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“Indeed, my lady.”
“So, my dear archaeologist, have you reached a decision?”
“I will take the commission.”
“Both of them?”
“Both of them,” Alistair answered, swallowing nervously as the image of his father staring disapprovingly from the pulpit floated down before him.
That evening the young archaeologist returned to his boardinghouse by way of a hansom cab. As he parted with the shilling he could ill afford, Alistair consoled himself with the notion that the luxury was a celebration, a way of accustoming himself to his future prosperity. Therefore it was not without some satisfaction that he noticed his landlady, Mrs. Jellicoe, spying from behind the dingy length of material she optimistically referred to as her curtains.
“In the money I see, Mr. Sizzlehorn,” she remarked as Alistair entered the darkened hallway of the boardinghouse.
“A temporary aberration that I hope will soon become permanent,” he replied cheerily, smiling into the gloom of the spacious but sadly neglected terraced house.
Mrs. Jellicoe clicked her dentures in disapproval, her jowly face framed by the yellowed bonnet she was never seen without. Gambling—the lad must have taken to the turf, she thought disapprovingly, already wondering what poor unfortunate she could replace him with if he should fall to rack and ruin. Ruminating over the possibilities, she returned to the parlor, where she settled into her knitting like a fat spider content in her web.
At the top of the stairs Alistair opened the door to his garret room with the rusty key Mrs. Jellicoe had entrusted to him with as much ceremony as if she were handing over the keys to the Royal Mint itself.
The garret was dark except for a strand of moonlight struggling to penetrate the dingy skylight set high in the slanting roof. The air was chilly. Shivering, Alistair scurried across the bare floor to light a mutton-fat candle on the three-legged desk propped up by a quantity of Latin texts.
The wick spluttered into flame, illuminating the room that was a mishmash of strange angles and awkward beams running across the ceiling with no apparent logic. An oil painting of Dante’s Inferno hung on one wall; an inferior piece reminiscent of the work of Hieronymus Bosch, Alistair had rescued it from a pawn shop on High Holborn. Attracted by the garishness of the writhing Dante besieged by temptations, he had tempered the dramatic effect of the canvas with a cheap lithograph entitled The Elysian Fields, which hung opposite. In contrast this was a colorful rendition of Utopia, showing a meadow populated by angelic shepherdesses and cherubs playing lyres. The diaphanous nature of the maidens’ garments had not been lost on
the lonely youth, who often imagined himself lolling in such a field, his head in the lap of one of the nymphs.
There was little else in the garret apart from these two paintings: a rickety bed, with a painted brass headpiece his mother had insisted he transport from home; a pathetic hearth blackened with soot; and a chipped china washstand equipped with an enamel jug, the water in which was guaranteed to be freezing no matter the season. In the corner was his desk, with a miniature of his parents and his certificate of graduation attached to the wall above.
After poking the struggling fire until it ignited into some semblance of warmth, Alistair fell in exhaustion upon the bed. Suddenly the whole house shook as a train headed into nearby Euston station. It was an event that occurred every twenty minutes or so, day and night, adding to the atmosphere of uncertainty that permeated the rambling boardinghouse. Every week saw some tenant being evicted and a new one installed, for Mrs. Jellicoe fancied herself a wronged woman and happily displayed a healthy lack of respect for the male of her species, particularly those who deluded themselves regarding the power of their charms. In Mrs. Jellicoe’s world, economy would always triumph over sentiment. “I got no time for yer story-spinners and fly-by-nights. Forty long years I put up with the gropings of an incontinent dipsomaniac and these four walls is all I have to show fer it, God curse Mr. Jellicoe’s drunken heart,” the landlady would often confide to no one in particular during one of her own inebriated moments.
Alistair listened to the last of the train’s rattling fade with one final hoot into the distant clatter of the city, then glanced over to his Latin dictionaries. He had topped the subject at Cambridge—the legacy of his father who had insisted that if his child were to roam wild he should at least roam in Latin.
The vision of Lady Whistle’s fine white hands drifted like a wisp of smoke across his thoughts, followed incongruously by a troop of whirling dwarfs, each encumbered by an inordinately colossal member. Disturbingly, many carried McPhee’s grim visage upon their squat dancing bodies. Just as Alistair was despairing of exorcising the whimsy, Lady Whistle entered the scenario, clad in the garb of the goddess Venus, her generous bosom resplendently visible. Alistair relaxed into the delicious fecundity of the phantom’s breasts and sex to lose himself in the insistent throbbing of his fantasy.
For the sake of discretion, Dr. McPhee installed Alistair in an office that, unless one had prior knowledge of its hidden doorway, was impossible to locate—which was entirely McPhee’s intention as he feared the intrusion of any other staff.
The room was freezing, heated only by the steam off a nearby water heater. Alistair bent over the desk, his icy hands clad in fingerless mittens, a threadbare scarf wound around his thin neck, painstakingly copying the shape of a bronze figure entitled Priapus pouring. The crowned god was standing with one hand on his hip, robed except for his naked erect phallus over which he appeared to be pouring holy oil. An expression of amused detachment adorned the deity’s face, as if the tumescent organ might possibly belong to someone else.
The archaeologist’s drawing was as good as his Latin, and he had accurately sketched in the details of the figure in Indian ink: the folds of the robe, the long wavy beard that suggested a Persian influence, the high crown perched on the figure’s head. He was just about to begin sketching the erect member itself when McPhee burst through the door in his customary bombastic fashion.
“Lad, I think not!” he exclaimed, his voice tight with outrage, one long yellow fingernail pointing critically at the offending appendage. “We at the BM have our standards. Standards we are obliged by Queen and State to uphold. I suggest either a reduction in size or, better still for the sake of modesty, a blank.”
Alistair looked at him, perplexed.
“A blank? You mean a cloud around the groin area?” he asked innocently, privately appalled by his employer’s request, but at the same time considering the possibility that McPhee might have drawn such a cloud around his own genitals a good five decades earlier.
“A cloud? Tosh and poppycock! I said a blank and I mean a blank!”
The octogenarian looked as if he might explode with rage, but Alistair was not to be deterred.
“But Dr. McPhee, that would not be historically accurate.”
“Mr. Sizzlehorn, when you are as decrepit as I am, ye’ll understand that history is a fluid concept, merely elastic reportage that is shaped and documented by the historian. We are not only archaeologists, we are also custodians—custodians of the Christian soul, which is an impressionable and fragile thing. We cannot allow images of celestial beings with huge…” At this point the man began to splutter, saliva flying as he tried to wrap his tongue around a word that had perhaps never before graced his mouth.
“Reproductive organs?” Alistair articulated helpfully, which only irked the professor further.
“Precisely. Mothers and children might see such a thing and be greatly distressed or, worse, corrupted. The British Empire cannot have that, never mind the British Museum, not to mention the British Queen.”
“Quite; but this is a private commission and Lady Whistle has specifically requested that the depictions be accurate.”
