Mr Darwin's Shooter Page 28

  First greying of morning. Scattering of dreams across the four seas. In the main bedroom of ‘Coral Sands’ Mr Covington rolled to the wall, pressed his hands prayerlike under his chin, and groaned that he would never get back to sleep at this rate. The events of the drowning hung over him like a swarm of bees. They had entered his dreams. Which boy was it, then, that got stung to death in a watery hive? Darwin’s book was in the swarm like a sheet of wax comb. It announced itself in a waking apprehension of the guts—hell’s honey-maker, and he avoided thinking about it as best he could, half-asleep, holding the matter at bay. Darwin. Let him go staying down in purgatory pumping thunder, as was said in ships. No wonder Covington’s mind baulked, ducked, and ran away—yet was all the time drawing closer to the heart of the question: Whatever shall appear on fair enquiry shall be the truth for there cannot be two truths. Nothing had changed about the question for years, except this drawing ever-closer to a full answer.

  Covington thought: to be clubbed over the head and made stupid would be a right way for me to escape this pass. So pray make it swift. A single blow as to a beast— he could show an accomplice the exact point on the skull to bring it about, placing his finger there to mark the suture. Should he call MacCracken, and get him to act from pity? That was how low he was. He sourly thought: A man is only a beast, is he not? Only rubbish in a boneyard. If it be so proved. Then, almost as quick as Covington dozed and thought of oblivion, he was thick in his armadillo dream.

  It was over-familiar to him.

  It started with an ostrich and he was on horseback in South America. Standing in the stirrups he made a trumpeting noise, scaring the bird from its nest in the grass. It stretched its wings hawk-like and half ran, half flew with the wind catching underneath and its legs skimming across the ground until it soared and disappeared into the sun. The Rhea darwinii. God help him, he thought, coming awake a little, perchance it wouldn’t be the armadillo this time. Perchance he would just go up this green rise in front of him, kick grass from his boots like a trapdoor shut, and so enter heaven. When he went back to the ostrich nest to count the eggs he saw a striped butterfly flitting in the grass, and pursued it on his knees. When that was despatched to a pill box—with a pin through its thorax— he picked the flower that went with it. So was he free? No, because lifting his head he came upon the animal—a glowering, humbled, armorial beast that filled him with fear. It was easy to grab, but as soon as he tugged the hard tail the animal dug down, spitting damp soil from under its leathery skirts and rocking slightly from side to side. Covington sat with his legs apart and arms straining. This part was always a great tussle and he always lost. The creature was powerful under his hands. It roused his blood and sometimes from the dream he woke full proud and desirous. But not this time. Mrs Covington would be spared his manly grunts and the explorations of his hands this time. Now there was just disturbed soil somewhat quaking at the centre as the creature rocked to deeper safety. Covington rolled on the mound. It was how the wheel of a sinking ship must feel pulling a man down, except instead of the smooth flow of water there was smothering dirt. Crumbs itched him. A patch of armour-plating showed mockingly in the earth. The last part of the armadillo was small as a tobacco tin and getting smaller. He found that with his fingers under the shell the creature began pulling him under. It cannot be happening was his common response— his arms stretching and straining. At the end, all that showed of the animal’s hard case was a piece the size of a button.

  He roared awake:

  ‘Me boots!’

  And his wife was at his bedside with his boots warmed from the stove. He put them on, laced them tight, and sat looking down between his knees. It was done before he realised the boots would have to come off again, because he was still in his night-shirt, trembling and sweating. She returned, the old darlin’, with his pannikin of tea and touched the back of his neck. You’re awake, it were just a dream. He raised his eyes and thanked her. ‘It was that infernal diggin’ animal,’ he said. He was wearing a red nightcap and his eyes were doleful. She had served the same loving function to their children and it seemed he was merely one of them in this state. Her kindliness wrung him through and cheered his heart.

  Covington went in to see his guest. MacCracken was fast asleep, his bruised cheek cupped in the palm of his hand. Safe was how Covington thought of him, the same feeling—if he cared to think of it—that he had around his prize bullocks and other breeding livestock when he had them yarded. During the night MacCracken had used the chamber pot, half-missing the bowl. A stain almost reached Darwin’s book, which Covington picked up ready to throw away, but as soon as he touched it felt differently. The book had a changed threat after a black night. A hot confused pride spoke to his feelings. Half of Covington was in its pages—those years when his life was disgorged at Darwin’s feet—the bundles of bones and birdskins to be interpreted—the glass jars devotedly sealed—the million gouged eyes—the innumerable notes copied in his own true hand. In this he was like a child peering in shadows, daring himself on. He tucked the Origin under his arm. He reached down and gently pulled the bedcovers around MacCracken’s shoulders. Let him sleep until they were ready to pack, he resolved, and then surprise him by taking him along. He’d often wanted to come. Now was his time.

  Covington went back to his room and sat on the edge of the bed. He turned the Origin over in his hands, and then pushed it under the bed. It was no good upsetting Mrs Covington any more by letting her see him pawing it over this way. Just by bringing the book away from MacCracken boosted his courage. Well, he never was much of a coward, to tell himself the truth. Last night when he burst from the house and kicked the door shut behind him the vibration around the doorframe registered with his deafness, he’d whacked it so hard. He’d felt disgraceful. It must have despaired them all. He’d set off, taking a deep, humid suck of air into his lungs. Let no-one follow him, he’d thought, or they’d get a taste of his malice. The missus and Nurse Parkington were ever-pursuing him, coming up without warning, plucking him by the shoulders. He didn’t want anyone to see him like that, enraged and submissive, thunderously appalled, helplessly wordless—trapped in confusion and to his great humiliation weeping copious salt tears. MacCracken had already caught an eyeful of him. It was just preposterous. He loosened the cravat from around his neck and mopped his cheeks. What could he do? Darwin’s book had come and the boy he’d pulled from the water that morning was dead. Grief for a child was the warrant of his pain. Where did they go, those playful spirits? He carried a clutch of them round in his heart all these years. Waiting for the signal flag from heaven, he supposed they were. Joey Middleton, his sailor-boy friend, he was the longest—until his rags had seemed to rot from him, dear God, and what was Joey now? Would he still be bones? Would the bones be petrified and laid down in strata? When he saw the boy Pickastick dead on the sand he saw Joey again. God help him—when he’d clipped MacCracken’s jaw he struck all those who held him back from diving in that first time, even counting old John Phipps.

  The damnable truth was that his emotions always felt new to him. Here they were every morning sitting in his chest freshly charged. The world wasn’t old at all while it had Mr Covington in it. And this was the worst time of it he’d ever had without doubt—since the letter that said the book of creation was almost done. That it was on its way soon. Then, God dammit, that it was in his house.

  The dark long light of the harbour had been made of woodsmoke, sandstone and heath. He’d wandered around aimlessly and sat on his rock. Smite the view. He hadn’t been there to witness any evening changes and appreciate them at all. What a lugubrious aching misfit he felt, an enemy of nature. He was there to get his strength up, to shake himself into fitness before going back in and using MacCracken as an arbiter of understanding. He didn’t like those twittery Afghans but he trusted MacCracken. He remembered his first sight of him, from upside down when he was carried to the cottage on a plank. MacCracken raised his fingers and beckoned the sailors
up the path: ‘Quick now, and I’ll save him.’ Had Covington heard the bull of Elstow bellowing in MacCracken’s rocky pasture he would not have been surprised. That was the state of mind he was in. Ready to go.

  But he hadn’t gone. He’d touched the walls of MacCracken’s sickroom, he’d followed the play of shadows, he’d sniffed the gritty aroma of sandstone country. He knew it back through his bones from the first time he came there. Sydney heathlands. Vegetation reeking of aromatic oils in the crackling heat of summer. When he started taking walks in his weeks of recovery it scratched, pricked, lurked. Its species were prolific and quaint. They lured his nostrils with subtle odours at every turn. He beat the bushes with his bug net venting the pride of the undefeated. Already the decision was made to spill his story to MacCracken. Indeed, he thought, he had begun letting it out in as many words, but this wasn’t how MacCracken heard it at all, the times he showed himself on the hill, wild to collect anything and retaining every small boy in the east of Sydney to bring him their finds. Covington had jars of marsupial foetuses preserved in spirits of wine in his pocket some days, and MacCracken didn’t know it. They were the tiny born young who lived on the outside of mother bandicoots, wombats and roos. But he couldn’t bring them out and say what they were. The image of angels, so pink, folded and heart-breaking? He was mad enough to fancy so. It was easier to cover MacCracken with blessings and draw him into his wealth of timber dealings and land, expressing his gratitude for having saved his life, rather than coming out plain with what he wanted:

  Which was to make his confession—that he was once an accomplice to a great murder. That the murder may not have yet been entirely done, and he lacked the wit to know how proved it was. There were no words in Covington’s lexicon to pin himself down. He was a man of action—yet strangled by philosophy you might say. And that was a strangling indeed. Everything was mixed and contradictory in Covington’s mind. Darwin wrote asking for specimens and Covington, always knowing what was afoot in the man’s thinking, sent him whatever he asked. There was pride in that. Just as there was pride in being wealthy and in having the same number of children as Darwin (and one better, through counting who was born on the wrong side of the sheets). Covington was the prodigious collector after all. Yet he was in desperate longing for sending a great surprise—the winking eye of God, you may call it—all those bulgy swollen pink marsupial eyes a case in point, peering out of their glass preservatives. And so he sent what Darwin didn’t ask for, too. Bombarded him with life, you might say, as he had done when they first started collecting together.

  Always so full of hope.

  Theodora came and found him. So dark it was and she carried no lamp. She took his hand and didn’t get his attention at all. He was all in his head, and so she waited. She was at his side, but didn’t know where he was. Well, he was lonely and sitting under an old chestnut tree in winter light, and making a prayer for company and good cheer. He was more spirit then, he mused, singing in his bones, a follower of heroes and at ease with animal nature, which he never doubted as a gift of God. He sighed for the immensity of a loss that he was even now unable to concede. (The sigh sounded to Theodora like a gust of wind, and she shuddered—what ugly old man was this?—but he still didn’t notice her.) There wasn’t a particle of him back in those early times that was given to reflection and second thoughts. Now he wondered: Why had the world become so vast? What wouldn’t he give for a sight of John Phipps with little Joey tripping along? And who was this stroking his gnarled fingers in the dark, brushing his hair back from his eyes, drawing him to his feet, taking him back into the house where Mrs Covington had hot water bottles in the bed and a glass of hot rum ready?

  More light in the room. Marine light on the ceiling, bouncing up from the harbour. With the light would come the sound of birds, if only Covington could hear them. A dim, deaf craving for the clarity of birdsong still touched him. His remaining senses were sharper: Sight. Smell. Taste. Touch. Let them have their run like the good sensations they were, he declared to himself, and let him be grateful for them and ignore the mill-race in his brain. His tea steamed on the window ledge, two sugar lumps on a plate beside it.

  Theodora. What a blessing it was to have her in his life and be glad that he had never, not once, repudiated the claim Mrs FitzGerald made in her letter that she had a girl-child, and that Covington on all the evidence—strong nose, red hair, pale skin—was the father. From that very day and every birthday thereafter he sent money care of Merchant Lumb in Buenos Ayres and was always concerned for her welfare. His mere oversight—his secret from his wife—had been in failing to tell Mrs Covington of Theodora’s existence until Theodora was already on the water from California and coming to him. It had been shocking to Mrs Covington, shaking her faith in God’s arrangements in her life—but good missus that she was she had recovered on meeting the young woman, oh yes indeed, and had not failed to love her. There seemed little doubt that MacCracken was likewise smitten. With regard to the feelings of Theodora, however, Covington found himself struck dumb. He clasped his hands and recited a meditation long-tested in his life:

  ‘This is like doing business in great waters. This is like being in the heart of the sea, and like going down to the bottoms of the mountains. Now it seems as if the earth, with its bars, were about us for ever. But let them that walk in darkness and have no light, trust in the name of the Lord, and stay upon their God. A-men.’

  He dunked the sugar in his tea and when it was about to crumble popped it in his mouth and swallowed it down with a few hot sips.

  ‘Make my porridge with cream,’ he bellowed through to the kitchen, adding, ‘An’ I’ll take more tea, me beauty!’— anticipating Mrs Covington coming through and buzzing around him so fondly as she always did when they made ready to travel. He unlaced his boots, getting himself geared for the day. Theodora wanted photographs before they left. She had arranged a studio, and it seemed like a good material boast, to have portraits. There she is my beautiful early-born daughter, secure in my heart, great with the spirit of life I gave her, carrier of my best blood, my sweet homing pigeon. But it worried him that the portraits might be her way of saying farewell. She had arrived on the Betsy Blaine out of San Francisco, and the second officer who was still in port kept sending her notes by messenger, she being open to persuasion as any woman might be—for give temptation an inch with ’em, he believed, and it became a bond. That officer—Covington had seen him—was quite, quite presentable. His ship hadn’t hauled anchor yet, but still waited off Millers Point. The thought made Covington fume.

  Theodora sat opposite him at the breakfast table. Confound my deafness. Confound my shyness with her, he boiled. The morning was chilly and she wore a long jacket with a fox-fur collar. It was tied at the throat with a brown string. Her hair was pulled back, pinned up, and strands fell down in natural curls. Her manners were straightforward, unaffected. Her small boots peeping out from under her chair were deep cherry-red, and her attaché-case, that she had placed near the door, far too small for a woman intent on inland travel. She sat very straight-backed, and in repose folded her hands in her lap. Compare her with the hoydens of Covington’s later blood and she was a princess in life! His children shared red hair, freckles and fine aquiline noses (his own eagle-like nose, to be precise), and that was all.

  He still could not ask whether she was consenting to coming with them today. What arrangements he had made he kept secret from them all. Wagons, beds, victuals: all the comforts of home (of ship, more like it) so they could travel down the land. Quite a caravan was in his mind. He peered from under his eyelids to read Theodora’s lips and decipher her words. Her mother had taken her a merry dance through several continents. The last but one was India.

  ‘More sugar … father?’

  Covington had the impression she begged his pardon. Then she repeated the question in mime.

  ‘Yea, heartily, more sugar, pile it on.’

  ‘He must have his sugar. It cheers him better
than wine,’ said Mrs Covington, so immensely considerate it stung.

  He steered his wife aside.

  ‘Is she comin’? Has she said yes?’

  ‘Bless you. Ask her yourself.’

  ‘Hmmm. Very well. Thank you.’ What could you do with a wife who spoke your own thoughts but declined to pass on the very words of others?

  A bar of morning sunlight warmed the room and Theodora stirred to its touch like a small ginger cat.

  MacCracken? Where was he? Covington wanted to see the two of them together. What they looked like sitting at table. The ferrety MacCracken phizog against the somewhat rounder-faced, high-cheeked Theodora. Bone structure versus bone structure. Nose of one against the cheek of the other. Ribcage and breast contour. Their compatible strengths. Their weak points in opposition. Covington wanted to sense how they would go on from here—into the unknown of their lives. He wanted to know how they would take it, as a principle of life, if they had the news that the spirit was absent. Stolen, torn out of the breathing world. They would need to be strong, and when he thought of that he feared they might not shine. He feared nothing might shine. For himself no courage was wanting. But what was courage in this matter without hope?