And as for long division—it was fifty years since he had even attempted it. ‘I’ve got the figures here.’ He tapped the notebook that lay open in front of him on the desk. ‘It’s for the chapter on phosphorus. Human interference with the cycle. How much P2 05 did we find out was dispersed into the sea in sewage?’ He turned a page. ‘Four hundred thousand tons. That was it. Practically irrecoverable. Just thrown away. Then there’s the stupid way we deal with cadavers. Three-quarters of a kilo of phosphorus pentoxide in every body. Restored to the earth, you may say.’ Lord Edward was ready to admit every excuse, to anticipate, that he might rebut, every shift of advocacy. ‘But how inadequately!’ he swept the excuses away, he blew the special pleaders to bits. ‘Huddling bodies together in cemeteries! How can you expect the phosphorus to get distributed? It finds its way back to the life cycle in time, no doubt. But for our purposes it’s lost. Taken out of currency. Now, given three-quarters of a kilo of P2 05. for every cadaver and a world population of eighteen hundred millions and an average deathrate of twenty per thousand, what’s the total quantity restored every year to the earth? You can do sums, my dear Illidge. I leave it to you.’ Illidge sat in silence, shielding his face with his hand. ‘But then one has to remember,’ the Old Man continued, ‘ that there are a lot of people who dispose of the dead more sensibly than we do. It’s really only among the white races that the phosphorus is taken out of circulation. Other people don’t have necropolises and watertight coffins and brick vaults. The only people more wasteful than we are the Indians. Burning bodies and throwing the ashes into rivers! But the Indians are stupid about everything. The way they burn all the cow-dung instead of putting it back on the land. And then they’re surprised that half the population hasn’t enough to eat. We shall have to make a separate calculation about the Indians. I haven’t got the figures, though. But meanwhile will you work out the grand total for the world? And another, if you don’t mind, for the white races. I’ve got a list of the populations here somewhere. And, of course, the deathrate will be lower than the average for the whole world, at any rate in Western Europe and America. Would you like to sit here? There’s room at this end of the table.’ He cleared a space. ‘And here’s paper. And this is quite a decent pen.’
‘Do you mind,’ said Illidge faintly, ‘if I lie down for a minute. I’m not feeling well.’
CHAPTER XXXIV
It was nearly eleven before Philip Quarles appeared at Sbisa’s. Spandrell saw him as he was entering and beckoned him to the table where he was sitting with Burlap and Rampion. Philip came limping across the room and sat down beside him.
‘I’ve got messages for you,’ said Spandrell, ‘and, what’s more important,’ he felt in his pocket, ‘ the key of your house.’ He handed it over, explaining how he had come into possession of it. If the man knew what had happened in his house that evening… ‘And Elinor’s gone down to Gattenden,’ he went on. ‘She had a telegram. The child doesn’t seem to be well. And she expects you to-morrow.’
‘The devil she does!’ said Philip. ‘But I have at least fifteen engagements. What’s wrong with the boy?’
‘Unspecified.’
Philip shrugged his shoulders. ‘If it had been serious, my mother-in-law wouldn’t have telegraphed,’ he said, yielding to the temptation to say something amusing. ‘She’s like that. She’ll. take a case of double pneumonia with perfect calm and then get terribly excited about a headache or a pain in the belly.’ He interrupted himself to order an omelette and half a bottle of Moselle. Still, Philip reflected, the boy hadn’t been very flourishing these last weeks. He rather wished he hadn’t yielded to the temptation. And what he had said hadn’t really been in the least amusing. Wanting to be amusing—that was his chief literary defect. His books would be much better if he would allow them to be much duller. He sank into a rather gloomy silence.
‘These children!’ said Spandrell.