“Well, Aidan now finds himself culled. James has been given his department, and he’s incorporating Reform into it, so I suppose he’s doubled his empire. Well, he deserves it. He’s kind and clever. I told you so.”
“It rather depends on who he’s trying to make up to at the time. If you were to ask his brother-in-law Bentink’s opinion on Sir James, the response would be unrepeatable. It might include the words ‘traitor,’ ‘conspirator,’ ‘bolshy police-poodle,’ ‘marriage-wrecker’.…”
“The first three, fair enough. But James wasn’t to know that his sister would begin divorce proceedings.”
“And leave her husband in the lurch? She made her mind up pretty quickly to stay in London when he slipped bail and headed for the continent. Don’t imagine I’m unaware that strings were pulled and officials looked the other way. I’m quite certain you were in there from the beginning, aiding and abetting, if the truth were known.”
“Does it matter? Bentink’s out of the country and can do no more harm.”
“Rubbish! I can’t imagine what evil the man’s perpetrating in the name of science over there where his views and methods are supported and encouraged.”
Dorcas was squirming with excitement. “I can! James told me just now. It’s why his sister decided to pull the plugs on the beast.”
“I’ll try not to glaze over while you tell me. But I don’t expect I shall understand a word.”
“Oh, you will! You of all people,” she said. Then added quickly: “The word is a made-up one. Bits of Greek. You’ll work out the subject of his new scientific enthusiasm when you hear it. It’s … um.…” She took a run at it: “… eutelegenesis. You won’t find it in a dictionary. Or even in a scientific paper yet. It’s one of those fashionable words scientists murmur to each other.”
“Not another eu word! Lord! This one sounds even more dastardly than the rest. Let me think. Tele—that’s ‘at a distance,’ as in ‘telephone,’ so we’ve got ‘good breeding at a distance.’ Sounds like something a stockbreeder might have need of. I mean transporting bull’s—er—essence, in a glass jar a hundred miles to a suitable recipient. No! Dorcas! Tell me I’ve misunderstood.”
“You probably haven’t. ‘Artificial insemination,’ an animal breeder would have called it when it was invented in seventeen hundred and something. Some wise men are beginning to say: We can breed the very best in plants and animals—why do we ignore the needs of humanity? The brightest and best of our men are not remarkable for their fecundity. Bentink actually calculated that fewer than a hundred babies are being born to men of calibre in this country every year. I do wonder what sources he used! He estimates that, given the right number of women prepared to oblige—and Joe, they are coming forwards!—he could increase this tenfold. Already there are five hundred on the waiting list in England and two thousand in the United States. In three or four generations we would be looking at a race of supermen. They say.”
“My God! I’ve never heard such tripe! Who are these silly women? What do they think’s on offer? They’d sign up for a Rupert Brooke or a Douglas Fairbanks, and that’s understandable, but when I look around at our brightest and best brains, what do I see? I see the ugly bodies, the unattractive features that seem to be part of Mother Nature’s sly deal. To use Bentink’s own words: ‘You wouldn’t want to breed from them.’ Anyway, what man would be so arrogant as to volunteer his seed anyway?”
Dorcas snorted. “Well, Bentink for a start! It was at this revelation that the relationship with Mrs. Bentink began to curdle. Imagine—walking in the park and seeing dozens of baby Bentinks out in their prams!”
“No bonnet big enough!”
“James says his sister was only too glad when he ducked off to Germany, where they take him seriously. Well worth the loss of the bail money.”
“No waterworks over there, I expect.” Joe sighed. “You know, I’d give a lot to hear Francis Crabbe’s views on—what was it? No, I won’t say the misbegotten word, and I hope never to hear it again. Though perhaps I might share the thought with Francis next time I visit. Just the sort of nonsense he’ll appreciate.”
Deep in thought, they sat on in companionable silence interrupted only by a loud cuckoo in the hedge.
“She’s arrived early this year,” Joe commented.
“I’ve never seen the point of cuckoos. One of Nature’s barmier ideas,” Dorcas said. “Laying her eggs in some poor unsuspecting sparrow’s nest.”
A minute later: “I was thinking of Jackie. I know Nancy’s his mother but—”
“But what?”
“She’s the most awful cow. Lydia thinks so too, I know, though she’s much too loyal to say so.”
“Sad to hear you say that. I loved her once.” He’d been meaning to tell her, try to explain how it had happened but hadn’t known how to phrase it and here he was blurting it out in four words without warning.
Dorcas appeared unmoved. “Thought so. Well, she didn’t love you. Too self-centred. Nancy gets what Nancy wants, I imagine. Sensible woman, though. She combined scooping up Jackie with extending her stay with her sisters and booking into the hospital in Brighton. Had you any idea she was six months pregnant?”
“No. It makes a lot of sense. Childbirth can be tricky in India. Much better to get it over with while she’s in England.”
The conversation was proving more painful than Joe had anticipated, and the hammock had been a bad idea. They always were. But he ploughed on. “I never knew her very well. I feel I know her husband, Andrew, much better. He’s very like me, you know.”
Dorcas nodded.
“I didn’t, for instance, know that Nancy had had a second child, two years after Jackie was born. A girl. She died when only a few hours old. Nancy’s determined that this time things will go better. She claims she’s rather elderly for childbirth anyway. What an idea! I thought she was looking quite splendid.”
He was remembering the walk he’d taken along the cliffs with Nancy when the storms had subsided. Jackie had repeated his decision to continue at St. Magnus, again citing the example of Mr. Gosling.
When he’d relayed this to Gosling, instead of the shout of scoffing laughter he expected, the young man had gone silent for a moment, then admitted he felt he wasn’t cut out for the Service. He’d even thought about—and pleaded with Joe to talk him out of it—staying on and doing a bit of schoolmastering. Much to be done, and he thought he could do it better than the men who were presently at the school. With Farman in clink and a new head on the horizon, perhaps St. Magnus would be a different kettle of fish. Joe would not even try to talk him out of it.
Nancy had chattered on about Jackie and the school, about their friends in India and had repeated warm messages from Andrew. She’d left it until the last moments before the walk ended to say what he really wanted to hear. “I’m so sorry, Joe. I thought you’d have forgotten. If you’d ever realised. But it was bad of me. I should have told you in case you were concerned. He’s not your son, you know. He’s Andrew’s. My doctor told me that this does happen. A childless woman has an affair and soon after, a baby is born. But a careful study of the dates reveals the unbelievable has happened. One of Nature’s little jokes? When she goes on to produce further children, there can be no more doubt. The husband is the father.”
And into his stunned silence: “Jack thinks the world of you, Joe. We’d all be very happy if you would consider visiting him at the weekends. For manly pursuits—you know, swimming, riding, shooting. The stuff an English gent has to know.”
Joe had fled back to Lydia’s and drunk a bottle of whisky. He made a raging and drunken vow that if he ever saw Nancy Drummond again he’d push her off a cliff. Marcus had caught his glass as he dropped it and agreed to help him do just that.