Not absolutely sure you’re concentrating, pet, but never mind, I’ll be telling you this story lots from now on. Anyway, Ivan works it out. Hilary and his dad decided not to tell Ivan the result of the first test because they think he might get so upset he’ll have another breakdown and start hurting himself all over again. So they don’t tell Ivan that his juice is as much use as a Cup-a-Soup for making babies. Can’t manage anything, can he?
Ivan’s head sank on to the side of the bed. He did not see, as he cried noisily into a scrap of green hospital paper towel, the lifting of Hilary’s fingers lying across her stomach. She moaned, hearing his weeping somewhere very distant.
So Hilary will carry on giving Ivan lots of screws and pretend they’re making babies and then when husband’s not
looking Doctor Dad will shoot his four-star, tried and tested spunk up her until she’s pregnant. Dad and son look so alike, you see, nobody will ever know the difference! And they have always wanted to screw each other, you see, Hilary and the dad. Ivan has seen that and thinks they might even have done it before. So what fun they will have and all in a good cause
.
Hilary’s eyes were wide open. She gasped, trying to find her voice, while her lips worked like two small landed fish. Ivan stood up and whacked her hard across the face with the flat of his hand. She gurgled and moaned.
Now shut up, pet, and listen to me, or I’ll have to do that again. If you make me cross like that again I won’t tell you the rest of the story. Well, then, everything goes along nicely for a while, but-oh I should have mentioned—the clinic’s had it and Dad has scarpered-until guess what. One day, splosh! Out tumbles disgusting red slippery bag of giblets and that’s the end of baby. Not Ivan’s, though, that’s the point. I did make that clear, I hope
.
Hilary’s screaming brought a nurse who listened to Ivan’s white-faced explanation that his wife appeared to have had a nightmare and had woken up saying all kinds of upsetting things. After she had brought the doctor, soothed and sedated her patient, the nurse tiptoed away. Poor things. It was late now, but there would be no point trying to suggest that this one leave to get some rest, even though his wife would be dead to the world for the next few hours. He was obviously devoted to her.
Her footfalls faded to silence.
And do you know what?
Ivan whispered, holding Hilary’s hand.
Now that the story’s over, the husband doesn’t feel anything. He thought he’d feel so many things but he doesn’t feel anything at all, he doesn’t even feel real
.
D
R
T
AKAHASHI’S FAX
came scudding through Sara’s machine at a quarter past eleven. She pulled each page off as it came in, assembled the fourteen slippery, curling sheets and sank into the sofa to read. The first dozen pages were filled with the relevant botany, history and folklore. Within ten seconds of starting to read the final two pages, on the pathology of ergot, she was almost retching.
She read that the pretty-sounding
Claviceps purpurea
fungus commonly known as ergot could produce in humans not only burning hands but, in addition, any or all of the following symptoms: debility, anxiety, insomnia, emaciation, excessive appetite, great thirst, cravings for acids, cramps, dry and flaky skin, dilated pupils, sunken eyes, falling out of the hair, cracked stiff tongue, red facial spots, vomiting of blood, ‘eructations of bad odour’ and ‘small painful boils with green contents’. These symptoms were to be got through, apparently, before the victim could hope for the fatal onset of haemorrhages of ‘oozing, fetid, watery black blood’, gangrene, hallucinations and dementia. And if any doubt remained, diagnosis could be facilitated by examining the patient’s stools which might
be olive-green, thin, putrid and bloody, as well as involuntary.
James. Was it possible that James could have been reduced to this? She could not countenance it. Please let her be wrong. She might, she prayed, be completely wrong about the whole thing. Please let it be that James died of some swift but kinder disease that had just washed through him and overcome him painlessly in sleep. Perhaps she
was
wrong. Since her frantic hypothesising in the dressing room last night and her desperate telephone calls she had gone almost past caring. Sara suddenly sat up straight, her heart pounding, remembering. What if Joyce had not actually got the meaning of what she had tried to tell her from Salzburg? What if, in an alcoholic haze, she had not heard properly or not understood? Sara had no idea, now that she stopped to think about it, whether or not Joyce had acted on the message at all, either at the Sulis or at the RUH. Stephen had not, after all, said anything about ergot. He had not actually used the word and nor had she. He had said only that no patients were left. She tried to slow her mind, searching for coherence, and wondered if Andrew was the only person she knew who would make better sense of this than she could. The deaths of Mrs Takahashi and Warwick Jones were slipping in and out of her calculations, too, yet she could see neither how nor even if they had anything to do with it. If indeed ‘it’ was really accidental ergot poisoning. And while she might be wrong (she clutched at the possibility for her own sake almost as much as for James’s) she might also be right. Joyce, quite apart from any other staff who could still be there, might still be eating ergot by the handful, completely unaware.
She reached the gates of the Sulis at half-past eleven.
Once again, the grounds were in darkness and the roofline of the unlit house stood out dark against the indigo sky. Looking up she tried to see the house as she knew it to be, graciously proportioned and golden stoned. But it was the daylight version that now seemed the illusion, while the cloak of Gothic gloom that the house wore under the dark sky seemed real. It was reassuring, then, that as Sara was locking the car she could see that there were lights on in the basement. Joyce was perhaps cooking something for herself. She broke into a run.
The smell of burning oil and the sound of voices rose up the stairwell to the hall. Sara tore down the stairs and arrived breathless at the bottom. All talking stopped. Sara stood, staring, seeing from the half-dozen or so faces staring back how insane she must look. One or two looked positively frightened. ‘What—what are you doing here?’ Sara gasped, getting in first with the question that could more justifiably be directed at her.
Ivan swirled the heavy frying pan once expertly in the air and replaced it over the flame. He turned back to the stove, where the rasp of sizzling began and grew louder. A tray of fat, raw sausages sat by the side of the cooker. Baskets of fresh-looking rolls and bowls of bright salad stood nearby.
‘Having a party,’ Yvonne said from the sofa. ‘Sausages and pancakes. Hot dogs French style. I’d have thought that was obvious. Have a drink.’ She picked up a bottle. ‘Ivan’s made all these lovely pancakes, haven’t you, Ivan?’
‘Galettes,’ Ivan said, smiling and turning round. ‘Pancakes are made with wheat flour. This is a mixture of buckwheat and other things. Better for savoury fillings.’ He nodded to Sara. ‘A sudden impulse. Hilary’s in hospital
and I couldn’t face being on my own so I rang Yvonne and she got everyone round.’
‘Via the pub, mind you!’ Yvonne said. Sara smiled weakly as everyone laughed.
Ivan said, ‘Do stay. I’m using up all our stocks: tomatoes, cheese, garlic, salad, rye and caraway rolls, there’s plenty.’
‘Ivan thought we should have a little impromptu farewell party. I brought meat! And all cooked in lovely, lovely oil,’ Yvonne said, breaking into a shrieking laugh. ‘We don’t care, do we!’
Sara looked round. She now recognised some of the laughing faces as the kitchen and cleaning staff. One or two young men, obviously partners, sat or stood with glasses in their hands. Bowls of crisps and salted nuts were being passed round. Yvonne placed a hand on the shoulder of the younger, short-haired woman beside her on the sofa. ‘Meet Chris, my other half,’ she said jovially, ‘and come on, have a drink. There’s gallons. What the hell? Do it properly, we thought, as it’s probably our last night. Here.’
Sara, too confused to speak, watched as the flushed and shiny Yvonne took a glass and Chris, smiling broadly, filled it with red wine. She handed Sara the glass with a wobbly smile. ‘Cheers!’
‘Where’s Joyce?’ Sara asked.
‘Gone. I went up to get her to join us but she’s not there.’
Sara’s despair was almost too deep for words. ‘Oh, no,’ she sighed, picturing her insensible in a stairwell somewhere. ‘Did she … talk to you about anything? Say anything at all?’
‘What about? No. I haven’t seen her today. Oh, don’t you go worrying,’ Yvonne said, comfortably. ‘Why shouldn’t she go out?’
‘She might—She’ll—She’s not meant to drink.’
Yvonne looked at her with a nose wrinkle and a confidential smile. ‘You are a worrier, aren’t you? Come on, we’ve all had a terrible time. Time to put it behind us now, isn’t that right? That’s what Ivan says and he and Hilary have had an awful time too so if
he
can stand there, making pancakes …’
‘Galettes,’ Ivan said, nodding, and slipped the hot soft disc from the pan on to a plate already high with others. He dribbled more oil from a bottle on to the pan, turned it over the flame and swirled a ladleful of batter into it. A glorious smell and loud sizzle filled the air. Orange flames flicked and danced up from the stove as the oil caught at the edges.
‘Whoa!’ Chris whooped. Yvonne clapped her hands, on balance a mistake, as she was still holding her glass.
‘Stop,
stop!
You mustn’t—it’s dangerous, you mustn’t!’ Sara stepped forward to the stove, as far as the heat allowed her to go.
Ivan grinned. ‘Don’t worry. I’ve made hundreds of these. The flame improves the flavour.’
‘No, no, I don’t mean that. It’s the flour. It’s poisoned. You mustn’t eat it, it’s dangerous.’
Ivan laughed. Sara pulled his sleeve and he turned again, shaking his head. ‘Come off it. You are joking, aren’t you? It’s a hundred per cent organic.’
‘I’m not joking. I think it’s contaminated. You’ve got to listen.’ Ivan turned off the flame under the pan. The happy sizzling died away to a stunned silence, which Sara knew
she must fill with an explanation. Everyone was looking at her with amusement or distrust.
‘Is there rye flour in that? From the smallholding?’ she asked, pointing towards the bowl of batter.
Ivan nodded. ‘A little.’
Yvonne picked up the basket of bread rolls. ‘And these are rye and caraway, aren’t they?’
Sara took a deep breath. ‘I think it may be infested with ergot. It’s a fungus. It’s rare nowadays, you don’t get it on anything that’s been sprayed, but on organic rye—I think it may have affected yours. That’s why James got so ill. It was the bread. Some of his symptoms—I’ve checked all this—some of them were the same as ergot victims in the Middle Ages.’
The silence had somehow grown even more stunned. Yvonne had sat up and turned and was now kneeling, looking at Sara over the back of the sofa. ‘Come off it. You mean, the tremors, the hands and feet? The appetite? Oh, the poor souls. Bunny, Mrs Valentine too. Ivan, that can’t be right, can it? Poisoned rye?’
Ivan’s face was the colour of his batter. He had put down his spatula. ‘My God, I … I don’t know … I’ve never heard of—Wait, wait though,’ he said, his face lifting slightly. ‘Everybody ate the bread. Not everyone was ill, were they? Yvonne, you weren’t ill.’
‘Trust you to ask,’ Yvonne said. She sighed with resignation. ‘I’m sorry, Ivan, I never had the heart to tell you, but it bunged me up, that bread. I never touched it after the first time. I’m fine with the salads, but as far as the bread goes I used to bring my own or buy a sarnie and eat it in the staffroom. I’m a Kingsmill and Flora girl, inside and out, aren’t I, Chris?’
Ivan looked over her head to some distant point, presumably the moral high ground, with a hurt expression on his face. ‘Joyce,’ he said. ‘She wasn’t ill either. If anything she got better, put on some weight.’
They waited. There was another heavy sigh from Yvonne. ‘Sorry to grass on her, but she didn’t eat it either. She told me she held with proper hot meals, meat and two veg. Scotch people don’t believe in salads and brown bread.’
‘So what did she eat then? She definitely put weight on.’
‘The garage halfway down the hill. I told her about it. She popped out every day and sneaked back a steak and kidney pie in her handbag. They even heat them up for you. She got quite a taste for them.’
‘And she fed the bread to Pretzel, I suppose,’ Sara said. ‘That’s why she took trays up to her room, so she could feed it to him and nobody would know she wasn’t cooperating with her treatment. Poor little dog.’
Ivan looked even worse. He had been staring at Yvonne, then at Sara and back to Yvonne. Yvonne pointed out, ‘You’re all right. Didn’t you eat it, Ivan?’
He shook his head. ‘Hilary and I switched to a raw diet when she got pregnant. Juices and leaves, mainly. To maximise vitamin and mineral absorption in the early weeks.’ He wiped at his eyes with his tea towel. ‘Inner cleansing. We were encouraging Hilary’s digestive system into optimum functioning for the sake of the baby. I did it too, to encourage her. I might have known it wouldn’t work.’ He sobbed noisily into the towel, then looked up.
‘What about everyone else?’ he said, challengingly, with a wave toward the little knot of people in the room. ‘They’re all fine. Aren’t you?’
Quietly Yvonne said, ‘Ivan, they’re all part-timers. They don’t eat in. Everyone brings a biscuit or something for their breaks.’ There were murmurs and nods.
Ivan turned to Sara. ‘Look, how can you be sure about this?’ he asked, aggressive in the way of a wounded, weakened animal. ‘Don’t you have any idea how careful we are about nutrition? We are
healers
. Nutrition’s at the core of all we do, and now you’re practically accusing us of … of
poisoning
people. It’s a terrible thing to say.’
Sara felt cornered. Of course she was not sure. Nor was she finding it easy to think of appropriate things to say to this idiot Ivan, who seemed to have turned the act of eating into a self-immolating religion of quite Tantric complexity. ‘I’m suggesting it’s a possibility,’ she replied, as quietly as she could, for she felt like shouting. ‘Surely it’s better to know, one way or the other? Of course I hope I’m wrong.’