A. R. Woresley put down his fork. There was one thin slice of salmon left on his plate. He let it stay there.
“So the little octopus grew and grew. It became a gourmet octopus. I can just see it, can’t you, down there in the dark caverns of the tummy, saying to itself, ‘Now I wonder what we’re going to have for supper tonight. I do hope it’s coq au yin. I feel like a bit of coq au vin tonight. And some crusty bread to go with it.’”
“You have an unsavoury predilection for the obscene, Cornelius.”
“That case made medical history,” I said.
“I find it repugnant,” A. R. Woresley said.
“I’m sorry about that. I’m only trying to make conversation.”
“I didn’t come here just to make conversation.”
“I’m going to turn you into a rich man,” I said.
“Then get on with it and tell me how.”
“I thought I’d leave that until the port is on the table. No good plans are ever made without a bottle of port.”
“Have you had enough, sir?” the waiter asked him, eyeing the rest of the smoked salmon.
“Take it away,” A. R. Woresley said.
We sat in silence for a while. The waiter brought the roast beef. The Volnay was opened. This was the month of March, so we had roast parsnips with our beef as well as roast potatoes and Yorkshire pudding. A. R. Woresley perked up a bit when he saw the beef. He drew his chair closer to the table and began to tuck in.
“Did you know my father was a keen student of naval history?” I asked.
“No, I didn’t.”
“He told me a stirring story once,” I said, “about the English captain who was mortally wounded on the deck of his ship in the American War of Independence. Would you like some horseradish with your beef?”
“Yes, I would.”
“Waiter,” I called. “Bring us a little fresh shredded horseradish. Now, as he lay dying, the captain—”
“Cornelius,” A. R. Woresley said, “I have had enough of your stories.”
“This isn’t my story. It’s my father’s. It’s not like the others. You’ll love it.”
He was attacking his roast beef and didn’t answer.
“So as he lay dying,” I said, “the captain extracted from his second-in-command a promise that his body would be taken home and buried in English soil. This created a bit of a problem because the ship was somewhere off the coast of Virginia at the time. It would take at least five weeks to sail back to Britain. So it was decided that the only way to get the body home in fair condition was to pickle it in a barrel of rum, and this was done. The barrel was lashed to the foremast and the ship set sail for England. Five weeks later, she dropped anchor in Plymouth Hoe, and the entire ship’s company was lined up to pay a last tribute to their captain as his body was lifted from the barrel into the coffin. But when the lid of the barrel was prized off, there came out a stench so appalling that strong men were seen rushing to the ship’s rail. Others fainted.
“Now this was a puzzler, for one can normally pickle anything in navy rum. So why, oh, why the appalling stench? You may well ask that question.”
“I don’t ask it,” A. R. Woresley snapped. His moustache was jumping about more than ever now.
“Let me tell you what had happened.”
“Don’t.”
“I must,” I said. “During the long voyage, some of the sailors had surreptitiously drilled a hole in the bottom of the barrel and had put a bung in it. Then over the weeks, they had drunk up all the rum.”
A. R. Woresbey said nothing. He was not looking at all well.
“‘Finest rum I ever tasted,’ one of the sailors was heard to remark afterwards. Now what shall we have for dessert?”
“No dessert,” A. R. Woresley said.
I ordered the best bottle of port in the house and some Stilton cheese. There was absolute silence between us as we waited for the port to be decanted. It was a Cockburn and a good one, though I’ve forgotten the year.
The port was served and the splendid crumbly green Stilton was on our plates. “Now,” I said, “let me tell you how I am going to make you a million pounds.”
He was watchful and a shade truculent now, but he was not aggressive. He was definitely softened up.
9
“You ARE virtually broke,” I said. “You have crippling mortgage interests to pay. You have a meagre salary from the university. You have no savings. You live, if you’ll forgive me for saying so, on slops.”
“We live very well.”
“No, you don’t. And you never will, unless you let me help you.”
“So what is your plan?”
“You, sir,” I said, “have made a great scientific discovery. There’s no doubt about that.”
“You agree it’s important?” he said, perking up.
“Very important. But if you publish your findings, just look what will happen. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry all over the world will steal your process for their own use. You won’t be able to stop them. It’s been the same all through the history of science. Look at pasteurization. Pasteur published. Everyone stole his process. And where did that leave old Pasteur?”
“He became a famous man,” A. R. Woresley said.
“If that’s all you want to be, then by all means go ahead and publish. I shall retire gracefully from the scene.”
“With your scheme,” A. R. Woresley said, “would I ever be able to publish?”
“Of course. As soon as you’ve got the million in your pocket.”
“How long would that be?”
“I don’t know. I’d say five or ten years at the most. After that, you would be free to become famous.”
“Come on, then,” he said. “Let’s hear about this brilliant scheme.”
The port was very good. The Stilton was good, too, but I only nibbled it to clear my palate. I called for an apple. A hard apple, thinly sliced, is the best partner for port.
“I propose that we deal only with human spermatozoa,” I said. “I propose that we select only the truly great and famous men alive in the world today and that we establish a sperm vault for these men. We will store two hundred and fifty straws of sperm from each man.”
“What is the point of that?” A. R. Woresley said.
“Go back just sixty years,” I said, “to around 1860, and pretend that you and I were living then and that we had the knowledge and the ability to store sperm indefinitely. So which living geniuses, in 1860, would you have chosen as donors?”
“Dickens,” he said.
“Go on.”
“And Ruskin . . . and Mark Twain.”
“And Brahms,” I said, “and Wagner and Tschaikovsky and Dvorák. The list is very long. Authentic geniuses every one of them. Go back further in the century, if you like, to Balzac, to Beethoven, to Napoleon, to Goya, to Chopin. Wouldn’t it be exciting if we had in our liquid nitrogen bank a couple of hundred straws of the living sperm of Beethoven?”
“What would you do with them?”
“Sell them, of course.”
“To whom?”
“To women. To very rich women who wanted babies by one of the greatest geniuses of all time.”
“Now wait a minute, Cornelius. Women, rich or not, aren’t going to allow themselves to be inseminated with the sperm of some long dead stranger just because he was a genius.”
“That’s what you think. Listen, I could take you to any Beethoven concert you like and I’d guarantee to find half a dozen females there who’d give almost anything to have a baby today by the great man.”
“You mean spinsters?”
“No. Married women.”
“What would their husbands say?”
“Their husbands wouldn’t know. Only the mother would know that she was pregnant by Beethoven.”