The Red Queen Read online

  She immediately averts her eyes from his travelling library, as though caught out in an act of minor espionage, and speaks, to cover herself. ‘Help,’ she says. ‘I’ve left my glasses through there, on the table.’

  He does not ask her what she wants her glasses for, but goes off, like a gentleman, to retrieve them for her. He also takes the opportunity to switch off most of the outer lights. Then he gets into bed, by her side, and puts his arm round her shoulder. She settles against him, comfortably. He is the most reassuring, undemanding man she has ever been about to sleep with. She is amazingly happy and light of heart.

  ‘Tell me about the Chinese babies,’ she says. ‘And tell me about your dressing gown. Is that Chinese, too?’

  He looks down at it, somewhat absent-mindedly, as though to remind himself of its appearance and its provenance. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘It was a gift. People in China kept giving me things. It was very embarrassing. I am afraid it may be rather expensive. It is very much a gift culture, you know. Like Japan. But the babies, those you have to pay for.’

  ‘Tell me more.’

  ‘They cost about $5,000. They are not really orphans, as you know. They are little girls who have been abandoned by their parents. I think you probably know something about this from your friend Bob Bryant?’

  She agrees that she does. She knows all about the tens of thousands of female babies abandoned every year, as a result of China’s one-child-per-family policy. She knows about gender imbalance and the missing girls. He describes to her the cots in rows, the newborn babies sleeping quietly, the larger children varying from the blank-eyed to the hopefully friendly. Some of them had been taught to utter the word ‘Mama’, in an attempt to arouse the attention of Western visitors. What should he do, what should he think? His wife Viveca is passionately desirous of having a baby to rear, but he cannot tell if this is a deep impulse, or a vindictive impulse, or a displaced desire, or a biological tic that will pass with time.

  His hand has stolen downwards to her breast, and rests warmly upon it. She sighs. She tells him a little of the birth, the few weeks of hope and happiness, the short and isolated months, and the sad death of Baby Benedict. Does she feel deprived, maternally deprived? How can she tell? She tries to answer his unspoken questions. She says that she does not think she will ever attempt to have another baby. It is too high a risk. She has a chromosome hazard. It is getting late, and she is getting older. And she has a full life without a baby. She does not think that a woman has a right to a baby. But, with the Chinese babies, she can see that that is not the only issue. Does a baby have a right to a mother? Would Jan be doing wrong, to aid his wife in this perhaps transient whim? She does not know, she knows she is not wise enough to say.

  ‘They were very appealing, the little ones,’ says van Jost. Would she like to see some photographs? He has a wallet of photographs, here, by the bed.

  It is clear that he wants her to see the photographs, he needs her to see them. She does not wish to see them, but she knows she must submit. She reaches for her glasses, he reaches for the wallet. She inspects the grave little faces. Each child has an institutional name and a number. Tears gather in her eyes. They brim over.

  ‘It is too sad,’ she says. ‘It is too sad.’

  ‘Dying by Lot: Uncertainty and Fatality,’ he replies, in her own formula. ‘Dying by lot, living by lot. It is not often in a lifetime that one confronts these issues. You have been there, and I find myself there now.’

  She turns to him, and he takes her in his arms. He reaches out, and dims, but does not wholly extinguish, the bedside light. Then he proceeds to make love to her, slowly, patiently, carefully. She is at once very sad and very happy. He is considerate and efficient, and seems to know exactly what he is doing, and moreover he seems to want to do it, but she does not feel that he is wholly present in the act. Although he is generously and indeed respectfully paying her so much attention in the body, he seems at the same time to be remote and withheld. Is this because he is so old, and has done this kind of thing so often? He is the oldest man with whom she has ever shared a bed. Is he thinking about the Chinese babies, or about his impatient and expensive young wife, or about something altogether different? Something on a higher and a more abstract intellectual plane?

  Afterwards, they disengage, and he lies back against his pillows for a while, with his arm round her shoulders. He is breathing evenly and deeply, but seems to be making some effort to do so, as though he were engaged in a postcoital form of yoga or transcendental meditation. Then he sits up, and reaches towards his bedside table, and pours himself a glass of water, and opens one of his pill bottles, and swallows a pill.

  ‘I have to take care not to exert myself too much,’ he says, in self-deprecating apology for this unromantic act.

  It is a satisfactory explanation. At once she is all womanly concern.

  ‘Would you like me to make you a cup of tea?’ she asks, with her best bedside manner. Then, hearing herself, she starts to laugh, and fortunately he, too, seems to find her remark comic. But he agrees that, yes, a cup of tea would be very acceptable at this point in the night, but he will get out of bed and make it for her, she is his guest. No, no, she insists, she will do it, what sort of tea would he like, she thinks that there is green tea, and English tea, and various herbal teas? She leaps out, before he can forestall her, and struggles back into the white and purple bathrobe, and marches into the outer room, whence she calls back to him the names on the various herbal sachets. They both settle for ginseng, on the grounds that it is the most appropriate beverage for their situation, and she brews it up, and carries back a mug for each of them. They sit up side by side, upright against the high pillows, inhaling the rare and much-prized aroma.

  ‘Well?’ says Jan van Jost.

  ‘Very well, thank you,’ says Babs Halliwell, politely.

  ‘I knew you were a wise woman,’ he says.

  ‘I’m not sure what evidence you think I’ve given of that,’ she says.

  In response, he puts his hand on her knees.

  ‘Now you, of course, are well known to be a wise man,’ she says.

  ‘I used to think I was wise,’ he says. ‘But now I have reached the recommended Socratic stage of knowing that I know nothing. You have not reached that point yet. You are far too young. And it is quite right that you have not reached it yet.’

  ‘I think I’d better get back to Room 1517,’ she says, as she drains her ginseng. ‘Funny stuff, this, isn’t it? Do you think it does any of the things it’s meant to do?’

  ‘You could sleep here,’ he says. ‘It is a big bed.’

  ‘No, I think not,’ she says firmly. She has no wish to push her luck.

  ‘No,’ she repeats. ‘I’d disturb you. I sleep better alone. I’m a very restless sleeper. I toss around a lot.’

  She thinks he seems relieved by this, as he has every right to be. At his age, why should he wish to give up bed space to a large, strange Englishwoman? She picks up her heaps of garments from the chair, and visits his bathroom, and reclothes herself, and emerges to bid him goodnight. It is half past two in the morning. It is respectably late, but not recklessly late.

  ‘Anyway,’ she says, as she stoops over him to kiss him goodnight, and forbids him to get up to see her out, ‘I have to be up early. I’ve got an early appointment at the National Women’s Hospital, as I think I said. To see some Korean babies.’

  ‘But you won’t disappear?’ he asks.

  ‘I’ll be back for Bob Bryant’s paper in the afternoon,’ she says.

  ‘I’ve got some press interviews tomorrow,’ he says, ‘but I, too, hope to get to hear your friend Bob Bryant.’

  ‘I may see you there,’ she says.

  ‘I hope so,’ says he.

  The Korean babies lie in orderly, hygienic rows in little white cribs in their long ward. The cribs are decorated with coy international non-denominational Disney-style cartoon figures in pastel shades. In Dr Halliwell’s view, these
cartoons are regrettable, but they are no doubt well meant. She pushes memories of the sad teddy bears of Great Ormond Street to the back of her mind, as she peers at the wise and enigmatic little faces of the babies, and listens to the details of their treatment. These children are not orphans, even nominally, and they are very well cared for, but the life chances of most of them are not good. Is it better to be a healthy Chinese girl child in an orphanage in Beijing or Shanghai, with a small but growing statistical possibility of being adopted either abroad or at home by an affluent family, or to be a much-loved Korean child suffering from a rare life-threatening illness? Dr Halliwell’s interest in these conundrums is professional and abstract and theoretical, but she is a human being and was once a mother, and the sight of these babies cannot fail to touch her. She listens to statistics and prognoses and makes notes in her notebook. She discusses the recent setbacks in the gene therapy trials at the Necker Hospital in France, where some young patients appear to have been producing an abnormal and monoclonal proliferation of T-lymphocytes. The cure may be as fatal as the disease. She nods, and questions, and assents. Her dry white brain has forgotten her night in the arms of Jan van Jost, and it thinks not of him. But her liquid body remembers him.

  She returns to her body in the taxi on the way back to the Pagoda Hotel. Her body, as she rejoins it, is at first in a mild state of anxiety, at having been forgotten for so long, but it soon informs her that all is well with it. Indeed, all is exceptionally well with it. It is simultaneously satisfied and aroused. It is a long time since it has felt so satisfied. The positional skirmishes with Robert Treborough after the Gladwyn Dinner had been most unsatisfactory and unsatisfying. All that her body needs now is a little reassurance.

  She and it are shortly to receive that reassurance. When she enters Room 1517, she finds a large bunch of flowers waiting for her. That, in itself, might not be very pleasant – indeed, if that were all that were to be awaiting her, it might be classed as inadequate, or even unpleasant. But there is also, on the desk by the side of the vase of flowers, a letter, with her name upon it, in handwriting that is not the handwriting of a hotel functionary, although the envelope bears the hotel’s logo. She has a letter. What will it say? She feels young again, and full of hope, as she prises it open.

  It is only a note, but it is more than adequate. It sagely avoids any form of address. It is short, but it is clear. It says:

  Happily, you forgot to take your book with you, so you must come

  back again this evening to collect it. Would you like to have dinner

  with me beforehand? You could leave me a voice message. But

  perhaps I will see you at Bob Bryant’s paper? I have only two more

  nights in Seoul, so I very much hope you will be free this evening.

  There are so many questions I want and need to ask you.

  Just as there is no opening salutation, so there is no phrase of farewell. He has signed himself, simply, and she thinks rather modestly, Jan van J.

  So this, she reflects, as she stares at this wonderfully clearly expressed billet-doux, is the hand and signature of Jan van Jost. He seems to write with old-fashioned blue ink. She wonders if his letters are worth a lot of money: how do sociologists rate in book collecting and bibliographical terms? Not very highly, she suspects. What a mean thought! She banishes it at once. She is a little flustered and very full of what feels like uncomplicated happiness. Shall she leave him a voice message, saying yes to everything? Shall she count on seeing him at Bob’s paper? Shall she accept dinner? What shall she do? What would be the most elegant, the most acceptably appreciative response? He is a busy man and at any point during the day he may be waylaid by the press or by the television or by another invitation to the Blue House. She does not think he will be waylaid by a femme fatale, as there are not many of them around at this serious conference or in this respectable hotel, but there are doubtless other uncertainties abroad, waiting to entrap him. How can she secure him? He seems to wish to be secured, he seems to wish to secure her, or he wouldn’t have gone to so much trouble with his prose style, would he?

  She is still wondering what to do when her bedroom phone starts to ring. She picks it up, and it is he, on a very bad line. ‘Dr Halliwell? Is that you? You are back?’ Is he about to cancel everything? No, he simply wants to tell her that he’ll be back from the television station in an hour, and will see her in the auditorium in the afternoon. Did she get his note? Yes? She doesn’t have to have dinner with him, but, if she would like to, he will book a table. ‘Yes, please,’ she hears herself say, across the crackling airwaves.

  So that is all settled, then. She is in a high good humour, as she takes her seat towards the back of the Sejong Auditorium. And here he comes, as arranged, prompt upon his cue. He takes his place beside her, and leans towards her to give her a friendly professorial peck upon the cheek, as though they were the oldest of friends instead of the newest of lovers. She cannot help smiling a little too much, and neither can he. She wonders if their new relationship is visible to the entire audience. Are they lit up, as by a spotlight? Do they glow? He is the most desirable man in the world, even though she has never been able to finish any of his books. Surely they must be radiating their luminous mutual delight! People stare at him anyway because he is famous, and she cannot be sure if they are staring at him with any new intensity. Is she captured like the moon in the reflection of his brightness? She settles, expectantly, and they both listen respectfully as Bob Bryant speaks to them on the unexpectedly relevant topic of fertility rates and gender imbalance in post-industrial societies. As Bob speaks, Jan, beneath the bench, lays a secret and confirming hand upon her knee. They are in the public eye, but they are alone, and they are alone together, his hand tells her.

  She is completely in love with him, and knows she will remain so for the whole of the next two days. She had forgotten what it was like to feel so innocently in love. The past recedes and vanishes; the distant future stands still. She is here, in the present.

  He has booked a table for them in one of the restaurants of another de luxe hotel, two minutes’ walk away and just round the corner from the Pagoda: ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, as they settle themselves in their discreet alcove, ‘it is not very imaginative to come here, but without our friend Dr Oo I cannot cope with the Korean menu, and Dr Oo says the food here is good.’

  She is glad that they seem to have the blessing of Dr Oo, her guardian angel. And the food is good, though they do not pay very close attention to it. They are too busy talking.

  Three days, they agree over dinner, is a good length of time for a modern romance, though perhaps it may not be quite long enough for them to exchange all the information that seems to pour from each of them, as they begin to exchange their life stories.

  He tells her about his childhood. He speaks of his father, who was a miner in the black coalfields of Limburg, and his mother, who was a schoolteacher. He comes from a hard-working, upwardly mobile and self-respecting family. A classic background for a sociologist, he says. His parents were determined that their sons should not go down the mine. An uncle had died underground, trapped in the famous pit disaster of 1948. He remembers well the drama of this death. He himself had been down that mine but once, quite recently, on an anniversary occasion, with a group of journalists. In 1988, he thinks it was. It had been an alarming experience. ‘I have this tendency to claustrophobia,’ he says. ‘Perhaps caused by these events, and by having been reared in the Low Countries. I do not like it below the earth. I have never liked the Channel Tunnel. I make myself travel under the Channel, but I do not like it.’

  His parents, he says, had sacrificed much for their children. They had lived frugally for their sake, and the children had studied hard for their parents’ sake. He had risen steadily through the excellent state system of the Netherlands to higher degrees in Paris and the United States. Yes, he is happy to say that his parents did live to enjoy his success, and to retire in comfort. But sometimes
he wonders if he was not obliged, as a boy, to work too hard and to aspire too much. School examinations, on which his career and his family’s fortunes depended. Examinations, followed by degrees, then yet more degrees. Competition, competition. Well, as she will know, he has written much about this. Climbing, climbing, always climbing. It is stressful. It does harm.

  He needs to tell her these things because he knows she will listen with indulgence. And so she does.

  ‘Now you need climb no more,’ she says. ‘You are at the very top.’

  He shrugs his shoulders at that, and smiles his wry smile.

  ‘And you?’ he asks. ‘You, too, have worked hard, it appears.’

  She disclaims unusual effort. She declares herself to be an archetypal middle-class grammar-school girl from Orpington, the daughter of a family doctor and a schoolteacher from the West Country. Her parents had met, conventionally, at university, and were still married. She had taken her first degree at the University of Sussex, her second at Oxford. She tells him of her average happy childhood, of her average hard-working happy parents, of her lawyer sister and her journalist brother. She was expected to do well at school, to go to college, to have a career, and she had been aspiring and ambitious. But nothing had been staked upon her. The family fortunes did not depend on her. Examinations had not been a threat to her. ‘I was free,’ she says, ‘to choose my own mistakes. I was fortunate.’