The Darwin Conspiracy (12 page)

The phrase “lost to history” popped into his mind. Let’s see. Darwin 
fathered ten children (for someone so sick, Hugh mused, the old man did okay). But three of them died young, including of course the ten-year-old Annie, whose death broke her father’s heart.

In his excitement the other names came to him in a jumble—William and George, Francis and Leonard, another boy whose name he could not recall, and Henrietta, the beloved one, everyone’s favorite. It was Etty who read her father’s manuscripts and edited them and who imitated him in his perpetual illnesses. She was the perfect woman of her time, even going so far as to achieve a Victorian lady’s highest aspira-tion, namely, marriage. But Lizzie—she got lost in the shuffle. What happened to her? Did she ever marry?

Hugh was captivated by Lizzie’s voice. He admired the subterfuge of hiding her journal in plain sight, just like
The Purloined Letter.
The ruse had worked its magic for—how long? he did the math quickly, rounding off—some 140 years. And just think, it had been lying there unread all those years, and he was the first person to crack it open!

He read on. From time to time he glanced at his minder sitting primly at the desk beneath the French window. She seemed to be taking pains to ignore him, like a guard in a museum gallery who doesn’t mean to suggest that you’re capable of actually stealing the Renoir. But he
was
capable; he knew that. He was already joining in Lizzie’s spirit of subterfuge, occasionally picking up papers and shuffling them around nonchalantly. He began to rationalize—any publisher that would burn Byron’s memoirs was pusillanimous to begin with and didn’t deserve this treasure. He debated: Should he steal the damned thing or not? Perhaps he should just borrow it—that was the thing to do. He could always come up with a way to return it, maybe say it got mixed among his papers.

A phone rang, startling him. The woman answered it and spoke in low tones, then turned to Hugh and said: “I’m terribly sorry, but we’re closing early today because of the move.” He had more entries to read.

“You have only five minutes more, I’m afraid.”

Five minutes was all he needed. He rearranged his papers, then placed a stack of them on the table and, sitting behind it, raised his shirt and slipped the journal under it, wedging it firmly in place with his belt.

He casually jotted down some more notes, gathered up his things, smiled distantly at the woman, thanked her, and walked down the 
creaking wooden staircase and out the front door. As he stepped into the cool London air, he felt as if he had just walked out of the Tower of London with the Crown Jewels.

With only minutes to spare, Hugh arrived at King’s Cross, leapt from the cab, and ran to catch the train to Cambridge. He climbed into a second-class coach and fell into a window seat just as the train departed.

Outside, stanchions glided by at a sluggish pace, then wooden sheds and coal piles and the grimy back facades of railroad flats. It was late afternoon but already darkening.

He was too preoccupied to notice much of anything. Other passengers were seated near him, an almost felt presence in his peripheral vision, but he ignored them. He switched his backpack to his lap and patted the canvas—he could feel the journal inside, its distinctive thick cover with rounded edges—and again the thrill washed over him, a tingling of excitement.

Staring into the gathering darkness of the train window, he was vaguely aware of dim objects whizzing by outside and half images reflected from the carriage interior. He paused to take stock. He knew the excitement the journal aroused in him was not entirely pure, that it had a darker side. For the thought kept creeping in that this discovery could launch his career. It might make big waves among Darwin scholars. Clearly, it wouldn’t prompt a radically new view—the man’s eccentricities and illnesses were legendary—but this was an account from within his own family. He wondered just how accurate it was. Yes, it sketched the familiar outlines of Darwin as a paterfamilias. But this portrait was more complicated, more nuanced—and not altogether flattering. Lizzie seemed to suggest that the old man buried himself in his family as some sort of refuge. His hypochondria could be triggered by the slightest social interaction and it turned the whole household upside down—or rather, settled over it like a depressive fog. And Darwin’s temper and his melancholy seemed formidable; what to make of that business with the cosh? Or the mirror to spy on visitors? Or Leonard’s remark that Darwin looked so distraught after the visit from his old shipmates? Lizzie certainly put a spin on things. She practically conjured up the vision of Robert Louis Stevenson’s lodger awaiting the dreaded tap of Long John Silver’s wooden leg.                                                                  

Well, as the saying goes, no man is a hero to his valet. He recalled the retort—that it is the
valet
who is incapable of recognizing the hero.

He tried to picture Lizzie, young, not yet twenty, sitting in a high-collared dress, composing her journal entries by the cold winter light coming in through a window. Or perhaps leaning back in bed in a long cotton nightgown while a candle flickered shadows upon the wall.

He imagined her straining to find the words to express the tumult of her feelings. Her eyes burned bright with intelligence—at that moment, he could actually
see
her and see her eyes staring back at him. He gave a slight gasp, shook off the daydream, but her eyes were still there—
for
real
—reflected in the train’s dark window. Startled, he began to turn, felt a hand on his arm.

“I was wondering when you’d notice me,” Beth said.

He couldn’t believe it. She was smiling, Sphinx-like.

“Beth. My God. What are you doing here?”

“On my way to Cambridge. And you?”

“The same.” He was dumbfounded. “How long have you been

here?”

“A little longer than you. You passed right by me to sit down. I’d say you were in some kind of trance.”

“Sorry. Yes. I don’t know. I was thinking.”

“I could see that. I almost didn’t recognize you. What happened to your beard?”

“I shaved it.”

“New look for a new life?”

“Yeah.” He gave an ironic half smile. “I’m starting with the little things—life—and moving on to the big stuff, like haircuts.”

“I see.” She examined him closely. “Well, you don’t look like a hermit anymore. Much more mainstream. Basically, you look good.”

“So do you.”

She
was
looking good—blue jeans, black scoop-neck sweater, her hair up. He shook his head.

“It’s amazing—to run into you like this,” he said.

“I know. Last time I saw you, from the panga, you were just a tiny figure on an island in the middle of nowhere.”

“And you—you were disappearing over the horizon.” He caught himself. “God, I’m sorry. I forgot about your mother, and the funeral. I hope . . . all that wasn’t too hard on you.”

“It was hard, actually, more than I would have thought. It was so totally unexpected.” She looked past him, out the window. “It turned out she had had heart problems before, but she kept it from us.”

“I’m sorry.”

She looked back at him. “You never really believe a parent is going to die—that’s trite but true. And we were very close.”

She said it matter-of-factly, without a trace of self-pity. He didn’t know how to reply. Only gradually was he recovering from the shock of seeing her.

“You learn a lot about yourself at a time like that,” she continued.

“The scales fall off your eyes. All kinds of things come out of the closet.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Feelings. Unresolved conflicts. Things you never even knew existed. You must have felt that.”

“Yes,” he said. Then he switched the subject. “And your father—how is he taking it?”

“Not well. They’d been married thirty-seven years. Met in college, sophomore year. He was stunned at first, but now that the shock is over his pain is even worse—all the little daily reminders that she’s no longer there. I think he still can’t quite believe it. He can’t bring himself to take her message off the answering machine. I’m going to have to figure out how to spend a lot of time near him in the future.”

“And was that a relative who called? On the island?”

“Yes. My brother, Ned. He’s five years younger. He lives in Califor-nia, so he’s not much help. That’s typical.” She shrugged. “And you—tell me about you. When did you leave Sin Nombre?”

“Nearly three weeks ago now. I just got fed up. After you two left, it wasn’t the same . . .”

“You missed the crowds.”

“No, but I missed something.”

She smiled, almost sadly, he thought.

“And the project? Who’s running it?”

“A couple came, nice enough, I guess. Serious types.”

“And you were the odd man out, once again?”

“Sort of. Speaking of which, how is Nigel? What’s he doing?”

“I don’t really know.”

“You don’t?”

“We stopped seeing each other.”

His heart rose up. “What happened?”

“Hard to say, really. He insisted on coming to the funeral, even though I didn’t want him to. My ex-husband came too, so there was a certain amount of . . . strain. I remember just looking at the two of them, so conspicuously ignoring each other, and thinking I wish I were rid of both of them. So when we got back, we went our separate ways. I expect he’s got someone new by now. The gift of gab gets them every time.”

“I’m glad to hear it. I didn’t think he was—up to you.”

She laughed, then said: “Unlike you, for example.”

“Yes. Unlike me.”

She smiled as the train pulled into a station. They had to stand to let an elderly woman pass. Hugh helped her with her suitcase, carrying it outside to the platform, and when he returned, Beth had her feet propped on the seat across from her, resting on an
Evening Standard.

“So, what are you doing in Cambridge?” he asked.

“Research,” she replied. “And you?”

“The same—research.”

He was struck by the realization that something had changed: he had found it easy on the island to confide in her, but now a screen went up between them. He felt as if he were playing chess—their pawns just blocked one another.

“What kind of research?” she asked. “Is it about Darwin?”

“Uh-huh. And you?”

“Darwin.”

“I see,” he said. “Is it—biographical or what?”

“Sort of. I can’t really say yet. And you?”

“The same.”

They fell silent, pondering the chessboard. Through the backpack, he felt the journal. If she only knew what he had there . . . but obviously he couldn’t tell her, or anyone else for that matter. What was she up to?

After a minute or two, he said, “You know, Nigel once told me he thought you were related to Darwin.”

She gave him a sharp look.

“Now, why would he say that?”

“I have no idea. But is it true? Are you?”

“Don’t believe everything you hear,” she said in a tone that ended the matter.

Checkmate.

They talked until the train reached Cambridge. On the platform, he saw that it was starting to drizzle lightly.

“So . . . You want to get a drink?” she asked.

He looked at his watch. The library was still open for another hour and he was also eager to read more of the journal. “I do, but . . .”

She finished his sentence for him: “You’ve got something to do.”

“Yes. I’m really sorry.”

“Stop saying you’re sorry so much.”

“How about tomorrow?” he asked.

“Okay. My schedule is nothing if not flexible—embarrassingly so.”

They fixed a time and place—the Prince Regent at seven—and shared a cab. Inside, they exchanged addresses and phone numbers; she wrote his on the back of an envelope. She was staying with a friend on Nor-folk Street, not too far from his rooming house, and so she dropped him off, refusing money for the fare. Through the window, she sized up his place. “Not fancy,” she said, “but I like the name: Twenty Windows.

Did you count them?”

“Of course.”

“See you tomorrow.”

Hugh dropped the knapsack off in his room, then turned around and left for the library. He followed the narrow side streets with their ungainly brown brick houses and alleyways. It was raining harder now, but it felt pleasantly cool on his face. At Market Square he entered a Gothic world of spires and ancient arches, turning into the passageway behind the walls of Trinity and crossing the slate-covered bridge across the Cam. The river below was an undulating bright green carpet. Three black swans, their heads bowed, swam through weeping-willow boughs that hung on the far bank. Life suddenly seemed filled with possibilities.

It was filled with coincidences and happenstance—you never knew when it might bring you to some crossroads or when you had taken some critical turn, even at the moment you were taking it.

He bounded up the library steps, showed his card, pushed through the turnstile, and mounted the stairs to the Manuscripts Room. Roland was there, shuffling through request forms; he waved hello, then checked his watch and wagged his head in make-believe reproach.

“I need something on Darwin’s family life,” said Hugh. “What can you recommend? I’m interested in particular in Elizabeth—Lizzie.”

“Ah, the mystery retard.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I’m only repeating what I hear.”

Ten minutes later, Hugh was installed at a corner table, plowing through the half dozen books that Roland provided.

There was little to learn about Lizzie.
Born July 8, 1847. Never
married. Died June 8, 1926.
Those were the bare bones of her life. Her father noted, once, that she was given to strange shivers as a child. And Henrietta left behind some lines suggesting that Lizzie was “slow.” So that’s where the calumny comes from, thought Hugh. He discounted it quickly and almost angrily—Lizzie’s own journal belied any such notion. Besides, he knew enough about sibling rivalry to understand that it worked both ways.

One book carried a reference to the curious fact that in 1866 (the year following her journal entries, Hugh noted) she refused confirmation; she turned away from the catechism and told her mother, “I do not feel much heart for it.” That same year she announced that henceforth she wanted to be known as “Bessie” instead of “Lizzie.” That was curious. Was she acting out of a whim? Or was she experiencing some crisis, some emotional storm that made her want to reinvent herself? And then four years later, just before Henrietta married a man named Litchfield, she seemed to drop out of sight; she went abroad alone and afterward was given short shrift in family chronicles.