Galapagos Regained Read Free

Garden.”
    *   *   *
    It was for Chloe a measure of her father’s despondency that, as they sat in the noisy and smoke-filled tavern awaiting their respective orders of mutton stew and kidney pie, he declined to bestow life on any inanimate object. In the past he would have introduced the candles to one another, exhorting them to seize the day ere their paraffin flesh melted away. Or he would have transformed the napkins into shrouds worn by spectral rats, encouraging the phantom rodents to haunt the dog who’d murdered them.
    The food arrived promptly. Fervently devouring his pie, washing it down with tidal gulps of ale, Phineas explained that he was obliged to eat quickly, for his furlough ended at sundown.
    â€œThey’ve got you doing hard labor like some Hebrew slave in Egypt,” said Chloe, indicating her father’s ravaged hands.
    â€œBreaking stones, grinding bones, picking oakum.”
    â€œOakum? Is that a crop?”
    â€œNow that I think about it, aye, ’tis a kind of crop, sown with malice and harvested in misery. From dawn to dusk we stoop over masses of discarded rope, untwisting the fibers for shipbuilder’s caulk. The overseer’s not satisfied unless our fingers bleed.”
    â€œWe must liberate you from that abhorrent place.” A tear exited Chloe’s left eye, tickling her cheek as it fell.
    â€œI came not to unload my troubles but to offer my accolades.” Phineas removed his pauper’s cap and kneaded his brow with the ball of his thumb.
    â€œYou saw my performance?”
    â€œFrom a secret vantage on the catwalk. You make a splendid blackguard, darling. I loved how you stabbed the bosun in the gizzard when he discovered your true sex. The audience got its money’s worth in blood.”
    â€œIn beetroot juice, actually.”
    Chloe leaned back in her seat, her roving gaze confirming her worst fears. Half the customers were staring at the moist-eyed actress. Her irony bone began to sing. Normally when dining at the Hoof, she hoped that the patrons, having just seen her onstage, would accord her admiring glances—but now that she had their attention she wished them all gone.
    â€œWatching you drink Jack Rackham under the table was equally enthralling,” said Papa, daubing her tears with his napkin. “I assume that wasn’t rum in your glass.”
    â€œWeak tea.”
    If Phineas Bathurst had ever entertained a sensible idea in his life, Chloe was unaware of it. Even his decision to marry the beautiful Florence Willingham had been fundamentally barmy, for she had evidently possessed the disposition of a gorgon conjoined to the ethics of a snake. In the opinion of the neighborhood gossips, Phineas’s wife was determined to put him in an early grave, and it was only her own death (minutes after the respective births of Chloe and her brother) that thwarted this ambition.
    â€œListen, Father, I am lodged in Tavistock Street with the woman who played Pirate Mary.” Chloe slurped down a spoonful of broth. “You are welcome to sleep on the floor each night till you find employment. We’ll steal a mattress for you from the properties department.”
    â€œYour generosity touches me, but my situation’s more complicated than you imagine,” said Phineas. “For all my fifty years, I still own a stout arm and a strong back, and so the workhouse authorities count me a great asset. Give old Bathurst an extra helping of gruel, and he’ll pick oakum with a frenzy to shame Hercules sweeping the stables. But should I ever leave the place, those same authorities will hunt me down and toss me into debtors’ prison.”
    â€œYou’re in arrears, Papa?”
    â€œFor the past two years, I’ve availed myself of England’s peerless network of moneylenders. I’m proud to say that, thanks to my continuous expectations of solvency, I donated most of this income to people