“Nor did I,” the Regius Professor answered, traces of displeasure in his voice.
“I tried ringing you, then came round to leave a note. But then I saw the door was open and I assumed you’d be arriving about now. So I waited.”
There was a sudden silence. And then Wylie burst out angrily, “You bloody fool. You bloody, stupid fool.”
“I’m sorry, Professor, I don’t understand,” Ted stammered, instinctively demoting himself back to pupil’s status.
“I don’t care about your morals, Lambros. I just gave you credit for more common sense. I’ll grant adultery’s as popular at Oxford as any place on earth. But most of those who practice it don’t play with undergraduates. That girl’s nearly half your age.”
The sanctimonious dressing-down began to anger Ted. He gathered courage for a quiet counterattack.
“Is that what you came to see me about?”
“No,” Wylie responded, “that was just my prologue. Sara rang me, wanting to speak to you.”
Oh shit, he thought. I knew I should have telephoned.
“She was very apologetic,” Wylie continued. “But it was an emergency.”
Ted suddenly grew anxious. “Did something happen to her father?”
“No,” Cameron replied. “It’s your son. He was taken very ill. They rushed him into hospital. When Sara phoned she was at her wit’s end.”
A shiver chilled Ted to the core. “Is he — alive?” He looked at Wylie, his eyes pleading for an answer.
“He’ll be all right. You’ve missed the worst of it. Fortunately, she had her father there.”
“Where is he? Where’s my son?”
“At the children’s hospital in Paddington Green.” Though Ted wanted to bolt from the room, something kept him frozen to the spot. “Does Sara have any idea where I’ve been?”
“No,” answered the professor. “I hardly thought it appropriate.” He paused, then added, “I’ll leave that to you.”
It was Sunday and the trains to London crept like pious snails. And — all the way Ted thought, Suppose he dies before I get there.
He who gave no thought to Christ from one Easter to the next, now started to converse with Him. To negotiate for little Ted’s survival. Please, Lord, I’ll pay the price. Take anything from me, but let him live.
His morbid thoughts were not relieved as he rushed through the portals of the hospital. It was bare and ill-lit and, to Ted, seemed ominously empty.
He found Sara and her father on the second floor outside the Lewis Carroll ward.
“Is he all right?” Ted quickly asked.
“Yes,” she answered. “Didn’t Wylie tell you everything?”
“No,” he replied.
Sara began to recount the story at breakneck speed. As if she had to get it out as quickly as she could. For her own catharsis.
“He woke up last night with an incredibly high fever —”
“Over a hundred and five,” her father added, as he too relived the painful moments. “Thank God when we got him here the doctor on duty knew exactly what it was. She put him —”
“She?” Ted intruded with atavistic disapproval. And then immediately apologized. “Sorry I stopped you. Please tell me what’s wrong.”
“Viral pneumonia,” Philip Harrison announced. “Calm down, Ted. The big crisis is behind us.”
Damn, he inwardly berated himself. And I wasn’t there.
Just then Dr. Rama Chatterjee appeared in the distance.
“Here she comes,” said Sara. “Maybe we can see Teddie now.”
Ted’s confidence in female physicians was not enhanced by the discovery that this one was Indian.
“He’s sleeping comfortably,” the doctor said with a smile as she approached, and then addressed the new arrival. “You must be Professor Lambros. He was asking for you.”
“I want to see him now,” Ted demanded. “And after that I want to see the head of your department.”
“You can do both at once,” said Dr. Chatterjee good-naturedly. “I’m the Chief of Pediatrics.”
In the days that followed, Sara rarely left her son’s side, She even slept next to him on a folding bed the hospital provided.
Ted also spent most of the daylight hours at the hospital. He and Sara would sit in the same glass cubicle and each in turn engage their son in conversation. But they rarely talked to each other.
She seemed emotionless. But Ted assumed it was merely a way of hiding her anxiety about their sick child. He had already convinced himself that her preoccupation had made her oblivious to the difficulty she had had in reaching him the previous Sunday.
When visiting hours ended, Ted and his father-in-law would have dinner and then stroll on the perimeter of Hyde Park.
They quickly exhausted topics of mutual interest. So one evening Ted delivered a monologue about how he’d been knifed at Harvard, an incident that in his own imagination had acquired the mythic magnitude of the assassination of Julius Caesar.
Mr. Harrison merely indicated interest by punctuating Ted’s harangues with “hmm’s” and “ah’s.”
The moment they returned to Claridge’s, the Harvard Overseer said good night and hastened to his room.
Early Friday morning a large Daimler arrived for Mr. Philip Harrison.
It would be a long day for him. He and Ted would take Sara and his grandchild from Paddington Green to the John Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford. He would then have to hurry back to Heathrow and catch the last plane to Geneva.
He was, after all, on a mission for the government of the United States, and could put off his obligations no longer.
Dr. Vivian Stone was waiting for them at the Radcliffe and saw to it that the young patient was installed as quickly as possible in a comfortable bed.
Looking at Sara’s haggard face, the pediatrician remarked, “Rama Chatterjee told me you’ve been camping out with little Ted all week. I suggest you go home and get a proper night’s sleep, Mrs. Lambros. We don’t want two patients on our hands.”
When they were back at Addison Crescent, it dawned on Ted that he and Sara had not really talked privately since the whole thing had begun. He had attributed her silence to fatigue and worry, but still he felt impelled to reestablish their lines of communication.
“Thank God he’s all right,” he remarked, choosing the least abrasive comment to open conversation.
Sara did not reply. She had her back to him and was unpacking.
“It must have been deadly for you. I mean being on your own like that. It was lucky Dad was in London.”
She whirled around, her face flushed with anger. “He’s not your father, dammit!” she snapped. “And I’m sick of having to be civil to you for his sake. I’m going to the hospital now. When I get back I want you out of here. And I don’t mean just you, I mean your clothes and every one of your academic books. Just be damn sure you don’t take any of mine.”
“Sara, what’s all this?”
“Listen,” she answered bitterly, “I’ve stood by you for twelve years. Caring for you. Doing half your research. Keeping together the pieces of your fragile confidence. I’ve listened, I’ve sympathized. I’ve practically turned myself into a human handkerchief for you to cry into —”
“Sara —”
“No, dammit, Lambros, let me finish. I didn’t mind any of it, I didn’t even mind having to be both parents to our son — as long as I thought I meant something to you. But then you had to choose Oxford — the biggest small town on earth — to slap me in the face. My God, everybody knows you were screwing that little tramp! And if that wasn’t humiliation enough, you had to flaunt it right in front of my father!”