The Woman in Silk

by R. J. Gadney

  “Don’t thank me,” the girl said. “Thank Mr. Khan.”

  “I’ll make sure Sister Vale gets it.”

  “And her daughter?”

  “And Nurse Vale too.”

  The assistant said: “Sister Vale must be sure to check the therapeutic documentation care-plan for the type, route and dose of your medication.”

  “What’s the other item?”

  “Additional medication for you, such as is unobtainable in the UK. Make sure it’s correct. Please—have a quick look-see at it. Mr. Khan won’t like it if you haven’t checked it in front of me.”

  He opened the envelope and found four small vials in bubble-wrap, each containing deep lavender-colored liquid. The very same color he’d seen on Francesca’s fingers.

  He removed one of the printed leaflets and read:

  VAN DER HECHTRITCEREN BESLOTEN VENOOTSCHAP

  NULFAIL® MILLE DEBACTER SEXUAL ENHANCEMENT

  Edging away from the main counter nearer to the racks of toothbrushes and toothpastes, he skimmed the rest of the leaflet.

  His reading was interrupted—“May I help you?”

  He looked into the eyes of a neat figure sporting a fedora and voluminous black cashmere cloak. The man bore an uncanny resemblance to the President of Afghanistan.

  The presidential person said: “What’s that you’re holding?”

  “My medication.”

  “You must be Captain Stirling.” The man doffed his fedora with a flourish revealing a bald and shining head. “V.J. Khan,” he announced with ingratiating formality. “I regret we cannot allow you to take that.”

  “It’s my medication.”

  “Sister Vale is the only one who can—”

  Hal turned suddenly, knocked over a stand of umbrellas and pushed open the door out into the alleyway.

  The pharmacist caught up with him and made a grab for the carrier bag.

  Hal kept on walking.

  “Give it to me.”

  Passing headlights lit up the alleyway.

  The pharmacist said. “Keep your Velamorphine. Keep it. The packet’s for Sister Vale. For me … to give her personally.” He fiddled with the chain at the collar of his cloak. “Purely for recreational use.” He glanced nervously at the passing traffic. “Are you alone?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You know what you’ve taken?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s harmless stuff.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  The pharmacist reached out his hand. “Don’t be a fool.”

  “Then stop trying to grab it.”

  “Do you want money?” the pharmacist asked.

  “For what?”

  The pharmacist tried to grab Hal’s sleeve. “I’ll call the police.”

  “And then?”

  “Report you.”

  “For what?”

  “Having opiate analgesic medication in your possession—heroin—diacetylmorphine. People talk, you know. Word gets around. Diacetylmorphine has originated from The Towers. I have it on good authority.”

  For a few moments they faced each other at the end of the alleyway.

  “Of course,” the pharmacist continued, “you can reseal the package and simply hand it over, can’t you? Hand it over to Sister Vale. You need, as it were, to be none the wiser. It’s a personal matter. Private and personal.”

  “What you say about The Towers, the heroin—is that the truth?” Hal asked. “Where’s the evidence?”

  “We’re both in the same boat,” the pharmacist said. “Trust me. Make no mention of this. For your own sake as well as mine. Tread carefully, my friend. You see, your mother was not entirely blameless.”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “Nurses and their patients develop unhealthy habits. Listen to me. Your mother … no stranger to chronic pain. And the nurses, what do they do? They shield the suffering from pain. Only death relieves it. Death can be a mercy.”

  “For God’s sake.”

  “Please—you mustn’t allow your anger to get the better of you. We, all of us, have to do things unacceptable to ordinary folk.” He paused. “Que sera, sera. Why don’t we have a talk … private and personal, man to man?”

  “That won’t be necessary.”

  “Then Sister Vale can tell you what I’m getting at.”

  “What are you trying to tell me?”

  “It isn’t what I can try to tell you. It’s an issue of what Sister Vale must tell you. Why not ask her in confidence who the father of her daughter is … Tread carefully, Captain Stirling. As I say, people talk, you know. It’s the business of little people to talk. As a pharmacist of longstanding one’s privy to disagreeable confidences. The stain on the reputation and so forth.”

  “What’s it to do with my mother?”

  “Ask Sister Vale. How many times do I have to tell you? Ask Sister Vale. They were very close.”

  The pharmacist was shaking visibly. Hal read the fear in the deep-set eyes. “I think you have no idea of the reality,” the pharmacist continued. “You must allow me to help you.” His mirthless smile revealed a prominent gold tooth. “You see,” he whispered, “your mother is alive.”

  A mouse darted from a discarded sandwich in the gutter.

  “What?”

  “Your mother is alive.”

  Hal’s throat contracted. “Are you mad?”

  The pharmacist inclined his head. “Your mother is alive. Common decency requires me to tell you.”

  “Where is she?”

  The pharmacist retreated. “Ask Sister Vale.”

  “Where is she?”

  Khan had already turned the corner as if he’d evaporated into thin air.

  Back at the pharmacy he read the notice:

  CLOSED

  HAPPY CHRISTMAS & A MERRY NEW YEAR

  A voice said: “Chemist’s gone to India for his holidays.” The informant was a ghoulish figure in a sleeping bag. “Cup of tea for an old soldier?”

  He gave the skeleton a handful of loose change.

  “Hope you have a very Happy White Christmas,” said the veteran as if he’d been insulted. “You know who I blame—?”

  He didn’t stay to hear the roll-call of the world’s religious leaders.

  There was a rattling of doors: the slam of steel shutters: the distorted voice from the Carlisle City Council’s loudspeaker on a lamp post crooning “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”

  He needed Sophie.

  37

  She agreed to meet him in Carlisle Cathedral. She would wait for him in St. Wilfrid’s Chapel, near the sixteenth-century carved Flemish altarpiece, the Brougham Triptych. The cathedral choir was rehearsing “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”

  He gave her a garbled account of the testy conversation with MacQuillan, his collapse in the car park, and the encounter with the pharmacist.

  “There are rumors he’s peddling drugs,” Sophie said. “The man’s got good reason to be running scared.”

  “So have I.”

  “Not on account of your mother.”

  “The idea of her … still alive—”

  “Don’t allow yourself to misled by some petty fraudster.”

  “Do you think there’s a germ of truth in it?”

  “Do you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you want to believe your mother’s still alive?”

  “Half of me does, the other half doesn’t.”

  “I think I can help you understand the situation. You aren’t going to like this. The truth is that the people in Moster Lees in the spirit circle devotedly believe in the force of the spirit world. They have done for generations. Your mother, and your father before her, inspired a messianic belief in the other world. Those Moster people, the pub landlord, his wife, the doctor and his Morningside wife; MacCullum and his wife, even the police officer MacQuillan—all wear the white wristbands of their faith, you must’ve noticed—so do Teresa and Francesca. So does Warren. To be perfe
ctly honest, when the whole thing first dawned on me, I thought them pretty harmless. No more a nuisance than Rotarians or Freemasons. Now, well, I’m not quite so sure. You have to understand—for them, The Towers is the circle’s heart. Your mother’s death is generating real panic about its future. It’s induced a crisis in their collective mind. Given your skepticism about their world, they’re hostile to you. They’d honestly prefer it if you just cleared off. To be frank, life would’ve been easier for them had you not survived your accident in Afghanistan. They think it’s taken a fatal toll on your state of mind. That finally you’ll crack up. That’s what they want.”

  “They’re going to be disappointed.”

  “If you don’t, then they’ll lay siege to The Towers and make life too painful for you to stay.”

  “This fucking circle. This was my father’s doing?”

  “And your mother’s too.”

  “What precisely is it?”

  “The dead. The not-so-dead. The other world. Keep your head. Hold fast. Eventually they’ll give up.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m not sure. As I say, they believe you’re suffering from the damage inflicted in Afghanistan. They believe your wounds were inflicted by the spirits. That your psyche’s dying. You’re destined to die there. If the spirits in Afghanistan didn’t finish the job then the ones at The Towers will. If they don’t succeed, they can assist what’s happening inside your head to kill you. Think Assisted Suicide. You can’t prosecute a homicidal spirit. The spirit is entirely free to murder and commit conspiracy to murder. Voices inside your head may tell you to take your own life. If they succeed in convincing you then who’s going to charge them with murder?”

  “Has any of them said this in so many words?”

  “Not to me directly. But from casual conversations I’ve overheard, you’ll find I’ve got it right. Word gets out. Their firm belief is that all they need to do is sit back and let The Towers do its worst.”

  “It’s already started.”

  “Then you have to fight it.”

  “Alone?”

  “Alone. No one can help you. I can’t. No one can. You have to identify the boundary between your mind and the outside world. Only you can do it.”

  They passed a woman in a pew. Her face was in shadow and she was praying fervently. She raised her eyes and stared at Sophie. Hal thought he saw a flicker of recognition.

  Sophie walked faster and looked at her watch. “I have to go.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” the choirmaster trilled: “Listen up. On Three, please. One. Two. And Three.”

  O little town of Bethlehem

  How still we see thee lie

  “That woman seemed to recognize you,” Hal said.

  “I know.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Warren’s fucking wife.”

  38

  At the cathedral exit he asked her if there was anyone among the villagers he could approach with a view to getting trustworthy support. He mentioned the Vicar but Sophie said he was a naive and gentle soul who didn’t seem to inhabit the real world.

  “You’re on your own,” she said. “In enemy territory.”

  “Without protection,” he said, “and outnumbered.”

  “Then numb that sixth sense of yours … the part of your brain that reveals sentient beings.”

  “It’s too late. I looked it up. Delirium’s in the Stirling genes. My father reached the same conclusion years ago. He too was a law unto himself.”

  “Such men are always dangerous, Hal. And I advise you against self-diagnosis.”

  “How do you explain what happened to me outside Vernons Tea Rooms?”

  “I can’t. You’re the only person who can disable the demons at The Towers. Given you don’t hold with them it shouldn’t be impossible.”

  He felt he was reaching out to touch the senses of his soul: seeing them in a looking-glass. Looking at himself. Seeing someone else. A passage from Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There at once reformed itself in his head:

  “So I wasn’t dreaming, after all,” I said to myself, “unless—unless we’re all part of the same dream. Only I do hope it’s my dream, and not Hal’s! I don’t like belonging to another person’s dream,” I went on in a rather complaining tone: “I’ve a great mind to go and wake him, and see what happens!”

  “Sophie, wait …” he said. “One more thing I need to tell you. You may not like it—”

  He told her what had happened in Francesca’s bed.

  Sophie took the practical view.

  That Francesca had administered drugs to him without his consent was a matter serious enough to have her nursing registration license suspended, if not withdrawn. The Nursing and Midwifery Council might very well discipline her for the sexual harassment of a patient. Likewise Teresa.

  But Hal would have to be a witness at the hearing. She asked if he was prepared to be put through the stress and humiliation this would inevitably involve. Teresa and Francesca Vale’s lawyers would say that there was no proof he’d resisted their advances. Indeed, what evidence was there that sexual relations with both women at the same time in the same bed had actually taken place?

  “Plainly,” she said, “given your present state of mind, you’ll prove a pretty unreliable witness. The nurses’ careers are of relatively minor interest. Your duty is to regain enough stability to return to the military. To the Taliban and not two cunning nurses.”

  As to the pharmacist, his professional future didn’t greatly concern her. He was registered as a pharmacist with the General Pharmaceutical Council. She could approach the GPhC; it had the authority to issue a warning; impose conditions on his professional practice; suspend him, or remove him entirely from its Register.

  “The GPhC could be asked to send in one of its inspectors who may take witness statements from Teresa and Francesca and you as well.”

  The interviews would be undertaken in accordance with the provisions of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act.

  “You’ll be asked to attend a hearing in London in front of a QC and a two-man committee. Most likely the pharmacist will be shown the door and sooner or later face police prosecution. Let the Devil take the hindmost.”

  Outside the cathedral she said: “None of this needs go any further. I too have a secret, Hal.”

  39

  From where the incline was steepest, the Range Rover’s headlights illuminated two vehicles parked by the entrance to The Towers. Warren’s Mercedes was next to MacCullum’s truck.

  He got out of the Range Rover, steadying himself against its side and the effect of the sight confronting him.

  Feathery snowflakes gusted across his eyes. Through the shifting veils he saw The Towers’ face.

  He squinted, jerked his head, and stretched his eyes wide open. He told himself it was a mirage. The house’s shape had altered. Not an image from his remembrance of the future.

  A section of the roof had collapsed. Broken stonework, splintered glass and timbers lay across the cobblestones of the forecourt.

  The Towers had begun to disintegrate.

  SEVEN

  As fear increases into an agony of terror, we behold, as under all violent emotions, diversified results. The heart beats wildly, or may fail to act and faintness ensue; there is a death-like pallor; the breathing is labored; the wings of the nostrils are wildly dilated; “there is a gasping and convulsive motion of the lips, a tremor on the hollow cheek, a gulping and catching of the throat;” the uncovered and protruding eyeballs are fixed on the object of terror; or they may roll restlessly from side to side, huc illuc volvens oculos totumque pererrat.

  CHARLES DARWIN

  The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals

  40

  MacCullum and Warren had brought portable lights, presumably intending to secure what reminded him of a scene devastated by an airborne high-explosive missile.

  A Hyundai generator throbbed outside a side
entrance. Following its orange power cable, Hal hurried into the building and down slimy stairs, wondering how far MacCullum and Warren had risked venturing beneath the damaged structure. Labyrinthine pipes gurgled above his head and a stench of sewage filled the chill and narrow passages.

  Barely able to see the subterranean route ahead, he followed the cable on and on through the cellars to where the stone floors were drier and thick with putrefaction. Squealing rats tumbled across his shoes.

  At the end of a low tunnel wavering lights and murmuring voices grew stronger. He made out the crouching figures of Warren and MacCullum.

  MacCullum had one hand down a drain hole struggling with a wrench to isolate the rising main valves.

  “Rats, fucking rats,” he chanted. “Rats. It should go bloody clockwise—rat piss, rats.”

  He struck out wildly at them with his wrench.

  Both men wore waterproofs and fisherman’s thigh-high rubber waders. Eyes glinting in the light, MacCullum glanced up at Hal: “Seen it, have you? Tower’s gone.”

  Warren kept his flashlight beam pointed into the filthy water MacCullum had stirred up. “Hurry,” he said. “This is a bloody death trap.”

  “What the fuck d’you think I’m doing,” MacCullum said. “Piss. Fucking rats.”

  “Take it easy,” Hal said. “Have you secured the electricity supply?”

  “What d’you bloody think?” MacCullum said.

  “Circuit boards are addled with rot,” said Warren.

  “How much more damage is there?” Hal asked.

  “You’re standing beneath the worst of it,” MacCullum said.

  Hal asked: “Are Teresa and Francesca okay?”

  “Scared to death,” said Warren. “They heard the thing come down as if it had been ripped apart by lightning.”

  “The dog’s out of its stupid mind,” MacCullum said. “Howling like a witch. Teresa’s had to tranquilize it.”

  “There was an almighty rushing wind,” said Warren with the tone of an evangelist. “Came out of nowhere with a chorus of rumbling. The Towers literally moved. They thought it was an earthquake. Shuddering and banging, Teresa said. Francesca was hysterical. There’s a desperate need to shore things up. This makes Sophie’s survey imperative.”