In his 1871 Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, written more than thirty years after his marriage to Emma, Darwin argues that birdsong and human music are the outcomes of the evolutionary process called sexual selection: ‘The impassioned…musician, when with his varied tones and cadences he excites the strongest emotions in his hearers, little suspects that he uses the same means by which, at an extremely remote period, his half-human ancestors aroused each other’s ardent passions, during their mutual courtship and rivalry.’49
Ardent passions indeed: following their wedding in January 1839, Emma Darwin was pregnant for more than a decade, bearing ten children, of whom seven survived. As this picture of domestic harmony suggests, music-making remained an important part of their marriage.
‘The suspicion does not appear improbable that the progenitors of man, either the males or females, or both sexes, before they had acquired the power of expressing their mutual love in articulate language, endeavoured to charm each other with musical notes and rhythm,’ Darwin concluded.50
One hundred and twenty years after Darwin published these words, such ancient charms were working on me through Vince Jones and his band. Our love wasn’t mutual, but I didn’t care. I parsed the lyrics of his original songs, looking for insights into the workings of his mind, imagining the day when we met and became—what? Friends? Colleagues? Lovers? Truly it was as ludicrous a fantasy as that entertained about marriage by the girls with whom I had studied Emma.
On reflection, I suspect what I responded to most strongly was the distinctiveness of Jones’s own compositions and the unmistakeable sound of his voice. It was probably the first time I had experienced, regularly and up close, the extraordinary power of an original creative artist. It was his voice—not just in the sense of his distinctive singing style, but also of his unique approach to songwriting and interpreting familiar tunes by folk and soul singers—that so charmed me, in the Darwinian sense. I suppose that’s what I wanted to be myself: original and distinctive in some way. Yet I felt as ordinary and invisible as everyone else, and too self-conscious to risk standing out.
The members of Vince Jones’s band always wore suits. Perhaps it was because they were from Melbourne, where somehow I already understood that the men dressed with more care than their Sin City counterparts. But to be honest, I didn’t care what they wore: their melodies and rhythms, as Darwin put it, were enough for me. Their clothes weren’t for my benefit. If they were willing to don a suit, I reasoned, then it didn’t seem beyond the realm of possibility that one day I could drag one of them home to meet my parents.
18
PETTY OFFICER JOHN HENRY EDWARDS STOOD just over six feet tall in his Royal Navy uniform, his hat in one hand, a bottle of whisky for his host in the other. While on furlough with Alice’s brother Vincent, Mr Edwards had endeared himself to the Taylors in two key respects. First, he had attended church on both Sundays since he and Vincent had been ashore. Second, he had recommended Vincent be reclassified on the Mameluke from stoker second class—a filthy job that demanded the relentless shovelling of coal into the ship’s boiler—to stoker first class, a promotion worth an extra five pence per day.
Alice, who had heard about little else than Mr Edwards for the past two weeks, wasn’t surprised to see him sitting at the dinner table when she returned from the Sunday service at Gardner Street. But she found herself disappointed. Mr Edwards was polite but distant, withholding the smile that had dazzled her when Vincent had introduced him after her Windsor Halls recital.
As the men discussed the intricacies of the Mameluke’s engineering, Alice wondered how much this effort at sociability was for the purpose of pairing them off. At first she had flattered herself to imagine that Vincent and her parents weren’t-so-subtly trying to bring them together. But nothing in Mr Edwards’ behaviour suggested he was here under false pretences. The Mameluke was in repairs for a few short weeks, and that was all. Once Alice had wrestled her unreasonable hopes into that logical straitjacket, she looked up and caught her mother’s eye. Her left eyebrow was raised slightly in a gesture that managed to be both commentary and question about the stranger at their table. At least Alice was clear on her mother’s agenda.
‘And where do you call home, Mr Edwards?’ asked Charlotte Taylor during a pause in the men’s conversation.
Alice observed Mr Edwards put down his knife and fork and wipe the corners of his mouth with his serviette, as if weighing how much he would share with his hosts. The air in the room, already heady with smoke from her father’s pipe, thickened in the silence.
Then, his voice quiet, Mr Edwards began to speak of his wife Ann and their son Alistair. About how they had been married for several years before she became pregnant, and about how he had feared to go on active duty and leave her in Plymouth while she was yet to give birth. Around the table the Taylors listened to the story of the telegram that conveyed the news of Ann’s haemorrhage giving birth to Alistair, who did not survive his mother.
‘The Mameluke’s my home, Mrs Taylor,’ Mr Edwards said. ‘I’m not ashamed to say I’ve even been glad of the war. Wouldn’t have known what to do with myself otherwise.’
When he stopped speaking, Mr Edwards looked hard at Alice for a moment, then lowered his eyes to his empty plate.
Vincent broke the silence. ‘Had no idea, John,’ he said. ‘Bloody awful.’
Alice’s father reached for his serviette and coughed for the sake of doing something.
