Read Online The Darwin Conspiracy by John Darnton - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: John Darnton
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drive, making little gods in diapers, almost too perfect for this world.
All that time we were talking, he thought, and we didn’t even say his name.
So he said it to himself: Cal.
Cal, Cal, Cal.
He spotted the building at once, number 50 Albemarle Street. A discreetly placed brass plaque announced it as home to John Murray, Publishers. He stepped back to examine the eighteenth-century town house.
It was five stories tall, cream-colored with a cranberry-painted cast-iron fence leading to the imposing front door. French windows peered down from the first floor. The blank facade of a NatWest bank next door made it doubly quaint.
He tried to imagine the crush of buyers nearly two centuries ago, shouting up at the windows to obtain the early cantos of Byron’s Don Juan. Or Jane Austen’s messenger delivering a carefully wrapped manuscript of Emma. Or the frail figure of Darwin in a top hat, prematurely aged, gripping the railing to climb the steps in order to negotiate yet another edition of the Origin.
He had called ahead for an appointment. The archivist said she’d be “delighted” to meet him—though her tone belied her words—and she remarked pointedly that she found his request “intriguingly spontaneous.” He ignored the sarcasm and said he’d be there “right away,” using the American expression, which forced her hand.
Walking there, he was pursued by memories of Cal. Years ago Cal had been a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, where he first fell in love with science. Hugh, just kicked out of Andover, was spending a year in Paris and he often jumped on the ferry for a quick visit to England. They’d set a time and place to meet—Piccadilly, the Tower, the pub forty paces from 10 Downing—and they’d surprise each other by arriving incognito, back turned, collar up. (Once Cal came disguised in a ridiculous mop wig.) They’d go carousing through London and then take the late train to Oxford and Hugh would crash on a couch in Cal’s room.
There was something liberating about being abroad—two New World vagabonds traipsing around Europe’s haunts, trading confidences (they could somehow talk more openly, more honestly so far from home). The four-year age difference melted away. Hugh remembered it as a time of confidence and endless possibilities. He did not dare compete for girls, convinced that Cal was irresistible, and he took solace in contrasts: his brother was the serious one and he was the wit, his brother the responsible one and he the rebel. He smoked Gauloises, letting the cigarettes dangle from his lip, spoke fluent French, wore a black turtleneck, and carried a paperback of War and Peace in his backpack.
And then Cal had met Bridget, who was backpacking with a friend.
“I want you to meet her. We’re coming over to Paris. A whole week— nothing to do but drink wine, hang around museums, and pretend I love French poetry.” And what a week it had been! The obligatory baguette and cheese on the Quai Voltaire. Marie Antoinette’s peasant cottage at Versailles.
Getting lost in the forest at Fontainebleau. Touring the catacombs, even the sewers. For three days he escorted Bridget’s friend Ellen, but thankfully she left. Then the three of them were inseparable. On the final day Cal left them alone to get drunk at an Algerian bar but really, as he put it, “ ’cause it’s time you two get to know each other.” No flirting—a novel sensation. He liked her immediately, maybe loved her, because she loved Cal and Cal loved her.
How odd—feeling so comfortable, so at ease, so included. A big sister to go along with the big brother. A trinity. There was nothing the three of them couldn’t do.
Where had all that piss and vinegar gone? Had it really disappeared in a single summer afternoon?
The receptionist, inside a glass cubicle in the front hall, directed him past a winding banister to the waiting area, a tiny room under a glass cupola. He rose to greet the archivist, a young
All that time we were talking, he thought, and we didn’t even say his name.
So he said it to himself: Cal.
Cal, Cal, Cal.
He spotted the building at once, number 50 Albemarle Street. A discreetly placed brass plaque announced it as home to John Murray, Publishers. He stepped back to examine the eighteenth-century town house.
It was five stories tall, cream-colored with a cranberry-painted cast-iron fence leading to the imposing front door. French windows peered down from the first floor. The blank facade of a NatWest bank next door made it doubly quaint.
He tried to imagine the crush of buyers nearly two centuries ago, shouting up at the windows to obtain the early cantos of Byron’s Don Juan. Or Jane Austen’s messenger delivering a carefully wrapped manuscript of Emma. Or the frail figure of Darwin in a top hat, prematurely aged, gripping the railing to climb the steps in order to negotiate yet another edition of the Origin.
He had called ahead for an appointment. The archivist said she’d be “delighted” to meet him—though her tone belied her words—and she remarked pointedly that she found his request “intriguingly spontaneous.” He ignored the sarcasm and said he’d be there “right away,” using the American expression, which forced her hand.
Walking there, he was pursued by memories of Cal. Years ago Cal had been a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, where he first fell in love with science. Hugh, just kicked out of Andover, was spending a year in Paris and he often jumped on the ferry for a quick visit to England. They’d set a time and place to meet—Piccadilly, the Tower, the pub forty paces from 10 Downing—and they’d surprise each other by arriving incognito, back turned, collar up. (Once Cal came disguised in a ridiculous mop wig.) They’d go carousing through London and then take the late train to Oxford and Hugh would crash on a couch in Cal’s room.
There was something liberating about being abroad—two New World vagabonds traipsing around Europe’s haunts, trading confidences (they could somehow talk more openly, more honestly so far from home). The four-year age difference melted away. Hugh remembered it as a time of confidence and endless possibilities. He did not dare compete for girls, convinced that Cal was irresistible, and he took solace in contrasts: his brother was the serious one and he was the wit, his brother the responsible one and he the rebel. He smoked Gauloises, letting the cigarettes dangle from his lip, spoke fluent French, wore a black turtleneck, and carried a paperback of War and Peace in his backpack.
And then Cal had met Bridget, who was backpacking with a friend.
“I want you to meet her. We’re coming over to Paris. A whole week— nothing to do but drink wine, hang around museums, and pretend I love French poetry.” And what a week it had been! The obligatory baguette and cheese on the Quai Voltaire. Marie Antoinette’s peasant cottage at Versailles.
Getting lost in the forest at Fontainebleau. Touring the catacombs, even the sewers. For three days he escorted Bridget’s friend Ellen, but thankfully she left. Then the three of them were inseparable. On the final day Cal left them alone to get drunk at an Algerian bar but really, as he put it, “ ’cause it’s time you two get to know each other.” No flirting—a novel sensation. He liked her immediately, maybe loved her, because she loved Cal and Cal loved her.
How odd—feeling so comfortable, so at ease, so included. A big sister to go along with the big brother. A trinity. There was nothing the three of them couldn’t do.
Where had all that piss and vinegar gone? Had it really disappeared in a single summer afternoon?
The receptionist, inside a glass cubicle in the front hall, directed him past a winding banister to the waiting area, a tiny room under a glass cupola. He rose to greet the archivist, a young
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