The Angel of Highgate (12 page)

Before the gardener could answer, Parkinson, one of Algernon’s junior botanists came rushing into the greenhouse in a state of agitation, his face flushed.

“Mister Hyde-Davies, sir!”

“What ever’s the matter, Parkinson?”

Parkinson was out of breath and so excited he could barely talk. “There’s a man, sir. In the Palm House. A naked man!”

Algernon’s expression showed his total bewilderment. “A naked man, you say? In the Palm House?”

Parkinson nodded his head rapidly. “Naked, sir. Totally starkers.”

Algernon couldn’t quite believe his ears. “A naked man—” He suddenly stopped as an awful premonition came over him.
No. He wouldn’t! Would he? Not even he would do such a thing. But then again, who else?

* * *

Algernon and Parkinson sprinted along the winding pathways of the Palm House.

“Mister Greenley’s chasing him, sir,” Parkinson yelled, “but he’s a slippery fellow. Look, there’s some of his togs!”

They found a gray silk top hat crowning a ficus tree. Ten feet on a pair of boots and socks lay where the owner had kicked them off. Farther still a pair of men’s trousers dangled from the lowest limb of a palm tree. They continued on, finding various items of hastily tossed-aside clothing. Finally Algernon spotted something thrust into the soft soil of a planter—a walking stick topped with a golden phoenix rising from the flames. Now there could be no doubt as to who the naked man was.

Algernon snatched the walking stick from the soil. He looked around the Palm House agitatedly. Seeing nothing he looked up at the glass domed ceiling and yelled at the top of his lungs.

“GEOFFREY!”

A naked man burst from the nearby bushes.

“Hello, Algy,” Thraxton shouted, chortling gleefully as he ran past.

“Geoffrey, what the deuce—” Algernon began to say, when a second later Mister Greenley, a gray-haired man in his late fifties, burst from the same bushes in hot pursuit, wielding a gardening rake with an obvious intent to do Thraxton some serious mischief.

“I’ll get ya, you swine!” Greenley yelled after the fleeing Thraxton.

Algernon and Parkinson joined the pursuit and now the four of them crashed pell-mell through the dense vegetation. Even as he ran, Algernon could see his position as head botanist evaporating before his eyes. His best friend was engaging in a demonstration of public lewdness that could very well land them both in the law courts if not at least the newspapers. Meanwhile his head gardener was trying his damndest to emasculate a peer of the realm with a gardening implement. If word of this got out, Kew’s head botanist would be lucky to find a position as a gardener in a municipal vegetable allotment.

A respectable middle-class family—a husband and wife, and their fifteen-year-old daughter—were strolling along one of the paths when Thraxton leapt from the undergrowth directly in front of them. All three stood in open-mouthed astonishment at the unwarranted appearance of a naked virile man. Then the wife screamed and swooned into her husband’s arms. The schoolgirl’s eyes widened in delight at her first glimpse of male genitalia. She held a pigtail to her mouth and giggled.

A moment later Mister Greenley burst from the bushes. He swung the rake at Thraxton’s head, narrowly missing. Thraxton ducked under the whizzing rake and took off running again just as Algernon and Parkinson reached the pathway.

“Geoffrey!” Algernon cried helplessly. “For God’s sake, man, put your clothes back on!”

Mister Greenley trembled with rage as he stopped to catch his breath. “Filthy swine. Wait till I lay my hands on him.”

Greenley made as if to run after Thraxton again, but Algernon grabbed his arm to restrain him.

“No! Please, Mister Greenley, Parkinson, leave this to me. I will endeavor to make him see reason.”

But Mister Greenley’s blood was up. He had no intention of allowing such a lecher to escape without a good hiding. “I don’t care if he is a lord,” he spat. “Prancing around naked in front of God and the world. The man ought to be horsewhipped.”

“Yes, thank you, Mister Greenley,” Algernon repeated, attempting to assert his authority. “That will be all. I shall deal with this matter myself.”

“Horsewhipped, I say!”

“Please.”

Mister Greenley cast a furious scowl in the direction he had seen Thraxton disappear. With great reluctance he shouldered his rake and walked slowly toward the door. Algernon gave Parkinson a nod to indicate that he should follow Greenley’s lead. When both men had gone, he stepped off the path and pushed his way into the lush vegetation.

“Geoffrey,” he called. “Put your clothes back on. You’ll cause a scandal. You’ll get me the sack!”

Thraxton’s disembodied voice came from somewhere in front of him. “They won’t sack you, Algy. Not while I give so generously to the Royal Botanical Society.”

Thraxton stepped from behind a spectacular breadfruit tree, his naked torso glistening. “Come on,” Thraxton urged. “Get your clothes off, Algy. You have recreated Eden. This is our natural world. Let us be natural, too.” He struck a dramatic pose, one armed raised. “I am the new Adam, and I have found my Eve.”

With that Thraxton turned and ran off into the undergrowth, chortling inanely.

“Geoffrey!” Algernon watched his friend’s bare bottom vanish and hurried to follow. After several minutes’ searching he came upon Thraxton again. He was standing on tiptoe, straining to reach up and touch the huge orange and purple bloom of an exotic tropical flower.

“Geoffrey, no!” Algernon cried in alarm. “Do not touch it!”

“Why ever not?” Thraxton asked. “It is exquisite!”

“It is a bloom that cannot abide the touch of man. If you lay hands upon it, the flower will die. Please… please… let it be.”

Thraxton relaxed his stretching fingers. He drew back and turned to look at Algernon.

“A mere touch will kill it?”

Algernon nodded in affirmation.

Thraxton was quite struck by the thought.

“Why is it those things of the greatest beauty are always just beyond our grasp?”

* * *

“I believe I have found my Eve,” Thraxton said.

He was fully clothed once again, to the great relief of Algernon, and the two were strolling around the pond that lay immediately in front of the Palm House. Compared to the dripping humidity of the greenhouses, the day was dry and bracing.

“Who is this demi-goddess?” Algernon asked. “Another actress? Surely not the wife of that fellow you told me about—Sir whatshisname?”

“Algy, you disappoint me. You know me better than that. Do I wax eloquent about every single one of my conquests?”

“Yes, Geoffrey, now that you mention it, you do tend to rattle on about them—every single one.”

“Mmmn, quite,” Thraxton said, looking hurt. “This is different. I have truly met my inamorata.”

Algernon was unable to conceal a look of deep skepticism. Thraxton noticed and cleared his throat, but continued. “Actually she is the woman you pointed out to me that day at the British Museum—Constance Pennethorne.”

Algernon’s face dropped at the news, but Thraxton was oblivious.

“We met the other day in Highgate Cemetery. We had some time to talk and, I may dare say, to open our very souls to one another. I found out that not only is she a woman of great beauty, she is also a creature of rare intelligence and spirit.”

Algernon looked away so that Thraxton could not read what was written on his face. In the center of the pond stood a Laocoön-like statue of a naked athlete struggling with a serpent. Algernon suddenly felt a deep empathy for the fellow—he could practically feel the serpent’s coils tightening around his own neck.

“And she feels the same about you?” Algernon probed.

“I have little doubt of it. She’s invited me to a very exciting evening this Saturday. A séance of all things. I’m looking forward to it profoundly.”

Algernon turned back to look at Thraxton. He had forgotten to recompose his face and Thraxton noticed his dour expression.

“Oh, there’s no need to look so glum, old stick,” Thraxton said good-naturedly. “Of course, you’re invited, too. She went out of her way to mention it, in fact.”

Thraxton punched his old friend in the shoulder. “Should be quite an adventure, eh? Conversing with spirits of the departed!”

F
ive figures sat around a circular table covered in a white tablecloth embroidered with floral patterns. At the center of the table, a softly hissing lantern, turned down low, provided the only source of light apart from the ruddy glow of coals in the fireplace. From their gilded frames, the portraits of the Wakefield family—a grandfather with white hair and a long white beard, a matronly woman wrapped in a fox stole, a young girl of three in pigtails—looked down upon the séance with luminous eyes that seemed to move in the flickering light.

Thraxton was seated between Mister Wakefield, a thin, ascetic man with white hair; to his left, and Constance Pennethorne to his right. Algernon sat to the right of Constance, while to his right sat Mrs. Wakefield, whose emaciation did not bode well for her cooking abilities. As is often the case with couples married so long, the two more closely resembled brother and sister than husband and wife.

“Now, if the sitters would kindly take hold of each other’s hands,” said Mister Wakefield in his broad Yorkshire accent. Grateful of the excuse for the intimacy of touch, Thraxton reached for Constance’s hand. She flashed him a polite smile, but then turned her attention to Algernon. As she took his hand in hers she gave it a slight squeeze that immediately brought Algernon’s surprised eyes up to meet hers. Thraxton noticed the brief exchange and felt a twinge of jealousy. Mister Wakefield took hold of Thraxton’s left hand.

“My good lady wife’s hands must remain free,” Mister Wakefield announced, “so she may write upon the pad.”

“We are to hear no rappings, then?” Thraxton asked. “Witness no ghostly manifestations?”

Mister Wakefield shifted a little in his chair and cleared his throat, clearly agitated by the question. “No, Lord Thraxton. My wife and I leave such theatrics to the frauds and music hall conjurers. We of the Spiritualist Church are interested only in sober communication with the spirits of the departed. What we practice is called automatic writing. My wife, who acts as medium, enters a trance, whereupon we may put any questions we like—so long as they are serious—to the spiritual presences hovering around us. They will guide my wife’s hand as it moves across the paper.”

“Ah, quite,” Thraxton said, frowning. He, of course, had been hoping for knocks and table rapping, for disembodied voices and levitating trumpets, even to see milky white ectoplasm streaming from the mouth, nostrils and sundry other orifices of Mrs. Wakefield. In short, all the sensational manifestations of the séances he had read about in the
London Standard
. Instead he would have to be content with an old woman scrawling on a notepad with a pencil. And if he wasn’t very much mistaken, the affections of Constance Pennethorne seemed to be taking a turn toward Algernon instead of himself. The evening was proving to be a crashing disappointment.

Mister Wakefield begged for silence while his wife steeled her mind for contact with the Other Side. All attention remained fixed upon Mrs. Wakefield as she sat with her eyes closed, lids trembling, then suddenly slumped in the chair, head lolling forward so that her chin rested upon her chest. For a while the only sound in the room was her slow, steady breathing.

Wonderful
, Thraxton thought to himself.
The old crone’s fallen asleep
.

Everyone jumped as Mrs. Wakefield gasped and stiffened. A sudden chill descended upon the room. Thraxton sensed it and the hair at the back of his neck bristled. Algernon, ever the skeptical scientist, wrote it off as nothing more than a draft from the fireplace.

In a trembling voice, Mrs. Wakefield asked the spirit presences hovering near if they bore a message for one of her sitters. Her right hand began to shake with uncontrollable tremors, and then suddenly shot across the paper, scribbling down words at an unbelievable rate. Interspersed with the words, written in a free-flowing cursive script of excellent penmanship, were strange icons and hieratic symbols, the meaning of which Thraxton could not even guess at. The scribbling went on for seven or eight lines and then stopped. Mrs. Wakefield’s hand flew back to the corner of the pad and sat there quivering, as if waiting for another message to come through.

Mister Wakefield leant over from his seat and read aloud what was written on the pad. “My dearest Constance—”

Constance drew in a shuddering breath at the mention of her name, her eyes filling with tears. Mister Wakefield continued reading.

“How I miss you, my darling. How I miss our quiet evenings together, the sound of your voice, and your sweet singing. But despair not, for time on this side passes quickly. Soon we will be reunited in eternal bliss.”

“But what if Constance were to remarry?” Algernon blurted the question aloud before he could check himself. All eyes, save Mrs. Wakefield’s, immediately turned upon him. He cleared his throat and squirmed in his chair. But to his surprise, Constance squeezed his hand in reassurance and turned to Mrs. Wakefield. “Yes,” she said. “I should like to ask my husband that very question. What if I were to remarry?”