At last Delaney spoke. He turned back from the window and returned to his chair to face the two men who had presented him with what he mentally referred to as the Devil’s Alternative.
‘Very well, gentlemen,’ he said firmly, ‘I do not think I have much choice. I ask you to stop the treatment. I ask you again, how long do you think it will be before you can detect changes for better, or . . . ’ He paused for a moment. ‘Or worse?’
‘The next treatment was due to be administered in just over an hour’s time,’ said Dr Moreland. ‘I do not know how long it will be before we know something. Dr Stead and I will take it in turns to sit by the bedside until we have resolution one way or the other. Matron will see to whatever special nursing needs we may require. I would advise you to take a little rest just now, Mr Delaney. Any changes might start in three or four hours. It might take twenty-four hours or even more. We do not know. But we will prepare as best we can for all eventualities.’
‘Thank you,’ said Delaney.
‘From this moment on,’ said Father Kennedy, ‘we are moving outside the knowledge of these good doctors here. We are all in God’s hands now.’
Michael Delaney returned to the hospital shortly after half past two. He brought with him a small bag containing a change of clothing and a large bottle of Jack Daniels. His coachman watched him turning into the main corridor of St Vincent’s. Then he took from underneath his seat a couple of European motor magazines that had recently arrived in New York. In some respects, he thought, the French and the Germans and the British might be ahead of the Americans in terms of design and engine construction. The coachman found that hard to believe.
The death watch party, as Delaney mentally referred to them, were already in their positions in the little ward. By the left-hand side of the bed, looking at it from the door, was a nurse, one section of her rosary beads hanging out of her pocket. Just behind her sat Dr Moreland, a couple of files on his lap and a pencil in his right hand. Next to the nurse sat Matron, her rosary beads in her lap, her lips moving silently, one tress of blonde hair which had escaped from her cap lying across the top of her forehead. Opposite the nurse sat Delaney, the hat still twisting in his hands. By the window stood Father Kennedy, staring out at the storm outside and the tiny rivers running down the front of the buildings. Above the bed, in a plain frame, was a reproduction of an earlier painting of a saint, dressed in brown with a brown background, his elbows resting on a table, his hands stretched out in prayer, the fingertips touching.
The nurse kept her head very near the bed. If you looked closely, Delaney realized, you could see faint breathing movements, slight swellings in the sheet as the boy’s chest rose and fell. Maybe the nurses had tucked him in extra tight, Delaney thought, so they could watch the movements better. He suddenly remembered telling James about the death of his mother. It had been in the drawing room of his great house, the lights burning brightly, a fire roaring in the grate and the continuous rumble of a great city on the move just audible from the street outside. Delaney had comforted the boy as best he could. Even though they both had known she was dying, it was still a terrible shock. He recalled James telling him, months after the event, how he, James, had felt numb for weeks. Sad, of course, tearful, naturally, but the most memorable feeling was numbness, a cold feeling that ran right through you as if you had swallowed some ice cold mixture. But he wouldn’t be able to tell James about this death, Delaney realized. James wouldn’t be here.
‘It’s all right to talk, as long as we’re quiet, Mr Delaney,’ said Dr Moreland in a voice scarcely above a whisper. ‘Some people think it might even help, that when the patients hear human voices, they know they’re still alive. Or you can take a little break with a walk in the corridor.’
‘How do we . . . ’ Delaney began and then paused, groping for the difficult words. ‘How do we know if James is getting better? Or worse, for that matter?’
‘I cannot give you precise guidance,’ said Dr Moreland. As Delaney looked closely at the doctor, he saw that the top left-hand corner of his folder was covered with tiny drawings of golf clubs. Woods, irons, putters, they were all there. Maybe this was how Dr George Moreland usually spent his Saturday afternoons, out on some green golf course by the sea, sinking his putts with the same authority that he brought to his patients in the hospital. Not, mind you, Delaney thought, looking out of the window, on an afternoon like this.
‘It’s the breathing, Mr Delaney, that’s one thing that can help us. If the breathing becomes shallow, or the gaps between breaths become longer, then I’m afraid that we would regard that as bad news. But often even that simple observation can be wrong.’ He sent Delaney a small, rueful smile.
Delaney found himself hypnotized by the praying figure on the wall, hanging directly over his son’s head, the pale, ascetic face, the fingers joined in prayer. He wondered who he was. He beckoned Father Kennedy into the corridor.
‘That fellow on the wall,’ he said, ‘the one above James. Do you know who he is, by any chance?’
Father Kennedy smiled. ‘That fellow, as you call him, is one of the most important saints in the Catholic firmament. He’s called St James the Greater. He was one of the disciples, one of the fishermen.’
Delaney had investigated fishing once as a possible source of profit, and found it disappointing. There were, in his view, too many variables, bad weather, leaking boats, unreliable fishermen. Now a temporary bout of flippancy overcame him, out here in the corridor of a hospital where his son might be about to die.
‘Why was he called the Greater? Was there a Smaller one? A Thinner? A Fatter perhaps?’
Father Kennedy had seen these temporary flights of fancy all too often in his long vigils by the bedsides of the dying.
‘I think he was called that to distinguish him from another St James, known as St James the Less. But, come, we should return. I shall tell you more about him later, if you wish.’
The afternoon wore on. The nun and the Matron continued their prayers. Dr Moreland moved on to tennis rackets on his folder, his eyes checking on his patient every couple of seconds. Father Kennedy was composing a sermon about the workings of God’s grace in his head. Delaney found a quiet corner of the corridor where he could take occasional consolation from his bottle of Jack Daniels. Every half-hour or so he tiptoed into the chapel and lit more candles. Outside the light faded and the storm raged on. Nurses came and went, bringing hot tea and sandwiches, pausing on their way out to say a prayer for the young man in the bed underneath St James the Greater.
The hours passed impossibly slowly. Delaney could see no change in the condition of his son. The blue eyes he knew so well were still closed. The light brown hair still lay ruffled on the pillow. His colour was still very very pale, a white that was almost the same shade as chalk. But he was still breathing. At seven o’clock Matron took Michael Delaney back to the little chapel. He had lit all the candles by now. The room was full, standing room only at the back. There must have been fifty or sixty people in there, mostly nuns with some auxiliary staff. All of them, Matron whispered, were there to pray for the life of James Delaney. Matron didn’t say that she was using all the weapons she knew of in her fight to keep the boy alive. And that if there were weapons she knew nothing of, she would use those too, if only she could find them. Delaney wondered about the power of prayer. Certainly he had never availed himself of it in his long business career. It had never occurred to him. Great business deals, he felt, depended on more mundane, possibly, in his present surroundings, more sordid factors: profit, or the possibilities of it, the cost of borrowing money, the size and potential for growth of the particular market. But Delaney closed his eyes and prayed along with all the others for the life of his son.