M&D - Chapter 18 - Heirs and Assigns

[Johnny Marr]

Mason muses upon the nature of Bradley and Susannah's relationship, how
Bradley watched his wife "with a focus'd Patience he recogniz'd from the
Sector Room...as if waiting for a sudden shift in the sky of Passion, like
that headlong change in Star Position that had led him to the discovery of
the Aberration of Light".

Mason considers that Bradley's real devotion was to the stars, that his
marriage to Susannah may have lacked cupidity and that their conjugal union
may have one of expediency for the Peaches, allowing them access to the
Copy of Bradley's great Volume of Observations Lunar, Planetary, and
Astral. The Peaches were now tied up in a legal dispute claiming the paper
was their's alone after the expiry of Queen Anne's warrant allowing Royal
Society Visitors an annual copy of the 'Obs' - "to interested Parties
priceless, yet to their Lawyers pricey enough to merit Disputing over".

Had Susannah been an unwitting pawn in a predetermined marriage (much as
Mason himself might have been)? Had this in effect paid the price of a
Directorship in the East India Company? Even by TRP's standards, this is
stunningly paranoid - and, Mason comes to realise, rather tasteless and far
fetched.

Through parapsychological intuition, "Even Mason's Horse looks back at him,
treproachful of this" (M&D is a book where parapsychology and animal
intelligence happen as a matter of fact. Is this Magical Realism? Is it in
the tradition of Lewis Carroll? Or is this just the world of TRP? I opt for
the latter - it's too happenstance to be contorted into a broader literary
school)

Recovering his air of nobility - the crown sometimes rests uneasy, but
never slips - Mason reproaches himself. If Bradley was an indulgent
husband, did that make him different to any other husband in love? "Of
course he ador'd her, his Governess in all things. How shall I speak"

Besides, even though Mason had been Bradley's assistant for most of the
findings included in the lucrative Obs paper, why would he put in a claim
to profit from an acitivty he had undertaken out of vocational duty. He had
performed many of the Observations in the paper himself, but "he was really
giving them to Bradley, all, for nothing more than, 'Thank you, Mr. Mason,
and well done".

Mason's vocational duties rest with his fellow astronomers and the very
Science itself.
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