by Lori Baker
Marie-Louise can say only one thing about this daughter who runs wild, ripping all the curling papers out of her hair, crawling in the mud beneath the shrubbery looking for worms, who spends all her time in the garden playing “camels and tigers” with the Mongolian servant, Dash—carried round and round, dizzyingly, on those exotic brown shoulders:
Qu’est-ce qu’un sauvage!
What else can she say? It’s true: my mother is a savage. And she is lost to Marie-Louise: sometimes it is impossible to get back that which has been taken. It recedes, is ever out of reach, a blossom on a branch that bends infinitely away, a bird retreating to a higher and higher perch; pursue it too sharply, and it will fly.
• • •
But Clotilde has her wish now. At last she will travel with her Papa.
They met at sea, they were at sea, they parted by sea. Launched now, on a roundelay all their own.
This, though, is separate from the launching of the Narcissus. Weeks yet before that will sail. Not until autumn. Cold winds will blow. For now: there she lies, at anchor on the Thames. A small, seaworthy vessel, restless perhaps, listing slightly at the bows. Preparations come first. Where or what she has been before, unknown; nor does it matter. Felix Girard will fit her to his own specifications, using Harry Ellis’s money. She will be stripped down, recaulked, refitted. Two scientific laboratories and a naturalist’s workroom are installed on board. It will all be there all right, everything they need—the benches and stools, the nets, specimen jars, calipers, scalpels, hammers, brushes, vials, tweezers, magnifying glasses, microscopes, beakers of formaldehyde, jars of ether—the entire clanking, juddering, swaying machinery of science, all this is provided at the museum’s expense, and an accountant, too, pale-mustached MacDowell, with his Ah yes, just so, just so, indeed, the lone and constant companion of their departure—see him noting it all in his book of accounts, a book as thick with papers and as carefully kept as the devil’s own? Ah yes, just so. The museum is concerned for its property: concerned, but not interested. MacDowell’s shrug will be sufficient to see them off; then they’ll know themselves truly disowned.
• • •
The Narcissus is growing heavy in the oily, black water. Her belly is full of ballast: not just the weight of science but also of potatoes, salt beef, biscuits, bread and onions, cabbages and beans, pickles, tobacco, bolts of cloth, soap, bottles of bitter and of claret, barrels of water, all that’s needed to keep body and soul together at sea. There is a floating farm as well, squealing piglets, chickens, a goat, these are the ill-fortuned charges of the cook. I think it will not go well with them, but we’ll see, we’ll see, it’s a capricious thing, that wheel.
Just before sunrise on a cold October morning the tugs will take her off: the Narcissus sliding out low and gravid from between the tarry hulls of her neighbors, sleek wayfarers lately returned or shortly bound for Singapore, Ceylon, Bombay, black bellies looming threateningly close, then sliding back into a silent oblivion of fog. The Owen family’s latest fortune in cloves no doubt lies somewhere among them, somewhere close, unseen. And yet.
No room, now, for second thoughts.
The sun a milky sphere, a smudge, upon a horizon of intractable grey.
Now they are sails merely, dwindling down the Thames.
That’s it, then.
My father is at the rail, small ambiguous figure, a hieroglyph above the waves. Harry Owen stands beside him.
That’s it, my father says, as if some doubt about the reality of the matter has been dispelled by the sudden rush of water beneath their bows.
He nods with a strange, slow gravity, a serious question having been answered, then turning gently away from his companion, bends stiffly at the waist, as if bowing to the river—offering it his best regards—and vomits, violently, over the side.
As he does, a voice rings out:
Papa, look! Mr. Dell’oro is sick already—and we haven’t even reached the sea! We’re only in the river! Is it not terrible, Papa? Will he not suffer horribly when we really do reach the sea? I fear he will be very miserable, Papa, will he not?
I cannot fault my mother on her timing, it is impeccable; for, of course, it is she, who else? Dressed in a thick shawl of blue and gold, with her hands plunged deep into a furry muff, cheeks reddened by the raw wind off the river, blond hair disarranged, she looks, as she approaches, like a picturesque detail from a Scandinavian mural: Ice Skaters on the River Lule, or something like that.
At the sight of her my father blanches again, offers himself once more to the Thames, and once again is sick.
Such an inauspicious beginning.
Felix Girard, more ursine than ever in his greatcoat with the collar raised up stiff around the back of his neck, like hackles, seeing Leo Dell’oro curled up against the rail, growls, He is a poor creature, Tildy! A poor weak-chested creature! A creature like this will take some time to develop sea legs, petite! Have patience! Be merciful! You must not poke fun!
Yes, Papa. I’m terribly sorry, Papa.
• • •
She’s brilliant, is she not? And brilliantly unfair, because my father isn’t seasick, he’s hung over. Harry Owen knows it, of course, but is too much of a gentleman to say. He was there the night before, on the eve of the embarking, saw my father, drunk, wavering up the Embankment, heard the rat-a-tat-tat of his ill-fitting new shoes, Leo Dell’oro bobbing rapidly from one to the next sickly pool of lamplight, such an uncanny figure in that dapper dark suit, running from lamp to lamp with the herky-jerk movement, like one of those automata of which the French are so fond, until suddenly he pitched sideways, toward the oily water, and disappeared.
A dangerous business this. There are cutthroats and thieves among the bushes.
There he lay, limbs rigid, quivering slightly, bright eyes staring fixedly ahead at nothing—completely absent. Being a gentleman, Harry Owen has thought no more about what he saw: that husk of my father, essence missing. Carapace only. Impolitic among strangers. Even among friends. From this Harry Owen has averted his memory; and taking the little artist back to Half Moon Street to recover, was relieved to find the carapace retenanted in the morning, after a night in the spare bedroom. Having revived it further with strong coffee, he said nothing. It is unclear if my father remembers anything of this.
• • •
It’s just as well, probably, that my mother knows nothing of it. The less material she has to work with, the better. And anyway, she’s about to be distracted: Hugh Blackstone has just discovered her spinet, and is shouting at the top of his voice for his men to Put the damnable object over the side—before I do it myself!
This handsome instrument, long-legged rosewood gazelle, purchased for Clotilde by Felix Girard, in Paris, is very important to her; though it is true, perhaps, that the ocean is an improper place for a spinet. Nonetheless, the evening concerts in her stateroom will be much enjoyed. “Wär’ ich so klein wie Schnecken,” that is what she will sing, with considerable skill and grace, as the Narcissus bucks and rolls upon unquiet seas; and later, too, as it idles under the stars in that endlessly still, tropical night. There she will be, Felix Girard on the bench beside her, gently turning, with his great bearlike paw, the pages of her music—
• • •
But this not yet. Not yet.
• • •
Hugh Blackstone disapproves. Even as he attends those concerts (crouching, stiff backed, in the passage just outside her door, frowning)—even as he listens, almost, it seems, against his will—he will disapprove. And now four of his men (probably the same four my mother bribed to put the spinet on board) have got the instrument up, forelegs resting on the rail, ready to heave it over, even as Felix Girard, furiously shouting Touch not the darling piano, Blackstone, you stinking bugger!, makes his way furiously amidships, and rescues it.
This will buy my father some time, he’ll be forgotten for a while, among the shouting, the tears; it won’t be until much later, when they’ve all sat down
to eat, that my mother will suddenly remember her other, unfinished work, and cry, Are you quite thoroughly done being sick, Mr. Dell’oro? Mr. Dell’oro has suffered most horribly from mal de mer, has he not, Papa? And we are still only in the river!
Eyes will be averted from this, focus placed instead on the uneasy cantering of the silver tureen from the center of the table to its edge and back, soup stirred by the waves. Only John McIntyre, the Scots ornithologist, will smirk, and even he only from behind his monocle; nonetheless, my father, with those few words, will be put completely off his meal.
• • •
Why does she do it? Who knows why anybody does anything. She doesn’t know why herself.
I think it is simply, instinctively, her way of being in love. The equivalent, emotionally speaking, of the love bite of the lioness. Once he is in the teeth of it, she must tear him.
It’s in her nature.
And there’s something else, too. Something in that single-minded adoration of her Papa, Felix Girard, that fights to preserve itself despite whatever else she might feel.
She’s a difficult woman, my mother. Delectable, but difficult.
• • •
Leo feels it, though he will pretend otherwise.
• • •
Here he is, below deck, tucked up in his narrow berth, in the dark down there with a fragment of candle stuck to the wall, writing. It’s a letter, a letter home, to his sister, Anna, I think.
There are memories in this.
They two curled up together in the same bed in the narrow house on Henrietta Street, warm little animals, the two of them, smelling each other’s smells, feeling each other’s little movements, kicking, elbowing, jostling, fighting each other for everything in that poor house. Now he crouches alone over his paper and writes. She like a part of him, recently abstracted. Darker of the dark twins, indulgent goddess of seventeen, striding up the Scaur in a dismal early twilight. Spit of snow off the sea. Ancient monster undulating, darkly. Her hair flashing out behind her like wings as she walks, lustrous even in this dull light. What can he say? Dear Anna. I can’t imagine this really. What, after all, is there to say about this, all this, his situation? Dear Anna. I find myself at sea. He pictures her back in Whitby, hanging out the washing. The cobbled yard there. The dingy smallclothes dangling from the wooden pegs. The slippery edge of the cesspit, acrid sweet smell of night soils, himself perched at the edge, about to heave the bucket in. Hsst, Leo! Hsst! And the workshop where his father carves jet. Him, too, once upon a time. Not so long ago. Dark things, black things, memento mori. These are home. The cliffs at Whitby are lined with dark things, entire forests embedded blackly in stone, and monsters, too, from another time. My father left there early in the morning, never said goodbye. He had his reasons, I suppose. The sea spread out before him as he descended Henrietta Street in the direction of the harbor. Dear Anna. I never said goodbye.
Dear Anna. She cuts me so, with those claws of hers.
No: he writes a great deal, but he would not write that. Some things he cannot confide.
Shortly Harry Owen comes down to make sure Clotilde’s talk hasn’t bothered Leo too much. What? What did she say? I honestly didn’t hear her, Harry, so of course I don’t mind it, whatever it was—blinking his luminous eyes, neck a pale stalk rising out of the stiff collar he insists on wearing even here as he sinks deeper into the berth, draws the thin, scratchy blanket up around him. Safe, in this shuddering, groaning cocoon.
Water rushing darkly just behind his head.
Mustn’t think about that, though.
Think instead of earthier dreads, the small scutterings beneath, rattling insinuation of vermin. Thorax, wing, carapace, tail. Seek comfort in the quivering whisker. This is where the gnawing begins in earnest.
It is not unusual for a single word from my mother to unman him completely.
Waves without, waves within.
In time he will cultivate other safe places. Up in the crow’s nest, or on the mainmast, on fair days. Down below, in the laboratories, where the specimens are stored. He will spend hours there, organizing the sarcophagus, sketching its contents. And time, too, beneath the tarp, or in the smallboat stored amidships—that is safe. Or crouching among the illfated charges of the cook, finding refuge among their warm, sweet, doomed breaths and the manure that repels Clotilde’s fastidious boot. As things progress he will grow fond of the railings aft, where, every night at midnight, once they have reached the warm latitudes, he will stand quietly watching Harry Owen smoke, both of them observing the miraculous phosphorescence of the million small floating animals plowed up astern by the rudder—the brilliant green sparks that come and go, rise up out of nowhere in a milky-green froth, then subside again, whirling away into watery oblivion.
• • •
Time is heavy on their hands. It’s an object that must be carried through one day, into the next, into the next. In all directions ocean, that terrible monotonous beauty. Even the birds disappear. Then they are really alone, at sea.
• • •
That will be me, too, soon enough.
• • •
They met at sea, they were at sea, they parted by sea.
• • •
No. I’m getting ahead of myself again. In retrospect there is such a sense of inevitability. But they don’t know that.
• • •
And so: even the birds disappear, and then they are really alone, at sea. Floating in all that vastness like a smut in a saucer. Someone wise has said, an ocean voyage consists of nothing more and nothing less than hours of tedium, punctuated by moments of terror, and this, it seems, is true. For every moment they spend with their hearts in their mouths—surrounded by crashing crockery, tumbling luggage, a chaos of spilled beakers and rolling funnels and shattering vials, science itself upended, papers loosed from beneath their weights, whirling like moths—and themselves as well, whirled around, whirled around, as the Narcissus hops and bucks and spins upon the waves—they will spend a hundred more languishing idly in their berths, perishing of boredom, pressed close by the rushing blackness of the sea.
It is very close, that sea. It is just there, on the other side of that wooden hull, which, after all, is a membrane merely, a flimsy man-made thing, a floating illusion, porous as a sieve. Why else are Blackstone’s men constantly below, manning the pumps? So as to stop them slipping through, into all that cold, black water.
Harry and Leo sleep poorly in the cabin they share, inches away from all that cold blackness and the million unseen, uncomprehended lives lived within it. They lie awake for hours sometimes, the two of them, not speaking, each assuming the other is asleep, listening to the chuckling rush of the water—then Harry Owen looks up, sees, in the shifting gloom, the tiny luminescence of Leo Dell’oro’s candle, suddenly lit in the opposite berth. What’s that noise, Harry? Did you hear it? That noise—that’s it—that one, there! But there are so many noises. The Narcissus is never quiet. There is a constant groaning, rending, wood upon wood, bone upon bone, strange thuds, thumps; it vibrates, deeply—shudders—from deep within the fragile shell separating them, just barely, from the sea.
’Twas just the timbers settling. That was the night watch, throwing down a rope. It’s just the rain on the quarterdeck—
They paddle desperately, together, trying to keep the flimsy illusion afloat.
• • •
It’s easier, for some. John McIntyre and Felix Girard, for example, are seasoned travelers, drawn violently together by the magnetism of a strong mutual dislike. It is not unusual to find them, in the saloon, at any time of day or night, regardless the weather, angrily disputing the nomenclature of the Satyridae, while all around them plates and saucers are borne floorward by the violence of the waves. My mother, in the same weather, may be found on deck, hugging her shawl around her, trying to tease the sailors into teaching her how to tie a granny knot, or a carrick bend, or a Matthew Walker. Under—around—and up—!
&nbs
p; For she is fearless, mother mine.
But others are suffering. Linus Starling, Felix Girard’s new assistant, becomes, from the moment of departure, a strange, enigmatic beast, remaining below deck, working at who knows what in Girard’s laboratory, perhaps at nothing at all. Here he is: see the glint of his glasses in the swaying lamplight as he staggers along the dim, rocking passage between the cabins and the scientific workrooms. There is a sudden buckling heave; all at once he is thrown violently against Harry Owen, who is creeping along uncertainly in the opposite direction in that narrow, pungent space; lapels gripped for support, obsequious smile a pale, smudged, rat’s grimace in the briny darkness, his Begging your pardon, professor, a pathetic squeak, neatly swallowed up by the ferocity of the gale. Then quickly they separate, the dance has ended, Starling moves past with a strange, unnerving, crabbed motion, clinging once again to the walls: he is maddened by mal de mer, and will not be seen above deck until the Narcissus reaches the calmer waters of the tropics.
There is something unsavory about this fellow. My father dislikes and distrusts him, though without knowing why. In this, the restless ocean, the cat’s paw, not now at play but in earnest, is his ally. Containing that which is best contained. Though this cannot last forever. Eventually, hidden things emerge.
• • •
My father has proven a tolerable sailor. Somehow his small, compact form is an advantage at sea: lower center of gravity. There is, though, so little for him to do, during the long hours of rotten weather. He is unoccupied; but then, they all are. And so he sketches, furtively. What is he drawing? This I cannot say. I can see him, though, hunched over the pad of paper that is his constant companion, the gentle, self-referential movement of the pencil, this is how he comforts himself: a bulwark against all that blue and green and grey. He combats infinity with a pencil point. Or tries to. At a table in the workroom, or maybe in the saloon. Approach and he pulls the sketch pad close, into his body, or leans over, shields it in the crook of his arm. Such a furtive creature. What has he got to hide? He is nineteen at most, perhaps twenty. Too young yet to have a history. When the others talk he is quiet. He comes from Whitby, he has told them that much. The city that stinks of rendered blubber. Carved out of it. Ships in the harbor heavy with paper and ambergris, cramped little whitewashed houses creeping tenaciously up their crack in the cliff, up toward the wrecked medieval abbey that reigns over all. The breakwater with its two lights. And the Scaur, which passes there for a shore, a bed rather of stone and wrack, the grim spine of the earth exposed—laid bare, like bone at the stroke of a cleaver, by the sudden ebbing of the tide. My father broke his boots on it as a boy, on that humped black spine of rock in which fossils are embedded, ammonites in pyrite, garnet, amethyst. Snake-stones, they call them: St. Hilda’s work. Old things, interesting things, things that have been lost; buried things, pushing up like unstoppable rebellion from beneath cracked and compromised ribs of bedrock. A repository of the living and the dead.