“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.”
Joe wondered whether he should snatch the knife from Dorcas’s hand as a preventative measure. The idiot Farman had no idea that the girl he was talking to had, herself, gone barefoot and largely uneducated for the first years of her life, excluded by society. She had grown up believing what her grandmother and the village told her: that she was the illegitimate offspring of a gypsy. As the oldest daughter of a loving and charming but feckless father, Dorcas had gallantly helped with the rearing of the children that followed. A tribe in themselves, these included two younger half brothers. Twins. Their mother had wearied of the constant hounding by grandmama and, succumbing to bribes and threats, had gone off in the night with her boys, back to her own people. Dorcas’s “stepmothers” always ran away. It would be difficult to imagine a more provoking conversational gambit, Joe thought, and he tensed, awaiting the response.
“We take them where we find them, headmaster.” Her voice was level, her knife engaged in cutting the hard crust of the meat pie. “Dr. Barnardo’s excellent institutions have been very helpful to our department. They rescue hundreds of children from death or exploitation on the streets and allow us access occasionally with our clipboards and our lollipops to question and test them.”
“Ah, yes. Sir James was telling me that he takes a certain interest in such establishments.” He looked about him to be sure that everyone had noted his intimacy with Sir James. Joe wondered where he had acquired it.
“He contributes financially to their welfare and offers his personal encouragement and support. He’s even been observed to lose to some of the boys at table tennis.”
“Sports—as good a way as any to overcome the communication problems.”
“And the less fortunate have much to communicate, Mr. Farman. Whatever their language, East End children tell me the same story: that bad diet, infected water, foul air and poverty are wrecking the health of the nation’s children.”
Looks were exchanged around the table. Eyebrows were raised. Sneers tugged gently at the corners of thin mouths.
Heavy talk for a lunch party. In her inexperience, Dorcas was allowing herself to be led into a serious discussion that could only end in embarrassment. He sensed that with her last comment, the girl had put herself into the open: a fox sighted a field away, a legitimate quarry for the pack, and could now expect a ritual pursuit to the rallying cries of “Bolshy … Lefty … Red.…” And, most unforgiveable by her lights: “Feminist!”
Joe decided to stop the hunt short. “Gentlemen, may I offer you the solution? I’m prescribing second helpings of Sussex steak and kidney pie and weekends of bracing Sussex air for every child born east of Bow Church,” he announced.
Surprisingly, murmurs of approval were burbled around the table. “Quite right! Establish a Utopia-on-Sea!”
“The commissioner speaks in jest but—yes! Something must be done to feed the multitude!” an elderly voice said firmly. “How else are we going to get the ranks up to scratch in time for the next war? Eh? Because it’s coming, you know! It’s coming.”
“Most of the 1914 intake were well under 5′4″ and dreadfully undernourished,” another voice came in, in support. “I remember my batman when he first joined me. Skin and bone. No notion of hygiene.”