Joe smiled his encouragement and his understanding. “I’m going to repeat a request,” he began.
“Ah! You’re still looking for the common denominator, Sandilands! And I have, once again, to tell you-there isn’t an obvious one. Or even an obscure one. Three different men from three different backgrounds. Different subjects and universities. Different views of life. Different proclivities.”
“Their religious beliefs?” Joe asked.
“I use the word again: different. Streetly-Standish was a declared atheist. A very fashionable thing to be in those days, but he didn’t impose his views on the school. He was thought modern and innovative even though some of his ideas were a bit ahead of the morality of the time. His successor, Sutton, had been a clergyman. Farman? Who can tell? Overtly, he’s Church of England and preaches to us all in the accepted manner. I don’t believe these three men knew each other. All they have in common is a stint at the same school. There is nothing else that linked them.” Godwit thought hard for a moment. “Except perhaps-” He shook his head, an elusive memory fluttering past him and escaping.
Getting to his feet, he added: “I shall turn this, whatever it is-I’ll call it ‘your quest’-over in my mind. Or what remains of my mind. I shall not forget. If anything stirs in the depth of this turgid pond of memory, I shall hurry to confide in you or young Gosling here. I take it he carries your seal of approval?”
“You may speak freely to Gosling. We’re working together on this. Working to right an ancient wrong.” It sounded overly dramatic but expressed Joe’s increasing determination to restore the lost boys, if only to memory. The words were received with an approving nod.
A hand as brown and fragile as a dead leaf reached out and tenderly touched the plump little face of John Peterkin. Godwit murmured a few words in ancient Greek, made the sign of the cross over the photograph, and left the room.
Joe turned to Gosling. “When it comes to Greek, I can claim, as with Shakespeare, that I have little Latin and even less-”
Gosling cut short his embarrassment. “Euripides, sir. It’s from one of his tragedies. Alcestis. We put it on in my second year at Oxford. Outdoors in a meadow on the banks of the Isis. That wonderful summer!” Seeing Joe’s puzzled look, he went on with the quiet tact of a courtier. “You’ll remember, sir, that, in the play, our hero, Hercules, is trying to snatch back the recently dead Greek princess, Alcestis, from Death?”
Gosling paused to give Joe a chance to say: “Ah, yes, of course. Familiar with the situation, not the injured party. Go on.”
“The deceased is the lovely wife of his friend Admetus. He, Admetus, is a bounder and a cad, as all agree. He’s destined to die according to a whim of the gods unless some other poor so-and-so can be persuaded to die in his place. His selfish old parents, though tottering at death’s door, refuse. The only one to offer is his dutiful wife, Alcestis.”
“Far too good for him,” Joe remarked. “Wives usually are.”
“Her husband-what a shit! — says thank you very much, and the lady prepares herself for death. Tearful farewells to the children and all that going on. In the middle of all this, Hercules, taking a break between two of his labours, turns up for dinner-”
“And senses there’s a bit of an atmosphere?”
“Nobody’s fool, Hercules! Our hero decides, unlike the caddish husband, that he’s not going to let this sacrifice be made, and although by now the lady has actually done the deed and her soul is practically in the clutches of the old boatman, Charon, Hercules piles in with a last-minute, god-defying plan.
“Being a stout-hearted and enterprising lad, he brings it off. After a bit of a dustup.” Gosling grinned. “Something of a brawler, Hercules. A dirty fighter. Used his brain as well as his brawn. He sneaked up on Death himself at the key moment of the burial ceremony and got him in a neck-lock. Went one round with the Infernal Lord and won. He rescued the lady from Charon before he could punt her soul across the river to Hades.”
“Whence there is no return,” Joe muttered.
“That’s right. He brought Alcestis home again to her husband, sound in wind and limb.”
“I don’t like to think how the ensuing conversation went, Gosling! Now, in a good Victorian melodrama of the kind I like, the husband would have killed himself in remorse and Hercules would have gone off with the girl. And she’d have been well pleased with her bargain. Quite a man, Hercules! Your sort of bloke, Gosling?” Joe said, trying to hide his amusement.
“Oh, yes. Half-man, half-god, remember. I’d have liked to have him in my crew! At my back, sir, rowing at bow.”
Joe didn’t need to ask which of the characters the young man had played on stage and hoped that the attractively pugilistic features had not been obscured by the traditional mask. “No last-minute rescue of Peterkin, in this case, I fear. Not even a decent burial as far as anyone’s aware. Did you catch Godwit’s words?”
“Yes. Memory not wonderful, but I’ll give it a go. At one point the Chorus says something like … Oh, that I had the strength to bring you back to light from the dark of death, rowing back across the sacred river.”
The words hung between them, ancient, guttural and full of grief. Joe left a silence before he spoke softly. “I’ll echo that sentiment, Gosling. We’ll find old Charon and give him a bad time, shall we? We may not return with the bodies, but we can snatch back the souls from oblivion, perhaps.”
“We’ll take our seats at the oar, sir, and give it ten!”
CHAPTER 16
“Miss Joliffe! I lent you a pair of my twins last year, I believe?” Mr. Farman had placed Dorcas on his left and Joe on his right at the top table for lunch. His comment silenced Joe and the other diners but appeared not to disconcert Dorcas.
“That’s quite right, headmaster. I wondered if you’d remember the name. We’ve not met before but I did send you a letter of thanks, following on my research program at St. Raphael.”
“I hope the brothers Simpson were of some use?” His tone was jovial, expansive, and Dorcas replied with equal warmth.
“Oh, invaluable, sir! Twins-I speak of identical twins-are very hard to come by. One birth in two hundred and fifty at best, I understand, and they’re not always easy to track down.”
“And even rarer, I should have thought, in the ranks of the upper classes,” Farman commented, nodding sagely.
“I’m wondering, can it be your observation or your research, sir, that leads you to say that?” Dorcas asked innocently.
“Observation. My interest in genetics is not such that I should want to delve any deeper than I needed to into the subject. No, I see for myself, and perhaps others would agree”-he smiled questioningly around the company, gathering support-“that multiple births-litters, one might say-proliferate amongst the lower social orders. I’m sure that if you were to trawl the streets of Seven Dials you would find vastly more sets of matching faces. Once you had scrubbed off the dirt sufficiently to investigate. I can understand that the material extracted might not be of much use to you from a scientific perspective-the children might have difficulty in communicating. The majority-an alarmingly large majority-of children born in the capital, I understand, do not speak English and certainly do not read and write it.”