Saturday. Part 9

Tucking get on with it/ Nigel mutters.

Baxter's hand and the knife are back on Rosalind's shoulder. Daisy looks at her father. What should she do? He doesn't know what to tell her. She bends to remove her boots, but she can't free the zip, her fingers are too clumsy. With a cry of frustration she goes down on one knee and tugs at it until it yields. She sits on the floor, like a child undressing, and pulls off her boots. Still sitting, she fumbles with the fastener at the side of her skirt, then she gets to her feet and steps out of it. As she undresses she shrinks abjectly into herself. Rosalind is shaking badly as Baxter leans over her shoulder and steadies his fidgety hand with its blade against her neck. But she doesn't turn away from Daisy, unlike Theo who appears so stricken that he can't bear to look at his sister. He keeps his gaze fixed on the floor. Grammaticus too is looking away. Daisy goes faster now, pulling off her tights with an impatient gasp, almost tearing at them, then throwing them down. She's undressing in a panic, pulling off her black sweater and chucking that down too. She's in her underwear - white, freshly laundered for the journey from Paris - but she doesn't pause. In one unbroken movement she unhitches her bra and hooks off her knickers with her thumb and lets them fall from her hands. Only then does she glance at her mother, but only briefly. It's done. Head bowed, Daisy stands with her hands at her sides, unable to look at anyone.

Perowne hasn't seen his daughter naked in more than twelve years. Despite the changes, he remembers this body from bath times, and even in his fear, or because of it, it is above all the vulnerable child he sees. But he knows that this young woman will be intensely aware of what her parents are discovering at this very moment in the weighted curve and compact swell of her belly and the tightness of her small b.r.e.a.s.t.s. How didn't he guess earlier? What perfect sense it makes; her variations of mood, the euphoria, that she should cry over a dedication. She's surely almost beginning her 218.

second trimester. But there's no time to think about it. Baxter has not s.h.i.+fted his position. Rosalind has tremors in her knees now. The blade prevents her turning her head towards her husband, but he thinks she's straining to find him with her eyes.

Daisy is before them and Nigel says, 'Jesus. In the club. She's all yours, mate.'

'Shut up/ Baxter says.

Unseen, Perowne has taken half a step towards him.

'Well, well. Look at that!' Baxter says suddenly. He's pointing with his free hand across the table at Daisy's book. He could be concealing his own confusion or unease at the sight of a pregnant woman, or looking for ways to extend the humiliation. These two young men are immature, probably without much s.e.xual experience. Daisy's condition embarra.s.ses them. Perhaps it disgusts them. It's a hope. Baxter has forced matters this far, and he doesn't know what to do. Now he's seen her proof lying on the sofa opposite, and seizes an opportunity.

'Pa.s.s me that one, Nige.'

As Nigel moves to retrieve the book, Henry shuffles closer. Theo does the same.

'My Saucy Bark. By Saucy Daisy Perowne.' Baxter flips the pages in his left hand. 'You didn't tell me you wrote poems. All your own work, is it?'

'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.'

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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, Tucking 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 hoa.r.s.e 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 220.

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 G.o.d. But this evening the lovers hear only sadness and loss in the sound of the waves breaking and retreating from the sh.o.r.e. 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. Fveryone 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 a.s.sociated 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, 221.

long withdrawing roar, retreating, to the breath of the night wind, down the vast edges drear and naked s.h.i.+ngles 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.

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'Oi, Baxter.' Nigel c.o.c.ks his head at Daisy and smirks.

'Nah. I've changed my mind.'

'What? Don't be a c.u.n.t.'

'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 s.h.i.+fting 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.

Tm 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.

's.h.i.+t/ Nigel hisses.

It's of the essence of a degenerating mind, periodically to lose all sense of a continuous self, and therefore any regard 223.

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 nmking IhemseK e^ 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.

T'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.'

'f.u.c.k 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 224.

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 snuiHest 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 pa.s.s 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.

The 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 225.

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 s.p.a.ce, 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 226.

moment. His family is downstairs, and he's feeling very lonely.

This describes the structure/ he starts to say. His voice quavers, as a liar's might, but there's nothing he can do but keep talking. The thing is this. The globus pallidus, the pale globe, is a rather beautiful thing, deep in the basal ganglia, one of the oldest parts of the corpus striatum, and uh divided in two segments which But Baxter is no longer paying attention - he's turned his head to listen. From downstairs they hear rapid heavy footsteps crossing the hall, then the sound of the front door opening and slamming shut. Has he been deserted for the second time today? He hurries across the study and steps out onto the landing. Henry drops the article and follows. What they see is Theo coming towards them at a run, leaping up the stairs three at a time, his arms pumping, his teeth bared savagely with the effort. He makes an inarticulate shout, which sounds like a command. Henry is already moving. Baxter draws back the knife. Henry seizes his wrist with both hands, pinning the arm in place. Contact at last. A moment later, Theo lunges forwards from two steps down and takes Baxter by the lapels of his leather jacket, and with a twisting, whip-like movement of his body pulls him off balance. At the same time, Perowne, still gripping the arm, heaves with his shoulder, and together they fling him down the stairs.

He falls backwards, with arms outstretched, still holding the knife in his right hand. There's a moment, which seems to unfold and luxuriously expand, when all goes silent and still, when Baxter is entirely airborne, suspended in time, looking directly at Henry with an expression, not so much of terror, as dismay. And Henry thinks he sees in the wide brown eyes a sorrowful accusation of betrayal. He, Henry Perowne, possesses so much - the work, money, status, the home, above all, the family - the handsome healthy son with the strong guitarist's hands come to rescue him, the beautiful poet for a daughter, unattainable even in her nakedness, 227.

the famous father-in-law, the gifted, loving wife; and he has done nothing, given nothing to Baxter who has so little that is not wrecked by his defective gene, and who is soon to have even less.

The run of stairs before the turn is long, the steps are hard stone. With a rippling, bell-like sound, Baxter's left foot glances along a row of iron banister posts, just before his head hits the floor of the half-landing and collides with the wall, inches above the skirting board.

They art1 in various forms of shock, and remain so for hours after the police have left and the paramedics have taken Baxter away in their ambulance. Sudden bursts of urgent, sometimes tearful recall are broken by numb silences. No one wants to be alone, so they remain in the sitting room together, trapped in a waiting room, a no man's land separating their ordeal from the resumption of their lives. With the resilience of the young, Theo and Daisy go downstairs to the kitchen and return with bottles of red wine, mineral water and a bowl of salted cashews, as well as ice and a cloth to make a compress for their grandfather's nose.

But alcohol, tasty as it is, barely penetrates. And Henry finds that he prefers to drink water. WTiat meets their needs is touch - they sit close, hold hands, embrace. The parting words of the night-duty CID officer were that his colleagues would be coming in the morning to take formal statements from them individually. They were therefore not to discuss or compare their evidence. It's a hopeless prescription, and it doesn't even occur to them to follow it. There's nothing to do but talk, fall silent, then talk again. They have the impression of conducting a careful a.n.a.lysis of the evening's horrible events. But it's a simpler, more vital re-enactment. All they do is describe: when they came in the room, when he turned, when the tall horsy one just walked out of the house . . . They want to have it all again, from another's point of view, and know that it's all true what they've been through, 228.

and feel in these precise comparisons of feeling and observation that they're being delivered from private nightmare, and returned to the web of kindly social and familial relations, without which they're nothing. They were overrun and dominated by intruders because they weren't able to communicate and act together; now at last they can.

Perowne attends to his father-in-law's nose. John refuses to go to casualty that night, and no one tries to persuade him. The swelling already makes a diagnosis difficult, but his nose hasn't s.h.i.+fted from the midline position, and Perovvne's guess is a hairline fracture to the maxillary processes - better that than ruptured cartilage. For much of this stretch of the evening Henry sits close to Rosalind. She shows them a red patch and a small cut on her neck, and describes a moment when she ceased to be terrified and became indifferent to her fate.

'I felt myself floating away,' she says. 'It was as if I was watching all of us, myself included, from a corner of the room right up by the ceiling. And I thought, if it's going to happen, I won't feel a thing, I won't care.'

'Well, we might have,' Theo says, and they laugh loudly, too loudly.

Daisy talks with brittle gaiety about undressing in front of Baxter. The tried to pretend that I was ten years old, at school, getting changed for hockey. I disliked the games mistress and hated taking my clothes off when she was there. But remembering her helped me. Then I tried to imagine that I was in the garden at the chateau, reciting to Granddad.'

The unspoken matter is Daisy's pregnancy. But it's too soon, Henry supposes, because she doesn't refer to it, and nor does Rosalind.

Grammaticus says from behind his compress, 'You know, it sounds completely mad, but there came a point after Daisy recited Arnold for the second time when I actually began to feel sorry for that fellow. I think, my dear, you made him fall in love with you.'

229.

'Arnold who?' Henry says, and makes Daisy and her grandfather laugh. Henry adds, but she doesn't seem to hear, 'You know, I didn't think it was one of your best.'

He knows what Grammaticus means, and he could begin to tell them all about Baxter's condition, but Henry himself is undergoing a s.h.i.+ft in sympathies; the sight of the abrasion on Rosalind's neck hardens him. What weakness, what delusional folly, to permit yourself sympathy towards a man, sick or not, who invades your house like this. As he sits listening to the others, his anger grows, until he almost begins to regret the care he routinely gave Baxter after his fall. He could have left him to die of hypoxia, pleading incapacity through shock. Instead, he went straight down with Theo and, finding Baxter semi-conscious, opened his airway with a jaw thrust; a.s.suming spinal damage, he showed Theo how to hold Baxter's head while he improvised a collar out of towels from the half-landing bathroom. Downstairs, Rosalind was calling an ambulance - the landlines were not cut. With Theo still holding Baxter's head, Perowne rolled him into a recovery position, and looked at the other vital signs. They weren't too good. The breathing was noisy, the pulse slow and weak, the pupils slightly unequal. By this time, Baxter was murmuring to himself as he lay there with eyes closed. He was able to respond to his name and to a command to clench his fist - Perowne put his Glasgow Coma Score at thirteen. He went to his study and phoned ahead to casualty, spoke to the registrar and told him what to expect, and to be ready to order a CT scan and alert the neurosurgeon on duty. Then there was nothing to do but wait out the last minutes. During that time they managed to ease Daisy's book from Baxter's pocket. Theo continued to support his head until two lads from the hospital in green jump suits arrived, put in a line and under Perowne's instruction administered colloid fluid intravenously.

Two police constables arrived in support of the ambulance, and a few minutes later, the CID man turned up. After he'd 230.

met the family, and heard Perowne's account, he told them it was too late, and everyone was too upset now to be giving statements. He took from Henry the licence plate number of the red BMW and made a note of the Spearmint Rhino. He examined the gash in the sofa, then he went back upstairs, knelt by Baxter, prised the knife out of his hand and dropped it in a sterile plastic bag. He took a swab of dried blood from the knuckles of Baxter's left hand - it was likely to be blood from Grammaticus's nose.

The detective laughed out loud when Theo asked him whether he and his father had c.u.mmitted any crime in throwing Baxter down the stairs.

He touched Baxter with the tip of his shoe. The doubt if he'll be making a complaint. And we certainly won't be.'

The detective phoned his station to arrange for two constables to be sent to the hospital to stand guard over Baxter through the night. When he was conscious, he'd be arrested. Formal charges would follow later. After the warning about sharing evidence, the three policemen left. The paramedics chocked and blocked Baxter on a spinal board and carried him away.

Rosalind appears to make an impressive recovery. Perhaps it's only half an hour after the police and ambulance men have left, when she suggests that it might do everybody good to come and eat. No one has an appet.i.te, but they follow her down to the kitchen. While Perowne reheats his stock and takes from the fridge the clams, mussels, prawns and monkfish, the children lay the table, Rosalind slices a loaf of bread and makes a dressing for the salad, and Grammaticus puts down his icepack to open another bottle of wine. This communal activity is pleasurable, and twenty minutes later the meal is ready, and they are hungry at last. It's even faintly rea.s.suring that Grammaticus is on his way to getting drunk, though he remains at a benign stage. It's about this time, as they're sitting down, that Henry learns the name of the poet, Matthew Arnold, and that his poem that Daisy recited, 'Dover 231.