The Heart Broke In (13 page)

It was after midday when Harry reached the institute. The receptionist in the lobby bulged eyes at him, picked up the phone and said into it: ‘He’s arrived,’ as if Harry wouldn’t hear. His assistant Carol was waiting for him outside the door to his office, one hand resting on the doorknob, the other free to cover her mouth when she saw him.

The room smelled of whisky. The bottle of Macallan was open on the desk where he’d left it the night before. He’d only drunk half. The letter he’d brought from the hospital was still there. He hadn’t explained to the staff why he’d locked himself in his office and begun boozing but before leaving he’d made a copy of the letter, scrawled
Please close diary after March, might be late tmw
and dropped it on Carol’s keyboard.

‘You could’ve rinsed the glass,’ he said.

‘We didn’t know where you were,’ said Carol. ‘You didn’t come to the ten-year survival do.’

‘Oh, him,’ said Harry.

‘Your phone was switched off. You weren’t at home this morning.’

‘I went out for breakfast. I went to the barber’s.’

‘We didn’t know. We thought we should leave everything as it was in case the police came.’

‘Has the survivor gone?’

‘He’s having lunch with everybody in meeting room one. He was disappointed not to see you at the presentation. He said he understood.’

‘You told the survivor? Is there anyone who doesn’t know? Has my tumour got more friends on Facebook than me?’

‘Oh, Harry.’

‘We need to reorganise,’ said Harry with an appearance of determination. ‘The institute’s drifting. We’ve got too many research groups. We’re supposed to be curing cancer here and all we do is screw around seeing who can create the most fucked-up mouse. I want all the PIs in here for a meeting this afternoon.’

‘Amir called,’ said Carol. ‘He said you should start your treatment tomorrow.’

‘Once my nephew’s paper comes out it’s going to shake things up. We need to be ready.’

‘Amir said the sooner you start the better. He said it was the difference between six months and eight.’

Harry ran his hand over the alien smoothness where the remnant of his hair had been, skin that hadn’t been exposed since he was a baby. His mother had kept a lock of his infant hair in an envelope, still blond after half a century. Where had it gone when she died? In with her old letters? Or gone to landfill in the clearout of the old house?

‘It smells like a distillery in here,’ he said. ‘What’s the survivor’s name?’

‘Shane.’

Downstairs, Harry stopped and listened at the door marked
Meeting in Progress
. He pressed his ear to the wood, heard the earnest hubbub and strained to hear his name. He went in.
The room stopped talking and stared at him. It had paper plates in its hands loaded with triangular sandwiches that looked glued together with some kind of brown paste. A flotsam of grey faces bobbed with wineglasses containing orange juice and still or sparkling water. In the midst of the round-shouldered, baggy-jacketed, joke-starved crew of scientists Harry saw a stranger, tall, slim, tanned, with glossy black hair, in an elegant purple shirt; he was in his late thirties.

‘Shane, I presume,’ said Harry. He shook the survivor’s hand. Shane smiled, looking Harry in the eye. He had a gold stud in one ear and his well-shaped nails reflected the light. He had fine features and an intelligent expression.
This one I don’t mind saving
, thought Harry.

‘We had to press on in your absence,’ said Robert, Harry’s deputy, raising and lowering a half-eaten sandwich as if he were playing a fish with it. He ran his tongue over his teeth and frowned at Harry’s hairlessness. ‘Glad to see you. We sent out search parties.’

Two dozen medical researchers laughed in nervous sympathy and Harry’s eyes skimmed their faces. He looked at Shane curiously and took Robert by the elbow. ‘Come and see me this afternoon, Bob,’ he said. ‘I’ve had some ideas. We need to take the institute in a new direction.’

Robert pushed up his lips encouragingly. ‘That sounds great,’ he said. ‘Why don’t we wait until your first round of treatment? You only found out yesterday.’

‘I’ll decide when I have treatment.’

‘Your son’s on his way to London. He’ll be here soon. Now’s not the time to be thinking about work. You need to spend time with your family, with your friends.’

Robert said more like this and Harry stopped listening. He
looked at Shane and asked if he would like to see the institute’s gardens. Shane picked up a leather sports bag and followed Harry outside.

One year Harry had chiselled money out of the trustees to make a miniature park behind the building. A scruffy lawn and hedge had been dug up and replaced by a radiating pattern of columns, trellises and arbours. He’d consulted Maureen about the plants. Vines had woven their tendrils through the interstices and, at intervals along the avenues, enamelled pots sprouted rosemary and lavender. Robert had told him it was a waste of public money.

‘You should see it in spring,’ Harry told the survivor. ‘When the vines flower it’s really quite pretty. Look.’ He lifted a cluster of nearly ripe grapes in his hand. ‘The money we spent could have paid a researcher’s salary, but saving people isn’t enough. You have to make the world you’re saving them for worth it.’ He gave Shane a sidelong look. The survivor had a muscular feline swagger, an aura of ease and potency. Harry’s head was strewn with old hopes. What if the expert cells could do more than quench cancer? What if they made their recipients young and strong?

‘It is you, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘You’re the survivor? Sometimes the survivor can’t make it and they send a relative.’

Shane smiled his white-toothed smile. ‘It’s me. Diagnosed ten years ago, treated with expert cells, complete remission, no recurrence. A miracle.’

‘I don’t care for that word.’

‘I’d be long gone otherwise.’

Harry sat down on a bench. Shane sat next to him. They watched a blackbird strike chips of gravel from the path with its beak.

‘You look in good shape,’ said Harry. ‘How old are you?’

‘Forty-one next birthday. I work out. I kind of feel I have an obligation to look after myself.’ He fidgeted with the handle of the bag. ‘I probably would anyway.’

‘Wife and kids?’

‘I live with my boyfriend.’

‘Aha!’ barked Harry.

Their eyes were caught by movement on the third floor of the institute and they watched a white-coated figure shuffle across a window, holding a flask.

‘My deputy’s mistress,’ said Harry conversationally, pointing at the window. ‘She spies on us to make sure we don’t steal the public’s lavender.’

‘They told me,’ said Shane. ‘About your diagnosis. To explain why you didn’t come.’

‘Mmm.’

‘I’m sorry. I hope they come up with something for you, like you did for me.’

‘My nephew Alex …’ Harry’s mind raced and he forgot what he was going to say. He asked Shane what line he was in.

‘Fashion,’ said Shane.

‘Excellent,’ said Harry, who fancied he knew something about clothes.

‘I went straight back to work after my treatment.’

‘Splendid.’

‘I design luxury coats for dogs.’ Shane opened the bag and took out a handful of leather and metal. ‘I made this for your Jack Russell. It’s a present for the two of you.’

‘For my Jack Russell?’

‘I guessed the size, but if it doesn’t fit, I’ll alter it.’ He
unfolded the garment on the bench between them. ‘The back piece, we call it the saddle, it’s made of kid, and the star emblems are made of brass. The side pieces are hand-stitched and it buckles on underneath with these Lycra straps.’

‘That’s incredible,’ said Harry.

‘It was the least I could do.’

‘Let me be sure I understand,’ said Harry. ‘All over the country there are dozens of dogs who’d be walking around without luxury hand-made coats if we hadn’t saved your life?’

‘All over the
world.’

Harry turned the coat over in his hands, rubbing the different textures with his thumb. He heard the voices of a man and a woman, and feet on the gravel. Through the columns and vine leaves he saw Carol leading his son towards him. He sensed Matthew’s pity from thirty yards away.

His son had learned how to aggravate him as a boy by feeling sorry for him because he couldn’t believe. Matthew would look at his father with sad eyes and pity him and Harry would shout that he was happy without Jesus, and Matthew would grieve and shake his head and tell him that he couldn’t be happy if he was shouting, and Harry would ask his son how he learned to be an expert manipulator of emotions. Were his Hebrew prophets psychoanalysts in waiting, marking time till they could start charging by the hour? And Matthew pitied him more. Now that Harry was ill, the old man was stepping into the vessel of filial lamentation Matthew had been preparing for him since he was fourteen.

Harry hadn’t seen his son for the best part of a year. He put a sinister interpretation on Matthew’s patience. It seemed to him that Matthew was quietly and humbly waiting for him to be damned, and this altered Matthew’s substance in his
memory to an ominous shadow. Yet the anxious man in the crumpled suit coming towards him now, the two ends of his tie at twenty-five past seven and care lines around his eyes, was his son. Harry didn’t resist when Matthew leaned down and put his arms round him. His son’s strength surprised him. Years seemed to have passed since he’d been held and felt the warmth of another body on his own. They began to speak, the four of them; introductions, medical matters, English awkwardnesses. While he talked Harry wondered why he hadn’t treated Christianity as an affliction beyond his son’s control, like a stammer or a limp. When he, Harry, was so sure that Matthew’s religion was a lie, how could he allow himself to feel enveloped in his son’s pity? He should have swamped Matthew’s delusions with compassion.

It came to his mind to tell his son that it was good to see him, but he thought:
Later, I’ll work up to it. Let him earn it
. ‘You look tired,’ he said.

‘I got up at six to get here,’ said Matthew. ‘What happened to your hair? Have you started your treatment?’

Harry stroked his scalp. ‘Shedding some ballast. How are my grandchildren?’ It seemed to him that the question made Matthew’s eyes narrow a fraction.
How can my son be my enemy when he is still a child?
he thought. They’d exchanged bitter words, and yet he was glad Matthew had come. His son was familiar. He thought again of saying to Matthew that it was good to see him. But why say it out loud, if he knew that it was true? He slipped his hand into his jacket pocket and fingered the lock of hair.

‘Lettie and the children send their love,’ said Matthew.

Shane said that it was time to go, shook everyone’s hands,
thanked Harry again, wished him luck and left. Harry, Carol and Matthew watched him walk away, a stranger to all of them, yet leaving them with the sense that they’d lost the kindest and gentlest member of their party. Carol said she would
leave you two to catch up
.

‘Why did you tell him I had a dog?’ Harry asked her.

‘I think you should have a dog,’ said Carol. ‘You shouldn’t be alone in that big house.’

‘I have a housekeeper,’ said Harry. ‘I’ll have a nurse. Then there’ll just be the house.’

‘You should get a nice dog,’ said Carol. ‘A Jack Russell. I know one, already housetrained. I liked Shane. He wanted to give you a coat. I knew he’d be disappointed if I said you couldn’t use one.’

‘And now I have this.’ Harry held up his gift, which clinked softly.

‘He seemed to be a good man,’ said Matthew.

‘He’s alive because of Harry,’ said Carol. She shivered; she was wearing a thin blouse and it was a grey September day.

‘Go, go,’ said Harry.

‘It comes with a basket,’ said Carol over her shoulder as she walked away.

Matthew sat down next to his father.

‘You’re glad he’s still alive?’ said Harry. ‘Shane the dog couturier?’

‘Of course.’

‘According to your people, when he does die, he’s going to rot in hell for ever, damned for sodomy.’

‘Don’t talk about that now, Dad,’ said Matthew.

‘I thought it was interesting.’

‘You spend so much time talking about what other people believe when you could be asking yourself if you live a good life,’ said Matthew. ‘We don’t argue about religion all the time like atheists do. We don’t think about it. We just live.’

I gave him a chance
, thought Harry.
He’s so touchy
. ‘I don’t want you to stop my grandchildren thinking.’ He raised his voice. His anger and the joy he’d felt on seeing his son seemed part of the same flow. It was all nostalgia now. He wanted Matthew to stay and submit to being ridiculed, and then for him to hug his father again. But the boy was proud.

‘I could come north at the weekend,’ Harry said.

‘You shouldn’t travel in your condition.’

‘The doctor didn’t say I couldn’t travel.’

‘We’ve got so much on, so many things coming up. It’s incredible how busy the children are.’

‘Give me a date.’

‘I’ll have to talk to Lettie about it.’

‘Why did you come here?’

‘You’re my father, and I care about you, in spite of everything.’

‘Magnanimous of you.’

‘On the phone you sounded frightened.’

‘I wasn’t frightened. I was drunk. Are you sure you know what you care about? You and Lettie care about getting the house. If you cared about me you’d let me see my grandchildren.’

‘That’s a question of trust.’

‘You don’t trust your father?’

‘You said you’d take Chris and Leah to the zoo and you took them to a two-hour film about the Inquisition.’

‘I didn’t know it would be
realistic.’

‘You offered Peter a pound for every inconsistency he found in the Bible.’

‘If you’re going to attack me all over again for trying to help open your children’s minds you might as well go home.’

‘On my way here I thought,
He can use this for love, or he can use it for leverage
. Everything would be all right if you’d accept the way we are. Even if you don’t, I want you to let me look after you.’