faint but expensive scent floated between us, the tang of an unusual toothpaste, hints of the first-class lavatories on long-haul Cathay Pacific flights, a dream of sable coats and Hong Kong boarding lounges.
Then a harsher odour intervened, the coarse petroleum reek of lubricating oil. The biker-clergyman, Stephen Dexter, lifted my head onto a corded cushion handed to him by Kay. His heavy thumbs touched my forehead, the clasp of a priest summoning a soul into the light.
There was another figure in the room, a slim man in a black suit whose face I never saw. I guessed this was the doctor, Richard Gould, whom Kay had called. He sat behind me, listening to my lungs through his stethoscope. When he gave me an injection I noticed his bloodless hands and chipped nails, moving in the furtive manner of a Philippine faith-healer.
Waiting for the painkiller to take effect, he rested a hand on my shoulder, and I sensed a fleshless body anchored to me like an incubus, the drained physique of a doctor in his thirties, some exhausted houseman roused by Kay from his afternoon sleep. A less agreeable odour than engine oil or Cathay Pacific toothpaste hung around the stained sleeves of his suit, a hint of the unwashed bodies of Down’s children.
Seeing that I was almost asleep, he finished with me and withdrew to the kitchen. The others deferred to him as he spoke, but I caught only my own surname. A refrigerator door closed and feet moved down the hall to the front steps. Chairs scraped around the kitchen table, and there were the sounds of the television news as I fell into a blurred half-sleep, the report of a fire in the bookshop at the British Museum.
When I woke, Joan Chang was sitting on the chair beside me, smiling amiably under her bangs. The news broadcast was still playing in the kitchen, and I guessed that I had only been asleep for a few minutes. But I felt surprisingly better, and the pain in my chest and diaphragm was a faint echo of itself. I remembered the clear reference to Heathrow I had overheard before falling asleep, but decided not to follow this up for the time being.
‘Mr Markham? You’ve come back to us.’ Joan nodded with relief, as if expecting someone else to emerge from my sleep. ‘Kay was really worried.’
‘God, I’m breathing again. That pain…’
‘Richard gave you a shot.’ She wiped something from my chin. ‘Rest for half an hour and then go home. See your doctor tomorrow. No ribs broken, but maybe your spleen is bruised. Those police boots, I guess.’
‘Green wellingtons – much more dangerous.’
‘The cat lovers? Kay told me.’ She winced in sympathy as I sat up and gripped her small hands. ‘It looks like they really hurt you.’
‘One species is sacred – cats.’ I glanced around the room, which seemed smaller and more domestic. Even the scowling samurai was less threatening. ‘Your doctor friend has a special touch.’
‘Richard Gould. He’s a great doctor, especially with children. Kay’s driving him back to his flat.’ She lowered her voice, smiling slyly. ‘He doesn’t like the Adler Institute. In fact, he said everyone there should be hanged. I think he made an exception for you.’
‘Thanks for warning me.’
‘I always tell the truth.’ She beamed winsomely. ‘It’s a new way of lying. If you tell the truth people don’t know whether to believe you. It helps me in my work.’
‘Where? The Foreign Office? The Bank of England?’
‘I’m a fund-raiser for the Royal Academy. It’s an easy job. All those CEOs think art is good for their souls.’
‘Not so?’
‘It rots their brains. Tate Modern, the Royal Academy, the Hayward…they’re Walt Disney for the middle classes.’
‘But you swallow your doubts?’
‘I’m going to resign. The work here is more important. We have to set people free from all this culture and education. Richard says they’re just ways of trapping the middle class and making them docile.’
‘So it’s a war of liberation? I’d like to meet Dr Gould.’
‘You will, David.’ Stephen Dexter entered the room, beer can in hand. ‘We need new recruits, even a psychologist…’
The clergyman had changed out of his leathers, and wore jeans and a Timberland shirt, at first sight the very picture of a fashionable Chelsea vicar with a passion for line dancing, weekend flying, and his parishioners’ wives. He was a tall, thin-cheeked man in his late thirties, with a professionally steady gaze and a strong head that was almost handsome in the right lighting. Hundreds of hours in an open cockpit had seared his face, and a horizontal scar marked his forehead, perhaps a memento of some unexpectedly short runway in the Philippines.
But the scar was a little too fresh, and I suspected that he kept it deliberately inflamed. When he smiled at me I noticed that one of his canines was missing, a gap he made no attempt to hide, as if advertising an innate flaw in his own make-up. I remembered Kay hinting that he had lost his faith, but this was almost an obligation in the contemporary priesthood. He placed his hand on Joan Chang’s shoulder, a schoolmaster with a favourite pupil. His affection was clear, but somehow lacked confidence, part of a larger failure of nerve.
‘Let’s have a look.’ Sipping his beer, like an actor with a stage prop, he stood by the settee. ‘Kay says the cat lovers gave you a kicking. You’ll feel better by tomorrow. We need you with us, David.’
‘I’ll do what I can.’ Unsure what I was committing myself to, I added: ‘If I ever walk again.’
‘Walk? You’ll run.’ Dexter moved his chair, so that the desk light shone into his face. He was playing both interrogator and suspect, testing himself in either role. ‘I watched you in court this morning. The magistrates were faced with something they hate above anything else – a responsible citizen ready to sacrifice himself for his principles.’
‘I hope I am. Aren’t we all?’
‘Alas, no. Protest is one thing, action another. That’s why we need you on the project.’
‘I’m with you. What exactly is the project? Picketing travel agencies? Banning tourism?’
‘Much more than that. We aren’t defined by Kay’s obsessions.’ Aware that this might sound harsh, he took Joan’s hand. Sitting forward, he massaged his cheeks, trying to bring colour into the gaunt bones. ‘Look at the world around you, David. What do you see? An endless theme park, with everything turned into entertainment. Science, politics, education – they’re so many fairground rides. Sadly, people are happy to buy their tickets and climb aboard.’
‘It’s comfortable, Stephen.’ Joan traced a Chinese character on the back of his hand, a familiar symbol at which the clergyman smiled. ‘There’s no effort involved, no surprise.’
‘Human beings aren’t meant to be comfortable. We need tension, stress, uncertainty.’ Dexter gestured at the film posters. ‘The kind of challenge that comes from flying a Tiger Moth through zero visibility, or talking a suicide bomber out of a school bus.’
Joan frowned at this, her eyes losing their focus. ‘Stephen, you tried that in Mindanao. You nearly got killed.’
‘I know. I lost my nerve.’ Dexter raised his head and stared bleakly at the grimacing samurai. ‘When it came to it, I didn’t…’
‘You didn’t have the balls?’ Joan shook his shoulder, irritated by him. ‘So what? Nobody does. Any idiot can get killed.’
‘I had the balls…’ Dexter calmed her with his quirky smile. ‘What I didn’t have was hope, or trust. I was relying on myself. For me, those children were already dead. I should have remembered who I was trying to be. Then I would have climbed on the bus and been with them when the end came.’
‘At least you’re here.’ I waited for Dexter to reflate himself, jaw flexing as it re-engaged with his scarred face. ‘The travel agency you tried to attack.