A Proper Education for Girls (24 page)

“Get Edwin,” cried Old Mrs. Talbot. “He'll know what to do.”

“No,” said Alice. She leaned forward. “Mr. Blake,” she whispered. “Mr. Blake!”

The photographer peered at her anxiously, and Alice suddenly became aware of how she must appear—her face dirty with soil and sweat, her hair disordered, her dress stained. “I look a fright,” she said briskly. “But what of it? I've been working in the hothouse.” She pulled aside the sheet and held up the candle. Mr. Blake's face was pale and waxy in the candlelight. His eyes were closed, his mouth open. His breathing was heavy and shallow. “Perhaps we can move him while he is unconscious.”

“Why not use my chair?” said Aunt Rushton-Bell. “The bath chair. If we could at least get him into that, then we could simply wheel him wherever he needed to go.”

And so, while in the drawing room Mr. Talbot demonstrated to his guests the efficacy of one of his more recent acquisitions (a prosthetic limb designed to hold and shoot a firearm), while Dr. Cattermole drank Mr. Talbot's port and smoked his cigars and winked as his host playfully pinched Mrs. Cattermole's generous thigh, while Mrs. Cattermole smiled and simpered at Mr. Talbot and gasped in delight at that prosthetic limb and shook her golden ringlets in the lamplight, two stories above them Mr. Talbot's
daughter, his five aged aunts, and his mother silently wheeled the naked, anesthetized body of Mr. Blake through the dimly lit hallways until they reached the door of his bedchamber.

“It's years since I entered a gentleman's rooms that weren't my husband's,” whispered Aunt Statham excitedly. She gave a girlish titter. “Uninvited too! What must Mr. Blake think?”

“Fortunately, I imagine he is thinking very little at the moment,” snapped Aunt Lambert. “He's drugged, isn't he Alice? That bottle you found in the bedding contained something.”

“Ether. We use it in the photographic process.”

“Experimenting with his own chemicals? Edwin would be interested after all,” said Old Mrs. Talbot. “You know he always says a man can learn the most through direct experience. Experiment and experience leads us to knowledge and improvement, that's what he says.”

“We should put Mr. Blake into bed and leave before he wakes,” said Alice. She rubbed her eyes, feeling suddenly dizzy. Mr. Blake's room seemed suffused with the stench of ether, as though he had slopped it onto his bedding, his furniture, even his curtains before staggering out and along the hall to the linen cupboard. Her aunts' squabbling voices receded into the distance, to be replaced by the rhythmic throbbing of blood in her ears. Alice felt the room lurch beneath her feet. Her head seemed suddenly as heavy as a cannon-ball. She dashed the curtains aside and threw open a window.

The cold April night poured in like a draft of icy water. She took a few deep breaths. Outside, the sky was hard and clear, the moon a low yellow orb. It was a good job she had turned up the heating in the conservatory, as there was a glimmering icy mantle on the ground. How late the frost was that year! Perhaps it was time to move the peach tree through to the hothouse.

A gunshot echoed out across the park, followed by men's laughter and a woman's voice.

“Bravo, Cattermole!” Her father's voice boomed out on the still air, reverberating from the silent walls of the house. “An inspired piece of engineering, don't you think? A boon to the military, as
well as to the unfortunate amputee who will now live to fight another day in the noble service of Queen and Country, rather than cluttering up the streets of our cities begging for alms.”

Alice felt a hand on her arm.

“Come away my dear,” whispered Aunt Lambert, steering Alice toward the door. “He seems to be asleep now. Whatever he wanted to say to you will have to wait until the morning.”

T
HE NEXT MORNING
M
R.
B
LAKE DID NOT APPEAR FOR
breakfast. In addition, it turned out that Dr. Cattermole and Mr. Talbot had spent the better part of the night engaged in various manly activities—practicing shooting at the statues on the terrace with the amputee's firearm, using Mr. Talbot's newly acquired acid battery and electrical circuit to test the conductivity of various materials, and of course, pursuing numbered mice about the drawing room. Both men were late in rising. After the excitement of the night before, the aunts too were slow to make their way downstairs. Thus it was that Alice found herself at the breakfast table with only Mrs. Cattermole for company.

At first the two women sat in silence. Then, “I hear you have been helping Mr. Blake with his work here,” began Mrs. Cattermole, giving Alice a frosty look.

“Yes,” said Alice.

“He is a most charming fellow, don't you think? And
so passionate
about his chosen path. Has he taken your likeness?”

“No, he has not.”

“He has taken mine many times. But then, I have sat for a number of well-known photographers. I have the face and the figure for it, you know. Not everyone does. You, perhaps, are not so well favored with the natural luminescence which the camera so loves.”

“Perhaps,” said Alice.

“Well, we cannot all be so fortunate. My husband has told me
that I am the perfect subject—he has taken me in numerous poses, including as various Greek goddesses—Diana, Persephone, Leda.” She smiled. “Your father, I think, has sculptures of some of these figures, so you understand what I am talking about.”

Alice nodded.

“Of course, it is true that the fuller figure is better suited to the more classical poses,” continued Mrs. Cattermole. “You are perhaps a little too …
masculine
—you will forgive me for saying it, I know—to appeal to the photographer's aesthetic sense.” She stared down her nose, as though waiting for Alice to blush, or at least look uncomfortable. “Your own skills
behind
the camera, however, and in the darkroom, Mr. Blake speaks of very highly, though I can't see that such an oppressive place is somewhere a lady ought to be spending her time.”

“If one is to take a photograph, the darkroom is not to be avoided,” said Alice.

“So it would appear.” Mrs. Cattermole breathed deeply. “And no doubt Mr. Blake is of the same opinion.”

Alice heard her father's favorite German long-cased wall clock ticking out the seconds. There was a dull thunk as the minute hand shifted forward. She struggled for something polite, something anodyne and suitably banal to say, but she could think of nothing. Nor could she excise from her mind the image of Sophia Cattermole, posing for Dr. Cattermole's camera as Diana, dressed only in a tendril of vine and a strategically placed bunch of grapes.

Mrs. Cattermole leaned forward. Her breasts bulged against her neckline, like two large grapefruits in a bowl. “You think he is attracted to you?” she hissed. “He is not. He thinks he is, but he can't be. He is deceived—that much I know for sure. But I could not let him remain so. Oh no. And now, why, I have told him such things—things you should have told him yourself, as it was plain to me that he did not know them—he can no longer think of you as he did before.”

“What on earth are you referring to, Mrs. Cattermole?” said Alice briskly. She stirred her tea but felt little appetite for it. The
doctor's wife was looking tired and irritable, and her eyes were puffy. Certainly thought Alice, the lady's famous beauty was better suited to the dim yellow light of a candlelit drawing room than to the harsh and revealing glare of a bright spring morning. She wondered what it was that Mrs. Cattermole had told the photographer. Alice opened her mouth to ask this very question, but Mrs. Cattermole waved her hand impatiently and continued talking. “You belong
here
,” she said, “among the Collection. You know, you really should let Dr. Cattermole photograph you. He is a medical man and most scientific in his approach.”

And then, all at once, to Alice's great relief, the air was filled with the whirring of mechanisms from the many clocks her father had gathered together in the breakfast room. The noise swelled and shivered about them, like the beating of the wings of a million insects. Mrs. Cattermole's lips continued to move, but whatever sounds emerged from between them were mercifully obliterated by the arrival of eight o'clock. Alice allowed wave after wave of chimes to wash over her. As the eighth bong died away, she opened her eyes. Mrs. Cattermole was silent now and looking startled. Alice took this hiatus as an opportunity, if one were needed, to excuse herself.

L
ATER THAT DAY
Mr. Talbot found his daughter among the swords and daggers, reaffixing the South American machete to the display on the wall.

“Dr. and Mrs. Cattermole have returned to London,” he informed her. “But Dr. Cattermole will be back in a few weeks. He and I have decided that it would be a good idea to hold an evening of experiment, enlightenment, and amusement. A number of our friends from the Society for the Propagation of Useful and Interesting Knowledge will be invited. I need to speak to you about certain items in the Collection to which I would like their attention to be drawn. Oh, and Mrs. Cattermole is with child. Cattermole is delighted.”

Alice said nothing.

“There are, of course, certain arrangements to be made if this evening of entertainments is to be a success,” continued Mr. Talbot. He rubbed hairy-backed fingers through the wiry matting of his beard. “I did wonder at first whether Mr. Blake's photographs of my possessions could be placed in numerous albums and left in the society's reading room, but Cattermole is right, as usual. A gentlemen's gathering would be far more stimulating. Cattermole has some monstrosities from his mortuary work to show to us, while I have new items to exhibit, and it would be most satisfying if these things were to be revealed to the society members at the same time. I also have one or two experiments I should like to attempt.”

“Experiments?” said Alice warily. The last time her father had experimented, the cook had left and a new suit of her father's clothes had been ruined. It was shortly after a meeting of the Society for the Propagation of Useful and Interesting Knowledge at which a Dr. Comely-Banks had been speaking on the wide range of temperatures endured by certain unusual creatures that made their homes in the geographical extremes of the world. Mr. Talbot had returned home to experiment on a rat, enclosing it in a roly-poly tin and popping it into the oven. Intending to monitor its vital signs after a certain number of minutes, he was distracted by the arrival of new display cases from his London cabinetmaker. The cook had opened the tin some hours later to find the rodent within baked to a cinder. Mr. Talbot had responded with exasperation to this experimental catastrophe and had climbed into the oven himself, allowing his own person to be baked, for twelve minutes at a moderate heat, all the while observing his own physiological well-being. “No perceivable ill effects” was his overall conclusion.

“What experiments?” said Alice again.

“Oh, nothing much.” Mr. Talbot gazed at the terra-cotta model of St. Nicholas's church in Hamburg that was standing nearby. “I have a most interesting plan for the manufacture of an artificial volcano—it is a simple variation of a common enough mixture used in pyrotechnic displays, but it should prove interesting
nonetheless. I was thinking of using the front lawn for the purpose. The iron filings and sulfur necessary for the procedure will be arriving in a few weeks. We should have plenty of time to prepare. I shall require your help in making all the necessary arrangements.”

“I am already helping Mr. Blake,” said Alice.

“Well, I shall need Mr. Blake's help too, of course. He may have to call a halt to his photographic endeavors for a week or two. Where is the wretched fellow anyway?”

“I have no idea.”

“Have you seen him today?”

“No, Father.” This last was only partly true. Alice had glimpsed Mr. Blake's receding back as she passed through the scientific instruments collection. His movements were rapid and furtive, so that Alice was not even certain at first that it was him. She had called out, but he appeared not to hear and had ducked behind a life-sized clay effigy of Sir Walter Raleigh. When Alice reached the spot where she had seen him, he had gone.

“Perhaps he is embarrassed,” Aunt Pendleton had whispered when Alice reported the photographer's elusiveness.

“He can't avoid us forever,” Alice had replied.

“In fact,” Mr. Talbot was saying, “Mr. Blake, with his knowledge of chemicals and so forth, would make the perfect assistant for the creation of the artificial volcano. A difficult and dangerous task for the uninitiated, but one in which an intrepid young man like Mr. Blake would, I'm sure, be only too happy to be involved.” Mr. Talbot rubbed his hands together vigorously, as though attempting to start a fire there and then. “Perhaps you would find the fellow for me. Send him to my study directly. We can discus the matter there.”

“Shall I attend also? If I'm to help—”

“Your role will be more administrative.” Mr. Talbot cleared his throat and looked down at her sternly. “I must say, Alice, it has come to my notice—indeed, I have Cattermole to thank for bringing it so clearly to my attention—that you are somewhat overanxious to become involved with the functioning of certain apparatus I
have collected. It is simply not … how shall I put it? It is not
appropriate
. For a lady.”