And then, quite quietly, he said to none of us:
“How oft when men are at the point of death
Have they been merry! which their keepers call
A lightning before death. O, how may I
Call this a lightning? O my love! my wife!
Death, that hath suck’d the honey of thy breath,
Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty.”
Daffy gasped audibly. Feely was as pale as death, her lips parted, her eyes on Father’s face. I recognized the words at once as those Romeo had spoken at the tomb of Juliet.
“Thou art not conquered,” Father went on, his voice becoming ever more hushed, the Quarto clutched tightly in his hands.
“Beauty’s ensign yet
Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks,
And death’s pale flag is not advancèd there.”
He was speaking to Harriet!
His words, now barely audible, were scarcely more than a whisper.
“Shall I believe
That unsubstantial Death is amorous,
And that the lean abhorrèd monster keeps
Thee here in dark to be his paramour?”
As if she were in the room …
“For fear of that I still will stay with thee
And never from this palace of dim night
Depart again.”
And then he turned, and walked slowly out of the room, as if from a graveside.
My father is not a hugger, but I wanted to hug him. I wanted to run after him and throw my arms around him and hug him until the jam ran out.
But of course, I didn’t. We de Luces do not gush.
And yet, perhaps, when they come to write the final history of this island race, there will be a chapter on all those glorious scenes that were played out only in British minds, rather than in the flesh, and if they do, Father and I will be there, if not hand in hand, then marching, at least, in the same parade.
• POSTLUDE •
EVERYONE HAD QUIETLY FOLLOWED Father from the drawing room. They had melted away as casually as the extras in a film after the big dance number, leaving me alone at last to stretch luxuriously on the sofa, close my eyes for a while, and plan for the future, which, for now, seemed likely to be given over to a course of steaming mustard plasters, buckets of cod-liver oil, and forced feedings of Mrs. Mullet’s revolting invalid pudding.
The very thought of the stuff made my uvula cower behind my tonsils. The uvula is that little fleshy stalactite that dangles at the back of your throat, whose name, Dogger told me, comes from the Latin word for “grape.”
How did he know these things? I wondered. Although there had been numerous occasions when Dogger’s knowledge of the human body had come in handy, I had thought of it until just recently as being due to his age. Surely someone who has lived as long in the world as Dogger has, someone who has endured a prisoner-of-war camp, couldn’t help but to have acquired a certain amount of practical information.
And yet there was more to it than that. I knew it instinctively and realized with a sudden shiver that part of me had known it all along.
“You’ve done this before, haven’t you?” I had asked as we’d stood together over Phyllis Wyvern’s body.
“Yes,” Dogger had replied.
My mind was teeming. There were so very many things that needed thinking about.
Aunt Felicity, for instance. Her account of her wartime service, however scanty, had reminded me of Uncle Tar’s correspondence with Winston Churchill, much of which still lay unexamined in a desk drawer in my laboratory. All of it was too early, of course, to have a direct bearing upon the matter. Uncle Tar had been dead for more than twenty years, but I had not forgotten that Aunt Felicity and Harriet had spent happy summers with him here at Buckshaw.
It was definitely worth another look.
And then there was Father Christmas. Had he, in spite of the mob, managed to make his way secretly into the house? Had he brought me the glass retorts and test tubes I had asked for—all the lovely flasks and funnels, the beakers and pipettes, packed in straw and nestled in together, crystal cheek almost touching crystal cheek? Were they already upstairs in my laboratory, gleaming in the winter light, awaiting only the touch of my hand to bring them to bubbling life?
Or was the old saint, after all, really no more than the cruel myth Daffy and Feely had made him out to be?
I surely hoped not.
Then suddenly there sprang to my mind a particular proof that starts with the letter P, and it wasn’t potassium.
My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of laughter in the next room, and a moment later, Feely and Daffy came in, their arms full of gaily wrapped gifts.
“Father said it was all right,” Daffy told me. “You were out cold for Christmas and we’re both of us dying to see what Aunt Felicity gave you.”
She let fall onto my legs a package wrapped in what looked suspiciously like Easter paper.
“Go ahead—open it.”
My curiously weakened fingers picked at the ribbon, tearing the paper at the corner of the package.
“Give it here,” Feely said. “You’re so clumsy.”
I had already felt through the paper that the package contained something soft, and had written it off. Everyone knows that truly great gifts are always hard to the touch, and I could tell, even without opening it, that Aunt Felicity’s was a dud.
I handed it over without a word.
“Oh, look!” Feely said, with fake enthusiasm, tossing aside the paper. “A bed jacket!”
She held the silk monstrosity up to her chest as if she were modeling it. Cross-stitched all over in a padded diamond pattern, the thing looked like a cast-off life jacket from a Chinese junk.
“The jade will go nicely with your complexion,” Daffy said. “Do you want to try it on?”
I turned my face towards the back of the sofa.
“This next one is from Father,” Feely said. “Shall I open it?”
I reached out and took the small packet from her hands. The label read:
To: Flavia
From: Father
Merry Christmas.
There was a picture of a little robin redbreast in the snow.
The paper came away easily enough. Inside was a small book.
“What is it?” Daffy demanded.
“Aniline Dyes in the Printing of the British Postage Stamp: A Chemical History,” I read aloud.
Dear old Father. I wanted to laugh and I wanted to cry.
I held the book out for Daffy to see, forcing myself to remember how excited I had been when I’d first read that the great Friedrich August Kekulé, one of the fathers of organic chemistry, had originally envisioned the tetravalent carbon atom while coming home from Clapham on top of a horse-drawn omnibus. The voice of the conductor calling out “Clapham Road!” had interrupted his train of thought, and he had forgotten his revelation until four years later.
Kekulé had been associated with printing inks, hadn’t he? Hadn’t his friend Hugo Müller been employed by De La Rue, the printers of British postage stamps?
I put the book aside. I would deal with my jumble of feelings later—when I was alone.
“This is from me,” Feely said. “Open it next. Careful you don’t break it.”
I peeled the paper carefully from the flat, square package, knowing as soon as I touched it that it was a phonograph record.
As indeed it was: Toccata, by Pietro Domenico Paradis, from his Sonata in A, played by the superb Eileen Joyce.