Out of the Sun (2 page)

But the signs were easy to follow. And nobody seemed even remotely interested in one plodding downcast figure. So, reaching the third floor and passing an unattended nursing station, he arrived, with little difficulty, at the far end of a short passage lit by a tinted window through which a dusk-smeared flank of the British Museum could be made out across the jumbled roof scape Room E318. With a card lodged in the name-panel at eye-level: David Yenning. No mistake, then. But a stranger, even so. Of that Harry remained certain. Unless what seemed like certainty was really only a fading hope.

He pushed the door open and entered. The room was small, but comfortably furnished. Pale wood, pastel carpeting and a large floral-curtained window created as light, airy and normal an atmosphere as could be contrived. But normality stopped at the bed. A youngish dark-haired man lay there motionless, his head resting in the very centre of an otherwise undisturbed pillow, his arms bent at identical angles across the counterpane. He made no sound that Harry could hear, but sound there nevertheless was: the steady rhythmic rise and fall of mechanical breathing. A ventilating device fitted with some kind of bellows sat on a low table next to the bed, linked by a ribbed plastic pipe to a valve fixed to the man's throat and attached to the tracheostomy through which his lungs were being filled and emptied. And without which, Harry's minimal medical knowledge told him, he would die. This did not look good. Peaceful, yes. Almost serene. But very far from good.

Sad as the sight was of an apparently fit and healthy young man lying inert and artificially sustained, it was still no more than that to Harry. It did not involve him. It need not concern him. It was none of his business. Especially since, whoever David John Venning's father was, he could not be Harry. Could he?

"Date of birth," Harry muttered to himself as he stepped across to the end of the bed and removed a clipboard thick with records from where it was hanging on one of the rails. That'll clinch it." And clinch it, in a sense, it did. Though not in the way Harry would have hoped. David John Venning. DoB: 10.05.61. "Oh, bloody hell." He had been born the spring after the summer of Harry's long-forgotten fling with Iris Venning.

TWO

By the time he left the hospital, Harry was in no serious doubt that the comatose occupant of room E318 was his own son. Not just on account of the coincidence of dates and names. Nor simply because the proud parents flanking David Yenning in a framed graduation photograph on the bedside cabinet were recognizable to Harry as older versions of the Claude he had worked with and the Iris he had been seduced by thirty-four summers ago. It was, after all, possible that the boy had been conceived during one of Claude's weekends home rather than one of his weeks away. Possible, though unlikely, especially given Harry's opinion of Claude's virility relative to his own.

But none of that was really the point. What convinced Harry beyond question was the telephone call. Someone knew for a fact that he was David's father and thought he should be aware of his condition. Which was, a staff nurse warily admitted, serious, if not grave. David Yenning had been with them nearly a month and had remained in a deep coma throughout that time. As for the prospects of a recovery, she declined to commit herself, suspicious as she clearly was of Harry's claim to be an old friend of the family who had somehow lost touch. If he did not know the next of kin's address and telephone number, she felt unable to supply them, although one correction she did supply. David's mother was Iris Hewitt, not Yenning. Remarriage, then, following divorce or widowhood. Well, the graduation photograph was probably taken more than ten years ago. It was not so surprising. Poor old Claude one way or the other.

She was scarcely more informative about the cause of David's illness, beyond stating that the coma was diabetic in origin. It seemed a cruelly arbitrary fate to overtake such a good-looking young man. Doubly so, when you considered how fundamentally fit his overweight ne'er-do-well father remained. Harry winced as he glimpsed a reflection of himself in a darkening window. He did not cut a handsome figure. To judge by the photograph, Iris had aged far more gracefully than he had. But that, he supposed, was only to be expected.

A more sympathetic junior nurse told him Mrs. Hewitt visited her son every afternoon, usually between two and four. If Harry wanted to see her, that was the time to try. The wisdom of trying was what he debated later over several pints in a nearby pub. Thirty-four years ago, he would have run a mile from fatherhood. In principle, he would do the same now. But that calm still waiting figure in the bed was no principle. It was a person. A body and a soul. A son he had never known. A man he had never met. Till now.

And then there was the telephone call he always came back to. Who could have made it but Iris? She alone would know for certain. It had to be her. If so, the call was a kind of summons. A plea for help, perhaps. An appeal for support. She must have gone to some lengths to track him down. In the circumstances, he could hardly ignore her. But why, if it was her, had she left no name or number? Why the anonymity she must have known he would see through? There was, of course, only one way to find out.

Harry called Shafiq from the pub pay phone and asked if he would be prepared to swap shifts with him tomorrow. Pressed for an explanation, he admitted it had something to do with hospital visiting hours, then claimed he was running out of money and rang off before Shafiq could do more than agree.

Since the swap committed Harry to a disagreeably early start, he headed straight home, hoping to find Mrs. Tandy had already gone to bed. But no such luck. She was up and about, making cocoa for herself and chopping up sardines to tempt Neptune, her cat, down from a neighbouring rooftop. Though cocoa was not what Harry wanted on top of four pints, no dinner and the sudden discovery of a son, it was what he found himself consuming in the tiny kitchen, while Mrs. Tandy stood at the open back door,

whistling for Neptune and waving the bowl of sardines in the night air to set his whiskers twitching.

"I don't know why I bother with this cat," she announced. "He gets better treatment than most of the children round here."

Harry choked on his cocoa and wondered amidst his splutters how Mrs. Tandy had developed her uncanny knack for making remarks somehow related to whatever he was trying hardest to keep to himself.

"Of course, Selwyn and I were never blessed with offspring. Perhaps if we had been ... But, then, you can't be sure, can you?"

"What about, Mrs. T?"

"How they'd have turned out. What they'd have become. As often a curse as a comfort, I believe."

"Well, I wouldn't know, would I?"

"No." She glanced back at him with a disconcerting beadiness about her eye. "I suppose you wouldn't."

THREE

Tuesday was Mrs. Tandy's Scrabble day. This was a relief to Harry, since it meant the coast was clear for him to return unobserved from Mitre Bridge for a bath, shave and change of clothes before setting off for the hospital. Such midday sprucing-up would have struck Mrs. Tandy as highly suspicious. As would the abstention from alcohol that nibbled at Harry's nerves as he made the journey to Bloomsbury. Not to mention the half dozen circuits of Russell Square he completed while making substantial inroads into a pack of Karelia Sertika cigarettes. He made a mental note to call at Theophilus's shop off the Charing Cross Road later and collect a fresh supply of the esoteric Greek brand his years on Rhodes had left him with a liking for. Though whether such a banal errand would lodge in his mind in view of all else it might soon have to cope with he rather doubted.

It was nearly three o'clock when he reached the hospital. The third-floor nursing station was staffed this time, but, happily, not by any of the nurses he had met yesterday.

"Is it OK to visit David Yenning?"

"Well ... he already has a visitor, actually."

"His mother?"

"Yes."

"Don't worry. We know each other."

He pressed on down the corridor. The door of room E318 stood half open, a pool of golden sunlight spilling across the threshold.

He stopped just short of it as a voice caught his ear. Iris Venning's. She was reading aloud.

"Cosmologists seem to have taken a Trappist vow in response to such inconvenient data. How can the universe contain stars up to sixteen billion years old when the Hubble telescope measures the age of the entire universe at a mere eight billion? Clearly, there is no easy answer. But scientists are not in business to dodge difficult questions."

Her voice had not changed. Listening to it, he could almost imagine that if he stepped into the room he would see her as he had last seen her: red-headed, bright-eyed and full-figured, her sensuous lips shaping a come-hither smile or a suggestive giggle. But the photograph had prepared him for what he would actually see. A middle-aged woman with salt-and-pepper hair cut sensibly short, her face grown lined and cautious, her eyes dull and diffident, her smile .. . But she was not going to smile, was she? For there was nothing to smile about.

"How they square this circle may determine the future of astrophysics. The Big Bang may come to be seen as the Big Blunder. A role for the much-derided cosmological constant may suddenly emerge. But that will seem to some awfully like a last resort. What is really needed '

She stopped the instant he appeared in the doorway. They looked at each other across twelve feet and a gulf of years. Recognition wrestled with disbelief in her gaze. Her mouth fell open in surprise. She slowly removed her glasses, put down the magazine she had been reading from and stared at him, unable to convince herself, it seemed, that it really was him. Had he changed so very much? Or had she thought he would ignore her message?

"I'm sorry," she said, 'who .. ." She frowned and rose from her chair, stepping round the end of the bed to see him more clearly. "Do I know you?"

"It's me," he replied, wishing to God he had thought of something less inane by way of introduction.

"Harry?" Her eyes narrowed. She took another step closer. "It can't be."

He shrugged and shaped an apologetic grin. "I guess this is what letting yourself go means."

She said nothing, blinking rapidly as she stared at him. She reached out behind her and clasped the bed-rail, as if for support.

"How are you, Iris?"

"What.. . What are you doing here?"

"I got your message."

"What message?"

"About David. About.. . our son."

Much of the colour drained from her face. A ring on one of her fingers began to tinkle against the hollow metal of the bed-rail. She was trembling, as if fear were slowly replacing shock.

"I called round yesterday. They wouldn't tell me very much."

"It was you?"

"Ah. They mentioned my visit, did they? Surely you must have guessed it was me, then."

"Guessed'? Guessed it was you? Of course not. I'd never '

"Look, why don't we sit down?"

He moved hesitantly into the room. As he did so, Iris suddenly darted to his left and slammed the door shut behind him. Closer to, he could hear the shortness of her breath and sense the turmoil of her thoughts. But he could not fathom it. Her reaction made no sense. "Let me get this straight," she said slowly. "You claim to have got some kind of message .. . about David?"

"You phoned the garage yesterday. Where I work. Just before I arrived."

"And said what?"

"That my .. . son .. . was here."

"Your sonT

"David."

"He's no son of yours." But something in her flickering glance towards the bed was as false as it was evasive.

"Come on, Iris. May sixty-one. I can do the sums."

"You've done them wrong."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying David isn't your son. I'm saying I made no phone call. And I'm saying I'd like you to leave."

"What?"

"My son is gravely ill. And I'm extremely worried about him. The last thing I need the very last is somebody I hardly know popping up from the remote past to claim a relationship that exists only in his imagination."

"Iris, for God's sake .. ." She must have read the bafflement in his eyes. Just as he read the determination in hers. The message had not come from her. The central fact of it was true. David was his son. But Iris had no intention of admitting anything. To her, Harry was worse than an enemy and less than a stranger. He was some kind of rival. One she was certain she had the power to defeat.

"Are you going to leave?"

"Not just like '

She pulled the door open and stepped into the corridor. "I want to see Staff Nurse Kelly immediately," she called towards the desk. "It's urgent."

"There's surely no need for '

"You're right," she said, looking straight at him. "No need for you to have done this at all. What gave you the idea, Harry? Did you see one of the newspaper articles about David and reckon there might be some money in it for you?"

"Money?"

"You look as if you're short. Well, I can't say I'm surprised. But if you think '

This has nothing to do with money."

"I can't imagine what else would bring you out of the woodwork."

"You phoned me."

"No."

"Well, somebody did."

"I don't think so. In fact Staff Nurse Kelly strode suddenly into view, a bustling vision of blue-starched efficiency. "Thank you for coming so quickly, Rachel," said Iris. "You met this man yesterday, I think."

"I did."

"His name's Harry Barnett."

"A friend of yours, he said."

"No kind of friend. And no help to my son at all. I've asked him to leave, but he refuses."

"I haven't refused," put in Harry. "It's just '

"I want him to go. And I don't want him to come back. Is that clear?"

"It's clear, Mrs. Hewitt." Kelly looked flintily at Harry. "We do have security staff, Mr. Barnett. Am I going to have to call them?"

"No. You're not."

"This way, then. If you please."

Harry shaped a final appeal. "Iris, can't we just..." But no. They could not. That was obvious. With a resigned shrug, he walked past them and away down the corridor at what he judged to be a dignified pace.