Irish End Games, Books 4-5-6

by Kiernan-Lewis, Susan

  Dr. Lynch left around eleven o’clock and Dr. Heaton went up to bed a few minutes later with admonishments that Father Christmas would bypass the house if two naughty children were still up and awake. John and Gilly sat in front of the fire with mugs of cocoa. John’s mind was in a whirl from everything that had happened that night and it was impossible for him to even think of sleep. He imagined his mother smiling and laughing. He prayed Gavin had made it back home safe. He imagined how wonderful it was going to be to put the whole awful episode behind them. As soon as his mind formed the thought, his heart clenched at the idea of losing Gilly and the doc.

  “You know Dr. Lynch is in love with him,” Gilly said.

  “You think so?” But John had already figured that out.

  “Oh, definitely. But she’s really plain, don’t you think? I mean, I know she’s smart and all.”

  “She’s in your dad’s lab all the time.”

  “See? What did I tell you? She’s practically stalking him.”

  “Yeah, but I’m not sure she’s there for that reason.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m probably wrong.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Well, it’s like she’s always asking what he’s working on and how much he’s done and has he found anything new.”

  “You think…she wants to steal his cure?”

  “I don’t know. It just doesn’t feel very…collaborative, you know? It’s more nosy than that.”

  “I don’t trust her one bit.”

  “I don’t think I do either. She’s really hard to like.”

  They sat quietly for a moment staring into the fire, listening to it pop and crackle as the flames devoured the sweet scented applewood.

  “I can’t believe Dad bribed you to stay because of me,” Gilly said.

  John looked at her in surprise. She was still staring into the fire.

  “What?”

  “I’m not a basket case, you know. I guess that’s what he thinks of me.”

  “Parents worry, is all. About everything. My mom’s the same way. And maybe that’s the reason I stayed in the beginning but it’s not the reason now.”

  She looked at him, her eyes glowing in the reflection of the fire. Her long dark hair tumbled luxuriantly around her shoulders. “Truly?”

  “Yeah, definitely. I mean, I’m excited to see my mom and everyone again but I hate the thought of leaving you and your dad.”

  “Maybe you could just go back for a visit and then come back to Oxford.”

  “I wish it were that easy.”

  “Why isn’t it?”

  “Because…listen, come with me and your dad to the commune sometime and you’ll see for yourself. Living like that—which is a lot like the compound in Ireland—everyone has to pull their weight or everyone else feels it. They need me.” He turned back to the fire and sighed. “I knew that when I left but I thought finding Gavin was more important. It’s a hardship me not being there and not just because my mom’s worried about me.”

  “You’re lucky,” Gilly said sipping her cocoa and watching him, “to be needed like that.”

  “Jeez, Gilly, you’re needed. The doc needs you big time. And you single-handedly brought me back from death’s door.”

  “All I did was give you broth and hold your hand.”

  John reached out and took her hand. “That was the best part.”

  She squeezed his hand and it seemed that both of them held their breath for a moment.

  “I really want you to meet my mom,” John said softly. “She’d love you.”

  Like I think I do, he wanted to say, but for now it was enough that he thought it.

  “I’d like that,” Gilly said, as she leaned into him.

  John leaned toward her and kissed her on the mouth. She smelled like lilacs and lemons and chocolate. A tendril of her long hair tickled his nose. She kissed him back.

  *****

  The next morning—Christmas morning—John watched the dazzling sparkle of the frozen River Cherwell as he and Dr. Heaton walked across the High Bridge. There was not a building or a tree to mar the pristine blank canvas of the river caught in midwinter.

  “That’s the University Park just there,” Dr. Heaton said, pointing to the west bank of the river. “In summer it’s paradise. I wish you could see it.”

  “It’s pretty gorgeous right now.”

  “Aye, but in summer there are picnics and boating and cricket. It’s lovely just to walk through.”

  Gilly had made them a hearty English breakfast before she curled up in front of the fire with the new books she’d gotten for Christmas. John wasn’t entirely sure how things had changed between them after last night’s Christmas Eve kiss but he knew he liked whatever it was. Hesitant but sure; tentative but secure. He had come downstairs before she did and when he heard her steps on the stairs, butterflies had kicked off in his stomach in a very pleasurable way.

  “So John, lad, are ye excited about going home?”

  “I am, sir. I can’t wait to see everyone. I only wish you and Gilly could come with me to the compound. I’d love for you to meet my family.”

  “Well, another time we will for certain. As soon as we’ve got this disease on the run, Ireland will open its doors again. You’ll see.”

  “I sure hope so. Was that your brother on the phone last night?”

  “Oh, aye. That was Daniel. I’m sorry you won’t have a chance to meet him.”

  “He’s in Parliament, right?”

  “Aye, that he is. And doing a smash up job, too. It’s no secret he’s the reason I got the lead on the work for the cure. Can’t let him down.”

  The doc got quiet after that and it crossed John’s mind that his brother might be giving him a hard time about not coming up with a cure yet. He hoped the guy hadn’t said anything to spoil the doc’s Christmas. When they got to the lab, not surprisingly, they were the only ones in the building. John wasn’t entirely sure why the doc wanted to come in this morning but he suspected that his buckets had become a sort of touchstone for Dr. Heaton.

  Why doesn’t he just bring ‘em home? It’s not like they’re sterilized or special in any way. But the doc was secretive about his work—with everyone but John. John assumed this was because he wasn’t threatened by a kid. The way the other jerks in the department and the lab spoke to Dr. Heaton made a pretty good case against ever bringing anyone into your confidence.

  In the lab, Heaton flipped on the overhead fluorescent lights and John went immediately to the workspace he’d carved out for himself weeks ago. In the corner of the lab near one of the sinks and under a glass-fronted cabinet was a narrow zinc-topped bench with a stool pushed up to it. On the table John kept his textbooks and a series of notebooks he’d begun writing in. Part of his notes had to do with things he found interesting either in the lab or in Oxford itself. He wanted to be able to tell his mother in detail about his experience here.

  The doc’s work surface took up most of the main workbench in the center of the room. On it was an assortment of high-powered microscopes, test tubes, a series of immunoassay analyzers and a microplane reader. In the middle of the state-of-the-art immunology equipment sat two white plastic buckets. Dr. Heaton went to the buckets immediately and began inspecting them.

  John pulled out his stool to sit when he noticed that one of his notebooks was on the floor. He froze. He knew without a doubt that he’d left all this books and notebooks stacked neatly and lined up parallel to the edge of the table. There was no way he would’ve unknowingly knocked one of his books on the floor before he left the lab yesterday. He looked at the doc who was humming and pulling a mesh filter out of the lid of one of the buckets. There was also no way that the doc ever came over to John’s area and even if he did, he wouldn’t mess with John’s notebooks.

  John reached down and picked up the notebook and flipped through it. Had somebody come into the lab after he and the doc had left yesterday? He knew the doc always locked up bu
t that meant less than nothing. These old locks could be sprung with a paperclip. He stopped turning pages when he came to the place where one page had been torn out, leaving only a remnant clinging to the metal spiral. A vibration began in his fingers as he realized he was holding proof that someone had gone through his notebooks and taken a page from them. He flipped to the page before and suddenly remembered the missing page held his personal notes about Dr. Heaton’s progress in the lab.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Finlay tried to remember what late December had been like in his childhood. Cold to be sure. Young John and Gilly were sitting in front of the fire with a pile of good books and more hot chocolate than was good for them. He smiled at the picture.

  Nothing in Oxford came close to the bone-chilling walk home from school with Daniel each day when they were boys. Over the moor and two miles across the pasture—or civilization as Daniel liked to call it. Finlay grinned as he let himself into the lab. Two days after Christmas, still a holiday weekend and the halls were empty. Finlay preferred it this way. One didn’t have to nod greetings or affect a mindfulness that didn’t exist. Didn’t everyone have way too much to do with their own work to care a toss about what anyone else was doing?

  But he knew the lab wasn’t that way, had never been that way and likely never would be. Mostly, his colleagues tried to be congenial, even if their efforts were insincere.

  All but one. He moved to his lab bench and dumped his briefcase and coat on the chair, frowning as the thought and image of Ethan White came to mind. Ethan hated him. Even Finlay could see that. Ethan never missed an opportunity to sneer or roll his eyes at Finlay, or to cut him as they passed in the hall.

  Ethan had been his first friend in Oxford, and his first lab mate. They’d gone to conferences together, and holidayed together with their families. Finlay rubbed a tiredness from the bridge of his nose. Little Ben and Gilly had been natural playmates. Poor little sod.

  He turned and walked to the small kitchenette in the corner of the lab.

  How many summer holidays had they spent together as families? How many Christmases, for that matter? Jenny and Cynthia weren’t quite as natural a pairing as the husbands and kiddies had been, but they enjoyed each other, Finlay was pretty sure.

  Well, at least until the Queen’s Birthday five years ago.

  He filled the electric kettle from the bottom bucket in the water filtration system sitting on the counter next to the sink. He pulled a small teapot down from the open shelf and jammed in four tea bags before walking over to his desk. He booted up the computer. Most people had very limited Internet access these days but for what Finlay needed, limited would do fine. He sat down and typed into the search engine window, plague effects city or country?

  The news sites were going full force on the trajectory of the plague and making a big deal of the fact that it wasn’t in Ireland yet. Huh. The plague and snakes. Wonder what poor ol’ Ireland is doing right?

  He found a couple bloggers debating about whether or not the disease was worse in the countryside or the city. While history wasn’t his strong suit, he seemed to remember that the black plague had hit the cities the hardest. After a few minutes, he got up to stop the screaming teakettle.

  How could the general consensus be that the plague’s effects were no better in the country? Was that true? Was there a reliable news source that could corroborate that? Because if it was no better in the country than in the city…if that were true…it would mean that whatever Geordie’s commune was doing to ward off the effects of the disease had nothing to do with where they were. He poured the boiling water in the teapot and watched the tea bags bob to the top before resettling the lid.

  If country folk are every bit as affected by the disease as anyone else then is there something about the commune itself? He glanced over at his workbench. He had three sets of buckets. Two of them were from the commune. He’d swapped buckets with them and completely disassembled them.

  As he waited for the tea to steep, he took down a large mug and rummaged in a drawer for sugar. He’d have to drink it black. He’d forgotten to bring milk. His wife Cynthia used to drink it black. He remembered his old Scottish auntie admonishing Cynthia about it once, calling it “that filthy Russian habit.” Probably no surprise that Cynthia never wanted to go back to visit.

  Gilly was ten years old the June they went to London for the Queen’s birthday celebration. He could still remember Gilly standing with little Ben at the barricade and watching the spectacular Trooping the Color parade out of Buckingham Palace. After a long and exhausting day, it was that night at dinner that a drunken Jenny had informed the table—children included—that Ethan and Cynthia had been “doing the dirty” for months behind everyone’s backs. Finlay never did hear the story of how Jenny found out. It didn’t matter in the end. One parade five years ago had terminated two friendships and one marriage. Jenny moved out as soon as they got back to Oxford. Finlay heard she moved back to her parents’ home in Dundee with Ben. Three years later they’d both succumbed to the plague.

  As for Finlay and Cynthia things weren’t so straightforward. He loved her and Gilly needed her. He knew if there was a way to get past Cynthia’s infidelity, he needed to find it. He blew on his tea and stared out into the winter sky. It was midday but already it was darkening.

  Cynthia said she wanted the marriage to work. She insisted the affair had not been her idea. And because Finlay so needed to believe her, and because he couldn’t go back in time and change the facts of what had happened, he chose to do the only thing he could do to right the situation—for Gilly’s sake if no one else’s.

  He changed himself. He accepted the crime, forgave it, and pushed it from his mind.

  His glance fell upon the three plastic buckets. His hands began to tremble slightly. Something was happening. Something was forming in his mind. An idea had been burrowed deep in his brain and was finally making itself known.

  He walked over to the buckets, and set his tea mug down next to them on the counter.

  What if I don’t alter the water? What if I alter me?

  He looked at the dark tea water. And suddenly the answer was right there.

  It’s the tea. The dandelion tea.

  He looked out the window and then at the door as if he needed to run, as if he couldn’t decide what to do next. His hand went to the mug of tea and then stopped and he turned and ran to his desk and his computer.

  Of course! It’s the fecking tea. It’s whatever chemical is in the damn dandelions. They all drink it. It’s not what they do to the water before they drink it. Bloody hell. It’s what they do to their bodies as they’re ingesting it.

  He laughed out loud for the first time in five years.

  *****

  For John, the two week Christmas holiday was going to be a time to explore Oxford, to read a stack of books in the doc’s library, and to fine tune his notes for his mom about life in the UK. John decided to spend most of his two weeks away from the lab because the doc seemed to be obsessed with some new idea that had to do with his buckets—at least John thought they had to do with the buckets.

  He and Gilly took long walks together where they developed alternative scenarios in which she either came to the compound to live with him—which was easily the less attractive fantasy as far as she was concerned—or where John remained with her and her father all the way through his graduate education. It was a fun daydream and whenever John forced himself to really open his eyes and see, he had to admit that the present was more stimulating than anything he’d experienced in the past four years. And, given the past four years, that was saying a lot.

  Bad weather had again forced them to postpone the medic transport to Belfast. The next scheduled one that Dr. Heaton could get all three of them on was later in the month. John found he didn’t mind. He’d get home soon enough. He knew that now.

  One morning before the Christmas holidays were over as the doc was putting together his briefcase and getting rea
dy to leave for the day, Gilly came bounding downstairs to say her friend Amelia had invited her on a family picnic to Stratford-upon-Avon. John knew that the numbers of infected people in Oxford proper had continued to drop, and healthy people were getting back to normal social activities. The pubs, for example, were doing a booming business. It amazed John that here in Oxford life was almost back to business as usual, when just three hours to the south crazy Mr. Quig was serving a desperate clientele whatever swill he could scrape off the walls and floors to sell them.

  “Want some company?” he asked the doc after Gilly ran back upstairs to get ready for her day. “I haven’t been to the lab in awhile.”

  “I would thoroughly enjoy that, John my lad,” Dr. Heaton said jovially. He’d been very enthusiastic lately and while he’d been spending longer hours at the lab, he’d come home tired but happy. John pulled the collar of his wool jacket up against his neck to ward off the biting cold as he and Dr. Heaton walked down the street.

  “Seen Dr. Lynch lately?” John asked. He and Gilly had been talking about how Dr. Lynch hadn’t come by since Christmas. John’s theory was that if her interest really was romantic, she’d come to the house. Otherwise, if it wasn’t, if it was something more sinister…then it made sense she only showed up at work

  “No, no. Nobody in the lab over Christmas,” Dr. Heaton said cheerfully. “Everyone has families to be with.”

  So do you, John wanted to say, but he knew it didn’t matter. Dr. Heaton had an important task. A world-shattering important task.

  “So are you having more luck with the buckets?” John prodded. “Were the commune buckets significantly different from anyone else’s?”

  Dr. Heaton stopped walking and John paused to look up at him.