The Siege of Reginald Hill Read online

  Once the nurse had drawn the curtains back again—directing a scrutinising look at him—and departed, I gave him a few minutes to recover from the exertion. Then I asked, “You know what you said earlier, Uncle Reginald?”

  Before I could continue, Doctor Fathiya strode into the room, gripping her medical bag. Another examination?

  Ah. The doctor bore down on Uncle Reginald’s bed with obvious intent, her tall, white-habited form making her look like a mountain peak shrouded in cloud. “Mr Hill, it really is past time we had a look at you.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you to leave me alone!” From Uncle Reginald’s vehemence, I’d clearly slept through some previous arguments.

  “Are you improving, left to your own devices, Mr Hill? I think not. I must examine you properly.” Opening her bag and whipping out a stethoscope, Doctor Fathiya leaned towards him.

  He grabbed the stethoscope and tried—unsuccessfully—to yank it from her hands. The effort made him pant alarmingly. “Stay...away from me...you holy cow!”

  Doctor Fathiya straightened and glared at him, her free hand flying to her rosary. She gripped it tightly, the firm set of her jaw showing that she wasn’t going to be put off this time.

  Uncle Reginald glowered at her as though hoping to repel her by the force of his stare, the only defensive option he had left. Hunching away from her in his bed, he looked very sick and frail and vulnerable.

  Thank God—the thought slipped into my head for the first time—thank God that out of all Uncle Reginald’s many, many enemies, it was our hands into which he’d fallen.

  The doctor raised the stethoscope again...

  Much as I wanted Uncle Reginald to live as long as possible, if he said he’d exhausted every option, I believed him. And the sight of him struggling to defend the privacy he valued so much...

  “Doctor Fathiya,” I said hastily, “Surely, like anyone of sound mind, Mr Hill has the right to accept or refuse treatment?”

  Doctor Fathiya’s gaze drilled into mine as though she sought to read my mind. “You are, of course, correct, Father Kyle,” she said at last. “But if you care about this...old…man—which I believe you do—you will persuade him to accept our help. And quickly. I suspect his condition is more serious than he realises—or perhaps chooses to let on.”

  You’ve got that right. But I just smiled and nodded. “I’ll do what I can, Doctor Fathiya. Thank you for caring.”

  She sighed, the tension draining out of her shoulders, and smiled warmly at me. “Oh, I’m only doing my job. God bless you, Father Kyle. Do you need anything?”

  “No, I’m very well, thank you.”

  She departed with her bag. Uncle Reginald carried on glowering after her for a moment, then shifted, making himself comfortable again. He offered me no thanks, but the glance he shot my way held a definite spark of gratitude.

  When he seemed to be settled, I said, “So, about what you said earlier.”

  “Which thing, Boomerang Boy?” His tone held more resignation than anything.

  “About Margo’s tears and your money being no use to you?”

  He eyed me unenthusiastically. “Yes.”

  “Well…don’t you realise that was precisely what I was getting at the other day? You’ve spent your whole life chasing the things you thought would make you safe—power and money—and now you realise they don’t make you safe at all. How can you find any permanent safety in something impermanent? You need to go to an eternal store for that product.”

  “For pity’s sake! Will you spare me your tedious sermons and let me die in peace?”

  “I’m not inclined to. Because you might die in peace—or at any rate, in quiet—but you won’t be at peace afterwards.”

  “If you keep this up, I swear I’m going to crawl over there and strangle you with my bare hands!”

  “Are you really at peace, Uncle Reginald? I mean, I’m asking seriously. Does your atheism give you peace?”

  He smirked at me, tiredly. “Knowing that I won’t be burning in hell for all my so-called misdeeds gives me great peace, thank you.”

  “Do you think that accepting God means you have to go to hell? If you accept God and ask His forgiveness, you’ll go to heaven, silly.”

  “Fairytales, crazy boy.”

  “I suppose by accepting God, you also accept your own guilt. And if you’re too proud to simply say, I’m sorry, forgive me, I can see why you feel that leads you straight to hell. Or at least strands you in a wasteland of pain and guilt—hell on one side, pride on the other. But you have to understand that hell is always your choice—and you’re choosing hell anyway, whether you believe you are or not.”

  Uncle Reginald yawned pointedly but failed to conceal the irritation in his tone. “You’re boring me, crazy boy.”

  Was the fact he was getting grumpier and less tolerant of these conversations simply a symptom of his growing frailty, or were my words making any impact on him at all? Hard to know.

  “You really are at peace, then? You don’t seem at peace.”

  Uncle Reginald scowled, speaking with sudden passion, as though, consciously or not, he needed to share. “When I realised it really was all up for me, I read all the major texts, educated myself on what to expect. Apparently, I’m supposed to be in a nice state of acceptance by now. The scientific equivalent of peace, I suppose. I’d like to shoot the authors! Acceptance, my…” He used the rudest word I’d yet heard him utter. But a jerkiness about his manner, a shake to his voice, betrayed his real state of mind. Fear.

  “The Lord must be taking pity on you.”

  “Pity?” He spat the word.

  “Yes. If you’d reached some worldly level of acceptance, you’d be even less likely to turn to Him.”

  “Pah. I’ve still got some time. I don’t need fantasies to bring my acceptance. It’s a normal part of a healthy dying process. I’ll get there.”

  “There’s nothing healthy about you, Uncle Reginald, body or soul. I wouldn’t count on it.”

  He turned his attention to the window and refused to speak to me for ten minutes. Had I exhausted his patience—or hit a nerve?

  At dinnertime, Georg Friedrich wheeled in a meal trolley bearing, surprise, surprise, fat juicy minted lamb sausages, mashed potato, onions, and, yes, thick gravy. Since I’d kept Uncle Reginald’s confidence about his condition, it was clearly Friedrich’s way of thanking him for saving me—and maybe continuing the spirit of his penance at the same time. Not that Friedrich needed much excuse to start cooking, when off-duty.

  He dished up well-calculated portions—modest for Uncle Reginald, massive for me. My appetite had returned with a vengeance. I had more than enough strength to feed myself, too, and though I struggled with the fork and spoon provided, regularly dropping both, Friedrich had cannily served my food in a deep bowl so I lost none of my tasty grub. I polished off the lot, fending away the little hands that kept making lunges for my sausages.

  “Stealing food from your sick uncle!” I scolded them. “Well, I’m sorry, I’m eating it all. I was almost dead yesterday, you know, and you lot get to eat your Uncle Georg’s cooking regularly!”

  “Awwww…”

  A well-timed suggestion from Friedrich that they go and ‘help’ him wash up resulted in a stampede in the direction of the kitchens and a quiet conclusion to the delicious meal.

  Uncle Reginald sampled everything on his plate and even smiled a few times as he did so but left most of it untouched. My appetite had abandoned me almost completely as I approached what would have been the end. How long did he have?

  Margo removed his plate with her own hands, clearly to ensure that the remaining contents went straight into a bin and not into the stomachs of any stray children that might encounter it. I really didn’t think Uncle Reginald had access to anything with which he might have tainted the food—but it wasn’t worth the risk, was it?

  Doctor Fathiya came in soon afterwards to make another thorough examination of me. She smile
d a lot as she summarised her findings. I was recovering well from the poison, and my general recovery was also progressing rapidly—though the skin on my legs hadn’t reattached properly yet, thanks to the inhibiting effects of my condition up till now. The same went for my knee, so she emphasised the importance of not moving either leg—but especially the left one—even the slightest bit.

  But she also reconfirmed that so long as I kept off it long enough, there was every reason to believe I would be able to walk again, unaided. No, not run, sorry Father Kyle. But walk unaided, mind you.

  That was a big deal. She was right. The difference between hobbling with a stick or walking on my own… I offered up a prayer of thanks to the Lord and assured her I wouldn’t be moving around at all until she said I could.

  Margo and Bane kept me company for a while after she’d left—the children no doubt still busy cleaning all Friedrich’s dirty bowls by the simple expedient of licking them—but, full and comfortable, my eyes soon grew heavy…

  “Crazy boy?” A hoarse voice.

  “Uncle Reginald?” I opened my eyes. We were alone. Margo and Bane must’ve taken charge of the children again and retired to the guest suite. The room door remained closed.

  Desperate for maximum privacy in the brief time left with Uncle Reginald, I’d asked U if we could have the door shut when it was only the two of us. After deliberating, U obviously concluded that Uncle Reginald seemed very unlikely to want to harm me and equally unlikely to be physically able to do so. Nonetheless, he used a cable tie to fasten my call button to my bed, with a wristCell beside it, so there was no possibility of me being unable to reach either, made me swear to call for help if Uncle Reginald put a foot wrong, and finally gave permission. The guard still stood outside the door, within earshot—of a shout.

  I glanced at the clock—eight in the evening—then at Uncle Reginald. “Are you alright?” A sheen of sweat covered his brow, and his gaze darted around in an agitated manner.

  “Fine.” He clipped the word short. “Fine. I don’t want to talk, alright? I don’t want any more of your confounded lectures. I just wondered if you could lend me a book. Anything…”

  A distraction. He desperately sought a distraction. What did he make of his vital signs? After a career in interrogation, being around the dead and dying through all stages of the process, he could probably read his monitors as well as any doctor, at least when it came to this.

  “I’ve only one book I can lend you, and I don’t think you’ll want it.”

  “Anything.” He spoke between gritted teeth. “I will take anything.”

  “Well, if you’re sure.” I reached out and actually managed to lift the volume from my bedside cabinet onto the bed, pinning it between my palms, or what was left of them. The square meal had restored a lot of my strength. “Promise you won’t chuck it across the room, though?”

  “I’m not strong enough to chuck it anywhere,” snarled Uncle Reginald.

  “Alright, then.” I pressed my call button carefully with my middle finger. My new pointing finger. I’d get used to that. I would.

  A nurse was already opening the door. She came to my bed, all smiles.

  “I’m very sorry to trouble you,” I said to her, “but would you mind very much taking this book”—I lifted it awkwardly, still held between both half-hands—“over to Mr Hill?”

  At that, the sister’s lips thinned in automatic disapproval—then her eyes fell on the book in question, and her smile came back. “Of course, Father Kyle.”

  She bore the black, leather-bound volume carefully across the room and placed it in Uncle Reginald’s eagerly—or desperately—reaching hands.

  “Can I help you with anything else, Father Kyle?”

  “No, Sister. Thank you very much for your help.”

  Out she went. Uncle Reginald got the book open to the title page…and groaned. “I should have guessed!”

  “You asked for a book, Uncle Reginald, and I’ve lent you a whole library. Seriously, you might be pleasantly surprised. What would you like to read? Adventure, history, poetry… Hmm, political intrigue? Hang on, what about an espionage thriller?”

  Uncle Reginald eyed me doubtfully. “Where do I find that?”

  “It’s called Judith. Check the contents page.”

  Uncle Reginald flicked through the pages for a while, then settled down to read, so I occupied myself with evening prayer.

  After a while, Uncle Reginald muttered, “This is badly written. I’m up to chapter seven, and I still haven’t met the title character.”

  “Fashions in literature change, Uncle Reginald,” I told him. “Are you seriously going to judge a book that’s well over two thousand years old by the conventions of modern literary genres that didn’t even exist when it was written?”

  “Are we seriously now going to argue about literary conventions?” retorted Uncle Reginald, keeping his nose in my Bible.

  I went back to the Divine Office. When I’d finished, I wasn’t drowsy yet. Huh, I really must be improving! If I had my Bible, I’d have opened it; instead, I picked up my rosary and practised ‘thumbing’ the beads with three fingers only. Praying for Uncle Reginald, of course. Lord, I know you give very special graces to the dying. Please send them to him most powerfully in his grave need.

  I would have liked to talk to Uncle Reginald some more, of course, but…well, I hoped I wasn’t anywhere near arrogant enough to think that anything I could say would do him more good than God’s own Word!

  A cackle of feeble but unrestrained laughter from the bed opposite finally interrupted our peaceful evening. “That’ll teach him to underestimate a woman. I always drummed that into my agents, you know, of both sexes. Never underestimate a woman. Silly fool. She certainly educated him.”

  “She did rather.”

  When Uncle Reginald had recovered from all that laughing—which took a while, he was so weak now—and finished the story, he looked up again. “Anything else good in here?”

  “Plenty. Let’s see…you might enjoy the history of King David.”

  MARGO

  The children were all tucked up in bed. In bed and asleep. With a weary sigh, I settled on the sofa beside Bane and snuggled contentedly under the arm he put around me. This larger guest suite had its own little lounge.

  “I can’t believe you brought them all the way here, by yourself! You must be exhausted.”

  Bane’s cheeks reddened. “Well, I wasn’t exactly by myself, was I, Margo? I had lots of VSS guys with me. VSS gals, even. Two of them.”

  “Yes, but I know who the children took every last little thing to.”

  Bane shrugged and tucked me closer. Then, for good measure, he turned and wrapped his other arm around me as well. “I missed you.”

  I hugged him back. “I missed you more! You should have seen me hugging that cushion, wishing it was you.”

  “What, this one?” He let go of me and grabbed it.

  “Yep.”

  “Doesn’t look much like me.”

  “What, square, soft, and squidgy? Close enough, surely?”

  “Close enough, huh? I’ll show you how squidgy I am…” He drew me in for a kiss.

  Tiredness was—temporarily—forgotten.

  KYLE

  “Kyle…”

  Such a nice dream…I grabbed at it, wanting to retain it, but it floated away like mist.

  “Kyle…” A low voice. Strained. Agonised.

  My eyes flew open. I stared across the dimly lit room. “Uncle Reginald?”

  “Help me… Please?”

  “Shall I call the doctors?”

  “No! I don’t want them. Can’t…can’t do anything. Just…help me…”

  The desperate pleading in his voice went right to my heart. But what did he want me to do? I was no doctor.

  “Please… I need…I need… Just…just help me…” His voice choked off.

  He wasn’t seeking physical help, was he? No. He sought emotional help; he needed spiritual h
elp. But how could I do this across the gulf of this darkened room? Should I call the nurses and ask them to wheel me over there?

  No, I couldn’t invite someone else in, not right now. That slender, fragile thread of trust stretched like a physical thing between me and Uncle Reginald, almost unseen on the other side of the room. Weeping, nakedly vulnerable, he’d reached out to me for help. Only to me. Get someone else in here—to, in his eyes, see his shame—and the thread would snap. And there’d be no time to spin it anew.

  I had to get to him. Somehow. Just me.

  I placed my hands flat on the bed and slowly, painfully, levered myself into a sitting position. The intensified pain from my legs made me gasp, though insignificant enough compared to the lung pain I’d suffered before. I looked around in the dim glow of my night-light. Was there anything fixed I could take hold of and use to drag my bed across the room?

  Nope.

  Anything long enough that I could use to kind of…punt… my way over?

  Nope.

  This is hopeless, Lord. How do I get over there?

  Uncle Reginald had stopped speaking now, stopped begging me, but I could hear his shuddering breaths, his barely smothered sobs. I had to get to him!

  But how, short of climbing off this bed and crawling over there?

  Oh, rats.

  Could I possibly do it without moving my knee? I mean, the brace would help…

  Dream on, Kyle.

  Lord… But my appeal petered out. I’d only one option. The sole question was whether I was prepared to do it or not. And that was up to me.

  Blast it all, I wasn’t losing him now! Not if I could possibly save him! Whatever it took, right?

  First things first…deal with the heart monitor. I leant over and scrutinised the display. Yes, very like the ones they used in the hospital nearest to my own parish. I pressed a few buttons and it turned itself off, silently. Good—I shook the sensor from my finger. What next? The morphine machine was mounted to the side of the bed, and a glance at the IV in my wrist showed it far too fiddly to remove with any care. I wrapped the tube twice around my other wrist, set my teeth—yanked.