by James Meek
Alex found that the trustees were impressed by the way the last paragraph of his paper had travelled around the world. He’d intended to tell them that he did it for Harry’s sake and that he was embarrassed by how those few words had skewed the way the paper was read. But he realised, facing the horseshoe of eminent committee-hounds under the portrait of old Lord Belford, that it was too late. He couldn’t cast doubt on the last phrase without casting doubt on all his work, and he was too proud for that. He noticed that some of the trustees had copies of the story in Val Oatman’s newspaper in front of them during his interview, with its ludicrous headline. The only way he could restore truth would be to attack himself using the same media that was being used to build him up. I WAS WRONG, BY ‘FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH’ SCIENTIST. MY REGRETS, BY ‘IMMORTALITY’ BOFFIN.
One day he got a call from Val Oatman, who said he’d heard through the grapevine that Alex wasn’t happy with the way his research had been reported. ‘You should have called us,’ Val said. ‘We take these things seriously, you know.’
‘I knew it’d be trivialised. But I thought you’d trivialise it in a more thoughtful way.’
‘You’re important now,’ said Val. ‘Our readers want to know more about you. Everyone’s interested in science when it’s about how long they’re going to live.’
‘And why did you say “Scientist finds” instead of “Scientists find”? You embarrassed me with my collaborators. There were other names on that paper besides mine.’
‘We want to promote champions of sciences,’ said Val. ‘We talked to your media people about it. They’re keen. You want to get on with your work, of course, but you’ve got to remember that you’re a hundred times more likely to get your ideas listened to if you’re a celebrity.’
‘I don’t want to be a celebrity,’ said Alex.
‘We humble scribes have a duty to persuade you. The man in the street can’t name scientists any more. That can’t be good. Come and see me next week, we’ll have lunch.’
‘I’m on holiday then.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Africa,’ said Alex, wondering why he instinctively answered the question when he felt instinctively inclined to tell Val it wasn’t his business.
‘Nice. Which part?’
Alex didn’t want to tell him, yet again he did. ‘Tanzania.’
‘Visiting a friend?’ Alex was silent until Val said ‘Hello?’
‘I’m not sure it’s …’ began Alex.
‘I have a friend in Tanzania,’ said Val. ‘She’s a scientist. Rebecca Shepherd.’
‘Did you know I was going to visit her?’
‘How would I know that?’
‘Did you?’ said Alex boldly. He faltered. ‘I know the two of you …’
‘That’s in the past,’ said Val. ‘Don’t worry. I wanted to make contact. I wanted you to know that whatever you do, there’s an interest.’
‘In the science.’
‘Absolutely. We’ll talk when you get back.’
At the beginning and end of each day at the institute Alex passed a piece of sculpture in the lobby that Harry had persuaded the trustees to let him commission. ‘A scientist can spend the public’s money on art just as well as some Tuscan spiv in a cardinal’s hat,’ he said. Reason IV, the work was called, scaled down from the artist’s original concept, which would have filled an aircraft hangar. As finally executed it was shoulder-high and resembled a metallic scarlet bowling ball dropped onto a worm-cast of hardened dough.
Alex wanted to fly to Bec at the earliest moment, but he’d moved in with Harry, who demanded that if he was going to swan off to Africa, he had to give him an infusion of expert cells first. Alex refused. Harry whined, mocked, sulked, made out he didn’t care and quivered with indignation. The sense of being denied a therapy he felt he owned invigorated him and it seemed likely to Alex that withholding the medicine might be better medicine for his uncle than the medicine itself. But that would be a life extended by grievance. And if he flew to Tanzania without giving Harry what he wanted, his uncle wouldn’t forgive him.
Alex agreed to fetch the cells from the institute’s freezer, and to administer them to Harry, on two conditions: Harry’s son Matthew must give his consent; and Harry must let Matthew help look after him in the end, as his son wanted.
‘Why won’t he let me see my bloody grandchildren?’ said Harry.
‘You know why.’
37
Alex decided that he had to talk to Matthew in person, even at the cost of delaying his trip to Africa. He took the train north. Lettie picked him up from the station.
She was forty-two years old and eight months pregnant, which, she said when Alex congratulated her on it, was a miracle. Tall and heavily built, with short greying hair, she made miracle sound like nuisance and looked weary. Even as Alex kissed her on the cheek she’d begun to turn and lead him away to the car. Her movements expressed duty, as if she were an agent collecting Alex for a conference.
Alex’s consciousness of this was dulled by love; anticipatory love, which, he found, swamps forty-year-olds too. He was confident that Bec would be his and though he was impatient to get to her he didn’t resent Matthew’s family for detaining him. He felt he was already on his way to the Indian Ocean via the Ribble valley. Love seethed in his belly and people like Lettie were only sights by the wayside on the road taking him to Bec. Whatever happened before Africa, he was sure, couldn’t hurt him; he was armoured in love.
All Matthew’s children were at school. Sixteen-year-old Rose, with three silver bracelets on her wrist, who watched from the edges and tried to put distance between herself and the others; Peter, two years younger, who pushed his glasses back up his nose with his forefinger; Leah, a twelve-year-old mood-vane, happy when everyone was together, anxious when two of her siblings were quarrelling and she couldn’t be friends with both; and young Chris. Their father was two rungs off the top at Lancashire county council. He had his own parking space at the education department and administered there, in a bright white shirt, from a desk wider than he was tall, rotating half a dozen ties, four suits and two coffee mugs, WORLD’S BEST DAD and Women aren’t supposed to make coffee – the Bible says HE BREWS.
The family lived in an old rectory at the edge of the fells, where the pastures begin to be dotted by tussocks of sedge. They were active in the parish; they kept two cars rushing to and fro along the web of thin crooked roads in and out of Preston, Clitheroe and Longridge.
On the drive to the house Alex kept a kind of conversation going by asking about the family while Lettie concentrated aggressively on the road ahead. He asked about Rose.
‘She hates it that I’m using her as a childminder now she’s sixteen,’ said Lettie. ‘We had a row about me coming to pick you up tonight.’
‘I could have taken a taxi,’ said Alex.
‘It’s fine,’ said Lettie, chopping the side of her hand viciously down on the indicator.
‘Harry’s doing better than the doctors expected,’ said Alex.
Lettie shook her shoulders as if to relieve a sudden muscle pain.
‘Do you mean he’ll recover?’ she said.
Through gaps in the hedgerow as they passed Alex saw a flickering image of prosperous, portly sheep. ‘Extra weeks,’ he murmured. ‘When does lambing begin?’
‘I never picked up farming knowledge,’ said Lettie. ‘I’m not from the country.’
Alex was given Chris’s little room for the night. The boy was gracious and serious as he showed Alex around. A poster showing a Napoleonic warship unleashing a terrific broadside of cannon and bodies flying into the air from an explosion on the enemy vessel was fixed to one wall with Jesus Loves Me stickers. It was the Battle of Trafalgar, Chris told him. He was going to join the Navy.
Alone, Alex sat on the quilt, printed with pictures of nautical knots. It was a small bed. If he didn’t curl up when he slept in it, his feet would stick out of the end. The room smelled of milk. He sent Bec
an email and laid his iPhone on the desk. It was dark outside. The window rattled suddenly in a gust of wind. The shaking of the wooden frame seemed urgent and personal, as if someone were trying to get in.
Floorboards creaked. Matthew was in the doorway, dark and smooth, his black eyebrows like fur. He was in his work suit and tie. They smiled at each other and embraced. As Alex hugged his cousin he thought, We didn’t use to do this, now we do.
‘The great scientist,’ said Matthew. ‘We’re honoured.’
‘It’s good to see you. They keep you late in Lancs.’
Matthew had a habit of pausing for a couple of seconds before picking up his side of a conversation, more, Alex thought, to give his interlocutors time to wonder whether they’d said something wrong than to think about what to say himself.
‘I’m not popular at the moment,’ said Matthew. ‘The young Muslims say I’m an Islamophobe, the white racists reckon I’m too cowardly to admit I agree with them and the lefties think I’m a fundamentalist. I’m just a public servant. I’m sure the Evil One is glad that we think banning schoolgirls from covering their faces will save us from his power.’
Matthew asked after Maria, and Alex told him they’d broken up, and Matthew looked stricken and repeated his words back to him, moving his eyes across Alex’s smiling face. Alex confirmed it and remembered that Matthew wouldn’t know why it was a good thing that he’d broken up with Maria or why he seemed happy about it.
‘Yes,’ Alex said, and cast his eyes down in respect for the broken up with. ‘It didn’t work out.’
Matthew said he was sorry. He spoke with a beat, as if he were counting off the years his cousin and Maria had been together. Alex wanted to make him understand that it was all right, that it was for the best.
‘I’m seeing somebody else,’ he explained.
‘Oh,’ said Matthew. ‘I see.’
‘It was amicable,’ said Alex.
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Matthew.
‘We agreed on everything.’
‘It was good that you didn’t have children, I suppose,’ said Matthew.
Peter came up and told them that it was time to eat.
It seemed to Alex that Matthew exercised a mysterious authority over his family, without bullying, without force or bluster. They deferred to him, to his quiet voice, his silences, his steady gaze, his certainty and his routines. He lived by the Bible, but it was not the Bible that gave him authority. There was some inexhaustible, incorruptible pool of confidence in him whose existence steadied everything, and in that steadiness and certainty the six of them, soon to be seven, lived diligently, humbly, admirably. Yet Matthew spoke of the Evil One, as if Satan lived a short drive away across the fells. When, in this peaceful household, did Matthew rally his wife and children to fight the Devil? Over breakfast? And what were the battlegrounds? The friends they kept, the books they read? The children were out in the world. There was nothing cloistered about their schools. If Matthew believed that God and the Devil were at war in this town, how could he bear to risk his family in it?
Throughout supper Lettie helped Alex to food without eye contact, telling him that he was probably used to more sophisticated food down south. ‘You’re famous now,’ said Matthew to Alex when they’d finished eating. ‘You were on breakfast TV, I heard.’ Rose looked up. The other children had gone.
‘Was I?’ said Alex.
‘I’m proud of you,’ said Matthew. ‘I mean it. We pray for you. Your saviour hasn’t turned his back on you, and he guides you in your work.’
‘I don’t feel guided,’ said Alex.
Matthew bowed his head, then broke out warmly: ‘You’re saving lives. The potter hath power over the clay.’
‘Who?’
‘The potter. It’s from the Bible. Romans nine.’
‘Cancer is the clay?’
‘No, you’re the clay.’ Matthew poked his cousin in the shoulder, as if Alex were a charming but slow-witted child. ‘God’s the potter.’
‘Oh.’
‘What’s he famous for?’ said Rose. She’d got up to fill the water jug and was leaning against the kitchen sink, hunched as if resisting the tallness that was being forced on her. She was all elbows and shoulders and impatience.
‘Don’t say “he” like that,’ said Matthew. ‘If you’ve got a question for my cousin Alex, ask him.’
‘What are you famous for, Alex?’ said Rose, tossing her fringe aside, angling her head back and smiling.
‘Counting atoms,’ said Alex. ‘Trying to work out why they go where they go.’
‘Like granddad.’
‘I’m following in his footsteps.’
‘How is my father?’ said Matthew.
‘There is something we should discuss,’ said Alex.
‘You’re on a mission. Excellent. Then there’s lots to talk about.’
‘Certainly is,’ murmured Lettie, turning a fork over and over on the table.
‘May I leave?’ asked Rose.
‘Of course, darling,’ said Lettie. ‘Can you bring the bibles at nine-thirty?’
Rose giggled and asked if Alex was going to do Bible study with them. They looked at him and he said that he would, if they didn’t mind an unbeliever sitting in. They protested that they weren’t like that.
Once Rose had gone Alex explained to Matthew and Lettie what Harry wanted.
Matthew leaned forward, palms down on the table. ‘So these cells won’t do him any good, and they won’t do him any harm?’
‘They’re his own cells, with a bit of a genetic tweak, so there aren’t any immune system issues,’ said Alex, twiddling an imaginary knob with his right thumb and index finger on tweak. ‘He had the same cell line injected into him fifteen years ago when he was testing them for safety and they had no effect. They’ve been sitting in a freezer ever since. An infusion of a few million of these cells won’t make the slightest difference to his condition. I wouldn’t do it otherwise.’
‘A few million sounds like a lot,’ said Lettie.
‘There are sixty trillion cells in a human body,’ said Alex, moving his hands apart and holding them out as if demonstrating the size of a gigantic fish he’d caught.
Matthew said: ‘If they won’t help him, and they won’t hurt him, why does he want them?’
‘It’s his way of praying,’ said Alex. ‘Trying to turn hope into a system.’
Lettie tutted and exhaled.
‘Prayer is when you ask for God’s forgiveness and mercy,’ said Matthew. ‘But my father doesn’t believe in that. This is more like when a gambler blows on the dice to get the number he wants.’
‘That’s a good comparison,’ said Alex.
‘If you’re trying to be nice by saying Harry’s as superstitious as we are, I’d rather you didn’t,’ said Lettie.
‘He’s wise enough to know the end is close,’ said Alex, ‘and frightened enough to grasp at the hope that he might get himself a few more minutes.’
‘He’s proud.’ Matthew brooded for a moment. ‘I’ve no objection to letting him have these cells. Do I have to sign something?’
‘It’s an informal arrangement,’ said Alex. ‘There’s no need for paperwork as long as I know you agree.’ He felt the power of being a messenger from the capital. There was a faint roar from the boiler cupboard as the gas jets lit. ‘He wants to see you,’ said Alex, ‘even if you won’t let him see the children.’
Matthew widened his eyes. ‘Did you persuade him?’ he said.
‘It doesn’t matter. He wants to see you. He wants you to visit the house when you can and be with him. He wants your help.’
‘That’s quite a change of heart,’ said Lettie.
‘He hasn’t got long,’ said Alex.
Matthew’s head shook slightly and he looked down, then met Alex’s eyes. ‘I don’t want to keep the children away from Dad when he’s dying,’ he said. ‘But what can I do? He’s broken so many promises. He’s tried so hard to get them on their own, in
the dark places of his house, and turn their hearts against their saviour. The last time we were there I caught him in the laundry room with Leah, asking why God would go to the trouble of creating the dinosaurs if he was going to kill them all and bury their bones before people turned up.’
‘Was Leah upset?’ said Alex.
‘That’s not the point,’ said Lettie. ‘He says he wants to protect the children’s minds from religion but all he cares about is getting his own back on Matthew for finding Christ.’
‘He knows you won’t let the children come to London,’ said Alex. ‘It’s my dad’s birthday next month and Harry will be in Scotland with us. We could get together for that. The whole family, on neutral ground.’
Rose came in with a stack of bibles and dealt them out.
‘Judges,’ said Lettie.
‘Judges,’ said Matthew, and they looked for the place. ‘Lettie, why don’t you start?’
Alex had the bible he’d been given open at the book of Judges, chapter one. He didn’t know what was expected of him. Lettie began to speak. In Judges, she said, we see a society in turmoil after the death of Joshua. People can’t distinguish any more between good and evil, right and wrong. They worship false gods. They have no fixed point of reference except their own selfish wants. They give in to their twisted desires, their fascination with violence and cruelty against others, their craving for luxuries and delicacies they don’t need. Why should they do otherwise? There is nothing, they think, to stop them. They don’t believe anyone is watching or cares when they do wrong. So God punishes them, and first of all he punishes them through the consequences of their actions. They look at the greed and violence and perversion around them and despair.
While Lettie spoke she was possessed by a passion that altered her voice. It made her louder, more confident. Strong words in her mouth did not inhibit her.
When Matthew took over his voice changed, too. He said that what they saw around them today was a society like the one after Joshua. Young people getting drunk, taking drugs, learning about love from pornography and murdering each other with knives. Their parents unable to stop them because they no longer knew themselves what was right and what was wrong, what was good and what was evil. People looked for answers, but instead of turning to Jesus, and to the Bible, which gives such clear moral guidance, they made sickly cocktails from different bits of religion, a little bit of Christianity, a little bit of Hinduism, a little bit of Islam, Buddhism, shamanism. It wasn’t the first time Britain had gone through a time of doubt and rejection of the truth of the Lord, said Matthew, and it would not be the last, but Judges showed us how the cycle of the generations was bound to turn, back towards faith.
