How Far We Fall Read online

  He laughs. ‘No one could ever forget Bruce, that’s for sure. Tell me, exactly who said all this?’

  ‘The Professor, I told you. Consultants, various ones, I don’t know their names. They don’t speak to me and I don’t speak to them. I listen, that’s all.’

  The last words ring true. A listener, other-worldly, the kind of girl who keeps her distance. She has taken off her coat now, revealing running clothes; a crop top shows her pale midriff, a window of tight flesh. She is older than he thought, finely drawn. Her small breasts are outlined against the clinging fabric. A child and not a child. She stands very still; they are inches apart. She looks towards him expectantly as if waiting to see what he will do next. In the sun now pouring through the skylight of the small room, he can see a dusting of fair hair along her arms; her skin has the grassy scent of the very young. Her mouth is slightly open, showing the edges of small white teeth. He thinks of snow, Norwegian woods in snow, unsullied. Why has she told him all this? Outside a door slams and there is an explosion of chatter, startling him. He glances at his watch. Lunchtime.

  3

  London. Autumn 2015

  Bruce is in the lift when it arrives on the tenth floor.

  ‘Leaving already?’ he asks. ‘Or is it lunchtime?’ His pretty face is as pale as a moth, the eyes sunk between red folds. A sour smell comes from his creased clothes. ‘I’ll come down again then. God, what a night; the girls get younger and younger. Why not join us next time?’

  ‘I couldn’t be less interested.’ Bruce’s sexual adventures are fantasies designed to shock. His stories, worn thin, are derided behind his back. ‘We need to talk. We’re running out of rats; you’re supposed to keep the stock replenished.’

  ‘I’ll do whatever you want,’ Bruce replies wearily. ‘Provided we discuss it over a pint.’

  ‘It’s a deal.’ Albie presses the ground-floor button. Lunch is usually sandwiches in his office – anything more seems a waste of time – but this way he can ensure rat numbers are steady; he needs a constant influx.

  They walk through the doors of the Institute into blinding sunshine. Bruce puts a shaking hand over his eyes. The National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery is to their immediate left, the Victorian architecture graceful next to the Institute’s brutal facade, but for Albie, the Institute is the place of greater magic, the hidden brains behind the face. He is reluctant to leave, even for lunch.

  Ted is by the front entrance of the hospital, his blond hair bright in the sunlight. Albie halts; an unexpected encounter, all the more welcome. Ted should be in clinic at this time, he doesn’t usually get to see him in the day. He waits by the railings. Bruce waits too, sighing impatiently. Ted is shaking the hand of a tall man with a tan and a neat grey crew cut, whose Midwest drawl carries easily in the still autumn morning. They seem to be congratulating each other. The man laughs and disappears into a waiting taxi. Ted waves him off then turns to go back up the short flight of steps that leads to the hospital doors. He is still smiling when he glances up and sees them. The smile vanishes and his thick eyebrows slant together; close up they are flecked with white, frost on a hedge. Ted is getting older; he hadn’t noticed.

  ‘Albie; the very man. Can we have a quick word? Excuse us a moment, Bruce.’ Ted takes Albie’s arm and draws him inside the hospital entrance. ‘You’ll hear soon enough, but I wanted to tell you face-to-face.’

  Ted’s tone is the serious one he adopts when about to convey bad news to a patient. Albie feels hollowed out on the instant. He should have been expecting this; grants get withdrawn at short notice. He’ll need to apply somewhere else to finish his work, maybe outside London. He is surprised by the sorrow he feels; there’ll never be another boss like Ted. What about Beth? His house?

  It takes a while for the words to filter through the noise in his head. ‘… a clinician I can trust to step into my shoes when I’m away in the States for a year, starting from January.’ Ted is still frowning. ‘That gives you three months to finish your thesis and a couple of weeks to settle in before I go.’

  Albie’s eyes burn. He’s not being sacked but rewarded. His heart has begun to beat very fast.

  ‘The thing is …’ Ted glances over his shoulder; Bruce has followed them in and is studiously reading the lists of consultant names engraved in gold on oak panels at the back of the lobby. Ted moves closer, dropping his voice. ‘The thing is, you need to start operating again, for the sake of your career, so you can be ready for, well, let’s say for opportunities when they arise.’ The blue eyes gleam. ‘I don’t mention this often and perhaps I should, but I’m proud of you, Albie; you’re the kind of guy who will make a difference.’ He puts his hand on Albie’s shoulder; the wide palm is very warm. ‘The truth is you’re a brilliant surgeon; innovative. You’re hiding your light under a bushel in the lab here.’

  Skuld’s words echo in his head. She’d relayed exactly what had transpired after all; he should have paid more attention. He ought to have thanked her. He feels light-headed, as if he were somewhere high up and the ground far below his feet. If this locum is to ready him for future opportunities, it tallies with his name being mentioned as the heir to Ted’s jobs in the meeting. Opportunities … jobs … It could mean he’ll inherit the lab and the consultancy one day. His career has been planned out by the department already; it’s all he can do not to hug Ted and punch the air. His thoughts soar. As a boy he’d gazed at the stars from the cliffs in Jura, convinced he was destined to travel that far; now he will. He’ll go further, there’s uncharted territory to map, new therapies to create, different viruses to try out. His heart is pounding fiercely, he can feel it in his mouth.

  Footsteps ringing on stone pull him back to earth. Bruce is pacing restlessly behind them but Ted is watching Albie, as focused as if dissecting a tumour from the brain.

  ‘Sorry, Ted, I’m a little … I didn’t expect this. Well, maybe I did. I knew, one day, I hoped, naturally …’ He is gabbling, scarcely aware of what he is saying, drunk with excitement. He makes himself speak slowly, though his smile is so wide it is difficult to form the words. ‘I’d be honoured. I accept, of course. I’ll work hard, I won’t let you down.’

  Ted pumps his hand. ‘Do you think I don’t know that?’ His grins mirrors Albie’s. ‘Of course you won’t let me down.’

  But he had let him down once – could Ted have forgotten? A couple of years back when he was still new to the job, he operated on a pituitary tumour to save a patient’s sight. Ted had been watching. The optic nerves were tightly stuck to the tumour, like Sellotape binding around an untidy parcel. Albie burnt the small, twisting blood vessels on the surface to ease dissection; keen to impress, he began to hurry. Ted asked him to stop, but, unable to resist one last vessel, larger than the rest, he quickly burnt it through. As he rinsed away the blood, the white surface of the optic nerve appeared, the neatly divided artery lying on its surface. He had destroyed the blood supply of the entire optic pathway; the patient was now completely blind. Ted took over in silence and Albie went home, distraught. He had wrecked a man’s life. He would be sued, deservedly struck off. He’d have to leave, sort out a non-clinical career, hospital management perhaps. He was halfway through a bottle of whisky when Ted’s anaesthetist phoned up. Owen’s gentle voice revealed that Ted had been to see the patient and taken all the blame on himself. The family had understood, forgiven even. There would be no legal action. Albie was expected to operate on a meningioma in the morning.

  ‘You’ve come a long way.’ Ted could be reading his mind. ‘I trust you, Albie.’ Then, turning towards Bruce, ‘We’re tossing ideas around over here, Bruce. Come and join us.’ Bruce walks towards them, his face set in rigid lines. ‘I’ve been thinking about your PhD on glioblastoma cell lines,’ Ted continues cheerfully. ‘It could be expanded to cover more ground. Why not use Albie’s new virus technology? Come by my office, we’ll talk it through.’

  Albie tenses; his work. What if Bruce uses it to make his mark, a
s Skuld intimated? The hare could overtake the tortoise yet; then he relaxes, nodding agreement. Ted has been generous; he can afford to be generous too.

  ‘We’ll catch up when you’re back in post,’ Ted murmurs to Albie. Then, louder, ‘Congratulations, both. Make it a swift one.’ He walks rapidly away down a corridor.

  ‘I overheard everything – tossing ideas around, my arse.’ Bruce stares at him accusingly. ‘How the hell did you swing a consultant locum?’

  ‘Cheer up.’ Albie claps him on the back, ‘You heard what Ted said. Talk to him, use my work if it helps.’

  ‘Don’t patronise me. I’m not a fucking child.’ Bruce shrugs him off. ‘Look, I’m thirsty, can we just go?’

  They walk through the garden square in front of the hospital. Papery leaves have drifted into yellow piles that crackle underfoot. Two young women sit on a bench, their faces turned to the sun. An old man in a green woollen hat stretches out on another bench, dozing on a mattress of yellowed newspapers; empty cider bottles litter the grass. They pass the metal statue of a mother holding a child. Albie glances around as if unsure which world is real: Queen Square gardens in the heat of mid-week London or the quiet laboratory behind him, the universe of cells down the microscope.

  In the Queens Larder, the airless hum envelops them immediately. They push through a close-packed crowd to the bar, and when their drinks and baguettes arrive they take them outside.

  ‘For someone whose pay packet has just tripled, you seem remarkably calm.’ Bruce glares across the wooden table. ‘Did you have any idea that this was on the cards?’

  The hesitation is fractional. The less Bruce knows about what he overheard, the better. ‘No idea at all.’

  ‘Just the hand of fate, then, tapping you on the shoulder …’ Bruce’s eyes track his. Albie gazes at the glowing plane trees in the square and shakes his head, although that’s exactly what it had felt like. Bruce stares down into his beer; the anger has gone. He looks miserable.

  ‘Our new lab assistant overheard some chat about you, though,’ Albie tells him, relenting. ‘Apparently you’ll leave a mark.’

  ‘The little blonde?’ Bruce looks up. ‘I tried my best but I couldn’t get very far with her.’

  Typical of Bruce to flirt with a young girl. If he’d come across aggressively it would explain a lot. Skuld had been watchful at first, wary even. She might have been anxious he would pounce like Bruce, and then relaxed when he didn’t. Unwittingly he’d earned her confidence.

  Bruce sips his beer. ‘Perhaps I ought to start working more seriously.’ He looks thoughtful.

  Albie feels a stab of regret at what he’d let slip and then remembers his resolve to be generous. Bruce will be like the meteors he used to watch as a child from those cliffs, a brief trajectory in the night sky then the precipitous fall towards the sea. Bruce’s inertia, his very lifestyle will do for him. They chew their baguettes in the warm sunshine. Albie taps a text to Beth:

  Promotion. Better things to come. Tell you more this eve. Can’t wait. Just us.

  4

  London. Autumn 2015

  Beth turns right out of Belsize Park underground, hurries past the Royal Free Hospital and, following the map on her phone, takes another sharp right downhill into Pond Street. Hampstead Hill Gardens is the first turn to the left. The sudden peace is tangible, the kind of deep quiet that is available only to the very wealthy in a capital city. She could be a hundred miles from her narrow road in East Acton, where the motorbikes roar between lines of cars and rubbish drifts in the gutters. The double-fronted Victorian mansion is halfway down the crescent on the right: Albie’s grandparents’ home, now his. He lives in the basement, letting the ground floor and two upper storeys to tenants for cash. The curtains are drawn and the imposing house has a bleak, forbidding air.

  Albie opens the door seconds after her knock, as if he’d been waiting the other side. He draws her in.

  ‘Welcome.’ He kisses her lips, her face, her neck. ‘You’re here, finally. Finally!’

  They’ve met so far in restaurants and parks for picnics, at the theatre or cinema. She has been elusive when he suggested his flat or hers, wanting an escape at the end of the evening. She has watched as his impatience built, waiting until she was sure of his feelings. Now she is caught too, a little scared.

  It’s cold in the dark hall, colder than the street; the musty air smells of dog. Envelopes marked with paw prints are beached along the skirting board; a fat black spaniel clatters to meet them, his plumed tail fanning as he noses her leg.

  ‘Poor Harris. I haven’t time for a dog but he belonged to my grandparents. At least there’s a garden at the back.’ Albie’s hands stroke the dog’s ears and massage his neck; she shivers as though her own skin is being stroked. He takes her hand. ‘The kitchen’s warm,’ and he leads her down the hall, grit crunching underfoot. Harris wheezes as he pushes between them; they follow him through the open door at the end of a corridor, and down steep stairs leading into a hot kitchen. The table is heaped with papers, paintings cram the walls – watercolours of the sea, as far as she can tell in the dim light. Books are stacked in toppling piles on several chairs. A large photograph hangs over the sink: Ted, with his arm thrown around Albie’s neck. Ted faces the camera, eyes screwed up as if against the sun; Albie is to one side, head turned towards the taller man. The background is layered cliffs and sea: Dorset. Jenny must have taken the picture. Beth can’t ask, of course. Albie has noticed the direction of her gaze; it’s too late to pretend she hasn’t been looking. He moves closer to the picture.

  ‘A present from Ted. I got it enlarged and framed. We’d just run a race along the shingle near Bridport. Have you ever tried to run on pebbles? He won by a long way. Amazing bloke.’ He laughs but she remembers the weight of Ted’s arm round her own neck. He probably stood centre stage in their photos too, it’s hard to remember; she’d ripped them to shreds the night he left. She turns away, picking up an ornament from the dresser at random. A carved stag, beautifully done though the wooden eyes stare blindly at her and the antlers feel very sharp; she puts it down again.

  ‘My father made that.’ He hands her a heavy tumbler of dark gold whisky. ‘There are thousands of deer where we grew up in Jura, he was obsessed by them. He ran a deer-stalking business.’ He stands so close that their bodies touch, he is trembling. The moment stretches until he gestures at the crowded room, the piles of paper and the stacks of books. ‘Sorry about this mess,’ he says a little wildly. ‘I got back late, I haven’t had time to tidy.’

  The disorder looks permanent despite his words; he is only noticing now because he sees it with her eyes. He begins to pace between table and stove, pushing up the sleeves of his shirt, clearing papers, stirring pots and lighting candles, recovering his equanimity. He spreads a cloth on the table, smoothing it out with careful hands, large hands that would feel warm and very gentle. She bends to examine his books, afraid her feelings will show on her face. They are mostly poetry, well thumbed. Kathleen Raine, George Mackay Brown. Hugh MacDiarmid. A large leather-bound notebook has been left open on a chair, revealing a sketch of rats asleep in a cage, perfectly executed. She can sense the softness of the fur, almost hear the peaceful breath sounds. She turns pages, glimpsing a human brain dissected, meticulous drawings of lab equipment, mauve and pink cells like a splash of bright art, notes in an italic hand alongside.

  ‘Not very technical, I’m afraid.’ Albie looks over her shoulder, spoon in hand. ‘Ted says I should design on a Mac but I think better with a pencil in my hands.’

  A screen would suit Ted, she can see that, the anonymity of the text, the ease of deletion; there is passion in Albie’s pages for research, for his little laboratory animals, for the brain itself. ‘These drawings are extraordinary, Albie.’

  He blushes. ‘Oh, they just help me think about what I’m doing. There’s a section further on for operation notes; the plans for research are at the back.’

  She flips to the end and sees
rows and columns, drawings of equipment, aims outlined, methods discussed; and here and there pencilled rats scurry up the margins or peer from behind a column of numbers.

  ‘Where did it come from, this talent?’ She points to a sketch of Bruce in a margin, a tiny likeness of his friend asleep by a microscope.

  ‘My mother.’ He draws her to a faded photo stuck to the fridge, standing behind her to point to a slight woman with wild hair, a freckled boy leaning against her. A taller boy plays with a dog nearby, conical mountains rise in the background. A grim-faced man stares out from another photo, his foot on the neck of a dead stag. Albie jabs a finger at his face. ‘That’s my father. He made us stalk with him, hours of crawling through wet heather, watching and waiting.’ He puts his arms round her. ‘Mother was different.’

  ‘In what way?’ She lets herself lean back; his chin grazes her head as his arms tighten around her. She can feel his heart beating through the cotton, his skin warming hers.

  ‘She was a poet and a painter. Mysterious, like the sea.’ He pauses, then, with a little rush, ‘You remind me of her.’

  ‘The sea on a sunny day or in a storm?’ she asks lightly.

  ‘The dangerous kind. Unpredictable, I was often out of my depth.’ She turns at his voice and he stares at her as if trying to penetrate to the deeper, darker places. A moment passes then he laughs and releases her. ‘Suppertime.’

  He has cooked scallops with fragments of bacon; they taste of summer and the sea. His eyes follow her fork anxiously; when she praises the food, his face relaxes into a smile. ‘The scallops are big as eggs on Jura.’ He tells her about the island, the beaches, the birds and the deer, about his mother’s stories, suffused with ancient magic. He believed everything she said, followed her everywhere. ‘I’m still following her in a way. Neurosurgery has its own magic. The more we know about the brain, the more extraordinary it becomes.’ He pours wine. His face is bright in the candlelight, flames dance in his eyes. ‘We are exploring at the edge of what we know. There are so many discoveries to be made; Ted trusts me to make them with him. It’s a thrilling time for me.’