Charlie’s Apprentice (20 page)

‘Could there be an official attempt to stop us getting out?’

‘Not if we move quickly enough.’

‘But it’s a possibility?’ pressed Gower. How was he expected to handle official obstruction in perhaps the most ordered and restricted country on earth?

‘A possibility,’ agreed the Director-General.

‘I’m to travel with him?’

‘Yes.’

‘
How
do I get him out?’

‘The quickest and most practical way: that’ll have to be your decision, according to the circumstances you find when you get there,’ said Miller.

‘He’s already been warned? There’s been an attempt to get him to leave?’

‘Yes.’

‘What if he refuses to come with me?’

‘There was a personality clash with our resident officer, who is being withdrawn,’ said the Director-General. ‘There mustn’t be, with you. You’ve
got
to get him out.’

‘I’m to work through the embassy?’ He was already wondering how to tell Marcia.

‘Officially you’ll be a representative from Foreign Office Personnel, making a ground tour of existing embassy facilities: that cover puts you
in
the embassy, but only as long as you need: we won’t have to claim you’re filling a diplomatic vacancy.’

‘Who in the embassy will know my real function?’

‘The ambassador, obviously,’ replied Miller. ‘Possibly his most senior attaché. You’ll work quite alone.’

At that moment, at either extreme of the world, two things that were very much to affect John Gower occurred simultaneously.

At London’s Heathrow airport, Walter Foster disembarked from the Beijing flight. He paused just inside the terminal building, allowing himself the theatricality of breathing deeply, feeling free, which was a sensation he had not known for months.

And in the church complex in Beijing, Jeremy Snow looked up at Li’s unexpected appearance, again at the back of a class in progress.

‘I thought you might have received the photographs from England,’ said the Chinese,’ when the class had once more hurried away, frightened by another official intrusion.

‘Not yet,’ apologized Snow.

The London apartment address listed in
Who’s Who
for Lady Ann Miller – an entry which recorded in one line the occupation of her husband as a civil servant – formed part of one of the most spectacular Regency mansions built by Nash at the very edge of the park. It was a penthouse and therefore far too high for Charlie to gain an impression of its interior, but he was able to see into other lower flats on the nights when their occupants didn’t draw their curtains. This wasn’t simply wealth, Charlie decided: people who lived here wouldn’t know how much they were worth because money – the need for it and most certainly never the lack of it – would never have intruded into their lives.

He alternated between morning and night, an observation he accepted from the beginning was inadequate if attempted irregularly by only one man upon a house with possible exits not only on to the park but into Albany Street as well.

After several unproductive days and nights, Charlie began to wonder if his inference from Julia’s remark might not, after all, have been wrong. Or if this wasn’t the love-nest in any case.

Twenty-one

Father Robertson collapsed forty-eight hours after Li’s second visit. It was not until the middle of the morning, after the older priest had failed to appear for early prayers, that Snow went to Father Robertson’s personal quarters and found him. The man – and his bedding – was soaked in sweat, but at that stage he was still rational, talking with reasonable coherence although his teeth chattered from the helter-skelter fever.

Snow changed both the man and the bed, shocked when he blanket-bathed the old priest to see how emaciated he was. There were scars, too. A lot, on the back, were evenly spaced and in the same direction, as they would have been if Father Robertson’s skin had split under repeated beatings. Another, to the right of his chest, high on a bony, skin-stretched ribcage, was indented like a stab wound. It had healed in a large, uneven white circle, as if it had not been properly, medically, treated.

Within an hour of the first change and bath, Father Robertson and his bed were as soaked as before.

‘I have to get the embassy doctor.’

‘No!’ His irrational agitation had Father Robertson virtually on the point of tears. ‘It’s nothing. A small fever.’

On his way to the kitchen with the newly fouled bedclothes, Snow decided to ignore Father Robertson’s refusal, picking up the telephone to call the embassy. The line was not dead but inoperable, which it frequently was, emitting a familiar high-pitched whine through which it was impossible to dial.

There was a temporary calm – even an apparent respite in the fluctuating temperature – when the two men said the rosary together. Snow led the observance, anxious against tiring someone clearly on the edge of exhaustion. Before lapsing into a shuddering, tossing and turning sleep, Father Robertson several times apologized.

Snow remained constantly by the bedside throughout that day and into the night. Sweat had constantly to be sponged from the man’s face and body. In between doing that, Snow soaked two towels into cold compresses, rotating one after the other on the priest’s forehead.

The telephone continued to whine, unusably, at him.

Towards dawn on the fourth day the older priest’s sleep became more settled, although the fever remained high, and for the first time Snow allowed himself briefly to snatch moments of half-aware rest.

The ugly, rasping sound of Father Robertson’s unconsciousness brought Snow abruptly and fully awake, frightened how long he had abandoned the man. Father Robertson was on his back, mouth wide open, dragging the breath into his frail body, which still vibrated with the fever. Ridiculously, close to panic, Snow physically shook the other man, shouting for him to open his eyes.
No more sleep. Don’t want you to sleep any more. You’ve got to wake up! Come on! Wake up!
The head rolled out of time with the movement of the priest’s body, but the eyes remained closed. Snow thought Father Robertson looked on the point of death.

When he tried the telephone once more it was completely dead.

It had been idiotic, delaying so long. Reluctant as he was to leave Father Robertson alone, he had to go to the embassy for proper help. But he couldn’t do that in the middle of the night: if he tried to enter the compound now he’d be prevented by the permanent Chinese guards, running the risk of even further delay. Snow timed his move with the beginning of proper light. Wanting to leave Father Robertson as comfortable as possible, he washed and changed the man yet again: throughout, the snoring rasped on, the perspiration bubbling up the moment it was wiped away.

The streets swarmed with bicycles, and this early smoke-belching delivery trucks added to the congestion. The nightsoil collection was beginning, fouling the air. Snow hurried at a trot, head in perpetual movement in search of a taxi or a pedicab, seeing neither. The exasperation welled up inside him, contributing to the inevitable tightening in his chest. He refused to reduce his pace until a throbbing ache threatened to bring him to a complete halt. He still continued faster than was good for him, so that he was gasping for breath when he arrived at the embassy.

Snow was surprised that it was the serious-faced Peter Samuels who came from deeper inside the legation. The political officer immediately summoned the resident doctor, an overly fat man named Pickering whose spectacles were too large for his features, giving him an owlish look heightened by the infrequent way he blinked, otherwise staring open-eyed at anyone to whom he talked. Pickering pedantically checked everything Snow told him: when the priest protested they could talk on their way to the mission the doctor, more controlled, asked the point of setting out without medication he might possibly need when he got there. ‘Why are you so convinced it’s as serious as you say?’

‘He’s an old man!’ said Snow. ‘He was a prisoner of the Chinese for years: any resistance to illness would have been undermined!’

‘Why didn’t you call me before now?’

‘He wouldn’t let me,’ said Snow, inadequately.

‘Wouldn’t
let
you?’ demanded the doctor, incredulous.

‘The idea of a doctor distressed him too much. Then for a while, he seemed to improve.’

‘You’re a fool!’

‘Yes,’ accepted Snow.

‘You say his health is undermined by imprisonment?’

‘I don’t mean he suffers permanent ill health,’ apologized Snow. ‘I just wanted you to know what he’s been through, in the past.’ Was there some guilt, at so constantly and so easily disparaging Father Robertson, in how he felt and was reacting? Honestly, although reluctantly, Snow conceded to himself that there was: that in fact a lot of the panic was a belated attempt to compensate for his failings towards the old man.

‘He’s usually fit, despite what happened to him in the past?’

‘Yes.’ Snow hesitated, momentarily uncertain. ‘And he drinks a little.’

The doctor’s head came up, enquiringly. ‘What’s a little?’

‘Every night. Quite soon after lunch, really.’

Samuels drove them in an embassy car back to the mission where they found that Father Robertson had fouled the room and himself: he’d been sick again and there’d been a bowel movement. Pickering was professionally unoffended, actually collecting specimens from the mess before helping Snow clean everything up. Samuels remained by the door, doing nothing, face tight with disgust.

The doctor’s examination was extremely thorough. After questioning Snow about the number of times he’d had to change the sweat-soaked man, Pickering erected a saline drip to replace the lost bodyfluids. He also administered an injection to stabilize the man’s temperature.

‘What’s wrong with him?’ said Samuels, towards the end of the examination.

Pickering frowned at the question. ‘I haven’t got the faintest idea. He’s got a fever, obviously. And he’s unconscious. His blood-pressure is too high. All or any of which could indicate one of a hundred things.’

Snow withdrew near to the door, close to the diplomat, to give the doctor more room. Without looking in Snow’s direction, Samuels said: ‘He didn’t complain about feeling unwell, before you found him and saw he quite obviously was ill?’

‘No.’

‘What
did
he say, in the time that he remained rational?’

Snow shook his head. ‘Nothing, not really. He just kept repeating how sorry he was. He said that over and over again.’

Speaking louder, to the doctor, Samuels said: ‘I think we should move him, to the embassy infirmary, don’t you?’

The doctor looked sourly over his shoulder. ‘You making diagnoses now?’

There was the faintest flare of colour to Samuels’ face. ‘It just seemed obvious.’

‘Not to me it doesn’t. Not until I’ve found out what’s wrong with the man. The embassy facility is not an isolation unit.’

‘It could be infectious?’

‘Of course it could be infectious! You forgotten that all the major infectious diseases of the world are still considered endemic in China!’ Pickering looked directly at Snow. ‘I’m not for a moment saying it’s as serious as that. Or that you’re in any danger. I need to get back to the embassy, to make some tests on these samples.’

Snow didn’t feel the slightest apprehension: perhaps, he thought, nursing the old man through an illness – infectious or otherwise – would continue to assuage his finally self-admitted guilt.

‘You can drive the car back, can’t you?’ Samuels said, to the doctor.

‘Why?’ frowned Pickering. The doctor was collecting his medical equipment, replacing each piece carefully into its grooved and socketed place in the bags he’d brought with him.

‘I thought I might stay here.’

‘What for?’ asked Snow.

‘When was the last time you slept?’ asked Samuels.

‘I …’ started Snow and stopped. ‘The night before last, I suppose. I can’t really remember.’

‘You won’t be able properly to look after anyone if you’re totally deprived of sleep,’ pointed out the diplomat, realistically. He looked at the doctor. ‘Are you coming back today?’

‘Of course I am,’ said the man. ‘He’s on a drip, isn’t he?’

Samuels nodded, positively, returning to the younger priest. ‘You can get some rest: try at least. Maybe by the time Pickering gets back he’ll have a better idea what the medical problem is: see if we can get Father Robertson into the infirmary. If not, you’ll be better able to carry on.’

‘Suits me,’ shrugged the doctor, packed and ready to leave.

Snow didn’t think he would be able to sleep but he did, dreamlessly. He awakened suddenly and was surprised to be in bed during the day and not instantly able to remember why. Then he did, hurrying up. Samuels was in the main living-room, but with the connecting doors open to see into Father Robertson’s bedroom. The saturnine man smiled at Snow’s entry and said: ‘He’s much easier.’

Snow had been aware of that, before the diplomat spoke. Father Robertson appeared to be sleeping properly, no longer emitting the growl of unconsciousness.

‘He isn’t sweating so much, either,’ added Samuels.

‘Let’s hope it’s all ending as quickly as it all began.’

‘You’ll be telling Rome?’ asked the diplomat.

The need to inform the Curia hadn’t occurred to Snow until then, although it was obvious that he had to. Awareness tumbled upon awareness. Would this breakdown, whatever its cause, finally bring about the long-overdue retirement and withdrawal of Father Robertson? Leaving Snow blessedly alone at the mission? Not a wrong or unfair reflection, he told himself: no conflict, with his most recent remorse at the tension between himself and the older priest. His sole concern was for a worn out, overstrained old man who needed rest, not perpetual apprehension. He said: ‘It’s necessary that I do.’

‘Will they retire him?’ asked Samuels.

‘I don’t know.’

‘I’ve come to realize he’s extraordinarily attached to China,’ said Samuels. ‘Which, considering what happened to him, is difficult to understand.’

‘Not, perhaps, to a priest.’