by Ian Mcewan
This second dreamy interlude may have lasted five minutes, perhaps ten. At one point, as the logic of his thoughts begins to disintegrate, he closes his eyes and lets himself drift backwards and down, a pleasant sensation confused with notions of a muddy tidal river, and of untying with clumsy fingers a knotted rope that is also a means of converting currency and changing weekends into workdays. But even as he sinks, he knows he mustn't sleep—there are guests, and other responsibilities he can't immediately identify. At the sound of Rosalind opening the front door he stirs and looks expectantly across his left shoulder. Daisy too half raises her head, and the conversation between Theo and Grammaticus breaks off. There's an unusually long pause before they hear from the hall the sound of the door closing. Perowne thinks his wife might be burdened with shopping or packages, or legal bundles, and is about to get up to help when she comes in. She moves slowly, stiffly, apparently wary of what she is about to find. She's carrying her brown leather briefcase and she's pale, her face is stretched, as though invisible hands are compressing and pulling the skin back towards her ears. Her eyes are wide and dark, desperate to communicate what her lips, parting and closing once, are unable to tell them. They watch as she stops and looks back at the doorway she has come through.
“Mum?” Daisy calls out to her.
Perowne disentangles himself from his daughter and rises to his feet. Even though Rosalind is wearing a winter coat over her business suit, he imagines he can actually see the racing of her pulse—an impression derived from her rapid, shallow breathing. Her family is calling her name and beginning to go towards her, and she's moving away from them, and backing herself against the high living-room wall. She warns them off with her eyes, with a furtive movement of her hand. It isn't only fear they see in her face, but anger too, and perhaps in the tensing of her upper lip, disgust. Through a quarter-inch gap between the hinged side of the door and its frame, Perowne sees in the hall a form, no more than a shadow, hesitate then move away. From Rosalind's reaction they sense a figure coming into the room before they see it. And still, the shape Perowne can see in the hall hangs back: he realises well before the others that there are two intruders in the house, not one.
As the man enters the room, Perowne instantly recognises the clothes; the leather jacket, the woollen watch cap. Those two on the bench were waiting for their chance. A moment before he can recall the name, he recognises the face too, and the peculiarity of gait, the fidgety tremors as he positions himself close, too close, to Rosalind. Rather than shrinking from him, she stands her ground. But she has to turn her head away to find at last the word she has been trying to articulate. She meets her husband's eye.
“Knife,” she says as though to him alone. “He's got a knife.”
Baxter's right hand is deep in the pocket of his jacket. He surveys the room and the people in it with a tight pout of a smile, like a man bursting to tell a joke. All afternoon he must have dreamed of making this entrance. With infinitesimal tracking movements of the head his gaze switches from Theo and Grammaticus at the far end of the room, to Daisy, and finally to Perowne just in front of her. It is, of course, logical that Baxter is here. For a few seconds, Perowne's only thought is stupidly that: of course. It makes sense. Nearly all the elements of his day are assembled; it only needs his mother, and Jay Strauss to appear with his squash racket. Before Baxter speaks, Perowne tries to see the room through his eyes, as if that might help predict the degree of trouble ahead: the two bottles of champagne, the gin and the bowls of lemon and ice, the belittlingly high ceiling and its mouldings, the Bridget Riley prints flanking the Hodgkin, the muted lamps, the cherry wood floor beneath the Persian rugs, the careless piles of serious books, the decades of polish in the thakat table. The scale of retribution could be large. Perowne also sees his family through Baxter: the girl and the old fellow won't be a problem; the boy is strong but doesn't look handy. As for the lanky doctor, that's why he's here. Of course. As Theo said, on the streets there's pride, and here it is, concealing a knife. When anything can happen, everything matters.
Henry is ten feet away from Baxter. When Rosalind warned of the knife, he froze mid-step, in an unstable position. Now, like a child playing grandmother's footsteps, he brings the back foot level with the front, and plants it well apart. With her eyes and a faint shake of her head Rosalind is urging him away. She doesn't know the background; she thinks these are mere burglars, that it is sensible to let them take what they want and hope they will leave. Nor does she know the pathology. All day long, the encounter on University Street has been in his thoughts, like a sustained piano note. But he'd almost forgotten about Baxter, not the fact of his existence, of course, but the agitated physical reality, the sour nicotine tang, the tremulous right hand, the monkeyish air, heightened now by a woollen cap.
With a look, Baxter lets him know that he too has seen his step, but what he says is, “I want all them phones out of your pockets and on the table.”
When no one moves he says, “You two kids first.” And he says to Rosalind, “Go on, tell them.”
“Daisy, Theo. I think it's best to do it.” There's more anger than fear in her voice now, and some rebellion in the understated “I think.” Daisy's hands are shaking and she's having trouble getting the phone out of the tight pocket of her skirt. She makes exasperated little gasps. Theo puts his phone on the table and comes round to help her, a good move, his father thinks, since it brings him almost to his side. Baxter's right hand is still deep in his jacket. If they can agree on the moment, they're in a good position to rush him.
But Baxter has the same thought. “Put hers next to yours and go back to where you were. Go on. Right back. Further.”
Somewhere in Henry's study, in a drawer full of junk, is a pepper spray he bought many years ago in Houston. It might still work. Down in the external vaults, in among the camping gear and old toys, is a baseball bat. In the kitchen are any number of cleavers and choppers. But the bruise on his sternum suggests he'd lose a knife fight in seconds.
Baxter turns to Rosalind. “Now yours.”
She exchanges a look with Henry and puts her hand in the pocket of her coat. She places the phone in Baxter's palm.
“Now you.”
Perowne says, “It's upstairs charging.”
“Don't make it worse, cunt,” Baxter says. “I can see it.”
The top of the phone is visible above the curving cut of his jeans pocket. The shape of the rest is picked out by a bulge in the denim.
“So you can.”
“Put it on the floor and slide it across to me.”
To encourage him, Baxter at last takes the knife from his pocket. As far as Perowne can tell, it's an old-fashioned French kitchen knife, with an orange wooden handle and curved blade with no sheen. Careful to make all his movements unsurprising and slow, Henry kneels down and pushes his phone towards Baxter. He doesn't pick it up. Instead, he calls out, “Oi, Nige. You can come in now. Pick up them phones.”
The horse-faced lad pauses self-consciously in the doorway. “Fucking size of this place.” When he sees Perowne he says, “Aw. Mr. Road Rage.”
As his friend is gathering up the phones, Baxter says, “What about poor granddad over there? Don't tell me they haven't bought you a phone.”
Grammaticus comes away from the shadows and takes a few paces towards him. In his right hand is his empty glass. “Actually, I don't own one. And if I did, I'd be inviting you to ram it up your cowardly arse.”
Baxter says to Henry, “Is this your dad?”
It's not the moment for fine distinctions, and he thinks he's making the right answer when he says, “Yes.”
But he's exactly wrong. Baxter walks unevenly, in his dipping pole-punter's roll, across the room, pausing only to step around Nigel. The knife in his hand is held firmly, point down.
“That wasn't very nice, a posh old gent like you.”
Sensing disaster, Perowne tries to get between Baxter and Grammaticus, but Nigel stands in his way,
grinning. There's no time. Perowne calls out quickly, “You've got no quarrel with him.”
But in that moment Baxter has arrived in front of the old man, and though Theo, immediately guessing what's coming, flings out a protective arm, Baxter's hand flashes in an arc in front of the old man's face. They hear a soft crack of bone, like a green branch breaking. All the Perownes exclaim, an “oh” or a “no,” but their worst fears are not realised. It wasn't the hand that held the knife that struck Grammaticus. Bare knuckles have simply broken his nose. As his legs give way and he drops, Theo catches him and lowers him so that he's on his knees, and takes the glass from him. Without a sound, without giving his attacker the satisfaction of a groan, Grammaticus covers his face with his hands. Blood trickles from just below his wristwatch.
Until now, Henry suddenly sees, he's been in a fog. Astonished, even cautious, but not properly, usefully frightened. In his usual manner he's been dreaming—of “rushing” Baxter with Theo, of pepper sprays, clubs, cleavers, all stuff of fantasy. The truth, now demonstrated, is that Baxter is a special case—a man who believes he has no future and is therefore free of consequences. And that's simply the frame. Within it are the unique disturbances, the individual expression of his condition—impulsiveness, poor self-control, paranoia, mood swings, depression balanced by outbursts of temper, some of this, or all of it and more, would have helped him, stirred him, as he reflected on his quarrel with Henry this morning. And it will be driving Baxter on now. There's no obvious intellectual deterioration yet—the emotions go first, along with the physical coordination. Anyone with significantly more than forty CAG repeats in the middle of an obscure gene on chromosome four is obliged to share this fate in their own particular way. It is written. No amount of love, drugs, Bible classes or prison sentencing can cure Baxter or shift him from his course. It's spelled out in fragile proteins, but it could be carved in stone, or tempered steel.
Rosalind and Daisy are converging on John Grammaticus where he kneels beside the sofa. Theo helplessly rests a hand on his grandfather's shoulder. Perowne's own path remains blocked by Nigel—there's no way past without physical struggle. Baxter, knife still in his right hand, steps aside and with a fidgety, wavering left hand removes his woollen cap and loosens the zip on his jacket. Awkwardly, he lights a cigarette. As he smokes, he jiggles the zip's tag and looks on at the scene around the man on the floor, shifting his weight lopsidedly between left and right foot. He seems to be waiting to see what he himself will do next.
But for all the reductive arguments, Perowne can't convince himself that molecules and faulty genes alone are terrorising his family and have broken his father-in-law's nose. Perowne himself is also responsible. He humiliated Baxter in the street in front of his sidekicks, and did so when he'd already guessed at his condition. Naturally, Baxter is here to rescue his reputation in front of a witness. He must have talked Nigel round, or bribed him. The lad is a fool to make himself an accessory. Baxter is acting while he still can, for he must know what's in store for him. Over the coming months and years the athetosis, those involuntary, uncontrolled movements, and the chorea—the helpless jitters, the grimacing, the jerky raising of the shoulders and flexing of fingers and toes—will overwhelm him, render him too absurd for the street. His kind of criminality is for the physically sound. At some point he'll find himself writhing and hallucinating on a bed he'll never leave, in a long-term psychiatric ward, probably friendless, certainly unlovable, and there his slow deterioration will be managed, with efficiency if he's in luck. Now, while he can still hold a knife, he has come to assert his dignity, and perhaps even shape the way he'll be remembered. Yeah, that tall geezer with the Merc made a big fucking mistake when he trashed old Baxter's wing mirror. The story of Baxter deserted by his men, defeated by a stranger who was able to walk away unscathed, all that will be forgotten.
And what was that stranger thinking of, when he knew about the condition, has seen his colleagues' patients, even corresponded a few years ago with a neurosurgeon in Los Angeles about a new procedure? The idea was to graft stereotactically onto regions of the caudate and putamen a cocktail of foetal stem cells from three different sources, and minced-up nerve tissue from the patient. It never really worked out, and Perowne wasn't tempted by it. Why could he not see that it's dangerous to humble a man as emotionally labile as Baxter? To escape a beating and get to his squash game. He used or misused his authority to avoid one crisis, and his actions have steered him into another, far worse. The responsibility is his; Grammaticus's blood is on the floor because Baxter thinks the old man is Perowne's father. A good start's been made on dishonouring the son.
Rosalind and Daisy are crouching by Grammaticus with paper tissues.
“It's all right,” he's saying in a muffled voice. “I've broken it before. On some bloody library steps.”
“You know what?” Baxter calls across to Nigel. “We've been here all this time and no one's offering us a drink.”
This is an opportunity to get clear of Nigel and edge round the low table to where the tray stands. Henry's anxious to draw Baxter into his part of the room, away from the group around Grammaticus. What he fears is an outburst from Rosalind or one of the children when Baxter is close by. Touching one of the champagne bottles with a forefinger, Perowne looks enquiringly at Baxter and waits. Rosalind's arm is round Daisy's shoulders as they tend Grammaticus. Nearby, Theo stands with his gaze fixed on the floor several feet ahead—sensibly avoiding eye contact with Baxter who has managed to pull his fidgeting hand away from the tag of his zip. His knife is back in his pocket.
He says, “Yeah. Two gins straight up, ice and lemon.”
The boon of reducing further Baxter's physical coordination has to be set against the risk of making his disinhibition even uglier. It's a choice, a calculation Perowne in his terror finds he can make. He bends like an apothecary to the task, and fills two wine glasses to the brim with Tanqueray, and adds a slice of lemon and an ice cube to each. He passes one to Nigel, and holds the other up for Baxter. The table is in the way; to Henry's relief, he comes forward, around the sofa and table to take the drink.
“Look,” Perowne says. “For the sake of argument, I'm prepared to accept I was in the wrong this morning. If you want your car repaired . . .”
“Been reconsidering, have you?”
The glass is not stable in Baxter's hands, and when he turns to wink at Nigel, a quantity of gin is spilled. Perhaps it's the habit of concealing his condition that causes him to steady the glass against his lips and empty it in four smooth gulps. In that short time, Perowne is thinking about the landlines into the house and whether Baxter took the trouble to cut them. There's also a monitored panic button by the front door, and another in the bedroom. Is this fantasy again? Distress is making him nauseous. With Theo's assistance, Rosalind and Daisy are helping Grammaticus to his feet. Even though Perowne attempts with a surreptitious flick of his hand to wave them further down their end of the room, they're bringing him by the fire.
“He's cold,” Rosalind says. “He needs to lie down.”
So much for that plan. Now they are bunched together again. At least Theo is on hand. But surely, it's already decided, rushing Baxter is childish dreaming. Nigel will have a weapon. These two are real fighters. What else then? Are they to stand around and wait until Baxter uses his knife? Henry feels himself rocking on his feet in fear and indecision. A strong urge to urinate keeps nudging between his thoughts. He wants to catch Theo's eye, but he also senses that Rosalind might know something, or have an idea. The way she brushed against his side could be significant. She's right behind him, settling her father on the sofa. Daisy seems calmer now—looking after her grandfather has helped her. Theo stands with his arms crossed, still staring tensely into the ground, possibly calculating. His forearms look strong. All this talent in the room, but useless without a plan and a means to communicate it. Perhaps he should act alone, wrestle Baxter to the floor and trust the others will pile in. More fantasisin
g, and with Baxter so volatile, so savagely carefree, the possibilities for harm multiply. All this beloved and vulnerable flesh. Henry's self-cancelling thoughts drift and turn, impossible to marshal. The proper thing would be to hit Baxter hard in the face with a clenched fist and hope that Theo will take on Nigel. But when Henry imagines himself about to act, and sees a ghostly warrior version of himself leap out of his body at Baxter, his heart rate accelerates so swiftly that he feels giddy, weak, unreliable. Never in his life has he hit someone in the face, even as a child. He's only ever taken a knife to anaesthetised skin in a controlled and sterile environment. He simply doesn't know how to be reckless.
