‘I do, I do, but a chap can’t always be lying down.’
Another cold blast from the door signalled the arrival of the others, who had joined up on First Avenue. As Hélène slipped down from the stool to embrace Seema, Toby leant both elbows on the bar for a moment, frowning into his Scotch. Was this how he should have spent his five minutes alone with her?
Over dinner the conversation had flowed with chit-chat about what everyone had been doing since the meeting in Oxford. At the first pause, Stephen had made his big announcement with a peroration on how rare an event it was for anyone to resign the Fellowship of an Oxford college. The news had not caused quite the sensation he might have hoped for, and to inquiries about his discussions at the New School he had been offhand. Fortunately he was in a position to consider his options.
Toby sighed for no particular reason other than forcing a break in Stephen’s monologue. ‘So, Tom couldn’t make it again?’
Seema shook her head. ‘Family moving to New York this very weekend. Said he thought on balance it probably wasn’t necessary to ask his wife what she thought about him spending it eating and drinking with his old college buddies while she dealt with U-Haul.’
Toby, smiling over his drink, turned to Hélène. ‘How about you, Hel, ready to blow them away with the big speech?’
‘I’ve done nothing but worry about it since Oxford.’ The others provided predictable reassurances. Only Michael remained quiet. Stephen asked whether there was to be an agenda for the weekend, to which Toby responded by asking Seema if there was any news on her book.
‘The news is, I probably no longer have a publisher.’ Briefly she recounted the story of her meeting at Gammer & Duce.
Toby reached for the wine. ‘Picked the wrong gal to bully. On the other hand you can see where the poor chap’s coming from. Big story – ‘I was the President’s under-age sex slave.’ Are we talking consensual by the way? Always liked that word. Don’t get much chance to use it.’
Seema smiled despite herself.
‘I’m under fire on that, too, Tobe. My feminist colleagues insist that a sexual relationship between master and slave is rape by definition.’
‘Mmm, that works.’ Stephen was holding his wine glass up before the candle flame, examining its colour. ‘In fact it’s quite a good little illustration of how analysis by power relations gets you straight to the heart of the matter.’
It was when Seema was talking about the surge of interest in slavery among middle-class African-Americans that mention was first made of a senior figure at the United Nations who had hired one of her PhD students to do private research into his own slave ancestry. Unobserved by the others, Michael’s focus sharpened as Seema speculated that the researcher, a mature student, ‘might be a little bit in love with him, or maybe it’s just his gorgeous row-house on Sutton Place.’
After dinner they stopped to pick up ice cream at the Häagen-Dazs on 57th Street before crowding into a chequered cab and heading down to the Village. Toby was up-front chatting to the driver. Michael, crushed in the back with the Gladstone bag on his knees, remained silent all the way downtown. Only as they were crossing 23rd Street did he ask Seema if she happened to know the name of the UN official she had mentioned over dinner.
14 | If this is a joke
Following her divorce, Seema Mir had decluttered her life of domestic detritus. To the loft of the four-storey walk-up on Charles Street she had brought very little apart from the two South Asian rugs whose subtle variations of flame and orange found echo in the dark reds and terracottas of the two Kokoschka reproductions on the walls. Another of the decisions she had made at that time was that she would have few clothes or holidays and that her great luxury would be not to cook. Instead she took full advantage of the delis and take-outs that seemed to be springing up on every corner of Greenwich Village and it was for this reason that the tiny Bauhaus-style kitchenette at one end of the loft had maintained its minimalist purity. And it was to this inviting space that Seema, Hélène, Stephen, Toby and Michael climbed that evening after being dropped off around 11.00pm in Sheridan Square.
Seema lit candles and put on coffee while the others unpacked the tubs of ice cream and set out the napkins and plastic spoons. Toby, still a little breathless from the stairs, applied his lighter to twists of newspaper in the stove.
Coffee arrived as the flames began to leap, illuminating floorboards and walls, the Kokoschkas glowing down as a cello sonata played softly in the background and the four of them made themselves comfortable on sofa and chairs, leaving Seema the cane-backed Bikaner planter’s chair that was the only antique piece. Soon the talk grew sleepy from wine, warmth and jet lag. A settled comfort reigned as another bottle was opened.
‘Before you pour that, Toby, I’ve got something serious I’d like to bring up, if nobody objects too much.’ A few groans were aimed at Michael, who was sitting forward in one of the armchairs, the Gladstone bag on the floor beside him.
Toby continued to pour. ‘Gravitas in a bottle this, mate, perfect accompaniment to anything likely to wander down the tedious side.’
Michael smiled patiently and accepted the glass. ‘It’s a proposal I want to make. Just to get your initial reactions.’
Toby poured for them all. ‘Run it up the flagpole and see who salutes. Just heard that today. God, I love America.’
Hélène, fighting sleep, covered her glass with her hand as the bottle neared. ‘So let’s have it then, Michael.’
Michael took a deep breath. ‘It’s about what we talked about in Oxford, and I’m afraid it might come as something of a shock.’
Toby, registering something in Michael’s voice, returned his glass to the table. Seema and Hélène glanced at each other. Stephen looked bored.
‘When I got back’ – Michael hesitated for a moment – ‘after Oxford, all the new data were waiting on my desk. Latest vaccination coverage from about a hundred countries. Another year, another five million kids killed by measles, tetanus, pertussis.’
He let the silence absorb his words, the mellow mood of the evening already gone. ‘Anyway, as I worked through it all, I kept hearing something that Toby said in the Parks that evening: about the obvious thing to do being to “get hold of the smallpox virus and threaten to blow bubbles with it unless the world got off its butt and immunized every last child”.’
‘Joke, Michael?’ Toby had raised his eyebrows patiently.
‘Many a true word … as you reminded me the very next day, Stephen.’
Stephen managed to frown and look amused at the same time. ‘I said I thought what was happening was a crime against humanity, and that as such it could justify any action taken to avert it. At the time you reacted rather conventionally, Michael, as I remember it. Though of course—
‘Where is this going, Michael?’ Hélène was wide awake now, and the first to glimpse what might be coming.
Michael reached down beside his chair for the Gladstone bag from which he had been inseparable all evening. Lifting it to his knees he snapped back the lock, the others watching in silence as he took out a plastic bag containing what looked like a half-pint thermos, the greenish metallic colour clearly visible through the milky polythene. No one spoke as he brought out two more identical bags and set them down on the table.
The cello continued to play softly. Firelight flickered on the walls. But the last of the ice cream on the table was forgotten as Seema, Hélène, Toby and Stephen stared, reactions stuck in neutral, refusing to engage with what they were witnessing. In the silence, the first taps of hail could be heard on the skylight.
Seema spoke first. ‘You can’t be serious, Michael.’
After a long silence Hélène took Seema’s hand. ‘Come on, Michael, you’re not asking us to believe—’
Michael lifted his eyes. ‘I am asking you to believe. But I’m asking you to believe a couple of other things, too.’ He grasped the first finger of his left hand. ‘First, no one’s in the slightest danger from
what’s inside those jars. It’s inert, freeze dried.’
His listeners formed a still-life tableau as he gripped the next finger. ‘And second, the threat wouldn’t ever be carried out. It’d be just a threat, no more. Just to see if we can’t get something moving. It might not work. And if it doesn’t then – too bad. We forget about it. These’ – he released his fingers and waved a hand at the bags on the table – ‘wouldn’t ever be used.’
For another twenty seconds not a word was spoken as the others continued to stare from Michael’s face to the three plastic bags standing on the table amid the espresso cups and half-empty tubs of melted Häagen-Dazs. More visible now that Michael had leaned back from the firelight, the jars themselves could be seen to be of the kind used to keep soup warm – broad-necked, capped by a black screw-on cup.
It was Hélène who broke the long silence. ‘You’ve gone mad.’
Michael held her eyes. Stephen was staring at the wall, the smallest of smiles on his face. Toby looked suddenly older. Seema took a deliberate sip of wine, compelling Michael to look at her before she spoke. ‘If this is a joke, Michael, please tell us all now.’
Occasionally there were outbursts of nervous laughter, and repeated appeals for Michael to confess that this was some kind of nerdish psychological test. But as midnight came and went, disbelief began a slow retreat in the face of Michael’s quiet insistence. And when Toby asked him just to go over very slowly what he was proposing, step by step, he did so in a voice that was all the more chilling for its matter-of-factness. They would demonstrate that they were in possession of the virus and announce that they intended to go public with the fact unless the government of the United States made a credible commitment to leading an international effort that would immunize all the world’s children within the next five years.
Stephen, attempting to match Michael’s matter-of-fact tone, rested his stockinged feet on the coffee table. ‘And why wouldn’t the response be,’ he raised a dismissive hand, ‘just vaccinate everybody against smallpox?’
Hélène shook her head. ‘That’s not what they’d do.’
Michael nodded his agreement. ‘Even if there were enough vaccinia in the US – and believe me there isn’t – immunizing everybody still wouldn’t be the answer. What they’d do is go into surveillance mode: ID suspected cases, quarantine confirmed victims, immunize any and all possible contacts.’
Stephen shrugged, determined not to be impressed. ‘Then that’s what they’ll do.’ Seema and Toby were still looking numbed.
Michael looked to Hélène for support. ‘They might. But gearing up to do it, organizing coast-to-coast surveillance and preparing quarantine and vaccination protocols would be a risk. A huge risk.’
Hélène nodded, closing her eyes and leaning her head back on the sofa. ‘Coast-to-coast panic.’
Seema had been staring at the plastic bags, taking in the full horror of what was happening. Eventually she looked up at Michael. ‘Where did those come from?’
Michael raised both palms. ‘That’s the one thing I can’t tell you.’
Stephen picked up one of the bags and examined it with a show of unconcern. ‘Forgive my evidence-based bias, Michael, but how do we know this is the real thing?’
‘You don’t. But I do. And it wouldn’t be much of a threat if it weren’t. First thing they’d do is test the hell out of it down in Atlanta.’
Toby was staring intently at his friend now. The rain had stopped and the only sound was the faint stirring of logs behind the glass doors. ‘Michael, are you sure you’re all right, mate?’
Seema added quietly. ‘Toby’s right. I can’t believe … I can’t believe we’re even talking like this.’
Michael began gathering up the plastic bags, returning them one by one to the Gladstone bag. When he had locked them away he turned to her and spoke with quiet reluctance. ‘And can you believe that two thousand more children have died from vaccine-preventable diseases since we met in Billy’s Bar tonight?’
It was after 2.30am when Hélène and Toby entered Estelle’s late-nite bar on Second Avenue at 38th Street. Michael and Stephen had been dropped off at their hotels after a surreal cab ride through the not-quite-lifeless streets. Not wishing to be alone with her thoughts, and knowing she would be unable to sleep, Hélène had accepted the invitation to a nightcap.
They took stools at the lonely end of the long bar, Toby suggesting a ‘cleansing ale’. The bartender, who seemed to know Toby, set up the two beers and left them alone, moving down to the other end of the room to continue watching the hockey game on TV.
They sipped in silence, knowing there was no other topic but not knowing how to begin. Toby eventually waved a hand to attract Hélène’s attention in the mirror behind the bar. She smiled weakly and he turned to face her. ‘You wouldn’t have a bar of this, would you, Hel?’
Her expression was suddenly frightened, and he rested a hand on hers on the brass rail. She left her hand where it was for a moment, but then picked up the beer and bit her lower lip. ‘I’d say it was sheer off-the-wall insane if it were anybody else in the world other than Michael Lowell.’
Toby picked up his own beer. ‘I know. Not like him to play silly buggers.’
After a long silence their eyes met again in the mirror. ‘You wouldn’t go along, would you, Toby?’
Toby toyed with a beer mat. The only other occupants of the bar had left their stools and begun a card game at one of the dining tables. ‘Love Michael, Hel. Always have. Always will. Not a false note on his keyboard.’ The card game was already becoming rowdy and the bartender had turned up the TV. ‘Smartish sort of a bloke as well.’ He inspected the glass and took a long pull on his beer. ‘So if he wants to do this, sweetheart, and for some unimaginable reason he wants TJ’s help – he’s got it.’ He drained his glass in one go then turned to her again. ‘My God, Hélène, there’s no two people in the world I …’ He broke off and looked away, hiding his face from her. When he had recovered himself he turned back to give her a cheerful smile via the mirror. ‘Glad you’re here, Hel. Hate to drink with the flies.’
After a few moments, Hélène placed a hand on his arm and turned him towards her. ‘Toby, I’ve never told you about Fabrice, have I?’
15 | Forget it ever happened
The din of the crowds echoed around the tiled vaults of the great beaux-arts building and the line for a table stretched back as far as the lower concourse, making it obvious to them all that The Oyster Bar in the bowels of Grand Central Terminal was an impossible venue. Toby tried to drum up some enthusiasm for the chowders and pan roasts, and Stephen was saying something about the great age of the railway being an early example of public investment for private profit, but conversation was all but impossible. And what the five of them had to talk about that day did not lend itself to shouting.
Seema and Hélène expressed a strong preference for being outdoors, however cold the day might be, and Seema it was who proposed riding the subway to 86th street from where they could soon be in the lonelier reaches of Central Park.
Twenty minutes later the little group was emerging from the Lexington Avenue subway and heading across town, crossing Park Avenue with its icy flower beds and leafless trees. Hélène walked beside Toby in silence as they continued west on 86th, passing the black doors and raised brass plaques of some of the world’s most exclusive paediatric practices.
Picking up coffee and hot dogs from a street vendor outside the entrance to the Guggenheim, they entered the park a little after one o’clock, stopping at the top of the steps to look out over the lake at the skyline of the Upper West Side.
For a while nothing was said as they sipped scalding coffee and bit into mustard-striped frankfurters. Apart from the occasional steam-breathed runner or muffled dog-walker, they were alone on the Bridle Path that circles what was then still known as Central Park Reservoir.
Not until they were approaching the West Drive was the apparent embargo on speech broken. Stephen,
breath frosting over the top of a zipped-up parka, gave his little preparatory cough: ‘Before we go any further into this thing, I think I should just say a word or two.’ There was a pause as a pair of joggers came towards them. When they were once more at a safe distance, Stephen repeated the cough. ‘It would not, I think, be entirely fair to allow Michael to bear the whole burden of this enterprise without my acknowledging that it is in fact an idea that, as Michael said, I ventured to put to him on that last morning in Oxford.’
Everything around them was winter dead: the earth frozen, the hollows and dips of the park filled with less-than-pristine snow. Alongside the path the rhododendrons and double-pink cherry trees still had months to wait and at the edges of the lake coveys of mallards, grebes and gadwalls were huddled on the ice. Hélène, walking on the inside nearest the water, spoke quietly into the freezing air, as if warning Stephen to keep his voice down. ‘I believe it was Toby’s little joke that started it all off.’
Michael stole a glance at Seema, walking by his side. The amusement around the mouth and eyes had gone, the harsh winter daylight exposing the strain and lack of sleep in the lines of her face. He pushed his bare hands into the pockets of his overcoat. ‘Thank you, Stephen, and maybe I should also say that it’s not entirely fair of me to expect you all to take it on board as suddenly as … as suddenly as last night. I’ve had months to think about this.’
Several more runners overtook them, flesh glowing pink, breath making brief clouds. When they were a good hundred metres ahead, it was Seema who made the next effort: ‘I’m struggling with this, like we all are. My respect for Michael …’ - her voice faltered for the first time and she did not complete the sentence. ‘But I think the point is that … in a case such as this … you can’t let anyone else make judgements for you. Not even Michael.’
The Kennedy Moment Page 11