The Darwin Conspiracy (36 page)

When it was over, most of those present appeared giddy from the excitement. Papa recovered and later pronounced it all ‘rubbish’, though I must say
that he appeared genuinely distraught. George, who is a believer in the spiritual world, saw the look upon his face as he came down the staircase, and
whispered to me: ‘If I did not know better, I would have said: here is a man
who is loath to have a reckoning with someone in the afterworld.’

Later, I was moved when you took my hands in yours and squeezed them
and referred to what you called my ‘travails’. You said: ‘My dear, it is we
women who bear the suffering of the world. It has always been so and will
always be. The consolation is that while men may wash themselves in our
tears, it is we who drink deeply at life’s source.’ As you said this, I spied a
single tear running down your face. When you leaned over to kiss me goodbye, I felt it upon my cheek, which made me think, years ago, of the sister in
Goblin Market
and the juice that dripped over her face and lodged in the
dimples of her chin.

I shall never forget the support you have provided for me during my time
of tribulation.

Yours always,

Bessie

18 November 1877

My dear Mary Ann,

To think I have not seen you in almost four years. So much has happened,
and yet so little. As you know, we have taken Francis’ son Bernard into our
house following the death of poor Amy in childbirth. Although I dearly wish
it had never happened, I will admit that the presence of a one-year-old has
enlivened the old place; his cry seems to shake the dust from the rafters and
rattle the mulberry-tree outside the nursery. I suspect that in no time the old
toys will be broken out, including the sliding-board on the stairs. Mamma
says Bernard is as solemn as a Grand Lama. I, of course, have found it wonderfully bittersweet to hold a baby in my arms once again. Sometimes my eyes
fill up with tears, and whether it is from joy or sorrow, I cannot tell.

Papa has become interested in earthworms, which, Mr Huxley noted, is
appropriate for someone ‘whose mind is casting ahead to the grave’. He has
placed a mill-stone in the garden, attached to a device that can measure how
much it sinks, to measure their underground activity. He is convinced they are
intelligent and has Mamma playing the Broadwood and Francis playing the
bassoon to test their reactions, despite the fact that, as Mamma points out,
they have no ears.

Parslow retired two years ago; he lives in the cottage on the property and
has become a superb gardener, winning first prize for potatoes in the village
show two years running.

As you are no doubt aware, Papa’s fame continues to grow. Yesterday he
received an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from Cambridge. Mamma
worried that he would not be able to last the ceremony, but he did; it was not
without its lighter moments. The Senate House was packed to overflowing,
with rowdy undergraduates standing in the windows and sitting on statues.

Moments before Papa appeared in his bright red robe, a stuffed monkey in
gown and mortar-board was suspended from the gallery. A proctor confiscated it, much to the crowd’s disappointment, but the boys rallied when an
object said to represent ‘the missing link’ was lowered from above and
remained hovering just over Papa’s head. He did not appear to notice it. The
crowd both cheered and jeered him but it was clear that it was all in good
spirits. The Latin was largely incomprehensible, save for the Orator’s final
declaration that men and apes are morally different.

I could not help but feel proud. There are many things which I have told
 
no-one, not even you. Perhaps at the end of the day, despite the fact that his
studies and writings flow from an event that is singularly reprehensible, of
which only I and a few others have knowledge, he does possess some attri-butes of greatness. For he is at least the messenger of a great idea. I take
solace in thinking of him as the Angel Gabriel of natural science.

Now that I know the worst about the man, forgiveness can begin.

Yours always,

Bessie

Hugh leaned against the railing on the South Bank near the entrance to the National Theatre and checked his watch. Neville was forty minutes late—forty-two, to be exact. Hugh worried that he wouldn’t come. God knows, he hadn’t been all that eager to meet, but still—he wouldn’t have set a time and place with no intention of showing up, would he?

Hugh paced along the Embankment, each time lengthening his path.

Then, when he reached a point about one hundred yards from the theatre entrance, he spotted Neville sitting on a bench, reading the
Financial Times.
When Hugh walked over, Neville did a slight double take, fumbling with the paper and standing up and sticking out his hand almost as if it were a coincidence that they met.

“Afraid I’d missed you,” he said.

“I was waiting over there.” Hugh pointed to the entrance.

“I see. There’s another one, you know, just around the corner here.

My mistake, I’m sure.”

“It doesn’t matter. The main thing is we found each other.”

They started walking slowly along the Embankment. Neville, still wearing the bulky sweater of the other day, looked at the ground. Hugh could tell his companion was nervous; for that matter, so was he.

“Shall we take a ride? I’ve always wanted to.” Hugh motioned toward the London Eye, rising high in the sky.

To his surprise, Neville agreed. Hugh bought their tickets for the slow-motion Ferris wheel and within minutes the two were ushered into a cabin that began to move slowly upward, rocking slightly.

They were silent for a few moments, then Hugh took a breath and began: “Look, I know this is difficult for you—”

“That it most definitely is.”

“But I hope you’ll be able to tell me
something.
Everyone’s acting so mysterious. Bridget keeps implying that a lot of things happened that I didn’t know about. That Cal was disturbed about something. And you—I don’t know—you seem so secretive. As if you know something important but don’t want to tell me.”

“I see. That’s what you took away from our conversation?”

“Yes. You said his death was upsetting—”

“It certainly was. Nothing mysterious about that.”

“No, but you implied that something had happened. You talked about going back over old ground and reassessing things. What did you mean?”

The wheel was moving steadily upward now. They could see the bridges up and down the Thames and the two towers of Westminster Abbey.

Neville didn’t answer. Hugh thought he would ease the man’s discomfort by taking a less direct tack.

“What did you do in the lab, anyway? I mean, what was the work?”

“Ah,” said Neville, falling silent. He peered out the window, rubbing it with his sweater sleeve to see more clearly. But when he turned back, he looked at Hugh directly for the first time. “I might as well tell you what I know. Please treat what I’m about to say as confidential.”

“I will. I promise.”

He gave Hugh a penetrating look. “You’ve heard of bovine spongi
form encephalopathy?”

“Isn’t that mad cow disease?”

“Yes.”

“We had some in the States—a cow from Canada, if I remember.”

“Exactly. It’s been linked to a strain of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans. Aberrant proteins eat away at your brain, turn it into Swiss cheese. You go crazy, you’re wracked with pain, then you die a horrible death. Altogether, a nasty business.”

“And your lab investigated it?”

“We were in the forefront of the research. The big question was whether the disease could leap the species barrier. We figured it already

had—that it began with scrapie in sheep and because sheep offal was fed to cows, they came down with it. It’s widely known that slaughter-houses don’t abide by regulations, so bits of cow brains and spinal cords were getting into the beef we eat.

“I don’t know if you remember, but back in 1996, when the link was established, there was a sort of hysteria over here. The European Union boycotted British beef. Wimpy’s, Burger King, and McDonald’s took it off the market; even British Airways. It was a crisis for John Major. The Tory government had been on a PR offensive for years—I still remember a cabinet minister going on the telly to feed a hamburger to his four-year-old daughter. Her name was Cordelia. You don’t forget something like that.”

“I guess not. But why are you telling me all this?”

“To give you some idea of the pressures we were under. They were culling herds right and left. Beef is a ten-billion-pound industry and it was in free fall. The ranchers were screaming and there were demonstrations. It was quite a circus—simply unbelievable.”

“So your lab was under pressure to . . . what? Come up with a cure?”

“No, we were nowhere near a cure. We were just trying to answer the basic question, could diseased cow meat contaminate the human food chain? Believe me, it was a loaded question politically.”

“But you were able to prove it. Right?”

“Well, yes. But these scientific questions are never clear-cut. They’re never black and white. They’re subject to interpretations, statistical analysis, all sorts of variables. There’s room for maneuver.”

The wheel paused. They were at the summit. All of London was spread out before them; the parks were oddly shaped patches of green.

Hugh turned back to Neville.

“You’re trying to tell me my brother did something unethical, aren’t you?”

Neville frowned by way of confirmation.

“What did he do? Give in to government pressure?”

“No, no, not at all. Quite the opposite. You knew him better than any of us. You know he wouldn’t do that. He’d go the other way—a natural iconoclast, against the multinationals and big business. And that’s just what he did. He let his views interfere with his work.”

“How? Tell me.”

“He was working on a study with mice. They were genetically altered to mimic human reaction when exposed to the cow disease. His results—they were very strong. They clearly showed humans were susceptible.”

“And?”

“They were a bit too strong. No one else could replicate them. The head of the lab was suspicious—he’s a real shit, by the way—and he demanded replication before publication. That’s when it became obvious that some of Calvin’s data sheets had been changed.”

Neville took a deep breath, then spat out: “Basically, your brother falsified his outcome.”

Hugh couldn’t believe it. Before he could react, Neville resumed.

“I’ve been trying to understand why he did it and I almost can. We all believed the danger was very real for humans. The damned disease took over ten years to incubate. Who knew how many people were walking around with it? Thousands, hundreds of thousands? It could have been disaster on a massive scale. And the government was paralyzed in a position of quasi-denial—‘stonewalling,’ your brother called it.

The politicians were playing with people’s lives by underestimating the dangers, at least that’s the way he saw it. He felt he couldn’t sit back and simply let it happen.”

“But still,
falsifying . . .
how can you be sure?”

“It’s incontestable. The changes on the sheets were obvious. It wasn’t very well done. Besides, he admitted it. We were just lucky we hadn’t gone to publication—it was only weeks away.”

Hugh shook his head. The wheel was descending slowly now.

“So,” Neville continued, “there was nothing for it but to let him go.”

“Let him go! He was
fired
?”

“Not to put too fine a point on it—yes, he was fired. It’s an extremely serious breach of ethics for any lab. Motive can’t be considered. . . .”

Neville talked on, about the inviolability of scientific research, but Hugh tuned out. He was thinking of Cal and how hard he would have taken it, he who had always taken such pride in his work, in getting ahead.

“When did all this happen?” he asked.

“About two months before he returned to the States. Maybe three.”

They had completed the ride and the door flew open. They stepped 
out and walked in silence back to the bench. Hugh shook hands with him.

“Well, I’m glad you told me all this—I suppose.”

“Don’t be too hard on him. Believe me, you don’t know what pressure is until you’ve had to stand up to a cabinet minister whose job is on the line.” Neville smiled weakly. “And please. I don’t mean to go on like a broken record—”

“I know, don’t worry. I’ll treat everything as confidential.”

Hugh felt he should be grateful to Neville but he couldn’t bring himself to thank him. In fact, he had irrationally begun to dislike the man.

Now
he
was the one who wanted to get away. But Neville kept talking.

“You know, a situation like this, an untimely death—sometimes you get some new information and you view it differently. It’s like anything in life: step back and take the broader view and you might see things differently.”

To be polite, Hugh nodded.

“Like your man Darwin. That was his specialty, the broad view.”

“I really must be off,” said Hugh, moving away.

At that moment, Hugh couldn’t care less about Darwin or about Lizzie or about their effort to uncover the mystery of the
Beagle
’s voyage. He was thinking only of the anguish Cal must have experienced— 
and that he had experienced it alone.

Later, riding back to Cambridge on the train, he saw things more clearly. Neville had been trying to help him, after all; he had undergone a risk, in his own mind at least, in revealing the secrets of the lab. So was Bridget, for that matter, though she had little but her own instincts to go on. They were
all
trying to help him. Now he needed to reach Simon, Cal’s roommate, to see what other secrets might remain.