Free A Man of Genius by Janet Todd

no worry about sending bodies to the fish but need to mumble something while they do.’
    At the end of his story he gave a chuckle from the relief of telling, then continued.
    â€˜On land in Esbjerg, for my sailors were going there, half-starved still, my mind almost dead, senses quite bewildered, I met Robert James and stumbled out my story. Where the boatmen had fed me little pieces of food, he fed me special delicacies and, more important, he fed me just enough of hope and life to make my mind start to live, to work again, not grow fat but at least begin to stir. He treated my mind as if it were his own, do you see? cared for it, nurtured it.’
    Ann was silent, thinking of Robert and his kindness to strangers, to men. Why not always to her? Was her story not good enough?
    Watching her unusual silence, Richard Perry feared she might be squeamish. He wished he’d not said so much, but either he told all his story or none of it.
    She roused herself. ‘Oh, Richard,’ she said.
    The sympathy unleashed more. ‘Do you know he, Robert James, had tears in his eyes when he saw me. He took new lodgings to accommodate me and cared for me like a child, a beloved brother.’
    She still felt some resistance.
    â€˜But he didn’t actually save you,’ she said, ‘that was the boat and the German sailors.’
    â€˜No,’ Richard Perry said, ‘no, you are wrong there. It was Robert James. I would have been mad without him. And what good is life without a mind? He made me human again. He is a wonderful man. There can be no one like him.’
    In the end resistance dissolved and she swallowed the words gratefully.
    â€˜He stayed with me in those cramped rooms in a bleak coastal town day after day, week after week. Just for me.’
    â€˜That was kindly done.’
    â€˜Yes. And to make me comfortable he said it was right for him, said it suited him too, for he was in hiding from authorities, in Denmark, maybe Copenhagen, no, rather a nearby island, he didn’t say clearly where he came from, probably many places. None liked England, too swaggering in her power. Maybe he helped her enemies. It would have been the English authorities after him. Imperial arms stretch far, he always said. He wasn’t even using his right name. He told me it but I was not to speak it then; I was to call him Peter O’Neil instead.’ Richard Perry smiled to encourage response. ‘But in fact I had little occasion to use this subterfuge. I could hardly speak to anyone for many weeks and I never went out. Neither did Robert. He sent a man to buy what we needed. I think he may have said these things for my sake.’
    He was back in that time of secret intimacy, two men snugly shut up together. ‘He sent out for good things for me – to tempt me to eat,’ he repeated.
    She was struck by the strange naming. Peter O’Neil.
    â€˜He uses his own name now?’
    â€˜Oh yes, the danger is passed. And he has moved from politics. They are of this ordinary world, and he is beyond it. He always was, but he thought once that some preparatory change might be political. That was why he began his great work to show what energy might do in the world. He knows now he was wrong.’
    Yet he retained strong views of that despised world. He loathed the mad King George and his flabby son. Ann remarked that Napoleon was no longer the taut young hero but had cradled his paunch long before being toppled from his throne.
    Robert scoffed. ‘So many false images the English make of someone they couldn’t conquer without the help of half the world.’
    â€˜But they, we, have conquered him all the same. He was just a show in Southampton. He walked up and down on his prison ship for everyone to see before they sailed to St Helena. How will he cope on an island without courtiers and audience?’
    â€˜I could do it. I could have been a hermit,’ said Robert.
    â€˜You could have