How Far We Fall

by Jane Shemilt

  Be careful, she wants to warn him. Don’t trust him back. Don’t believe his promises; if you do, he’ll break your heart.

  ‘Today he asked me to be his locum, while he goes to the States.’ Then he laughs, a short, embarrassed laugh. ‘The oddest thing happened. Our new lab assistant told me this morning she’d heard them discussing me as his future replacement in the consultants’ meeting. I didn’t pay much attention, but five minutes later he offered me his locum. I think it means I’m being lined up for the job when he retires.’ His colour heightens. ‘I can’t help feeling fate is smiling on me, that this was meant to be.’

  ‘A scientist, and you believe in fate?’

  ‘My mother did,’ he replies, joking and not joking. ‘She thought fate was responsible for what you get in life.’

  Fate doesn’t give you what you want, it usually takes it away. If you want something you have to work for it, suffer for it. Albie’s eyes are sunken, his cheeks hollow. He doesn’t need fate; beneath the excitement there is a deeper story of duty and routine, early mornings and late nights. Iron self-discipline.

  ‘So now you have to prove yourself to your boss?’

  He nods, his eyes shining. ‘That’s what I want to do more than anything.’

  She smiles though her heart clenches. Ted could use that, twist it. Ted is marvellous company, he makes people feel important; they trust him and love him and then he betrays them; he betrayed her as easily as he once did his wife. It could happen to Albie.

  She gets up and walks round the table, puts her hand on his shoulder and leans to kiss him. ‘I’d love to see more photos of where you grew up.’ He takes her hand and they leave the plates on the table and sit on the floor next to the radiator in his bedroom. He wraps a cashmere rug round her shoulders, the wool is moth-eaten but warm. The gold-leaved pages of the worn photo album are loose, the binding has been chewed by mice; like the cracked leather of the chairs in the kitchen, the threadbare Persian rug and the chipped bone china, everything was good once. She likes this rich shabbiness, its texture and colour. She can hear the echo of old wealth sounding through the darkness and cold; it’s as though her long dead grandfather had taken her by the hand and told her it would be all right. Everything would be all right now.

  Ted thought the lack of clutter in her flat was restful. He’d told her Jenny’s paintings were piled on every surface at home, that the boys’ football boots tripped him up and their spaniel got in his way. The emptiness in her flat wasn’t a choice, though; her grandfather’s wealth had been squandered on parties and drink. She’d watched her aunt’s dogged progress through the barren house after her parents’ funeral, searching for something to salvage for her niece. Beth had leant against the wall as she watched, nine years old, thumb in her mouth, bereft. Caroline took her in. She was a librarian in Reading and ran an allotment, her life was tranquil. Beth started to heal; as time passed she began to feel happy. There was no money for university so they chose nursing, but in the first term her aunt died, hit by a bus as she cycled to the library. The past sank out of sight, a lost city frozen under ice until Ted hacked his way through; the affair lasted seven years. He left when she was pregnant and went back to his wife; the money for a termination arrived later, online. If she puts a hand on her abdomen, she can still conjure the low-down burning anger that pulled her through.

  She leans against Albie as he talks, carried by the flow of words which slide together with the ease of a song. She follows his finger as he traces the map stuck into the front of the album: Jura, a long island cut almost in two by the sea, off the west coast of Scotland, above Islay, below Mull. The deer-stalking business ended with his father’s death, the estate passing to Jamie, the elder brother who spent lavishly to turn the house into a hotel. The weather was bad for three summers, debts accumulated. They had to sell everything except Dunbar, the gamekeeper’s lodge, the last house on the track to the north. He points to a square white building facing the sun and the sea, the windows flung wide open. She bends to look more closely; the sounds of the wind and the waves would wash through those sunny rooms. When her parents died, the police discovered her in the flat two days later on her own in the dark. Silence can frighten her still.

  ‘I promised Mother I’d keep Dunbar but I can’t afford the repairs, it’s becoming run-down. The locum will help, thanks to Ted.’ Then he smiles, pointing to the smudges of brown and gold behind the house. ‘See that bracken? If we were there now, we’d hear the stags bellowing.’

  ‘Do stags bellow?’

  ‘It’s autumn, the rutting season has started. They warn off competitors.’ He puts a hand on her thigh and leans to kiss her, ‘Battling for a mate.’

  She puts her hand over his, making her decision. ‘You don’t have to battle.’

  She wakes later, her face stiff with cold. The slippery eiderdown is on the floor. She moves closer to Albie’s sleeping warmth. He stirs and pulls her to him. ‘If you were a dream, you have just come true,’ he murmurs. Their mouths touch and open.

  Later, he pulls on a plaid dressing gown and pads out; she moves to lie in his place, sliding her legs downwards in the warmth. She feels different, lighter, as if she has put down something heavy she’d been carrying for a long time. When Albie returns, he hands her a cup of coffee and begins to talk while she leans her head on his shoulder. He describes his research, and how that will shape his future, how the locum has focused his thoughts. He tells her that he loves her.

  As she listens, possibilities unfold in her mind, like the fresh sheets she spreads out for her patients, ready for any weight, any wound. Every now and again, she turns to press her lips against his shoulder, as if to know him by the texture and taste of his skin, as if to assess the resilience of his flesh.

  5

  London. Winter 2015

  ‘Hey guys, coffee or tea?’ Owen leans against the wall of the small coffee room, as relaxed as usual, despite the long list of patients still to anaesthetise. Albie thinks of surfers whenever he looks at Owen, or a child’s version of Jesus. The man’s serenity is famous; Ted has been known to refuse to operate on difficult cases without him. The red lips smiling through the dark beard recall the edges of a wound made by an imprecise knife. Albie glances away; too much operating, too many incisions, each lipped by bloody skin.

  ‘Tea, please, Owen.’

  ‘Coffee,’ Ted raps out.

  A routine morning in neuro theatre; the operations have gone smoothly. Ted has just implanted an electrode in the brain of a patient with Parkinson’s disease; he paces restlessly while the position is checked in the scan.

  Owen hands tea to Albie and then gives Ted a mug of dense black coffee, downed instantly. Albie inhales the smoky scent rising from his cup; it takes him back to childhood, always. Jura. Ten years old, drinking the tea his mother brought to the garden at five every day. Gulls crying, waves slapping on rocks, his body sprawled on grass, tingling with anticipation for the life ahead. No one knew why he was so different from Jamie. His father had watched, baffled, as he grabbed at opportunities like a starving child for food; only his mother recognised he was going about his destiny. He passed everything, won everything, but there is one more prize to claim. He closes his eyes and presses his fingertips together as if praying. Beth slips behind his eyelids, exquisite, mysterious as if guarding secrets. There are places he can’t go; beyond childhood her past seems fenced and she the elusive guardian at the gate. She is loving, though, attentive; no one else listens to his plans with such intensity or understands the demands on him so well. Her wisdom is astonishing. Her beauty takes his breath away, always. People turn to stare in corridors and down streets. It’s difficult to let her go, difficult to get out of bed. They make love all night sometimes. He’s never felt like this before; it frightens him. He’d marry her tomorrow but she needs more time, it’s only been six months. He’ll ask her in the spring, everything begins in the spring. His mother’s emerald engagement ring is waiting at home in the silk-
lined box he bought specially from Cartier’s.

  ‘Twenty minutes to go,’ Owen warns, closing the door quietly behind him as he leaves to check the patient in the scan.

  Ted paces up and down the small room, watching the clock. The constant movement distracts Albie; it must disturb Jenny, though Owen has told him they live mostly apart. There have been rumours of a long-standing affair which ended after Albie arrived; a needy woman with a relentless streak, so the gossip went, though no one knew her name. None of this is his business, but he wonders, as Ted turns and turns again, how you can think yourself immune from discovery or punishment. Why risk the loss of wife and family, everything you treasure? Some men cheat all the time, perhaps they like the risk. Beth’s body had been warm against his this morning; risking anything would be unthinkable.

  ‘God, how I hate this,’ Ted mutters as he walks back and forth, glancing at Albie.

  ‘It’ll be fine, Ted.’

  ‘As I tell myself, but there could have been a blood vessel we didn’t see. He could be haemorrhaging into his cerebrum right now.’ Ted’s hands ball in the pockets of the blue cotton trousers.

  ‘You make decisions based on the evidence to hand. It’s all anyone can ever do.’

  Ted flashes him an exasperated look.

  ‘There were no obvious vessels in the way,’ Albie continues, smiling. ‘There won’t be a problem.’ The electrode was perfectly placed, what follows has become a routine miracle. The patient’s tremor will be abolished. He will be able to drink a cup of tea, walk across the room. Sleep.

  ‘There’s always the risk of the unexpected, don’t forget that while you’re quoting my words back at me.’ But the pacing has slowed, the hands unclench. Ted grins back. ‘Sit down, Albie, you look exhausted.’ He indicates the small red sofa. The base sags, sacking hangs down to the floor and the cushions are thin, but Albie sits with a little groan of relief, his back aching after hours of assisting Ted, who seems tireless.

  ‘I’m leaving for the States shortly so I need to tell you about Viromex Pharmaceuticals, the US company.’ Ted draws up a chair and sits facing him. ‘It’s been a few months since I submitted our varicella virus patent to the patent agent.’ Ted runs his hand over his hair. Albie stares. Our patent? ‘My name was on the application along with yours, as co-inventor,’ Ted continues smoothly. ‘The patent itself is owned by the university, but I think you knew this already.’

  He nods, hiding surprise. He didn’t realise Ted would claim to be co-inventor. Ted knows that he, Albie, is entitled to sole ownership of the patent. He modified the virus, after all. A few seconds tick by; his mind flicks back to the pituitary tumour operation, the cut artery, the spiralling guilt, the way he was saved. He can trust Ted. He waits.

  ‘The patent agent has done a search; there’s nothing as specific out there which also stimulates an immune response.’ Ted leans forward. ‘The university has pitched the concept to Viromex. We’ll get a deal, a bloody good one.’ He pauses, a punchline is coming. ‘They say they’ll give us an upfront payout of two hundred and fifty thousand; quarter goes to the university; we receive the rest. I get sixty per cent, you have forty.’ He smiles, a disarming flash of blue eyes and white teeth.

  Albie calculates swiftly: his share will amount to seventy-five thousand pounds: more money in one lump sum than he’s ever dreamt of possessing. This will have been the best deal Ted could obtain on his behalf; it doesn’t matter if they receive different sums, not really. He’s grateful, of course he is. A cure is in sight which will now reach thousands; to be an author of that, so early in his career, would be extraordinary.

  ‘Fantastic news, Ted.’

  ‘We’re at an early stage. Viromex haven’t signed the contract yet.’ Ted’s tone has become businesslike. ‘We’ll need to run dosing studies to find the best concentration of virus for tumour shrinkage. Bruce can do those now you’re back on the wards. Once Viromex sign, the money is released to us when we hand over results of those studies, and the patent, of course. They’ll run their own checks after that, then the trial in children will start, probably in Boston Children’s Hospital.’ He leans back, grinning. ‘This will be huge, Albie. There is no known cure for this bloody disease, no prospect of survival for the affected children beyond seven months. It will be taken up in a flash.’

  Albie pictures the little girl he saw on the ward round earlier today, the lovely child he had first met in Ted’s clinic three months ago, with her fairy wings and missing tooth. Her mother had been hunched over the bed this morning, her father standing against the wall, weeping. The sheet was barely tented over her body, her skin was yellow, her breathing shallow. She was dying. Cured of her brainstem tumour, that little girl would gain weight and sit up; in time she would get out of bed and walk from the ward, holding her parents’ hands.

  ‘Looking ahead, the royalties could be impressive too.’ Ted glances round the room, checking they are still alone. ‘Each treatment will cost twenty-five thousand pounds; let’s say there are a thousand cases a year, that’s a potential income for Viromex of twenty-five million.’

  Albie tries to keep the shock from his face. It seems obscene, though he’s not sure quite why. Drug companies need profits – it’s a job, after all, a business.

  ‘The university take their share of the royalty; we divide the rest,’ Ted continues. ‘Your portion of our share will be around seven hundred and fifty thousand every year.’

  The money seems unreal; far more than he would earn in a year, even at the height of his career. He tries to visualise it as notes on the table in front of him, set out in straight-edged towers, like those stacked by criminals in gangster movies, but all he can see is the little girl turning to wave goodbye at the door of the ward. Other children will follow her; children who now face certain death will survive because of his work.

  Ted takes a sip of coffee, ‘I’ve been appointed to Viromex’s scientific advisory board for the purposes of the viral trial,’ he says, watching him over the rim of his cup.

  The swift dart of jealousy surprises Albie; he would have relished that role. Beth will tell him it could have helped his career. He takes a mouthful of tepid tea and swallows it down. He’ll have to explain that he owes Ted the chance of research in his lab, and for the locum that’s about to start; he’ll tell her if it wasn’t for him he’d be in hospital management now. He owes Ted everything.

  ‘… plenty more viruses for the lab to try out.’ Ted is nodding encouragingly. ‘You’re good at developing ideas, Albie; the pharmacology world is keen to buy them.’

  Ideas bought and sold, like tea or coffee. It never occurred to him that his thoughts would have a monetary value. He is used to the performance of being a doctor, of being rewarded for all the exhausting ways in which his energy and stamina are used; to be paid for ideas seems too easy, like cheating.

  ‘We could be rich, given time, very rich,’ Ted says quietly, so quietly he could be talking to himself. Then he smiles. ‘First things first. We’ll have to wait for Viromex’s signature on the contract and those dosing studies. It could take a year before payout, but don’t worry—’

  Ted’s phone rings and he turns away, mobile to his ear. Albie looks out of the small window which gives a view of the back wall of the hospital kitchens, lined with great waste bins, boxes and crates of rubbish. Complex systems of chimneys and pipes run against the walls; prefab units are jammed among Victorian brickwork. The intricate working parts of the system, hidden from sight and dark with grime.

  Rich: the word has a glow to it, like a bar of gold. Ted has always been astute. He put a bungalow in the garden of his Bristol house and sold both when he moved to London. Owen confided that the sum had been eye-watering. Ted mostly lives in the Chelsea penthouse and holidays in Greece; Jenny stays at the cottage in Dorset. They have found what works for them. Albie stares down at his hands, remembering the silky feel of Beth’s skin this morning, wondering how it’s possible to live apart from the woman you lo
ve. He never aimed for wealth but all the same, the bar of gold wedges open a door in his mind through which the future glitters. One day he could pay for a laboratory and then what he invents will belong to him. It doesn’t matter if Ted gets more now, his turn will come. He learnt that as a child; the slow crawl on his belly over heather during the stalking season, the hours of watching for an opportunity, the way time is defeated by patience.

  Ted has finished his phone call. ‘I’ll get Bruce to start the dosing studies; he’ll need to order the delivery of rats and obtain more viral supplies.’

  Albie opens his eyes and smiles, scarcely hearing. Dunbar will be safe now; he can restore the Hampstead house too, recreate a home for a family as it was in his grandparents’ time. Through the door of the future, Beth is picking roses in a garden, his children fly kites on the Heath.

  ‘So what do I need to do?’ he asks Ted.

  ‘All fine,’ Owen sings from the door, ‘We’re good to go, folks.’

  Ted gets up; Albie rises too. Ted takes a fraction longer to straighten his spine. He is taller by half a head but Albie has the width, his hands are bigger.

  The men look at each other, Ted smiles. ‘I’ll organise everything. Trust me.’

  6

  London. Spring 2016

  A web is stretched across the footlights, intricate, shimmering.

  What’s it supposed to be? The worldwide web? The deep one? The dark one?

  Arachne and Anansi gossip in the wings, old friends. The orchestra tunes up.

  Shelob and Aragog come on dancing; the audience roar.

  Three hooded figures in black enter and walk from side to side, unfurling skeins of silky stuff.