A BOTTLE OF BLOOD

Jepson Sieverance sent for Dr Carriscant at 9 the next morning. It was raining hard and as Carriscant dashed from the carriage to the front door he saw that it was Sieverance himself who was holding it open.

'It's the most wonderful news,' Sieverance kept repeating as he strode beside him down the corridor towards the bedroom. 'And I'm sure she's right. Woman has an instinct about these things.'

For some reason Carriscant found his use of the general noun offensive. 'We'll confirm it soon enough,' Carriscant said, managing a thin smile. Delphine was right: the man's preening elation was offensive, rebarbative.

She was in her room, waiting, wearing a plaid robe over her nightgown, sitting in an armchair. She looked calm, he thought, very serene. They greeted each other with their usual cordiality, and then Sieverance obligingly excused himself.

'No Nurse Aslinger?' Carriscant said.

'I was obliged to let her go.'

He leaned forward and pressed his lips to her forehead fleetingly. He could hear Sieverance pacing the corridor outside, already a parodical expectant father, he thought. He lowered his voice.

'Everything is organised for the twentieth,' he said. 'Axel is prepared. I'll have everything ready.'

'I know what to do.'

He opened his bag and removed a brown medicine bottle which he gave to her. 'Here. You'll need this to make it convincing.'

'What is it?'

'Blood.' He touched her arm, and her face. She kissed his fingertips as they brushed her mouth.

'You can't bring anything with you, you know. You'll have to tell me what other clothes, powders, rouge, things you need, essentials…

'All right. A complete fresh start,' she said, smiling, 'Good. I like that.'

'I'll make sure they're on the boat.' He paused, the reality of what he was asking her to do sinking in. 'Won't you miss anything?'

'My books, I suppose. I can always buy more books.'

'Axel says he'll get us to Singapore in six or seven days. We can pick up any boat going west to Suez. Then, once we're in the Mediterranean…'

'We can get off anywhere we want.' Her eyes went distant, as if she were focusing again on those magical cities that had been the context for their fantasies of escape. 'What about money?' she said, suddenly practical again.

'I've got plenty. Look, let me take care of the details. You'll have enough to go through.'

'I'll be safe, won't I? I mean, nothing could go wrong, could it?'

'Nothing. And remember we're committing no crime. We're doing nothing wrong.'

'Nothing legally wrong.' She looked solemn, then. 'What about you and your… I never ask you about her. I feel I don't -'

'It's easy for me,' he said, bravely. 'The whole thing's been a sham for years. A big mistake. I don't think there'll be too much surprise on her part.' The words came so easily, he thought. 'I'd better go and tell him the good news.'

Sieverance was waiting in the living room.

'Congratulations,' Carriscant said, feeling oddly formal. 'Your wife is expecting a child. She's almost five months pregnant.'

Sieverance was overcome, but at least he did not weep, Carriscant thought. He managed to leave the house without having to drink the baby's health: THE TOY Nicanor Axel accepted the small jute sack of silver Conant dollars with a look of surprise. Carriscant thought it was the first expression of emotion he had ever seen register on that inscrutably filthy face. The eyes widened and the whites showed unnaturally blanched in their deep swart sockets. 'That's more than generous, Dr Carriscant.'

'Just a down payment. There'll be the same once we make landfall at Singapore. I want you to know how important this is to me and how much I count on your absolute discretion.'

'But of course,' Axel said, scratching energetically at the volute of a nostril. The nail sickle was quite black against the dull nacreous pink of the nail. Indeed the whole nail was outlined in black as if with a pen or an indelible pencil. But somehow his blond hair always looked clean: how did he manage that?

Axel grew aware he was being studied. 'Is there anything wrong?'

'Nothing. And you can guarantee that there will be no other passengers?'

'Completely.'

'And that you will not return to Manila for at least two months after you have deposited… the two passengers at Singapore.'

'Goes without saying.' Axel offered his grubby hand and Carriscant shook it. The palm and fingers were astonishingly calloused, as if carved from pumice. Strangely, Carriscant felt he could trust him.

'May I ask who these two passengers are?' Axel enquired, a little shyly.

'A gentleman and a lady. I think for the moment we should leave it at that.'

Axel nodded hastily. 'Till the twentieth, then,' he said.

Carriscant stowed a suitcase of clothes in the small cabin that had been made available and walked back up top to the reeking deck. Thin ropes of steam rose from one of the forward holds. It was a hot, foetid night and all the moist warmth of Manila seemed to have congregated around this noisome craft. Across the treacly, smeared waters of the Pasig the lights on Fort Santiago burned, a fuzzy areola of moisture haloing the moth-battered bulbs. Carriscant felt the enormity of what he and Delphine were about to do. Then the awful trepidation passed as he stood there, almost magically it seemed, giving way to a strange boyish surge of excitement, a vision of horizons receding, of worlds waiting to be explored.

'Goodbye, Doctor,' Axel said. 'We'll be ready for you.' He corrected himself. 'Your passengers.'

'Not a word to Udo, mind,' Carriscant warned. Axel was no fool. Carriscant said goodbye and cautiously made his way across the sagging planks between the moored cascos to the quayside, the black waters slapping the wooden hulls. He walked up to Escolta and hailed a carromato. Nobody had seen him.

Back in his consulting rooms Carriscant, in his new mood of calm, ran through the details of the plan for what seemed the thousandth time. Delphine had told her friends about her pregnancy and was fully involved in the packing up of the house in preparation for the return to America. Everything was as ready as could be. Carriscant had informed the hospital authorities that he was taking two weeks' leave and going south to visit his mother on 21 May. Annaliese had protested a little at this news and had offered to accompany him, but as there was scant affection between daughter-in-law and mother-in-law he knew she could be easily dissuaded.

He held his hand out palm down, fingers spread. Not a tremor. Surgeon's hands. He contemplated his new life ahead with calmness and contained excitement. Somewhere in Europe he and Delphine would settle, raise their child, and he would take up the scalpel again. To be in a centre of medical excellence after this backwater: what challenges there would be, what reputations to make! If this was indeed the golden age of surgery, as the great surgeons claimed, then it was only fitting that he… He checked himself. He should keep his ambitions more modest: it would not do to become too celebrated. Perhaps his dreams of glory would have to be set aside – a small price to pay, he conceded, a small price to pay.

He poured himself a glass of rum from the bottle he kept in his cabinet and told himself to relax, everything was in order. He merely had to live out the next few days as normally and as ordinarily as possible. He was going to make a new life in Europe with the one woman he had ever truly loved. He was, he told himself, the luckiest man alive. He grinned. Sieverance's luck had proved to be Carriscant's luck after all, and Carriscant's luck was about to have its day.

He was refilling his glass when Pantaleon rapped on the door and came in. He was carrying a newspaper in his hand and his manner was both agitated and excited.