The Mystery of the Venus Island Fetish by Tim Flannery, Dido Butterworth Read Free Book Online

satisfying, I feel, than if he were here. I don’t know whether
he has the sort of vim that Father would like to see in a young man, but I am rather
fond of him, Betty, though please don’t tell anyone.’
    Beatrice was thrilled that Archie wrote to her so often from the Venus Isles. When
she opened his last letter, her heart swelled to bursting. She loved him, loved him,
loved him, she told herself over and over as she read its opening words:
    Beatrice. Would you be mine? My wife. Forever and ever?
    Her brave Archie, who had gone all alone to the islands! How happy they would be
with their house on the North Shore and a growing band of children. Of course, she
would have to leave her job at the museum, as all female public servants must do
upon marrying. But Archie would support her, and the children. And she would help
him with his work.
    She was desperate to tell someone her good news. The only person in the whole museum
who seemed to care about her since Archie left was Giles Mordant, the Cockney taxidermy
assistant. A flash dresser, young Mordant possessed a forced sophistication that
sat well with his sallow complexion. He had a way of joking that made Beatrice feel
like a younger sister, though it often seemed to her that she was the only one who
didn’t get the joke. Mordant had the kind of face, she decided, that could be either
handsome or viciously ugly, depending on his mood. She was struck, too, by the terrifying
vacancy that could play over his eyes when he felt he was unobserved.
    Beatrice ran across Mordant in the great hall, where he was tinkering with an exhibit.
‘Giles, I’m engaged to be married!’ she blurted.
    He didn’t seemed particularly pleased. She showed him Archie’s letter.
    ‘Blimey, Beatrice, what’s this?’ he asked, picking up the small object folded within
it.
    ‘Oh, that,’ she said, trying to sound knowledgeable. ‘It’s a foreskin. Archie says
it’s an infallible love charm.’
    Mordant was almost choking. ‘Beatrice, you do know what a foreskin is, don’t you?’
    ‘It’s the skin of a fore,’ she lied, desperately trying to hide her ignorance, ‘which
is a kind of frog found in the islands.’
    Giles burst into high-pitched laughter, attracting the attention of a group of schoolgirls.
‘Beatrice, that bloody thing is the end of Archibald Meek’s cock, his penis, in other
words, which some savage has chopped off with a stone knife!’
    The schoolgirls began giggling. One of them mimicked Giles: ‘The end of Archibald
Meek’s cock!’ This unexpected announcement caused a vicar, who had been examining
an exhibit of seashells, and an elderly couple standing by the stuffed lion to evacuate
the gallery. Beatrice was convinced that both gave her dirty looks as they fled.
She felt herself turned to stone, unable to shift from the spot.
    The schoolgirls stared gleefully at Beatrice, and everyone seemed to be hooting in
derision. All of a sudden it was too much. Beatrice ran to the women’s toilet, in
tears. She sat in the cubicle a long time, holding the offending object between the
pages of the letter, as she considered flushing the horrid thing down the pan, along
with Archie’s letter. A hard streak of spite arose in her. No, she thought. She would
not flush it. Instead, she would register it in the collection, where future generations
could read of horrid Archibald Meek’s perfidy!
    Beatrice returned to the anthropology store, filled out a label, and threaded a needle
with a length of cotton. She then stabbed the foreskin savagely, pulled the needle
and thread through, and attached a label to it. Holding it by the label so that it
dangled at her side, she walked to the cabinet where she kept the newly registered
objects and opened a drawer labelled ‘Pacific Islands: Charms and Fetishes’. Archie’s
foreskin was slapped down next to a sorcerer’s bag filled with bits of bone and claws,
and Beatrice slammed the drawer shut.
    She was still standing by the