CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

1

The waves were bigger than any he'd seen at an English seashore. And bobbing like gulls, floating on the crests, were dark imps with barbs popping from their skin like fishhooks. One of them ran out of the surf, faster than a sandpiper, and straight up Snow's leg. The tips of its little claws sent shivering currents up his thigh. He shouted and jerked his leg out, then woke up.

Mrs. Jarrett was knocking loudly, and calling his name. He untangled his legs from sweat-damp sheets. His muscles were miserably stiff and painful. He checked the bite on his shoulder and saw to his relief that it wasn't going to fester.

Light coming in strips under the heavy curtains showed that it was well past noon. Suddenly he remembered the water in the jars. Southwark and Vauxhall. Lillian. He had gone to sleep the night before without coming to any decision about what to do next. He must get to work immediately.

Mrs. Jarrett's voice reached him again as he sat up, the sounds muffled from the thick door and bed curtains.

"Dr. Snow, wake up. Your father is here. He's been waiting almost half an hour and he's not pleased. You'd better hurry." Her voice held a smug anticipation at a potential conflict.

He dragged himself out of bed and drew the curtains, letting in a midday glare. Pulling on the dressing gown he strode barefoot into the library. His father was ready for him.

"Good morning, John. Or perhaps I should say afternoon. The doctor is keeping virtuous hours, I see."

Old Snow sat glaring in the armchair, his thin legs crossed, a few lingering strands of silver hair combed across the scalp. One strand had escaped and hung long beside his ear, and this unknowing disarray saddened Snow. His father's dry spotted hands fingered a copy of the morning paper.

"Hello, Father. I was up late last night, the entire night actually. Experiments."

The man slowly nodded his head, as if to say, "I know all about that devil's work." Then he cleared his throat and spoke again. "While you've been wasting your morning sleeping off your foolish laboratory messes, I've been to the City, to our bankers. Investment opportunity, enormous potential." His eyes brightened.

Mrs. Jarrett appeared with a tray full of tea, toast, and fruit, and lingered as long as she could, dusting books, straightening tubes and jars. She even started to feed the hedgehogs until the old man's glare chased her out.

Snow poured two cups of tea. He was hungry and wanted toast but was embarrassed to eat in front of his father, who had always considered any food between sunrise and two P.M. to be a slothful indulgence. "What investments, Father? I thought there was nothing left to invest. Other than what we have in the funds. You wouldn't touch that." He handed a cup to his father, who thrust out his lower lip and shook his head. Snow set it down as quietly as he could.

"Wouldn't I?" said his father. "That lump sitting there all those years, earning just enough to keep me in pipe tobacco and mend the fences? It could be earning ten times that!" He picked up the paper and swatted it, as if the letters were solid proof of his words. "The Great Western Gravel Company. Expansion. Five hundred shares, that's what I bought."

Snow tried not to show his panic. He took a sip of tea and burned his tongue. His father's financial instincts were terrible. The last time he had tried an investment scheme was when Snow was still at school, and there was such a loss that Snow had to come home for the rest of the term.

Maybe it wasn't too late to stop him. "Have you discussed this with the solicitors, Father?"

"Damn the solicitors! If they had their way no one would ever buy anything and trade would collapse in a week."

"But, Father—"

"Don't argue with me about this, John. Your poorly informed objections have no weight. If you'd spent some time learning about important things instead of all this piddle we might have got somewhere by now." He looked calmly at the disorder around him, the bottles, the piled papers, chemical equipment, spilled solutions in puddles just as Snow had left them at dawn.

"I'll ask you one last time. Isn't it time you abandoned all this and did something worthwhile? You could get the farm functional again. Your being there would change everything for me.

Snow had been trying to sneak in some toast but he had to put it down. He felt too upset to swallow. He cautiously took another sip of tea to avoid choking on the dry crumbs.

"Father, let me try to explain. I've been working so hard on this cholera thing and I'm just on the verge of finding a cause for it. I was awake all night, and just this morning I pinpointed something. Look, I'll show you.

A remote hope that he could get his father to share his fervor prompted Snow to pull out the salinity notes and bring them over. He spread one of the maps on his father's knees and traced the districts of London with a forefinger. He tried to outline the facts slowly but by the time he reached the part about the water companies his words stumbled with enthusiasm. He could feel his father's impatience, but he persisted despite a warning inner voice.

"You see, these lists show the cases and water supply strongly linked, here, in this area I've colored in, and especially here, where they had indoor plumbing. And if you look—"

"Are you saying that the Southwark and Vauxhall water is polluted?"

"Yes, that's exactly it!"

"Oh, no. They filter their water. I read all about it in the newspaper last year. A new method; through sand beds up beyond Teddington Weir."

"But don't you hear me saying that—"

"The idea, that a water company would knowingly pollute water for houses." The old man swept the papers off his lap, tearing one of the maps, and stood up. "You'd better come up with something stronger than that if you expect anyone to listen to you." He started for the door but stopped halfway, turned around. "Besides, what if it is? How does that prove anything about your precious cholera?"

"But if the water has sewage—"

"Think about it. You say yourself that half the houses in those neighborhoods were healthy. Where's your logic, John?" Snow's father shook his head slowly. "Your trouble is, you think you know what's right and then try to prove it, instead of the other way around. I read the paper, too, you know, even up there in the wilds of Yorkshire."

The door opened and Mrs. Jarrett ushered in Lillian. She smiled at him, glowing, and then stopped short when she saw his father. Snow turned to his father to introduce her, but the man went on talking as if she weren't there. He didn't even look at her, but focused on the retreating figure of Mrs. Jarrett.

Snow's father gestured with the paper which now jutted from his clenched hand like a scepter. "I've read all those letters about you. I know what real scientists, like that Phineas Greeley, think of your work."

He pointed at Snow with the rolled paper. "Johnny, I don't want to see you fail at what you're doing. But at this point I don't see how you can do anything else. What makes you think you have what it takes to do science, even if there were any sense to it? Come back to the farm while you still can."

He turned and left, ignoring Lillian.

Snow stood for a moment, not looking at her, his bare feet feeling the gritty dust in the unswept carpet, and his dressing gown growing hotter by the minute. He glanced down at the page of lists he'd been trying to show his father. To his deep embarrassment, tears began welling in his eyes. He frowned and went to a mirror to wipe them away as though a speck of dirt had fallen in.

Lillian came to his side. "He's completely wrong, you know. Parents can't see their children clearly, even when the parents have good hearts. And your father —"

"His heart's rotten," Snow said, afraid to look at her.

"Maybe it is." She was silent for a long time. "I don't know that love for one's child is a given fact.  But I do know that you are a real scientist, and your work is good, and will get you somewhere."

He finally looked at her. Her face was turned up to him. Her eyes had dark circles under them, but they glowed. She was so beautiful that he found it hard to listen to what she was saying.

"And I know another thing. Whatever your father thinks, you are worthy of love."

This he heard. He put his arms around her and pulled her to him, just holding her. Her breathing rose and fell against his chest. Like that moment at the party, he felt himself invaded by her soul; only this time it wasn't distress that reached him, but an overpowering, enveloping sense of her love. It was far more intimate than kissing or even sex had ever been for him. He felt naked and godlike. He wanted to shout.

She pulled away and looked up at him. He kissed her; desperately trying to hold on to his sense of communion with her, though he knew it was a feeling no one could experience for long without going mad. It faded, but not completely, leaving a warm glow like the last ember of a candle wick. The strawberry smell of her breath replaced it.

She pulled away and smiled at him. "I came here today to tell you that. Even if your father hadn't been here."

"Thank you." He was reluctant to let go of her. "You changed my life." And he meant it; even if she disappeared tomorrow, he would always know how it felt to be loved.

"I also came to say I want to help you more. You said last night that Caleb wasn't happy. Let me do what he used to do." She disengaged herself completely now, and sat on a chair. She looked businesslike and very serious.

"What did you have in mind, exactly?" Part of him loved the idea; but maybe she would distract him. Maybe the work would disgust her.

"Today, for example. Shouldn't we start to do something about all that salinity information? Talk to someone?"

Snow heard the "we" and it sounded right. "You're right. I know just where to begin, too. The Registrar General Office has the history of all the major utility companies. We'll start there. Just let me get dressed."

2

An hour later Snow and Lillian sat with Caleb in a dingy, high-ceilinged back room of the Fleet Street office of The Times. The Registrar General Office had said that all their files on Southwark and Vauxhall had been released to The Times the previous week.

Caleb eyed Lillian with mixed interest and distrust. He was still grumpy but had agreed to help Snow find the files he needed. "But what does the salt prove?" asked Caleb. "I still don't quite connect." He leaned with one hand on the door frame, trying to leave but obviously too interested to head back to his desk.

Snow had said nothing to Caleb of the dog attack. His cuts and bruises from the dog fight he had attributed to a fall on a tenement stairway.

"The filtration systems they use should pull out most of the salt. Like the Lambeth water. Either Southwark and Vauxhall's system is useless or they aren't filtering it at all."

"And what do you think you'll find, digging through all that?" Caleb finally left.

Snow turned more pages. It was so dull. Prices of shares, details of the ‘51 sewer renovations, records of public donations for reconstruction, areas supplied.

"Look at this, Lillian." Snow unfolded a map. "It's the streets they supply, the actual water lines."

On the map the Southwark and Vauxhall Water Company lines were red, the Lambeth lines were green. They crisscrossed on top of each other, tangled like a poorly done tapestry. On a given street, one house might have Southwark water piped in, the next Lambeth, the next Southwark, and so on.

"Do you see this?" Snow's finger traced the colored lines. "It explains everything."

"It looks like a tangled mess to me.

"No, look at it. One of my biggest problems has been that the cases seemed so arbitrary from one street to the next. I thought an entire street would have the same water company. But they don't at all."

Lillian peered over Snow's shoulder. "I see what you mean.

But what about all the cholera cases in this neighborhood?" She pointed to an area of Soho where there was no piped-in water at all. "And I know there's cholera here, too." Her hand covered the East End, Seven Dials, the whole dock neighborhood where thousands were dying. No red or green lines ran through there. Their water could come from anywhere.

"Well it's obvious, isn't it? Most houses there get water straight from the Thames, or a ditch. Even if they get it from a street pump I can't believe that pump water is consistently pure." Despite his confident voice, Snow felt his enthusiasm fade. The only thing he knew for sure was that Southwark and Vauxhall water was salty, not that it caused cholera.

Lillian sat quietly leafing through papers while Snow stayed at the desk, unable to come up with any new ideas. He might as well go home and start looking at the data again. But since he'd gone to all the trouble to get them, he would finish going through the last pile of records.

"Look at this," Lillian said suddenly.

She handed him a folder labeled "Trustees." He leafed through it once, bored, not paying much attention. "You missed it," she said, "Look here." She pointed to a section in print so fine it made his eyes burn to focus on it, but it was worth the pain. Southwark and Vauxhall Water Company was a subsidiary of the Great Western Gravel Company. And the president of the board of trustees for both was Sir Philip Constable.

Snow looked up at her. "Great Western. That's the company my father —"

"Said you should invest in? I heard him, but I only noticed because my stepmother said the same thing. Dr. Greeley was talking about it."

"And Constable —" He looked up at her, suddenly wary. "Hadn't you better tell me about him?"

She lowered her head and pulled her shoulders up. "You mean about the other night, don't you?"

"Of course."

She was silent for a long time. Finally she said, "John." She stopped. It was the first time she had said his name. "John, I can't tell you yet. I need some time to understand. My past is, well, complicated.  I promise you, I'll tell you everything as soon as I can.

She looked at him then with such earnestness and love that he hadn't the heart to question her.

Snow had already put an explanation together in his mind: most probably, Sir Philip had heard of the water company's poor methods, and had managed to install himself on their board of supervisors, an easy task for an MP. Constable must be planning to expose them. As deputy minister he wanted all the credit for himself, perhaps to boost a fading political career. Why should he want Snow honing in on his discovery? Of course he would ask him to stop investigating.

But even as he thought it out, it seemed absurd, and explained nothing; none of the violence, or that trace of salt on the man's shoes.

Snow felt confused and discouraged. The elation of being in love was already spotted with complications and questions. He forced himself to copy down a few pages of data, and the two left the office.