Saturday (28 page)

‘Yes.'

‘Very clever you must be.'

He holds the book out towards her. ‘Read one. Read out your best poem. Come on. Let's have a poem.'

As she takes the book she implores him. ‘I'll do anything you want. Anything. But please move the knife away from her neck.'

‘Hear that?' Nigel giggles. ‘She says anything. Come on, Saucy Daisy.'

‘Nah, sorry,' Baxter says to her, as though he's as disappointed as anyone else. ‘Someone might creep up on me.' And he looks across his shoulder at Perowne and winks.

The book is shaking in her hands as she opens it at random.

She draws breath and is about to start when Nigel says, ‘Let's hear your dirtiest one. Something really filthy.'

At this, all her resolution is gone. She closes the book. ‘I can't do it,' she wails. ‘I can't.'

‘You'll do it,' Baxter says. ‘Or you'll watch my hand. Do you want that?'

Grammaticus says to her quietly, ‘Daisy, listen. Do one you used to say for me.'

Nigel calls out, ‘Fucking shut up, Granddad.'

She looked at Grammaticus blankly when he spoke, but now she seems to understand. She opens the book again and turns the pages back, looking for the place, and then, with a glance at her grandfather, she begins to read. Her voice is hoarse and thin, her hand can barely hold the book for shaking, and she brings the other hand up to hold it too.

‘Nah,' Baxter says. ‘Start again. I didn't hear a word of that. Not a thing.'

So she starts again, barely more audibly. Henry has been through her book a few times, but there are certain poems he's read only once; this one he only half remembers. The lines surprise him – clearly, he hasn't been reading closely enough. They are unusually meditative, mellifluous and wilfully archaic. She's thrown herself back into another century. Now, in his terrified state, he misses or misconstrues much, but as her voice picks up a little and finds the beginnings of a quiet rhythm, he feels himself slipping through the words into the things they describe. He sees Daisy on a terrace overlooking a beach in summer moonlight; the sea is still and at high tide, the air scented, there's a final glow of sunset. She calls to her lover, surely the man who will one day father her child, to come and look, or, rather, listen to the scene. Perowne sees a smooth-skinned young man, naked to the waist, standing at Daisy's side. Together they listen to the surf roaring on the pebbles, and hear in the sound a deep sorrow which stretches right back to ancient times. She
thinks there was another time, even further back, when the earth was new and the sea consoling, and nothing came between man and God. But this evening the lovers hear only sadness and loss in the sound of the waves breaking and retreating from the shore. She turns to him, and before they kiss she tells him that they must love each other and be faithful, especially now they're having a child, and when there's no peace or certainty, and when desert armies stand ready to fight.

She looks up. Unable to control the muscular spasms in her knees, Rosalind still gazes at her daughter. Everyone else is watching Baxter, and waiting. He's hunched over, leaning his weight against the back of the sofa. Though his right hand hasn't moved from Rosalind's neck, his grip on the knife looks slacker, and his posture, the peculiar yielding angle of his spine, suggests a possible ebbing of intent. Could it happen, is it within the bounds of the real, that a mere poem of Daisy's could precipitate a mood swing?

At last he raises his head and straightens a little, and then says suddenly, with some petulance, ‘Read it again.'

She turns back a page, and with more confidence, attempting the seductive, varied tone of a storyteller entrancing a child, begins again. ‘The sea is calm tonight. The tide is full, the moon lies fair upon the straits – on the French coast the light gleams and is gone…'

Henry missed first time the mention of the cliffs of England ‘glimmering and vast out in the tranquil bay'. Now it appears there's no terrace, but an open window; there's no young man, father of the child. Instead he sees Baxter standing alone, elbows propped against the sill, listening to the waves ‘bring the eternal note of sadness in'. It's not all of antiquity, but only Sophocles who associated this sound with the ‘turbid ebb and flow of human misery'. Even in his state, Henry balks at the mention of a ‘sea of faith' and a glittering paradise of wholeness lost in the distant past. Then once again, it's through Baxter's ears that he hears the sea's ‘melancholy,
long withdrawing roar, retreating, to the breath of the night wind, down the vast edges drear and naked shingles of the world.' It rings like a musical curse. The plea to be true to one another sounds hopeless in the absence of joy or love or light or peace or ‘help for pain'. Even in a world ‘where ignorant armies clash by night', Henry discovers on second hearing no mention of a desert. The poem's melodiousness, he decides, is at odds with its pessimism.

It's hard to tell, for his face is never still, but Baxter appears suddenly elated. His right hand has moved away from Rosalind's shoulder and the knife is already back in his pocket. His gaze remains on Daisy. The relief she feels she manages to transform, by a feat of self-control and dissembling, into a look of neutrality, betrayed only by a trembling in her lower lip as she returns the stare. Her arms hang defencelessly at her sides, the book dangles between her fingers. Grammaticus grips Rosalind's hand. The disgust with which Nigel listened to the poem a second time has only just faded from his face. He says to Baxter, ‘I'll take the knife while you do the business.'

Henry worries that a prompt from Nigel, a reminder of the purpose of the visit, could effect another mood swing, a reversion.

But Baxter has broken his silence and is saying excitedly, ‘You wrote that. You
wrote
that.'

It's a statement, not a question. Daisy stares at him, waiting.

He says again, ‘You wrote that.' And then, hurriedly, ‘It's beautiful. You know that, don't you. It's beautiful. And you wrote it.'

She dares say nothing.

‘It makes me think about where I grew up.'

Henry doesn't remember or care where that was. He wants to get to Daisy to protect her, he wants to get to Rosalind, but he's fearful as long as Baxter remains near her. His state of mind is so delicately poised, easily disturbed. It's important not to surprise or threaten him.

‘Oi, Baxter.' Nigel cocks his head at Daisy and smirks.

‘Nah. I've changed my mind.'

‘What? Don't be a cunt.'

‘Why don't you get dressed,' Baxter says to Daisy, as though her nakedness was her own strange idea.

For a moment she doesn't move, and they wait for her.

‘I can't believe it,' Nigel says. ‘We gone to all this trouble. ‘

She bends to retrieve her sweater and skirt and begins to pull them on.

Baxter says eagerly, ‘How could you have thought of that? I mean, you just wrote it.' And then he says it again, several times over. ‘You wrote it!'

She ignores him. Her movements are abrupt as she dresses, there could even be anger in the way she kicks aside the underwear she leaves lying on the floor. She wants to cover herself and get to her mother, nothing else matters to her. Baxter finds nothing extraordinary in the transformation of his role, from lord of terror to amazed admirer. Or excited child. Henry is trying to catch his daughter's eye in the hope of silently warning her of the need to go on humouring Baxter. But now she and her mother are embracing. Daisy is kneeling on the floor, half lying across Rosalind's lap, with her arms around her neck, and they're whispering and nuzzling, oblivious to Baxter hovering behind them, making frenetic little dips with his body. He's becoming manic, he's tripping over his words, and shifting weight rapidly from one foot to the other. Daisy let her book drop on the table when she went to Rosalind. Now Baxter nips forward and seizes it, waves it in the air, as if he could shake meaning from it.

‘I'm having this,' he cries. ‘You said I could take anything I want. So I'm taking this. OK?' He's addressing himself to the nape of Daisy's neck.

‘Shit,' Nigel hisses.

It's of the essence of a degenerating mind, periodically to lose all sense of a continuous self, and therefore any regard
for what others think of your lack of continuity. Baxter has forgotten that he forced Daisy to undress, or threatened Rosalind. Powerful feelings have obliterated the memory. In the sudden emotional rush of his mood swing, he inhabits the confining bright spotlight of the present. This is the moment to rush him. Henry looks across at Theo who makes a slow-motion nod of agreement. On the sofa, Grammaticus is sitting up, with his hands on his daughter's and granddaughter's shoulders. Rosalind and Daisy remain in their embrace – hard to believe they think they're out of danger, or that by ignoring Baxter they're making themselves more secure. It's the pregnancy, Henry decides, the overwhelming fact of it. It's time to act.

Baxter is almost shouting again. ‘I'm not taking anything else. You hear? Only this. It's all I want.' He clutches the book like a greedy child fearing the withdrawal of a treat.

Henry glances across at Theo again. He's edged nearer, and he looks tensed, ready to leap. Nigel stands between them, watching – but he's disaffected and there's a chance he'll do nothing. And besides, he, Perowne, is closer to Baxter and will certainly reach him before Nigel can intervene. Again, Perowne feels his pulse knocking in his ears, and sees a dozen ways in which it can go wrong. Henry glances once more at Theo, and decides to count in his mind to three, and then go, no matter what. One…

Suddenly Baxter turns. He's licking his lips, his smile is wet and beatific, his eyes are bright. The voice is warm, and trembles with exalted feeling.

‘I'm going on that trial. I know all about it. They're trying to keep it quiet, but I see all the stuff. I know what's going on.'

‘Fuck this,' Nigel says.

Perowne keeps his tone flat. ‘Yes.'

‘You're going to show me this stuff.'

‘Yes, the American trial. It's upstairs, in my office.'

He had almost forgotten his lie. He looks again at Theo
who now seems to be prompting him with his eyes to go along with this. But he doesn't know that there's no trial. And the price of disappointing Baxter will be high.

He's put the book in his pocket and has taken the knife out and waves it in front of Perowne's face.

‘Go on, go on! I'll be right behind you.'

He's so high now, he could stab someone in his joy. He's babbling his words.

‘The trial. You show me everything. All of it, all of it…'

Henry wants to go to Rosalind, touch her hand, speak to her, kiss her – the smallest exchange would be enough, but Baxter is right in front of him now, with that peculiar metallic odour on his breath. The original idea was to draw him away from the others, and to separate him from Nigel. There's no reason not to carry this through. So, with a final despairing look in Rosalind's direction, Henry turns and walks slowly towards the door.

‘You watch them,' Baxter says to Nigel. ‘They're all dangerous.'

He follows Perowne across the hall, and they start up the stairs, their steps ringing out in time on the stone. Henry is trying to recall which papers lying around on his desk he can plausibly pass off. He can't remember, and his thoughts are confused by the need to make a plan. There's a paperweight he can throw, and a bulky old stapler. The high-backed orthopaedic office chair will be too heavy to lift. He doesn't even own a paper knife. Baxter is one step behind him, right on his heels. Perhaps a backward kick is the thing.

‘I know they're keeping it quiet,' Baxter is saying again. ‘They look after their own, don't they?'

They're already halfway up. Even if the trial existed, why would Baxter believe that this doctor would keep his word rather than call in the police? Because he's elated as well as desperate. Because his emotions are wild and his judgment is going. Because of the wasting in his caudate nucleus and
putamen, and in his frontal and temporal regions. But none of this is relevant. Perowne needs a plan, and his thoughts are too quick, too profuse – and now he and Baxter are on the broad landing outside the study, dominated by the tall window that looks onto the street, just where it runs into the square.

Henry hesitates for a moment on the threshold, hoping to see something he might use. The desk lamps have heavy bases, but their tangled wires will restrict him. On a bookshelf is a stone figurine he would have to go on tiptoe to reach. Otherwise, the room is like a museum, a shrine, dedicated to another, carefree age – on the couch covered with a Bukhara rug his squash racket lies where he tossed it when he came up to look at Monday's list. On the big table by the wall, the screen saver – those pictures from the Hubble telescope of remote outer space, gas clouds light years across, dying stars and red giants fail to diminish earthly cares. On the old desk by the window, piles of papers, perhaps the only hope.

‘Go on then.' Baxter pushes him in the small of his back and they enter the room together. It's a dreamy sensation, of going quietly, numbly, without protest towards destruction. Henry doesn't doubt that Baxter is feeling free enough to kill him.

‘Where is it? Show me.'

His eagerness and trust is childlike, but he's waving his knife. For their different reasons, they both long for evidence of a medical trial and an invitation for Baxter to join the privileged cohort. Henry goes towards the desk by the window where two piles of journals and offprints lean side by side. Looking down, he sees an account of a new spinal fusion procedure, and a new technique for opening blocked carotid arteries, and a sceptical piece casting doubt on the surgical lesioning of the globus pallidus in the treatment of Parkinson's Disease. He chooses the last and holds it up. He has no idea what he's doing beyond delaying the
moment. His family is downstairs, and he's feeling very lonely.