Airship Shape & Bristol Fashion (10 page)

Announcement of Scientific Interest

Professor Samuel Lime has kindly assented for the enhancement of knowledge to invite interested gentlemen to witness a scientific dissection of a lesser man. With a particular consideration to ‘brain’ anatomy, and a detailed examination of the oblique brain hair structure. Lecture to take place, June 1st in the Victoria Room. Entrance fee: Ten shillings.

No ladies please.

I escorted Belle and Ruth into the fernery’s public rooms which displayed specimens from all over the Empire. The young ladies flitted from fern to fern under the sparkling sunlight filtered through the filigree roof. The sound of water falling into an unseen dripping well enhanced the pleasant ambience of the room.

I stayed a few metres behind my daughter and her young married friend until a bench beckoned. I sat, gratefully easing the pressure on my swollen leg. (Could it be the onset of gout? Surely I was too young for that particular ailment.) I lit my pipe and watched with satisfaction the blue smoke floating in the air.

“Father, I don’t think you should be smoking,” said Ruth.

Why was she so serious, all the time? I remembered her as a bright-eyed girl, eager for my return home, unwrapping the presents which Martha almost always deemed unsuitable for a young lady. “No smoking? Why not? See.” I blew smoke at a fern. The fronds quivered. “That’s what makes Bristol a clean city, none of the filthy soot you’ll find elsewhere. When you’re out walking or horse-riding it’s the ferns that keep your silk dress clean.”

Ruth frowned.

Ah, I’d said the wrong thing. How was I supposed to know what young ladies did all day? Perhaps they stayed inside all day, like hot house flowers. I knew very little about women. I’d never had learnt the trick of them. “Let’s go and see Queenie Green, shall we?” I rang the bell to summon the attendant.

Belle joined us. “Jolly good,” she said. “I can’t believe that Lady Croft has agreed to have one, at last.” Belle said rather too much, I thought. It was well known that my wife despised the very thing that had made my name.

“Mother has concerns on religious grounds,” said Ruth. That was the persistent objection to the lesser men. Were they part of God’s wondrous creation, or a mockery of it?

The fernery attendant approached us. “Hello, Sir Alex. My name is Anna Didcot. I’m here to escort you to the birthing ground.” Anna’s skin was dark, a not uncommon sight in Bristol with its legacy of slavery.

“How long have you worked at the fernery?” I asked politely.

“Professor Franks engaged me two years ago,” she replied.

“Very good.” Zeb had always been a progressive employer, although I wasn’t aware that his progressive views had included the employment of women. I missed the old fellow terribly.

I walked behind the three women, amazed at the animation my daughter was displaying. Why, she was even exceeding Belle in conversational prowess.

“But what are they?” asked Ruth. “Are they distant cousins? Surely they’re too like us to be anything other? And consider natural selection. What is the evolutionary advantage for Queenie Green to reproduce in such a manner?”

I hadn’t realised that my daughter was so interested in such matters, or that she was so knowledgeable.

Anna opened the doors and led us into the hothouse where Queenie Green resided. Although Queenie Green had been found in a temperate clime, Zeb had found that her ideal environment was tropical. Underground pipes covered with iron grills breathed steam into the room, condensation ran along the windows. The walls were lined with rock, artificially arranged and cemented into natural formations. Queenie Green dominated the room. Her fronds were larger than a man, spotted with plate-sized reddish sporangia. The new leaves unwound from tight spiralled fiddleheads that seemed coiled with potential.

But it was the hammock shaped pods that were of the most interest. Inside each one, a lesser men grew.

My daughter watched Anna Didcot with rapt attention as the botanist birthed a lesser man and transferred it into a travelling Wardian case. All the time, Ruth chattered away with a smile plastered on her face, totally ignoring Belle.

It was gratifying to see Ruth so happy.

Until the realisation, dreadful and undeniable, seared into my mind. I knew the reasons for my daughter usual restraint, her quiet aspect, her sadness. Ruth was like me. Exactly like me. My daughter had my own terrible fault. What taint had I bestowed upon her? Ruth, my darling little girl. Oh Lord, the poor child. My daughter loved members of her own sex. And like myself twenty years ago, she was about to be engaged into a union that could never bring her happiness.

I stumbled backwards and collapsed onto the floor.

Immediately Anna was at my side. “Can I assist you, Sir Alex?”

“Yes. No. Sorry. The heat overcame me for a moment.” This woman, could she return my daughters affections? Was such a thing possible? Was such a thing commonplace? Of course, I’d heard men in their coarse way sometimes speak about sex between women, but … that was not love.

My poor daughter. And I’d never suspected anything. I wondered: did Martha suspect? In all these long years she’d never made any accusations against me, she’d never spoken of my own fault. What did she feel when I never shared her bed, even on my infrequent visits home?

With a great effort of will, I composed myself. I requested that Anna accompany us home. She was pleased to oblige. We deposited the loquacious Belle at her home, as Percy would be missing her.

Fortunately Martha was not at home. I don’t think I could have faced her quite yet.

It was decided to decant the lesser man into the conservatory. Anna explained how to train the lesser man with repetitive actions, while Ruth smiled and nodded.

Did she know? I wondered. Did Ruth torment herself, as I had done? Did she fear that she may be mentally ill? How did she view her upcoming marriage? Was it with the same overwhelming melancholy that I had felt?

“I read in the paper,” my daughter was saying, “that the lesser men communicate not with words, but with some vegetative principle, with their cranial filaments or by some other means. Do you think that might be true, Miss Didcot?”

“There are many things we don’t understand about the lesser men,” said Anna.

“How terrible it would be if that were the case. Then they could be intelligent beings, slaves to men,” said Ruth, blushing when she spoke. “It doesn’t matter what they want, they are obliged to follow their master’s wishes.”

And her words were so painful that I had to leave the room.

Later when Anna had left, I went to speak with my daughter. I found her still in the conservatory, gazing at the lesser man. I lit my pipe and said, “I’ve been thinking, Ruth, that you might like to accompany to me to Hy-Brasil.”

She looked at me in amazement.

“Before your marriage, I meant. An extended holiday, perhaps. Maybe you could do some work on the ferns. You seemed so interested this afternoon. Perhaps we could get the botanist to come with us. She seemed very knowledgeable.”

“Leave Mother? I don’t think I would like to do that.”

“Then what do you want, Ruth? What are you passionate about?” How inadequate my words were. “You can tell me anything.”

“Can I?” Ruth reached out and touched the lesser man gently on the arm. “Look at him, Father. How monstrous it would be if he was a thinking creature. Are we slavers, Father, for the lesser men? They work in the mines, in the factories, in the coalfields, under the most dreadful conditions.”

“Better them than men,” I said. “The work must be done if progress is to be made.”

“And what about the hardship the working men endure, when these creatures take the bread out of their mouths?”

I’d never considered the effect of the lesser men upon the working man, before today. But this was not the issue I wanted to discuss. “And is this all my fault? They are less than animals, less than men. They have no language, Ruth.”

“Even if they could talk, we couldn’t understand them.” She laughed, a bitter, dreadful sound. “They’re very much like us in that regard, don’t you think, Father?”

I sighed. My daughter and I were so alike, and yet so very far apart.

Ruth said goodnight.

I sat in the conservatory smoking my pipe. It would be a hard won battle to reclaim my daughter’s trust. I had failed her, abandoned her. But I would not let her enter a loveless marriage. Never that.

She was my daughter. I would find the language to speak to her
.

I stared at the lesser man. Could there be understanding in those blank eyes? Could there be a yearning for communication in that waving ephemeral brain hair? Had I been blind to everything important in my life? Could that be so?

Well that was another question, and it was not one that I intended to ignore. Tomorrow, I would think about that, tomorrow, after an incredibly difficult conversation with Martha.

No longer would I be silent.

- Joanne Hall -

The abyss yawned beneath her feet. Angela swayed, suddenly dizzy, clinging on to the iron balustrade as the rocks and the river swirled below her. A three-funnelled clipper swept under her feet, belching steam, heading for the port. It gave her pause for a moment. She would not risk others. That wasn’t her way, even if it was Howard’s. She waited until she was sure the ship was clear of the bridge, and took one last, long look around, saying a mental goodbye to the city, to Leigh Woods, which swept down to the abutment where they had walked when they were courting, to the elegant curving terrace where her hopes had withered and died with Charlotte. Even now, someone could be racing across the Downs to rescue her.

She shook her head to clear the fantasy. No one was coming. In all the sprawling city, she had no one. No one would miss her. There was no one on the bridge, and the grey, restless water was clear. She gathered her heavy skirts up to her waist, holding them bunched in one fist while she swung one bare leg, and then the other, over the railing.

The drop seemed a lot further on this side of the fence. For a moment she clung white-knuckled to the barrier, courage failing at the last, unable even to dash away the tears that blinded her.