Blood And Water (20 page)

“My brother, Seb, isn’t answering his phone,” she said fretfully. “He’s the one who should deal with this – Mum’s useless at this kind of stuff.”

William heard her sigh. Even from his sick bed he wanted to tell her to stop her snivelling and just get on with it. And yes, where
was
Seb?

The door opened again and one of them left – the nurse, he assumed. Listening to Ciara shuffling and moving around the room, he still couldn’t bring himself to sneak even a quick look. He didn’t want to see her pity. Vulnerable wasn’t ever a trait he quoted as his own. He was strong. Masterful. Proud. In control. She idolised him, he knew that, and he couldn’t bear to see the pity that was bound to be in her eyes. Him, the commanding would-be leader, lying here helpless and old. The last time she looked at him it was with admiration and awe. Not pity. She was incredible – no matter how many times he put her down, disparaged her with some patronising, condescending or demeaning remark, she always took it, would retreat for a while but invariably came back for more. Sometimes he did feel a slight pang of remorse, but it was for her own good. Now it was he who felt vulnerable and exposed, an ironic twist of fortune. He almost felt angry with her for it and wished she’d just go so he could relax and rest in peace.

He heard the digit beeps of her phone then the soft sound of her breathing, quietly waiting for a reply.

“Seb, it’s me again – Ciara. I’m at the hospital now. Dad’s very ill but he’s stable. They say he’s had a heart attack – sorry –” she then laughed, “I already told you that in my other messages. Look, can you give me a shout as soon as you get a chance? Simon McDaid is here and wants us to make a statement. I don’t know what to say. Please come … I think you’re better at this than me, than any of us. Anyway, you’re the oldest – sorry, I’m babbling. Just give me a shout. Bye.”

William didn’t need to open his eyes to see how she looked. He could picture her well enough with her cheeks flushed, feeling stupid. Seb got so irritated when she prattled on like that. William was sorry when she ended the call, obviously doing her best not say anything else that would annoy Seb – more’s the pity – he deserved it after what he’d done.

William didn’t think Seb would be returning the call and wanted badly to tell her not to bother and to try Rian or even Cormac instead. Even Barbara would be better. She, apparently, was not in the room – he wondered where she was and suspected she wouldn’t be back in a hurry.
Do I blame her?
Maybe not: he knew she’d had enough, but then she had amazed him already. If he had been a betting man he would never have put a single cent on her saving his life. That said, neither would he have put Seb down as a cold-hearted bastard. Which, in his father’s eyes, was exactly what he was.

‘How dare he do this to me?’
William silently thundered, feeling his pulse race in tandem with his simmering anger and the colour flush into his cheeks.

To which his conscience replied,
‘Well, he is your son.’

‘But, really, what son does that to his father?’

‘You’re as bad as each other.You made him that way
,’ his conscience advised before asking rhetorically, ‘
Would you not have done that to your own father?’

But William answered anyway.
“If it were a means to a goal, then, yes, I would. No one stands in my way.
”

He thought of Ronson Street and the deal that they were so convinced couldn’t go wrong. But just in case, like every good politician and strategist, they wisely made sure there was a cover: a Plan B. How easy and logical their apparently foolproof, simple scheme sounded. If he were being honest with himself, he’d say that Seb was right to be furious. Yes, they knew what they were doing when they devised their plan. They were well aware of the implications, both legal and moral. And they had consciously set Seb up to take the fall. Yet somewhere, well camouflaged within the conniving and scheming, was a minute, almost indecipherable, faint beacon of regret that it was Seb’s trust in his father that would ultimately be his ruin. But they hadn’t been completely dismissive of him and as a group had debated furiously about his fate at one of their many late-night planning sessions and eventually, in the early hours, came to the convincing conclusion that realistically it would only really be a ‘short’ fall and worth it if the worst came to the worst. And even then, William could, he was sure, use his circle of influence to ‘bury it’, Haughey-style. He’d get a rap on the knuckles, a warning of sorts, but nothing more.

At the end of the day, William rationalised quietly in his own mind, it was what it was and Seb just needed to man-up. He’d get over it, in due course. Yet the persistent memory of Seb’s face and the look that poisoned it right before he walked out the door suggested it might take longer than he’d thought: it was a hard, well-considered look, a concoction of pain, disgust and hatred, targeted precisely at him. William felt his fists clench under the light-blue hospital cover.

I am lucky to be alive, William admitted, curious to know how Seb reacted when he was told that death was not his fortune that day –
Hoo-Ha!

One by one they had arrived to visit. They whispered about him in the third person like he had passed away already, and debated the doctor’s prognosis which was the prospect of a by-pass. Silently he laughed, entertained by the idea that they should decide his fate. Operation or no operation, it was his decision to make, not theirs. He’d bide his time and tell his doctor so.

‘
But let them at it,’
his conscience told him. ‘
They’ll get bored in a bit and go away, but for now leave them to it.’

So he listened to his better judgment and let them worry while he slept.

He woke some time later. The room around him was deathly quiet and, risking a quick peek, he thanked the Lord that finally he was alone – still tired, still disenchanted but, most importantly, still alive. He didn’t know whether to be grateful or disappointed. This was his life, his lot. In his adult years he had achieved a lot, but not everything that he wanted. There was more to do, so much more, he surmised, thinking of the unexplored and exciting opportunities open to him to attain further greatness and financial betterment, if he wanted it. Was there sufficient life left in him to do that? Did he really want it? Did he have the energy for it? And what about happiness? Was there a chance for that too? He thought of his life so far, his wife and his children. They were all damaged in one way or another. Did he want that or them? Was there a future for them in his life?

He had tried so hard to give them direction and guide them in the ways of the world – the real world – to impart to them the ambition to succeed, to instil in them a hunger to do better, to be better. But, with the exception of Seb, none of them quite ‘got it’. None of them, he deduced, either understood it or needed it or wanted it badly enough to take it by the horns for themselves. Instead they did it their own way regardless and, in his opinion, failed miserably.

Barbara’s genes, he mused, thinking of his subservient wife who had, in his enlightened opinion, neither backbone nor gumption. Yes. He was disappointed.

He drifted in and out of sleep, disturbed at moments by voices and nurses and needles and noise and a pressure in his heart that still hurt like hell. Time became an enigma, teasing him with hints of light and night, but they passed so quickly it couldn’t possibly have been real.

He thought he heard a male voice plead, “But why won’t he wake up?”

In a fleeting moment of lucidity he silently answered from the safety of the hospital bed:
Because I don’t want to look at you, any of you.

“Your father is a very sick man,” he heard the doctor reply. “His body has gone through a serious trauma but his vitals are strong. He’ll wake up when his body is good and ready.”

When I am good and ready, he affirmed silently, wondering who was asking so urgently.

“He’s not unconscious,” the doctor said, “just sleeping.”

Stupid boy, William thought ungraciously in response to his son’s concern.

“He can’t die, not yet.” A woman’s voice this time.

Martha, he assumed, not unpleasantly surprised by the level of emotion in her voice.

“He won’t die,” the doctor told her kindly. “For now he needs to rest – we’re looking after him.”

William wished they would leave him to wallow in his own illness.

When he did finally decide to open his eyes and face the world the nurse called for a doctor.

“You’ve had a lucky escape, sir,” the young medic told him, delighted they’d managed to save his life, while William smiled up at him weakly.

“Lucky?” he rasped.

“Yes, sir. If your wife hadn’t caught you when she did, you’d be a goner.”

“I don’t believe in luck.”

“Well, call it what you like – just be grateful you’re still here and you can thank your wife for it.” With that he smiled, issued a round of orders to the nurse then dropped the chart back into its cradle and left her to it.

“Has she been here … my wife?” William asked.

“You’ve had lots of visitors with you over the last few days,” she told him. “Isn’t it just typical that, the moment you wake up, they’ve all gone?”

“And Barbara?”

“I’ve only just come on shift myself so I can’t tell for sure, but I can ask.” She stopped what she was doing to look at him. “Do you want me to call her for you?”

“No. No. It’s fine,” he replied, closing his eyes again.

Things had changed. He could feel it. There was no way for him to come back from where he and Barbara had arrived. He had, he admitted, lost an element of control, which he considered he might never have had in the first place. Seb was a strong man. He should be proud of his son’s confidence and tenacity in standing up for himself, even if it was to the detriment of his scheme and probably his reputation. It was the flaw in his plan, William admitted: he never considered that Seb wouldn’t stand for it. Never thought he’d react as he did. He had overlooked Sebastian Bertram’s strength and force of character. As it was, he knew he’d have to defend his position in government against the vultures that were bound to circle: even the slightest whiff of weakness and they’d swoop. He’d done it himself so he both knew and recognised the form. And he
was
weak, between the heart attack and what might be the fallout with Seb. He needed to think, circle the wagons, and defend his territory. He needed to get the hell out of here, regroup his troops and prepare. It would have been good to have Barbara there as his moral support, good for the papers. He’d have to work on her, get her back, so to speak.

Chapter 19

For three days Barbara allowed herself to wallow in an alcoholic stupor. She had no idea who came and went during that time. Gladys obviously was around every day but she knew to steer clear of Barbara when she was like this.

When on the third day she decided to surface without the aid of her whiskey crutch, her head throbbed and her stomach heaved.

Sitting up slowly, she massaged her brow.

“Jesus!” she gasped, the throb in her head pulsing against the inside of her skull and the stench of her breath lifting her stomach.

She sat still on the edge of the bed to let everything settle and align before standing up. The air in the room was heavy and stale and, as if on a tightrope, she took small, considered steps, placing one foot gingerly in front of the other to get to the window, pull open the curtains and drag up the glass. The light burned the back of her eyes but her face welcomed the cold breeze that wafted into the room to drive out the dead, alcohol-infused air. From her bedroom window everything was as it should be: the cars were parked below in the regular positions and the wind danced with the trees to the quiet hum of traffic on the main road. Inside was silent, as always.

Turning, she took stock of the evidence of her recent activities strewn on and beside her bed. She winced: it wasn’t a pretty sight. Empty bottles, dirty plates, spills and soiled, crumpled-up tissues littered the bed, floor and bedside locker. Taking a deep breath she walked past it, opened her bedroom door and unsteadily made her way across the corridor. Warily and out of habit she knocked first before entering the room.

The smell of William’s musky aftershave filled her head, evoking instantly a mental image of him. His tall frame and still full head of hair came to mind. Even in his absence his presence in this, his space, was strong. And it was immaculate. The bed was made, his pillows plumped and not an item out of place: books, bottles, brushes and all his bits, pristine except for a jacket thrown casually across the back of the chair in the corner, like it had been cast there only moments before and he would return any minute to retrieve it. She sat on his bed, partly because her legs wouldn’t hold her anymore and partly because she just wanted to sit a while and think. She struggled to clear the fog in her head. She wished it would dissipate quickly because the desperate need to understand from where she had come and where she was going wasn’t helping her already throbbing head. But inside her head was chaos. She had tried and tried to untangle it, bit by bit, breaking down each phase of her life to a bite-size piece, small enough to digest, but she could only achieve so much before getting the pieces caught up in the pandemonium and having to start all over again. Her frustration was blinding.

In here, though, there was a feeling of calm. Looking around, taking in the atmosphere, the arrangement and the smell of the room, she let the impression coalesce. A small stack of books sat on the bedside table, topped off with Richard Branson’s
In His Own Words
, beside it an ancient picture of the whole family from one of his political landslides. She picked the photo up to take a closer look. They all looked so young, not particularly happy nor fashionable but content. There were no big grins or funny gestures. It was just them, the Bertrams, facing the camera, standing straight and tall. Barbara placed it back on the table and lightly touched the pile of books, eyeing each of the titles. Among them, Mandela’s
Long Walk to Freedom
and Hawkins’
My Short History
– all thoroughly intellectual reads with not even a sniff of fiction inside any them. Typical William, she thought. Never a fan of creative writing no matter how literary or noble, he preferred the facts, the science, and the actuality of the world. Is this what he’s reading now, she wondered, admiring the handsome Branson on the front cover, with a bookmark halfway through the book. Would he want it in the hospital? She always liked Richard Branson: a tenacious and attractive, not to mention exciting, entrepreneur. William had met him many years previously at a seminar at which he was the guest speaker. So normal, so down to earth, William just couldn’t fathom it. How could a man who had achieved so much and had everything be so normal?