“All those times I visited her, the conversations… all a complete sham, a charade of normality. I feel betrayed by her… no… violated.” Jasper shook his bowed head.
Lazlo frowned as the silence engulfed them and he was left without a notion of how to handle his grief stricken guv’nor.
“Is anyone to blame, guv?” Lazlo said cautiously.
“I don’t know how to deal with this unless there is.”
Jasper stared straight ahead. Far below a crew of four intrepid rowers in white T-shirts braved the cold, as their oars made clean cuts in the virginal surface of the water, powering their boat forwards as the bow sliced through the mist.
“It has suddenly been revealed to me at the age of forty seven that I’m going to die from this horrible disease, Lazlo, I could easily blame my father for that, though it is hardly his fault. But…”
Jasper hesitated for a moment as he tried to order his rabid thoughts, bloodshot eyes darting about in a tormented face as the ideas gelled and he began to nod.
“But… Jennifer and my unborn baby, they both died quite unnecessarily, tragically. The only person I can blame for that… is my mother.”
“Come on, guv.”
“No, Lazlo, I mean it. If she had only broken her silence thirty years ago, Brad Pitt, even one year ago, Jennifer would still be alive today.”
Down below on the river, the distant voice of the rowing coach echoed through the swirling mist as the rowers rested their oars on the surface of the water and listened.
“It’s as though she didn’t care about me, Lazlo. My mother didn’t tell me because she didn’t care what happened to me. Did I mean that little to Jennifer as well?”
“Perhaps, guv, they couldn’t face telling you because they cared too much. Sometimes love motivates us to adopt courses of action that… don’t always work out.”
Jasper shot a look at Lazlo, his face twisted in confusion.
“What are you saying?”
Lazlo sighed and looked up at the towering spires of Durham Cathedral for inspiration.
“I don’t think your mother or your wife… what’s the word… deliberately plotted to hurt you, guv. It must have been very hard for them, keeping such terrible secrets.”
Jasper snorted in disapproval and shook his head sharply.
“Then why did they do it? It makes no sense.”
Jasper clenched his jaw, making the muscles ripple around his temples. Lazlo looked down at the rowers who were turning their boat in the centre of the river and readying it for the return slog to Elvet Bridge.
“Perhaps, guv, they did it out of love?” Lazlo said softly.
Jasper pinched his eyes shut and squeezed them, but as the tics humiliated his face a tear of bitter regret managed to escape and drip on to the ancient sandstone parapet.
“I saw a client recently, he wanted me to sue the hospital for ignoring his explicit wishes and not allowing him to die. I listened to him and… legally it’s probably an open and shut case… but I just could not see myself doing it. It seemed so… pointless, so wrong. For the first time, Lazlo, I questioned myself about whether he would gain any closure from it.”
Jasper turned to Lazlo and their eyes met. The pain and torment in Jasper’s eyes leapt out and moved Lazlo, who had never seen his guv’nor like this before.
“What is happening to me, Lazlo?”
SIXTY NINE
Jasper was in his office packing clothes and personal items into a leather holdall when Debra arrived unexpectedly. She was wearing blue denim jeans with a heavily padded black jacket and a bright rainbow scarf tied around her neck.
“Hello, Jasper, it’s good to see you out of hospital,” she said.
Jasper looked up at her and managed a thin smile. Debra looked around the room and watched him packing. She smelled of spring flowers, bringing a welcome freshness into the stale office.
“Are you going somewhere?”
He sighed.
“I’m moving back home.”
He hoped she wouldn’t ask him about Ollie’s case as he just could not bring himself to think logically, let alone legally.
“If there’s anything I can do to help, please ask.”
He stopped packing and looked up slowly, his face pained and drawn.
“Thank you.”
She bit her lip and folded her arms tightly across her chest.
“I know what it’s like to feel… lost…”
A silence followed but it did not feel awkward, both parties perhaps aware that words alone could not describe every moment of significance.
Stacey popped her head and shoulders around the door into the office without warning, black lipstick, black mascara, black nail polish and a jet black blouse.
“There’s a Dr Montgolfier here, Mr C, he says it’s very urgent that he speaks to you.”
Jasper’s eyes met Debra’s as he felt a rise of embarrassment wash over him. The moment of shared silence had suddenly become awkward.
“I’ll go,” Debra said turning quickly to leave. “If you want to talk anytime, please call me.”
Montgolfier was shown in by Stacey and looked slightly ill at ease. His hands were restless, clasping and releasing constantly over the handle of his small, brown briefcase.
“Mr Candle, you may remember me – Dr Montgolfier.”
He extended his hand which Jasper shook firmly with a small nod of acknowledgement.
“We were very concerned about you, Mr Candle, absconding from hospital and all that, highly irregular.”
“I’m sorry,” Jasper said in a monotone voice without looking up.
“I have been assigned to oversee your rehabilitation program – I believe Dr Giordano explained some of that to you?” Montgolfier’s voice rose towards the end, emphasizing the question.
Jasper sighed and stared into the leather holdall.
“I just don’t see the point, Doctor, I mean I’ve not got much time left and I have no reason to…”
Montgolfier frowned, stroking his beard.
“Not long left, what do you mean?”
“I’ve got Huntingtons disease, it runs in my family. It’s incurable, isn’t it?”
Jasper stopped packing and looked up at Montgolfier, holding his gaze, a few subtle tics tugged at his face and his thumb and index finger rolled rhythmically over the shampoo bottle that he held in his hand.
Montgolfier stepped forward and placed the briefcase across the corner of Jasper’s desk, beside his leather holdall.
“May I?” he said politely, opening the case and extracting a violet coloured folder before sitting down in the chair.
Montgolfier scanned the pages, pulled the spectacles off his face and began to suck the curved end.
“Mr Candle, your affliction is due to alcoholism, that’s one of the fundamental precepts we must accept before we can move forward at all.”
Jasper nodded without looking up.
“Yes, I love my gay and frisky too much, I accept that. But I also have Huntingtons disease, it’s just been diagnosed.”
Montgolfier replaced the spectacles on his face and flicked through the notes, his brow creased in the centre. Jasper moved over to the cactus and retrieved a framed black and white photograph of Jennifer from the carpet beside it.
“You underwent an MRI scan of your brain and also genetic testing for Huntington’s.” Montgolfier said, as though thinking aloud, as his index finger traced his progress through the notes.
Jasper shrugged as he moved across to the desk, holding the photograph in a trembling hand.
Montgolfier pulled the spectacles off his face again and chewed on the end as he turned over the final pages in the folder.
“The tests are negative, Mr Candle.”
Jasper dropped the photograph. It clipped the edge of the desk, shattering the glass before falling silently onto the thick
pile of the deep blue carpet.
“Negative?”
“You do not have Hunti
ngton’s disease.”
Jasper lifted his hands and turned them over in front of his face methodically as he studied them with disdain – the rhythmic rolling of his thumb and index finger and fine continuous tremor. His left eye twitched. He felt nauseous.
“What’s all this from then, Doctor?”
Montgolfier looked up at Jasper and closed the folder in his lap.
“You have Parkinsons, Mr Candle. Medication was commenced in hospital and you’ve made remarkable improvement. Now all we have to do is beat the alcohol and you have everything to live for.”
Jasper felt his knees weaken and a loud buzzing sound develop in his head, as a snowstorm of spots invaded his field of vision. The last thing he remembered was that he was going to vomit.
SEVENTY
Drifting in and out of wakefulness, seeing blurred faces around him, aware of strange smells that had no firm origin; Jasper’s days merged into one long and surreal hallucination.
He recalled muffled voices that now swirled about in his head like smoke in a blender, a cacophony of subliminal and persuasive sound bytes manipulating his guilty conscience.
“It is not your fault that this has happened.”
“You are not to blame for your wife taking her life.”
“Don’t torture yourself about events over which you had no control.”
“Not everything in life is rational and easy to understand.”
“Human actions do not necessarily follow a logical thought process.”
“You are not to blame for your wife’s decision making.”
“You could not have prevented this.”
In spells of prolonged wakefulness he found himself staring at his hands, at the fine but ever present tremor, remembering how it had ridiculed him from the outset and how it had now made a mockery of his life, fooling everyone dear to him. He wanted to hate the tremor, to blame it for everything that had happened, but then a lucid spark would remind him that this was absurd.
Gradually, the days got longer and he remembered more. After a while he was able to recognise Montgolfier’s voice even with his eyes shut and he could predict what he would say next. He liked Montgolfier.
He hoped Debra had not visited. Fortunately, he thought, even if she had he had no recollection of her being in his room.
He knew Lazlo had been there and that pleased him.
One day he woke up and found himself in a neatly made white hospital bed, bright flowers on the table – Arum Lilies and roses – and a few cards. The room smelled of lavender and a meadow. Debra must have been here, he thought.
SEVENTY ONE
A staccato rap on the door startled Jasper from his reading. In his trembling grasp he held the yellowed letters above the neatly starched linen of his hospital bed.
“Jasper, old boy, what the devil happened to you?” Merrill said, a cautious grin across his cherubic face as he stepped into the room.
Jasper was a little annoyed to see Merrill but he smiled in return and extended his hand warmly.
“Merrill, my china plate, good of you to call.”
“It’s not your ticker, is it?” Merrill said with concern etched into his face as he sat down, tapping a balled fist against his own chest.
“No, no, not at all,” Jasper said quietly looking down at his hands, “It’s far worse than that.”
“Ah.” Silence. “Well, as long as you’re on the mend.”
Jasper smiled unconvincingly and pushed the letters under his arm.
“I feel… a bit better, thank you.”
“You look better,” Merrill said nodding effusively. “I made an appointment to see you in the office, but Stacey told me you were in hospital again.”
Jasper nodded submissively.
“Dr Montgolfier wants me here a few more days.”
Merrill took a deep breath, opened his mouth and then stopped, angling his head to one side as if measuring something in his mind before beginning.
“You know the case of the little boy who died from measles?”
Jasper nodded, frowning ever so slightly.
“You were planning a suit against the parents alleging negligence, reckless endangerment of the public by failing to vaccinate their child with MMR…”
Jasper continued to nod. “Uh-huh.”
Merrill sat back in the uncomfortable chair and took a deep breath.
“Well, the CPS has been looking into the case from a different angle and I thought you’d be very interested to know about this for two reasons.”
Merrill paused for effect, but Jasper said nothing, merely holding his steady gaze and nodding.
“Firstly, we have you to thank for putting us onto this idea, and secondly our course of action may well influence how you choose to proceed with your own case.”
Despite his mental exhaustion and emotional distraction, Jasper was more than a little intrigued, though it was the first time he had given a moment’s thought to the Ollie Kowalski case for some time.
“But I thought you regarded my case as having more holes in it than a colander?” Jasper said.
Merrill narrowed his eyes as if sucking on something sour.
“You got me thinking, Jasper, recent developments have very much played into our hands.”
“Another measles death?” Jasper said, sitting forward in bed.
“No, no, a GMC verdict.”
Jasper’s face displayed his confusion as a few tics tugged at his left eyelid.
“Dr Hans Isselbacher, who conducted and promoted the initial flawed research espousing the dangers of MMR and whose work has long since been discredited and rejected by the medical profession, has been struck off the General Medical Council register for misrepresentation, falsifying data and bringing the profession into disrepute.”
Jasper twisted his hands palm up in a whole body shrug.
“The CPS is bringing charges against Dr Isselbacher for his pivotal role in the MMR vaccination scandal.”
“What about Seamus Mallory and his parents?”
Merrill shook his head.
“The Mallorys are analogous to the small time drug dealer, Jasper. What we’re going for here is the cocaine factory in Colombia. Dr Isselbacher’s published research kick-started a media frenzy that put the MMR vaccine on the front pages of every national newspaper for all the wrong reasons, resulting directly in thousands of parents rejecting the vaccination for their children. They too are victims, like the Mallorys, and some of their children may also die from measles.”
Jasper sat in silence, nodding his head rhythmically, his left eye flicking only slightly every now and then.
“We are building a case against Dr Isselbacher: criminal negligence, possibly involuntary manslaughter.” Merrill paused, clearly pleased with himself. “I thought you’d like to know.”
Jasper leaned back and rubbed his chin.
“My client very much regards the Mallorys as the direct cause of her son’s death and I can sympathise with that point of view. You can’t absolve the gunman just because a Mafia Don ordered the hit.”
“If you’ll forgive me, old boy, clients may be guilty of the lynch mob mentality – hang the first blameworthy person that comes along – but we lawyers must look deeper into the problem.”
“I liked to think of it more as establishing a legal precedent, Merrill. If people know they can be prosecuted then they will think twice before refusing vaccinations. Problem solved.”
Merrill shrugged and nodded simultaneously, then checked his wristwatch.
“As I said before, Jasper, it’s not an argument without its merits, but I believe the judge will look further up the chain towards the end we’re presently pursuing. As long as somebody is blamed for the death of her child, your client should be satisfied.”
“You think that, do you?”
“That’s your talent, Jasper, it’s how you sell it, old boy. You’ve always told me that closure comes through apportioning blame. Well, just tell her that Dr Isselbacher is
responsible for her son’s death and that he will face criminal charges before the summer.”
Jasper grimaced, realising he was being patronized but feeling suddenly as if Merrill’s sentiments were resonating on a chord that he could not only hear but appreciate for its clarity. If only he could apply it to himself.
“I’ll give it some thought.”
Merrill left with a smile and a hand shake. Jasper wasn’t sure how Debra Kowalski would react to this news. The echoing hollowness inside him still made it difficult to feel anything for himself, let alone for others.
After a few moments of thoughtful preparation, Jasper returned to the letters he had hidden beneath his elbow, extracting them slowly with a gentle tremble of his left hand that now seemed confined mostly to his thumb and index fingers.
Beside his bed stood the framed photograph of Jennifer, bearing a fine tear through the centre where the glass fragments had sliced into the emulsion.
SEVENTY TWO
Within a few days Jasper was back in his home. He spent much of his time sitting in the drawing room, looking through old photograph albums, ordering his thoughts and reconstructing his emotions and memories.
He was once again able to look up at the wooden model of HMS Victory where it occupied pride of place on the mahogany mantelpiece, to recall the memories it evoked and to enjoy the magnificence of its beauty and personal significance without regret.
The doorbell rang: it was Lazlo with a carry bag of takeaway chicken madras, lamb jalfrezi, coconut naan, and pilau rice.
“I was in the neighbourhood, guv,” he said, swaggering past Jasper who stood in the entrance hall wearing tartan slippers and holding open the front door with a wry smile.
The aromatic smell of Indian spices and warm rice made Jasper’s stomach rumble. He could not remember when last he had eaten.
“What have you there, Lazlo?”
“Indian – my favourite, guv.”
“Let’s eat in the kitchen.”
They sat opposite each other around the rectangular Provence style oak table, Lazlo with his legs wide apart to accommodate his belly.
The Secret Anatomy of Candles Page 24