Belle Moral: A Natural History (10 page)

F
LORA
. Pearl, we canna care for your brother here on our own.

P
EARL
. For pity’s sake, Flora, make up your mind.

F
LORA
. There’s more to … there are things beyond your ken, pet.

P
EARL
. What “things”?

F
LORA
. Have you considered Dr Reid’s proposal?

D
R
R
EID.
I spoke to your aunt, Pearl. I did think it proper.

P
EARL
. Of course. [to F
LORA]
Dear Auntie, I …

D
R
R
EID
[
to
W
EE
F
ARLEIGH]
. I think we could all do with a cup of tea.

P
EARL
. Auntie, I know you cherish certain other … hopes. And, though I’d thought to speak first to Dr Reid in private, I wish you both to know that I –

F
LORA
. Marry him, Pearl.

P
EARL
. What?

F
LORA
. Dr Reid will live here and look after Victor, he’ll look after … everything.

P
EARL
. Wh – why? You think me incapable?

F
LORA
. No, no –

P
EARL
. Sheltered and ignorant because I’ve dedicated my life to study rather than gad about the world like Victor – much good it’s done him. I’ll have you know there is a greater distance between two cells than between the poles of the earth –

F
LORA
. Pearl –

P
EARL
. I am mistress of Belle Moral! My father
willed
me capable. You would have me forego my inheritance, my chance to consecrate myself to my work – forgive me, Doctor, your proposal does me nothing but honour, I speak on principle only –

F
LORA
. Pearl, there’s more to life than work.

P
EARL
. You’d rather I were more like your precious Victor; sensual, dissolute –

F
LORA
. Nay, pet –

P
EARL
. Dismissing my work as if it were just another lady-like “accomplishment” on a par with playing the pianoforte, “mind you don’t get
too
accomplished, dear, and frighten the young gentlemen away –

D
R
R
EID.
Pearl, I’m eager to hear of your insights into the ear.

F
LORA
. Don’t encourage the lass.

P
EARL
[to F
LORA]
. If you can’t stomach science, go back to your elves and pixies and –!

D
R
R
EID.
Now, Pearl, don’t be too hard on your auntie, she is of another generation.

F
LORA
[to D
R
R
EID]
. So are you.

P
EARL
[almost feverish with excitement]
. Doctor, I have indeed been vouchsafed a fresh insight into the ear which I am longing to share with you.

D
R
R
EID.
I am longing to receive it.

P
EARL
. You claim it is more than a freak, meaningless –

D
R
R
EID.
Not meaningless, no. Indeed, no, no, no, it is pregnant with meaning.

P
EARL
. What kind of meaning?

D
R
R
EID
. Pearl. Even now there are those among us whose bodies function as evolutionary Trojan Horses, concealing traits that harken back to a common ancestor. Not only of man. But of every mammal on Earth.

P
EARL
. You think the ear is a throwback?

D
R
R
EID
. I think it likely.

P
EARL
. Victor’s fit proves the ear is canine –

D
R
R
EID
. Victor’s fit proves that he
perceived
the ear to be canine. As such it may say more about him than about the ear. Indeed, is the fit merely one side of the phobic coin? Heads: an unwholesome fear of canines in particular. Tails: an unwholesome identification with animals in general, witness his new-found vegetarianism.

P
EARL
. We’re all of us animals.

D
R
R
EID
. Touché, my dear; we differ in degree only, not in kind. But if Man does not cast off the vestiges of his animal origins, he can only revert; back to the beast.

P
EARL
. But how do we know which vestiges to cast off? We are all changing – evolving – even now, in this drawing room. Life teems at the uncertain line between species, and who’s to say it’s a line at all, perhaps it’s more of a … blur. The bones of my hand with
which I take up a pen or wield a paint brush are the same that propel a bat to fly, a horse to gallop, a whale to swim. Darwin said “we shall never probably disentangle the inextricable web of affinities between the members of any one class.”

D
R
R
EID
. That doesn’t mean we should not try.

P
EARL
. Of course not, but what is it we are supposed to glean from these endless variations? –
[wonderment]
apart from an odd disequilibriating sense of déja vue; such as when we gaze upon the countenance of a great ape.

F
LORA
[likewise in wonderment]
. I’ve seen the photo of those monkeys drinking tea in the London Zoo. All got up in top hats and bonnets. I’ve never been so disequi-liberated.

P
EARL
. Perhaps Victor’s phobia is an effect of his overheated mythopoetical faculty; it having rendered him susceptible to a deep recognition of animal kinship.

D
R
R
EID
. Intriguing.

P
EARL
. Canines, of course, are invested with supernatural significance in many cultures including our own, frequently as psycho-pomps.

F
LORA
. Who?

D
R
R
EID
. Guides between this world and the next.

P
EARL
. Guardians at the gates of the Underworld. Witness the Greeks with their three-headed dog, Cerberus, who was soothed by music; the Egyptians with Anubis, an imposing creature with the head of a Jackal and the body of a man. Often depicted carrying baked goods.

F
LORA
. Baked goods?

W
EE
F
ARLEIGH
. Baked goods.

P
EARL
. For the journey into the afterlife. What is the secret these mythic creatures keep?
[Takes a pastry.]

F
LORA
. Who? The apes or the pompadours?

P
EARL
. And how are we to winkle it out of them? What is the –
[taking a bite]
. What’s this?

W
EE
F
ARLEIGH
. A madeleine. Small, rich gateau, baked in a shell-shaped tin.

F
LORA
. A what?

P
EARL
. A biscuit. Only better.

It is the secret of immortality. And what is immortality, but the fact of our common substance? One day, you and I and those daubs of paint [the
family portrait]
might trace our origins to a common ancestor, and that ancestor might turn out to be a mere … particle.

F
LORA
. “Remember man that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return.”

P
EARL
. What’s wrong, Doctor?

D
R
R
EID.
Nothing. You reminded me of someone just now.

P
EARL
. Who? Father?

D
R
R
EID.
No, no; someone I knew a very long time ago.

P
EARL
. Did she look like me?

D
R
R
EID.
It was a he. And no, he didn’t resemble you in the slightest – not outwardly – but I dare say the two of you might have struck up a friendship.

P
EARL
. We might even now. Is he still alive?

D
R
R
EID
. In a manner of speaking, yes. He was, I confess, myself. Foolish –

P
EARL
. Not at all.

D
R
R
EID
. Fanciful –

P
EARL
. Seamus, you’re blushing.

D
R
R
EID
. Pearl, I too heard that siren call from the bottomless well of deep time, for that is where our ultimate origins are to be found. And in my mind’s eye, I gazed through that microscope of finer and finer distinctions until it seemed all was … one. But those hypnotic depths can paralyze the will. Cast your gaze forward, my friend. Science now calls upon us to stake out the boundaries; to etch boldly those lines between one species and another, lines which Myth and Religion have smudged, and which Nature has only sketchily indicated.

P
EARL
. Nature is an impressionist, then.

D
R
R
EID
. And I would not have a Renoir on my wall for all the tea in China, for what do these Turners and Whistlers do? They glorify Nature’s seductive pull back to the primordial swamp out of which we so recently crawled; a pull to which we are now more susceptible than ever. Pearl, when our great Queen Victoria was born, man could travel no more swiftly than the ancient Egyptians, by horse; now the country is traversed by trains, oceans are plied by steamships; there will soon be horseless carriages clogging the streets and flying machines crowding the
heavens. Innoculations save lives, sanitation extends lives, humane laws protect the defective where once they’d have been cruelly cast out to perish. We are at an historic juncture. Thanks to our interventions, Nature no longer holds dominion over our survival; she has lost the power to select the fit and discard the unfit. It’s up to us. We are, like it or not,
in locus Dei
.

P
EARL
. And what we are to do in God’s place? How are we to know what God’s work is?

D
R
R
EID.
It is to forge an earthly paradise; to rouse the infant science of eugenics from its cradle; to engender a blueprint for the New Man: genetically pure, morally uncontaminated.

P
EARL
. To identify the cause of the ear. And eradicate it.

D
R
R
EID
. Yes.

P
EARL
. As far as we know, there is nothing in the fossil record to indicate man’s descent from dogs.

D
R
R
EID
. There is not.

P
EARL
. Then, assuming the ear is canine, how can it be a throwback? If it were, one would expect it to be ape-like.

D
R
R
EID.
All mammals share a common ancestor.

P
EARL
. Wolves and primates diverged much later; thus if a human being exhibits a canine trait, the chance of it being atavistic is exceedingly slight.

D
R
R
EID
. Point taken. Then we are left, merely, with a case of monstrous birth; singular, interesting, but … 
[disappointed]
meaningless.

P
EARL
. Unless …

D
R
R
EID
. Unless?

P
EARL
. Cast your gaze forward, my friend. Might it not be an emergent characteristic? Signalling the rise of a new species.

D
R
R
EID
. Nature’s most closely guarded secret.

P
EARL
. The inner workings of life itself. Exposed.

D
R
R
EID
. Marry me, Pearl, and I will take you to the source of the ear.

P
EARL
. So you do know where it is from.

D
R
R
EID
. Yes.

P
EARL
. And you will take me there. To the village on the Caucasian steppes.

D
R
R
EID
. I will take you to the ends of the earth. As man and wife.

P
EARL
. Seamus … 
[suddenly]
What’s that smell? F
LORA
. What smell?

P
EARL
. It’s an overpowering stench of … paint.
[Covers her mouth.]

D
R
R
EID
. Pearl –

P
EARL
. I’m fine. I felt a bit queasy this morning, but I’m better now.

F
LORA
. Queasy?

D
R
R
EID
. This morning?

F
LORA
. Is it your woman’s time?

P
EARL
. Flora! I’m perfectly fine, [as
though suddenly recovered]
in fact I’m longing for luncheon.

F
LORA
. Wee Farleigh’s fixed a lovely … French thing.