'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.'
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'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 shift 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; assuming 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
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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 cummitted 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 appetite, 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 reassuring 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
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Beach', is in all the anthologies and used to be taught in every school.
'Like your "Mount Fuji"/ Henry says, a remark that pleases Grammaticus immensely and prompts him to stand to propose a toast. John's in his twinkly mode, an effect heightened by his clownishly swollen nose. The evening has the appearance of being back on coxirse, for in his hand is the proof copy of Mi/ Saucy Bark.
'Forget everything else that's happened. We're raising our glasses to Daisy,' he says. 'Her poems mark a brilliant beginning to a career and I'm a very proud grandfather and dedicatee. Who would have thought that learning poems by heart for pocket money would turn out to be so useful. After tonight I think I must owe her another five pounds. To Daisy.'
'To Daisy,' they reply, and as they lift their glasses she kisses him, and he hugs her in return - the reconciliation is made, the Newdigate Rebuff is forgotten.
Henry touches the wine to his lips, but finds he's lost his taste for alcohol. Just as Daisy and her grandfather sit down, the phone rings and since he's nearest, Henry goes across the kitchen to take the call. In his unusual state, he doesn't immediately recognise the American voice.
'Henry? Is that you, Henry?'
'Oh, Jay. Yes.'
'Listen. We got an extradural, male, mid twenties, fell down the stairs. Sally Madden went home with the flu an hour ago, so I've got Rodney. The kid's keen and he's good and he doesn't want you in here. But Henry, we have a depressed fracture right over the sinus.'
Perowne clears his throat. 'Boggy swelling?'
'Right on the spot. That's why I'm stepping in. I've seen inexperienced surgeons tear the sinus lifting the bone, and four litres of blood on the floor. I want someone senior in here and you're the nearest. Plus you're the best.'
From across the kitchen comes loud, unnatural laughter, exaggerated like before, almost harsh; they're not really pre232 Saturday
tending to have forgotten their fear - they're simply wanting to survive it. There are other surgeons Jay can call on, and as a general rule, Perowne avoids operating on people he knows. But this is different. And despite various shifts in his attitude to Baxter, some clarity, even some resolve, is beginning to form. He thinks he knows what it is he wants to do.
'Henry? Are you there?'
'I'm on my way.'
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Five
The family is used to Perowne's occasional departures from dinner - and in this case there may even be some reassurance, a suggestion of a world returning to the everyday, in his announcement that he's been called to the hospital.
He leans by Daisy's chair and says into her ear, 'We've a lot to talk about.'
Without turning, she takes his hand and squeezes. He's about to say to Theo, perhaps for the third time that evening, You saved my life, but instead he half smiles at his son and mouths, 'See you later.' Theo has never seemed so handsome, so beautiful as now. His bare lean arms lie across the table; the solemn, clear brown eyes and their curling lashes, the blind perfection of hair, skin, teeth, the unbent, untroubled spine - he gleams in the half-light of the kitchen. He raises his glass - mineral water - and says, 'You sure you're up to this, Dad?'
Grammaticus says, 'He's right, you know. It's been a long night. You could kill some poor bugger.' With his swept-back silver hair and nose compress he resembles a patched-up lion in a children's book.
T'm fine.'
There's been talk of Theo fetching down an acoustic guitar to accompany his grandfather in 'St James Infirmary', for
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Grammaticus is in the mood for a Doc Watson imitation. Rosalind and Daisy want to hear the recording of Theo's new song, 'City Square'. There's an air of unnatural festivity around the table, of wild release which reminds Henry of a family outing to the theatre the previous year - an evening of bloody and startling atrocities at the Royal Court. At dinner afterwards they passed the evening in hilarious reminiscence of summer holidays, and drinking too much.
When he's said his farewells and is leaving, Grammaticus calls after him, 'We'll still be here when you get back.'
Perowne knows this is unlikely, but he nods cheerfully Only Rosalind senses the deeper alteration in his mood. She rises and follows him up the stairs and watches him as he puts on his overcoat and finds his wallet and keys.
'Henry, why did you say yes?'
'It's him.'
'So why did you agree?'
They are standing by the front door with its triple locks and the keypad's comforting glow. He kisses her, then she draws him towards her by his lapels and they kiss again, longer and deeper. It's a reminder, a resumption of their morning lovemaking, and also a promise; this is surely how they must end such a day. She tastes salty, which arouses him. Far below his desire, lying like a granite block on the sea floor, is his exhaustion. But at times like this, on his way to the theatre, he's professionally adept at resisting all needs.
As they pull away he says, The had a scrape in the car with him this morning.'
The gathered that.'
'And a stupid showdown on the pavement.'
'So? Why are you going in?' She licks her forefinger - he likes this glimpse of her tongue - and straightens his eyebrows for him. Thickening, with unruly tendrils of ginger, grey and unblemished white tending to the vertical, evidence of the clotted testosterone that can also cause ear and nostril hair to grow like winter sedge. More evidence of decline.
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He says, 'I have to see this through. I'm responsible.' In reply to her querying look he adds, 'He's very sick. Probably Huntington's.'
'He's obviously nuts as well as nasty. But Henry. Weren't you drinking earlier? Can you really operate?'
'It was a while ago. I think the adrenaline's rather cleared my head.'
She's fingering the lapel of his coat, keeping him close. She doesn't want him to leave. He watches her tenderly, and with some amazement, for her ordeal is only two or three hours behind her and now here she is, pretending to be entirely herself again and, as always, keen to know the components of an unusual decision, and loving him in her precise, exacting way, a lawyer to the core. He forces his gaze from settling on the abrasion on her throat.
'Are you going to be all right?'
She's lowered her eyes as she orders her thoughts. When she lifts them he sees himself, by some trick of light, suspended in miniature against the black arena of her pupils, embraced by a tiny field of mid-green iris.
She says, 'I think so. Look, I'm worried about you going in.'
'Meaning?'
'You're not thinking about doing something, about some kind of revenge are you? I want you to tell me.'
'Of course not.'
He pulls her towards him and they kiss again, and this time their tongues touch and slide by each other - in their private lexicon a kind of promise. Revenge. He suddenly doubts he's ever heard the word on her lips before. In Rosalind's slightly breathless utterance, it sounds erotic, the very word. And what is he doing, leaving the house? Even as he frames the question, he knows he's going; superficially, it's simple momentum - Jay Strauss and the team will already be in the anaesthetist's room, starting work on his patient. Henry has an image of his own right hand
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pushing open the swing doors to the scrub room. In a sense, he's already left, though he's still kissing Rosalind. He ought to hurry.
He murmurs, 'If I'd handled things better this morning, perhaps none of this would've happened. Now Jay's asked me in, I feel I ought to go. And I want to go.'
She looks at him wryly, still trying to gauge his intentions, his precise state of mind, the strength of the bond between them at this particular moment.
Because he's genuinely curious to know the story, but also to deflect her, he then says, 'So we're going to be grandparents.'
There's sadness in her smile. 'She's thirteen weeks and she says she's in love. Giulio is twenty-two, from Rome, studying archaeology in Paris. His parents have given them enough money to buy a little flat.'
Henry contends with fatherly thoughts, with nascent outrage at this unknown Italian's assault on the family's peace and cohesion, at his impertinently depositing his seed without first making himself available for inspection, evaluation where was he now, for example? And irritation that this boy's own family should know before Daisy's, that arrangements are already in hand. A little flat. Thirteen weeks. Perowne leans his hand on the door lock's ancient brassy knob. At last Daisy's pregnancy - the evening's buried subject - rises before him in clear light, a calamity and an insult and a waste, a subject too huge to confront or lament now, when he is waited for up the road.
'Oh God. What a mess. Why didn't she tell us? Did she think about a termination?'
'Out of the question, apparently. Darling, don't start boiling over when you're about to operate.'
'How are they going to live?'
'The way we did.'