge at Balliol, after wangling an invitation! It was so important to be seen at functions like that. It was what Oxford was all about. Margo had heard of another affair at Oriel, coming up in November. Taking another jar down from the shelf, she paused with her hand on the lid. Whom did she know at Oriel?

  Corystes cassivelaunus, said the label on the jar, Mr. C. Darwin. Margo wrenched it open. Oh, God, couldn’t Hal see how dull it was for her at Aunt Peggy’s? Last time he had insisted on exploring the entire house, every hideous room. And then he had sat down beside Aunt Peggy on the flatulent sofa, looking at hecatombs of snapshots of the happy summers he had spent there as a child while his divorcing parents sued each other back in Kansas. And then he had jammed the car so full of boxes of books and papers, there was hardly room for Margo. She couldn’t face another visit.

  Margo poured alcohol into the jar from her container, readjusted the lid, and looked at the rows of shelves. Would she ever be done? Sometimes when a snake seemed to look up at her, or a fetus bobbed its tiny head, she shuddered, and thought of finding other employment. This sort of thing was pure routine. Any housewife could do it, any old-fashioned homebody with experience in preserving garden produce. Margo had heard about another museum job, and she coveted it. A new woman had been hired to repack the egg collection in acid-free tissue paper and mount new specimens of lepidoptera. It sounded a lot more pleasant. Maybe she could pry that woman out and wangle herself in. And there was an even better job she could try for. That slot too was filled, but perhaps by the most delicate maneuvering she could dislodge the current occupant and slither into her place.

  Margo unsealed a jar of centipedes, her mind floating free. She had found a way of amusing herself on the job by thinking up cameo studies of her new British acquaintances. It had become a hobby, inventing vicious little thumbnail portraits to be recited to her friends later on. It didn’t disturb Margo that the same friends were all included in her character studies. She would tell Friend A about Friend B, then take B aside and skewer Friend A.

  The next jar was Number 12998, a container of Darwin myriapods. Languidly Margo removed the lid, inventing at the same time a mental sketch of William Dubchick. Her husband admired him so much, but why?

  WILLIAM DUBCHICK: Bald head, whiskers like Father Time, nose like a turnip, bristling hairy eyebrows nourished by Oxford dews and damps. They’re something like the fancy feathers with which male birds attract females, although he’s far too old to attract anybody. Imagine being embraced by Dubchick, engulfed in that forest of whisker!

  Margo topped up Jar 12998 and pressed the top back on. As for his zoological expertise, I understand it’s pretty much passé. I’m told he spent the last eight years studying crabs. Now, that’s what I call pedestrian. He’s supposed to be writing a book, but people doubt it will ever be done. And as for his daughter—

  Margo moved on to a jar of squid, and recoiled at the long tentacles bundled together in the narrow container, their sucking disks clearly visible through the glass. Bravely she removed the top and put her mind on the problem of Fredericka Dubchick. The girl is cunning to look at, one has to admit, but what else is there to recommend her? She’s an undergraduate at a prestigious Oxford college, but surely that’s due to her father’s influence. Freddy Dubchick is a classic example of a spoiled child, and she’s also the kind of pretty girl who throws herself at anything in trousers. I’ll bet she’s sleeping with that good-looking kid who calls himself a clergyman. She’s even started to work her charms on Hal, and the poor fool is just a little bit bewitched.

  Margo put back the top on the jar of squid and sealed it with a brush dipped in grease, making an inner vow to keep an eye on Freddy Dubchick and report her findings to Hal. She’d see to it that he was unbewitched in a hurry.

  She was tired of the Invertebrate Spirit Store. Margo turned off the lights, locked the door, and made her way back to the courtyard. This time she paid no attention to the stone scientists standing among the display cases and the fossil bones. She did not even imagine them dancing when no one was there. When Roger Bacon held up for her admiration his model of the heavens, and cautioned her that true phibsophers could not conceive the causes of things unless their souls were free from sin, Margo tossed her head and turned away to mount the south staircase.

  It was almost impossible to reach the top, there was so much in the way. The repair of the museum was going forward, but it was far from finished. The north stairwell had been completed, along with the plaster walls and vaulting of the gallery arcade, and now the bricklayers were erecting metal scaffolding over the south stairwell.

  Margo worked her way up the steps, dodging past the workmen, who politely moved aside. There were more of them in the corridor above, busily taking scaffolding apart. As she picked Jier way past them, two men gathered up the ends of the plastic tarpaulin that had been protecting the railings and the floor from driblets of plaster. They were holding it like a sheet, folding it over and walking together to join the two ends—when there was a crash of breaking glass.

  Margo skipped to one side. “What was that?” she said sharply, as one of the men stepped back.

  “Bloody hell,” he said, “I didn’t know there was bottles under there. Jesus.”

  His colleague lifted the blue tarp out of the way, and together they surveyed the damage. Dozens of jars were lined up on the floor. Some were rolling, colliding, knocking down others. One jar lay in a smash of broken glass, its clotted contents leaking out in a dark puddle.

  “God!” said Margo, recoiling.

  The workman who had kicked the broken jar appealed to her: “I didn’t know they was here, honest. There wasn’t any here, I swear, when I put down the tarps. No way they could have been here. I’m sorry I busted one, but how was I to know?”

  “Don’t look at me,” said Margo, shuddering, staring at the dark jars. They were like the grisly bottles in the Invertebrate Spiri
t Store, the bottled squid and the jars of embryos, and she wanted nothing to do with them at all.

  CHAPTER 17

  We will now turn to the characteristic symptoms of Rage. Under this powerful emotion the … face reddens, or it becomes purple from the impeded return of the blood, or may turn deadly pale.

  Charles Darwin,

  The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals

  Mark Soffit existed in a globe of rage.

  For one thing, he was disappointed in his Oxford living quarters. Back in the United States he had imagined elegant rooms off a private staircase in some medieval tower. But when he arrived in the city and took a cab to Wolfson, he was chagrined to discover that it was not one of the ancient colleges clustered around the Broad and the High. Unlike Balliol, Magdalen, and Christ Church, it had not nurtured famous men of British history. In fact it had been founded only thirty years ago, and it was in North Oxford, way the hell and gone out of the center of town. It was a graduate college with an emphasis on the natural sciences, which explained why the fools had put him there.

  Mark’s room was not on a private stair. It was a narrow cubicle on a long corridor. Most of the other members of the college were clever Hindus or sober Chinese or dark-skinned Africans from Senegal. The only other white man on his corridor was Arnie Cohen, another American, your archetypical nerd, a skinny Jew from New York City with a buckled briefcase. And Christ, he was another Rhodes scholar!

  Cohen had tried to cozy up to Mark, but Mark had cut him off, nipping an embarrassing friendship in the bud (along with the opportunity to know a future Chief Justice of the Supreme Court).

  Now Mark entered the museum for a conference with his tutor, Hal Shaw. He supposed he should be grateful to Dr. Shaw for taking him on, but his failure to become the pupil of William Dubchick still rankled. Mark did not say to himself that he had soured his own chances. His memory had a way of developing blisters over pricks to his vanity.

  The core of his problem was his inability to lose himself in anything. His selfhood clung to his consciousness with sharp claws. Here I am, Mark Soffit, Rhodes scholar, walking down the High Street. This is me, Mark Soffit, Rhodes scholar, entering the Oxford University Museum.

  Below lay a wincing misery. They don’t know me. They don’t like me. I’ve got to show them.

  Gloomily now he climbed the south stairs, edging angrily past the scaffolding, failing to notice the active beehive in the window, although it was one of the museum’s most interesting exhibits, ignoring the display of beetles at the top of the stairs.

  He also failed to notice the jars on the floor of the corridor, although in striding past them he crunched a piece of broken glass under his foot. God, you couldn’t even walk around this place in safety.

  Homer’s first lecture was scheduled for the afternoon, but he dropped into the museum in the morning in a state of nervous anticipation. What if it was a flop? What if everybody coughed and walked out in the middle? The Oxford career of Homer Noodlehead Kelly would be a failure. People back home would hear about it and sneer at the colleague who muffed his chance abroad.

  A flood of children poured into the courtyard. The soft roar of their voices ricocheted from every surface. Homer looked at them, relieved to get his mind off himself. They were dark-skinned children, eager and energetic. A couple of mothers were with them, and a tall blond man in a clerical collar. Homer recognized Freddy Dubchick’s clergyman boyfriend.

  He watched as the young man tried to get the children’s attention. They were making too much noise. The hum of their voices obliterated everything but an occasional phrase—God’s world—this proof of His creative power. Well, good for Freddy’s boyfriend. Somehow he was managing to unite science and theology, and that was no easy task, as Homer knew to his sorrow. He had spent a lifetime trying to blend into a single whole the same gigantic incommensurate things.

  Soon another group of children thronged into the courtyard. Now the two sets of overlapping voices mounted until they were a vast soft echoing, as though the building were a cave. The children swarmed past the fossil bones to gaze at the gray seal and the horny heads of the rhinoceroses and the gigantic spider crab. Would they notice the stone scientists on their pedestals?

  They did not. If the golden statues had been placed there by the founders of the museum as an inspiration to the young, the spell wasn’t working, at least not on these children.

  It worked on Homer. He liked the stony presences. He especially liked the brooding figure of Charles Darwin, looking down in melancholy wonder at the coelacanth below him in its glass case. The carved stone image might have been the living man himself, the author of the books Homer was reading with such awe. The struggle for existence was occupying the two of them now, Charles Darwin and Homer Kelly—the flies in Paraguay that laid their eggs in the navels of cattle, which checked the cattle’s increase, which protected the vegetation from overgrazing, which led to the increase of insects, and therefore to more insectivorous birds, which protected the cattle in their turn. It was battle within battle, horrifying and majestic. It was the truth in all its fierce beauty.

  “Oh, there you are, Dr. Kelly.” Hal Shaw emerged from an aisle between two rows of display cases, accompanied by a sullen-looking student. Homer remembered the student from the reception. He was the Rhodes scholar who had been so eager to find Professor Dubchick.

  Hal was glad to interrupt his tutorial session with Mark Soffit. He had brought him down to the exhibits in the courtyard to point out some really basic things about which the guy seemed oddly ignorant. “The legs of the isopods, you see, are less specialized. Look at the decapods. Do you see the difference?”

  “Tell me about it,” said Mark, gruffly sarcastic.

  William Dubchick left his office and groped his way into the hall. His glasses were askew on his nose, and he couldn’t see a thing. He had made another attempt at fixing them with tape, but the temple pieces became unhinged at once. Everything was out of focus. He was barely conscious of dark objects on the floor of the corridor, but he managed to stumble around them and squeeze past the scaffolding on the stairs.

  On the ground floor, peering into the brilliant sunlight, William made out a group of people at the other end of the courtyard. One of them was Homer Kelly.

  He was anxious to speak to Kelly, to thank him, to apologize for his daughter, and he called out, “Oh, Dr. Kelly,” and started blindly forward, stepping carefully over an obstacle that reared up in his way.

  But the obstacle was only the shadow of the collection box. He did not see the box itself. Stumbling into it, he lost his balance and hit the floor very hard.

  Homer Kelly, Mark Soffit and Hal Shaw saw his strange high step, and then his fall. All three ran across the courtyard to help the old man get to his feet.

  As they ran, Mark murmured to Hal, “Did you see that? He’s going senile.”

  “No, no,” said Hal, hoping with all his heart that it wasn’t true.

  CHAPTER 18

  I mark this day with a white stone.

  Charles Dodgson

  So it was Helen Farfrae rather than William Dubchick who noticed the significance of the jars on the floor of the corridor outside the Zoology Office. She came in late and rushed upstairs, scrambling past the scaffolding, saying a breathless good morning to the men mortaring bricks high above her on the wooden platform. Then she stopped short in the gallery corridor and stared at the jars. One of the workmen was sweeping the mess of glass and blackened contents to one side.

  Helen was instantly alert. “What happened? Where did all these jars come from?”

  “I’m sorry, missus. It was my fault it broke. I didn’t know there was anything under the tarp.”

  “Under the tarp! You mean all these jars were under the tarpaulin?”

  “They weren’t here when I put the tarp down. This very same tarp.”

  “But who—?” Helen stared at the jars, then reached down slowly to pick one up by the edge of it
s sealed lid. She read the label aloud, “Griskin of Pork.”

  “Right,” said the workman. “It’s a lot of preserves. My grandmother, she used to put things up. But this stuff, it’s pressed tongue and stuffed pheasant, weird stuff like that. Somebody’s idea of a joke, dumping them here. Don’t worry, we’ll have them out of your way in a jiffy. Frank’ll be up with a bunch of boxes.”

  “It sounds like an old cookery book.” Helen took the jar to the railing and held it to the light. Turning it carefully to examine the dim contents, she shook her head. “This isn’t griskin of pork.”

  At that moment Frank appeared, carrying a couple of cardboard cartons. “It’s okay, love,” he said to Helen. “We’ll pack these right up and get ’em out of your way.”

  Helen looked at Frank with flashing eyes. “No, no, I don’t want them out of my way. For God’s sake, don’t throw them away. Here, I’ll tell you what to do. Pack them in the boxes very carefully. Hold the jars by the edges, like this, do you see? And bring them into my office, this office right here.” Swiftly she unlocked the office door, then turned back and said eagerly, “Oh, and don’t throw away the broken one. Wait, I’ll get you a container to put it in. Save all the pieces. Save the contents too, if you can, that black stuff in the corner.”

  Homer Kelly was dithering with stage fright. He whined aloud as he dressed for his first lecture. “The idea of somebody from a barbaric provincial institution trying to enlighten a bunch of highly educated British undergraduates, my God, how did I get myself into this?”

  Mary looked up from the Oxford map she had bought at Blackwell’s. “A barbaric provincial institution—you mean Harvard University?”