Reaper

by Hurley, Graham

  The cab took him through the downtown area, and out across the Charles River, into Cambridge. Buddy knew enough by now to recognize the kind of area Pascale had selected for his private clinic. It was a class address. He had Harvard University and MIT for neighbours. These were blue-chip institutions, world leaders in their field. For Buddy, tired but exultant, it was the very best collateral.

  The cab dropped him at a Holiday Inn. He registered at reception and spent an hour or so lying on the huge king-size bed, watching television, not thinking very much. Pascale had agreed to meet him at seven. He was to take a cab to the clinic and bring the X-rays with him. He had the X-rays in his bag. Jude’s doctor had refused to part with his own, and in the end he’d had to commission a new set, at twenty pounds a throw. Bishop, learning of his plans, had told him he was a fool. It was, he’d said, a waste of money. More importantly, he was raising Jude’s hopes at precisely the time when he and Jude should be getting down to the sterner realities of rehabilitation. The sooner they both confronted reality, the better. Pascale, he’d implied, was a fraud.

  Buddy had shrugged the little speech aside. For the first time, standing there in the big main corridor, an island in a stream of wheelchairs, he felt he’d regained the initiative. He’d smiled at Bishop, and said goodbye.

  “I’ll be back,” he’d said, “for my wife.”

  The journey out to the Clinic took Buddy along the river again. The river was wide and black. The wind was blowing down from the north, occasional flurries of snow, and there were wavelets lapping against the further bank. Buddy could see them under the street lights, little explosions of white. He blinked, thinking of Jude.

  The Clinic lay in a wide, tree-lined avenue off Memorial Drive. There was a high wall and a substantial garden and a security phone beside the tall wrought-iron gates. Buddy bent to the speaker, pressed a button, gave his name. The gate hinged open, totally silent, no sound of a motor. Buddy walked in, impressed. Good sign, he thought. Nice piece of engineering.

  He made his way up the drive. The Clinic was modem, two storeys, shallow pitched roof, white venetian blinds at the windows. The front door opened as he approached. A man stood on the top step, sniffing the night air, his hand already outstretched. Backlit, he was tall, slim. He wore a white coat, unbuttoned.

  Buddy stepped in, out of the light. The man smiled, perfect teeth in a wide mouth. He looked about forty, well-made, jet black hair swept back from his face. His face was dark, Mediterranean blood. Buddy shook his hand, introduced himself. The other man nodded.

  “My name’s Pascale,” he said. “Call me Alvar.”

  Buddy followed him down the hall. The place smelled of lemons. There were doors off the hall, all of them white. Pascale opened a door at the end, and led Buddy into a small study. He shut the door behind him and sat down behind a large desk. The desk was piled with papers. He waved Buddy into another chair, offering him a jelly bean from a large glass jar by his elbow. Buddy smiled at him, shaking his head, sensing at once that Pascale was a lady’s man. Something to do with the way he held his body, the expressive movements of his hands. The hands were long and slender, perfect nails. He used them constantly. They went with the voice, low, confidential, with a hint of faint amusement.

  “You took the morning flight over?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s fine. No problems. West–east’s different. That’s a killer. Especially at night.”

  Buddy agreed, not caring which direction he flew, wanting only an answer, some kind of decision. He picked up the big buff envelope, opening it and passing over the X-rays. Pascale switched on a small desk lamp, and held up the first of the films. He studied it a moment, and Buddy watched his face, a blur through the dense grey negative. He knew what he wanted, confirmation that the job could be done, that his journey might end here, in this small room, three thousand miles from the wheelchairs and the bowel evacuations and the endless stream of well-intentioned chatter.

  Pascale made a note on a pad, and glanced quickly through the rest of the X-rays. There were six in all. He tidied them into a pile and put them back in the envelope. Buddy was still watching his face. He looked up.

  “Well?” Buddy said.

  Pascale picked up the envelope. “I’ll need to keep these,” he said, “that OK with you?”

  Buddy nodded. “Of course,” he said. “Does that mean …?”

  Pascale smiled at him, holding up a cautionary hand, stopping him in mid-sentence.

  “It means …” he said gently, “that I’ll be taking another look. I need to go over them carefully. I need to talk to your wife’s physician. I need more information.”

  “She’s paralysed. She can’t move. Can’t eat properly. Can’t shit. Nothing.”

  “I know that.”

  “Her doctor won’t talk. I’ve already asked him.”

  “Won’t?” Pascale echoed the word, the softest inflection, an air of pained bemusement. “Won’t?”

  Buddy shook his head, vigorous, sure of himself. “No,” he said, “he’s very anti. He thinks you shouldn’t … you know …” he shrugged, “mess around.”

  Pascale laughed at the phrase, nodding, enjoying it. Plainly, he’d heard it before.

  “You bet,” he said. There was a brief silence. He tapped Buddy’s envelope. “What do you want?” he said.

  “I want my wife back.”

  “And you’re prepared to have her undergo major surgery?” He paused. “After all that stuff your physician has told you?”

  “If it’ll work, yes …” Buddy hesitated, the old question back again, impossible to defer. “So …” he said, “will it work?”

  Pascale got up and stepped across to a cupboard. Inside, there were racks of hanging files. His hand moved quickly from file to file, extracting documents. Watching him, Buddy realized that it was something he’d done before, probably often, the hand scarcely hesitating between each file. Finally, he returned to the desk, patting the documents into a neat pile and passing them over to Buddy.

  “These are reprints,” he said, “articles of mine. Respectable medical journals. If you think I’m covering my butt, you’d be right. But I’m no charlatan. Neither am I rich. Neither am I mad.” He paused. “What I’m doing isn’t popular. Especially with people like your physician.”

  Buddy glanced down at the pile of papers in his lap. The first article was from the New England Journal of Medicine. It was entitled “Transplant Techniques for Foetal Rat Tissue”. He looked up again.

  “How many of these operations have you done?” he said.

  “To date?”

  “Yes.”

  “Seven.”

  “Have they worked?”

  Pascale composed his fingers into a bridge, studying Buddy for a moment before he answered.

  “Worked isn’t a word I’d use,” he said. “In the majority of cases, we have established significant sensory gains.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means we’ve achieved measurable improvement.”

  “So it has worked.”

  Pascale nodded slowly.

  “Yes,” he said, “as long as we agree on definitions.”

  There was a long silence. Then Buddy stirred in the chair.

  “So what happens next?” he said.

  Pascale leaned forward, suddenly businesslike.

  “Next, I talk to your physician. There won’t be a problem. I establish a prognosis. I assess your wife’s case. And if it’s appropriate, I shall suggest she undergoes surgery. That process won’t happen unless I feel there’s a substantial chance of success.”

  Buddy nodded. “How long …” he said, “will all that take?”

  Pascale glanced at his watch. It was a slender watch, gold, plain leather strap. “Three weeks,” he said. “Possibly a day or two longer.”

  Buddy nodded again. Pascale’s eyes had gone back to the envelope. He slid out the first of the X-rays, and peered at it for the second time.
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br />   “It’s a tough break,” he said. “How old is your wife?”

  “Thirty-four.”

  “Is she fit?”

  “Very.”

  “Is she cheerful?”

  “No.”

  He nodded slowly, sliding the X-ray back into the envelope.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “it’s a horrible injury. Which is why guys like your physician should be a little more … ah … adventurous.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You bet.”

  There was another long silence. Miles away, Buddy could hear the wail of a siren. He thought of the river, the flurries of snow, the black water.

  “One thing …” he began.

  Pascale looked up. “Yes?”

  “How much will it cost? All this?”

  Pascale fingered the envelope. He sat back in his chair.

  “Assuming your wife is a suitable candidate, I’ll need her here at least a week before we operate. She’ll need to recover from the flight. I’ll need more X-rays. Plus we do various other diagnostic procedures. The operation itself takes ten hours. We have full convalescent facilities here, on the premises. She’ll be on her back, post-operative, at least three weeks. So …” he frowned, “including medications, surgery, after-care …” He paused. “About eighty thousand.”

  Buddy blinked. “How much?” he said.

  “Eighty thousand.” Pascale smiled. “Dollars, of course.”

  Connolly met Mairead in the Botanical Gardens, in Belfast, two days later. He’d come straight from a morning lecture at the University, barely a quarter of a mile away. Mairead was sitting on a bench by the Palm House. There was a baby on her lap and an empty buggy by her side. She looked cold.

  Connolly sat down beside her. She squinted at him in the weak sunshine.

  “Hi,” she said, “stranger.”

  Connolly looked at the baby. He’d not seen Mairead now for nearly a week, not since the Cortina had driven him back into the city, back from the exchange across the table in the cold empty cottage out west. The experience had overwhelmed him, a mix of disbelief, and confusion, and a kind of surreal detachment, and he’d spent the next forty-eight hours trying to sort out what he really felt. It was fear.

  “Hi,” he said. “Nice baby.”

  “His name’s Kieron. He’s mine for the morning.”

  Connolly reached across and tickled the baby under the chin. The baby started to cry. Mairead rocked it softly, backwards and forwards. She’d phoned Connolly first thing in the morning, at his flat off the Ormeau Road. The meeting had been her idea. She bent low over the baby’s face, warming the cold flesh with her own breath.

  “Why haven’t you been round?” she said. “What did they do to you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She looked up at him, and he knew at once that she didn’t believe him. He nodded.

  “Certain,” he said, trying to sound as matter-of-fact as possible. “They took me off for a while. Little chat.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know. Somewhere out west. Or maybe south. I don’t know. A long way. It was very dark.”

  “Who were they?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “No names?”

  “No.”

  “They hurt you?”

  “They didn’t touch me.” He paused. “Why should they?”

  Mairead ducked her head again, catching the inflection in the last question, the way it lifted his voice. There was anger under there, and she knew it.

  “They’re gangsters,” she said. “They’re bad people. I’ve been worried sick. No word from you.”

  Connolly said nothing. The night they’d brought him back, they’d dropped him in the city centre. It was too late for the buses up to Andersonstown, and he didn’t have enough money for a cab, and he suspected that the walk would have exhausted what little courage he had left. Two years lecturing about the perils of colonial disengagement should have prepared him for the real thing, but somehow it hadn’t. He’d never seen a gun before, not so close. He’d never thought seriously about the possibility of his own death, what it might feel like.

  He looked across at her. He wanted to touch her. Hug her. Kiss her. Be part of her again. Get back to the person he’d once been. A week ago. A month ago. She knew nothing of what had happened between Leeson and himself, of how far he’d let the relationship develop, how he’d contributed his own sexuality to the cause. Not the Provos. Not the pale-faced man across the table in the cottage. But her. Mairead. If she ever found out about this small truth of his, about lying in bed with Leeson, about the possibility of “gay plague”, he knew she’d be gone and away. He could plead necessity, means and ends, battle damage, but none of it would make any difference. She’d think him mad, and sick, and dangerous to know, despite the fact that he’d done it, after all, for her. Another blind alley on the map of his life that he was no longer able to recognize. And now this, the men in the Cortina, who knew all about him, what he looked like, where he lived.

  “Tell me who you talked to,” he said, hearing his own voice, cold.

  “I told you.”

  “Tell me again.”

  “They were Danny’s friends.”

  “Tell me their names.”

  She looked up at him. The baby was asleep.

  “I don’t know their names,” she said, “it’s God’s truth.”

  “I thought you said they were Danny’s friends?”

  “They were. They said they were.”

  “But you’d never seen them before?”

  “No.” She paused. “I never knew that Danny was up to it all. I’ve told you that.”

  “But afterwards, after he died, after the funeral, you’d have met them then. They’d have come round, given you money, help, clothes, whatever. They’d have made contact. I’m sure they would.”

  She nodded. “Yes,” she said. “They did.”

  “But not these men?”

  “No.”

  “So how …” Connolly frowned, “how did you know they were Danny’s friends?”

  There was a long silence. Mairead looked away, over the park.

  “I didn’t,” she said softly. “And I still don’t. Danny had lots of friends. They say they knew him …” She shrugged hopelessly. “So I suppose they did.”

  “So you told them about me?”

  “They asked.”

  “And you told them?”

  She nodded, saying nothing. Then she turned back. She was crying.

  “I had to,” she said.

  Connolly gazed at her, unmoved.

  “Why?”

  “Because otherwise they’d see to Liam,” she sniffed. “You have to live here to know what that means. It means they’ll take him away and break his legs. They do it with concrete blocks. From the building sites. It happens all the time. That’s the kind of men they are.”

  “These friends of Danny’s?”

  “Yes.”

  “Doing that to Danny’s child?”

  “Yes.”

  There was a long silence, Mairead leaning into him, her head on his shoulder, and Connolly realized with a shock why she’d phoned. Not because she missed him. Not because she was worried sick. But something far more businesslike.

  “They’ve been round again,” he said.

  She nodded, not looking up.

  “Yes.”

  “And you’ve a message.”

  “Yes.”

  “What is it?”

  “They want to meet you. This weekend.”

  “Where?”

  Mairead lifted her head and nodded at the buggy. Hanging on the back of the buggy was a plastic bag.

  “In there,” she said, “a brown envelope.”

  Connolly got up and retrieved the bag. Inside the envelope, there was a sheaf of twenty-pound notes. He counted them quickly. £500. He stared at the money.

  “What’s that for?”

  “
God knows.”

  Connolly looked in the envelope again. There was a single sheet of carefully folded paper. He took it out and opened it up. It was a photocopy of a street plan. He looked at it, uncomprehending, aware of Mairead beside him.

  “Ranelagh?” he said. “Rathmines?”

  Mairead was looking carefully at the map.

  “Dublin,” she said after a while.

  Connolly gazed down at the map. There was a blue cross on a street off the Rathgar Road, and a number, one hundred and twelve. He turned the map over. The address was repeated on the other side, 112 Garville Street, and a time, Saturday, 2.30 p.m. Mairead was at his shoulder again, looking down. He laid the map carefully on the seat between them, the envelope with the money on top.

  “Is this why you phoned me?” he asked her. “This morning?”

  She said nothing for a moment. The baby was awake now, gazing up, light blue eyes and the beginnings of a frown. Mairead nodded.

  “Yes,” she said, “it is.”

  “To tell me to go to Dublin?”

  “Yes.”

  “Nothing else?”

  She looked at him, her eyes dry now, her skin pinched by the cold. For the first time, Connolly realized how much weight she’d lost, how thin she’d got. The old optimism, the sparkle and the wit, had quite gone.

  “What do you think?” she said.

  “I don’t know.”

  She tried to smile but it didn’t work. Then she leaned across and kissed him. Her lips were cold on his cheek.

  “Then I’ll tell you,” she said. “I once thought I’d nothing left to lose. Not as far as men were concerned. I thought it was all over for me. But it’s not …” She hesitated for a moment. “I love you. You should know that. And when this madness is over, I’ll think of ways of showing you.”

  Connolly nodded, saying nothing. The contract between them, the deal, was quite explicit. Go to it, get it over with, and get yourself back in one piece. Until then, it was a question of Liam’s legs, and probably the rest of him, and the other kids too, and what was left of her own peace of mind. Connolly looked at her for a moment. She was back with the baby, nuzzling it with her cheek.

  “Is that why you’ve not phoned before?” he said.