by Jane Rogers
After a period of blackness he opens them again to find the same scene. He feels secure, almost as if he has reverted to boyhood, to the age of the son who decorated this bedroom with his racing cars. And he has a son of his own, too. His flickering thoughts turn to Paul’s room, Paul’s posters, of owls, pandas, polar bears and whales. Paul is the one person he would like to tell what he has done. He would like to win Paul’s approval, at last, after all these years. It is only Paul who has maintained an unwaveringly critical attitude to the use of animals in research. It seems to Con now that he patronised the boy by rooting it all in that first unhappy monkey house experience. Why insult Paul by implying that his seriously held beliefs are simply the after-effects of childhood trauma? Say rather that that first visit to the monkey house planted a seed of intelligent questioning.
Con remembers Paul’s arguments and the arrogance with which he demolished them. He saw arguing with Paul as sparring, as play. He realises now that Paul must have guessed this and felt belittled by it. As he grew older he moved from emotional (in Con’s head, soft) arguments, to hard: to questions of cost and political choice. Here it became more difficult to demolish him, and the arguments ran on from one conversation to the next.
Con remembers taking him out to practise for his driving test, soon after Con had started working for Corastra. His new work had been the subject of conversation in the house all weekend, and Paul had made his disapproval clear. They were on country roads, driving towards Halifax, and Paul continually drove just a little too fast for comfort. Con had to check himself, after he’d exasperated Paul by twice asking him to slow down. He kept his eye on the speedometer and vowed to himself not to mention it again unless the needle touched 60. It didn’t, Paul’s speed was perfectly calculated; Con knew it was being used to wind him up. They came to a lay-by with a mobile shop and he suggested they stop for a coffee. Paul parked and Con got out into the damp air to buy the drinks.
‘I think the research you’re doing is unnecessary, politically suspect and immorally cruel.’ Con realised that Paul must have been rehearsing the sentence in his head as he waited for Con to return with their coffee, selecting and rearranging the charges for maximum impact.
He tried for lightness. ‘Oh, is that all?’
‘I’m serious.’
‘OK. Unnecessary because you think people with heart problems should be left to die?’
‘Yes.’
‘Politically suspect because the money should be spent on starving children?’
‘Yes.’
‘Immorally cruel?’
‘You chop out pigs’ hearts, you stick them in monkeys, the pigs die, the monkeys die.’
Despite himself, Con was needled. ‘I’m not doing it for fun.’
‘Maybe. But you are doing it for money.’
‘For God’s sake, Paul! You don’t even understand the basics of what I’m doing, yet you set yourself up —’
‘Tell me then. What makes it so different from what I think?’
‘The reason we’re using monkeys —’
‘Start with the pigs. Go on, explain it.’
‘Right. We want to make a pig heart that can be transplanted into humans. Pig hearts because pigs breed easily in captivity and have large litters – a lot of hearts can be supplied.’ His anger began to subside. ‘D’you really want to hear all this?’
‘Sure.’ A rare grin from Paul. ‘Give me the ammo to whop you.’
‘You know the big problem with transplants is rejection.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, the more divergent the species the more ferocious the rejection. If you put a normal pig heart in a human you get hyperacute rejection, which means the antibodies of the host’s blood attack the antigens on the surface of the alien heart and reduce it to a black swollen mass within minutes.’
‘Ugh.’
‘So, the pig is genetically modified, which is to say a very small number of its 50,000 genes are modified to alter the surface antigens of the pig’s cells so that they more closely resemble human antigens. So then when the pig heart is transplanted the human immune system is tricked into seeing the pig organ as human and not attacking it, OK?’
‘OK. Does this have to be done to every pig foetus?’
‘No, the transgenic pigs breed naturally and their offspring inherit their genetic make-up.’
‘They’re not slowly going to grow more and more like people?’
‘Only in science fiction.’
‘Then what?’
‘Then we transplant the hearts to monkeys.’
‘And what happens?’
‘We treat the monkeys with immunosuppressants, to help prevent rejection, and we monitor their progress with a view to transplanting hearts like these into sick humans in the near future.’
‘How long do the monkeys survive?’
‘Anything from a few hours to sixty days.’
‘So the best you could offer anyone is sixty days?’
‘At the moment. If you consider that HAR takes six minutes, sixty days is not bad going.’
‘So in the hope of one day producing a heart and drugs that will keep a human alive for longer than sixty days, you kill – how many pigs? How many monkeys?’
‘The pigs are irrelevant, since we breed them specifically.’
‘OK. Monkeys are our closest relatives in the animal world. They can remember, love, hate, play, feel pain and rage —’
‘This is the furry friends argument.’
‘You know a mother monkey will grieve for a year or more over the loss of her baby?’
‘The belief that human life is more valuable than animal life is a principle of all research involving animals.’
‘That’s speciesism.’
‘No argument.’
‘It’s wrong.’
‘We’ll have to agree to differ.’
Of course he knows it was cruel. His ability to work depended on him effectively blocking out that knowledge. How easy to be a bleeding-heart sympathiser. He has a physical sense, now, of how tightly he screwed himself up against that sympathy, how he locked up his feelings, and the cost at which he did it. He had to make himself feel nothing. And what he locked up has broken out now, flooding his system with grief and shame.
Something is shaking. Con opens his eyes reluctantly and sees Alberto tugging at his shoulder. ‘You drink now. Drink or you will dehydrate.’
Con pulls himself up in the bed; his body is strangely heavy. He takes the glass of orange from Alberto. ‘Thank you.’
‘Now water.’
Con obeys again. Alberto watches him drink. ‘I’m sorry about this – you are very kind —’
‘No problem. You have the flu I think. Headache?’
‘A bit.’
Alberto points to the bedside table, there is a box of paracetamol. ‘Take two.’
Again Con obeys; there is an ache around the bridge of his nose which he is afraid will turn into tears of gratitude. How can a stranger be so kind to him? When he looks up again, after painstakingly swilling the tablets down his constricted throat, Alberto has gone. Con lies back on the bed, too exhausted even to shuffle down properly under the blankets. When he’s better he’ll organise something. Buy Alberto a present. He allows his eyes to close.
How long did it take, that shift at work? That slow subterranean movement from optimism, conviction and discovery, via endless knock-backs and tiny inchings-forward, to the dull acceptance that this was it, nothing much was changing? The animal rights people gave them a year’s grace by letting out the pigs. That put the whole programme back a year while they bred up a new batch of pigs, ironically instilling in Con a renewed sense of optimism and purpose. Maybe with the next batch of pigs there would be a breakthrough. And then when the new pigs were ready, nothing worked any better than it
had before. Always this cycle of hope and of being slapped down.
He was naive; naive and gullible. Ditto with Maddy. Soon after their Birmingham meeting she asked to meet him in London, and he organised a visit to Megan’s play that evening to make sense of the journey. Maddy was waiting for him at Euston and led him to a basic-looking Indian restaurant five minutes away, on Drummond Street. It was a sweltering August day.
‘I’m not sure I fancy Indian for lunch,’ he tells her.
‘Oh, but it’s vegetarian and the food is very good. Please give it a try. I always come here.’
It is on the tip of his tongue to suggest sandwiches in Regent’s Park, or a pub with a beer garden, but she looks so distressed that he goes along with it. The food is spread out on a long table; following her, he helps himself to random spoonfuls until he has far more than he wants to eat. He has never been able to understand the point of eating hot food when you are hot. They settle at a table. ‘So how was my statement received?’ He knows it has not appeared on the Prevent Experiments and Cruelty to Animals website, because he’s been checking it regularly.
‘There are problems with the group,’ she tells him. ‘Real problems, everything has been held up.’
‘What’s gone wrong?’
She shakes her head. ‘Relationships. Turns out the man who does the website has been having an affair with Lindy, who is Tom’s partner. Lindy and Tom are the founders of PECA. When it came out there was a huge flare-up and nothing has been done on the website since. He’s got it all password protected, none of the rest of us can touch it.’
Con nods. They are cranks. The idea that anything will get done via Maddy is simply a waste of time.
‘I’m so angry with them all,’ Maddy confides. ‘If you believe in a cause, a cause like this, the animals should come first – not petty things like family and relationships. All that has to be put aside. It’s a crusade, we need to fight together.’
‘Did you show them my statement?’
‘Yes – yes. But they’re carping. They’re saying, Where are the photos? and This is useless without his name on it. They’re so petty and negative and they gang up together…’
Con realises she is near to tears. ‘Don’t be upset. And you were right, this dhal is excellent, so is the – the green curry.’
‘I will be upset. Of course I will. Just because they’ve all known each other for longer than me, because it’s their group that I’ve joined, I’m like a kid they can order around.’
Con is really afraid she will cry. He is annoyed with himself for not realising, before this, how flaky she is. Now he comes to look at her properly, she is a mess. She’s wearing a crumpled, off-white shirt and faded cords, on the hottest day of summer. Her hair is greasy and her skin grey. ‘You’re not at work today?’ he asks.
‘I’m on holiday.’
He thinks she has lost her job. ‘Listen, your people at PECA will sort it out. Of course they will. People are always selfish when they’re upset. When the dust settles they’ll update the website, don’t you worry.’
‘Everything I do,’ she says, ‘is for the cause. If I can’t make a difference I might as well be dead.’
‘Come on now, Maddy, don’t talk like this. If you’ve really fallen out with the PECA bunch, have you thought of starting a group of your own?’
‘Me and whose army?’ she says bitterly. ‘Everyone’s afraid. Will you give me those photos?’
‘Well, there’s no point right now, is there? With the website not working.’
‘The point is then at least they’ll see I mean business.’
‘But Maddy, I don’t want… the photos can’t be a pawn in an argument between you and your friends. I mean, I can’t just —’
‘You can’t just help me. No. Of course you can’t. Why should I expect that?’ Her voice is getting louder. She has not touched her food. ‘Why should I expect help from a scientist?’ She pushes away her dishes and stands up. She is at full volume now. ‘Why should I expect help from someone who has everything he ever wanted handed to him on a plate?’
‘Maddy —’
‘My life is nothing but shit.’ She turns and slams out of the restaurant. A waiter grins at Con. After a moment of embarrassment, he realises how relieved he is to be rid of her. He has made a stupid mistake, and he vows he will not make it again.
But then, of course, he does.
With what feels like a physical effort, he shifts his thoughts away from her. He doesn’t have to go back. He never has to go back there, it is over. Sleep, like black water, closes over his head.
Alberto comes into Con’s room bearing a tray of food. Soup, bread, a peeled and sliced apple. Con shuffles himself to sitting up again and takes a couple of spoonfuls of soup. The spoon is so heavy he can barely lift it.
‘Alberto, thank you.’ His voice seems to have become a whisper. ‘But I can’t – I’m sorry…’
Alberto nods. ‘Try the apple. You must have something. It will be three days now – you must eat.’
Conrad forces down a slice. His throat is sore and swollen and the shreds of apple are like splinters in it.
‘OK, I will call doctor.’
Maybe wise, thinks Con. This is an illness. Has he really been here three days? He is ill, in a stranger’s house, he can’t even shift himself back to the hotel. He must give Alberto some cash. He fumbles through his wallet but there doesn’t seem to be any. He remembers paying with a 50-euro note at the restaurant – was that the last of his money? He hands Alberto his bank card, and laboriously writes his PIN on the back of an old receipt. Alberto tells him, with dignity, that he does not require money, but he will agree to fetch 250 euros for Conrad.
‘You will telephone your wife, perhaps?’
Con glances at his switched-off mobile on the bedside table. It lies in a forlorn heap with his hotel key and loose change; Alberto must have emptied his pockets when he put him to bed. ‘Yes, of course. Thank you.’
Alberto removes the tray and returns with another glass of water. As Con’s heavy eyes close he hears Alberto moving around the kitchen and then the front door softly opening and shutting. Con squints at his phone. He could call El. Tell her he’s ill. The whole episode could be put down to his illness and there would be no need to explain any of it.
No. He does not want El to rescue him, with her impatient efficiency. Is she always impatient now? The now Eleanor is a woman he does not really look at. He knows how she looks: the slightly stiff posture with the deliberately straight back; the defiantly jet-black hair which seems, when she is tired, too dark and vivid for her face. He suggested to her a year ago that she should stop dyeing it and she laughed incredulously. He thinks silver or grey or whatever combination are now threading their way through the black would soften it and be kinder to her pale fifty-three-year-old skin. But it’s not so much the posture or the hair or even the clothes, which are smarter and more discreetly formal than he likes, which identify her as a certain type and class of woman; it is the closed-ness of her face. She is intent on other things; her work, her own busyness, her lover – intent on anything but Con.
But is that what his grievance boils down to – a plea for attention? Is this why he does not look at her? Because what he sees when he looks negates him?
No – there’s another reason for not looking at her. Because he wants her to know he is angry. The withholding of eye contact is the withholding of himself. He’s saying she’s not worth looking at. He’s negating her.
And does she look at him? When she does, he dislikes the way she does it. It is as if she knows in advance whatever he is going to say. She finds him both predictable and slightly disappointing. So he is not looking at her because he doesn’t like what she projects back to him, a sense that he is slow and that she has more important concerns. She is not in the least interested in what of herself he reflects bac
k to her. She doesn’t care what he thinks, because his thoughts are irrelevant to her. This is why he doesn’t look at her. Because she has negated him far more effectively than he has negated her.
But where are the other Eleanors, the ones before this one he cannot look at? He can only think of photos, as if his memories have been stolen by them, or distilled into static moments. Their wedding photo. The best one; the one that the kids used to pore over wonderingly, savouring the notion of ‘before we were born’. Eleanor is radiant. She doesn’t look pregnant; she is smiling straight at the camera, her hair lifted slightly back from her face by the breeze outside the register office, and her lips are slightly parted as if she is meeting something, like a swimmer breasting a wave, she seems to be afloat upon the moment. Anyone who sees the photo knows her smile is about Con. It is connected to her fingers entwined with his, to their facing a future together.
The picture of her breastfeeding Paul. Con still carries this in his wallet; it is tattered with age. She is looking at the photographer – Con. She is smiling a complex smile. A fraction of it is almost shamefaced. It says what a ridiculous cliché for you to take my picture feeding our baby – she is smiling at their cheesiness. But overcoming the hangdog look is a great beam of happiness that says, I’m glad you’re looking at me and it doesn’t matter ever what anyone else thinks because we both know this is wonderful. It is both public and secret, shamefaced and proud, again, it is Eleanor faring forward.
He tries to think when she stopped looking like that, when she stopped drawing him into complicity with her own reactions (or knowing he was already complicit). Might it have been that he stopped understanding her? Might that have been the beginning of her impatience?
But she stopped offering him things to understand. How could he understand if he didn’t know? And in the history of all that, her affair with Louis is not, in fact, very important. It is symptomatic, not causal. Things were wrong a long time before.