English passengers (4 page)

‘‘What’s that you’ve got there?’’

It wasn’t me he was asking but Quayle, the cook, and Quayle looked like he’d been patted on the head with lightning. ‘Just cheese,’’ he stuttered, ‘‘for the swiney here.’’

Clarke peeled the cheese from his hand—a mighty chunk it was, and all foreign-looking in its shape—and took a deep sniff ‘‘And where might this cheese be from?’’

I guessed quick enough what was up. There had been a row of shops right by the quay of that certain discreet port, and Quayle must have slipped across without anybody noticing. Seeing how the silly fritlag would only stammer us into worse trouble, I shot him a look to quiet him. ‘‘Peel, wasn’t it?’’

‘‘So this is Manx cheese, is it?’’ Clarke turned it over, and then his face went all sort of white and he held it up for me to see. ‘‘And I suppose this is Manx writing?’’

Would you believe it, there was a big tear of French newspaper stuck to the underside, that it had been wrapped in. I knew Quayle was a windy dawd of a one but still I could hardly believe he had been so stupid as this. And all for that useless lump of swiney.

Clarke had himself a quick stare at the paper. ‘‘This is dated just four days ago.’’ You’d have hardly recognized him as the same man as a minute before. Quite gone was all his shiny-buttons cheeriness. Now his voice was sort of breathish and his face had gone quite pinched with fury. Sad to say, I’m sure he wouldn’t have been half so bad if I hadn’t managed to catch him so nicely with the prints of Queen Victoria and all her babes. He had been duped and he knew it, and there’s nothing your uniformed Englishman hates more than being shown stupid by foreigners.

I had to say something. ‘‘Wasn’t there a fishing boat we ran into? You must’ve bought the cheese off them, mustn’t you, Quayle?’’

Quayle nodded weakly. He’d have agreed if I’d said he’d bought it off some passing shark. Not that it made much difference now, as Clarke wasn’t going to believe a word I said, though it was seven times true. Besides, buying goods off a foreign ship without declaring it was almost as much breaking the law as buying them from a foreign port.

‘‘I think,’’ he said, icy as hoarfrost, ‘‘that it’s time you took yourselves to London, so you may have a little chat with some gentlemen from Her
Majesty’s customs.’’ Then he peered over the side to call back his marines from the boat. ‘‘The
Dolphin
will escort you,’’ he added, all sarcastic, ‘‘just to make sure you don’t get lost.’’

So off we went, quiet as lambs, with a coast guard cutter just behind, and the six marines stretched out on our deck, smoking pipes and having themselves a good few laughs about Manxmen and cheese. There was nothing to be done about it, either, except to tell Quayle that he was to cook us for our dinner a fine feed of fresh roasted
pork
. Of course, there were some aboard remarked how strange it was that the creature that had caused us this trouble was the exact same one that the Bishop of Man had called pig. Not that I was one to trouble myself over any such foolishness, but then again, it was a little curious.

By dusk the coast was clear in sight. A long day it had been, too. Looking at that black English shore, all our dreamings of jink and rum and rented females were long gone. My thoughts were all of searches and questions, of fines and confiscations, of bankruptcy. Perhaps even a spell in gaol.

What we actually got, of course, could hardly have been more different.

T
HAT NIGHT
I
WALKED
in Diemen’s Land. Through the furthest wilderness I strode, where no Christian had yet trod. Before me rose up cliffs steep as fortress walls, though these were like no ordinary cliffs, being white and smooth as polished alabaster. Humble yet fearless, I began to climb, surmounting boulders and chasms, reaching ever higher, till finally I stood upon a mighty peak and, there before me, miraculous to behold, lay the greenest land that ever was: a lush yet ordered abundance, a garden in the wilderness, lost these six thousand years. As I looked upon it, filled with awe and wonder, every distant fern and stream and flower seemed to murmur to me, ‘‘come hither, sweet vicar, come hither, and make haste.’’

Then I woke and found myself in my sister-in-law’s house in Highgate.
Early morning summer sunlight caught the curtains with a delicate brightness, transforming this most ordinary of scenes, filling me with a warming light of truth, and giving to my premonition—for premonition it surely had been—a sense of something confirmed.

‘‘Louisa,’’ I gently called to my wife. ‘‘I have just had a most extraordinary dream. I do believe it is a sign.’’

My dear wife, though she is filled with fine and noble qualities, is not easily drawn by the visionary. ‘‘Oh good,’’ she murmured, without great attention, then returned to sleep.

Early though the hour was, I rose from bed without delay. Twenty-six years as a parish priest in rural Yorkshire had been more than long enough to imbue me with the ways of country people, and could not be gainsaid by a few weeks in lazy London. In this case my promptness proved most opportune. Hardly had I set to work on my correspondence when there was a knock at the door and the housemaid, once she had been raised from her slumber, admitted Jonah Childs’s coachman, who had brought a note from his master across town in Clapham.

The note’s simple directness was wholly characteristic of that noble man, as was its hour of arrival: he must have decided upon the meeting in the middle of the night, having the coachman roused—the idle fellow was visibly sulking—and sending him on his way there and then. Jonah Childs was never one for the slow or the round and about, being nothing less than a fountain of enthusiasm. To know him, indeed, was to be constantly delighted by his warm and excitable nature, his exuberance, his sudden and unexpected bursts of laughter. There were some, it is true, who considered him rather too changeable for their liking, yet I saw this never as a fault, but rather as a quality of charm, resembling the
weather on a delightful spring day, when the wind may suddenly and unexpectedly alter its direction, transforming rain into sunshine.

The truth was that without Jonah Childs’s extraordinary kindness the whole expedition would have been impossible, and I believe the Garden of Eden might never be found at all, at least in my lifetime. The man had been nothing less than a power of generosity, a gift from God, and in consequence any little annoyances that might be suffered were of little account. While it was, I admit, far from wholly convenient for me to to be called so suddenly to his home in Clapham, I never for a moment considered declining his invitation. It might, besides, prove of no small importance to learn the identity of this mysterious ‘‘somebody’’ he wished me to meet. Mr. Childs was so unpredictable of spirit that there was no telling what might be in his thoughts.

‘‘Tell your master I look forward to visiting at eleven,’’ I informed his servant.

The morning promised a hot day, being already well warm by half past eight. As my cab journeyed down from Highgate hill, London dimly glinting in the distance through its own dust, I considered how richly unpredictable life could be. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined, even a few months previously, that I might find myself in such a situation as this: my life wholly revolutionized, parish duties exchanged for hurried preparations for—now only ten days away—an epic journey of discovery.

I cannot say the change was wholly unwelcome. Twenty-six years is a long time to remain a vicar in rural Yorkshire, and while I was honoured to perform my humble priestly duties, and found the parishioners— in their direct way—wholly charming, I must confess that there were moments when I did wonder if I had not been intended to perform some greater service on this earth. My student work had been, though I say it myself not without promise, while I sprang—if somewhat distantly—from one of the older families of Kent, which had included within its ranks two bishops. I began my ministry with some zeal, endeavouring to improve the lives of my flock by launching a little campaign to have the alehouse open only three days in the week instead of seven, and offering—as a nobler recompense—two extra church services. Sadly this little initiative was answered, in certain quarters, with something like hostility.

Attendances at my normal Sunday services actually declined, while I felt myself regarded sometimes with frosty glances in the village.

If this were not troubling enough, I found myself also increasingly concerned for the happiness of my dear wife. She had been brought up in exhilarating Manchester—she would often reminisce about its many colourful shops—and did not find life in this quiet corner of Yorkshire always easy. For a time she was distracted by the demands of our seven children, but as these grew older and more independent, her stoicism seemed slowly to wane. The main source of her distress was, charmingly, her noble loyalty to myself. Often she would recall one of my teachers during my Canterbury days, with whom I had enjoyed some splendid theological duels, in which I had acquitted myself, I must confess, by no means poorly. The man had later gone on to become a man of some influence in the Church, and she felt, perhaps foolishly, he might have helped me find some more exacting toil. Hard though I struggled to reassure her that such things were quite beyond our own poor understanding, still she would raise the matter ever and again, even to the point of weariness. Being much troubled by her unhappiness, which I seemed powerless to alleviate, I became increasingly drawn to taking long walks, along the cliffs or across the moors, so my senses might be refreshed by the bracing Yorkshire wind. It never occurred to me, of course, that I might be walking upon the very answer to my many questions.

My interest began as the merest foolishness: a simple pleasure in collecting pebbles, the more pleasing of which I would bring home and place on the mantelpiece. After a time I developed a curiosity about their colours, which varied so wondrously, which led me onwards to observing the hues of the cliffs and soils of the area. From here I took the great leap of purchasing a bag and tiny pick for the collection of samples, and all at once I discovered myself to be a man with
a pastime,
that even took me on little journeys of discovery about the county. Naturally I never expected anything to come of this enchanting pursuit beyond the knowledge and simple pleasure it already provided.

One morning I visited our nearest town to purchase a replacement for a lamp that had broken, only to find that the shop was closed. A little annoyed to have wasted my journey, I drifted into a nearby bookseller’s,
and soon chanced upon a newly published volume on geology. How close I came to replacing the book upon its shelf, considering its price too high. What drove me to make so rash a purchase? Merest chance? Or did some distant voice murmur words of encouragement? Of such mysteries are formed life itself. That same afternoon I applied myself to reading and received a mighty shock. Even in the very first chapter the author—supposedly a geologist of repute—brazenly asserted that Silurian limestone was no less than one hundred thousand years of age. This was despite the fact that the Bible tells, and with great clarity, that the earth was created a mere six thousand years ago.

This was not mere error, this was slander. This was a most poisonous assault upon the good name of the Scriptures. As I sat thus by the fire, the cup of tea by my side grown cold, my wife working upon her knitting, needles clicking, my heart began to beat faster, and suddenly I knew myself to be in the midst of one of those rarest of moments, that are like some dazzling hilltop vista in the midst of the slow walk of life. A great truth began to pour through my soul, like some charge of electricity. All these long years in Yorkshire had not been wasted, far from it. I was simply being prepared for the great task now revealed to me: to right this terrible wrong, and prevent weak minds from being led astray by this vile falsehood.

From that moment idle pastime was turned to deadly earnest, as I endeavoured to make a kind of machine of myself, to defend this great cause. I read every volume on the subject that I could find, only to discover that more than a few others were tainted with the same calumny as my opponent. My enemies were stronger than I had supposed. Still I strove not to lose heart, recalling to mind the story of little David and mighty Goliath. I began conducting investigations of my own, journeying even outside Yorkshire, as far as Wales and Cornwall. I studied. I pondered. I studied again. Half-formed thoughts began to crystallize into lines of reason. Vague assumptions took on a clear, fighting form. Finally I felt ready to put pen to paper and attempt my very first pamphlet, which I had printed at my own expense:
False questions honestly answered: the new theory of divine refrigeration fully explained
. Little did I imagine as I looked upon the results of my labours, stacked ready to be
sent to periodicals and men of influence, where these sheets of paper might finally take me. Publication is a powerful thing. It can bring a man all manner of unlooked-for events, making friends and enemies of perfect strangers, and much more besides.

My opponents’ first argument was that the rocks of the earth—which are generally agreed to have once been in a hot and melted state—would have required far longer to lose their heat than the Scriptures described. My reply was that the earth had indeed cooled at great speed, being made possible by a process I termed
Divine Refrigeration
. Seeing as our Lord had enjoyed the power to create the world, it seemed only logical, after all, that he would also have had the power to alter its temperature. This left only the atheist geologists’ second claim, which concerned the vanished creatures. My adversaries had fussed greatly about these, especially a defunct animal named the trilobite—that resembles nothing so much as a giant wood louse—whose remains are sometimes found in Silurian limestone, and which they claimed must have existed in some long-past era. The explanation, however, seemed nothing less than obvious. The earth had originally been created with a huge variety of animals dwelling upon it, extending from the useful—such as horses and trusty dogs—to the simply ludicrous, such as this tiresome specimen. Naturally, with time, many of the less satisfactory animals—and what could be less satisfactory than a giant wood louse?—had simply vanished away. A good deal of them, I proposed, would have succumbed during the great flood.