40

III

On the following Friday evening, Nanny ordered that I dress in my best suit, for Father and I were to partake of dinner at Mr. James Gwent’s house. Travelling by carriage, we passed a procession of stone colleges, their dark doorways resembling elderly, cross fellows sitting in hunched judgement. Every time I saw a woman with chestnut hair peeking out from beneath the brim of her hat my hopes were first raised, and then rudely dashed.

Five days had passed since I had last seen Rachel, and yearning had hollowed out my stomach. Every night when I knelt down beside my bed I made desperate pleas to God that, in his book of the world’s destiny, he might scribble a few lines whereby Rachel and I became ardent lovers. I attempted to please our Creator with good deeds, each conducted with slightly less ardour than the one before, and with a sinking feeling that our Heavenly Father was unimpressed by such trivial acts. My gesture needed to be grand, and so when Nanny happened to tell me the story of how St Francis of Assisi had built a church with his bare hands, I had run into the garden, found three small rocks and placed them beneath the willow tree, declaring that they were the foundations of a church that would pierce the clouds with its spire by the end of 1861. 41

We disembarked from our carriage and approached Mr. Gwent’s abode. As always, I was tickled by the note that hung upon his gate:

i must ask anyone entering the house never to contradict me or differ from me in any way, as it interferes with the functioning of my gastric juices.

My father rang the bell and the front door was opened by the maid. Mr. Gwent, on his hands and knees, gazed up at us with a quizzical expression and proceeded to bark loudly, then turned – so that I fancied a tail frisking behind him – and crawled down the hallway, his trousers squeaking on the polished boards. My father bowed and offered the maid his coat and top hat. I ventured to pat our friendly canine on the head – only to cry out when he gently nipped the pudge of my palm.

‘Good Lord, James!’ My father admonished him for his display of eccentricity. ‘That is quite enough – the game has gone too far, I fear.’

Mr. Gwent jumped to his feet, looking far meeker as a human than he had as a pet. He apologised, and after vigorously shaking our hands invited us to join him for tea.

Mr. Gwent’s parlour was my favourite place in the entire world. It was not so much a cabinet of curiosities as a museum dedicated to preserving the mind and heart of a true eccentric. Candelabras lined the grand mantelpiece, their twisted branches reaching towards the silvery light of a large mirror. In the room’s shadowy corners lurked all sorts of treasures – a skeleton hanging in a glass cage, 42a stuffed dodo perched on a card table, and the original Pandora’s box, if Gwent’s boasting was to be believed. His bookcases were filled with every volume of Dickens and H. G. Wells, along with Gwent’s own novels and dusty tomes describing magic rituals from ages past. Even the fire had a mysterious crackle, as though inviting one to cry, ‘Open Sesame!’ and see the flames leap apart.

His large méridienne, covered with skins and furs, reminded me of the pictures of shaggy wildebeest in our schoolbooks, and there we reclined while the maid entered to serve us tea. Mr. Gwent insisted on making us pause to savour its aromas before we sipped it. We sat with our fingers curled around our teacups, as though we were trapped in a still life, inviting the scents from our cups to parlay with our nostrils. My father, who had learnt to recognise herbs, began citing traces of rosemary and bergamot. I, meanwhile, could only translate the smells into colours and impulses.

‘Nostalgic,’ I murmured. ‘Silver … A long way from home.’ My father rolled his eyes, but Mr. Gwent beamed at my fancy.

‘Come, where is it from?’ my father finally asked, impatiently.

‘It is Tie Guan Yin, a Chinese oolong tea,’ Mr. Gwent informed us. He went on to explain that the tea was less dramatic than black tea, but more provocative than green. My mind began to drift and I quietly set down my cup, drawn to the large mirror above the fireplace, which possessed a gilt frame and was scritched with age. I fancied that it stored countless memories of my face, from a chubby, angelic cherub to a thirteen-year-old boy on the 43verge of adulthood, and beyond that too: a prediction of my elderly self, with whitened hair and craggy lines storing secrets of a life well lived.

‘Dinner time, Thomas,’ said Mr. Gwent, smiling down at me. Under his arm was tucked the dodo, which eyed me with a curious gaze.

We entered the dining room, a dark, stuffy room, sickly with candlelight. Heavy oils adorned the walls, of men who seemed as old and creaky as furniture, looked upon by various animal heads perched on cabinets. I had once heard my father declare that they were the worst examples of taxidermy he had ever seen. There was a stoat which seemed to have welcomed death as a relief from some sort of terrible constipation, a cross-eyed deer, and an antelope whose neck was so long that he clearly aspired to be a giraffe. The table was set for four, and on one velvet-cushioned chair, Mr. Gwent set down the dodo; this was a habit that my father had tried to dissuade him from for some time, but to no avail. We were served mulligatawny soup, the dodo included, though he obviously found its scent unsavoury, for he did not lift his claw to his spoon. Mr. Gwent proceeded to speak, with increasing vehemence, of overcrowding on trains and the profit the train companies were making from our discomfort. He spat out little pellets of soup as he spoke: mulligatawny exclamation marks. This was very typical of Mr. Gwent, who regularly alternated between railing against the mundane injustices of the world and consoling himself with the magical and the extraordinary. He was also malignly scathing about Dickens, his literary rival, whom Father 44had to pretend to dislike when in truth he devoured every instalment of his novels.

‘Tell me, then,’ my father said, attempting to redirect the train of conversation, ‘how is your latest novel progressing?’

‘Oh!’ Mr. Gwent sipped his soup as though becoming aware of its flavour for the first time that evening. ‘Very well indeed. I am close to finishing.’

I had seen the covers of Mr. Gwent’s novels, sporting monsters and machines; I had been told that I would be allowed to read them only when I became a man, a fact that Nanny had asserted and my father had confirmed.

‘In what year is your latest novel set?’ Father asked, as the servants brought in the beef steak.

‘2014,’ Gwent declared. ‘There will be all sorts of glorious inventions present in my tale. Men will have machines which will enable them to fly, for instance.’

‘We can already fly,’ said my father, with a twinkle in his eye. ‘Why, we have the hot air balloon.’

‘In 2014, they will invent hot air balloons that will outpace even the birds in the sky,’ said Mr. Gwent.

I had never had the opportunity to travel in such a balloon, though Father had promised to take me to see the one at Cremorne Gardens. I envisaged the hot air balloon of 2014 with great feathery wings, flapping so that it might soar higher and higher.

‘Will it be another sensation novel?’ My father enquired.

‘It will be a love story,’ said Mr. Gwent, his eyes acquiring a dreamy hue. ‘The man shall be chasing the woman, hoping for her hand in marriage, but she will rebuff him, for she prefers her independence.’ 45

‘What a perverse creature such a woman would be,’ said Father. ‘A woman doomed to spinsterhood and wilful loneliness.’

I saw a familiar look pass between them, as though both were removing their top hats and rolling their sleeves up.

‘Take Darwin’s Biston betularia, the speckled moth,’ said Mr. Gwent, his voice rising. ‘Its dark colouring is quite different from the moth of pre-industrial times, when it was able to survive as a speckled white. So too will the species of woman be quite different in 2014, in reflection of the changing culture. Why, her very mind, her physique, her chemical being will be an entirely different concoction.’

‘Homo sapiens is not a butterfly,’ said my father. ‘We contain certain fixed traits that God created when He made us. Why, I was recently reading a novel written in 1746 that spoke to my heart in its themes of love, of marriage, of parenthood. The stories of people do not change so very much.’

‘What will churches be like in 2014?’ I asked, thinking of my own paltry tower of stones in the garden.

‘Oh, the churches will have all become haberdasheries and coaching inns,’ Mr. Gwent sighed. ‘For God will be dead in 2014.’

I froze, my knife half embedded in my steak. My father did not look quite as shocked as I might have feared at such blasphemy, which only served to exacerbate my alarm.

‘It is entirely the fault of your friend,’ Mr. Gwent went on, giving Father a sly glance. ‘He is the man who is killing God.’ 46

‘Charles Darwin is a most misunderstood man,’ said my father. ‘He is a devout fellow whose scientific discoveries are truly an act of propitiation.’

Mr. Gwent’s expression looked most dubious.

Mr. Gwent concluded the evening with his regular treat; we gathered in the living room, the lamps subdued, the curtains drawn tight, and his magic lantern projected its eerie phantasmagoria on to the wall. I habitually adored such shows, finding that they poured bizarre colours into my mind and cleansed me of my cares, but, on this occasion, it only seemed to inspire anxiety. I pictured God scrawling on his sheet of paper, and dipping his pen into the inkwell to find there was no ink, his sentences dwindling to the strange marks ancient tribes might have made, when we lived in caves and wrote on walls. The images flew as though Mr. Gwent had wandered the streets at night, collecting dreams to pour into his lantern: lions that leapt on to the backs of galloping horses; monkeys exchanging stovepipe hats; the goblins who stole the sexton Gabriel Grubb. I pictured God lying down in a bed, tired and old, a tear trickling down His cheek as the people of 2014 laughed and chatted and cared not what happened to Him, unaware that He was drawing His last breaths. On the wall, an image of a gentleman in his bed ended my daydreaming: a giant beetle with spindly legs was climbing up the sheets. I cried out in fright. My father chided Mr. Gwent and declared that it was time for me to return home. 47

In the carriage, I asked Father if Mr. Gwent’s theories were true. He laughed.

‘Why, of course not! Do you think man has the power to destroy or create God? God was here before us, and will continue to be after we have gone.’

I stared out of our carriage window in order to hide my blurred eyes from him. My mother would not suffer a Heaven of cobwebs and fading light; God would look after her still. My father went on to tell me that I should not mind Mr. Gwent, because he had become an eccentric ever since he had lost his wife, Mary, before he moved to Oxford. That sad fate had occurred twelve years ago, my father explained, and that was why Mr. Gwent put a dodo on the table, in her place, as a sort of mourning gesture.