“Who never knew he had a son, Iris. Remember that. I had no idea.”
“Would it have made a difference if you had? Would you have stood by me if I’d come back to Swindon a few months after leaving and announced I was carrying your child? I don’t think so, Harry, do you?”
He shook his head slowly in surrender to his own memory of himself as much as the force of her argument. “No. I expect he was better off with Claude as a father. But you said this morning he knows. About me, I mean.”
“I told him after Claude died. I thought he was entitled to know. But he didn’t make much of it. Mathematics had always been more important to him than human frailty. Another reason why suicide would never have entered his head.”
“Why do they think it did?”
“Because the coma was precipitated by an overdose of insulin. Too big an overdose for him to have taken accidentally. If a chambermaid hadn’t found him when she did, he’d certainly have died. As it is…” She sighed. “They don’t think he’s going to recover, Harry. They don’t think he’s ever going to wake up.”
So that was it. The final irony. Perhaps a disembodied voice of fate had left the message for Harry. So he could learn he had a son only when it was too late to claim him. “There’s no hope?”
“Realistically, not much. So the doctors tell me, anyway. Miracles do happen, of course. But they reckon the chances of a full recovery are virtually nil. And that, even if he did emerge from the coma, he’d have permanent brain damage. Can you imagine what that would mean for a brilliant mathematician?”
“I’m not sure I can, no.”
“They’ve suggested taking him off life support.” She looked straight into Harry’s eyes. “Letting him die.”
“I see.”
“Do you? Do you really see where that leaves me?”
Torn, I imagine.”
“Yes. Torn very nearly in two.” She glanced away. He was tempted for a moment to reach out and take her hand. To offer physical comfort where words seemed likely to fail him. But they had not touched each other in David Venning’s lifetime. And perhaps they never would. “I sometimes wish…”
“Don’t say it.”
“I’m sorry,” she said briskly, looking back at him. “This isn’t your problem.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No. Absolutely not. Ken and I will ‘
“What does Ken think you should do?”
She pursed her lips. A flicker of weakness passed across her face. Harry reckoned he knew what Ken thought without her needing to say. If he was right, Iris might have made the anonymous telephone call after all so that she could enlist his help without having to beg for it.
“I don’t think you should let yourself be talked into taking any action you might later regret.”
“How very level-headed of you, Harry.”
“Whoever left that message for me obviously thought ‘
“It wasn’t me.”
Then who?”
“I simply don’t know. I’m more or less certain David kept what I told him to himself.”
“He might have confided in his wife.”
“You wouldn’t say that if you’d ever met her.”
“Or a close friend.”
“No. I was nervous about telling him. But I needn’t have been. He made it obvious he regarded it as a matter of no importance.”
“You can’t be sure of that.”
“No? Well, did he track you down, Harry? Did he seek you out when he had the chance?”
“He might have found that difficult. I was living abroad.”
“Yes. In Rhodes.” Her look hardened. “I read about you in the papers. Six years ago, wasn’t it? Something to do with a girl who disappeared on holiday.”
With weary fatalism, Harry confronted the moment he had known was coming all along. The skeleton in his cupboard that was no skeleton at all. And yet so much more famous than the real ones. “Something, yes. But the press made more of the mystery than its solution. As they always do.”
“Well, I shouldn’t think the story made the American papers. And I didn’t send David any cuttings. So he was probably blissfully unaware of your brush with notoriety.”
“Iris, you can’t think ‘
“How exactly did you end up in Rhodes? I’d always imagined you whiling away life as a council clerk.”
“I left the Council five years after you moved to Manchester. Opened a car sales business in Maryborough Road with an old National Service chum, Barry Chipchase. Went bankrupt, I’m afraid.” He decided not to mention his partner’s treacherous role in the episode for fear he would not be believed. “After that, I worked for a marine electronics firm in Weymouth. The job fell through after a few years.” The phrase was another triumph of reticence. He did not think Iris was ready to hear how he had been falsely accused of embezzlement. “A friend offered me a caretaking job at his villa on Rhodes around the same time, so…”
“This friend would have been the disgraced government minister Alan Dysart?”
“Yes. But he wasn’t a minister then. And he hadn’t been disgraced.”
“How did you come to know him?”
“He worked for Barry and me when he was a student.” Harry shifted awkwardly in his chair. “Look, where’s all this getting us?”
“The present, Harry. Your present.”
“I live at 78 Foxglove Road, Kensal Green. I have a flat on the first floor. My landlady and her cat live downstairs. I pay the rent by working part-time at a nearby garage. I get by. I live from day to day. I survive. What more do you want to know?”
“Never married?”
“Since you ask, yes. Just a few years ago.”
“But you don’t live together?”
“She moved to Newcastle to find a job. She has a cousin who’s a solicitor there. He took her on as a secretary.” Growing caution prevented Harry explaining that he had married Zohra in order to save her from being deported back to Sri Lanka. It had been an act of unambiguous generosity. But somehow he did not think it would sound like it. “That’s enough about me. What about you? And David?”
She drank some tea, palpably playing for time before answering.
“There’s something you need to understand, Harry. Something that isn’t easy to say. What happened between us thirty-four years ago had an … ulterior motive.”
“What do you mean?”
“Claude and I had been trying to have children for a long time. Without success. And I wanted children. Badly. Claude was a good man. I loved him. But…”
“He couldn’t get you pregnant?”
“No. Whereas ..”.”
“I could.”
“It sounds awful, doesn’t it? So clinical. So … calculating.”
“I thought we were having fun. Simple uncomplicated fun.”
“Simple, yes. Uncomplicated, no.”
“So, the realization that you were pregnant by me wasn’t a horrible shock so much as a satisfactory outcome. Did you tell David that?”
“Yes. Which is why he would never have come looking for you.”
“Well, thanks,” he said, allowing the bitterness to break through in his tone. Thanks a lot for making my son understand I was just a means to an end.”
“Your son in the strictest biological sense only.” She threw back her head, as if in search of calm as well as logic. “I won’t stop you visiting him, Harry. I could, but I won’t. On the other hand, I’m not going to let you invade his life. Or mine.”
“How long do I have before you switch him off?”
“It’s not like that.”
“Will you at least warn me … when you reach a decision?”
“Yes.” She looked at him gravely. “I will.” She took a tiny notebook from her handbag, tore out a page, wrote something on it and slid it across the table towards him. “My sister’s address and telephone number. You can contact me there … if you really need to.”
“Does she know about me?”<
br />
“She will.”
“And Ken?”
Iris shook her head. “I’m not going to answer any more questions, Harry. You already know as much as you’ve a right to. Probably more.”
“Not in the opinion of whoever left me that message.”
“If there was a message.”
“You said yourself I couldn’t have found out any other way.”
“I suppose not. It’s just another mystery.”
“Like the overdose? If it wasn’t a suicide attempt and it couldn’t have been an accident…”
“Stop it.” She had raised her voice for the first time, sufficiently to attract a curious glance from a nearby table. “I’m tired of such speculation. Don’t you think I’ve been through it all in my mind, over and over again? In the end, the whys and wherefores don’t matter. They won’t help him breathe or eat or speak or walk. Nothing will.” She was trembling now, her eyes brimming with tears. “Could it be some kind of punishment for deceiving Claude, I wonder? I asked myself that about his diabetes when it was first diagnosed. Now this. It makes you think.”
“You know that’s ridiculous.”
“Yes.” She dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief and blew her nose. “Of course I do. Like hoping he’ll recover. Ridiculous. But I can’t help doing it.”
“Neither can I.”
The remark, with its hint of intimacy, seemed suddenly too much for Iris. “Why should you care?” she snapped. “He’s nothing to you.”
“Perhaps because I have no-one else to care about.”
“Exactly.” There was harshness in her expression, honed by the anguish she had endured. “If you had a family of your own, you wouldn’t be interested, would you? You wouldn’t want to know.”
“It’s easy for you to say that, knowing I can’t disprove it.”
“That’s not good enough.” She glanced at her watch. “I really must be going. Blanche will be wondering what’s become of me.” Rising hurriedly, she took a ten-pound note from her handbag and dropped it onto Harry’s side of the table. “Would you mind paying the bill for me? That should cover it.”
“There’s no need But catching her eye as he stood up, Harry realized there was a compelling need from her point of view. She did not want to owe him any kind of debt, however trivial. Lest it remind her and him of what they could not help owing each other.
“Goodbye, Harry,” she said with cool finality.
SIX
Room E318 at the National Neurological Hospital seemed as warm and muffled as a womb next morning. The ventilator pumped out its measured maternal breaths and a vase of fresh irises spread its symbolic cheer; while the distant sounds of calm voices and familiar movements compressed themselves into an institutional universe of care and compassion. It surrounded Harry on all sides, enclosing him and his silent son, encompassing their pasts and however much of a future either of them had.
“Your mother’s lifted her ban on me,” Harry remarked, trying another gambit in his one-way bedside conversation. “So you’ll be seeing quite a bit more of me. As long as you don’t mind, that is. Say if you do. We’ve got a lot of catching up to do, of course. I’ll tell you about myself, if you like. There’s nothing remarkable to say. Nothing out of the ordinary. Not like you. I mean, mathematics? I wouldn’t know where to begin. The square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides. I know a joke about that, involving squaws and hippopotamuses. Or is it hippopotami? Well, I don’t suppose you want to hear it anyway. What would you like to hear? My life story? That can be arranged. I’d like to hear yours. As well as your thoughts on one or two things that have been troubling me. The message I received. If it wasn’t from your mother, who was it from? And what was it supposed to make me do? Ask how you ended up like this, perhaps? An accident’s out of the question, apparently. And attempted suicide? I can’t see it. Not for a son of mine. The Barnetts are often unlucky. But never self-destructive. What, then? What happened in that hotel room? I’d try to find out I promise I really would if you’d just tell me where to begin.”
But David could tell Harry nothing. And Iris, even if she could, had made it clear she did not intend to. Which left Harry to interrogate Shafiq about the person who had left the message for him at Mitre Bridge to no avail. Shafiq remained uncertain about the sex of the caller. Nor could he remember any particular accent.
“Didn’t you think to ask for their name?”
“Of course I did, Harry. Do you take me for a fool?”
“Well, what did they say?”
“Nothing. That was when they rang off.”
“Oh, marvelous.”
“Well, I’m sorry. Would you have done any better?”
“Maybe. For a start, I might have recognized them.”
“If they’d known that was likely, they would not have called while you were here, would they?”
“No. No, they wouldn’t.”
“In which case…”
“They must have been studying my movements. They must have been watching me.”
It was a disturbing possibility. So much so that Harry decided to unburden himself to Mrs. Tandy. He chose his next day off, when, as usual, he accompanied her to Kensal Green Cemetery as flower porter and water carrier. Mrs. Tandy’s had been a marriage of cousins, as a result of which her late husband’s relatives and her own were inextricably intertwined. And more numerous, it sometimes seemed to Harry, than the weeds that grew between their overgrown plots.
Recuperating on a bench after a vigorous tour of the scattered outliers as well as the main cluster of Tandy memorials, Harry explained his predicament as noncommittally as he could. He felt Mrs. Tandy should be made aware of the situation. But he was not sure he wanted her to understand how deeply it had affected him. His uncertainty, however, took little account of the keenness of her insight.
“Quite a shock for you, I imagine. Discovering you’re a father so late in life.”
“Only technically a father.”
“But the man who believed he was David’s father is dead, isn’t he? So perhaps the technicalities are irrelevant.”
“Not according to Iris.”
“Whose need is greater, Harry? David’s or his mother’s?”
“David’s, of course.”
“Then perhaps you should do something to help him.”
“What do you suggest?”
“Find out what caused his coma and what can be done to cure it.”
“How?”
“Speak to his doctor. And to those who know him best. His friends and contemporaries. His fellow mathematicians. Anybody who might understand his state of mind when he booked into that hotel. Or know of any reason why others might have wished him harm.”
“But Iris ‘
“Is his mother. What would she know? Have you told your mother, for instance, that she has a grandson?”
“Of course not. What would be the point?”
“See what I mean?”
“But his friends… are probably all in America.”
“His ex-wife, for instance?”
“For certain, I should think.”
“Should you?” She grinned mischievously. “You ought to read more of the newspapers than the racing page, Harry, you really ought. Fetch yesterday’s Telegraph from the bin over there, would you?”
“But I screwed up the dead flowers in it.”
“Then unscrew them. You want page three or five.”
With shrugs and sighs of reluctance, Harry crossed to the bin, fished out the bundle in which he had disposed of the whiffy accumulation of sodden stems, flattened out the paper on the path and tried to separate the damp pages. “What exactly am I looking for, Mrs. T?”
“Bring it over here.”
Leaving the mess of rotten foliage behind, he carried the paper back to the bench, where Mrs. Tandy had already put on her glasses. She took it from him with a supercilious smile and arched back her head to improve her focus.
“Let me see, let me see.” Two wet-edged pages were carefully parted. “Ah, here we are. There was a film premiere the night before last at the MGM Cinema in Shaftesbury Avenue. I doubt it had the panache of those I attended before the war, but never mind. The point is that one of the stars of Dying Easy is none other than Steve Brancaster, pictured here arriving at the event with his glamorous wife Hope.”
Harry sat down beside her and stared at the photographs. There were three of them in all, the largest showing a young Royal disgorging from a limousine. But one of the accompanying shots was what drew Harry’s eyes. As the caption confirmed, the tall faintly lupine figure in tuxedo and open-neck dress shirt was the actor Steve Brancaster. Beside him, blond hair cascading over bare shoulders, a dazzling smile and sparkling eyes competing for attention with a neckline that displayed a truly startling amount of cleavage, stood Hope Brancaster, formerly Yenning, formerly God knows what.
“I expect they’re still here,” said Mrs. Tandy. “Premieres can be very exhausting.”
“You think so?”
“Oh yes.” She peered closer. “I should try the Dorchester if I were you.”
SEVEN
Mrs. Tandy’s estimate of the Brancasters’ taste in hotels turned out to be spot on. With his fraying blazer and faded tie once more to the fore, Harry strode into the Dorchester late that afternoon, asked as confidently as he could for Mrs. Brancaster and was rewarded with confirmation that she was indeed a guest there. Unfortunately, she was also out.
“Can I take a message for her, sir? Or would you prefer to wait?”
“Weller…”
“Oh, actually, there’s no need.” The concierge glanced over Harry’s shoulder. “Here’s the lady now.”
Harry turned to see Hope Brancaster making an eye-catching entrance in wide-brimmed hat, flared raincoat and high-heeled bootees. A porter was bringing up the rear with two Bond Street carrier bags in either hand and a fifth looped over his shoulder.
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