by Jane Rogers
In the interval he paces the street outside, compelled by the desire to make a change in his situation. His emotions have been so plastered over and papered up that they have lost all meaning: he has duped himself into the life of a vegetable.
The warehouse is transformed for the second half. Blossom-laden branches hanging from the roof make a pink canopy, with dappled sunlight filtering through. The freshly green-carpeted ground is confetti-strewn with petals; daffodils and tulips spill from overflowing tubs. Shepherds and shepherdesses dance among the audience. There is birdsong, spring and innocence, and Perdita and Florizel’s love turns the world anew.
In the shameless sentiment and prettiness of the staging, and Autolycus’ and the clown’s foolishness, Con rediscovers his composure. It is only a play, after all. The decisions not to rage, not to leave, not to pull the house down around her ears, were painfully made and made for good reasons. Unfortunately he can see now that they were not the right decisions. Because as long as a thing is patched up, it will continue to limp along. Destruction is what’s needed for life to spring anew. The freezing obliteration of winter, annihilation by ice of all that tangled growth. It is a cycle old as the seasons; a time of growth and plenty will be succeeded by darkness and death. Out of darkness and death, new life rises. His way of living has been as unnatural as his work, eking out the life of an ailing thing, instead of embracing destruction and trusting spring to come.
By the time the play reaches its sweetly cyclical ending, Con is at peace. It is rare to feel such clarity. He must end this. Walk away. Walk into the freezing darkness and out the other side. He will be able to do it now.
He takes Megan for a late dinner. She is still wrapped in the glamour of the part, still an uncanny double for El. She has a film audition in the offing, plus a term’s work with a Theatre in Education company if she wants it. After eighteen months surviving on call centre work, chorus in a panto and crowd scenes in adverts, her career is taking shape and they can both drink to that.
‘Will Mum come to see it?’
‘I’ll tell her she ought to. But you know how busy she is.’
‘She didn’t see The Dream Play either.’ Accusingly.
‘Not my fault.’
‘Why didn’t you ask her to come with you?’
‘She’s more likely to come if you remind her yourself.’
‘I’ve invited her once. If she doesn’t want to see me it’s up to her. Other people’s mothers —’
‘Other people’s mothers don’t have such important careers.’
‘Pah!’ said Megan, exactly as El might have done. ‘I don’t know why she bothered having so many children.’
‘Why, how many do you propose to have?’
‘One, max. So I can look after her properly.’
‘You weren’t looked after properly?’
‘OK, we were, but not by Mum. More by the au pairs than Mum. More by you than anyone.’
‘Am I such an inferior option?’
‘Oh the poor old thing!’ She gave him a wonderfully theatrical kiss. ‘Don’t be so touchy!’
‘Your husband could also look after your children.’
‘I’m not having a husband, thank you. Much easier living alone.’ She glanced up at the stream of people coming through the restaurant door, to see if anybody recognised her. He remembers thinking calmly that it would not hurt her, or affect her in any way, when he left El.
His Italian is virtually non-existent but still he can tell there is a lot of meat on this menu (Braciole di maiale, Saltimbocca alla Romana, Brasato al Barolo are the three main choices on the board). He doesn’t object to meat of itself, but he tends to cook and eat vegetarian to honour Paul and Megan’s demands. And right now, there is something quite repulsive about the idea of meat. He settles for tomato and mozzarella, followed by pasta marinara.
It is because of him they are vegetarian, of course. He made a bad mistake with Paul when Paul was nine. It happened just after Dan’s birth, in July. Dan was a week early, and Con had to go back to work for a couple of days before taking off his three weeks for the Spanish holiday that they had planned. El was exhausted after a long and difficult labour – Daniel was breech – and while Megan and Cara were happy in the care of Lisa, the latest au pair, Paul was fractious and difficult. Con offered him the option of going into the lab, provided he could read quietly while Con was busy, and Paul leapt at the suggestion. He was pleased to be singled out.
Conrad had a project meeting at 9 then needed to check a colleague’s changes to an MRC funding application. In the late morning he became aware of Paul industriously drawing at the other end of the bench and offered to take the boy down to the animal house. Here the rodents and primates being used in departmental research lived in wire cages, in a brightly fluorescent-lit, windowless, breeze-block construction. Con was so used to it he didn’t stop to think how it would strike Paul, and to begin with the boy didn’t ask any questions. He pored over the cages of rats and mice, marvelling at their pink eyes and bald, squirming litters. He dabbed his finger end at their water bottles to make drips fall, and speculated on how those with shaven patches and wound dressings had hurt themselves.
Then one of the monkeys at the other end began to scream.
‘Dad? What is it, Dad?’
‘Just a monkey. They can be noisy, can’t they?’
‘Can we see them?’
‘Sure.’ They walked on past the rabbits to the monkey cages at the far end; at their approach the monkeys began to hurl themselves frantically round their cages; only one sat still on the floor of his cage, staring balefully at Paul and picking at a wound scab on his abdomen.
‘Are they frightened, Dad? Are they frightened of us?’
‘Well, they don’t get many visitors. They get excited.’
‘Is it like a zoo?’
‘No. Not really.’
‘Is it a hospital? Are you making them better?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘What then?’
‘They help us with the experiments. We need them to help us work out how to make ill people better.’ The monkeys were calming down, they came to rest on their perches or the floors of their cages, grimacing and staring tensely at Con and Paul, a couple of them chattering angrily to themselves.
‘What do they eat?’
‘Special monkey food. And oranges. They have fruit for a treat sometimes.’
‘But can’t they ever come out?’
‘No.’
‘Do they have names?’
‘Not really.’
Paul took a couple of steps closer to the cages.
‘Don’t go too near, Paul. They bite and scratch. They can be very bad tempered.’
‘They look sad.’
Con saw how stupid he had been to bring Paul here. The monkeys all looked fine. Those that had been operated on recently were behind locked doors in the sterile lab; you certainly wouldn’t take a visitor in there. ‘Shall we go?’
‘Why do you have to keep them here?’ As Paul turned towards him Con realised that the child was close to tears.
‘It’s not that bad. They’re safe here. They’re warm and dry and fed —’
‘But they’re not free. They can’t go swinging through the trees or play —’ Paul swiped angrily at the tears on his cheeks.
‘Pauly, Pauly, come on —’ Con gave him his handkerchief. They passed in silence through the ranks of rabbits, rats, mice, to the outer door.
‘Why can’t you let them go? Why can’t you?’
It was a relief to breathe fresh air again. Con led them towards the canteen. ‘I told you, we need them to help us work out how to make ill people better.’
‘How?’
‘Well, sometimes things go wrong with bits of people’s bodies and doctors can’t cure them because t
hey don’t understand what’s happening. Or because they need a new kind of medicine.’
‘Are all the monkeys ill?’
‘Things can be tested on them. To see if they would work on humans. New cures we’ve never tried before. When we go back to my lab I’ll show you down the microscope, the little cells I’m battling with.’
‘You make the monkeys ill, to test the cures?’
‘Well, I don’t, I work with rats. But some of the scientists have to work with monkeys.’ They had reached the canteen. There was silence between them as they selected cutlery and slid their trays along the rail.
‘Can I have sausage and chips?’
‘If you like. D’you want a pudding?’
Paul chose a white iced bun and Con led them to a corner table.
‘What do you do with them afterwards?’
‘What?’
‘The monkeys. When the experiment is over?’
‘Nothing.’ As far as Con knew they either died or were euthanised.
‘You should let them go.’
‘Most of them were bred here, Paul. They couldn’t fend for themselves in the wild.’
‘Send them to a zoo then, where they can go outside.’
‘That’s a good idea. Maybe we should.’
After lunch Con switched on the electron-microscope and showed Paul some slides of antibodies swarming round a pathogen. Explained, in simple terms, the battle the body wages against an intruder; explained why sometimes the body’s defences need inhibiting, to manipulate a cure. ‘Your immune system is what protects you against diseases, or bad things from outside – wounds, infections, viruses. But sometimes we have to try and turn the immune system off, so we can help the body in other ways; help it to accept treatment for cancer, or a transplant, like a new heart. And that’s my job. Trying to stop all these little swarming soldiers running wild and filling the bloodstream…’
Paul was curious, and quick to understand. At the end of an hour Con slipped the slides back into their box with a feeling of relief. He had shown Paul why this was interesting. He had shown him what it was really about; that microscopic battle in the blood, which they were going to win. The battle against death. He had at least attempted to redress the balance. Now he knows how signally he failed.
The following week in Spain he took Megan and Paul to the nearby little lake for a swim one afternoon, leaving El and the au pair, and the two little ones, to their siestas. It was hot – too hot to be out, really – but the prospect of cool water enticed them, and he wanted to get Paul and Megan out of the house to make some peace for the sleepers.
The lake – actually more of a pond – was in fields, and surrounded by marsh grass and prickly shrubs. They followed the beaten path through the undergrowth and came to a small baked-mud beach, where it was possible to wade into the murky water without pushing through reeds. There was a bad smell and Con worried briefly about the water, but the lake was recommended for swimming by the owners – it was one of the reasons they had chosen this particular self-catering villa. Paul was first in the water and halfway across the pond when he shouted, ‘What’s that?’ He was pointing at a large pale brown barrel-shaped thing floating in the water at the far side. It was a moment before Con’s eyes could make sense of it. A cow. A drowned and hugely bloated cow in the water, stinking of death. Paul realised what it was seconds after Con. Con imagined it bursting in the heat and splattering the whole pond in rotting meat.
As they scrambled out of the water and dragged shorts and T shirts over their wet skin, the smell intensified. It was overpowering; Con couldn’t believe he’d let them swim in that. Megan wanted to go closer and have a look; she was curious but not disgusted. Whereas Paul, Con could see, was as sickened as he was. As they walked back, the stink clinging to their skins, the two children speculated on how the cow could have drowned. It must have been drinking, it must have slipped. Or maybe it just died and someone threw it in there. Maybe it was ill…
At dinner that night Paul announced he was not going to eat meat any more. ‘It’s cruel to keep animals just to eat them.’
‘For heaven’s sake!’ Eleanor was impatient. ‘They’re only alive because someone wants to eat them. If we didn’t eat meat, half the animals on farms wouldn’t even be born.’
‘We should eat the things we don’t have to kill them for. Milk. Eggs. Wool.’
‘And what are you going to have for tea? Wool sandwiches?’ Over the baby alarm came Daniel’s thin wail. Eleanor pulled a face.
Con rose to his feet. ‘I’ll get him. If Paul really doesn’t want to eat meat we should respect —’
‘As if there aren’t enough faddy eaters in this house. No baked beans for Megan. No vegetables for Cara unless I hide them in a shepherd’s pie. No red peppers for you. And now we have to have a vegetarian option!’
‘El —’ He touched her arm, and she stopped. ‘We’ll talk about this later,’ he told Paul.
When the children were in bed they had a row. He told El about Paul’s reaction to the animal house and she was irritated. ‘You should have warned him in advance what they were for, that they’ve been bred specifically for research, that they only exist to save human lives. Stands to reason he’s going to start feeling sorry for poor little furry things if you haven’t already given him a steer on it.’ She tutted at Daniel and moved him to the other breast. He was a poor feeder, dropping off to sleep after only a few minutes on each side, then waking again hungry an hour later.
‘I didn’t think, did I. Stupidly, I didn’t work out in advance all the possible ramifications of taking him into the animal house, as you would have done.’
‘I think he should be told he can choose what to eat when he’s older. It’s all very well virtuously respecting the fact that he’s developing his own values, but it’s a nightmare as far as cooking goes.’
‘It’s not that bad. We already have cauliflower cheese, scrambled eggs…’
‘We eat meat five nights a week. Have you got time to work out five balanced alternatives? ’Cos I haven’t. This child is driving me mad —’ Dan was asleep again.
‘Pass him here. Paul can have what we’re having and just skip the meat; make sure he has plenty of cheese and nuts.’
‘It doesn’t work like that, does it.’ She was busying herself with the breast pump. ‘The juice of the stew is meat juice, the roast veg are roasted in beef dripping; are you going to pretend to humour him then lie to him? Either he eats meat or he doesn’t.’
‘I don’t see why you’re so angry with me.’ Dan lolled limp in Con’s arms, the whites of his eyes visible beneath his half-closed lids. ‘This boy’s out like a light.’
‘Can you try him with a bottle tonight? If I don’t get some sleep soon…’
‘Sure. Why don’t we all become vegetarian?’
‘How much do you know about vegetarian cookery?’
‘I could find out.’
‘Fine. Whatever.’
It was a miserable holiday. Everyone was angry, and after the pond, the nearest place to swim and cool down was a crowded outdoor swimming pool half an hour’s drive away. When they got home Con started cooking veggie meals, offering the kids the option of what he had cooked or some of El’s big pots of lamb stew or bolognaise. They tended to eat what he had made.
But Conrad never managed to erase that anger in Paul. Megan joined him as a card-carrying vegetarian but she did it with sunny ease, she did it lightly. Con remembers her, in her teens, becoming fascinated by H. G. Wells’ The Island of Dr Moreau.
‘Could this happen?’ she wanted to know. ‘Could you chop and sew together animals like this?’
‘Why would anyone want to? The only point of the work I do is its human application – we’re not out to create freaks.’
‘But you are a vivisectionist.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t c
all myself that but —’
‘You do cut up animals.’ By now he was working on the monkeys.
‘Under anaesthetic.’
‘And transplant bits from one to another.’
‘Hearts. But we’re doing it for a reason.’
She grinned. ‘If you put a monkey heart in a person, they might fall in love with a monkey.’
‘They might. Unlikely, but you never know.’
‘Do you think it’s cruel, Dad?’
‘I don’t know how else we’re going to be able to help people with heart problems.’
‘OK. I’d rather have a monkey heart than no heart. And bananas are my favourite food!’ She slipped away to do something else, leaving Con smiling. Megan was as easy as Paul was difficult.
When Cara asked to go to see where he worked, he managed it very carefully indeed, never mentioning the animal house, confining her to the lab and a collection of beautifully stained slides of cells in varying stages of health and sickness; that and a visit to the anatomy teaching labs, where she could marvel at the skeletons and the models of hearts and intestines. He kept her well away from the animal labs and dissecting rooms, away from meat, alive or dead.
Which takes him back, of course, to Maddy.
After his first meeting with Maddy, the relationship is normalised by the exchange of friendly emails. She does not pester, but emails every ten days or so, wondering how he is getting on, giving the odd detail of her life. She describes a two-person picket outside a local beauty salon where animal-tested products are used. ‘It rained heavily and it turned out that no one in town actually needed beautifying that day. I had to remind myself that it was all in a good cause.’
Con spends a long time composing his email to Carrington Bio-Life, carefully itemising the problems with their animal care. It is important not to sound too shrill. It takes nearly two weeks for their reply to come: ‘Thank you for your comments, CBL is committed to improving animal welfare.’ It is not even signed. In a rage he phones their office, where a helpful answerphone message assures him he will be rung back. He realises that the weekly reports on his animals – on his experiments – come from the CBL office but are never ascribed to a person with a name. He’s never even thought about that before; after all, the reports are factual, scientific, they cover the range of information he has asked for – and he has always assumed that they are compiled by different technicians on different shifts. But there is nobody named whom he can get back to.