Mr Darwin's Shooter (23 page)

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 cabinet, 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 better 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.

‘Red sky in the morning, shepherd's warning,' said Covington as a matter of habit. ‘Wind before seven, dry by eleven.'

‘It is
always
dry hereabouts,' said Darwin, scooping a handful of dust. Covington saw he was making a resolve, pursing his pinkish, wind-chapped lips; rubbing a sandy, sun-burnt eyelid—he was going to have to be more patient with his manservant if this was to be possible at all. He knew that a sailor lived by the weather, and Covington was a sailor almost from childhood, was he not, having weather in his bones? No wonder he tested it constantly, boringly, tediously. Darwin understood that. Besides Covington came from a survey ship. Their very duty led them into places that all other ships avoided and their safety depended on being prepared for the worst. Darwin could be fair-minded, no mistake. So that Covington carrying a certain over-readiness from the bark to the campo was to be expected. And yet his damnable chatter! And the sore irritation! And the relentless presence of the lad! Must he hoist his crotch, spread his legs way wide, and jig a little from the knees every time he readied himself for bed?

‘Every night we reef our topsails,' Covington chortled when drawing his blanket up to his chin and giving it a shake, ‘so as to lose no time if a breeze forces us to move.'

‘I think the worst we shall have tonight is a dew,' invariably observed Darwin—at which Covington laughed immoderately, and agreed they well might.

Covington came back from shooting:

‘Covington!'

‘Yoi?'

‘You've got me far too many skins,' said Darwin. ‘More than I asked—'

‘Look, I have sorted them.'

‘You have indeed. But Covington—'

‘Yea? What have I saved you?'

‘It must be a week, I confess, at the least.'

‘There you are, then.'

‘But you have too many of the same kind. What is this?'

‘It came skimmin' along the water.'

‘But it is half shot away.'

‘A pinch is better than a peck, ain't that right?'

‘Not in the case of birds, I am afraid. It is a lot less than so. This might be a scissor-bird. I cannot tell. Its beak is shattered.'

‘I used a light shot,' said Covington defensively.

‘If you could get me a scissor-bird—'

‘What then?'

‘Well,' said Darwin with a certain false heartiness, ‘I might write to the king for a commendation. It is a great rarity.'

‘Then a scissor-bird it will be,' Covington swore, but thought, ‘I am not slow, except to condemn; I am not witless, except when I do not know, and cannot keep up with Cambridge men; I am not a child, who will be satisfied by excitement. So what does he mean, when he condescends? That I should go away, hide my face, hobble my tongue, and only come back when there is
hefting
to be done?'

Neither was Darwin comfortable with Covington's fiddling a few scrawled tunes in the pampas night, making a monstrous interruption to his thoughts, which were deep
and slow. ‘Enough of that caterwauling there,' he would declaim, pretending to be in the most hectic good humour about the thing. Then he'd turn his back and pull his blanket around his ears, cherishing his sleep on dry land in contrast to that at sea, where there were always footsteps on deck, thumps, clangs, bells, voices against one's ear in the most private of cubbies, and always the queasy motion of the waves.

Once or twice of this was all it took, and Covington crept away from the fire where he sat propped against his saddle-bed looking up at the stars, plunking the strings of his Polly Pochette with the flat of his hand, the battered instrument hard against his ear, making a repetitive medley collected along the way, a music touching his mood of obedience and making it rankle a little—telling of dark eyes, red roses, flashing steel and spilt blood. ‘
Lua na testy munha
,' he sang, remembering a rough night of his life.
Moon, my only friend
.

It was a marriage of convenience they had, and Darwin was like the fiancée who gives her consent to the match for reasons of suitability but through lack of love rues the intimacy—yet all the time lauding the practicality. Darwin's beau ideal of a collector when they began was not Covington but the coxswain and captain of the maintop—Covington's dear friend, the walking cyclopaedia of God's mysteries who could set bird traps as prettily as steer the cutter, rig a sail or produce a Biblical reference in his best Bunyanesque style. Darwin owed a debt to Phipps for releasing Covington from a closeness of personal friendship without hostile jealousy—a dissenting, somewhat conspiratorial and devotional closeness, it would seem from the way people talked about it. From Phipps's and Covington's point of view it was a comfortableness so close as to seem like carrying home with them wherever they went. This attachment was famous in the ship for having a whiff of inseparability about it—there had been grumblings
that the two were as tight as wax, that there would be trouble from Phipps if Covington was removed from his sphere, and so on. But no such trouble came. Phipps had a vanity he could draw the gent to their circle of prayer, which wasn't so fanciful, when you considered the number of times Darwin ‘amened' through Sunday service. It was Phipps had the good effect on people, they were soothed by something in his heart—immovable-seeming, yet lightsome in the practice of his faith, which he sniffed as a rare breeze, and went nimbly pursuing to catch with his texts all arrayed like sails.

Covington was not such an inspirer. Or say he inspired something else.