Distracted by all this, he was a little late getting to the oyster-house.
The other two were here before him, and they stood to greet him. Both had aged well enough, Luis supposed. Fraser Burdon, who was about Luis’s age, was as whip-thin and fit-looking as ever, with a leathery tan that told of years spent in warmer climes. Oswald Hackett was a decade older, in his eighties now, and it showed; Hackett had fattened up, was as bald as an egg, and could stand only with a stick, but he lumbered to his feet to shake Luis’s hand.
Then they sat. Luis observed two books sitting on the table before Hackett, one an academic tome he recognized, the other a novel he did not, with a fawn cloth-bound cover featuring a sketch of an idealized sphinx.
A waitress briskly took their order.
Hackett grinned, showing bad teeth. ‘Let’s introduce ourselves, gentlemen. Maybe we ought to write our “names” down; at our age it’s going to be easy to forget. And by Christ, sometimes I forget who I was … My name is Richard Foyle.’
‘Woodrow Boyd,’ said Burdon. His accent had a new twang to it, and Luis studied him curiously; maybe he had moved away from the old country – permanently to America, perhaps?
Hackett prompted Luis. ‘And you, sir?’
‘John Smith,’ said Luis.
Hackett snorted laughter. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, man, you almost deserve to be hanging by your thumbs in some cellar under Whitehall. Now, I know you both have children, Mr Smith and Mr Boyd. What have you told them of your, ah, past indiscretions?’
Luis said softly, ‘I took each of mine aside at their age of majority and told them the lot. Seemed to me the best way to equip them to protect themselves in future, and their own children who may be blessed with our strange faculty – or cursed. As to the name, it’s not an issue for Ella, who’s married now. Robert, though, insisted on reverting to the old family name. Proud of the family origins, he says. The young! What can one do? In any case I have a close friend, a lawyer; we cooked up a story about an adoption, and so that’s all above board.’
Burdon said, ‘But it leaves you damned exposed, man. If anybody’s still on our tail after all these years, which I doubt. I’d condemn you if not for the fact that my middle ’un is going down the precise same route. There’ll always be Burdons.’ He turned to Hackett. ‘It’s probably a risk for us to be gathering here in London – indeed, in one of your old haunts, if I remember your anecdotes correctly. Maybe you should get to the point.’
Hackett said, ‘Let’s get to the oysters first, for here they come …’
The service in the Clam was as brisk and friendly as ever, Luis thought, and the oysters just as relishable, even if, half a century later, the prices would have shocked the Great Elusivo.
Burdon, however, tried one and all but spat it out. ‘My God. How can you eat these things? As if the Thames is one great mucky spittoon and I just took a mouthful of phlegm.’ He tapped Hackett’s book. ‘This is a volume of Darwin’s Origin of Species, is it not?’
‘Yes, and it’s a first edition, man, so keep your greasy fingers off.’
‘If Darwin were here I’d demand to know what theory of “natural selection” can possibly have produced something as ugly and as useless as an oyster.’
Luis laughed. ‘I dare say he’d have an answer.’
Hackett grunted. ‘And I’d invite Darwin to speculate on our own peculiar condition – and our future. I have followed his work since his accounts of the voyage of the Beagle, you know. Saw the man speak a couple of times, but never met him. It’s to my regret now that I didn’t approach him when I had the chance; he died a dozen years back – or was it more? But in a way it was his ideas that made me resolve to bring us together again – the three of us, the first of the Knights. And the last, I fear, for I’ve found no recent trace of the others with whom we worked. We need a way forward – for ourselves and our descendants. We three may go to the grave skulking like whipped dogs, but that’s not good enough for our children – for, believe me, some of ’em are going to inherit our uncomfortable, umm, faculties, just as you say, “Mr Smith”. And what’s to become of them, eh? What are we to do for them?’
‘Nothing,’ Burdon said. ‘For we’ll be long in our blessed graves. Let the future take care of itself.’
Luis said, ‘But it’s thirty years or more since Origin of Species was published. What is it that’s prompted you to call us together now, Hackett?’
Hackett actually clipped him around the back of the head for that indiscretion. ‘Good question, “Mr Smith”. The answer lies in the pages of this little book.’