Shortest Day (37 page)

There was a misunderstanding, Oliver said. Freddy just didn't understand how completely he agreed with her father. “I mean, I've been reading
The Origin of Species.
I've got a whole new understanding of creation.”

“Oh, you mean you don't believe in God anymore?” Freddy grinned at him. She knew she shouldn't be teasing him about his faith, because it meant so much to him, but sometimes she couldn't help it. “I'm just joking.”

But Oliver took it seriously. “Oh, of course I believe in God. Oh, not the God of Genesis. I know He didn't create the world in seven days. Of course not. I mean God as the designer of natural selection.” Oliver's blue eyes looked away from Freddy, and he waved his hand at the courtyard, with all its bones and fossils and stuffed beasts. “All this. I mean God's plan is so much grander, when you look at it this way.”

“Oh, so that's it,” said someone, moving up beside them from the courtyard. “You mean it's God's fault? God is the villain? It's God who's responsible for carnivores, and all the disemboweling and bloodsucking? Well, I wondered who it was. Now I'll know whom to blame.”

Freddy laughed. “No, no, I don't think that's what he means at all. Who are you?”

“My name is Shaw. Hal Shaw. I'm from Manhattan. Manhattan, Kansas, that is.”

“Oh, of course,” said Freddy, beaming at him. “I know who you are. You're working with my father.”

Oliver Clare looked at Hal Shaw balefully. He was some sort of American barbarian, with his broad muscular body and violently red hair. Oliver appealed to Freddy, murmuring in her ear, “Freddy, I've got to talk to you.”

But Freddy was interested in the barbarian from Kansas. She was interested too in his matching wife, who surged up beside him. The wife also had red hair, but it was a cosmetic purple-red, not the incendiary orange that had flamed up on her husband's skull the day he was born.

“You're Fredericka Dubchick?” said Margo Shaw. “Hal's going to be working with your father, and I've got a job in the museum too. I'll be topping up the spirit jars for a month or two. Isn't that exciting? What's Hal been telling you? That God is dead?” She had a brittle voice, a high-comic manner. Her husband stood silent while Margo waxed whimsical. “Isn't this place incredible? Do you suppose the skeletons talk to each other when we're not here? Perhaps they dance! Imagine the clatter!”

“Oh, I wonder if they do,” said Freddy, enjoying the joke. “Can you imagine the elephant waltzing with the bison?”

Margo tittered. Oliver tried to laugh. Hal's face remained stony. He was trying to get used to the fact that his wife's vivacious chatter was a continuous repetition of a small set of playful remarks. She held only a single hand of conversational cards. In the Greek sculpture gallery of the Metropolitan she had said gaily,
Do you suppose they talk to each other when we're not here? Perhaps they dance!
And he had been charmed. But on the day before their wedding she had said the same thing to the best man about the stone dignitaries in the university chapel,
Do you suppose they dance when we're not here?
—and he had felt a pang of doubt. Since then, he had learned to his sorrow that his wife had conversational ploys filed away in the drawers of her mind, cross-indexed under appropriate cues. Whimsy was one of her stocks-in-trade, another was acid commentary. A third was an alarming aptitude for small wily plots.

“Freddy,” urged Oliver Clare. He tugged at her arm, but at once someone else came pushing into the conversation, staring hungrily at Freddy.

It was Mark Soffit. At last he had found Dubchick's daughter. He introduced himself and explained hastily that he was a Rhodes scholar. “Can you tell me if your father is here?”
God, she was cute.

Freddy Dubchick looked at him patiently. “Yes, of course. I'll take you to him.”

Hal and Margo Shaw drifted away. The others made a small procession with Dubchick's daughter Freddy in the lead, the clergyman Oliver Clare next in line, and Mark excitedly bringing up the rear. Swiftly Freddy led them past the horny heads of the rhinoceroses in their glass case, past Isaac Newton gazing down at the apple between his shoes, and the tall melancholy figure of Charles Darwin. For once Mark glanced up and grinned. Darwin was the target of his dissertation.
Beware, old-timer.

Then he paused in dismay. Freddy Dubchick was hurrying up to an elderly man, stopping beside him and kissing him. All Mark's anticipation collapsed at once in an awful sinking feeling. It wasn't, it couldn't be—?

It was. William Dubchick was the old man he had snubbed, the one who had stretched out a welcoming hand. “Father,” said Freddy, “here's someone who would like to meet you.” She turned to Mark. “I'm sorry, your name is—?”

Mark could hardly find his voice. He swallowed, tried to speak, failed, tried again. “Soffit,” he croaked. “I'm a Rhodes scholar. You know, from the United States.” He held out a trembling hand.

There was a slight hesitation before the old man took it and nodded at him soberly.

Blinking, blushing, Mark shook Professor Dubchick's hand fervently. He shook it and shook it. “I'm sorry, sir. I didn't recognize you at first.”

As if that makes up for your rudeness.
Dubchick smiled at his daughter and put his arm around her. He turned to the clergyman and included him in the smile. Then he glanced at his watch and said, “It's almost time for my talk.” He nodded at Mark Soffit. “Excuse me. I'll just go upstairs for my notes.”

“Oh, sir,” said Mark. “I hope we can meet again. Like I'll make an appointment, okay?”

Professor Dubchick was heading for the stairs. Without turning around he waved his hand, as if to say, Do as you like. On the way up the broad stone staircase he reflected on the brutal way the young man had ignored him, and told himself sadly that it was his own fault. He had committed a sin. And with each passing year it was more sinful than before, more criminal.

He had been born so long ago, that was the crime. Every year it was worse than ever. The date of his birth was unspeakable. The evidence was visible in the mirror, that pop-up old gentleman who kept coming back, getting in the way of the reflected self he remembered. William was so old that he thought of his past life in epochs—the epoch of childhood, the years of schooling, the decade of zoological apprenticeship in Ecuador, the era of beach exploration and the study of crustaceans, the long season of teaching and research at Oxford, and at last the period of summing up in which he was now engaged.

Striding down the corridor of the gallery upstairs, he smiled grimly as he thought of the young upstart who had refused to shake his hand. In forty years that boy too would be an old has-been, and William would sit up in his grave and laugh.

C
HAPTER 3

I am the most miserable, bemuddled, stupid dog in all England, and am ready to cry with vexation at my blindness and presumption.

Ever yours, most miserably
,

C. Darwin (letter to Joseph Hooker)

T
he golden statues were still looking down at the reception in the courtyard of the University Museum. Watt fingered his steam engine, William Harvey presented his model of the human heart, Sir Humphry Davy dangled his lamp, Newton gazed at his apple. The murmuration of combined voices swelled to a roar.

From his office on the upper floor William Dubchick could hear the noise of the party, but for the moment it could be ignored. The office was a refuge. He forgot the obscene statistics of his age, said hello to his new assistant, Dr. Farfrae, and rummaged among his papers for the outline of his talk.

The room was little changed from the 1860s, except that it was now warmed by a radiator rather than by the defunct fireplace. For years it had been the Hope Entomology Room, but the drawers full of insects had been moved to larger quarters. It was now the Zoology Office. A long table ran down the middle, and there were two desks between the pointed windows. On the mantelpiece, above the stone foliage with its carvings of moths and stag beetles, lay the egg of an extinct great auk in a glass case, looking ready to hatch. A large photograph of Charles Darwin hung on the wall above the mantel. First editions of Darwin's works occupied a glass-fronted bookcase behind William's desk—
The Voyage of the Beagle, The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms, The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs, The Origin of Species, The Descent of Man, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.
Whenever William sat at his desk he was warmed by the thought of the drab bindings lined up behind him.

Dr. Farfrae was another comforting presence. She was not one of the robust young generation thrusting up around him, all so admirable, looking at him pityingly and speaking their own strange version of the English language. Sometimes it alarmed William to think of the thousands of clever babies who were being born every minute and surging into adulthood to challenge and overwhelm his own generation, like the young upstart downstairs just now. Dr. Farfrae was clever too, but fortunately she was nearly his own age.

Their relations were cordial and businesslike. She was a helpful and efficient colleague. This afternoon she sat at her desk under the window and did not at once turn to say hello.

“Oh, Dr. Farfrae,” said William courteously, “why aren't you at the party? Listen, you can hear the noise from here.”

There was a pause, while the reverberation of the voices swelled along the arcades around the courtyard, streamed past the columns of Aberdeen granite and Marychurch marble, and lost itself in the crevices of the foliated capitals. When Dr. Farfrae turned away from the pale screen of her computer, her eyes were cast down. “I just wanted to finish up a few things first.”

She had been crying, William could see that. He felt an anguished sympathy. Dr. Farfrae's home life was reputed to be difficult. She never complained and William never inquired, but now he couldn't help asking, “Dr. Farfrae, is there anything—?”

He had overstepped. She stood up and grinned at him. “Guess what? The gecko laid a clutch of eggs. Look.”

William laughed, and bent over the tank on the windowsill. “And we thought it was a male.”

The noise from below was louder than ever. “Oh, dear,” said William, “my talk. I've got some notes here somewhere.”

“Here they are.” Dr. Farfrae shifted the papers on the table and pulled out a sheet. “I'll be down shortly. I just have a few—”

“Oh, no, don't bother to hear me. It's just the same old stuff.”

“But I'd like to.”

William smiled politely at his colleague and departed with his notes.

Helen Farfrae took a mirror from her bag and looked at herself, then dabbed astringent around her eyes, still a little swollen from crying. She was a tall strong woman with plump cheeks and piercing hazel eyes and a nose with a bump in it halfway down. Her no-nonsense gray hair was clipped at ear level all the way around. Her only adornment was a pair of gold earrings, but she had paid for them with half a month's salary.