Hannie Richards

by Hilary Bailey

  In the library, where huge windows looked down towards the river, the manservant poured coffee and brandy. Hannie took both, hoping something would make her feel better. Sir Duncan said, ‘Tell me what you think of Serena.’ All Hannie thought was that if she spent too much longer in this house she might go mad. She also still felt sick. She would give the situation half an hour and then, job or no job, money or no money, she would leave. Her instincts were muddled, her head was unclear, but her body was sending plain enough messages.

  She asked cautiously, ‘Who is she, actually—Serena?’

  ‘My girlfriend, obviously,’ he said.

  Hannie took a deep breath and said, ‘I think that she might be dangerous for a man in your position. She may have awkward involvements and unpredictable friends—I hope you don’t mind my saying so.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Kyte. ‘I thought you might say that. To a man like me the Serenas of this world are often fatal.’ He paused for a long time. Then he said, ‘They have undesirable friends collected during a past which hardly bears thinking about. They have bad habits and no standards worth mentioning. They would wrench the gold teeth from a dying man and think nothing of it afterwards. Unfortunately, their vicious little ways are appealing—irresistible.’ The manservant had gone. Kyte walked to the table across the room and poured himself more brandy. As if in a dream, while he walked back and sat down, he said, ‘The fact that they make no judgements, have no preconceived ideas about how anything should be makes them—relaxing.’

  He seemed very tired. This room, like the others, was hot. Hannie said, ‘The snag is that while you’re relaxing, sometimes they’re not. It’s easy to come round and realize you weren’t so much being relaxed as hypnotized.’

  ‘You’re very intelligent,’ said the weary man. ‘I suppose it’s the fact that they are so weak that makes them so intriguing. Watching their little short-term plots, all those tiny, cunning manoeuvres designed to purchase for them a moment’s gratification, all those small greeds—’ He put his glass on the table beside him and said, ‘I’m sorry. This is of no interest to you. I saw the way you looked at Serena. I just wanted to talk about it for a moment. You see, ordinarily, someone like me steers clear of girls like her, with their low-life connections and their habit of gossip—now it doesn’t really matter.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Hannie.

  ‘That’s why you’re here,’ he said. ‘I’m ill. Very ill. In fact I have cancer.’

  Hannie was startled. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said finally. There seemed nothing else to say. Of course that explained his pallor, his fatigue, the silent, over-heated rooms, the strange air which hung about the house.

  ‘Is it Interferon you want?’

  ‘Do you think I haven’t obtained Interferon in sufficient quantities?’ he said. ‘You do me an injustice. It doesn’t always help. In my case it hasn’t. What I want is more difficult to get than that—far more difficult.’

  What would that be—God’s pardon, or the green eye of the little yellow god, Hannie wondered. All she said was, ‘You look tired. Just go straight through it. Be brief, to spare yourself, and be completely frank. I’m utterly silent about these things, whether I take the job or not.’

  ‘I had assured myself of that,’ he murmured. ‘But it’s quite a long story and goes back into the past. I shall have to explain all that first.’

  ‘All right,’ said Hannie. ‘I’m listening.’

  Leaning back in his chair, looking like the sick and weakened man he really was, Duncan Kyte said, ‘I have to start with my half-brother, Roderick Kyte. He’s a biologist, well, more of a biochemist. He’s the child of my father’s first marriage. It was a bad marriage. He got out of it to marry my mother. Roderick never forgave my father, or my mother, or me for that matter—always felt his mother had been badly treated and that there was a family vendetta against her. There wasn’t, of course. She was just rather a tedious woman who lived in a tedious suburb and never had the sense to make a new life for herself after the divorce. Of course, it can’t be denied that I got the benefit of the old man’s ever-increasing fortune, but Roderick didn’t do too badly either—went up to Cambridge, got a good degree, did research, made a name for himself. Trouble is, wherever I was, there was the action—the good war, the spectacular marriages and so forth—and where old Roderick was there was a noteworthy lack of movement, if you know what I mean. His was the sturdily won scientific reputation, the decent marriage, but unfortunately his wife died—anyway, you can imagine the scenario.’

  The scenario, as he described it, seemed to be reviving Duncan Kyte. As he spoke, he sat up straighter. His eyes brightened. Hannie had the idea that the ancient feud with his brother had always been stimulating, especially as he seemed always to have come out the winner. The way he spoke changed too, as he talked about it. He used the language of clubmen.

  ‘About two years ago I got a press cutting, automatically, from my cuttings agency. It was extracts from a paper in a scientific journal by Roderick to do with his researches on various South American plants he’d collected on a trip he took there—about how the Indians in the Mato Grosso used them for contraceptives, insecticides, poisons and so forth. He’d been there in the sixties when the authorities decided to send a team out to collect stuff and generally examine the area before a big road was pushed through and the whole ecological balance changed.’ He looked at Hannie. ‘Are you with me so far?’ he asked.

  She nodded, ‘I’m ahead of you. I read of the paper in a popular newspaper a few years ago when I was stranded in a snow-bound train. I can remember the headline—CURARE, CONTRACEPTIVES, A CURE FOR CANCER FROM THE JUNGLE. The journalist had done the usual thing—set to produce a story from the scientific papers, he’d gone over the top and said far more than the scientist really claimed. The scientist seems to have said, “Rubbish” when asked to comment. I suppose that was your brother?’ Kyte nodded. ‘Well,’ said Hannie, ‘how does the story go on? Did he really have a cancer cure? Is such a thing possible?’

  ‘He’d been working on it,’ said Kyte. ‘I never saw the article you mention. Obviously there can’t have been much to it or the other papers would have taken it up. The article I read was more sober. Roderick said he’d been working on plants collected from the Mato Grosso for twenty years. He’d found a narcotic, a poison and so forth. He mentioned he was hoping to prove that he’d got some results in checking cell damage and, in some cases, in stimulating the actual regeneration of cells. The word cancer was not mentioned, as befitted an article in a sober and reputable journal. Roderick must have been furious when some cheap journalist made that interpretation—it’s exactly the sort of thing he’d most dislike. He’s jealous of his reputation. Anyway, the main thing is that having glanced at the article, I forgot it. Six months later I found out I was ill and the whole subject became more important to me, as you can imagine. Then I remembered the article all right. On the other hand my relationship with Roderick was not exactly wonderful, so I didn’t fancy going to him. I only did that when the operation failed to check the cancer and the Interferon did no good. I even tried a crank macrobiotic diet advised by a Japanese doctor. Well,’ said Kyte, a kind of ruined pride in his grey, handsome face, ‘after falling into the hands of the cranks, spooks and ghouls, the idea of approaching Roderick seemed less obnoxious. I thought I couldn’t be made to feel any worse.’ He looked at Hannie. ‘Have you got any brothers and sisters?’

  ‘One of each,’ said Hannie. ‘But we get on fairly well. I remember feeling the worst hatred for them I’ve ever felt for anybody, though, in childhood. I suppose that feeling can go on.’

  ‘It does,’ said Kyte grimly, but Hannie wondered if they were talking about the same thing. ‘Those hatreds go deep—very deep. I could not have believed it myself if I hadn’t experienced it. I went to see Roderick. I told him what was happening to me. I asked him if he would help. In the end I was almost begging, but he was quite determined. He would not help me.
He just refused.’

  ‘Didn’t he give you an explanation? Even an excuse?’ asked Hannie.

  ‘Oh well,’ said Kyte, ‘he gave me an explanation. He said they were only just starting experiments on animals. They were by no means certain of the results. I pointed out to him that I was offering myself as a human subject—I had no future anyway. As I say, I begged him. It was no good. He said he didn’t care who I was, he would not allow me to have the drug.’

  ‘That must have been a bad blow,’ said Hannie.

  ‘No blow is that bad,’ said Kyte, ‘when you’ve been around as long as I have. What I intend to do now is secure the substance for myself. I have some papers of my brother’s about the process. Unfortunately I was unable to secure the formula—the exact chemical breakdown of the plant he is working on. But I’m told there’s enough information there to be going on with. All I need now is the plant.’

  ‘The plant?’ said Hannie.

  ‘Well, what did you think I asked you here for?’ Kyte demanded. ‘I need someone to go to Brazil to get the plant. If you agree, I can get you in on an Anglo-Brazilian field trip to the area Roderick got his plants from. I’ve been told that with the papers I have of his, and the flowers of this tree he found, I can get the stuff synthesized and into assimilable form in a few weeks. You understand what that means?’

  ‘I’d have thought it a lot easier to break into his laboratory and grab—’ said Hannie. Then she realized. ‘Oh—you did,’ she said. ‘Now he’s got everything guarded.’

  ‘And an injunction against me,’ said Roderick Kyte’s brother bitterly. ‘The leader of the expedition is a Dr Peter Davis. His deputy and the head of the botany section is Dr Joe Spinelli. The fee for getting those plants is £100,000.’

  Hannie flinched. It was a lot of money for what might turn out to be a fairly easy task. To give herself time to think she said, ‘I can’t see Joe Spinelli taking me on.’

  ‘I heard he always liked you,’ said Sir Duncan. He knew a great deal about her then, thought Hannie. And was not surprised.

  ‘He liked me,’ Hannie said, ‘as a girlfriend. But not as a scientist.’

  ‘Let’s be perfectly frank,’ said Kyte. ‘There is very little chance of your ever being selected, on the strength of a third class degree in biology, as a member of this team. I have made a very useful donation to the expedition.’

  Hannie thought quickly. He must have given the expedition at least as much as he was offering her. That was quite a big stake. But not very much in exchange for his life—not very much to him, that is.

  ‘£100,000 isn’t enough,’ she said flatly. ‘I’d need double.’

  Sir Duncan Kyte’s face went rigid. He detested her, as the rich will, for wanting his money. It was not so much the bargain he resented as the fact that she was in a position to bargain at all. Hannie knew he needed her. The problem was that men like Kyte will do almost anything rather than be bullied. For almost a quarter of a million pounds he could bribe Joe Spinelli to get the plants for him. Hannie knew that Joe would have done it for five hundred and a pint of beer, but she gambled on the fact that Kyte would not suspect that Spinelli’s well-earned scientific reputation was paired with a lack of personal integrity so marked that his nickname for years had been ‘Pig’ Spinelli. And if Kyte made an offer and was refused, his position would be worse than before. Even at her inflated price she was a better and a safer proposition. Also, Kyte was in a hurry, the biggest hurry a man could be in. As the two of them stared each other in the eye, Serena came in. ‘All settled?’ she asked.

  Kyte, still looking at Hannie, said, ‘Yes. All settled.’

  ‘Good,’ said Serena. She came in lightly and poured herself a drink. She looked more cheerful than she had at lunch. Hannie, sagging in her chair, thought that whatever Serena had in her bathroom worked wonders on the human spirit. At the back of her mind a voice was saying, ‘You got it. You got it. You got the money. You get a fresh start.’ She also heard Julie’s voice behind her, shouting for her to come back. I’m tired, she thought. I need some rest. I got it, that’s all that matters.

  Meanwhile the bright-eyed Serena stood behind Duncan Kyte’s chair with bare white arms round his neck. She whispered in his ear. A smile crossed his tired face. From behind the chair Serena looked up, gave Hannie a quick smile of complicity, as if congratulating her on joining the gang and getting her share of Kyte’s money. Hannie was feeling sick again. She barely heard Kyte saying, ‘I propose to pay a third of the money directly to your bank and I’ll lodge the remainder in the form of a post-dated cheque at my solicitor’s. The expedition leaves in nine days. You could be back in under three weeks. I’ll date the deposited cheque for thirty-one days from now. If you are not back, or fail in the mission, I shall cancel the cheque.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Hannie. She felt slightly dizzy now and stood up. ‘I’ll go back and make some preparations. Thank you for the nice lunch. I’m reasonably hopeful about this—if the plants are there I’ll get something, anyway.’

  Serena was still whispering to Kyte. He got a peculiar kind of peace from the girl, some kind of release from his fear, perhaps from the burden of his past. In his attitude she suddenly saw something of her own weary gratitude to Adam when she arrived back from her trips. She shrugged off the thought. Kyte looked at her and said, ‘Can you do something else while you’re en route? It’s a contract I don’t want to put in the mail. Can you deliver it to some associates of mine in New York? That’s all—they’ll arrange a courier for the return trip.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Hannie. He went to the desk, put some papers into an envelope and wrote an address on it. As she took it from him, he gazed at her imploringly. He said, ‘You will be quick, won’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hannie. ‘As fast as I can.’

  Already Serena was at Kyte’s shoulder, her hand on his arm, her face upturned, seeking to divert his attention from his own fears to herself.

  Hannie said goodbye and in the doorway she turned again, seeing the tableau of the girl clutching the sick man.

  She was happy to find herself on the steps with the manservant. The wind buffeted her and the rain hit her face. She felt better to be out of the heat of the house. She told the manservant to telephone the lodge that she was coming on foot and walked down the drive under lashing trees, taking deep breaths. By the time she got to the bottom she could hardly believe how ill she had felt.

  In the evening she rang her husband from the Hope Club. ‘Adam,’ she said, ‘I thought I’d just tell you—I’m going to South America. I expect to be back in a few weeks.’

  He said uncomfortably, ‘I expect that’s a good idea, Hannie. I hope it goes well for you.’

  ‘Thanks, Adam,’ she said. ‘Give my love to Flo and Fran, tell them I’ll see them soon.’

  ‘Will do,’ he said.

  There was a pause.

  She said, ‘We’ll have to talk about all this when I get back.’

  He said, ‘Yes, yes.’ He sounded nervous. Nothing else—just nervous.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘goodbye.’

  As she put the receiver down, Elizabeth, who had come in quietly without knocking, said, ‘What a fool—sorry, Hannie, but you are. You’re going away for weeks—they’ll just settle in with the children and put up the sandbags.’

  ‘They can do what they like for three weeks,’ said Hannie. ‘I’ll be off earning £200,000. When I come back, I make the terms, that’s what.’

  ‘You’re entitled—’ said Elizabeth.

  ‘To half the house,’ agreed Hannie. ‘But only if I’m prepared to hang around for a divorce. Then I sell Adam’s family home and take away the place my children have grown up in—where their roots are.’

  ‘I ask myself,’ said Elizabeth, ‘if a woman can afford to be so gentlemanly. Off to shoot tigers, are you? You won’t stand and fight for your husband, just like all the other women?’

  ‘No,’ said Hannie. ‘As a matter of fact, I won
’t.’

  ‘I wish you would,’ said Elizabeth sadly. ‘If you go away now you might lose him for good.’

  ‘I’m not hanging about making him feel guilty with a load of scent behind my ears in case he changes his mind,’ Hannie said. At the same time she was heaving herself into a pair of tight leather trousers. ‘No, he’s in love with her, not me. That’s the long and short of it.’ She put on a maroon silk shirt, leather top and flung a long, matching silk scarf with a fringe around her neck.

  ‘I’m off to the Hunt Ball, Elizabeth,’ she said and left the precincts of the Hope Club for another kind of club in North London. This was dark with flickering strobe lights, and all the clients were women. A women’s band played, and the women danced to it. Hannie leaned against the bar, looking round. Through the darkness came a glittering figure in a shiny green-blue dress. The blonde hair on either side of the pale face was frizzed out. Hannie straightened up and kissed the girl on the mouth. ‘Serena,’ she said, ‘I thought you’d make it.’ Serena giggled. ‘I thought you could do with some fun,’ she said, ‘before you went off on the big adventure to find a cure for death.’

  5. The Adventure to Find a Cure for Death

  Breathing was like taking in air from the spout of a boiling kettle when the steam is filled with tiny insects. They should, Hannie thought, be wearing oxygen masks. Something bit her on her already-bitten cheek. She was too tired to raise a hand to hit it. They should also, she reflected, putting one foot after another on the uncertain carpeting of leaves, vines and decaying vegetable matter, be covered in sterile gauze bandages from their toes to the crowns of their heads with little holes just for their eyes. Over those they’d wear goggles, she decided, as another wave of tiny fruit flies hit her eyeballs and made her eyes stream with tears again. Better than that, they should be wearing space suits, with cooling systems. Then she tripped, recovered and put her booted foot into a large mound, from which a string of two-inch ants began to pour. She said to Joe Spinelli, who was walking behind her, ‘We should have space suits.’