Afterwards everyone gathered for a drink, to discuss the lecture and to catch up with news of butterflies and moths the country over. I was glued to Clive’s shoulder and he introduced me to everyone we came across. When he led me over to Bernard Cartwright I was relieved, finally, to see someone familiar. Bernard often stayed at Bulburrow—either to discuss his latest research with Clive, on his way down to the West Country for a field trip, or as a family friend for the weekend. Bernard was a proper academic. He was a professor at a London college, and a few months ago he’d isolated a caterpillar hormone, one that initiates molting, so he was now a household name in that very small and exclusive collection of entomology households. He was addressing a group of men as we approached.
“A gland secretes a hormone in our heads, which actuates a nerve, which then activates a muscle, all involuntarily, without us knowing,” he was saying.
“Congratulations on your paper, Bernard,” Clive interrupted, shaking his hand.
“Thank you, Clive. Good talk, very lively as usual. Hello, Virginia,” he said to me, then leaned down to whisper in my ear, “do you like the way your daddy gets them going?” as if Clive had goaded them on purpose. Then he laughed loudly and I winced as a fine mist of spittle engulfed my face.
“So, Clive, what do you think makes the gland secrete the hormone in the first place?” said one of the men in the group.
“Most probably something that has not yet been discovered,” Clive said.
“That’s ducking the question, if I may say so.” Another laughed.
“No. I could speculate if you like,” said Clive, “that it was another hormone, one released as a coefficient of a mechanical process, like growth, perhaps. Before Bernard here”—he nudged his ally—“found the hormone that loosens and releases a caterpillar’s skin at certain stages of its growth, you probably thought that a caterpillar decided to shed its skin—voluntarily—when it was getting a little uncomfortable, a little too tight? We now know it wasn’t thinking of shedding its skin, and I’d say there’s probably a lot more thinking that the caterpillar is given credit for.”
“Well, I’m afraid I can’t agree with you,” said the same man.
“No, I know,” said Clive, satisfied once again with a cease-fire, and the conversation drifted on to something else.
I looked towards the acclaimed Bernard. He was a truly ugly man. He was short with a pan-shaped face, a tiny nose in the middle and tiny eyes too. Bernard must have been slinking up to middle age but seemed younger on account of his plump cheeks and shiny-skinned complexion and his reputation for hailing round the countryside on a Triumph motorcycle. He had a loud, inappropriate laugh but, I thought, at least he was cheery and a friendly face. Whenever he visited Bulburrow he’d always take notice of Vivi and me, and make conversation or sit down for a game of dominoes, unlike some of Clive’s more stuffy colleagues, many of whom would walk in and ignore us. (Maud said most of them ignored her too; they were weird about women, she said.)
When he saw me looking at him he sidled up, slapped his hand on my back and pulled me a little closer to him. “I’m glad to hear you’ve joined our team,” he said privately to me, as he ran his hand down the length of my back. Then he caught my eyes and held them, his puffy face a few inches from mine, so I couldn’t possibly avoid pitying the extent of his unnatural ugliness.
I assumed he was waiting for some response.
“I’m glad to have joined the team,” I replied with a hiccuped laugh and an idiotic smile. It was all I could think to say.
“Great,” he said. “Great. In this game you need allies, so remember I’m an ally.”
“Thanks,” I said, smiling again.
Then he ran his hand from the small of my back down over my bottom, which he grabbed lightly and shook a little. And then he left it there. I didn’t know what to do or say. I felt a little heat rise in my face and we both turned our heads back at the same time to resume being part of the group’s conversation. His hand still lightly cupped my bottom but our bodies were too close for anyone else to notice. Was it familiar friendliness? Or a consequence of a tight space? Or was I being fondled? The answer wasn’t as apparent as you’d imagine. We were squashed more or less into a corner so space was a little limited, and that confused my judgment for a start—the intimacy that’s tolerated on a packed bus isn’t on an empty one. All the options ran through my mind: He was protecting me from being pushed farther back into the wall. There was nowhere else for his hand to go. He’d merely forgotten it was there, as our familiarity over the years had deemed my bottom not a particularly personal place.
I was further prevented from reaching a conclusion by Bernard’s own puzzling behavior. He seemed to be listening so intently to the conversation in the group, with his head strained forward, that I was convinced he couldn’t possibly be thinking about his hand, so it was most probable that he’d just forgotten where he’d left it. A genuine mistake it may have been, but I couldn’t help but feel a strange hand cupping my bottom was oddly uncomfortable. I clenched my bottom muscles a couple of times, hoping he’d feel the movement and realize his mistake—the equivalent of a sharp look of distaste—but he merely shifted it a little, so intent was he on the conversation going on in front of him.
“You think a dog has instinct, don’t you?” a walrus-like man asked my father.
“Yes.”
“So where do you draw the line in the animal kingdom between those that have developed instinct and those that haven’t?”
“I don’t. All animals have instinct. The difference is most of them don’t know about it. The thing that sets us apart from other animals is self-awareness. And don’t ask me where, in the animal kingdom, I’d draw the self-awareness line, because I couldn’t tell you, but you can be sure it won’t be distinct. It will be a question of degree, and there will be lots of animals with only a little self-awareness.” Clive rattled off his thoughts without pause for breath, and I realized he’d said the same things many times before. He went on, “What do you think makes decisions for a pupa when it’s in liquid form? There’s no brain left. It’s a primordial soup. Surely you don’t imagine Pupal Soup can think. Its genetic coding orchestrates the proceedings, like a key opens a door. It’s not a decision-making process.”
A throng was now gathering round him, like a dissatisfied mob, and I could tell he was increasingly uneasy, as he stepped up the frequency with which he scratched his neck beard.
“So what exactly is self-awareness, then? Is it a soul, do you think?” someone asked.
Clive’s trial was far from over.
“Well, that’s an issue for a different kind of lecture entirely.”
“I know, but I’m interested in your view. You seem very definite on all of it,” someone pointed out acerbically.
“I am a reductionist, so I do not think that self-awareness is a spiritual attribute. I think that, perhaps, it is a by-product of evolution.”
“By-product? Like a mistake?” came the reply.
“No. Well, I don’t know….” Clive paused, but it was obvious he did. “Perhaps,” he continued tentatively, “as animals get more advanced in their biochemical processes it becomes too complicated to try to orchestrate everything in terms of reflex and reaction. It is, in fact, a simplification to make the creature’s brain responsible for determining its own solutions, to be able to learn by memory and recognition, to compute its surroundings and make a decision for itself.”
He said it all so quickly, as if he’d rehearsed it many times, that it sounded unbelievable, like an actor reciting lines his heart wasn’t in. I was hot and uncomfortable and it occurred to me that it was as if I had dreamed up my worst nightmare and made it a reality: Bernard’s hand was still on my bottom, and now he was moving his thumb up and down in a caress. Was it voluntary or involuntary? It was the same question to which the entire room wanted the answer. Did Bernard think this united us as allies in the team he had talked of? Clive looked exhausted. The crowd drew closer. I could hear the scoffs and general contempt for Clive’s latest theorizing.