Conrad & Eleanor (19 page)

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 call 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.

He goes in to discuss the situation at CBL with his head of department, Gus. Everyone in the department is using Carring­ton Bio-Life now the university animal house has closed down. But Gus is frantic, with a massive funding application deadline, plus a student from India flying in that night for a supervision on Ph.D. work Gus has not yet read.

‘Bad, yes, bad,' he nods, when Con shows him the photos. ‘But don't do anything yet, let's check where we're all up to first. I've got a couple of monkeys only a week in, I'd like to get some results before we take any action which may affect the running of the place.'

‘But they're transplant monkeys.'

‘Yes.'

‘So they could survive up to sixty days.'

‘I bloody hope so.'

‘But that's two months, Gus.'

‘Look, I've got to dash. Just sit on it for a bit, will you?'

Con puts out feelers to colleagues in other universities who are using CBL. Responses are all similar: an unwillingness to disrupt experiments in progress, plus fatalistic shoulder shrugging at the suggestion of abuse. ‘Everyone said it would happen when the universities closed their own animal houses; farm it out and you can't keep an eye on it.'

‘But I have kept an eye on it,' Con protests. ‘And I'm telling you what I saw.'

‘There are laws and regulations. An inspector has to go in there at least twice a year. You probably hit a bad day.'

Con considers going to the press. If he writes a statement one of the papers surely will pick it up. But what stops him is the issue of anonymity. They'll need to name him as a whistleblower and there will be the resentment of all his colleagues who have kept silent; their experiments will be closed down and no one will be willing to work with him in the future. And the confidentiality clause he signed – how would Kneiper react? Could they prosecute him? Or worse? Surely he could gain the same result, exposure of the abuses and action to put a stop to them, anonymously, through Maddy?

After six weeks (during which he himself has been forced to send instructions for a new set of immunosuppressant trials – his work cannot stand still, after all) he agrees to Maddy's request that they meet on neutral territory in Birmingham, where she has a job interview the following day.

At New Street station his eyes single her out as she comes through the ticket barrier, but he holds his position at the café they have designated, watching her. She is wearing a red skirt and black boots; she looks younger than he remembered. He feels a kind of glee, that El, if she cared to look in his wallet, might find a train ticket to Birmingham and perhaps a receipt for drinks and a meal for two, and wonder what is going on. When Maddy sees him she smiles and he automatically extends his hand to take her shoulder bag. ‘That looks heavy.'

‘It's just my smart clothes for the morning.'

‘Where will you stay?'

‘They've booked me a hotel. Is it OK if we go there to talk?'

‘Have you eaten? I've come straight from work, I thought we might grab a bite.'

‘Well, won't there be a restaurant at the hotel?' She sounds uncertain.

‘Sure, let's head for it.' When they emerge from the station approach she seems to hesitate. ‘D'you know the way?'

She recites a name and address. Con knows the place, it's a ten-minute walk. He leads them across the road. ‘So are you nervous? About your interview?'

‘I think it will be all right.'

‘What's it for?'

‘HR. It's not very exciting, but the pay is better.'

‘Well, that's always a plus.' She seems cowed, as if the size and noise of the city – or maybe it is meeting him – is too much for her. He dredges for things to chat about, feeling awkwardly avuncular. Again he finds himself wondering about her age. Thirty-five? Forty? Yet she has an almost girlish quality, as if she has never been anywhere.

‘I'm really grateful to you for agreeing to meet me again,' she tells him. ‘You can help the campaign so much.'

The hotel restaurant is adequate, with a respectable scattering of diners, but she reads the menu with an anxious expression and he wonders if she is bothered about money. ‘My treat,' he says. ‘Were you even planning to eat at all?'

‘I had a sandwich on the train.'

‘Have something nice now, go on,' he urges. ‘And will you drink red or white?'

‘Oh, I don't know, I don't think I —'

‘There's a good New Zealand sauvignon on this list, you'll have a glass surely.'

‘Well, just a glass.'

He orders a bottle, why not.

Once they've placed their orders she seems to relax. She takes a little notebook and pen from her bag and leans towards him. ‘You haven't been able to make any progress?'

‘No, the problem is that everyone has ongoing experiments, no one wants to upset the apple cart, and CBL themselves are blanking me.'

‘So the only way to stop them is through protest.'

‘I'm forced to agree.'

‘Who did you write to at CBL?'

‘The director of research.'

She is writing in her little book. ‘What's his name?' She looks up and smiles. ‘I'm assuming it's a him.'

‘You won't get anything out of him. He's not replied to my letter or email.'

‘No, but I just need to know his name,' she says quickly. ‘They tell you to get every scrap of information you can, because it might help the campaign one day, in some way.'