by Lucy Atkins
Olivia’s neck and chest have turned blotchy. If she’d Googled me as Ballard, at the time, which she must have, she would have found academic papers in which I am cited as D.V. P. My zoology department profile picture was a grainy shot of me squatting in a hat, field jacket and khakis next to a Land Rover, entirely genderless. I have always hated being photographed and avoided it whenever possible, so there are probably few images of me out there. My university profile was written in the first person, I have never been on social media and I certainly do not have a website. If Olivia had spotted conference pictures it would have been very easy to mistake my gender. I possibly do look a little bit masculine.
I wear slacks, always have, and I’ve kept my hair like this since the seventies, when Sweetman was asking me to babysit and make the tea. I remember exactly what triggered me to cut it off. Her father was leading a visiting American scientist through the lab and I heard him apologize for ‘all the women’, adding, ‘at least they’re decorative’. The only women at the time were me and my lab assistant. I went into Brighton and had my hair cropped that afternoon. I don’t think I look like a man, as such, but people see what they expect to see. So if you’re looking for a male scientist you’ll probably see one.
She is gaping at me, white-faced and visibly shaken. I honestly cannot fathom why she has not worked this out before, particularly when she went into my office. But she always was too preoccupied to notice what was right beneath her nose. It is possible that in all this time she has never really looked at me properly.
When she walked into the museum that day, I was braced for recognition. It was always a gamble. I knew that our first meeting would be the make-or-break test. If she hadn’t cut off from the whole sorry business, as she said she would in that letter – which I stole from Darren’s in-tray – she would have recognized me that day and my endeavour would have failed before it even began. Two years of hard work would have come to nothing.
But she did what she said she would in her letter, she cut off. She focused wholly on her own life instead. She was awarded her UCL professorship and she built up the media career that was just beginning to take off at that time. I suppose she was too busy to further look into, or obsess on, the sad and twisted professor who had tried but failed to ruin her father’s name.
There was not the slightest glimmer of recognition on her face in the museum that first day. She had absolutely no idea who I was.
I prod at the yellow crumbs along the knife blade. ‘By insisting your father could not have been wrong, by sending in his original photo of the fossil and urging them to investigate, you had a devastating impact on my life, you know. I lost absolutely everything.’
‘I had a devastating impact?’ Her cheeks have gone a greenish hue beneath the make-up. I’m actually slightly worried that she might collapse. ‘You did this to yourself, Vivian.’
She has her fingers pressed against her temples and every so often she shivers, quite violently. It is very cold without the heating and I’m getting worried about her. She looks really odd. ‘Are you all right, Olivia? Are you cold? Why don’t you put that blanket over your shoulders?’
‘You’re insane,’ she whispers.
I harden then, and wave her letter at her. ‘I particularly like “Integrity is everything”.’
‘This is revenge?’
‘Actually, no, this was an experiment. I set out to prove, to myself as much as to you, that you’d do the same if the tables were turned. You’d be prepared to lie and defraud the public if everything you’d worked for all your life – your home, your lifestyle, your career, your identity, your status – was at stake. Most of us would, wouldn’t we?’
She hugs herself with both arms and shakes her head, whether in disbelief or denial I do not know.
‘It did get rather out of hand,’ I concede. ‘I mean, I had no idea you’d have ambitions to write a biography. I thought you’d publish a paper about the diary and then I’d tell you the truth. You’d beg me not to expose you, thereby demonstrating that all your talk of integrity is nonsense. You’d see you were no better than me. I was angry, I admit it. It’s possible that I wasn’t very well at the time.’
‘You aren’t well now, Vivian!’
I wave this away; it is too easy, too dull, for her to dismiss me as mad. ‘You never once asked yourself why someone like me, who’d produced impeccable research for decades, would go to such lengths to fabricate data and publish it in Nature.’
‘You hated my father? You were jealous of him?’
‘Hate is a strong word and I certainly wasn’t jealous. Your father was my mentor, he was my teacher.’
She stares at me with round eyes.
‘I was his graduate student in the eighties, didn’t you realize that? I do have a few reasons to be upset with him, in fact.’
I find that I do not have the heart, even now, to tell her the full truth about her father. She is so enamoured with his memory, and his massive status matters so deeply to her, it would destroy her to know the truth. So, instead, I share some of my more minor gripes. ‘Your father was a sexist man. He gave me less space than the male graduates in the lab and fewer resources. He once told me he didn’t want to give me as much time as the men because I’d only leave to get married.’
‘Now I know this is rubbish! He was never sexist!’ Her eyes flash, always ready to defend the Goliath.
‘Well, they were different times of course, the early eighties, but I’m afraid you’re wrong about that. He even had me babysit you once. Don’t look so appalled. You Sweetmans have rather a habit of getting me to look after your children, don’t you? I remember it very clearly, I wonder if you do? You must have been ten or eleven, I suppose. Your school was closed for a day, I think. There were five male scientists in the lab – and me. Your father walked up to my desk with you and told me to take you to the Palace Pier for an ice cream.’
Her eyelids flicker and I wonder whether she is dredging up a wispy memory of that day. She was a nervy, whiny child, used to getting her way, I suppose. She wanted to go on the helter-skelter but I wouldn’t let her. I was livid that I’d been put in this situation and I was never good with children. I seem to remember she cried a bit towards the end and demanded to be taken home.
I’m not sure whether it is the memory of Brighton Pier, or the idea that I once babysat her, or perhaps the realization that her sainted father was a male chauvinist pig, but she looks very distressed indeed now and I find that I don’t want to upset her any further.
I just want her to understand. I want her to know that while I may have allowed my compulsive tendencies to get the better of me, that while I may have got in over my head trying to prove a point, I am not a malevolent person. I just need her to understand why I did what I did.
‘Let’s go back to the question of why I fabricated that Nature paper in the first place,’ I say.
‘Yes, let’s. Why?’
‘Well, I was almost sixty and the department wanted to get rid of me. You can’t be the lone scientist in the lab nowadays. It’s all about income generation and public profile. There was enormous pressure on us to secure millions in research grants. We were meant to form international networks, accept plenaries and visiting lectureships. I really don’t have the patience or aptitude for any of those things. International travel upsets me and I’m a very poor collaborator. They wanted us all to be “media friendly” too – can you imagine? I can’t pretend to be something I’m not. I didn’t have the time or energy for it; I just wanted to get on with my research.
‘Which, by the way, was superlative. I always scored extremely highly on all their “impact factors” charts. I was internationally respected, doing very important ecological work, but that wasn’t enough for them. They started talking about early retirement. They began to make my life difficult, and I did think about going. Then I discovered that when I retired I’d get my pension, but everything else would be taken away from me: my college life, my space in th
e lab and, worst of all, my house. Apparently an Edwardian house in north Oxford is now worth a great deal of money. The college owned my house and they were going to take it back. My only hope of keeping it was to become a “name”. If I went out in a blaze of glory then they’d give me an emeritus professorship, they’d let me stay in my house and continue with my work and keep all my college privileges. I realized I was going to have to produce a piece of research with huge international repercussions, and as you know, that kind of thing – those moments of real career impact – only happen once in a lifetime, if at all.’
She is frowning deeply. ‘What? So you wrote a fraudulent paper debunking my father’s evolutionary theory in order to keep your house?’
When she puts it like that it does sound petty, if not a little insane. But she doesn’t understand what I’m trying to tell her, not really. ‘My routines – home, work, college life,’ I say. ‘Those things were vital to me. I’m not good at transitions and I’d lived in my house for over thirty years. It was my home, my place of safety, my refuge. It was a part of me. And college life – dining in Formal Hall, the cycles of the academic year – those things were my stabilizers. They protected me, they were my elytra—’
‘Your what?’
‘Never mind. My shelter, my security. They imposed order on what otherwise feels to me like dangerous chaos. It’s hard to overstate how important these things were to me. My home mattered as much to me as your children matter to you.’
‘Oh, I very much doubt that!’ She balls her fists on the table and her eyeballs strain in her head. ‘You did a really heinous thing, Vivian. You must have spent God knows how many months creating a faked amber specimen to photograph so you could “debunk” my father’s life work and legacy. You didn’t care what that would do to me or anyone else who loved him. And now you’re trying to destroy me too!’
‘But I’m not.’ I tighten my grip on the knife. ‘I told you. This – you, the diary – I just wanted to show you that you aren’t as morally impeccable as you think you are. You and I are the same, really.’
‘We so aren’t, Vivian!’ Her laugh is harsh.
For a moment we sit in silence. She is thinking, I assume.
‘How long did it take you to create the diary?’ she says. ‘You seriously perfected the art. I mean, to dupe my friend at the British Museum, a world-leading expert, you must have worked obsessively on this, forensically. And for what? To trick me? To pay me back for some imagined crime – or crime by association?’
This is all going wrong. I just want her to understand me but I can see that she never will. Someone like her can’t possibly understand someone like me. She is a different species. She is staring at me as if I am a repulsive to her. In her eyes I am a dark, destructive nobody.
I want her to know that I was brilliant, too, but that being brilliant isn’t enough these days. To succeed today you need to be brightly coloured, noticed, admired, validated by grants and keynote speeches, bestselling books, media appearances and honours. You have to show an impressive face to the world. You have to love the attention, smile for the cameras. You have to be like her.
‘I got what I deserved,’ I say. ‘When my fraudulent Nature paper was rescinded, they turned on me: I was dismissed, I lost my professorship, my college privileges and my home almost immediately. I also lost my dignity and my name. For a while the scientific community couldn’t talk about anything else. Shame isn’t just a word, Olivia, it’s a powerful, visceral reaction. It’s physical. Even just saying the word out loud makes you feel it, physically, in your guts. The response was positively medieval. I was publicly destroyed – shunned by almost everyone I knew.’
Olivia lifts her chin. ‘This won’t work on me. I won’t feel sorry for you, I never will. I know plenty of older female academics who don’t feel the need to falsify research for glory. They just produce spectacular work.’
I have been trying to avoid telling her the full truth about her father but this is just too much for me. ‘I did produce spectacular work!’ I bellow. ‘And your father claimed it was his!’
‘Oh, come on. We’re talking about his great discovery, I assume?’
‘His great discovery was actually my great discovery. It was I who first noticed that the speck in the olivia fossil wasn’t an artefact, a contaminant, as your father lazily believed, but a minute fossilized dung ball. My discovery of that dung ball proved that dung-rolling beetles were alive millions of years earlier than we previously thought; my attention to detail led to the game-changing evolutionary paper that made your father’s name. I even helped him write it. I fully expected to see my name on it and I remember how shocked I was when it wasn’t there. Your father was my mentor, my senior, my superior; perhaps it didn’t occur to him to credit me. But without me, your ancient scarab and its dung ball would still be sitting unnoticed in their amber bubble and no one would remember your father’s name.’
‘This is just not true!’ she shouts. ‘My God, Vivian! How could you say all this?’
I do stop then, even though I could go on. I could remind her that my story is nothing new. Generations of female scientists have had their ground-breaking discoveries credited to male colleagues. They have been written out of the textbooks, ignored by Nobel committees, erased from history. I could describe to Olivia how her father spotted my potential as an undergraduate and nurtured and guided me; how he supervised my PhD, then turned me into his acolyte; how for a while I was his faithful helper, there to serve, enable and admire his genius. I could tell her how he turned against me when I was offered the prestigious Oxford college position; how he raged, then accused me of ingratitude and arrogance, of biting the hand that fed me.
I could also tell her that he behaved like this because he was threatened by me. It had taken him decades to secure his reputation, which he only did thanks to me, whereas I, at the age of twenty-four, was being wooed by one of the finest institutions in the world. I had ‘the promise of excellence’ and his ego could not take that. Ron Sweetman’s approach to a threat was attack. I could tell Olivia that her father made a point of dismissing my work in public after that; he humiliated me at conferences, sabotaged my talks, bad-mouthed me to colleagues. He was fixated on destroying my career because he was deeply afraid that one day I would find a way to prove that the discovery of the Archeocopris olivia dung ball was mine. I would expose him as the fraud he was.
He was right to be frightened of me. I would have done it, but I couldn’t, because I had no proof. Naively, I’d given all the data to him at the time. It had simply never occurred to me that he’d take all the credit. When I heard about his heart attack I was glad he was dead, but I was also disappointed that I would never get the chance to right the wrong he did me.
I could tell her all this about her sainted father, but I don’t, I stay silent because I know that telling her would only have two outcomes, neither of them particularly helpful. Either she would refuse to believe me, in which case I would only alienate her further, or she would believe me, and that would destroy her. I have, I realize, lost the desire to destroy Olivia. In fact, I am beginning to feel quite protective of her.
She is wringing her hands. Her lips are edged with pale blue. She is either very angry, or very cold, or both.
‘What did you think you’d achieve by hurting me like this?’ she croaks. ‘You know that if Joy finds out about the diary, she’ll have to have Annabel pulped? My career will be over, all those people who mutter to each other that I’m “not a serious historian” will have a field day. This will be all over social media and the national papers. This is going to destroy me. I could even lose my professorship. Is that what you really want? Will you feel better when I’m crushed? Will you feel better if you take away everything I’ve worked my whole life for?’
‘It never occurred to me that we’d get to this point,’ I say, honestly.
‘I can’t do this.’ She suddenly pushes back her chair, gets up and walks towards the door.
I wasn’t expecting this.
I struggle off my seat and pain sears through my knee. I limp after her into the corridor. She hears me behind her and stops, spinning round to face me. I support myself with one hand on the scullery doorframe. She has the look of an untamed animal, smudge-eyed, ready to bare her teeth and bite. She is breathing very rapidly and I see her glance at my hand in case I still have the knife, which, oddly, I do. She is, I realize, furious, but also afraid of me.
‘I’m going now.’ She lifts her chin. ‘I can’t stay here. You should just do what you want.’
But she is not the one who gets to decide how this ends. Not this time. ‘Really?’ I say. ‘We haven’t discussed our options.’
I know the sort of thoughts that must be racing through her head right now. She wants to run to the gunroom, shove on her boots, flee to her car and drive back up to London and her family. But she also knows that she can’t do that. She can’t really let me do what I want, because I might want to ruin her.
‘Do you know,’ I say, resting my shoulder on the doorjamb, taking the weight off my knee, ‘all this drama has given me quite an appetite. I don’t usually eat supper until seven but I have two lovely fresh wood pigeons in the scullery. An estate manager I know – his father was a colleague of my father’s – dropped them over this morning. They’re so fresh their eyes are still gleaming. Do you fancy a nice bit of pigeon breast? We could have a bite to eat and talk about what to do next.’
She stares at me, speechless.
I turn and walk towards the kitchen. I am not sure what she’ll do, but I do know, from the early days with Bertie, that I must not look as if I care.
After a moment, I hear her socks on the parquet, soft as a puppy, following me back to the kitchen.
Olivia
Ileford Manor
As she watched Vivian’s bulky form limp off down the corridor to the kitchen, with the knife still dangling from her hand, it took every particle in Olivia’s body not to turn and flee. But she couldn’t run away. She had to stay and see this through. She had to contain and control Vivian, once and for all.