Grey Rocks

Howard became a palaeontologist because of a rise in interest rates when he was six years old. His father, a cautious man with a large mortgage and thoughts focussed merely on how the economic situation would affect him, announced that the projected holiday to Spain was no longer feasible. A chalet was rented on the English coast instead and thus, on a dank August afternoon, Howard picked up a coiled fossil shell, called an ammonite, on the beach.

He knew for a long time that he wanted to become a palaeontologist, and towards the end of his time at university he became clear as to what sort of palaeontologist he wanted to be. He found the focus of his interest reaching further and further back in time. The more spectacular areas were not for him, he realised, turning his back on the Jurassic, on dinosaurs. He was drawn particularly to the beginnings, to that ultimate antiquity where everything is decided, from which, against all odds, we derive. So he studied delicate creatures revealed on the surface of grey rocks.

Work on his doctoral thesis came to an end, and, he knew, possibly a bitter one. Would he get a job? Would he get a job in the sort of institution he sought? He was far from being without self-esteem and knew that his potential was good. But he knew that those who deserve do not always get, and that while the objectives of science may be pure and uncompromising, the process of appointment to an academic position is not. When the Assistant Lectureship at Tavistock College in London came up, he applied at once, though without high hopes.

On the morning of Howard’s interview, the professor who would chair the panel had a row with his wife. As a consequence he left home in a state of irritation and inattention, drove his car violently into a gatepost and ended up in the Casualty Department of the local hospital. The interview took place without him and without the support he had intended to give to a candidate who had been a student of his.

The professor who replaced him on the panel was a hated colleague, whose main concern was to oppose the appointment of his enemy’s protege; he was able to engineer without much difficulty that Howard got the job. Howard, surprised at the evident favouritism from a man he did not know, was fervently grateful until, months later, a colleague kindly enlightened him as to the correct interpretation of events. Howard was only slightly chagrined. It would have been nice to think that he was the obvious candidate, or that he had captivated those present with his ability and personality. But by then the only thing that really mattered was that he had the job and that he could support himself by doing the sort of work he wanted to do.

He often found himself contrasting the orderly nature of his professional life – where the pursuit of scientific truth was concerned, it was possible to plan a course of action and carry it out – with the anarchy of private concerns. The world teems with people who can determine the quality of your existence, and on occasion some total stranger can reach in and manipulate the entire narrative, as Howard was to find when his briefcase, containing the notes for a lecture he was about to give, was stolen at an Underground station.

Fuming, Howard returned to the college. He made an explanatory phone call and postponed the lecture. He reported the theft to the appropriate authorities and then went for a restorative coffee. He joined a colleague who was entertaining a visiting curator from the Natural History Museum in Nairobi. And thus it was that Howard learnt of the recently acquired collection of fossils, as yet uncatalogued and unidentified, the study of which would provide him with his greatest challenge and ensure his professional future. But for the theft, but for that now benevolent stranger. Within half an hour he had dismantled and reassembled his plans. He would not go to a conference in Stockholm. He would not spend a fortnight taking students on a field trip to Scotland. He would pull out every stop and somehow scramble together the funds for a visit to the museum in Nairobi.