The Specimen Page 13

  November 13, 1859.

  My Dear Gwen,

  I have made, already, several different drafts of this letter, which have all found their way to the fire. I feel that I owe it to myself, and, of course, to you, to write this letter to you, and to send it. Please, when you receive it, do not keep it. After you have read it as many times as you need to, please destroy it in the fire. I could not bear to think that the words I am about to put down on this paper should lie in a drawer as a testament to my failings.

  I know that I have not behaved properly with you. I know that I have not been the gentleman that I would have wished to have been with you. You were absolutely right to be angry with me. But can you believe me when I say that I am more angry at myself than you could ever be? In time, I hope that I may be proper and chivalrous towards you, as you deserve nothing less. You are the most extraordinary person I have ever met, and I would like you to know that in being my friend and my secret companion you have saved me from a certain kind of madness. Gwen, when I am with you I am whole and unmarked by my past.

  You have been so very patient with me and most extraordinarily kind in every way imaginable. You have accommodated me in your splendid grounds without complaint. And the few nights that I have spent with you, when we have come together in the most secret of places, I have been beside myself with joy. I know that it is impossible for you to take pleasure in these particular meetings, but I wish you to know that I am most humbly grateful for them and that I will never embarrass you, as you have requested, by ever mentioning them to you again. They remain, those nights, our most secret and most blessed times.

  But I must now speak of my past and indeed of my present. I am husband to a woman called Isobel—but husband in name only, as the marriage is not, has never been, consummated. It is for this reason that I have tormented myself over our friendship. I have omitted to reveal myself in my true colours, and for this I remain deeply ashamed. If you can bear to read it, let me tell you now that preceding our first meeting, I was entangled with another person. A female whose personal attributes I cannot bring myself to describe but for whom I was nevertheless bent on destroying myself. Please be assured that she was nothing compared to you and that my wife is nothing compared to you.

  Truly, I feel that I have been saved by you and that you are the one person, the only person whom I should ever be able to call my own. You, and only you, have shown me what it means to be a whole man, unfettered by the ridiculous, stringent constrictions of our society.

  If you still feel, after reading this letter, that you are able to allow me to continue to see you, then you must do no more than behave as if you have never received this letter. I hope that you will still accept me, as you have done so far, without judgement. If you will still allow it, let us meet, in darkness, as we have done before when no words have been needed except those which feed my all-consuming desire for you.

  I seal this in haste, lest I should again waver over my conviction that I may remain, for ever,

  Your Own Edward.

  With a shiver of intense and exquisite satisfaction, Euphemia slid the letter back between the pages of the almanac.

  Chapter XXVI

  Each time he went out with his insect net, Edward seemed to come back with his collecting tin full of specimens he had already collected. For he would take not just a male and female specimen of every possible species, but several, arranging them in rows to show off minute variations in pattern and colour. And then there were those which did not make it into the collection but were discarded for slight lack of lustre or a small section of wing which had been broken off. There was a midden heap under the house outside his room. In varying stages of rapid decomposition, butterflies, spiders, beetles and other small fauna Edward did not wish to transport back to England soon became indistinguishable in a friable mass.

  But her painting things stayed untouched; she worried vaguely that the humidity might be bad for them but she did nothing about it. The scents from the flowers in the garden and the undertones of decay were quite overwhelming; in part she blamed it for her inactivity. Sometimes, she would realise that she had been reading the same sentence over and over in a loop which made no sense, the magazine almost dropping from her hand. She felt herself sweating into her clothes and waiting for Edward to come back with his tired but joyous step and full of it all. What is wrong with me? she thought. She got up later than usual one morning, and was cross. It is absurd, she thought, that I should be here and not see for myself the walks he tells me about. She spent the rest of the day with the sticky shadow of an ill temper and hardly spoke to Maria.

  When Edward came back she jumped up. “At last,” she said.

  Edward frowned, and then smiled. He put down his heavy bags. Bottles inside it clinked. He blew his nose through his fingers onto the ground and then after wiping his fingers on his trousers, he looked at her, holding her out at arm’s length by the shoulders. She felt uncomfortable in his gaze, imagining herself as him, coming up to herself through his eyes to see that he hadn’t thought of her all day. He never thought of her during any of his rambles. Since they had stepped off the boat he had been on the edge of something approaching ecstatic rapture. Gwen was aware that her eyes were staring and wide, and she bit her lip. Edward put his hand to her chin, and he squinted at her mouth where mango fibres were trapped between her top front teeth. “Has something happened?”

  “No, no, nothing, nothing at all.” She disengaged her chin from his fingers. “I should really like to come out with you tomorrow.”

  “What about your feet? Hmn? I thought we agreed that you should keep those ankles up.”

  She shrugged off his hands but she recovered her attitude, slipping her arm through his. “I’m not suggesting that I should be out with you all day. Perhaps a short walk.” Do not treat me like an imbecile, she thought.

  “Well, I had rather imagined that you would like to make a start on some of the specimens I have collected so far. But I can see that you are restless. It’s understandable, of course. Nothing too taxing.”

  Gwen struggled to hammer down her frustration and fury as they went into the house.

  Edward chatted for the entire ramble the next day. They had agreed that they would go out early, before breakfast. This is not what I had meant, she thought, as she listened to his incessant commentary. From the humidity (which she was already familiar with), to the height of the trees (which she could see for herself), to the insects in the leaf litter under their feet. Edward filled the air with his voice. They stopped once or twice, and she dutifully craned her neck to admire the height of the canopy. Edward took out his pocket knife and gouged into the side of a fallen tree to show her a beetle grub.

  “See how its fat body writhes so slowly in my hand, Gwen. It would have stayed inside this rotting log for years, perhaps, before finally pupating. It’s one of the longhorn beetles. I’ll find one for you.” My God, she wanted to say, I know a beetle larva when I see one. Who on earth do you imagine you are talking to?

  She tried to hear the forest around them under the sound of his voice. It seemed incredible that a man who had not even known the Cardinal beetle in his own country should now be telling her about exotic Coleoptera. The morning chorus had calmed some time ago, but around them here and there were isolated bird calls and the ever present hum of insect life in the air. Gwen played a game with herself. How many things could she spot before Edward pointed them out to her. She knew other people used these paths. There were villages deeper into the forest, though what she regarded then as deep forest would be as nothing by the time she would have finally left Brazil. It would not be unusual to meet someone, even though they had not, so far. I am being silly, she told herself. But the sensation that she was being observed, like the squirming fat larva in Edward’s hand, would not leave her. She watched, rather repulsed, as Edward put the larva into a small vial of preservative and straight into his collecting bag; its final moments dismissed to the dark pocket
of red leather.

  She could not believe what he was doing, treating her like some silly young girl out for a walk in the park, pointing out the greenness of the grass or the song of a blackbird. How could this be the same man she had wanted to spend all her days with? She wondered what it would take to have been able to make him understand her desire to see everything around her in the same state of awe that he had enjoyed. His being able to name some of the flora and fauna was a clever kind of trick, but she couldn’t see that it served any particular kind of usefulness to his understanding of the place. The flora specimens they took were identified, housed and despatched to England in the Wardian cases. The butterflies not for his own collection were wrapped in triangles of paper and sent off to be set by others and placed in private collections. No, she thought, in naming these things, in speaking their names, he is claiming them. As they stood on the high ground and looked down into a swampy hollow filled with huge arums she tried and failed not to mind as Edward’s tremulous voice told her that they were standing under a Cassia tree. A surge of desire rushed down through her legs, but it was undirected and confusing. It was not Edward she desired. The heat prickled her neck and back, and her head felt hot in irritation. She grasped his arm, and he patted her hand saying, “Time to go back? Better not overdo it.”

  She clenched her teeth and watched where she trod, and noticed little more than the mango trees lining the road. The feeling that she was being watched disappeared slowly. Perhaps it was just a monkey, or some animal like that.

  After a couple of days, Gwen followed the road again away from the direction of town. She went alone, taking herself into the nearest edges of the forest. She did not tell Edward about her plans. She told Maria that she was off for a little stroll, that she would not be long. A rush of excitement came over her, and as she turned off onto a path leading into the forest itself, butterflies danced in the patches of sunlight around her.

  Now the light changed; a diffused green was cast over everything. She dared to look up into the canopy. She was at the bottom of a pond and she reeled. Her bowels fluttered. She bent over and took deep breaths, and stared blinking into the shadows, which somehow contrived to surge before her eyes. The white tips of wings danced in and out of the islands of shade, the rest of the insects virtually invisible to her unpractised eye. They never went very high. It was, she thought, as if they were pretending to be moths. Upside down, some rested beneath wide, waxy leaves and she put out her finger, almost touching their closed wings before they took off again to settle out of reach. She retraced her steps back onto the sunnier main path through the forest and was mesmerised by the sight of several different blue Morphos. There was a very leisurely, luxuriant pattern to their flight; the way they seemed to know where the warm air would facilitate their desire most effectively. They would twist, mid-glide, like a seagull. No wonder Edward came back so frustrated sometimes. The changing hues of iridescent blue flashed in the sunlight as if they were taunting her. It was lovely to see these things in their proper context, and she was more than sorry for the burgeoning collection of butterflies in the wooden cases. And yet she wanted to hold one, to see it as closely, she thought, as the Creator in that moment of inspiration. And then she checked herself, remembering Darwin’s theory. Her feelings and thoughts and learning were tangled and knotted, so that she didn’t know what she should think or feel, confronted by the magnificence of everything surrounding her. How was it possible to believe and doubt at the same time, to see connection and disconnection in every object. She was completely overwhelmed—and burst into tears.

  And now there was that suspicion again that someone was watching her. She had tried to dismiss it as a benign sensation in her brain. But she felt it more in her back; not only out here on the forest path but around the house she felt it sometimes. Some days, it was more acute than others. She could not talk about it. Every time she had felt like saying something about it, there had been the notion that Edward would not take her seriously or think that she was, after all, of flimsy character; a silly female, unable to function satisfactorily in this new environment, suited only to exist on the banks of the Helford in Cornwall. And sometimes she allowed herself to think that this was true. It must not be true, and yet while she was in awe of her surroundings she wanted to escape them. She found herself wishing that she would not have to speak to Edward when he returned. Already his voice grated in her mind and tipped her nerves. I am just his facilitator, she thought. He would not be here without me; no self-respecting man would have agreed to my unequal share in this endeavour. She wondered if this was the real reason she had been reluctant to begin her part of the bargain here.

  She unlaced her boots and tossed them into a corner, pulled off her silk stockings and rubbed at her ankles, then she went barefoot through to Edward’s room and rummaged in his closet. Maria’s voice at her back remonstrated, and Gwen froze, her hands clutching at the waistband of Edward’s trousers. “You can’t wear a man’s clothes, Mrs Scales. I’ve got a better idea.”

  Chapter XXVII

  THE TIMES, Wednesday, October 3, 1866.

  MURDER TRIAL AT THE OLD BAILEY.

  MR Probart for the Prosecution addressed the Jury: “The prisoner is a woman, as we shall see, whose enthusiasm for immorality in her younger days persists into the present. Following her ill wonts has led her here: Murder. Gentlemen, why are we never surprised in this city when foul murder is committed by a female of low morals and even lower reputation? Perhaps it is because these two thrive together. Be not deceived by the prisoner’s apparent stature, by her—notable—command of language; and nor yet by her insistence of guiltlessness. This, gentlemen, is a wily female cornered, who would stop at nothing to get what she wants.”

  At this last, Mrs Pemberton leaned forward. “I will have you retract every last slanderous word, sir,” before she was reminded by Mr Justice Linden that she must, “internalise her outbursts, however well founded she believed them to be”. The Clerk was not asked to strike the prisoner’s remarks from his notes, and nor were the members of the Jury advised to ignore them.

  In response to the Prosecution’s statement, Mr Shanks for the Defence said: “Observers of this case may be forgiven if they have thought, up unto this moment, that what we are trying to set out for examination is a simple case of a lovers’ tryst gone horribly, murderously wrong. The murder victim, the late Mr Scales, as you will come to see, treated the prisoner, Mrs Pemberton, with deviousness and subversive intent from the moment he laid eyes on her; this, you will see, is true. He lured her away from her family home, from the security and safety of her known world under false pretences. We know this to be true, for we know that Mr Scales was already a married man, and having no intention of enlightening the young Mrs Pemberton to this fact, allowed her to believe that in travelling with him to Brazil, she would eventually become his wife. It is a familiar tale, but in finding herself unwittingly cast in the tawdry plot, Mrs Pemberton, her passion high, one might assume, would, one might assume, seek revenge at the most convenient time and not, Gentlemen, wait, wait, wait and wait more long years until she was under the gaze of the entire City of London to commit a murder she might so easily have done many years before. Think on it, if you please, Gentlemen. In attempting to untangle the ghastly threads of any murder, one must cast his mind in the role of the perpetrator. A cold and calculated act, from a person as level and as intelligent as the prisoner, Mrs Pemberton—would it result in such an obvious mess? Would she have allowed herself to have no alibi? The obvious answer, of course, is that a woman as level and intelligent as Mrs Pemberton is not the murderous type. The crime, Gentlemen, does not fit the accused, and it does not fit the accused in such an obvious manner that I wonder, like the prisoner herself, and indeed many others, that she was charged with the crime—if there was a crime—at all. Life, real life, is not always as neat as we would like it to be. Mrs Pemberton was unfortunate in her acquaintance with Mr Scales from beginning to end. It seems
that, even in death, Mr Scales has contrived to leave his mark upon her. Mrs Pemberton happened to have called upon Mr Scales on the day preceding the night he was, allegedly, murdered. This small fact has cast such aspersions on her—and why?”

  Witnesses were then examined before it was stated that the Jury should be taken to see the house where the body of Mr Scales was found.

  Chapter XXVIII

  Gwen could barely breathe in the only evening gown she had brought with her. It had seemed such a ridiculous thing to pack into her trunk. It dug into her armpits, and her bosom was pressed painfully inside it.

  “Mr and Mrs Scales! Marvellous! Hettie will be so pleased that you have been able to come to our little gathering.”

  “Mr Grindlock, good evening. We could hardly not have come; it was very good of you to invite us.” Edward’s speech was as stiff as his collar.

  “Not at all, it’s a pleasure to see you again. How are you finding your feet? Getting the feel of the place yet?”

  “Absolutely, yes, absolutely.” Edward cast a sideways glance at Gwen and placed his free hand briefly under her elbow. “Collecting’s been most productive.”

  “Mrs Scales!” Hettie’s voice floated in a sing-song warble over the room, closely followed by the woman herself, diaphanous and fluttery, in a muslin confection with a silk stole. She beamed into Gwen’s face and prised her away from Edward’s hands. “Do give Mr Scales a drink, Tristan. Mrs Scales, do come with me, and meet the ladies of our little amateur operatic society,” she said, steering her away. Leaning into her she said, “It’s such a pity my brother can’t be here—I hope he will be with us by Christmas. I’m sure you’ll adore him to bits. Tristan,” she called over her shoulder, “you did say, didn’t you, that Marcus Frome will be coming tonight?”