But by the time August arrived, she was bed-ridden, unable to move. Stephen only saw her one more time, for the aching length of an afternoon. The frailty of her, the wide gentle eyes she had turned on him, had rent him in two, as certainly as if a scalpel had sliced through the thin armour of skin and tissue. He had wept for the first time since childhood. Wept at his own helplessness, too.
Then Tessa had walked into his life. Her vigour, her good sense, her flashes of wry humour had steered him towards less rocky shores. He had buried Sonya in the recesses of his mind. Only in his work did she sometimes surface in the recurring compulsion to find a cure.
Jan and his family had moved to Prague after Sonya’s death. Jan had lost his post at the Brno hospital. His new job was as a hospital orderly and that had only come through the good graces of an old friend of his father’s.
He never blamed Stephen for it, though Stephen knew the worst. He had allowed himself to forget the omnipresence of informers, the thousand eyes of the secret police. He had been careless and Jan and his family had paid the consequences. He vowed to himself that somehow he would make up for it.
When he had met Jan in Prague for a walk along the dusky paths of the Petrin Hill, Jan had told him that the particular kind of lung cancer Sonya had died of was chromium-induced. There was a high incidence of it in Czechoslovakia. If nothing else, his country had a genius for producing lethal industrial pollutants. Jan had laughed a short bitter laugh.
‘If only we could find some substance that killed those dangerous cells, eh Stephen, a magic injection. Or an inhalant. Since we can’t expect my countrymen to stop meeting their production quotas.’
Stephen’s eyes focussed on the drab furniture in Jan’s office. Shrugging away memories, he returned his attention to his computer and tapped in his code. He half watched the data protection programme come up on the screen, tapped again, and saw the wondrous forms take shape, the coils and folds of the protein he would present to Jan. He breathed a sigh of quiet satisfaction.
It had all been one of those miraculous accidents. He had been testing his then current work on calcium when something in a particular sequence of amino acid chains and peptide bonds, a pattern of encapsulation, had given him an idea. He had dropped everything and started the business of fashioning. A few days and sleepless nights later, the chromium binding protein had emerged. Tense with excitement he had called the DNA sequence up from a bank and placed the plasmid into the E. Coli. And waited. The worst was the waiting. But the miracle had occurred. The E. Coli hadn’t been killed off.
Then came the first testing stage. Into the Petri dishes with their jelly mixture of healthy and chromium infected cells, they had placed a small quantity of the protein bacteria. The infected cells had granulated, had literally curled up and died. The healthy cells were unaffected: they retained their pretty freshness. He had stared at the dishes for a long time. A wonder, akin to that he had felt as a child when he had first looked into a microscope, had filled him, and with it came a sense of jubilation. This was not just a breakthrough. It was a major discovery. With a little gulp of awe, he had named the protein: Chrombindin.
A small quantity of the separated out protein and the plasmid were sitting in the igloos in Jan’s lab right now. Jan would share his jubilation in Chrombindin.
He had kept the discovery from the Directors at Camgene. A few more weeks would make no difference. First he needed to speak to Jan. It was Jan who had been his point of inspiration and he owed it to him. The patent application would name them jointly as inventors. And then Camgene would see the reason for a collaboration with Prague. The trials would be carried out here. First animal, then clinical - under the aegis of Jan’s institute. Trials were far cheaper and simpler to run in the Czech Republic, in any event. Then too, Stephen thought with an edge of grimness, there was no lack of potential patients here.
It would be a proper inter-European cooperation, the very kind they had long envisioned. The very kind the meeting he and Jan were jointly hosting this week was aimed to promote. Jan’s Institute would become one to be reckoned with on the scientific map. Sorely needed funds would come pouring in.
Stephen slowed the pace of his plans. These were still early days. There were a great many hurdles yet to leap before a discovery became a tried and tested pharmaceutical. Nonetheless, he was as certain of the importance of Chrombindin as he had ever been of anything in his life.
He gazed down at the computer screen and started to run through the material. Something jarred. Some difference of detail. What was it? He scrolled back and started again. No, nothing. It was all exactly as it should be. But the nibbling at the edge of his consciousness persisted. He called up a previous screen, started again from scratch.
The diary of entries, that was it. That odd date next to the Chrombindin programme and his lab files. He couldn’t remember having accessed them in the last week. His day files, yes. Some random notes from meetings. He searched his mind. Perhaps he had looked at Chrombindin just for reassurance, or checked some laboratory record for the conference. Or simply pressed the wrong keys.
A prickle of fear edged up his spine. He had been so vigilant during the journey, but his vigilance had been directed at the styrofoam cages. Not at his Powerbook, secured, he assumed, so long as it was with him, by his password. He gazed at that date again, the time code still ticking to a British clock. He took out his pocket diary to serve as an aide-memoire. But in a flash, without looking at it, he knew exactly where he had been at that time on that day.
Ariane. She had been so nonchalant in her suggestion of a game of chess. She had stood at his side talking on the telephone as he tapped in his password. And then he had gone off and lain in her bath, like a sentimental fool.
But what possible interest could she have in calling up his work?
Stephen ran his hands nervously through his hair.
‘You are not happy, my friend.’ Jan’s voice reached him from the door.
Stephen turned a grim face towards him. ‘No, no. I have some very good news. Though it may not be undiluted.’
-9-
__________
‘Glad that you accepted my invitation?’ Ted Knight looped an arm round Tessa’s shoulder and followed the direction of her gaze.
Below them the river curled as lazy as a well-fed boa in the gleam of early-morning sun. In the distance a dense tracery of trees clustered against a fairy tale castle.
‘Ecstatic,’ Tessa looked up at him. ‘I don’t know why I waited so long to come here.’
‘Waited for me. Waited for an American to show you Europe.’ His face was suddenly impish beneath the spiky bristle of his hair. ‘A reluctant European. Very English of you.’
‘Is that what it is? Well then you had better get on with it. There’s an awful lot out there to see. And I still haven’t had a cup of tea. And we’ve already wasted a whole hour.’
‘Wasted?’ He pulled her a little closer to him.
‘Wasted beautifully,’ she acknowledged, sniffing in the fresh morning smell of him. She ruffled his hair and for some reason she thought of Winnie the Pooh and his honey pots and she snuggled closer to this handsome unlikely man who had swept her up and might yet deposit her exactly where she wanted to be.’ What I like best about you…’
The phone rang before she could finish and she watched the quick stride with which he crossed the hotel room, the instant concentration as the voice at the other end engaged him. She shivered with pleasure.
It was odd how easily they got on, playing to each other like the two hands of a counterpoint, well-rehearsed yet full of surprises for all that. And yet she had never rehearsed it, had never had an affair which had little to do with the heart and less with tomorrow. As long as one didn’t break the unspoken rules - which were all she sensed to do with introducing the heart and its future - it was as delicious as a soufflé - a lemon soufflé, all light and sugary but with a bracing tang of tartness. And as evanescent.
Her impressions of the last few days were fleeting too. There were so many of them. They had covered so much ground. From Vendôme, back to Paris, then in a hired car to Strasbourg, then a flight to Prague. She hadn’t moved around so much and with such speed in years. Not ever, really. And she found she loved the breathlessness of it all. It didn’t leave time for dark thoughts. As if one could escape time altogether.
Tessa smiled, then flushed a little at her own thoughts. Sexually, too, she had never experienced anything quite like it. As if with Ted she were someone else, someone freer, more daring. She had been ripped out of the quotidian, out of time as well as place. No longer the sensible, responsible Tessa Hughes of Cambridge, who hurt and couldn’t get her husband into bed and worried about tomorrow and herself; but a woman, any woman really, desired and desiring, immersed in touch. She liked whoever that woman was, wished she could somehow package her and bring her home with her. Not to Stephen though. Funny how she had hardly given Stephen a thought since they had left Paris. There would be time enough for that, Tessa thought, forcing the shadow away.
‘A couple of faxes waiting for me downstairs.’ Ted was by her side. ‘Tomorrow I’ll have it installed up here. More convenient.’ He kissed her delicately on the forehead, left a lingering touch on her hip. ‘Meet you in the dining room. Okay?’
‘Very okay.’ She waited for him to go, then turned back to the magical view. From the street she heard the clip clop of horse’s hooves. She imagined the two of them as they had been yesterday just after they had arrived, in the streets swept clean by rain and a watery sun glimmering on the cobbles, as the carriage they had hired drove them through the city. She had insisted on the carriage. Because of the sign she had seen in the agency. ‘Take one of the horse driven city tours,’ it had exhorted in that new Euro-English which leaked with wondrous inadvertent puns. ‘We guarantee no miscarriages.’
Tessa giggled, then grew more serious. Tonight she would ask him. Yes. With Ted, she felt certain it would work.
The dining room had an air of such newness that she wouldn’t have been surprised to find the last dabs of paint still wet and the furniture bearing price tags. She spotted Ted at a buffet table. He was heaping cereal into bowls, fruit and rolls onto plates, as if he thought she too might be some famished Californian jogger in need of high voltage vitamins.
He gestured her towards a windowside table and followed a moment later bearing the overloaded tray.
‘I’ve ordered tea. And coffee. Just in case.’
‘Wonderful. You’re spoiling me, you know. You’ll never get rid of me.’
He looked at her a little reflectively, then chuckled. ‘But I have a favour to ask of you.’
‘Oh?’ She sat up, suddenly nervous.
‘Nothing that terrible. It’s just that something’s come up back home. And I’m going to have to sit tight by fax and phone and try and sort it out. That, plus a few more meetings to set up. There are some interesting heads gathering here. It’ll take me a good few hours. At least.’
‘I’m sorry. But that’s all right. Really. I’m quite good at keeping myself busy. Was expecting to.’
‘I had no doubts on that score. There’s still the favour though.’
‘You want me to type some documents for you. Is that it?’
‘Heh… I’m your nearly new man. An old hand with the keyboard. No, not that. I’d like you to keep an appointment for me. I can’t seem to reach this person on the phone and it would be rude not to turn up.’
‘And what do I do? Pretend I’m a junior headhunter with loads-of-bucks to squander?’
‘Sure, why not. My temporary assistant.’
‘But I know absolutely nothing about science. Nor about Centocor or Chiron or Genentech or any of those other appealing little names of firms you drop that sound as if they’ve fallen out of some primer on mythology.’
‘You’ve been paying attention.’ He wagged a mocking finger at her. ‘You could of course simply tell him the truth and have a pleasant lunch.’
‘You mean that I’ve come along for the bed and breakfast.’
Ted’s coffee cup met its saucer with a spill and clatter. ‘Now, now, Tess, we don’t want to give the man ideas. How about you just say I’ve got a crisis on and I’ll catch up with him later.’
‘Okay. I’ll be a proper little English Miss. Mrs. I mean.’
‘Not too proper.’ He grinned suddenly, brought her hand to his lips. ‘You can come back and tell me all about him - what he plans to do with the rest of his life, what he thinks of the dear old U.S. of A, how many dependents he’s got… That kind of thing.’ He pulled a map from his case and a guide book.
‘Start to build up a dossier in other words.’
‘Call it what you will,’ he said as he carefully circled the name of a restaurant and marked an X on the map. ‘But make sure you’re back by three or I’ll begin to wonder what kind of truths you’re telling him.’
Ted Knight watched her go, the swing of bag on hip, the hint of shyness in the smile and wave she turned back on him. She was proving a treat this Tessa he had found for himself, avid in bed and cool out of it. With touches of acerbity. He liked that. It kept him on his toes. Perfect. She was making this trip a pleasure.
She was clever, too. Had a magpie mind, full of the jewels and trinkets she had picked up here, there, and everywhere. Too clever, perhaps. He would have to watch that. He didn’t want anything interfering with what was proving so successful a journey. No doubt about it. Luck was on his side.
The streets of the old town with their golden domes and red roofs and amber stucco formed a labyrinth so full of architectural marvels that Tessa wasn’t sure she would want to find her way out even if a minotaur lurked. But when she realised that her sparse map bore little relation to the density of the city and it was almost half-twelve, she made a concerted effort to locate the restaurant.
She found it just a little late at the crossroads of a named and unnamed street. The promised wooden fish flapped above its doorway, like some wingless prehistoric bird trapped in an inbetween state. She made her way quickly past ornate oak tables and ballooning paper lanterns towards a desk with an old-fashioned till at its centre.
‘Mr. Knight’s table?’ A young woman looked at her curiously. ‘But you are not Mr. Knight? You would like another place, yes. Your guest has already arrived.’
‘Oh. No.’ Tessa explained hurriedly and peered beyond the woman to a table where a man sat staring out the window with evident impatience. His face was thin, slightly forbidding, the chin marked by an indentation, and the eyes he turned on her were of so startling a clarity, that she stumbled over his name.
‘Dr. Martin.’
‘Martin,’ he emphasized the last syllable. ‘But you are not Edward Knight - unless he has had one of those operations the tabloids in Romania were recently so proud of.’ He grinned a little crookedly. The expression so transformed his face that Tessa forgot to let go of his hand as she introduced herself.
‘Dr Knight asked me to convey his apologies. He couldn’t reach you in time to do so himself and he asked me to stand in for him.’
‘Sit in. Please.’ He pulled out a chair for her with old world courtesy.
‘So, you work with Dr. Knight?’
‘Temporarily. In a manner of speaking.’
He examined her intently.
‘We’re travelling together.’ Tessa burbled.
‘I see. A fortunate man.’
She couldn’t tell from his face whether that was another instance of flattering courtesy or whether it meant something, so she studied the menu that had just been handed to her and which was inordinately long.
‘Don’t waste your time. The only edible food is on the board.’ He gestured towards the wall. ‘But you are not American?’
‘No. No. English. From Cambridge.’
‘Oh.’ He smiled that miraculous smile again. ‘I have a very good friend in Cambridge who also knows Edward Knight. Perhaps y
ou have met him. Dr. Stephen Caldwell.’
Tessa gazed into the middle distance. She would have to come out with it now, though her mind was having distinct trouble shaping itself around the concept, let alone the word, husband.
‘No, well, Cambridge is larger than one suspects. You are not at the university.’
Tessa held her breath, shook her head. Then plunged, ‘And you… you would like to go and work in the States.’
‘No. No. Not really. Or perhaps just for a year at some time. To see how money can organize things.’ He leaned closer to her as if he were about to reveal a confidence. ‘It is really my friend Stephen’s idea that I meet Edward Knight. Stephen has decided to become my career adviser. No, my place is here. Here, is what I wish to speak to Mr. Knight about.’ He gestured emphatically with quick graceful hands.
‘So I’ve been wrongly briefed. There’s really no need for this meeting,’ Tessa gabbled, laughed to still her nervousness.
He joined her. ‘Perhaps not. But you are here. So we shall eat. And talk. And when you go back you can communicate to Dr. Knight that when we finally do meet what I am interested in are funds to be invested here, cooperation with American companies.’
He proceeded to chat to her with great charm about the parlous condition of research in a country where it had once excelled. He talked to her about Prague, about its theatres where illusion and revolution were made, about Kafka’s secret and forbidding castle and its transformation by Vaclav Havel.
By the time dessert arrived, Tessa felt herself so utterly in his thrall that she was sorry she had lied to him and had listened under false pretences. For he told her not only about Prague, but also a great deal about Stephen, perhaps courting her through the English association, but also she felt because he meant it. He had hailed Stephen as a genius and also a generous man, a true believer in scientific community, a man who had helped him enormously, a brother who had seen him through dark times.
The Things We Do For Love Page 15
