insect collections, were left reeling as prices plummeted overnight on those not-so-rare rarities that passed under their hammer. Not even that made Clive rush to order one.
When I asked Maud, she told me that of course Clive would like one but pride got in the way. She said he’d always made his own equipment, to his own specifications, which he’d perfected over many years, and he refused to believe that his own designs might not give optimal performance. I didn’t believe her. Clive wasn’t the conceited type.
Over those wonderful partnership years Clive never let go of his lifetime ambition—that of resolving the composition of Pupal Soup and, with it, revealing the secrets of metamorphosis—and as each autumn came, it led us, with trowel and chisel in hand, to the broad rides in the local woods or the sheltered borders alongside the furrowed fields in search of those small elusive pupae that had hooked themselves so deeply into Clive’s fascination. Until the following spring we were thrown into this ambitious pursuit, analyzing the contents of cocoons at different stages of their development to try to find the pattern, the trigger, the golden key, to the miraculous process of metamorphosis. But it was frustrating and futile, and we found few patterns. A team in America had reported that pigmentation within the developing imago was affected by temperature, but from our own observations we found temperature had no effect either on the development of the pupa or on the initiation of the reorganization of the imaginal buds. Neither did we find it to influence or control the speed of destruction of the larval tissues and organs by the phagocytes, but that the process varied between a few days and a few years, depending on the species. We also saw no effect on the active phase of pupal life, the reorganization of the new insect or the time of emergence. Having discounted temperature, we looked for other triggers, such as hormones and changes in polarity or pH, but three years on we were no closer to finding the stimulus, catalyst or control that activates the onset of genetic reorganization.
Eventually we had some successes in other areas, especially on the subject of pigments. I particularly remember Clive’s heightened enthusiasm when he discovered that the red pigment in red British moths—the Scarlet Tigers, the Burnets and Red Underwings—was not the same compound found in our red butterflies but, rather, one prevalent in continental species, which, Clive said, shed new light on the British moths’ evolutionary pathway, the details of which he discussed at length in a lecture during an international entomology convention in Plymouth.
This convention brings me to the events of 1959 because it took place in the spring of that year. Clive culminated his lecture—unbeknownst to me—with a most impressive stunt that was to become the talking point for the rest of the three-day convention.
There are only two British moths, the Brimstone and the Swallow-tailed Moth, to share a fluorescent yellow pigment in their wings, and they are both classified
The strangest part for me was that I had no idea, not even a suspicion, that Clive was going to perform this spectacle and challenge the entire classification system. I knew by heart the lecture he was going to give, I’d heard him practice it enough, but he’d never rehearsed this last little stunt. You’d have thought he would have mentioned it, but it was as much of a surprise to me as it was to everybody else.
The most memorable thing about the Plymouth Convention, however, was what happened when we got home.
We’d set off on a Tuesday afternoon and arrived back at teatime on Friday. When we walked in, the house was quiet and there was no one to greet us. I almost skidded on a pile of post on the hall floor. In previous years Basil might have been the first to the door but he’d died a couple of years before when his kidneys packed up. We called for Maud but, unusually, there was no reply. In the kitchen a great pile of washing up haunted the sink and the overloaded bin smelt sweetly putrid. It was most unlike Maud. In the library the cushions on the sofa were limp, the curtains half drawn. A saucerless cup and an apple core, browned with age, had been left stickying on the mahogany card table, sure to mark it. In other places things were curiously out of place: one of the ancestors had been knocked and tilted on the wall up the stairs, a small framed certificate had fallen off the paneling onto the floor and the whole house had a mildly shambolic feel.
Clive moved quickly now, checking the rooms downstairs one by one. I followed him. I felt the slow, sickening panic of a child who loses sight of its mother for a moment in town. Clive didn’t speak but I felt his fear. It was in his short, sharp steps, in the way he swung open each door as if boldly standing up to his own dreaded imagination, in the curt, composed way he enunciated her name—“Maud”—as he entered each room, with intensity but not volume. My mouth was dry. My stomach was dancing. First we checked the downstairs—the potting shed, the shallow pond in the orangery, the steep stone steps descending from the loggia, round the back to the parlor where the meat hooks hang…
There was no sign of her downstairs so we made our way back to the hall. But just as Clive began up the stairs ahead of me, I saw, to my unimaginable relief, Maud at the top, sashaying elegantly down in a green and blue peacock-print evening dress.
“Hello, darlings,” she called halfway down, glowing with exuberance. “Good trip?”
Her dress was cut high and rounded at the neck, and pinched her small waist with a sash. I hadn’t seen her dressed up for a long time. Tight, lace-edged sleeves finished on her upper arm and two lengths of amber-colored beads hung in low loops round her neck, tied together in a loose knot. It was the kind of thing she had worn when she was much younger. Tarnished silver bracelets jangled round her wrists and a quarter-glass of sherry dangled off her right hand. She might have been neglecting the housework but she’d certainly made an effort with herself. Undoubtedly she was striking.
“It looks like you’ve had a party,” said Clive, glancing into the kitchen.
“Oh, I did, darling. I’ve had lots of parties while you were away. And don’t worry about the clearing up. It’s all under control.”
“I’m not worried,” he said, meeting her on the stairs with a kiss.
I was still marveling at her appearance. I was sure I’d never seen her in that dress, yet it reminded me of something. I thought if I stopped trying to think of it, it would spill unexpectedly from my memory sometime soon.
“Did you really have parties?” I asked.
“No, I’m just
She seemed animated, restless. “I’ve got you a present, Clive. It can be an early birthday,” she said coquettishly, even though his birthday wasn’t this side of the year.
She put her glass on the arm of the settle in the hall and pulled out from under it a large box wrapped in brown paper and tied up with string. She said, “There you are, darling,” and smoothed down the waist, then the sides of her dress with her hands.
“What do you think?” she said. “Do you recognize it?”
He looked down at the parcel. “No. I have no idea. What is it?”
She laughed. “Open it,” she urged. “Go on, open it.”
Clive took out his pocketknife. Deftly, he sliced the string and split off the brown paper. I caught sight of the writing on the box before all the paper had come away.
“It’s a Robinsons trap!” I exclaimed, as the paper fell away.
“So it is,” Clive said plainly.
Then I remembered how openly he’d despised the idea of a Robinsons. He’d made it quite clear he didn’t want one. I realized of course how much effort Maud would have gone to, tracking down the brothers’ company in Kent and ensuring it arrived in time for our return, and I worried—as Clive casually undid the box and laid out the pieces—that he’d be ungrateful.
But he didn’t reject the present out of hand, as I’d assumed. Instead he examined the parts to see how the
