A Proper Education for Girls (5 page)

“He was convinced that the cures for all man's ailments could be found in plants, if only we looked hard enough,” said Alice.

“Well, they have to be good for something,” muttered Mr. Talbot. “All that useless greenery.”

Mr. Blake saw Alice's brow darken. “The natural world provides inspiration for the direction of our own progress,” she
said. “Even without their medicinal properties plants have much to offer us. Some of man's finest creations mimic their processes and structures.”

“Such as what, my dear? Such as what?”

“Well, the Crystal Palace. The building that housed the Great Exhibition. A building very similar in design to our own conservatory.”

“An excellent example, Alice,” cried Aunt Lambert, clapping her hands. “The Crystal Palace is a marvel of size and complexity. But where did Paxton get his inspiration? Why, from nature! From plants.”

“Precisely,” said Alice. “Paxton's structure was based on Amazonian lily pads—huge circular leaves strong enough to support the weight of a child due to their supporting network of veins.”

“That's as may be, but civilization is man's triumph over nature.” Mr. Talbot reached beneath the table and produced a twelve-inch rectangular box. He placed it gently on the tabletop beside his plate. “Look here. I was saving this for later but now seems as good a time as any.” He ran an admiring finger over the varnished wooden surface of the box. “The perpetual mousetrap. A small but ingenious addition to the Collection. A device capable of resetting itself and trapping mice continuously.”

Alice glanced at Mr. Blake, who waved a fork cheerily. “Oh, don't mind me,” he said, nodding and smiling. “Cattermole used to talk about diseased cadavers at the dinner table. It'll take more than a mere mousetrap to put me off, I can tell you!”

There was a polite pause. “Quite so,” said Mr. Talbot. He cleared his throat. “As I was saying, most traps can only catch and kill one mouse at a time, but this one, why, owing to its spring-loaded turnstile mouse door, it flips the mouse through to a chamber at the rear and is instantly primed to receive another. It can catch up to twenty-eight live mice in a single trap! More if the holding chamber is made larger. Indeed, there could be no limit to its capacity if the holding chamber were made bigger and bigger. The whole thing is patented, of course. Ingenious, don't you think? A humble
example of progress, of man's resourcefulness triumphing over the natural proclivity of the mouse for procreation and pestiferousness. I shall try it in the stables tonight.”

Alice shook her head. “And what would anyone want with twenty-eight live mice? Really Father, take the thing off the table. It should be in the kitchen, along with the cat!”

“With this there will be no need for cats!”

“But Alice is right,” said Aunt Lambert. “This progress of yours is simply the exchange of one set of conditions and restrictions for another.”

“Exactly,” said Alice. “A cat would
eat
the mice it catches. By its natural urges it rids us of vermin and sustains itself. Your mousetrap still leaves the problem of what to do with twenty-eight mice.”

“And, by implication, what to do with the nation's cats.” Aunt Lambert and Alice exchanged a smile.

Mr. Talbot's face grew red. “My dear aunt, would you have us abandon all efforts for improvement? And you, Alice. Do you say that the conditions in which you live are no better than those of your forefathers? No, you do not. Man's dedication to invention and manufacture has transformed the lot of even the humble working man. Take slum dwellers. Progress in theories of disease causation and new methods of sanitation have transformed their quality of life. Not to mention the impact a mousetrap such as this might have upon their infested homes!”

“But before the slum dwellers appeared in their droves in our cities, were they not happier, and healthier, living in the countryside?” said Alice. “I admit, improved sanitation allows them to avoid the cholera, and this means that they live longer. But longer lives spent in miserable conditions. Who benefits from this, Father? The slum dwellers? I doubt whether they would regard an extra five years of life caught in poverty and servitude as progress, with or without this mousetrap to remind them how lucky they are!”

Mr. Talbot's face darkened further. He turned to Mr. Blake. “She reads pamphlets, you know,” he muttered in an undertone. “I have no idea where she gets them.” He frowned. “Alice, my dear, as
much as I applaud your lively thinking I must point out that you have little experience of the world outside these walls. You cannot possibly know what you are talking about. Of course, tonight we are lucky enough to have Mr. Blake with us, a man who joins us from the metropolis. Mr. Blake, your views on the matter?”

But Mr. Blake was no longer listening. He was thinking about his missing trunk. How careless of him. And how careless that he had stored his portfolios of photographs in it. Why had he not kept them with his photographic equipment, as he had originally intended to do? There were some portraits in those portfolios that Dr. Cattermole had implied Mr. Talbot might be keen to see, and now they were gone. What if someone else found the trunk and opened it? Rendered sleepy by the huge meal he had consumed, Mr. Blake pressed his palms against his eyes to halt the images of white flesh and black hair that came crowding into his brain each time he thought of his missing portfolios. The portraits had been taken not two days before he quitted his lodgings in Whitechapel to start his commission with Mr. Talbot. Taken, moreover (and much to Mr. Blake's surprise), at the instigation of Dr. Cattermole, a man who had taught him so much about the photographic art and who had, of course, been the one who had put in a good word for him with Mr. Talbot in the first place.

“C
OME NOW, MY
dear fellow, one good turn and all that?” the doctor had said with a wink, throwing a conspiratorial arm around his apprentice's shoulders. And then he had demanded his favor in return, a parting gift from one man of the world to another. A secret, of course. After all, the doctor had Mrs. Cattermole to consider. Ah, if only his good lady would allow him a fifteen-minute exposure, Dr. Cattermole had joked, as they walked through the foul and raucous back streets to escort a suitably endowed prostitute back to Mr. Blake's lodgings.

Mr. Blake had eyed his companion nervously. Mrs. Cattermole, he knew, demanded much more than fifteen minutes. Indeed, she
was beginning to demand too much, and as far as Mr. Blake was concerned, his commission with Mr. Talbot could not come soon enough.

The doctor slapped Mr. Blake on the shoulder and gave another exaggerated wink. “You know what I mean,” he insisted. Mr. Blake, assuming the question was rhetorical, gave only a wan smile.

The afternoon had passed in a blur of shock and surprise. Having worked with him every day for the past six months, Mr. Blake assumed that he knew the doctor well. Why, he had been to Dr. Cattermole's house, had eaten his food and drunk his wine. He had also spent the past six weeks with his breeches down, reaming and rogering the doctor's wife in every conceivable location in the doctor's own house.

“He's not interested in me,” Mrs. Cattermole had panted. “He's not interested in any woman—unless they're dead and on his slab.”

But as he gazed in disbelief through the camera's unflinching eye, seeing the doctor's pale and skinny frame jerking enthusiastically between the thighs of the prostitute, Mr. Blake realized he had no idea at all who Thomas Cattermole was.

The naked doctor had insisted on shouting instructions to Mr. Blake throughout the proceedings. At one point, he had extracted himself from the moist recesses of the lady to dart forward, his bobbing manhood glistening pinkly in the light from the window, to make sure the lens was correctly focused. Using a newfangled photographic technique involving collodion had at least meant that each exposure was mercifully rapid. More than once Mr. Blake found himself wondering whether either Dr. Cattermole or his obliging assistant (really, she was quite remarkably flexible for one so large) would have been able to maintain such a variety of positions for so long had he been taking photographs using the slower calotype method.

Afterward, while Mr. Blake attended to the developing process in the cupboard, the doctor had taken a few more photographs, this time of the lady on her own: wearing her shift gathered up about
her waist and sitting on the edge of a chair, dimpled thighs coyly sandwiched together; another photograph depicted the same but with only her stockings on. A third picture showed her standing completely nude and holding an immense globe-shaped breast in each hand, like a butcher offering two sides of beef for inspection. The woman herself had neither complained nor questioned but had followed her instructions with bovine indifference. As Dr. Cattermole paid her off, slapping her bottom as she turned to go, Mr. Blake had had the feeling she had seen it all before—and more besides.

Soon afterward, as he cleared up the detritus of the afternoon, Mr. Blake realized that the doctor had left these final three plates behind. But Mr. Blake had not thrown them away as he had told himself he should. Instead, he had plunged them into the saline bath, staring at the mounds of naked female flesh that appeared before his eyes even as the memory itself mercifully faded.

Dr. Cattermole had said nothing at all about that afternoon until Mr. Blake was packing up his photographic equipment and preparing to leave for his commission with Mr. Talbot.

Then, “Those pictures,” Cattermole had said as he shook his apprentice's hand. “Talbot might be interested.”

N
OW
M
R.
B
LAKE
realized with alarm that Mr. Talbot was addressing him. Was shouting at him, in fact. “Come, come,” he was saying. “Speak up!”

“Indeed,” said Mr. Blake. “You are quite right, sir.” He had no idea what he was agreeing to, but his employer seemed satisfied. He looked at Alice, but her gaze told him nothing. He smiled, for reasons he could not identify, suddenly wanting her approval. She stared at him, then turned away, as though disgusted. Mr. Blake felt his cheeks turn red.

“There you are!” thundered Mr. Talbot. “Mr. Blake agrees and, as a medical man and a scientist, I'll wager his knowledge of public
health matters is greater than your own. Now then”—he eyed Mr. Blake as he rummaged in his pockets—“perhaps it's time the ladies left us.”

Mr. Blake felt a deadening sense of gloom bearing down upon him at the prospect drinking port alone with Mr. Talbot. Would it be rude, or somehow unmanly to claim indisposition and make his way to his rooms?

Along with the half-smoked stump of his cigar, which was what he had been searching for, Mr. Talbot extracted from his pocket a crumpled piece of paper. “Humph,” he grunted. “This came for you last week.” He tossed a letter across the tabletop to his daughter. “I've a mind to throw it into the fire.”

The envelope was creased and corrugated with water damage, the address only visible through the scratches of pen on the surface of the paper. Mr. Blake watched in surprise as Alice snatched the letter from her father's outstretched fingers, as though she expected him to change his mind and stuff it back out of sight into his pocket.

“At last!” cried Old Mrs. Talbot, clapping her skeletal hands together so that her rings rattled. “I knew Lilian would not forget us. Thank you, Edwin dear!”

“But you've already opened it!” said Alice, pointing to the torn envelope.

“This is my house. All correspondence that crosses this threshold is of interest to me. Especially if it's from
her
.” Mr. Talbot banged his fist on the table. “She has no right to communicate with anyone here. She made her choice. ‘Sharper than a serpent's tooth,’” he muttered darkly to Mr. Blake. “Besides,” he added, looking slightly shamefaced, “it's almost impossible to read. Silly woman must've written on wet paper. Either that or the monsoon caught it. She might as well be writing on butter. The only reason I didn't throw it onto the fire along with all the others she's sent is so that you can see for yourselves what a model wife she has become. Cattermole was quite correct in his treatment of her. His …
intervention
, his procurement of her husband, why, she appears to be quite
transformed. She says hardly anything worth reading. Seems more concerned with household decoration that anything else.”

“But it is addressed to
me,”
cried Alice, as though she hoped to drown out her father's words.

“What of it?” shouted Mr. Talbot, his face turning purple. “And don't think you might like to reply to it. I've removed the address for a start, and my post bag is barred to you. And your aunts.” He swept the table with a suspicious glare. “And Sluce keeps an eye on the servants so you won't be able to find yourself a courier from among their ranks either.” Mr. Talbot heaved himself to his feet. He addressed Mr. Blake. “And I include you, sir, in this injunction. Do
not
be persuaded to carry a letter out of this house without my knowledge. I will search your pockets, sir. I will search your pockets. The nearest village is five miles away, and I have forbidden the carriage to be made ready unless I authorize it personally. Let me also remind you,” he cried, “that
no one
is permitted to leave this house without my express permission.
No one
. I am quite determined. You will
not
communicate with her. Now take that foolish scribble away. Before I change my mind.”

“Poor Lilian,” said Aunt Pendleton, tearfully. “She was taken from us.”

“Taken where?” asked Mr. Blake.

“Never mind ‘where!’” cried Mr. Talbot. “I'll not have her name mentioned at this table again.”

“She's in India,” explained Alice, slipping the letter into her pocket. “She married a missionary. A Mr. Fraser.”