Out of the Sun (4 page)

"There's something you need to understand, Harry. Something that isn't easy to say. What happened between us thirty-four years ago had an ... ulterior motive."

"What do you mean?"

"Claude and I had been trying to have children for a long time. Without success. And I wanted children. Badly. Claude was a good man. I loved him. But.. ."

"He couldn't get you pregnant?"

"No. Whereas .."."

"I could."

"It sounds awful, doesn't it? So clinical. So ... calculating."

"I thought we were having fun. Simple uncomplicated fun."

"Simple, yes. Uncomplicated, no."

"So, the realization that you were pregnant by me wasn't a horrible shock so much as a satisfactory outcome. Did you tell David that?"

"Yes. Which is why he would never have come looking for you."

"Well, thanks," he said, allowing the bitterness to break through in his tone. Thanks a lot for making my son understand I was just a means to an end."

"Your son in the strictest biological sense only." She threw back her head, as if in search of calm as well as logic. "I won't stop you visiting him, Harry. I could, but I won't. On the other hand, I'm not going to let you invade his life. Or mine."

"How long do I have before you switch him off?"

"It's not like that."

"Will you at least warn me ... when you reach a decision?"

"Yes." She looked at him gravely. "I will." She took a tiny notebook from her handbag, tore out a page, wrote something on it and slid it across the table towards him. "My sister's address and telephone number. You can contact me there ... if you really need to."

"Does she know about me?"

"She will."

"And Ken?"

Iris shook her head. "I'm not going to answer any more questions, Harry. You already know as much as you've a right to. Probably more."

"Not in the opinion of whoever left me that message."

"If there was a message."

"You said yourself I couldn't have found out any other way."

"I suppose not. It's just another mystery."

"Like the overdose? If it wasn't a suicide attempt and it couldn't have been an accident.. ."

"Stop it." She had raised her voice for the first time, sufficiently to attract a curious glance from a nearby table. "I'm tired of such speculation. Don't you think I've been through it all in my mind, over and over again? In the end, the whys and wherefores don't matter. They won't help him breathe or eat or speak or walk. Nothing will." She was trembling now, her eyes brimming with tears. "Could it be some kind of punishment for deceiving Claude, I wonder? I asked myself that about his diabetes when it was first diagnosed. Now this. It makes you think."

"You know that's ridiculous."

"Yes." She dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief and blew her nose. "Of course I do. Like hoping he'll recover. Ridiculous. But I can't help doing it."

"Neither can I."

The remark, with its hint of intimacy, seemed suddenly too much for Iris. "Why should you care?" she snapped. "He's nothing to you."

"Perhaps because I have no-one else to care about."

"Exactly." There was harshness in her expression, honed by the anguish she had endured. "If you had a family of your own, you wouldn't be interested, would you? You wouldn't want to know."

"It's easy for you to say that, knowing I can't disprove it."

"That's not good enough." She glanced at her watch. "I really must be going. Blanche will be wondering what's become of me." Rising hurriedly, she took a ten-pound note from her handbag and dropped it onto Harry's side of the table. "Would you mind paying the bill for me? That should cover it."

"There's no need But catching her eye as he stood up, Harry realized there was a compelling need from her point of view. She did not want to owe him any kind of debt, however trivial. Lest it remind her and him of what they could not help owing each other.

"Goodbye, Harry," she said with cool finality.

SIX

Room E318 at the National Neurological Hospital seemed as warm and muffled as a womb next morning. The ventilator pumped out its measured maternal breaths and a vase of fresh irises spread its symbolic cheer; while the distant sounds of calm voices and familiar movements compressed themselves into an institutional universe of care and compassion. It surrounded Harry on all sides, enclosing him and his silent son, encompassing their pasts and however much of a future either of them had.

"Your mother's lifted her ban on me," Harry remarked, trying another gambit in his one-way bedside conversation. "So you'll be seeing quite a bit more of me. As long as you don't mind, that is. Say if you do. We've got a lot of catching up to do, of course. I'll tell you about myself, if you like. There's nothing remarkable to say. Nothing out of the ordinary. Not like you. I mean, mathematics? I wouldn't know where to begin. The square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides. I know a joke about that, involving squaws and hippopotamuses. Or is it hippopotami? Well, I don't suppose you want to hear it anyway. What would you like to hear? My life story? That can be arranged. I'd like to hear yours. As well as your thoughts on one or two things that have been troubling me. The message I received. If it wasn't from your mother, who was it from? And what was it supposed to make me do? Ask how you ended up like this, perhaps? An accident's out of the question, apparently. And attempted suicide? I can't see it. Not for a son of mine. The Barnetts are often unlucky. But never self-destructive. What, then? What happened in that hotel room? I'd try to find out I promise I really would if you'd just tell me where to begin."

But David could tell Harry nothing. And Iris, even if she could, had made it clear she did not intend to. Which left Harry to interrogate Shafiq about the person who had left the message for him at Mitre Bridge to no avail. Shafiq remained uncertain about the sex of the caller. Nor could he remember any particular accent.

"Didn't you think to ask for their name?"

"Of course I did, Harry. Do you take me for a fool?"

"Well, what did they say?"

"Nothing. That was when they rang off."

"Oh, marvelous."

"Well, I'm sorry. Would you have done any better?"

"Maybe. For a start, I might have recognized them."

"If they'd known that was likely, they would not have called while you were here, would they?"

"No. No, they wouldn't."

"In which case .. ."

"They must have been studying my movements. They must have been watching me."

It was a disturbing possibility. So much so that Harry decided to unburden himself to Mrs. Tandy. He chose his next day off, when, as usual, he accompanied her to Kensal Green Cemetery as flower porter and water carrier. Mrs. Tandy's had been a marriage of cousins, as a result of which her late husband's relatives and her own were inextricably intertwined. And more numerous, it sometimes seemed to Harry, than the weeds that grew between their overgrown plots.

Recuperating on a bench after a vigorous tour of the scattered outliers as well as the main cluster of Tandy memorials, Harry explained his predicament as noncommittally as he could. He felt Mrs. Tandy should be made aware of the situation. But he was not sure he wanted her to understand how deeply it had affected him. His uncertainty, however, took little account of the keenness of her insight.

"Quite a shock for you, I imagine. Discovering you're a father so late in life."

"Only technically a father."

"But the man who believed he was David's father is dead, isn't he? So perhaps the technicalities are irrelevant."

"Not according to Iris."

"Whose need is greater, Harry? David's or his mother's?"

"David's, of course."

"Then perhaps you should do something to help him."

"What do you suggest?"

"Find out what caused his coma and what can be done to cure it."

"How?"

"Speak to his doctor. And to those who know him best. His friends and contemporaries. His fellow mathematicians. Anybody who might understand his state of mind when he booked into that hotel. Or know of any reason why others might have wished him harm."

"But Iris '

"Is his mother. What would she know? Have you told your mother, for instance, that she has a grandson?"

"Of course not. What would be the point?"

"See what I mean?"

"But his friends .. . are probably all in America."

"His ex-wife, for instance?"

"For certain, I should think."

"Should you?" She grinned mischievously. "You ought to read more of the newspapers than the racing page, Harry, you really ought. Fetch yesterday's Telegraph from the bin over there, would you?"

"But I screwed up the dead flowers in it."

"Then unscrew them. You want page three or five."

With shrugs and sighs of reluctance, Harry crossed to the bin, fished out the bundle in which he had disposed of the whiffy accumulation of sodden stems, flattened out the paper on the path and tried to separate the damp pages. "What exactly am I looking for, Mrs. T?"

"Bring it over here."

Leaving the mess of rotten foliage behind, he carried the paper back to the bench, where Mrs. Tandy had already put on her glasses. She took it from him with a supercilious smile and arched back her head to improve her focus.

"Let me see, let me see." Two wet-edged pages were carefully parted. "Ah, here we are. There was a film premiere the night before last at the MGM Cinema in Shaftesbury Avenue. I doubt it had the panache of those I attended before the war, but never mind. The point is that one of the stars of Dying Easy is none other than Steve Brancaster, pictured here arriving at the event with his glamorous wife Hope."

Harry sat down beside her and stared at the photographs. There were three of them in all, the largest showing a young Royal disgorging from a limousine. But one of the accompanying shots was what drew Harry's eyes. As the caption confirmed, the tall faintly lupine figure in tuxedo and open-neck dress shirt was the actor Steve Brancaster. Beside him, blond hair cascading over bare shoulders, a dazzling smile and sparkling eyes competing for attention with a neckline that displayed a truly startling amount of cleavage, stood Hope Brancaster, formerly Yenning, formerly God knows what.

"I expect they're still here," said Mrs. Tandy. "Premieres can be very exhausting."

"You think so?"

"Oh yes." She peered closer. "I should try the Dorchester if I were you."

SEVEN

Mrs. Tandy's estimate of the Brancasters' taste in hotels turned out to be spot on. With his fraying blazer and faded tie once more to the fore, Harry strode into the Dorchester late that afternoon, asked as confidently as he could for Mrs. Brancaster and was rewarded with confirmation that she was indeed a guest there. Unfortunately, she was also out.

"Can I take a message for her, sir? Or would you prefer to wait?"

"Weller .. ."

"Oh, actually, there's no need." The concierge glanced over Harry's shoulder. "Here's the lady now."

Harry turned to see Hope Brancaster making an eye-catching entrance in wide-brimmed hat, flared raincoat and high-heeled bootees. A porter was bringing up the rear with two Bond Street carrier bags in either hand and a fifth looped over his shoulder.

"This gentleman's been asking for you, Mrs. Brancaster," said the concierge as he held out her key.

"And you are?" said Hope in a Californian drawl. She was close enough to Harry for the headiness of her perfume and the flawlessness of her complexion to be abundantly apparent.

"Harry Yenning," he replied at once, smiling earnestly. Noticing a flicker of doubt in Hope's eyes, he added: "David's uncle." The lie had been planned to get him as far as Hope's room. Now, committed to using it face to face, he wondered if she might know for a fact that David had no such uncle. If so, he could be about to make a forced and ignominious exit.

But his luck was in. Luck and something else he could never have anticipated. "You've got his smile. You know that?"

"You think so?"

"To the life. But it's odd. I don't recall David ever mentioning you."

"I've been out of touch with the family for quite a while. Doing my best now ... to rally round."

"Yeh, right." She rattled the key in her hand as if to signal his time was nearly up. "So, what can I do for you?"

"I was hoping to talk to you .. . about David."

That could be kinda difficult." She glanced ostentatiously at her watch. "I'm on a tight schedule."

"It really is rather important."

She hesitated for a moment, then said: "OK. But I need to freshen up. I'll meet you in the bar in ten minutes."

Half an hour had passed, during which Harry had finished one extravagantly priced lager and started another, when Hope Brancaster deigned to join him. Her schedule, it seemed, was nothing like as tight as the PVC jeans she had somehow managed to wriggle into in the interim. There was a faint squeak as she descended into the chair opposite Harry, who could not suppress a pang of disappointment at how well her loose-fitting T-shirt camouflaged those remarkable breasts he remembered from the newspaper photograph. She ordered a Virgin Mary and cast a hostile glare at the ashtray, where smoke was still curling up from the remnants of a Karelia Sertika cigarette.

"You smoke those things?" she enquired with no hint of irony. "Or cure fish with them?"

"Sorry," he said with a shrug.

"Not as sorry as you should be. I dislike liars every bit as much as nicotine addicts."

That's all right, then. I'm neither."

"Cut the bull. I gave Iris a call. She recognized your description. But not your name."

"Ah."

"Advised me to throw you out. Without listening to a word."

"Did she?"

"Which is what I would do .. ."

"Except?"

"You really do remind me of David. Weird, I'd say, if you're no kind of relative. Which Iris assures me you're not."

"I'm his father."

"Your death was just an ugly rumour, right?"

"Iris and I ... had a brief affair .. . the summer before David was born."