Perfect People (34 page)

In Central Park he felt better, walking along a track, away from the smells and sounds of the sewer and the man with the Ankh. They called this place a city! How did they dare? There was only one city – the City of God.

You have come to God, the judge of all men, to the spirits of righteous men made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. Hebrews 12: 23–24.

Dr Sheila Michaelides was a petite, bubbly, very self-assured woman in her early forties, with an olive-skinned face, large, angular glasses and a shock of straight black hair. She was dressed neatly, in a tight-fitting jumper over a cream blouse and brown slacks.

Her consulting room, with French windows overlooking a well-tended walled garden, was at the back of an imposing red-brick Victorian house that had been carved up into doctors’ offices. It was a generously sized room, with a high, stuccoed ceiling, but furnished in contrast to its period in a cheery, modern style, with a pine desk on which sat a computer and framed photographs of two laughing children, and cushioned sofas arranged either side of a pine coffee table, at which John, Naomi and the child psychologist sat.

Naomi wondered if it was mandatory for any medic involved with kids to have saccharine pictures of children on display.

John was talking her through the history of Luke and Phoebe, omitting of course any mention of their background with Dettore. With Naomi interjecting to add details, he covered the incident with the wasp, the strange language the children had developed, Reggie Chetwynde-Cunningham’s opinion on their linguistic ability, their excitement on Saturday at the zoo, and their even bigger excitement yesterday, Sunday, when they had gone to a pet shop and bought each of them a guinea pig.

He said nothing about his suspicions that the children might be playing chess on his computer late at night – because he hadn’t yet mentioned this to Naomi.

When they had finished, Sheila Michaelides’s neutral demeanour seemed to have changed a little. She looked at both of them in turn with a distinctly sceptical expression. ‘This language you say they are speaking – do you really believe that?’

‘Absolutely,’ John said.

‘What you are telling me is just isn’t credible.’

‘Surely,’ Naomi said, ‘if it is some kind of autism—?’

The psychologist shook her head. ‘Even if you had one child on the autism spectrum, and perhaps capable of strange mathematical feats, it is inconceivable it could be the same for both.’

‘Not even in identical twins?’ Naomi asked.

‘Phoebe and Luke are not identical twins,’ she said.

‘So how do you explain it?’ John asked.

She tilted her head. ‘Are you sure this isn’t wishful thinking?’

‘What do you mean by that?’ Naomi said testily.

The psychologist glanced at one of her own fingernails. ‘You strike me as very ambitious parents – from the way you have been talking about your children. You’re an academic, Dr Klaesson, and you are clearly a very intelligent woman, Mrs Klaesson. I’m getting a feeling from you both that you have great expectations from your children. Would that be correct?’

‘I don’t have any expectations,’ Naomi said quickly, getting in ahead of John.

‘All we want is for them to be normal,’ John added.

‘And healthy,’ Naomi emphasized.

The psychologist bit her nail for a moment, then said, ‘You lost your boy, Halley, at the age of four. You adored him. Are you sure you aren’t searching for something in your twins that puts them above him, as a form of compensation?’

‘That’s ridiculous!’ Naomi exploded. ‘Absolutely ridiculous!’

‘Totally!’ John confirmed. ‘Look, we want to try to understand our children, that’s why we’ve come here – but you seem to be attacking us!’

‘No, I’m not. All I’m trying to say is that what you are telling me about them speaking backwards with every fourth letter missing is impossible! No model exists for this! You are claiming a linguistic skill for your children that no human being on this planet is capable of. Just think for a moment about the mathematics.’

‘So give us your explanation?’ John responded.

‘I don’t have one. I wish that I did, believe me, but I don’t.’ She looked hard at each of them.

Naomi felt herself being scrutinized, and she was confused. ‘How can a linguistic scientist tell us one thing and you tell us another?’

The psychologist nodded in silent thought for some moments, then she said, ‘Does the expression
epistemic boundedness
mean anything to either of you?’

‘
Epistemic boundedness?
’ Naomi repeated, shaking her head.

‘Yes,’ John said, ‘I know about it.’

‘Could you explain it to your wife?’

John shrugged, as if hesitant for a moment, then turned to Naomi. ‘What it basically means is that human intelligence has a ceiling. That humans are hardwired with a certain level of intelligence. That there are biological limits. Just as there are limits on other aspects of human beings.’

He looked at the psychologist for confirmation. She nodded for him to go on.

‘For instance, the four-minute mile. We know it can be broken by a few seconds, but no human is ever going to run a one-minute mile. Probably not even a three-minute mile.’ He exchanged an awkward glance with Naomi.

One of Dr Dettore’s might
, her face said.

‘It’s the same with height,’ John went on. ‘Most humans are within a certain range. You get occasional exceptions, but seven and a half feet is about the upper limit – you’re never going to find a human who is fifteen feet tall.’ He looked back at the psychologist. ‘What you’re saying, if I’m understanding you correctly, is that this feat of language by Luke and Phoebe is the equivalent of – like – a one-minute mile, or a fifteen-foot-tall human?’

‘That’s exactly right.’

John caught Naomi’s eye, then looked away sharply. He had not realized the full significance of what Luke and Phoebe were doing before, and now he did, he wasn’t sure how he felt about it.

‘So how come Chetwynde-Cunningham didn’t tell you that?’ Naomi asked.

John looked at her, then at the psychologist, then back at his wife. ‘He did. That is exactly what he said. I thought perhaps he was exaggerating, but now I realize that probably he wasn’t.’

‘You are saying that our children are performing a mathematical feat that is beyond the capability of any living human being?’

‘Beyond any human being who has
ever
lived, I would imagine, Mrs Klaesson.’ The psychologist looked dubiously at John and Naomi. ‘I think the next step would be for me to see Luke and Phoebe. Ideally I would like to observe them at playschool.’

Naomi felt her cheeks burning. ‘The reason – the main reason that we came here is – because—’ She glanced at John for support, then back at Dr Michaelides. ‘Because I was asked not to bring them back to playschool.’

The psychologist nodded. ‘Yes, but I think I could have a word with the playschool leader and ask if she would let them come back with me observing – I’ve done this quite a few times and it is not usually a problem.’

‘Anything you could do, we’d be very grateful for,’ Naomi said.

After they had left, the psychologist wrote up her notes on her computer. She also checked the notes that the psychiatrist, Dr Roland Talbot, had faxed through.

Pushy, ambitious parents
, she wrote.

Like many of its counterparts that were on the mainland peninsula of Mount Athos, the monastery of Perivoli Tis Panagias was a huge cluster of buildings in different architectural styles, contained within the outer monastic walls. In the middle ages, poor monks inhabited cells in the main building, while wealthier arrivals constructed their own houses, in their preferred building materials – mostly wood or stone – and colour schemes.

Staring down from his cell window into the cobbled courtyard that was dominated by the domed church, flanked on one side by a row of terraced houses that would not have looked out of place in San Francisco or in parts of Boston, and on the other by turreted and crenellated walls, Harald Gatward thought, as he did often during his hours of contemplation, that the place at night felt a little like a deserted studio lot.

Except it was never deserted. The spirit of God was always present, and the eyes of their beloved guardian angel, the Virgin Mary, ever vigilant.

Father Yanni permitted very few intrusions from the outside world to pass the monastery’s tall wooden gates. Pilgrims of course were welcome, in the monastic tradition of hospitality, but the Abbot recalled it had been twenty years, probably longer – he would have to check the registration book – since any pilgrim had made the twenty-kilometre boat trip from the mainland. Occasionally a cruise ship sailed past, or a yacht, but they always kept their distance, although more out of respect for the four unmarked submerged reefs than for the privacy of the monks, he suspected.

One intrusion was the laptop, which sat next to the Bible on the simple wooden table in Harald Gatward’s narrow cell. The Abbot had considered it a strange request, but who was he to refuse anything to the American who had been brought here by the Virgin Mary to save their monastery?

All other trappings of the modern world were housed in the village a short distance below the monastery walls. There the Disciples lived with their women. The Disciples were welcome to worship in the monastery’s church and to eat meals in silence alongside the Abbot and the four other monks in the magnificent refectory with its frescoed wall, but not the women. Out of respect to the customs of the monks, Gatward had never permitted women to enter these walls.

At midnight, as was his ritual, Harald Gatward broke off from his prayer vigil. He was well pleased with the work of his Disciples. Five sets of Satan’s Spawn were now exterminated. Three had made the world press, but the fourth, in a car crash in Italy, had passed unnoticed, as had the fifth, in a helicopter crash in Singapore. Even so, he had thought it prudent to call his Disciples home, let the heat die down.

Just one Disciple remained out in the field at this moment. He was good, this one, he had true passion. Soon it would be time to summon him home, and give him his reward: Lara, sweet girl, waiting down in the village, so patient, so devout.

There was an email sitting in his inbox from Timon Cort now.

Harald Gatward closed his eyes and asked the Virgin Mary to dictate his reply.

Luke and Phoebe were kneeling on the kitchen floor, totally absorbed with their two guinea pigs.

Fudge had beige and white stripes, Chocolate was dark brown and white; they were cute, with their sleek coats, their black, hairless ears, their tiny paws, and the strange little squeaking sounds they made.

Naomi lovingly watched Luke and Phoebe play with them, each feeding them a carrot. It was the first real affection she had ever seen from the children, although she worried how long it would be before they got bored with them.

Five weeks to Christmas. She loved Christmas, loved putting up the tree and the decorations and preparing all the food that went with it, and buying and wrapping presents. And this year, Luke and Phoebe were old enough really to start appreciating what was going on.

She hoped it snowed, a white Christmas out here would be awesome. Her mother and Harriet were coming down on Christmas Eve and staying until Boxing Day, and John’s mother was coming over to stay from Sweden for the whole of Christmas week. Carson and Caroline and their children were coming over for a boozy Swedish Christmas Eve dinner, and Rosie and Gordon and their children as well. It was going to be great – chaotic, but great!

As she sat, some of the anger that had been boiling inside her, since their meeting with the child psychologist Dr Michaelides this morning, was now starting to simmer down.

She felt belittled by the woman. In the car afterwards John had told her she was being over-sensitive, but she disagreed. She had felt that she and John were on trial. OK, of course they’d said nothing to her about Dettore but—

Her thoughts were interrupted by John arriving back, hot and sweaty in his tracksuit after a long jog up on the Downs. He’d stayed at home this afternoon after they got back from Dr Michaelides, and she was glad to see him go on his run; he’d been working crazy hours recently and doing much less exercise than he used to.