The Hopkins Conundrum

by Simon Edge

  “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” said Mallac, when Hopkins privately told him how bad he was feeling.

  He had now been in Ireland three years. To everyone’s surprise, the barbaric treatment for his chilblains for which he had volunteered back in his first year had actually worked. But he was no longer prepared to expose every ailment to general scrutiny for the entertainment of the house, and he declined the Frenchman’s offer of further help.

  “I just… wanted to tell someone,” he said vaguely. “I suppose it will pass.”

  But it did not. Every morning he woke with his night clothes so damp that they had to go straight to the laundry. When it was no better after a week, he went to the doctor, an angular figure of about his own age called Redmond, who had consulting rooms just along the square.

  “It is most likely a fleabite,” Redmond pronounced after a perfunctory examination. “I’ll give you a draught to take every morning and every evening, and you should see an improvement very soon.”

  The vile-tasting tonic made Hopkins drowsy but had no effect on the muscular ache or the fever. After two weeks of it, he was feeling just as ill, if not worse. He wondered if he had been too hasty to dismiss Mallac’s quackery.

  “I have some beads for you,” the Frenchman said. “You must dissolve them in water and they will make you feel better in no time. As I always promise, your money back if it doesn’t work – and I’ve never had to pay anyone yet.”

  “That’s because you never take money from anyone in the first place.”

  The Frenchman gave him one of his winks. Mallac did at least lift the spirits.

  Hopkins took the beads trustingly. But if faith in the method was part of the process, it was not enough on this occasion. The treatment made no difference.

  All the while, he struggled on with his teaching, knowing that he would soon have an examination to set. The prospect always filled him with dread, but this time it took physical form: the nausea and headaches that came on when he thought about this task were real enough and, on more than one occasion during his working day, he found himself checking where the nearest vase or bucket was, in case of emergency.

  In the end, it was Mrs Brady who put her foot down.

  “You need bed rest, at the very least,” she said in front of everyone at the luncheon table, hands on hips to brook no dissent. Ever since their adventure in the kitchen, she had made a particular fuss of him. “You’ve eaten less and less every day this week.” She turned indignantly to Father Wheeler, who sat at the top of the table beside Delany and was technically responsible for the welfare of the house. “Will you look at the poor little fellow? He eats like a bird at the best of times, but today he’s had no more than four spoonfuls of soup, and he has not touched his meat at all. He’s really not well, Father.”

  Having caught sight of his own pale, damp face in the hall mirror on the way to table, Hopkins knew he certainly looked the part.

  “You’ll up to your room this instant, and I’ll send young Bridie after you with some beef tea. And if that doctor isn’t here to see you again first thing tomorrow, he’ll have meself to answer to. Wouldn’t you say so, Father?”

  “I would say so, Mrs Brady, I would indeed,” said Wheeler, letting his napkin slip to the floor as he came round the table to offer Hopkins his arm. “You’re quite right, and you put the rest of us to shame. We’ll get you tucked up now, Hopkins old man, and we’ll have that doctor back first thing. And we’ll all pray that you have a better night tonight.”

  He passed it fitfully, by turns shivering and then throwing the covers off when he woke drenched with sweat. In the morning Redmond reappeared. This time he looked much graver, running a bony hand through his thinning chestnut hair. His change in manner was unnerving, but Hopkins told himself that it must be a consequence of the roasting he had doubtless received from Mrs Brady. The doctor put his hand on Hopkins’ brow, asked about the pains in his back and limbs, and wanted to know precisely how much he had eaten (virtually nothing) and drunk (gallons). He then instructed him to unbutton his nightshirt so that he could look at his chest and press the cold brass of his stethoscope to it.

  “Have you any ringing or buzzing in the ears?”

  He had not.

  “Any rigor or shivering?”

  “Well, yes. When the chills come I shake all over. And then in no time I’m hot and feverish again.” His own voice sounded weak and thin, and he could see Redmond straining to hear him.

  “And what about energy?”

  “I’m utterly exhausted. I could barely climb the stairs back up here last night. But I expect that’s the lack of food as much as anything else.”

  The doctor nodded. Now he wanted to see the patient’s tongue, and his teeth. All the while he made little clicking noises to himself. When the examination was over, he told Hopkins he could fasten his nightshirt. This was an effort because his hands were heavy and his fingers and thumbs unwilling to do his bidding. He became engrossed in the task, and it took him some moments to realise that Redmond was waiting to deliver his verdict.

  “The news is not good, Father.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’m afraid you have typhoid.” He said it very slowly and clearly, as if to allow no misunderstanding.

  Hopkins was conscious of passing suddenly, without a by-your-leave, into a domain hitherto reserved for others.

  “Are you quite sure?”

  His own voice sounded distant, even to himself. He was conscious he must make an effort to take the news manfully – but could not guarantee he would succeed.

  “I’m afraid there can be no doubt. The symptoms did not present themselves so obviously last time we met which is why, er… But this time they are unambiguous. Nevertheless there is no need for despair. You are still a young man, Father. What, thirty…?”

  “I am nearly forty-five.”

  Redmond looked genuinely surprised; it had not been flattery.

  “Really? Well in that case…”

  “In that case I am not quite so young and resilient after all?”

  It was meant to be a pleasantry, but his facial muscles seemed reluctant to smile.

  “Not a bit of it,” said Redmond earnestly. “Nature is clearly on your side and you can overcome this. You have every chance. Now I’m going to leave you another tonic…” – he started pouring out grains from a jar that he took from his leather bag – “which I want you to take twice daily. It’s sulphate and quinine, and I’ve seen it work wonders on patients much worse afflicted than you.” He looked over his shoulder. “Is the other Father still there? I’ll need to tell him how to make the tonic up and how he should best look after you…”

  Hopkins was left alone to absorb the news.

  So he might be spared the horrors of ageing. All of a sudden they did not seem so bad.

  North Wales, the present

  If nothing else, Tim is developing a powerful fellow feeling with the poet. The guy had it just right when he said No worst there is none: every time you think things are as bad as they could possibly be, they go and get a whole lot worse. What’s amazing is that their man managed to express all that in five words of one syllable. Tim is also pretty amazed at his own bone-headedness in missing this simple point the first time round, when he was trying to learn it and got the first line completely wrong. On top of it all, he is aware of a cruel irony: the pain and humiliation of being caught pretending to have a poetic sensibility, when he was in fact a complete philistine, has awakened a genuine poetic sensibility that he never knew he had – but it has come too late to do him any good.

  As well as being devastating, this is a Notsoism of the first order.

  Not that Chloe has confronted him yet, but it’s only a matter of time. She has now been out with Barry Brook for two and a half hours, which has given Tim the leisure to rehearse the collapse of his life half
a dozen times over.

  She doesn’t know for certain that Tim is @Wreckileaks, and since he himself has given Barry Brook no clues, there is nothing that his girlfriend and his American guest can say to each other to establish beyond doubt that Tim is the cheap chancer who has enticed the great conspiracy theorist to this valley. In that sense, he is in the clear. But it isn’t that simple, it can’t be. Chloe knows, because she isn’t stupid, that Tim was well aware he had Barry Brook under his roof, and she knows he chose not to tell her. If she thinks that is suspicious behaviour on his part, she is absolutely right. And she must know more than she is letting on, otherwise she wouldn’t have gone to such elaborate lengths to pretend that she is Barry Brook’s greatest fan. She is therefore up to something, and whichever way he looks at it, Tim cannot see it ending well for himself.

  The not knowing is an agony, made worse by the fact that he is alone in the Red Lion. It is unusual for Alun Gwynne not to be propping up the bar of an afternoon, and while it was maddening that the old boy was not there earlier to keep Chloe and Barry Brook apart while Tim was dealing with the Latvian delivery driver, he is now desperately missing his confidant. He is about to lock the door and run round to Alun’s house to see if he’s there, when the old boy and Macca finally turn up. They have been to the vet for the mutt’s annual check-up. Tim is absurdly pleased to see them both. He pulls the old boy a pint on the house and opens a bag of scratchings for the dog, and then brings Alun up to speed.

  Alun Gwynne professes himself as baffled as Tim. He can’t see any obvious explanation for Chloe’s extraordinary change of heart, cosying up to a writer the mere mention of whose name has previously disgusted her – bar one.

  “You wouldn’t call the fellow good-looking,” he muses. “But he’s got more hair up top than you, landlord, and of course he must be filthy rich. He’s worth millions and millions, wouldn’t you say. Tens of millions. Women like that in a man, even when they say they don’t.”

  “Thanks for that, Alun. Very comforting.”

  “Maybe even hundreds of millions.”

  “You’ve made your point.”

  Tim feels a sudden ebbing of affection for his customer. He also has half a mind to take the scratchings away from Macca, who is already poisoning the air with pork-flavoured farts.

  Before he can do so, the front door scrapes noisily open and the two tourists appear.

  “Sorry we were so long. We took a detour so I could show Barry the oldest brick-built house in Wales,” says Chloe, glowing like a newly-wed. The detour is a low blow. She is definitely punishing him.

  “Ah, the oldest brick-built house,” says Tim uselessly. “How was it?”

  “Fascinating,” beams Chloe.

  That’s even lower. She is clearly trying to rub salt into his wound. But Tim is determined not to show that it hurts.

  “Another gin and tonic for you, Mr … er… Barry?” he asks, with as much landlordly cheer as he can muster. “Alun, did you know that our Mr Brook is the famous author Barry Brook? I had no idea, did you? Who would have thought we’d have such a distinguished guest in the humble old Red Lion?”

  He is aware he may be laying it on a little thick, but only now does he notice that Brook does not share Chloe’s happy glow. The American is looking distracted. He is frowning heavily, avoiding looking anyone in the eye and pulling at his fingers in an agitated manner. In fact his face is a picture of misery. He is either no fan of sightseeing, or else the yew tree and the old house have fallen badly short of expectations.

  “No thank you, sir,” says Brook stiffly. “In fact if you’d be so kind as to prepare my bill, I’m going to have to check out right away. Of course you must bill me for tonight – I’m more than happy to cover that for your inconvenience. But I’m afraid my plans have, ah, changed and I need to go pack.”

  “Yes, of course, no problem. But… has something happened?”

  He glances at Chloe, who smiles innocently back.

  “No, no, it’s just that… Well, I have to be on my way. Won’t you excuse me?”

  Brook manages a grim smile and disappears in the direction of the staircase.

  Tim’s imagination is running all over the place. He has been desperate to get rid of the guy ever since he arrived, so he ought to be pleased. But the abruptness of it all is alarming.

  “One thing about that fellow,” says Alun Gwynne at a discreet volume. “For all his fame and his money, he doesn’t seem very happy in himself, does he?”

  Tim glowers. If Alun were concentrating on his role, he would have remembered that he wasn’t meant to know that their guest had any fame and money at all until five minutes ago. At this point he should still be reeling in astonishment at the discovery, not slagging the guy off.

  But Chloe seems not to have noticed. She appears to be taking sadistic delight in looking inscrutable.

  “What’s going on?” Tim hisses. “What did you say to him? Why’s he leaving?”

  She puts a pale finger to her nose and winks.

  The three of them wait in painful silence, with the only sound coming from Macca destroying his final scratching.

  “Don’t forget he needs his bill,” she says.

  Tim had indeed forgotten. He is grateful for the distraction.

  Finally Brook comes bumping back downstairs with his luggage.

  “Let me get that for you,” says Tim, seeing him struggling.

  “No, no!” says the American, so sharply that Tim backs off and holds his hands up to make it clear he has no intention of touching the guy’s stuff.

  “Is my bill ready?” says Brook.

  “Yes, of course. Here you are, sir.”

  It takes Tim a while to work out how to use the credit-card machine, and he can see Brook growing more and more impatient as he fumbles with it. When the payment finally goes through, his guest gives him a cursory handshake with little eye contact. Alun Gwynne gets a slightly longer one and Chloe a proper squeeze, with hurried thanks that sound heartfelt.

  Tim tries to get the door for him but Brook insists on doing that himself too. It scrapes closed behind him and then there’s a silence as the three of them wait to hear the Lexus purr to life. It crunches softly on the gravel as it turns round, and then it is gone.

  “Okay, what just happened?” says Tim, turning to Chloe.

  Alun Gwynne and the dog are staring at her too.

  She seems to be trying not to laugh, but she is clearly in no hurry to share the joke.

  “Aha,” she says.

  North Wales, the present

  As she drives back home at the end of an exhilarating weekend, Chloe recalls her resolution when she started seeing Tim. Didn’t she tell herself she wouldn’t put up with him if he turned out to be a manipulator, because that is the one quality she really can’t stand in another human being? So by rights she ought to have dumped him. But she knows she’s not going to.

  Without being sure of every detail, she has long had a fair idea of what Tim has been up to. Working this out has not been hard, mainly because he is such a hopeless liar. It has been clear for a while that he and Alun Gwynne know far more about Barry Brook and his interest in the valley than they are letting on, and she wouldn’t put it past the pair of idiots to be up to their necks in the entire hare-brained scheme. She has suspected that all along, but her arrival at short notice this weekend to find Brook himself staying under Tim’s own roof – a development, crucially, that Tim has neglected to mention to her – is all the confirmation she needed.

  At that point, all she needed to know was whether Tim’s crackpot scheme was still live. That was why she needed to get Brook on her own, and proposed showing him the local sights.

  “Would you prefer to walk or take the car?” she asked him, with her most winning smile, as she closed the door of the Red Lion behind them.

  “Oh, I prefer to
walk, if it’s not too far.”

  “Me too. It’s a lovely evening. So tell me, what brings you to North Wales?”

  “Kind of a long story.”

  “I’m a good listener. Tell me.”

  And so he told her all about the local man – or possibly woman, he couldn’t be sure – who had contacted him with the germ of an idea for a new book. The idea was complicated. It related to the famous poet who used to live up the road – had she heard of him? – and it sounded pretty crazy at first. But, as a subject for the kind of thing Barry writes about, it might actually have legs. So he wrote back and got a dialogue going with this local informant, and they seemed to be getting on pretty well, right up to the point where Barry announced he was up for the idea, was prepared to reward his contact for it, and proposed to come and visit.

  “That’s when the guy – let’s just assume it’s a guy – like, disappears.”

  “No!” said Chloe.

  “I swear. I’m, like, emailing and messaging and doing everything I can to say I’m up for this, so c’mon, buddy, talk to me. But the guy is, like, blanking me. No response. Zip.”

  “How mysterious. And rude. That really is no way to behave.”

  “I know, right?”

  “Tell me: when was this, roughly?”