When Gilly came back to the table, he put a hand on her arm as she reached for their silverware.
“I’ll never be able to thank you enough for all you’ve done for me, Gilly. Both you and your dad.”
She sat down hard in the seat opposite him and her eyes filled with tears.
“It’s me who should be thanking you,” she said. “I was so lonely here with just Dad. You’ve seen him. Even when he’s not depressed, he doesn’t talk to me.”
John frowned. “That’s not true.”
“He thinks girls are useless.”
“Now I know that’s not true. He’s always saying how clever Dr. Lynch is. And you too.”
“Good try.” Gilly wiped her eyes and gave him a tremulous smile. “But that’s okay. It’s just how he is. He’s very paternalistic. It would never occur to him to talk to me. Not about important stuff like he tells you.”
“He doesn’t tell me stuff.”
“No, it’s all right, John. He’s got you and I’m glad.” She squeezed his hand. “But most of all, I’m glad because I’ve got you, too.”
*****
Two days later when John woke up, he saw it was steadily snowing again. He sat at the kitchen table watching Gilly’s back as she silently prepared his breakfast. The truth was, her silence was easier to take than the manic and fake cheerfulness she’d been trying for the last few days. More honest anyway.
She turned and thumped a bowl of steel cut oatmeal in front of him and then one at her place setting. She went back to the kitchen counter for a tray and brought it back, transferring a creamer, a pot of honey, and a bowl of toasted nuts to the table.
“Sorry no Sultanas,” she said as she sat down and picked up a spoon.
“Sorry?”
She frowned. “You call them raisins?”
“Oh. No problem. This looks great.” He poured the cream and honey over his oatmeal and smiled too broadly at her.
Damn. Now who’s being obnoxiously cheerful? Afraid she’d get the idea he was happy to be leaving, he leaned across the table toward her. “It’s not forever, Gilly.”
“I know. Do eat your porridge John while it’s hot.”
You’ll make a great mother, John thought but wisely did not say.
A book fell in the living room where Dr. Heaton was sitting. Because they were travelling today he wasn’t going into the lab. In fact he hadn’t gone into the lab for the last two days.
Nothing had improved on that front. Meanwhile he barely spoke to them.
Is this really the best time for me to be leaving her? he thought for the millionth time.
“There’s oatmeal, Dad,” Gilly called to her father. “But no brown sugar.” She looked at John and gave a half-smile. “Dad and I both love brown sugar on our porridge. Have you ever had it that way?”
John nodded as he ate his breakfast. “Yeah, brown sugar is great.”
Dr. Heaton walked into the kitchen and poured himself another mug of hot tea. He stood staring out the kitchen window for a moment seemingly oblivious to the fact that both John and Gilly were sitting in the room having breakfast.
Gilly cleared her throat. “But the honey’s pretty good, isn’t it, John? I’m not sure I don’t like it better.”
John looked at Gilly and then at Dr. Heaton. She was trying so hard and the guy just really could give a shit about honey or brown sugar or the price of rutabagas in China.
“I like it better,” John said encouragingly to her. “Did you get this from Geordie?”
“I did. I didn’t even know they made honey until you and I went out there last week. It’s lovely.”
The sound of the mug shattering against the tiled kitchen floor made both Gilly and John jump.
“Dad! Are you okay?” Gilly said, her voice shrill.
Dr. Heaton stood with his back to them staring out the window. John could see the doc’s hands were gripping the counter so hard his knuckles were white. He turned around slowly and gazed over their heads with his mouth open.
“Dr. Heaton?” John said, wondering if the doc was having a stroke.
“Dad!” Gilly jumped up and grabbed her father by the arm. He seemed to snap out of it then and drew her into a hug. He smiled at John over her shoulder.
“It’s the honey,” Dr. Heaton said.
An hour later, after they’d postponed the transport again, they were all three driving back to the commune at Rosemont. The countryside looked like an old-fashioned oil painting of froth-topped cottages with mile after mile of ancient fieldstone walls crisscrossing the snowy pastures.
Only Dr. Heaton was more excited than John, who not only got to stay on in Oxford, but was likely going to be in on the big discovery.
Of course! The honey. It not only went in all the tea the commune drank, it went on just about everything else too. Not everybody drank the Dandy tea—no matter what Geordie’s Granny said—but everybody in one way or another ate the honey.
It continued to snow as they drove to the commune and in spite of slower going due to icy roads, they made good time. Geordie had obviously seen the SUV coming down the long driveway. He was standing on his grandmother’s porch pulling on a heavy coat. They jumped out and walked over to him.
“Oy, John! I thought you was gone today!” Geordie called.
“I was supposed to be,” John said. “Dr. Heaton was wondering if we could see your beehives.”
“What for?”
“It’s not the hives so much, lad,” Dr. Heaton said, his face flushed with excitement, “but the fields they frequent. The flowers they pollinate.”
Geordie shrugged. “Follow me.”
He led them to the back of the commune. The snow continued to fall and it occurred to John that they might have trouble getting home. Every hut they passed had a chimney with smoke coming out of it. When he’d first visited the commune there had been a central cookfire but it was cold and unused now and under inches of snow.
“Surprised you’d want a tour on what some would say is the coldest day of the year,” Geordie said over his shoulder. “But as Granny says, ‘there’s no telling with city folk.’”
He led them to the back fence of the commune and opened a gate which they all filed through. Gilly was shivering but John didn’t dare suggest she stay in the car or go warm herself at Granny Bancroft’s hearth. She was every bit as excited as he was about her dad’s theory.
Please let it be the real thing this time.
The little white bee houses were lined in two rows of five huts each. The looked like oversized birdhouses with gabled roofs. The field they were sitting in was brown with no hint of whatever weed or flower must be rampant in it in the spring. Geordie went to the nearest hive and knelt by it. He unlatched the lock and pulled out a bottom board to show where the bees built their brood chambers and stored the honey.
“It’s right in there, like,” Geordie said, pointing to the frames that slid in and out of the hives. “This isn’t my job, mind, but it isn’t very tricky. The honey is collected from here. Of course, the bees are all hibernating now.”
Dr. Heaton squatted next to Geordie and fingered the frame and then looked past him to the field.
“It’s really more the flowers I’m interested in, lad. What the bees make the honey from.”
Geordie stood up and looked at the field now covered with snow.
“Well,” he said, “there’s goldenrod, of course. And tansy. Oh, yeah, and borage. Granny uses that in her medicinal concoctions too. And in salads.”
Dr. Heaton shook his head. “No, those aren’t any good. Are you sure? Is that all the plants?”
“Well, all the ones the bees are interested in,” Geordie said. He looked at John. “What’s going on? Why the interest in the bees?”
“It’s not the bees,” John said. He could see discouragement on the doc’s face. “We thought there might be something in the honey that y’all eat. You know, as the reason y’all aren’t as badly affected by the disease.”
> “Oh, I see. I’m sorry, Dr. Heaton.”
“Me, too, lad.” The doc looked out at the field, the lines of his face drawn downward. They turned to walk back to the commune.
“Are you going to test the honey we have at the house, Dr. Heaton?” John asked.
“Sorry, lad?” Dr. Heaton looked at him wearily. “Oh, yes, of course. It’s just that if the honey came from goldenrod or even borage—no offense to your grandmother, Geordie—there’s little likelihood it could serve as any sort of herbal prophylaxis.”
Geordie turned to Gilly. “Do you have both kinds of honey?”
She frowned. “I didn’t know there were two kinds.”
“What is it?” John asked. “Blackberry flavored or something?”
“No. Wasp honey. We eat loads of it, too.”
“Wasp honey?” Gilly said, looking over her shoulder at the bee hives on the other side of the fence. “I didn’t know wasps even made honey.”
“Oh, yeah, they do. But we don’t have hives for wasps because they’re such buggers, you know?”
“Well, how do you get their honey?”
“We basically find their nests and steal it from them,” Geordie said with a laugh.
Dr. Heaton stopped and put his hand on Geordie’s shoulder.
“Are the wasps in the same field as the bees?”
“No, they hang out in the woods. Granny had us move their nests from the woods to the front gate to be more convenient like.”
“Also a pretty effective security system,” John said with a grin.
“You’re not kidding,” Geordie said.
“What flowers do the wasps pollinate?” Dr. Heaton asked. The way he asked the question seemed to suck all the oxygen in the air around them. It seemed to take forever before Geordie answered.
“Moonflowers,” Geordie said.
The transformation in Dr. Heaton’s face was immediate. His eyes widened and the flush returned to his cheeks. “Take me there,” he said.
The excitement ran through each of them as they hurried back through the center of the commune. When they reached the front gate, Geordie turned to the right and led them to a thick copse of trees. Only a dusting of snow had reached the ground beneath the trees. The light was dim and it was eerily silent. They walked quietly, listening to their own breathing and the soft crunching of their steps on the brittle needles that carpeted the ground. They soon came upon a small clearing. Geordie went to the center of it.
“Here,” he said.
Dr. Heaton walked at once to a dead tree that was broken and hollowed out by animals and weather. Up the side of the tree, nearly invisible against its bark, was a network of brown vines.
“Is that it, Dad?” Gilly whispered. “Is it what we’re looking for?”
“It’s the moonflowers, aye,” Dr. Heaton said. He touched the delicate vines with a finger.
John came closer but there wasn’t much to see. The vines held no flowers and no leaves. They looked a little like the morning glory vines his grandmother had in her backyard in Jacksonville.
“So these are better than goldenrod?” John asked.
“For our purposes, aye, lad. It’s also called Jimson weed. It’s a highly toxic herb.”
“Is that good?”
“Gran says the moonflowers are bad poisonous,” Geordie said. “But she says something happens in the abdomen of the wasp so we don’t die when we eat their honey.”
“Alchemy, me lad,” Heaton said, his eyes bright with revelation. “It’s called alchemy.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The medical transport was delayed another week. John knew how close Heaton was to a cure now. Sidetracked by the failure of the dandelion herb as the possible key to the cure, the doc was nonetheless further ahead because he’d at least accepted the idea of an herbal solution.
It wasn’t the tea. It was the honey the commune used in the tea. Honey that had been made by wasps that pollinated the flower called Datura or Jimson weed. While the accidental alchemy of the wasp’s honey enabled the little commune to escape the worst effects of the disease, Heaton focused on finding an antidote to the herb’s inherent poison while isolating the chemical that killed the virus.
John continued his classes with Gilly at the college and went to meet the doc at his lab in the afternoons. The difference in the man’s attitude—the very atmosphere in the lab—was electrifying. Not only had the doc been right about the honey, he was making dramatic strides towards a useable cure derived from it.
Three days after their visit to the Rosemont commune, John was hurrying down the corridor toward the lab. The other docs still loitered about the halls or occasionally pressed their noses at the window of Heaton’s lab. They knew something was up. You’d be insensate not to feel it, John thought with building joy as he opened the door to the lab.
Sandra Lynch sat next to Dr. Heaton as he studied a slide through one of the high-powered microscopes. She still had her coat on so either she hadn’t been offered a cup of tea and an invitation to hang around, or she didn’t expect there to be reason to stay. John nodded politely to her before going to his own little corner of the lab and dumping his textbooks.
When the hell does she have time to do her own research? And if she thinks the doc is such an idiot, why is she always hanging around? The idea that Dr. Lynch fancied the doc seemed less likely the more John got to know her. Besides, was her perennially pinched face and wrinkled brow really the face of someone in love?
“What are you talking about?” Sandra Lynch’s voice was nasal and high. John turned to glance at her and the doc.
“We know the disease involves both bacterial and viral elements and which complicates treatment,” Dr. Heaton responded. “This twofold agency doesn’t respond to any of the normal approaches. But it’s the virus component that’s had us flummoxed.”
“I do know this, Finlay,” Dr. Lynch said sourly. “I have my own work, you know.”
“The disease’s bacteria can be removed and killed by filtering and boiling the water but these purification methods are irrelevant against the virus.”
“Well, ineffective anyway.”
“No, irrelevant. It’s not the virus in the water that’s the problem. It’s the virus once it gets in the body.”
“I see. What will you tell me next? That water quenches thirst? Or that butter comes from cows?”
“He’s saying we need to treat the person drinking the water not the water,” John said, standing up.
Dr. Lynch turned to look at John as if surprised to see him there. John figured it was entirely possible she hadn’t noticed him when he came into the lab.
“Exactly,” Dr. Heaton said. “I believe it’s a waste of time to look for ways of killing the virus in the water before people drink it. We need to sort it out once the virus is in the body.”
“And…you’ve done that?”
John watched Dr. Heaton pull the test tube stand out from behind a stack of books and he had to grin. Looks like the doc had a little bit of showmanship in him after all.
“I do believe I have.”
Dr. Lynch’s eyes went to the test tube filled with a pale amber fluid. A strong beam of sunlight from a north facing window illuminated it. No one spoke for a moment. Dr. Lynch seemed unable to stop looking at the test tube. John moved closer to the bench.
“Is the formula…complex?” she asked finally.
“Let’s just say I don’t believe anyone else will replicate it,” Dr. Heaton said firmly. For the first time, John saw a flash of steel and determination in the scientist’s face.
“Does it work?” she asked.
“It did on fifty mice and half a dozen chickens.”
“Infected with virus-contaminated water?”
“Yes, Sandra. Wouldn’t be much of a test otherwise, would it?”
“Are you saying it’s a cure and a preventative?”
“Taken in heavy doses, my discovery should mitigate the effects of the disease in pe
rsons already infected before they receive the compound. I believe most will eventually survive as a result. But—and this is the key thing—the compound blocks the disease-causing agency of the virus in persons who take it before the virus gets into their bodies. It prevents the virus from its normal pathological pathways in the human body.”
Dr. Lynch straightened up, her thick shaggy eyebrows were brought together in a frown. John figured it was a pretty safe bet she didn’t love not being taken into Heaton’s confidence over what was in the new cure. But to her credit, she swallowed it down.
“Well done,” she said.
“Thank you, my dear.” The moment between them was brief and, if you weren’t looking for it, virtually nonexistent. But John had seen his mother and Mike play this game for two full years before they finally admitted their mutual attraction. He couldn’t read adults that well but he could see Dr. Lynch was all in and Dr. Heaton was at least willing.
“What will you do now?”
“Take it to London where it’ll be prepared in quantities for mass distribution.”
The two stared at each other as if they were the only ones in the room and John had the awful feeling that one of them was going to lean over and…He cleared his throat.
“You know, sir,” John said from across the room. “It’s weird that Ireland thinks it’s safe from the disease because all it takes is birds drinking the infected water to fly across the channel and end up in someone’s lunch to bring the disease to Ireland.”
Both Dr. Heaton and Dr. Lynch turned and looked at John, who felt his face flush with embarrassment. Had he said something incredibly stupid?
Dr. Lynch was the first to speak. She didn’t take her eyes off John.
“My God, Finlay. Where did you find this boy?”
“He found us,” Heaton said with a proud smile. “Clever, isn’t he? And you’re right, John. It’s only a matter of time before Ireland has the sickness too. Which is all the more reason.”
Irish End Games, Books 4-5-6 Page 44