Thanks for all the lovely reviews. This is the second anniversary since I started this story so an especial thanks to all those who've stuck with it - or found the time to read from the start since joining the site. I never intended it to be so long but it took on a life of its own. Rest assured I am aiming to finish the story this year.
Hospital
11.30pm
It was silent in the chapel, infused with a stillness that arose from an aura of contemplation and calm, rather than the mere absence of sound. A welcoming island of repose, transcending the disinfected bustle of the world just beyond its doors.
As befitted a spook undertaking a delicate mission sans backup Malcolm entered noiselessly. He was not a field officer, but the technicians - often semi jokingly referred to as the invisible men - were required to be unobtrusive, a designation that suited the reclusive Malcolm down to the ground. Casting his eyes around the room he registered with approval the plain, light wood furnishings set against background walls that, in the subdued lighting, presented as a pale beige. Clean lines, unfussy, set with chairs rather than pews, arranged in two sections divided by a wide centre aisle, a layout designed to ensure ease of access for the wheelchaired faithful. With nothing on view to excite the emotions, or the eye, the space conveyed the understated ambience of an oasis of calm residing in the deserts of despair. Cream vertical slatted blinds, closed against the night, concealed three narrow oblong windows. Otherwise the place was devoid of any hangings that could harbour germs, or any images that might offend those who preferred their worship direct and simple. The only real splash of colour being provided by the altar frontal, dull green as befitted the current pre Advent liturgical season. The altar itself was adorned only by a pair of wooden candlesticks, holding unlit, semi burnt down, wax candles, between which stood the dominant centrepiece in the shape of the inevitable Calvary cross. Clutterless, the only feature hinting at angst - other than the cross - was tucked away in a side alcove; a free standing portable font, carved from the same wood type as the altar. Malcolm, glancing at it, wondered briefly just how many agonised parents had sought a despairing comfort as they stood helpless on that spot, sobbing while they watched the chaplain perform the rite of emergency baptism on their desperately sick child.
Spying the solitary figure seated at the front, facing the altar, Malcolm felt like an intruder disturbing the peace she come in search of, especially if she was by any chance actually praying. Quiet as his entrance had been the slight draft, perhaps creating an infinitesimal change in the air, had informed her that she was no longer alone. As he moved forwards, she dragged her eyes away from the cross, on which she seemed to have fixed her unseeing attention, to identify the invader.
Her recognition of Malcolm came accompanied not by irritation, but with a flare of alarm, which he had no difficulty in interpreting. Moving to sit at the end of the row, leaving a space of three chairs between them in a carefully judged acknowledgment that he was encroaching on her personal space, Malcolm reassured her,
"No news on Harry yet." He answered her next question before she could even begin to articulate it.
"We were worried when we saw you were missing."
Thankful that at present no news was good news, looking at him with contrite eyes as she whispered an apology, the prevailing atmosphere not being conducive to loud speech,
"I'm so sorry, I didn't even think of that." After a lengthy pause she continued falteringly, "It was just the sight of Harry lying there when they took him into the theatre, almost lifeless, like the dummy you practice the kiss of life on. I needed a bolt hole where I could think without having to talk to anyone." Noting the understanding flicker in his eyes she enquired in a voice more akin to her normal timbre, "How did you know I was here?"
"I'd guessed." Seeing her puzzled by his unsuspected telepathic skills he reminded her, "The day Laura came back with your clothes, and you explained that while you weren't exactly a card carrying member you'd found your local church conducive to reflection."
Jane gave him the ghost of a wry smile, "Not something most people understand. It's just..."
Seeing Jane was about to justify a concept of solace, that she understandably believed foreign to the habitués of Section D, Malcolm spared her the struggle,
"You don't need to explain to me. My father was a clergyman."
That was productive of shock and relief intermingled, as Jane reacted with stunned disbelief to Malcolm's unexpected emergence from the religious closet.
"You were brought up in clergy household, and then volunteered to spend your life dealing with all the activities that the security services are privy too!"
At this disparaging of his chosen vocation Malcolm informed her, with a strong note of rebuke. "It's not such a huge leap. 'Regnum Defende' is also a creed largely centred upon mission and sacrifice, with, I may add, Harry as one of its most faithful adherents."
Jane was striving to explain her feelings, not easy when she didn't know them herself... conflicted...tired...drained and now the immediate crisis was past tearful...frightened... hollowed by the emotional rollercoaster of the past week... with a half sob she stated,
"Maybe but after he's saved Catherine, been so undeservedly generous to me..." Almost unconsciously her hand went up to touch a diamonded earlobe, "and the best I could do for him was force him into a direct line of fire."
Malcolm, as he prepared to introduce a jarring note of commonsense, began to wonder if a guilt complex was infectious. With their joint individual capacities for self blame Harry and Jane made your average flagellants look as though they scourged themselves with whips composed of candyfloss.
With a firmness, that was at huge variance with his more customary moderate speech, he advised her, "Coaver was going for Harry anyway. That is confirmed by the recording from the security camera. From what I saw when I played the incident back Harry's moving sideways as he pushed you meant he was shot in the shoulder, not directly in the chest, in which case he would have been dead."
As Jane retreated once more into a brooding silence, Malcolm, disinclined to make any further attempts to initiate conversation, was tempted to walk away. She'd come here to gather her thoughts, and only a churl would deny her that after everything she'd been through tonight. Remarkably, surprisingly, Malcolm was beginning to discover within himself an admiration for her that he'd not have anticipated before their first meeting. From his sidelines, having watched as Jane suddenly plunged into the dangerous world of Section D, had taken in her stride the shocking events kick-started by the CIA, it was obvious that she didn't crumble easily. Which for anyone who was a friend of Harry's raised a very unpalatable question: namely, just how unbearable had he made her life? Followed by the immediate subsidiary question reverberating around the Grid staff in an unspoken, unacknowledged unity of mind: namely was there any outside possibility of re-formatting them as a couple? Following the logical consequences of these thoughts, and almost heaving a sigh Malcolm, only too aware of his deficiencies as a counsellor, against his initial better judgement, returned to the emotional fray once more.
"Jane when I heard you'd re-entered Harry's life I thought it was bad news. I've changed my mind. He'll never admit to it, but he needs someone."
Jane emitted a snort that, owing to an overwhelming exhaustion, emerged as a huff. "Knowing the Harry effect he'll not have been short of offers."
His exact meaning had bypassed her, possibly owing its incipient unlikelihood, rather than wilful misunderstanding. Applying his technical skills to a scenario well outside his usual area of operation Malcolm tried to untangle the crossed wires of communication.
"To be precise he needs you."
Jane's protest was couched in the blunt tone that an unsympathic medic would adopt when addressing the seriously delusional with the objective of penetrating their clouds of self deception.
"Malcolm it's been less than a week since...and we'd not met for years before that."
"A week isn't just a long time in politics" Seeing her face, a combination of stubborn and uncertain he ventured, "I know it's not easy, I'm not suggesting it is, but really do you want to revert to the status quo of the last few years?"
Jane knew the answer to that one, but temporised with,
"I'm not the woman he wants."
Wondering, hoping, wanting, waiting... for Malcolm to contradict her.
He didn't, preferring to skirt around the issue. "You're the English teacher so you should know the difference between want and need."
Jane failed to reply as she sat with eyes downcast, now wearing an expression compounded of anguish and worry. Sitting beside her, as their mutual silence lengthened and thickened, half companionable, half wary, Malcolm was fixing his own eyes on the altar cross. Closer observation revealing that it was not plain as he'd first thought, but instead lightly carved with tracings in the style of Celtic patterns, lines that twisted and parted, separated but joined in an endless interweaving. A metaphor for the eternal dance, sometimes happy, sometimes malevolent, in which everyone while playing a small part never saw the entire picture, lives that touched, parted and then entangled afresh in subtly varied designs.
Internally he was debating his next move. Jane had obviously acquired some inkling as to the underlying cause of Harry's outcropping sorrows, which left Malcolm seriously considering the merits of disgorging the truth, an action halted only by the legacy of his own personal stumbling block. The first and last time he'd interfered, unasked, in Harry's very private concerns, Ruth had run from any publicly acknowledged involvement with Harry with all the speed of a startled doe. Despite years of telling himself that his well meaning words had merely been the excuse, not the reason, underlying an action Ruth had already contemplated, he'd never quite succeeded in shaking off the suspicion that if it hadn't been for him that tentative relationship might not have been stunted at birth. A precedent that forced him to hesitate, but convinced of the difference Jane's presence had wrought in a matter of days was now the time to do what he dreaded most? Be brave, and risk the consequences of a catastrophic fallout with Jane, or Harry, or both?
He was unexpectedly cut free from this tangled web of indecision by Jane, who while waving her hand in a small dismissive gesture, instructed him very definitely,
"No Malcolm, whatever needs to be said on that score must come from Harry. It's only when he can bring himself to confide in me that I'll know he really does trust me."
Grateful for her appreciation of his dilemma, and almost sagging with relief at being excused from making the potentially disastrous decision of confessing a secret that wasn't his, Malcolm, having detected the wistful base note in her voice, tried to reassure her.
"I don't think he actually distrusts you - but Jane you know how private Harry is. After a lifetime of keeping secrets he shuts people out without even realising he's doing it."
Weariness, and the strained aftermath of an evening that had promised much but whose conclusion had been stuffed with unhappy, confused emotions, was beginning to take a visible toll as Jane rubbed her face, the lack of smear being a testament to the efficiency of her waterproof mascara, while she sighed,
"It's precisely because he's so secretive I know he'd be furious if you broke his confidence. I don't want to be one to destroy the only close friendship he has - and because I don't know exactly what he's hiding, I can't guarantee to stay around."
The look of disappointment Malcolm gave her was sufficient to make her soul shrivel, forcing herself to clarify a position muddied by the disconnect between times past and times present.
"Malcolm, I don't want to walk but Harry's obviously afraid I will. He's unwilling to take that chance and while I don't want to go back to where we were until the other day..." Not sure if Malcolm really understood the pre divorce trauma she'd suffered – how could he when he'd never been married – she stated emphatically, "I really can't go back, or rather I won't risk going returning to the situation I lived through during to the last years of our marriage. Not when it was the secretiveness that drove us apart." Almost as an afterthought she added, "Plus other women."
Much as Malcolm wanted to talk her out of this position those last three words struck dread into his hopes for a Harry Jane reunion. The 'other woman' problem still lingered, although not in the sense Jane was referencing – or possibly - Malcolm's quick mental arithmetic confirmed, damningly, that during those Cold War Years when Harry and Elena were mutually seducing the other in the interests of their respective employers the increasingly alienated Jane had still been in possession of Harry's wedding ring.
Recognition of that, and a grudging respect for her frankness, enabled him to reply without rancour. "That's a decision only you can make." Having been entrusted with her confidences Malcolm swapped, by giving her one of his own, "But I will say I've been worried about him. That's why I agreed to return to the Grid. Somehow though in the last few days, since your arrival, he's come alive, been more like his old self."
Seeing the doubt in her face he continued, being Malcolm he always preferred to back up his assertions with some form of verification, "That's not just my opinion. Tom, he's an ex-agent who does odd jobs for Harry, saw him the other day and remarked on the change."
Malcolm deemed it politic redact the information that it was Tom who'd previously blasted Harry's shoulder to near smithereens. Some spying customs no reasonable person could expect Jane to understand, and the spook code of closing ranks around those who suffered a breakdown was one of them. He wasn't even going to try, not after having spent the last half hour flat footedly dancing across a minefield of historic emotions that even a ballerina en pointe would have struggled to negotiate without explosion. An experience that had reinforced his admiration for the sheer skill with which the field agents succeeded in making half truths sound like the whole story.
"I can only repeat, he'll deny it, but he needs you. And at this moment so do your children." Reverting to his original reason for seeking her out he informed her, "They've both arrived."
Malcolm wasn't the only one who could reply tangentially as Jane, ignoring this piece of news, commented, "You love him don't you."
Seeing him start, and then remembering that Malcolm's sexual proclivities were obscure, even to Harry, she realised what she'd accidently implied. Mentally she began to kick herself for the slip, especially since as far as Jane was concerned what happened in the bedroom stayed there. Dealing with the fallout affecting various teenagers who'd sex texted unwisely, - "Jennifer the site is called Facebook not Boobtube, and I refuse to believe that your parents can't afford to buy you a bra' - had simply confirmed her dislike for the modern insistence on the almost compulsory revelation of everyone's sexual orientation, often within minutes of meeting them. Hastily she clarified her statement, "Sorry I didn't mean... I was thinking philia not eros. You've obviously been a good friend to him over the years."
His mild alarm dispersed, Malcolm relaxed a touch, "Maybe, but I've not known him for not as many years as you." Trusting as he said it that, despite their current location, she wouldn't interpret that statement in a biblical sense. Even in the shadowy light afforded by the chapel he could detect her total bafflement as he continued to fumble for the right words. "Harry and I only met around 1990 when I joined the Section, how far do you go back?" Answering his own rhetorical question he concluded, "I'd say around the mid seventies since you married in..."
Jane confirmed the exact data for him, "15th June 1977, I applied for the divorce in October 1986. Since then virtually all our meetings have ended in vicious arguments, so I really and truly don't see how my presence helps."
Malcolm, who by now was seriously wondering whether wading though the quicksand would have been a preferable experience, made a final effort to illuminate his theory.
"Over the past few years loss and betrayal have gradually ground Harry down. He's lost any sense of joi d'vivre. Having you back to argue with has dredged up memories of previous times, when he had something normal to live for. It's as if he's suddenly had a short circuit back to his more hopeful youth. "
The total lack of reaction made him want to scream, a very unusual reaction for the quiet man of the Grid. Then he noticed her face. Despite the almost total differences in colouring and feature it bore an expression remarkably similar to that worn by Ruth when she'd been analysing some puzzling, unsupported piece of Intel. Unbeknownst to Malcolm those last few words had resonated, striking a half remembered chord, a snippet from one of the several statements Harry had made over the past few days, 'The simple fact that I had something normal, people who might need me, made me fight.
At the time she hadn't processed the full implication of those words. But now! How unutterably depressing was that! In his job you were forced to regard everyone with suspicion, including those you worked with, especially - given the twisted parameters of that world - those you worked. Home then had been his refuge. Even when she'd been berating him with banshee like shrieks for the marital crimes of indiscriminate shagging and boozing, topped off by a workaholic neglect of his family, he'd seen in these charges a welcome affirmation of normality. With that as his benchmark for survival small wonder he'd fought to avoid a divorce cutting the umbilical cord that had connected him to the everyday world outside Section D. In normal jobs a colleague's betrayal meant you received your P45 and a lousy reference, not a bullet to the brain and a concrete overcoat.
This forcible reviewing of Harry's past standpoint, pushed her into re-examining her own. Had her behaviour ultimately been much of an improvement on his? Post divorce she'd denied him regular access to the children, and before that well... she'd not exactly been living the role of Caesar's wife had she, not once Robin with his smooth tongue and wandering hands had crossed her path, playing on her justified disaffection with her marriage. She should have been better than that, resisted the temptation - but hell she was human, and whatever fates toyed with man's existence had ensured that, with the wonders of hindsight, her history with Robin had left her as the not very proud possessor of intimate memories that made her wince with shame.
It was late, she was shattered, in no mental condition to make sensible, potentially life changing decisions. Decisions that, since Harry's survival into the morning was not a given, may never be required of her. Malcolm however was beside her, looking equally exhausted. The chapel might be within his declared comfort zone but the conversation, she suspected, had exceeded his normally closed up boundaries by yards, probably miles. His was a different temperament to that of Harry, but just as externally stoic. And for one so mild mannered the hopeful look he was directing at her was every bit as effective as Harry's steely glare in forcing the recalcitrant to reply.
"The problem is Malcolm I don't know what Harry really wants." Malcolm was about to open his mouth when she anticipated his reply and stymied it, "I know what he says, that he wants us to remain as friends, but I'm not sure that will be possible in the long term. Whatever he's hurting over is affecting him, and I don't want to add my rejection onto that if I can't give him what he needs." Swallowing she added, "He's been so caring it's difficult to say no, but for both our sakes I daren't make the mistake of being trapped by gratitude into a disastrous relationship."
Malcolm was pondering what she'd just said. He was pushed into a reluctant admittance that she was probably right. Harry was still dealing with the fallout of the various disasters of the past few years and Jane, well she'd had a torrid time during four very confusing days. Throw in her dissolving second marriage, and the naturally cautious Malcolm could understand her viewpoint. As it happened Jane wasn't planning to canvas his opinion on her best move. Appreciating his efforts at meditation, she manage to dredge up sufficient energy from her diminishing reserves to make some sketchy attempt at a positive response.
"No promises. Other than I'll think about everything you've said."
With an indication that this matter was, for now, relegated to the back burner she stood up and squared her shoulders as if preparing for battle before sighing, "Nat said that Harry's operation would take at least two hours, probably longer, so at the moment I think Catherine and Graham are my more immediate concern."
Relived to be returning into more certain territory Malcolm replicated her action in standing up, as he endorsed her statement, "It might be an idea to join the others before Graham offends all of Section D."
Jane shut her eyes for a second, visions of Graham in full cry slashing across her mind. He'd inherited Harry's temper, but not alas, that turn of sarcastic wit that made Harry bearable, even appealing in a bizarre way.
Slightly refreshed from her sojourn in the Chapel she was emitting a low groan she prepared to return to the joys of family life, plus whatever else awaited her in the world of the hospital proper.
"That bad? And you want me to let bygones be bygones with Harry. I sometimes think the most unforgiveable thing he ever did was to inflict parenthood on me."
Many thanks for reading and do review if you have a moment.