D. Mitchell: The King of Terrors

When they both finally turned up at his door, the full moon raining down its silvery light on them (it was only appropriate they timed the inaugural meeting of the Lunar Club to coincide with a full moon), to his joy they did not flinch once at his appearance, and they both immediately launched into a flurry of anecdotes small and large; who was doing what, who was getting what wrong, a shocking treatise on Benjamin Franklin, an inspiring lecture at Greenwich on Milton, and what God-awful tea they served up on British Rail.

Charles fussed over them, prepared tea, and afterwards they sat by the fire drinking wine before moving onto whiskey and cigarettes. He was so happy and they looked positively energised to be all together.

He’d seen photographs of them, naturally, but in real life they looked far different. Howard Baxter, tall, spindly, swept back dark hair, a firecracker of a man whose passion exploded at the slightest spark to his passion’s blue touch-paper. He’d taken a slight career detour and had become an archivist. And Carl Wood; quieter, smaller than he’d expected, who lit up cigarette after cigarette in nervous succession and left the greater amount of the talking to the other two, except to make a remark every now and again that was as sharp as a knife.

Then Charles rose from his seat and said he had something to show them. Would they follow him to his study? The boyish frivolity of earlier gave way to serious contemplation as he lifted out his carefully prepared notes and laid them on the table in front of them, peeling back his findings a layer at a time, to demonstrate how he reached his conclusions, so there could be no mistake, so they were clear about what they were seeing. He watched them as their faces grew solemn with disbelief and disappointment, expressions that said that they would have to let their friend down carefully when this was all over; watched them as they were gradually infused with excitement, as over the hours he drew them deeper into his research, pointed out the proof, tabled copies of mediaeval documents, books, more notes. They discussed the implications, tested the facts, argued and discussed it all over again.

Finally Charles Rayne sat back, breathless, completely exhausted with the effort, and then silence descended on the room.

‘Gentlemen,’ he said at length, ‘there you have it. I need your help. Are you with me?’

And the members of the Lunar Club, in grave silence, nodded and shook hands.

‘How is she tonight?’ she asked.

He came to her side, nuzzled up to her rather too closely, she thought. His arm brushed against hers and she moved away and folded her arms against the barely disguised suggestion. ‘She’s having one of her strops,’ he said. He looked across at the woman lying on the narrow hospital bed, her wrists and ankles firmly strapped down with thick leather belts. Bare arms and legs poked out of a thin, unflattering, green cotton nightgown. ‘We are, aren’t we?’ he said to her, his neck craning forward, his chin thrust out almost contemptuously. He lifted the clipboard that hung at the foot of the bed, the woman staring cold and hard at him. She jerked her legs and caused him to react fractionally. ‘It’s no use fighting against it,’ he said, his grin a whisker away from a sneer. ‘You’d think you’d have learned after all this time that you’re not going anywhere in a hurry.’ He flipped a page or two. ‘She’s due her usual sedative.’ A glance at his watch. ‘Looking at her I’d shove double into her. Take the sting out of her attitude.’

‘We don’t want to harm the babies,’ she reminded him. ‘She’s stressed as it is.’ She nodded to the grey metal box bleeping by the side of the bed.

‘She’s refusing to eat again,’ he remarked casually. ‘We’ll give you a little more time to change your mind, young lady, and if you don’t, well, you know what’s coming.’ He indicated down his throat with his index finger. ‘And remember, you’re eating for three now!’

She yanked hard and furiously at her restraints. The bed shook a little but she gave up, her eyes squeezing shut, tears being pressed from them.

‘Don’t be cruel to her,’ she said to him. ‘Why do you insist on treating her like that?’

She knew why, of course; because he could. Because the woman didn’t even possess a name. She had a number. She was a number. And what’s more she was completely helpless, pegged out like a bug on paper, and the ego of men like him grew fat on helplessness, grew strong on it, relished it. She loathed him and all his kind. But she didn’t let it show. She swallowed down the feeling, though it stuck in her throat.

‘She doesn’t know any better. How can she? She isn’t normal. She’s a freak,’ he said. It didn’t carry any emotion. It was a statement of fact.

‘She’s a human being,’ she defended, yet in even the short time she’d known this man Stephanie Jacobs knew compassion was a quality he didn’t possess, or he kept it pretty much chained up in a dark recess somewhere in that black soul of his. How could that be so, she thought, in a career that was dedicated to the betterment of the human condition? Perhaps that’s where she had gone wrong — or right, depending upon your point of view; perhaps she had allowed compassion to creep in too much, to prise open that cool, clinical reserve of hers. Not so long ago she had considered herself to be immune to such sentiments, for you simply couldn’t do this job and have any deep kind of feeling for the subject. The woman on the bed had to be meat in a clinical trial. Simply that. But it had all changed and she was on the verge of throwing her career into the trashcan because that often-cruel veneer of medical dispassion had been scraped away once and for all.

She took the clipboard from him. ‘She’s stable?’

‘Mother and foetuses doing well,’ he said. He went over to a cabinet on the wall and took out a glass bottle and a syringe. ‘Time for bye-byes, miss,’ he said.

‘I’ll finish that off,’ said Stephanie.

He pumped air out of the needle, a thread of silver liquid arcing upwards. ‘That’s OK, I’ve got it,’ he said, eyeing the syringe carefully.

‘It’s two in the morning. You should have finished hours ago. Go home. You’re supposed to be going out with your wife tomorrow — today — or have you forgotten?’ She held out her hand for the syringe. Beckoned enticingly with her fingers. ‘Come, give it here; it’s past your bed time too.’

He hesitated momentarily then handed it over. ‘Careful, Dr Jacobs, she’s a little wildcat tonight.’ He paused at the door, turned back to her. ‘I’d prefer it if I were going somewhere with you instead, you know.’ He grinned. ‘Come on, give me a sign. Give me some hope.’

‘You’re married,’ she pointed out, tapping the syringe with her fingernail.

‘So?’

‘So go to your wife,’ she said, smiling at him and turning to the woman.

‘You little tease,’ he said, leaving her and closing the door.

‘You little prick,’ she said under her breath, her smile falling away. Stephanie Jacobs moved over to the bed; the restrained woman lifted her head slightly, watched her keenly, the muscle in her smooth jaw working away like a mole beneath sand. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, holding aloft the syringe. But she quickly pumped out the contents into the air and tossed the needle into a sharps bin. ‘Sorry that he’s such an arsehole.’ She bent to her haunches, touched the young woman’s forehead. It was very warm and damp with sweat. ‘Listen, I’m going to leave the room for a few minutes. I want you to stay calm, and if anyone comes in I need you to behave as if I’ve given you the sedative. Do you understand? You’ve had the sedative. Now do as I say. I’ve come to help you get out of here.’