Mr Darwin's Shooter

by Roger McDonald

  MacCracken began injecting Covington’s voice into some of the propositions before him:

  Crossing in the wild gives only limited variety.

  That spoke of humility. The fierce little tribe of Covingtons clinging to steep ridges and guarding their cattle among the dingo dogs.

  Huge variety possible under domestication.

  That spoke of ambition—and a very present one too for a man of property and clumsy pretensions. Why else did the Covingtons of this world take their wild-bred daughters to Government House balls, and try getting them joined with officers who were, back through the Home Counties and spa towns of England, in turn bred for such conjunctions, being adapted to getting rich colonial wives?

  There was a trace of perfume in the room where MacCracken lay. Memory of a smile hovered at the edge of his understanding. Had the fleeting Theodora rested there, changed her clothes, sprawled on the imperial couch fanning her pale forehead while MacCracken hallucinated? By any reasonable standard of feeling he should be free of desire in his sickbed. But selection came in three forms, he read by now: artificial, natural, and then there was sexual, and the last-named was stronger than death.

  MacCracken skimmed. Leafed back. Darwin’s story was set far below man in the order of things, in the vegetable garden, the worm patch, the bird’s nest, the frog pond. South American landscape and buried, ancient bones played an important part. Yet although there were no men, as such, treated in these pages, hints of them were everywhere—in every potent old sire of various broods, in males’ dedication of life to the continuation of the line—in the draught stallion, the bull elephant, the oxen and the rhinoceros with its lowered horns and armour-plating. MacCracken lifted the sheets, peered down his trunk, and studied himself in the raw. He’d never quite thought of the penis ennobled as such, but there it was, ever-hopeful, the flagpole of life’s claim on itself.

  So what about MacCracken and his common urges under the sheets? When it came to the attributes of sexual selection, which was he—the peacock with the showiest feathers, the gamecock with the sharpest spur, the lion with the boldest mane? None of it fitted. He had only his impertinence, his rather lazy-faced intelligent features, to recommend him. That and a fullness of desire making him ardent to his sweethearts, the several women whose hearts he’d crossed in life.

  MacCracken understood what was being said against the comforting and the familiar in Darwin’s pages—about the seething profligacy of creation and its object to breed at any cost. Because only custom created nature in the sense of what was proper. Otherwise wildness was all.

  MacCracken allowed himself a whim of rapaciousness. Chasing Theodora through a grassy shade he caught her and had her on a muddy bank. The illusion was decently succeeded by a picture of them on the chair-deck of a steamer on the Italian lakes, smoking cigarillos and planning the architecture of a nursery wing.

  He dreamed a while longer, then put his aching head into the book again. It was a great challenge to understanding.

  Nature, wrote the hero of the Beagle Journal—now raised to greater heights—must have its universal laws and they were surely as obvious in the wild as they were in the stars. Because if in one place, why not in another? Laws were accepted in physics and astronomy, otherwise the arrangement of the heavens would collapse. An apple would never fall into your hands from a tree, nor a wave advance along a shore. The work of the wave and the seeding of the apple were well known to common sense. Lineal descent, likewise, was accepted in the farmyard and understood by the simplest of observers. Darwin wrote that he consulted farmers and breeders and they gave their thoughts. So domestication in Darwin’s thinking was a demonstration of longer-term processes in the wild. Selective breeders summoned into life whatever forms and moulds they pleased. They imagined a spotted dog or a heavy-haunched draughthorse and within a few animal generations brought them into being. When Darwin looked farther afield—into the shipload of specimens the Beagle brought back—he saw that naturalists needed to learn the same lesson. He ventured confidently to look back thousands upon thousands of generations. Therefore all naturalists should understand how species in a state of nature were descendants of other species—though few did, it seemed, and stayed rooted to the idea Darwin shared before he began his study, which was that God made each being fit for its station in the world, and allowed it to vary only in small ways, as the diet and climate of its station dictated. How magnificent though was Darwin’s idea of the wild, thought MacCracken, where forms were chalked out upon a wall of stupendous extent, not by men, but as it were by a greater force, most powerful, and utterly invisible except in effect.

  In such a way MacCracken sketched out his thoughts of Theodora.

  Now MacCracken was weary and let the volume slide from his fingers. His mind went to those green eyes again. Rested in them. Dreamed of attachment. How many shutter-exposures had his eidetic memory made as he lay stirring hazily, and Theodora took him in charge, leaning over him, expertly twitching him in the region of the zygomatic fossa, and so putting his jaw in place? A picture he retained was of her face turned half-away, chin slightly lifted, fiery hair freed and cascading, eyebrows memorably arched and somewhat thick, as if they underlined a style of thought. A sadness in her downturned mouth caused his heart to yield its independence absolutely. He believed it was for the simple reason that she was absent in that look, and he would never be able to reach her where she was, that his longing was found measureless in the very moment it began. Then he remembered. She had been carrying a lamp, holding it high to check the room on leaving. There she was, all of her—a small woman, well proportioned, intense in her fine-boned perfection, and youthful in looks although perhaps edging towards thirty years of age. Whatever, his heart went still.

  The optical impression revived with hallucinatory clarity, MacCracken took it forward in time, playing with it in his imagination. Nothing became impossible, then, and all was found. Theodora spread her patterned skirts. MacCracken placed his head in her lap. She stroked his hair, twisting a lock in her fingers and giving it a tug. She laughed, although he had no memory of her laugh at all. They smiled into each other’s eyes as they reclined on grass beside a fast-flowing brook. The stream was under Mount Monadnock, in New Hampshire, where he’d gone fishing as a boy. The glassiness, the twisting currents and ceaseless motion of the stream had always held him. His father flicked his rod upstream and MacCracken declined to join him, rather sulked, stressing an independence of being and a withholdingness in his nature.

  A rubble of shells and small stones lay under the flow. Nothing much seemed to happen as the torrent passed over, but then one of the pebbles or shells leapt, jerked, and changed position. Whole numbers of them gathered and piled, broke away, ran in pairs, bunches, and continued alone, or else were all gone and disappeared in a cloud of debris and mud as part of the stream-bottom went. Finally the water was clear again, and it seemed as if nothing had ever been any different. The sun shone, the dew glistened, and life was ready for whatever happened next.

  It was Mr Beskey in Rio, where Covington had first gone to find advantage in working up his ambitions, who sparked him to thinking of natural history as lucrative. Beskey spoke of names in Holland, Germany and France before selling him his insect collection in a broken box to use as a guide. But blow Covington down when he came to learn the rules from his Derbyshire gent—because half Darwin’s procedures broke such rules when they started together, and letters followed them from England complaining they hadn’t done it right; beetles mouldered in pill boxes; spirits leaked from jars; birds got mingled because the young master was confused between a lark, a pigeon, and a snipe—bewildered by which circle of creation or inosculation they matched. Covington was to overtake his employer in respect of a certain sense of order, and was often praised for it, too. Except his precision in the matter came to be the burden he carried through the world.

  Beskey had inspired Covington to go all out, to tackle the luxury trade, the amateur c
abinet, as well as to stroke the purse of serious scientific endeavour. Covington always remembered what was needed. Leadbeater’s taxi-dermy agency in London was one place to send; the Maison Verreaux in Paris another. The demand was for knowledgeable collecting, trained individuals, good shots and exacting shots. Covington had never fired a gun as yet, had only stared at one and carried another, and knew a toucan from a sparrow, a Brazilian lizard from a serpent, and that was about all. He was merely the essence of ambition, that day when Darwin took him on, pestering the gent on their bark and insinuating himself with him as hard as he could. Meantime he absorbed his tricks from Beskey:

  ‘Write down on card where you are, the time, the date, the place, and be full about it because it gives cachet to your find—and your client, be he never there himself, wishes to feel he were. And what if it is a new discovery? You may not know, but he shall be wild to prove it.’

  So the next step to the state Covington was in had been starting his own bird collection. In South America aged seventeen years he devised a way of shipping specimens out under his master’s nose. It was done through the services of a merchant’s house in Buenos Ayres, owned by a certain Mr Lumb. Covington knew how such businesses worked: if you wanted something smartly done, and little talked about, you went to the chief of clerks and made their friendship. Understand he was loyal, always, and would not consider undercutting what he was employed to do, and for fair wages besides—but sought private booty when there was room for it in a bird-basket, and gave his spirit every chance.

  Over the year they sailed south from Rio and La Plata to Tierra del Fuego, and then came back again making a zigzag survey of the coasts, their Beagle going like a diving duck at the wind and storm. It was the worst weather in the world when they made those forays, nosing away below the mirrored cove where Covington had travelled as a boy, in past Wollaston Island and Nassau Bay. Seas black, wind raw, timbers wet, faces pink, lips chapped, sails ripping, stays torn asunder. After sighting Cape Horn it took them three weeks to sail thirty miles. All were afraid of the vessel broaching-to, but their Capt was a full Christian and kept his faith.

  So at last they came into sheltered waters, where even if wind raged one hundred miles an hour in the outer roads the bay was never disturbed, trees hung over the water, and reflections were true. There they put Revd Matthews ashore with all his furniture and crockery and his civilised Fuegians. Covington stared at the one he had grabbed that time off Brazil and wondered what had struck him, because now that he was deep in employment his impulses were not so humorous any more, and Miss Basket was already getting her finery torn, her face poked with curiosity by her savage cousins, who hardly knew her, for she had forgotten most of their tongue. She was on her downward slide and Covington was on his up.

  After a short cruise they returned and took Revd Matthews off again lest his eyebrows and furze bush were all plucked out by reverted savages wielding mussel shells as snippers. The mission to the natives that had filled Capt’s thoughts for a very long time was a wreck. The Beagle sailed back to Patagonia and Monte Video like the Grand Old Duke of York a-wheeling and about-turning. Revd Matthews was not such a smart aleck around the deck any more and mostly stood in one position, clutching the lower ratlines, letting the spray flick on his face and his shoes fill with water.

  During a foray on land Covington was taught how to shoot. They took a walk in sandhills, looking for something to pot. Covington made a welter of loading the weapons, putting too much powder in one, selecting wrong-sized ball for another, and being fortunate when he fired that Mr Darwin wasn’t standing in front of him, because he let-off before he was ready, and scorched a hole in the air. Luckily the game was plentiful and not over-shy, and they walked on a bit over the low, featureless country, crested a rise and saw a flock of small deer, and so pulled down under the crest and readied themselves.

  ‘What did you say to get this work?’ Darwin quizzed.

  ‘That I was willing.’

  ‘Aye, that you were willing. You rubbed hard enough with that. But I mean with the guns, Covington, what did you boast to me, that you were a fine shot?’

  ‘I never told a lie.’

  ‘Then come out with it true.’

  ‘I said I had a way with guns.’

  ‘Well, was that a lie?’

  ‘Not if you consider the truth of it now.’

  ‘I am lost. What is the truth of it now?’

  ‘You are with me and correcting my mistakes,’ Covington sulked.

  ‘So I was to be your opening and your way with guns?’

  ‘I think you are,’ Covington nodded, risking his new employment with a flash of brazen confidence. He gave his powder horn a tip. Powder ran down the side of the barrel and Darwin berated him. It was the wrong sort. A finer powder was better with a ball the size they needed, as its faster action threw the ball farther. Every deliberate clumsiness Covington made, Darwin came back at him with a correction and an instruction. The rags Covington used as wads, to seal over the top of the shot, Darwin said were contemptible. They showed inferior musketry and many on the ship could have put him right, but he was too proud to ask. (In fact he had asked John Phipps and had not got very far, because given his choice Phipps never used guns but took to nets and snares, lime twigs and bells, and amused the ship’s company by carrying a songbird on his shoulder.) Darwin would never use rags, cotton or tow as others did, because they were tinder-like and might leave a spark in the barrel. Crumbled leaves or grass would answer at a pinch. Darwin himself had occasionally, in a desperate hurry, loaded and killed without any wadding.

  Thus prepared they sneaked to the top of the rise again, and the deer were even closer than before, complacently ripping at the coarse herbage. But in a moment they took fright, and Darwin swung his rifle with them and brought the leading buck down to its knees. Covington ran out and cut its throat. Darwin smiled to see him topping the rise like an ancient Briton returning with the kill, noble in forest and noble in glen, as he said, the buck slung around his neck—a vision of undaunted perseverance and tamed savagery in the service of civilisation. Back at the beach Covington confidently skinned the deer, butchery being a skill he had in plenty, chopped it into portions, and it was cooked on a fire of grass and weeds, dry stalks, sea-wrack and a few planks washed from the dim ocean.

  Before they returned to the Beagle Covington took the guns out again, and potted a hare weighing twenty pounds. Taking details for the Game Book, Mr Wickham was snide with him, affecting to believe a sailor paid over to a gent was no loss to a ship’s company at all—even though a feast was made of the meat and the gun room declared it the best tasting ever. Capt had himself a new clerk to make his weather entries, a Mr Hellyer, and boasted he was the neatest hand the bark had known and a determined amateur of natural history as well, a bird man par excellence. This Covington knew for a hurtful stab. Mr Hellyer looked as if he hardly knew what a bird man was but would make himself one if that is what it took to win a captain’s heart. He could not even swim.

  From then on the Beagle was no longer Covington’s sworn bark by Capt’s own decree. Covington was without duties aboard her save as they related to supplying his gent with his needs. When they were on the water, riding the waves—shifting to their next anchorage and survey place— it was all examining, pickling, packing, labelling and stowing. When that was done it was sewing buttons on shirts, drying clothes and damp papers on the coals, filling lamps with oil, cleaning, tidying, killing cockroaches and lice, rearranging books and looking into them when the chance was given, and getting a mite of intelligence sparked. Covington’s fine copperplate was hungry for words. No matter how tired he was at the end of the day he turned to a task that was to continue, then, into the unseeable future—the copying-out of Darwin’s notebooks, journals and important letters.

  Riding the pampas with this man he called his Don C.D. he was not so bound to set duty. Always letting his horse go a little ahead. Always wanting to do just a little bette
r than the one who taught him most of what he knew. Fashioning a noose from the stem of an ostrich feather and riding after a partridge. Galloping around in tight circles gaucho-style until the partridge looked at him stupefied and allowed itself to be caught. Such displays of spirits leaving the other one cold—the young naturalist looking overlarge on his pony, dropping his chin to his vest, lifting his eyes and studying the horizon more intently and his nag’s ears all at once.

  Have you quite finished? Let us press on.

  Around the camp fire Darwin was often wordless in the face of Covington’s cheeriness. He was cursed by an inability to unbend—to make idle observations when needed, as the riffraff did, oiling their existence with gabble. Nothing would come out, and so a willing boy made the running with ease—‘Would they have fine weather tomorrow?’ ‘Would the ship return on time?’ ‘Are they guanacos looking at us from the dark?’—a patter of nervous hooves—‘Aye, guanacos—they ain’t Indians at all.’

  Darwin’s lack of effort dinned in his ears. ‘I daresay we should.’ ‘I suppose it must.’ ‘There are no Indians nearby, I have it on authority of the posta commander.’

  Why the gross prickliness with Covington a Darwin would be hard-put to say. It was akin to bullying and must be a reflex of some kind because it defied the will and excited peripheral nerves. Was murder at the same root of instinct? Undoubtedly. He would later use such words. But he would have to be honest some time, spitting out what it was. Servant or no, he didn’t quite like him. It was enough to make the angels weep.