Roger Curtis - Lights in a Western Sky

‘Let’s make a fire,’ Melanie said.

‘Alright.’

‘I saw some chestnuts in the cupboard. She must have got them in for Christmas. Shall we?’

‘Aren’t you forgetting Piers?’

‘You think we should worry about Piers?’

‘Well… if he’s taking you for a meal…’

‘I don’t think that need bother us.’

‘I don’t follow.’

‘Piers was never coming, Eugene.’

‘What?’

‘Piers was my security. In case you were not what I wanted you to be.’

‘A reason to get me to the station on the pretext of a dinner in Richmond.’

‘Something like that. Besides, Piers is not at the National. He’s in Paris, with someone else. And I haven’t set eyes on him for weeks.’

With those words came an immediate and profound sense of release. I let my eyes roam unhindered about the room, for the first time seeing its treasures for what they were, not strange and hostile appendages of Berenice. And all suffused by an ethereal light from the window, where Melanie was now standing.

‘Have you looked outside?’ I said.

‘I know. My car’s half-buried.’

‘I could help you clear it.’

‘But then the trains wouldn’t be running, would they?’

‘I suppose not.’

She began to stroke my hair, over the temples, as she’d done all those years ago to console me. She said, ‘I always knew there was something odd about your hair.’

‘I promise I won’t let it worry me anymore.’

I switched off the light and stood beside her at the window. As we stared into the distance our eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. Slowly, like a photograph developing in a darkroom tray, the image of the pagoda with snow upon its countless tiers rose up, and we were transported back to where we had once been.

Dr Rupert Murchison’s dream was about to die. That much he knew and was prepared for. But of its manner of passing he was still ignorant.

He paused at the top of the stairs overlooking the Natural History Museum’s great gallery. Behind him in the wall the bust of the hunter Selous, with rifle poised, presided over the stuff of trophies with an ambivalence more acute in this conserving age than at any time before. Below and before him stretched the skeleton of Diplodocus , the largest of the dinosaurs. He gazed along the line of its spine towards the entrance, the better to contemplate his departure.

Part of him – the realist – wanted immediate severance from a world that suddenly, with his retirement, had turned sour. The other part – the dreamer – wished to linger and for the last time commune with the incumbents of the cases in the galleries below.

He descended the stairs cautiously, into the conflicting flows of tourists and children’s groups. He became for the first time part of the masses, no longer the proud, if unrecognised, Curator of Mammals with his head held high. He saw himself mistily, as if from behind, a figure walking steadily down a beach towards the troubled surf, ill-informed of the dangers beneath its surface. It was an appropriate analogy. The sea was the life of idleness that now awaited him, and the predator within it a wife for whom affection had ebbed as the dementia had taken hold. It was a new profession that he would follow, whose motto was the single word ‘care.’

By the time he reached the bottom the lesser man – the dreamer – had won the day. He turned into one of the bays off the main gallery. There, in their cases, the higher mammalian orders held their court. He passed that chosen spot amongst the primates which, twenty or so years before, he had vowed to fill with a specimen so unique that the world of scientific discovery must fall at his feet. He even recalled rehearsing the lines he intended to speak – first to his colleagues, then to the press, and last of all to those members of the public privileged enough to attend.

But it hadn’t happened. And Bradley Tyler – his protégé, colleague and now, today, the usurper of his position – had seized upon this of all the subjects that Rupert’s productive life as a zoologist might have offered. The words had ricocheted around the bottled walls of the spirit room where they were gathered to wish him farewell. ‘Most scientists,’ Tyler had said, ‘are remembered for their discoveries and what emanates from them; but a few are famous for leaving behind seemingly insoluble conundrums. Murchison’s fragment, as it has come to be known, will assuredly outlive him.’ He looked around with a thin triumphant smile, then added, ‘Unless, of course, someone with sufficient insight should come along and…’ He cupped his hand around his ear. ‘Did I by any chance hear someone mention Piltdown?’ He waited until the titters had died down. ‘But we mustn’t jest. Today we say farewell to a fine scientist, colleague and friend. So please raise your glasses…’

Within the pocket of his trousers Rupert’s grip closed viciously upon the small glass tube, hardly larger than his thumb, containing the famous fragment of skin that, over the years, had resisted all attempts to establish the species of origin. The unrefined microscopic techniques of the time had given way to the sophisticated tools of modern technology. But they too, despite their power, had yielded nothing more.

With Tyler’s challenging words the weight of failure bore more heavily upon him than at any time before, because the doors were about to close against any remaining possibility of resolution. Now, under the stares of this dumb audience of apes, he felt the cold blade of their disdain. He turned away, resolved to look no more and complete as rapidly as possible his passage to the end game.

But such finality was denied him. Tyler had appeared at his elbow.

‘Sorry to pursue you, Rupert, but an elderly gentleman has just turned up. Said he knew you. Thought he could throw some light upon your little mystery, but just what I can’t imagine. Didn’t seem too nimble on his feet, though, so I said I’d follow you with his card.’ He handed the card to Rupert. ‘Ah, a man of the cloth I see.’

‘Thank you,’ Rupert said, glancing at the card, then putting it into his pocket.

‘You won’t see him?’

‘I’ve had enough socialising for today, Bradley. His number’s here. I’ll give him a call.’

‘Right, I’ll tell him. Well, goodbye then, Rupert. Take care.’

‘You too, Bradley.’

Angry with himself for his cowardice, Rupert made his way along the railings towards the subway to South Kensington station. Suddenly weary, he slumped onto the bench at the top of the steps, then closed his eyes. In moments he was on that train from Nairobi to Lake Victoria, all those years before.

The train had climbed out of the Rift Valley and over the Mau Escarpment. The carriage swayed in a manner at odds with the more regular clatter of the wheels. As daylight waned the ochre hues at the window turned leaden-grey with the beginnings of a tropical rainstorm. Soon the fusillade against the glass began to dominate the train’s more drum-like beat. Under their influence Rupert could hardly tell whether he was dreaming or awake. He recognised only that his eyes were closed and his mind was numb, vaguely aware that the future – or what he could read of it – held nothing that warranted any adjustment of this state of melancholy.

The uncomfortable truth was that he had stayed in Kenya too long. The magnet that had drawn him here had captured others in its field, and the fruits of their collective labours had to be shared. The time had come to return to the museum and his laboratory high above the Cromwell Road, and reconstruct his career around what his colleagues would see as rich pickings. He knew that he would be less easily satisfied.