The Long Utopia

34

THE CARD, INVITING Luis to lunch at the Drunken Clam in Lambeth, was dated the previous day – October 15 1895 – and was anonymous, signed only as by a ‘fellow traveller’.

Of course it was from Oswald Hackett. Even a quarter-century after that fateful encounter with Radcliffe in the dungeons of Windsor Castle, no matter how he had hidden his past – even to the extent of changing the family name – Luis had always known that Hackett would be able to find him, that such a summons would come. That his past would catch up with him some day.

And of course he felt compelled to attend.

It wasn’t hard to get away. Since the death of his wife Luis had lived alone, and his son and daughter, both grown, had long flown the nest, Ella to a comfortable marriage, Robert to take up engineering for which he showed an unusual aptitude, marrying somewhat later in his life. So Luis travelled to London by train from Bristol, where his financial interest in various steamship companies was based – controlled by means of a layer of company holdings under a false identity, and with no trail back to initial investments under his own name before Radcliffe’s attempted entrapment of the Waltzers in 1871.

Indeed, Hackett had insisted that their birth names should not be used at this meeting. Luis had even considered going in disguise, cropping his whiskers or shaving his head or some such, but when he contemplated the prospect it seemed an absurdity for a man in his seventies. No, he was going to London for lunch with old friends at the Drunken Clam, and he’d defy any man who challenged him otherwise.

And if Radcliffe’s successors caught up with him at last, then to the devil with it all, for he’d had enough of skulking.

His train was delayed.

And then, once he’d arrived in London, he couldn’t resist a stroll around some of his old haunts. Oxford Street was now a grand thoroughfare lined with fine, spacious shops; Fleet Street a medieval alley chock full of traffic; Covent Garden Market crowded with more than a thousand donkey barrows, he estimated, and women with loads balanced precariously on their heads, its cobbles slick with crushed leaves; and at last Lambeth’s New Cut itself, with the costermongers in their corduroy clothing, and soldiers strolling with uniforms casually unbuttoned, and coachmen in their livery and tradesmen in their frock coats, the street packed as ever with stalls and vendors of fried fish and hot potatoes, and beggars and entertainers, even street mummers – and, yes, with shoeless children, as much as it had ever been – as if the great reforms of the age, in education and public health and trade unionism, had been but fantasies.

Distracted by all this, he was a little late getting to the oyster-house.

The other two were here before him, and they stood to greet him. Both had aged well enough, Luis supposed. Fraser Burdon, who was about Luis’s age, was as whip-thin and fit-looking as ever, with a leathery tan that told of years spent in warmer climes. Oswald Hackett was a decade older, in his eighties now, and it showed; Hackett had fattened up, was as bald as an egg, and could stand only with a stick, but he lumbered to his feet to shake Luis’s hand.

Then they sat. Luis observed two books sitting on the table before Hackett, one an academic tome he recognized, the other a novel he did not, with a fawn cloth-bound cover featuring a sketch of an idealized sphinx.

A waitress briskly took their order.

Hackett grinned, showing bad teeth. ‘Let’s introduce ourselves, gentlemen. Maybe we ought to write our “names” down; at our age it’s going to be easy to forget. And by Christ, sometimes I forget who I was … My name is Richard Foyle.’

‘Woodrow Boyd,’ said Burdon. His accent had a new twang to it, and Luis studied him curiously; maybe he had moved away from the old country – permanently to America, perhaps?

Hackett prompted Luis. ‘And you, sir?’

‘John Smith,’ said Luis.

Hackett snorted laughter. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, man, you almost deserve to be hanging by your thumbs in some cellar under Whitehall. Now, I know you both have children, Mr Smith and Mr Boyd. What have you told them of your, ah, past indiscretions?’

Luis said softly, ‘I took each of mine aside at their age of majority and told them the lot. Seemed to me the best way to equip them to protect themselves in future, and their own children who may be blessed with our strange faculty – or cursed. As to the name, it’s not an issue for Ella, who’s married now. Robert, though, insisted on reverting to the old family name. Proud of the family origins, he says. The young! What can one do? In any case I have a close friend, a lawyer; we cooked up a story about an adoption, and so that’s all above board.’

Burdon said, ‘But it leaves you damned exposed, man. If anybody’s still on our tail after all these years, which I doubt. I’d condemn you if not for the fact that my middle ’un is going down the precise same route. There’ll always be Burdons.’ He turned to Hackett. ‘It’s probably a risk for us to be gathering here in London – indeed, in one of your old haunts, if I remember your anecdotes correctly. Maybe you should get to the point.’

Hackett said, ‘Let’s get to the oysters first, for here they come …’

The service in the Clam was as brisk and friendly as ever, Luis thought, and the oysters just as relishable, even if, half a century later, the prices would have shocked the Great Elusivo.

Burdon, however, tried one and all but spat it out. ‘My God. How can you eat these things? As if the Thames is one great mucky spittoon and I just took a mouthful of phlegm.’ He tapped Hackett’s book. ‘This is a volume of Darwin’s Origin of Species, is it not?’

‘Yes, and it’s a first edition, man, so keep your greasy fingers off.’

‘If Darwin were here I’d demand to know what theory of “natural selection” can possibly have produced something as ugly and as useless as an oyster.’

Luis laughed. ‘I dare say he’d have an answer.’

Hackett grunted. ‘And I’d invite Darwin to speculate on our own peculiar condition – and our future. I have followed his work since his accounts of the voyage of the Beagle, you know. Saw the man speak a couple of times, but never met him. It’s to my regret now that I didn’t approach him when I had the chance; he died a dozen years back – or was it more? But in a way it was his ideas that made me resolve to bring us together again – the three of us, the first of the Knights. And the last, I fear, for I’ve found no recent trace of the others with whom we worked. We need a way forward – for ourselves and our descendants. We three may go to the grave skulking like whipped dogs, but that’s not good enough for our children – for, believe me, some of ’em are going to inherit our uncomfortable, umm, faculties, just as you say, “Mr Smith”. And what’s to become of them, eh? What are we to do for them?’

‘Nothing,’ Burdon said. ‘For we’ll be long in our blessed graves. Let the future take care of itself.’

Luis said, ‘But it’s thirty years or more since Origin of Species was published. What is it that’s prompted you to call us together now, Hackett?’

Hackett actually clipped him around the back of the head for that indiscretion. ‘Good question, “Mr Smith”. The answer lies in the pages of this little book.’

The second tome on the table by his plate was a novel. ‘The Time Machine,’ Luis read from the spine.

‘By some chap who writes for the magazines. Calls it a “scientific romance”. The book’s a sort of fairy story about Darwin’s scheme of selection. Or a nightmare. It shows a future in which mankind changes, evolves – bifurcates – over a span of hundreds of thousands of years. Becoming something quite different from the modern stock.’ He searched their faces. ‘D’ye see? That’s one root of my idea, my scheme. The other comes from dear old Grandpa Darwin, and if you’ve ever read his book, which I’m sure you haven’t, you’d know that an early part of it, and a deuced long section it is and written in a rather lifeless tone, is all about pigeons.’

‘Pigeons?’

‘The breeding of fancy pigeons for particular traits. That’s the key to his argument, you see. Just as a man will breed his pigeons or his dogs for colour or body shape or whatnot by consciously matching up the types he wants to promote, so nature, all unconsciously, selectively shapes its stock of animals and plants using the blunt scalpels of hunger, a lack of room to live, changes in the weather, and extinction.’

‘You’ve lost me,’ Luis admitted cheerfully. ‘Our oysters have gone extinct, by the bye. Shall I order another round?’

Burdon ignored him. ‘You haven’t lost me, “Foyle”.’ He leaned forward and lowered his voice. ‘You’re talking about cross-breeding our children, aren’t you? The way a man breeds his horses.’

At that word, cross-breeds, Luis saw it, all of a sudden, and forgot about the oysters. ‘My God, man. How can you conceive of such a thing?’

Hackett sneered. ‘Thank you, Lord, for blessing me with companions of such small imagination! Forget horse breeders and pigeon fanciers. Think of arranged marriages. Haven’t our own aristocracy been pairing off their sprogs for generations? Not to mention the royalty. And I know for a fact, “Smith”, that the new mercantile rich you associate with are doing exactly the same thing now, purely to keep the wealth in a closed circle of families. All I’m suggesting is – let’s do the same. For our own protection, our families’. And,’ he added more ominously, ‘to improve the blood.’

Burdon said heavily, ‘You’d better tell us exactly what you propose.’

‘Simple enough. We establish an organization – a Fund, let’s call it, to be handled anonymously by one of the better banks – no, more than one, let’s spread the risk across institutions, indeed across nations – umm, “Mr Boyd”, you may be able to handle the American end. Now let’s suppose you have a grandson of marriageable age, “Smith”.’

‘Actually I do have a grandson.’

‘Good. While you, “Boyd”, might have a spare granddaughter of similar age. The Fund keeps a list of our families and others, the births and deaths and so forth – all quite above board, with operatives who have no idea of the true purpose. But when two eligible candidates pop up in the fullness of time, they are – approached.’

Burdon said, ‘Approached?’

‘It might work this way. Letters arrive, from a nominated bank. A meeting is arranged between the two youngsters. Each is told that if they would consider a liaison, then a gift would be available – call it a grant. We’d have to consider the wording; the only stipulation would be the birth of a sprog, of course, which is the point of the exercise. Perhaps there would be a sweetener to make the meeting in the first place: fifty per cent of the balance might be paid up at the marriage, and a further fifty per on the occasion of the first litter. But if the youngsters don’t hit it off, they can walk away with no harm done. D’ye see? There’s no compulsion, no hardship – everybody wins, including a young couple with an unexpectedly good start in life.’

Luis grunted. ‘How much of a “good start”?’

Hackett shrugged. ‘That’s to be decided between us. A thousand pounds, perhaps.’

Luis, who had started out earning shillings in flea-pit theatres, was nothing if not careful with his money. ‘A thousand pounds? Are you mad?’

‘Certainly not,’ Hackett growled, ‘and ye needn’t pretend, either of you, that we haven’t the resources between us to establish a fund healthy enough to generate such sums through the interest paid. And it needn’t just be the three of us.’ He produced a piece of paper, tucked into the endpapers of The Time Machine. ‘I’ve done some research – well, I’ve had plenty of time to do it, and the resources, and don’t ask me how. Beyond those I contacted like you two, there is a slew of families like ours, their histories studded with Waltzers, or possibilities anyhow, like true pearls on a paste necklace.’

Luis scanned the paper, which was a simple list of surnames. Blakeney. Burdon. Hackett. Orgill. Tallis. Tallyman. Valienté …

‘You need to be careful with that,’ Burdon murmured.

Hackett nodded and tucked the paper away. ‘You understand that we are strengthening the blood, increasing the chances of the faculty emerging in a given generation. Many species respond quickly to such domestication. I suspect Darwin would predict that the results ought to be visible in a very few generations. A century or so, perhaps.’

Luis said, ‘And when said cross-breeds produce a Waltzer child to order – what then? What’s to become of it? It will be in danger of just such a risk as we have faced in the course of our own lives – suspicion and persecution, especially if, despite appearances, the successors of Radcliffe are still on our elderly tails.’

Hackett nodded. ‘It’s a fair question. Initially there would need to be some way of keeping tabs, an agency on hand to advise the bewildered young parents of toddler Jimmy when he starts popping out of existence.’

‘But the need for that would fade with time, I imagine,’ Burdon said. ‘The more Waltzers there are, the more the families will know. Because Uncle Jerome or Aunt Ginnie will have had just the same peculiar trait.’

‘That’s the idea. So what do you think?’

Burdon said softly, ‘You’ve always thought big, “Foyle”. All the way back to the days of Albert and his Knights. But this is a stretch, even for you. To manipulate the generations – to try to shape the future, centuries ahead—’

Luis tried to take all this in. ‘To change the very flavour of mankind itself. What arrogance, sir!’

Hackett flared, ‘Arrogance? But what is the choice? To leave our descendants unprotected, to be picked off for their magical ability by these – others? An ability with the capacity for so much good – have you forgotten the Underground Rail Road?’ He tapped the cloth-bound cover of the novel. ‘And besides, as this tome shows us, the future will shape mankind willy-nilly if we don’t, like it or not.

‘But the oneness of humanity will be gone, it’s true. “We are living at a period of the most wonderful transition, one which tends rapidly to accomplish that great end to which all history points – I mean, of course, the realization of the unity of mankind.”’ He studied their faces. ‘You recognize that quote?’

‘Albert,’ Luis said. ‘I bought his Golden Precepts after his death.’

‘Well, that fine dream is bogus. The coming war with Germany, and it’s inevitable, you know, will see to that. But after the flags are folded there will be a deeper divergence than any between nations. For we, we humans, will become two kinds, at least – d’ye see? There’ll be the old sort, Radcliffe and his crew, Homo sapiens sedentarius. And then among ’em will arise the new sort, us – Homo sapiens transversus. That’s the best I can do with my schoolboy Latin; let Darwin’s successors sort it out. And in a century or two, if we do this, our new kind will flood this good Earth – and those green forest worlds into which we Waltz, I dare say. And then, who knows what the future will hold? Eh? What’s it to be? It’s that or the subjugation we saw with poor Abel on the Mississippi. Subjugation, or glory.’ He studied their faces, a very old man, determined, intent. ‘Are you with me? Are you?’