Hillings.
As we ride up, I can see the outer wall going down. Most elevators protect you from seeing the outer wall.
He cranks open the gate. Thank you, Hillings.
Your servant.
When I called from the Atomotel, Grandmother said, Yes, by all means. Come. And hung up.
Hilly answers the door. She is tiny and bowlegged with a bald patch. Her eyes are very bright. She straightens the mat outside the door and says (to the mat), Trying to escape again, little devil.
I step into a dark antechamber.
She takes my coat. Your grandmother is in the drawing room.
It occurs to me that Hilly might be a more reliable source of information than either Toff or Grandmother. I touch her arm. I’m trying to find my uncle, I tell her.
Have you tried the directory.
The drawing room has mint-coloured carpet and a white pillar in the middle. The pillar is shaped like one of those Greek women. She’s got the ceiling on her head. This pulls me up short. It’s not the kind of thing you expect to see inside. All around the pillar are spindly tables with legs that end in paws. The tables are cluttered with objets d’art.
Watch the tables.
Grandmother is sitting by the window. A cast on her right arm. Come, she says, not looking at me. She can’t see, I remind myself.
Come and let me see you, she says.
I negotiate the tables and take a chair opposite hers. No hug. No kiss.
Audrey.
Hi.
She has aged. But of course she has aged. Her floppy hair is gone. Now she wears those backwards combs that rake your scalp. But she doesn’t look any smaller. She looks like, if she stood up, she’d be a match for the pillar.
I need the light to see, she says. Come a bit closer.
I lean forward. Her eyes flash. Like a nocturnal animal’s. Tapetum lucidum, it’s called. When the retinas reflect light. There’s a mother-of-pearl backdrop in there.
You look just the same, she says.
Which confirms her blindness, because my face is an accident scene.
Hilly brings tea on a tray with biscuits. I vaguely remember the biscuits from the Clue-board house. Powdery. Hilly guides Grandmother’s hand to her cup. Yes, I’ve got it, she says.
How’s your arm, I ask.
Broken.
But otherwise you’re doing well.
She scowls.
I dislodge biscuit from my molars. We sit in silence. I remark on the beauty of pillar. Look at those muscles.
It’s hideous. I’m glad I’m blind.
Well, this is going to be fun.
It’s called a caryatid, she says after a moment.
What is.
The column.
Oh. Presumably tid is another word for ceiling. Interesting. How about I sign your cast. In Canada we sign casts.
I don’t want my cast signed.
Sure you do. I look around for a pen.
Is it true what they say about your father, Audrey.
I freeze. What do they say.
They say he was hit by a car.
Yes, it’s true.
I was hit by a car. Isn’t that funny. She sips her tea.
Hilly, who has brought napkins, says, You fell off the curb into a parked car.
Happens to the best of us, I say. Do you have a pen, Hilly. Or a marker.
She nods.
Don’t listen to a word she says, Grandmother whispers to the window. She is a consummate liar.
But a good nurse, I hope.
Grandmother makes another face.
My plan is to work Uncle Thoby into the conversation casually. Like this: So, did Uncle Thoby stop by to see you. Thanks Hilly. Here, give me your arm.
She resists at first. Then relents.
Who, she says.
Thoby.
Oh. Yes.
When.
I don’t know. Yesterday. Two days ago. More.
Where did he go. Did he say where he was going.
Home, I think.
I lean back in my chair. He went home.
That is my recollection.
Did we cross paths over the Atlantic, then. I have an image of us watching the same Sherlock Holmes episode, “The Mystery of the Dancing Men,” except his episode is playing backwards as he flies home.
Is he at home right now, trying to Northwest Shove the door open and finding it locked against him. Where’s Oddly. Oddly’s in London, investigating something, rescuing someone, but she is a bit confused.
I drop Grandmother’s arm and look up at the tid. Where to now. What’s next.
Did he seem okay.
No answer.
Grandmother.
Yes.
Did he seem okay to you.
Who.
Uncle Thoby.
She nods. Your uncle was here.
Yes. And he said he was going home.
Tapetum lucidum eyes. Unreadable.
I try again. Did he seem upset.
She makes a comme-ci-comme-ça gesture. He came to apologize, she says.
What for. Why would he.
Long pause. He would have to tell you about that, she says.
I feel like breaking her other arm.
Audrey.
What.
I’m tired and I think you should go.
You’re my grandmother. You’re supposed to want me to stay indefinitely.
Well, but I don’t.
Did you forgive him.
Who.
You know bloody who, I say.
The word bloody startles her. No, she says after a moment.
No, you didn’t forgive him.
No.
I stand up. Rest a hand on her shoulder.
Ow.
I’m going now.
I love my sons, Audrey. Both of them.
As I put on my coat I hear Hilly say, She wrote Oddly on your arm.
I take a taxi back to the Atomotel. The cabs here do not have big Napoleon hats. They have little flat caps perched on their foreheads.
She doesn’t, though, love both her sons.
London speeds by. We neigh at pedestrians. I think about how a Clint’s cab with its hat all aglow is one of the most re-assuring sights in the world, and what am I doing in London if Uncle Thoby is back in St. John’s.
He isn’t, though, back in St. John’s.
Up ahead there has been a collision in front of a church. A man in a white truck is arguing with a man in the street. The man in the street is wearing black. He is a chauffeur or he is in mourning. The man in white is a deliverer of some kind.
Traffic stalls while this resolves itself, or fails to resolve itself.
Lorry should stand down, says the cabbie, rubbing his forehead in frustration.
Funny how I know they are fighting, even though I can’t hear what they’re saying. It’s all in the posture. This seems simple—of course there is such a thing as body language—but how do you really know two people at a distance are arguing. How does the brain know.
The same way you know from far away that someone is a threat. You know by the shape they cut against the sky.
And you can tell how long two people have known each other just by observing them walk down the street together. Give or take a year, your brain knows.
There are so many clues your brain picks up without you realizing.
The man in black is contorted. His face. Don’t look at him. He has been at a funeral. And now this. The white truck, sorry lorry, hitting his car. It is too much. Today of all days. He sits down on the church steps. Lorry man is writing something on a piece of paper. Lorry man is resisting feeling pity. His pen strokes are jabby.
I remember Uncle Thoby saying something about an olive branch. To be extended towards England. And my dad saying, Bugger that. Which word was full of venom and made Uncle Thoby sit down. My dad didn’t usually take sides unless there was an election. But now he was taking sides. Our side of the Atlantic against th
eirs. And it wasn’t for himself he was doing it. It was for Uncle Thoby. I looked up from the floor where I was playing with Wedge.
He’d forgotten I was in the room.
Uncle Thoby glanced at me.
My dad shrugged, like, let her hear it.
What’s an I-love branch.
Olive.
Olive you too.
There was no rule in our house about rude words, but there was a rule about hurting people with rude words. You didn’t do it. But my dad hadn’t broken that rule because his rude word had been on our behalf. We were safe because my dad had pointed a gun at England and said, Noli me tangere.
I nodded to myself.
But Uncle Thoby did not nod. And I suspected he would like to be sending whole olive trees to England.
England was another word for Grandmother.
I open my coffee-filter map and ask the cabbie if he can take a quick detour.
At the next red light he looks at the map. That’s hardly a quick detour.
Yes but can we swing by anyway.
Yes we can swing. He puts on his indicator.
Good. I lean back.
He looks in his rear-view mirror. You sure that’s where you want to go, he says.
Why.
He shrugs.
I put my feet up on the jump seat. That is one thing I like about English cabs. The living-room seating arrangement.
Half an hour later we turn onto a road lined with rundown little shops. Everything is closed except an auto parts store. The cab slows.
Number 138 Welkin Way Road is a Vacuum Repair Shop. Someone has spray-painted NATURE ABHORS A on the brick wall to the left of the sign. The windows are blank. Maybe it used to be a residence, but not now.
Don’t you say hoove in England, I ask the cabbie. Don’t you hoove the carpet.
We hoover. But we also vacuum.
I see. My dad always said hoove.
What do you want to do.
Nothing. Keep going.
I’m sure it’s an accident of the chimneys, but here is the general outline of Humouse House.
What does that remind you of.
Cambridge has a sprinkling of snow. People ride bikes with those metal clamps around their pants. Their front tires wobble because they are smoking or reading while they ride. If you stop to ask someone where Humouse House is, they answer in your dad’s accent that they haven’t the foggiest. Or they say it is over there, across the Cam. Oh yes. The Cam is the river that only comes up to Toff’s waist. Thank you. It is all very agreeable but grey and you are struck by the intense colour at the end of a cigarette.
There is no Starbucks across from Humouse House.
Is Wedge in that building.
When I called Lionel de Tigrel I was told by his secretary, Michael, that Lionel is all booked up until May.
I glanced at the agenda in my hand. Um. Tell him whose daughter I am.
Whose daughter are you.
Michael put me on hold. The hold music was an advertisement for Duracell.
So now I am meeting Lionel de Tigrel at the pub where Watson and Crick discovered DNA. Most people don’t know that DNA was discovered in a pub—or the important role beer played in that discovery.
I wanted to meet him at Humouse House, but he said no, he couldn’t take me inside the building because he had a rotten cold, or possibly an untreatable strain of tuberculosis, and many of the mice have human immune systems.
How convenient. By the way, I too have a human immune system.
But we could meet at his favourite pub, where he has a liquid lunch every day.
Okay, I said.
He sounded hyper. And congested. And not at all Belgian.
In the article it said that Lionel de Tigrel’s diet consists mainly of beer and Kit Kat bars. So I have brought him a Kit Kat bar. I put it on the wood table in front of me and order coffee. Then I look over my revised agenda.
Audrey Flowers, daughter of.
Wedge, astounding age of.
Wedge, heart rate of, upper body strength of, knockout potential of.
Belgian man, accomplice of.
Walter Flowers, your vendetta against.
Toff, your acquaintance with.
I should be able to remember six items, right. Right. I fold the list and put it in my pocket.
Aside from a plaque on the way to the bathroom, the pub does not advertise its claim to fame. I try to imagine what the discovery of DNA looked like. Did they bring microscopes to the pub. Or is it all math. Sorry, maths in England. Did Watson and Crick just solve an equation on a pub napkin. Or was someone opening a bottle of wine at the next table and, upon seeing the corkscrew disappear into the cork, they had a double-helix moment. Aha!
To my left is a table of knitters. Two girls and a guy. Students. They chat while watching their needles. They pause to sip beer or tug on their wool. In the pub where DNA was discovered, students are knitting. In the pub where Lionel de Tigrel, maniac, messiah, whatever he is, has a liquid lunch every day, students are knitting.
The richness of life blows my mind.
Here he comes, blowing his nose. I wave. He lifts an elbow in greeting. Goes straight to the bar.
He is wearing a thin grey sweater over a Hawaiian shirt.
Rotten cold, he says, sitting down.
Yes, you said on the phone.
I’m sorry about your father.
He has a ponytail that looks like it hasn’t been brushed in a month. And a beard that looks like it was brushed on the stoop before he came in. He does not bat an eye at the knitters. But he does bat an eye at the Kit Kat.
For you, I say, sliding it across the table.
How thoughtful.
He is very thin. The article said that he practises calorie restriction. Apparently if you keep the body not-quite-starving, it will keep going and going. Fuelled by hope. Also, the body will become more active. You will discover stores of untapped energy. This is because the body wants desperately to forage.
Rapacious is the word for his eyes.
He puts the Kit Kat in his bag.
So this is my dad’s arch-nemesis.
He tells me that, yes, he used to know my dad quite well. They were students together. They dressed up as Watson and Crick for Halloween one year. That was long ago.
And did you keep in touch.
Through publications. I followed your father’s work.
Really. He didn’t follow yours.
He squints at me like I amuse him. Okay, Audrey. So, what’s this about a twenty-year-old mouse.
On the phone, when I mentioned that I had a mouse five times the age of the oldest mouse in Humouse House, he did not guffaw. He did not say anything except to invite me to lunch.
Now I tell him all about Wedge. How low his heart rate. How strong his upper body. How he could light a light bulb. How a Belgian man, possibly his accomplice, showed up at my dad’s funeral and now Wedge is missing.
He nods like this is just what he expected. Then he says, A twenty-year-old mouse is impossible, Audrey. Wait—he lifts a hand—let me rephrase. Twenty years ago the technology did not exist to prolong a mouse’s life twofold, let alone five-or sixfold. Twenty years from now we will have twenty-year-old mice.
My dad had the technology.
He couldn’t have.
Say he did. Say a twenty-year-old mouse came into your hands, via a Belgian accomplice, could you tell how old he was.
A gleam in those eyes. Like a Kit Kat has appeared on the horizon. Yes, he says.
Humouse House began as the Drosophila Melanogaster Centre.
We had one of those.
But alas, fruit flies do not capture the public imagination.
I beg to differ.
Well, they do not capture corporate funding. No one cares to prolong the life of a fruit fly. Believe me, I flogged that dead horse for years. On the other hand, if you talk directly about human immortality, I mean on the ground human immortality, people get very nervous.
But a mouse. A mouse is okay. A mouse is cute. There’s Mickey. There’s Mighty. There’s Wedge, he adds, tipping his glass in my direction.
Beer number three.
To answer your question, he says—even though I haven’t asked one—it’s understandable. I mean, consider how much we’ve invested in quote unquote coming to terms with death. Thousands of years worth of religion and art. Now here’s this bearded bloke who says it was all for naught. All those mental somersaults over the abyss. Unnecessary. Or, to put it another way. Imagine you’ve been chased to the edge of a cliff by a man with a gun. You can either jump or be shot. You decide to jump. But the moment you do, even as your legs are uselessly windmilling, someone on the edge of the cliff—not the man with the gun, but a benevolent bearded bloke—says, By the way, you needn’t have done that.
He pauses.
I’d feel like shooting the bearded bloke, I say.
Lionel de Tigrel laughs and extracts some tissue from his sleeve. Okay, I was going to say you’d tell the bearded bloke he’s full of shit. But okay. You want to shoot him. But now. Enter the mouse. The mouse hurries you along to the of course stage. The of course stage is when you realize—or remember—that of course you don’t have to die. Haven’t you always suspected a loophole. Remember being a kid and feeling that some technology would come along in your lifetime to prevent your going where billions have gone before. Of course there is a magic formula. Of course there will be a bearded bloke. Because if such a miracle as being alive is possible in the first place, then why shouldn’t the miracle of staying alive be equally possible. Indeed, the second miracle should be more easily negotiated than the first.
He pauses to blow his nose. He is talking quite loudly. Maybe his ears are plugged.
And we are quite right to feel this way, he resumes. Being alive is what the body knows how to do best. More than that, the body remembers being young. Having been young once, that knowledge—of how to be young—is stored in our every cell. We need only jog the memory and persuade the cells to resume an earlier state.
Yes, but what if the body also remembers how to be dead.
He leans back with a thud, like, now you have really wounded me, Audrey Flowers. How can the body remember not existing.
I vaguely remember not existing.
Bollocks. Nevermind. I know what you’re saying. You’re saying that to die is natural. And to prolong life is unnatural.
Come, Thou Tortoise Page 30
