Fourth Horseman (14 page)

While I was trying to think of a better way of explaining it, she went on: ‘Don’t worry about your dad, sweetheart. He’ll snap out of it as soon as he gets where he wants to go. Then he’ll be back to his usual self. He’s nutty as a fruitcake, your dad. You should know that by now.’

I wanted to follow that up; to say that ‘nutty as a fruitcake’ didn’t come near it. But Mum had a dreamy look of affection on her face and I knew that, just then, she wasn’t going to hear any criticism of Dad. Usually I liked it that my parents were so mad about each other, but just then I hated it. I felt as if they had formed an alliance against me, and I was struggling on my own to hold on to the truth.

Maybe I should have told her, even if it did make her think I was cracking up. She might have stayed at home and become involved with what happened. She might even have found a way of stopping it all before it came to crisis point. I doubt it, though. I don’t think Mum—or anyone else for that matter—could have foreseen what was going to happen, or imagined what was lurking in the shadows around the lab, waiting for its moment to appear.

Alex’s fourteenth birthday was on the twenty-third of October. He made the usual jokes about catching up with me. For most of the year I was two years older than him, but because my birthday wasn’t until January there were always a few weeks when I was only one year older.

By a coincidence that was hardly surprising, Alex was given two hakamas that day: one from Mum and Dad and the other from Javed. It was slightly embarrassing, but there was an obvious and very happy outcome when Alex persuaded Javed to keep one of them. They looked to me just like long black skirts but I have to admit that when the boys wore them to practise their aikido they looked brilliant; like a pair of young Samurai warriors. I promised myself that as soon as I could I’d start going to classes. As soon as Dad finished with the squirrel project.

By the time of Alex’s birthday Manir had finalized the itinerary for their Shasakstan tour. He had a fabulous programme worked out for them. The first two one-day internationals were in Chandralore, the third in Hamachi and the final two in Sunderabad. Hamachi was hundreds of miles to the south, but there were three free days on either side of that match, so Manir and the boys were going to use the time to have a little tour and see a bit of the country.

I remembered the pictures Attiya had shown me and for the first time I felt envious. I would have loved to take those trips. There was probably still time to change my mind, and I considered it. I didn’t, though. I couldn’t.

A few days later, along with the team, Mum left.

The tour was to start off with three five-day test matches at different grounds around Shasakstan. We got cable TV so that we could watch bits and pieces of the matches when they coincided with our free time. There was some great cricket. Javed, who joined us at weekends, said that Jamali, the Shasakstani captain, was the most under-rated batsman on the world scene. He said there was no one who played the ball later than Jamali, or with such grace, and I had to admit that his batting was a pleasure to watch. Javed recorded all his innings and studied them later at home, and that autumn Jamali took over from Sachin Tendulkar as his role model. Manir expressed huge relief at this turn of events. Despite his internationalist temperament he had never been quite comfortable with having a son who idolized an Indian cricketer, and he had been trying for years to convert him to Jamali.

Our own temperaments had become a bit more internationalist by then as well. There was a lot of banter between us as we watched the matches, with Javed cheering for Shasakstan and Alex and me supporting England. But Javed said Alex would get lynched if he was caught shouting for England when they were in Shasakstan, so he had better get in practice before they left. It was a joke, but Alex went along with it, and worked hard at learning the names of all the Shasakstani players and the proper way to pronounce them. Which, as Javed observed, was more than most of the English commentators did.

We made our smoking allowance for Dad again, but I don’t think he joined us once. He spent every spare moment at the lab. We missed him.

The test series ran right up until the end of November, and then the team had a ten-day break before the one-day series began. For the first week of December Alex was like a cat on a hot tin roof. He had finished his packing before the end of November, and his rucksack sat in the hall outside his room like an eager collie, waiting to be off. He had a money belt with his passport in, and some sterling and a credit card, which Dad had got for him specially for the trip. He left the belt sitting on top of the rucksack, and on two separate occasions I saw him open it and examine the contents.

‘Just checking,’ he said. He would, I decided, turn out to be one of those people like Mum, who had to check three times that the gas was off and the back door was locked before she left the house. But he would also be one of those people like Mum, and not like Dad, who kept a tight ship and always knew where everything was. I felt very close to him during that last week before he went away, and had to work hard to prevent myself ruining his fun by being too anxious. I realized we had never in our lives been apart from each other for more than a few days at a time. When he went to Shasakstan I would worry about him, but I would also miss him. He knew my email address, but just in case, I wrote it out in clear letters and tucked it carefully away in his money belt.

I said goodbye to him on Thursday morning, the eighth of December. When I came home that evening the rucksack had disappeared from outside his door, and he was gone.

I
CHECKED MY EMAIL
regularly. The first one from Alex was there when I got up on Saturday morning. They were five hours ahead of us in Shasakstan, so by the time I read the email they would have already been at the first of the one-day matches. But even before they saw any cricket they were having a brilliant time. They were staying with one of Javed’s uncles in a huge old colonial house in Chandralore. Alex’s spelling went to bits as he raced through his report, telling me about the trees and the amazing birds and insects all around, even in the middle of the city. The uncle was a bigwig in the army, Alex said, but you wouldn’t know it. He was really nice and funny, and he was cricket mad as well. He had two daughters a bit older than me who were into the city nightlife and were really disappointed that I hadn’t come. I have to admit that I felt a bit of regret as well, when I read it. It sounded exotic, from Alex’s descriptions, but also quite normal and safe. My anxieties for him evaporated.

Dad had already gone to the lab by the time I got up, but I didn’t go until the late afternoon. That way Dad and I would be leaving together and I could get a lift home. I watched the second half of the one-day international on TV, searching the crowd shots for Alex and the Maliks. I didn’t see them, but England won the match, so I was in good form when I set off to work. It was a wintry day with a strong west wind, but cycling soon warmed me up and I got to the lab just before the rain started. Inside the squirrel room it was warm and dry. I changed into my work clothes and set about cleaning out the cages, and it wasn’t long before I realized that one of the grey squirrels was missing. I did a quick headcount and discovered that there was a red one missing as well. I inspected the cages carefully but I couldn’t see any way they could have got out. Even so I went round the cage room, searching in corners, making my feeding-time call. All the others responded, emerging from whatever nest box or corner they were in and climbing up the nearest wall of their cages. But there were still two missing.

Dad was in the virus room. I called him on the intercom.

‘Hi, sweetheart. You ready to go already?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ve just got here. But there’s a couple of squirrels missing.’

‘They’re in here,’ Dad said.

‘What are they doing in there?’

‘Being dissected, I’m afraid.’

I was too shocked to reply.

‘I’m looking for those nerve cells I was telling you about. Now we have to see if the reality fits the theory.’

I still didn’t know what to say. I was battling with emotions. The shock had been replaced by sorrow, and by humiliation as well, because I ought not to have been feeling like this.

‘Sweetheart?’

‘Oh, yeah, that’s fine, Dad,’ I managed to say. ‘But you should tell me, you know, when you take them. They’re my responsibility, after all.’

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘You’re right. Bad practice on my part. It won’t happen again.’

I closed the connection and went back to the cage room. I was furious with myself for being such a wimp but I couldn’t get rid of the distress I was feeling. Whenever I blinked I visualized the two of them spread-eagled on the dissection board, their innards open to the air. I had done dissections myself at school and I’d never had a problem with them: I had been the scientist’s daughter, hard-nosed and strong-stomached, laughing at my squeamish class-mates. But then I hadn’t known those frogs and rats. This was different. I had tamed those young squirrels. I had made pets of them so Dad could catch them and kill them.

I wished now that I hadn’t given them names. I had to make a point of not checking the ear tags as I cleaned out the cages. If I didn’t notice who was there I wouldn’t be able to tell who wasn’t. But I was much too familiar with them all. No matter how hard I tried not to, I soon knew perfectly well which ones were pinned out on that board.

Dad knew me better than I liked to think. On the way home he was sympathetic and conciliatory, even though I refused to admit that I was upset. I was irritated with him at the best of times, but that evening it was all I could do to restrain myself from biting his head off. The day had been an emotional rollercoaster and all I wanted to do was go home and let it all settle.

We stopped to get a Chinese takeaway; another conciliatory gesture from Dad. We ate it at home, then I checked the email. There was a new one from Alex.

He had been to the match and was full of himself. The cricket had been brilliant, but the best bit had been when they surprised Mum during the lunch break. He said she had just stared at him for ages as if she was seeing things. But then she realized he was really there and the celebrations began. He and Javed got introduced to both teams. Javed got Jamali’s autograph. They were both allowed to stay on the England balcony for the rest of the match. Eat your heart out, Laurie. He didn’t say it, but I heard it all the same. I was beginning to feel totally spineless for backing out. At that moment I could hardly even remember what it was that I’d been afraid of.

Dad came in and read the email over my shoulder. There was one from Mum as well, telling us the story from her side. It made me feel even worse. Pathetic.

The warrior who wasn’t.

On Monday evening as we drove home from the lab I asked Dad if he’d found the nerve cells he was looking for.

‘I found nerve cells,’ he said. ‘Too early to say if they’re different in the way I want them to be.’

I nodded and looked out of the window for a while. Then I said, ‘Why did you take on this project, Dad? What are you hoping to get out of it?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t think I want any more out of it than I’m already getting,’ he said.

‘Really? Don’t you want to win the Nobel Prize or anything?’

He laughed and did his Einstein impression. Most people would have thought it was Hitler, and I was glad he rarely did it in public. ‘I can’t see it, can you?’ he said. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever be famous.’

‘You’ll get this published, though, won’t you? If the experiment works.’

‘Lord, no. It’s all far too hush-hush. I couldn’t publish even if I wanted to. It’s written into my contract.’

Since I had eavesdropped on his conversation with Mum that day I had felt less worried about Dad’s work. I’d believed what he had said to her then, about being free to pull out if the experiment looked like working. But hearing about the extent of the secrecy gave me goose pimples about it all over again.

‘Then what do you want out of it?’ I said. ‘Is it just money?’

‘Money’s nice,’ he said. ‘And the self-esteem, when you do something that hasn’t been done before. But it’s more than either of those things, at the heart of it. It’s the beauty of science. Pure science. If I wasn’t getting paid for it I would still do it, just to see if I could.’

‘Like Everest,’ I said. ‘Because it’s there.’

‘Something like that,’ said Dad. ‘Or maybe it’s the only way an atheist can get close to God.’

Those words reminded me of something. Later that evening I remembered seeing that copy of the Bible in the study. But when I asked Dad about it he only shrugged dismissively.

‘It’s an interesting sociological document,’ he said. ‘No home should be without one.’

M
OST OF THE ONE-DAY
internationals happened on days when I had to go to school. I sometimes watched or listened to an hour or two in the early mornings, but I never got to see a whole match from beginning to end. The next email from Alex filled me in on the important details of the second of them, which Shasakstan won. He also told me about the previous day, which he had spent exploring Chandralore with Javed and Manir. They had been to the bazaar in the old part of town, and to some of the old monuments: mosques and forts and ornamental gardens. Alex had fallen in love with the city and the Shasakstani people. He was determined to visit the country again, and for longer next time. When that happened, he promised, he would drag me along with him, whether I liked it or not. He warned me that this would probably be the last email I would get for a while. They were setting out for Hamachi the next day and were going to do some sightseeing along the way. He was looking forward to it, he said, and felt completely comfortable in Shasakstan, wherever they went. He couldn’t wait to head out into the countryside.

Over the next few days I felt increasingly sorry that I hadn’t gone with him, because it was around then that Dad’s behaviour took a definite turn for the worse. He began to spend longer and longer hours at work. The days were shorter now, but despite the early darkness I would cycle straight to the lab from school, even if it was pouring with rain. I tended to go there as a matter of course now, on the days when I didn’t have hockey practice, even though there was hardly anything for me to do any more. The squirrels were all healthy and confident, and giving them feed and water only took a few minutes. But that was where Dad was to be found, so that was where I went. It became our routine.