When We Have Wings

by Claire Corbett

  ‘Fliers are beautiful,’ Chesshyre said. ‘That’s not the problem. But beauty and sexual attractiveness have only a tangential relationship. Lots of beauty in this world doesn’t move you in that way.’

  I scratched my head. ‘So that’s why you decided to fuck Peri? Come on, Peter, I don’t believe it’s anything to do with beauty. It’s about power.’

  Chesshyre glanced at me sharply. ‘You have no idea what you’re talking about,’ he said. ‘You don’t have any idea what real intensity is, what real power or control is.’

  ‘Well, I’m not lacking in imagination,’ I said. ‘I can see that if you make the stakes so high that every sexual encounter becomes a potential love-death it might be hard to settle for anything less extreme. That sort of thing tends to be addictive.’ I thought of Ruokonen. Fertility was a casualty of the treatments. You become a different person when you become a flier. Different things matter to you.

  ‘So, that’s what you finally told Avis, didn’t you?’ I said. ‘That Peri was Hugo’s mother? Bit of a miscalculation on your part, wasn’t it? Were you so used to the fact you couldn’t get Avis pregnant that you forgot it might be easier with someone else? That’s why everything started unravelling when you got those test results. You knew Avis would find out she wasn’t even Hugo’s genetic mother, which was not what she signed up for. It was all falling apart and you had to tell her why. Jesus, poor Avis. Her baby isn’t hers, which she must have felt all along, just like she knew all along you never desired her. Not ever. No wonder she had some problems.’

  Peter looked down at the slick still in his hands.

  ‘I knew you were dishonest with me from the beginning but I never imagined you’d denied Peri her own child. You people really are monsters. Freaks.’ I was almost spitting at him. ‘Did they take out your heart when they gave you your wings?’

  ‘Don’t be so naive, Fowler,’ Chesshyre said, raising his head to look at me. ‘It was kinder not to tell Peri. She had to give him up anyway.’

  ‘And Peri was terrified you were going to send him away and couldn’t bear to see how you loved him less because he’s not like you,’ I retorted. ‘I’d say she’s got you two pegged pretty well. I’m not surprised Avis pissed off. Though she’s no better, is she? Outsourcing pregnancy and labour to a poorer woman. Like Hugo’s a pile of washing she can’t be bothered to iron herself. I don’t suppose she was too sorry to miss out on the whole experience. As long as Hugo’s genes were half hers, that’s all that mattered.’

  Now Chesshyre was angry. He put down the slick and sat right up, away from the heap of pillows, wincing as he moved. ‘Fowler, just where do you get off being so fucking self-righteous? You’re ignorant, maudlin about pregnancy and birth precisely because you don’t have to do it. What’s so ennobling about stretch marks and torn perineums and abdominal incisions? It’s barbaric. Do you weave your own cloth, grow your own food? It’s all about where you draw the line. You sentimentalise pregnancy and birth because your family had no other choices.’ Exhausted, Peter leaned back against the pillows.

  ‘I’ll tell you something else,’ he said after a moment. ‘This scandal about Little Angels and the church and the department will do far more harm than good. You think you’re some sort of fucking white knight, riding in to rescue helpless girls? Guess what? They won’t thank you. You’ve just made it a lot harder for those girls—girls who have nothing—to sell the one thing they do have to offer and get off the bottom rung. Who are you to say they shouldn’t? You think Peri would rather not have her wings? Why don’t you ask her?’

  I glared at him then dropped my gaze to the slick Peter had set down on the bedside table. My attention was drawn into the images fading up, then dissolving away: views of a house as if it were already built.

  ‘You’d better tell me where Hugo is,’ Chesshyre said, glancing over to see what I was looking at.

  ‘Of course,’ I said, my attention still drifting to the slick. ‘As soon as you arrange the meeting with Peri and the lawyers. Peri’s lawyer will be in touch with you. At the moment you don’t have anyone to look after him.’

  ‘I will,’ said Peter.

  ‘Another nanny? Because that’s worked out so well.’

  Ignoring that, Peter indicated the slick. ‘That’s where Hugo will live.’ He swept his finger across the screen, bringing up more detailed images. ‘You don’t build this house. You grow it; its colours and textures develop from petals, leaves, rind. Each room has its own intrinsic scent—orange, vanilla, hay, thyme. And it’s more or less self-repairing.’

  ‘It’s fabulous,’ I said, impressed in spite of myself. Chesshyre might be a ruthless son of a bitch but he was a talented ruthless son of a bitch. How could he show me this work, his true passion, as if all the rest had not happened, was all in the past already? He really was moving on. No more wife, no more clifftop house. No more Frisk. He hadn’t mentioned the lion, not even to ask how he was. Too easy to blame the treatments, the alien genes. It was human, after all, to treat the mother of his only child that way. To treat his child that way. Don’t you understand yet what the real sacrifice is? It’s Hugo.

  A green vertical meadow, sprigged with flowers, formed walls around the house, enclosing a courtyard. I’d like a house like that myself. Peter wanted to give Hugo the best of himself, I could see, but I wanted to say: the best is not enough, don’t you get it? You have to give everything. The house rose up from the earth like a scarlet runner bean on a stake with Peter’s rooms at the top. We get claustrophobia. They get vertigo.

  Chesshyre closed his eyes, dismissing me, saying coolly as his parting shot, ‘Hugo is ours. Remember that. His birth certificate names Avis and me as his mother and father.’

  I visited Peri when I could but each time I did she was still unconscious. I told Henryk the infection was not responding to treatment. Must be one of those superbugs, he said. He and Vivienne and I worked out a roster for looking after Hugo for the few days Peter remained in hospital. None of us could bear the idea of returning him to the child hotel. He liked playing with the twins and was overjoyed to see Frisk. The lion, who had started to look old and stiff, was as tolerant as any grandfather, letting the baby pull on his ears and mane and tail. He even let Hugo ride on his back for a few steps at a time, before gently rolling him off his back and onto the floor, to squeals of delight from Hugo.

  ‘I don’t like to think what CaFS would say about us looking after Hugo without anyone’s permission,’ said Henryk one night when I’d gone to his house for dinner. Hugo was sleeping there overnight. ‘But you can’t talk to anyone there anyway. The whole department is in lockdown.’

  ‘Cam rang me,’ I told him. ‘Says she’s going away after giving evidence at the commission of inquiry. She’s been suspended. She said her reward for exposing the most serious breaches of trust and procedure, to say nothing of the law, in the department will be narrowly escaping a prison sentence for breaching security.’

  ‘That sucks,’ said Henryk.

  A rumble of thunder sounded right over the house.

  ‘I’ll have to give evidence at the commission of inquiry too,’ I said.

  Lightning flashed, rain poured down. Another storm in this long, wet, wild summer.

  ‘Where’s she going away to?’ said Henryk.

  ‘Buddhist monastery, apparently. Says that in her culture it’s the right time of life for her to attend to her spiritual development.’

  Henryk rang me a few weeks later. ‘You watching the news?’

  ‘I’m always watching the news,’ I said. ‘Especially since you and me and Cam are responsible for making so damn much of it. I particularly enjoyed watching Mrs Harper’s arrest and her outraged denials of any wrongdoing. That helmet of hair was looking ruffled.’

  ‘Turn it on now,’ said Henryk. ‘I’ll stay on for a sec. Want to hear your reaction to this.
’

  ‘Okay.’

  The news came up. The lead story was about a category six hurricane. Fair enough. It did seem, these days, that weather was the beginning of the news, not its end.

  ‘Here it comes,’ said Henryk.

  ‘That’s one of your guys,’ I said, watching a detective head into the Origins compound. ‘Fantastic.’

  The next thing we saw, with delight and for me an almost hysterical glee, was the arrest of His Incandescence, the Most Serene Trinity Jones.

  For a moment I was speechless.

  It was blissful seeing Jones finally, finally, led away in cuffs from his compound—there were those bloody solar yachts in the background, just where they were when we’d raided him—on a serious array of charges, from trafficking to kidnapping to murder.

  He had the stare of true fear, that white mask around the eyes. Now you know how it feels, you bastard. You’re not getting off. Not this time. The scandal with Brilliant was being used as a blunt instrument to crack Origins and its secretive ways wide open.

  ‘You know what’s really funny?’ said Henryk. ‘It hasn’t come out yet but the charge that’s really going to hurt Trinity, the one he’s really going to go down for, is tax evasion.’

  ‘So your specialist in financial data and tracking came good,’ I said.

  ‘Certainly did,’ said Henryk. ‘All those lovely rivers of undeclared cash from rich fliers. The government’s going to settle its scores for the crime that really matters.’

  Well, that’s what we all thought at the time. But there was one more turn of the screw regarding Trinity I failed to grasp until later . . .

  Peri had her own room in the hospital, almost as swish as Peter’s. I guessed he was paying for it now, now that he had Hugo.

  She was lying on her side, very still, like an angel carved on a tomb.

  ‘Peri,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  She glanced at me, eyes glittering, but didn’t move.

  Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.

  ‘Can you tell me what happened?’

  ‘What did you expect? My lawyer was never going to scare Peter’s team.’ Peri sighed. ‘He did what he could. It was better than nothing. Better than I had any right to hope. They’re going to change the birth certificate. I don’t get residence, as they say. He’ll live with Peter. I get contact. I get to visit him. Supervised at first.’

  I started to move over to Peri but she patted the air, motioning me to sit down. She didn’t want me to be outraged on her behalf. She was trying to hold herself together but the dam was bursting. ‘He’s not here. I can’t believe they just . . . took him. He cried so hard.’ She shook her head. ‘Don’t say anything. Please. I can’t bear it. I did the best I could. I have no money, nowhere to live. I have a history of abuse and neglect and foster care so I’m the one who’s punished. They’re not trying to charge me with kidnapping my own child but there’s eight different ways Chesshyre’s team can make me look a bad risk.’

  Peri sniffled. ‘There’s one good thing. There’s no sign of Avis. Legally Peter and I are Hugo’s parents. Actually two good things. The residential parenting order is only temporary. Anyway, I know what’ll happen. He’ll be thrilled to have Hugo back at first but I know the hours he works, how busy he is, how much he likes it. He’ll hire someone to look after Hugo and end up hardly ever seeing him.’ Anger seized her. ‘Oh, why couldn’t they—why couldn’t they just give him to me? They might as well have.’ She lay face down on the bed and howled as if her heart would break.

  I put my hand on her shoulder. ‘Peter’s angry now. You can’t be surprised about that. Things will get easier. You’ll see more of Hugo over time.’

  Peri sat up, stony-faced. ‘I’ve got what I deserved. The only one who’s suffered who didn’t deserve it is Hugo.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I thought I knew best. That I was helping Hugo. But I’m the one who’s harmed him. As if the storm didn’t terrify him so that he can’t bear to fly at all, he was also seized by the Wild in the fight above Heavener. Can’t imagine him ever wanting to fly after that.’

  I was silent. No point offering her false comfort. ‘I can help you with somewhere to live. Henryk needs a tenant. How would you pay rent?’

  Peri rubbed her eyes. I handed her some tissues and she blew her nose. ‘I’ll go down to Flight Gym for a start. I’m better than any of those instructors.’

  I sat with Peri until she fell asleep. As I watched over her, the tear stains drying on her cheeks, her breath slowing until it was low and even, I thought how strange it felt that this case was finally over. Hugo was with his father, parenthood knocked down to the highest bidder. Nothing new about that. Chesshyre thought he’d had it all worked out. Peri would give him and Avis a baby. And what had gone wrong? A natural conception and birth. Because he’d fucked her. Why? Because he wanted to. Because he could. Because he could make her pregnant, even if he wasn’t fully aware of that motive. Nature doesn’t care about your happiness, my father used to say, warning me not to get my first girlfriend pregnant. Nature doesn’t care if a baby is what you want. A baby is what Nature wants. Nothing personal. We keep acting as if the link between sexuality and fertility can be broken so easily but Peter admitted he wasn’t attracted to flier women. Perhaps he just hadn’t worked out why.

  I met Sunil at Kamchatka Joe’s again, hoping he’d summoned me to give me more work. He was already there when I arrived, reading.

  ‘Interesting article,’ he said, smiling.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘An analysis of the Origins scandal. This article explores the idea that the Most Serene Trinity Jones didn’t hit on the idea of trading in babies by accident. For a sufferer from Klinefelter’s, but one with such a strong will to power that he’d set up his own cult, for a man who felt himself only half a man, with his microorchidism and congenital sterility, controlling a trade in the fertility of others—especially the rich and powerful enemies of all that he claimed to stand for in this world—would be intoxicating indeed. And highly lucrative.’

  I nodded. ‘Makes sense.’

  My arm still hurt where my skin had been shredded, though proper new skin had long since been pasted over the wounds. I rubbed it thoughtfully.

  ‘I suppose,’ I said, ‘that information I got for you about Brilliant isn’t of much use now he’s so embroiled in scandal?’

  Sunil stared at me. Then he started laughing. He laughed so hard I started laughing too, though I didn’t really know why.

  ‘Is that what you think?’ said Sunil when he could speak again. ‘God, that’s fantastic. By all means, don’t let me disabuse you then.’

  ‘Oh. I’ve been a bit slow, haven’t I?’

  ‘You know, Zeke, for an investigator you aren’t nearly suspicious enough.’

  I stared at him. Wheels turned in my brain.

  ‘Ah, I see now,’ I said. ‘You never were that interested in Brilliant. The fact he’s now been charged as an accessory to murder is just a bonus. Brilliant and the church are collateral damage; it’s Trinity you were after all along. You thought there was something suspect between Brilliant and Waterhouse and I proved you spectacularly right. My information and Cam’s revelations were useful, they started the deluge, but the storm engulfing Brilliant and the church and then, inevitably, Origins and Trinity—you’d worked towards that from the beginning. It awaited just the right moment to set off the avalanche.’

  Sunil smiled. ‘Do you think what happened to Brilliant was entirely unforeseen?’

  ‘You mean you knew I’d get Henryk onto it? I’m a good pawn. Well, I guess the financial detective work his people did was very useful to your boss. Whoever the hell he is.’

  ‘You see?’ said Sunil. ‘You can get it if you really think it through.’
r />   ‘Patronising bastard,’ I said.

  With a flash of clarity that took my breath away I knew who Trinity’s real enemy, and Sunil’s boss, was: the ex-cabinet minister, well connected with many powerful friends, whose daughters Origins had kidnapped years ago. The Charon case, the case that had given me whatever notoriety I possessed, was still working its way through the body politic. Revenge is a dish best eaten cold, they say, and this dish was being served at absolute zero.

  I was a true servant of Nemesis after all.

  ‘It was well done, Sunil,’ I said. ‘Congratulations.’

  Well done indeed. Watch the masters at work. And each time I had been one of the instruments of retribution, the first time by chance, the second by design. An elegance I could attribute to Sunil’s intellect and love of the game.

  This was the season of spending time in hospital. I’d needed treatment for my ankle, I’d visited Peter, I visited Peri. But this was the moment of truth, the hospital appointment I dreaded most. Now I sat in the waiting room next to Lily and waited for Thomas. Finally, after all the preparatory treatments and therapy, this was the morning scheduled for his surgery. Thomas was whisked away into another country behind those swing doors. When he re-emerged, he’d be transformed.

  I’d thought Lily would be jubilant but I’d underestimated her. She was subdued, even frightened. She’d dressed soberly in her perennial grey and brought case files to read but didn’t look at them. She just sat on the white plastic chair in the waiting room and stared at the television high on the wall. I fetched us both coffee. She took one sip but didn’t touch it again. ‘He looked so small,’ she said, keeping her face turned up to the TV.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. Thomas had looked tiny as they wheeled him into the operating theatre, surrounded by blue sheets and all that silver and matt black equipment. ‘Brave Thomas,’ I’d whispered to him. I was assailed by the most powerful feeling of guilt I’d ever experienced. Lily and I had delivered him to a torture chamber. Drugs, masks, needles, knives. How could we do this to our little boy? Legally, surgery is assault, a crime mitigated only by consent and necessity. Well, we’d consented, but was it necessary? Would Thomas have consented, if he’d known what he was really in for?