(1998) Amsterdam by Ian McEwan

Author:Ian McEwan [McEwan, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: General, UK
ISBN: 9788495971050
Publisher: Anchor
Published: 1998-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

IV

i

Rose Garmony woke at six thirty and even before her eyes were open the names of three children were on her mind, on her mind’s tongue: Leonora, John, Candy. Careful not to disturb her husband, she eased herself out of bed and reached for her dressing-gown. She had reread the notes last thing at night, and met Candy’s parents in the afternoon. The other two cases were routine: a diagnostic bronchoscopy following the inhalation of a peanut, and the insertion of a chest drain for a lung abscess. Candy was a quiet little West Indian girl whose hair had been kept back-combed and ribboned by her mother all through the dreary routines of a long illness. The open-heart procedure would last at least three hours, possibly five, and the outcome was uncertain. The father ran a grocery in Brixton and brought to the meeting a basket of pineapples, mangoes and grapes – propitiation for the savage god of the knife.

The scent of this fruit filled the kitchen now as Mrs Garmony entered barefoot to fill the kettle. While it heated she crossed the apartment’s narrow hallway to her office and packed her briefcase, pausing to glance at the notes once more. She returned a call to the party chairman, after which she wrote a note to her grown-up son who was asleep in the guest room, then she went back to the kitchen to make the tea. She took her cup to the kitchen window and, without moving the lace curtain, looked down into the street. She counted eight of them on the pavement of Lord North Street, three more than were there the same time yesterday. There was no sign yet of the TV cameras, or of the policemen the Home Secretary had personally promised. She should have made Julian stay over at Carlton Gardens, rather than here, in her old flat. They were supposed to be competitors, these people, but they stood in a loose, chatty group, like men outside a pub on a summer’s evening. One of them was kneeling on the ground, attaching something to an aluminium pole. Then he stood and scanned the windows and seemed to see her. She watched, expressionlessly, as a camera came bobbing and telescoping towards her. When it was almost level with her face she stepped back from the window and went upstairs to dress.

A quarter of an hour later she took another peep, this time from the sitting-room window, two floors up. She felt just as she liked to be before a difficult day at the children’s hospital: calm, alert, impatient to begin the work. No guests the night before, no wine at supper, an hour with the notes, seven hours’ unbroken sleep. She would let nothing break this mood, so she stared down at the group – there were nine of them now – with controlled fascination. The man had collapsed his extendable pole and had rested it against the railings. One of the others was bringing a tray of coffees from the take-away shop on Horseferry Road.

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