He swallowed a yawn out of deference to the sick man, but missed the feeling of his respiratory system being flushed out. He’d read that when the iron lung was first introduced, patients would die even though they were breathing, because no allowance had been made for the occasional sigh. Just breathing was not enough. He hoped it was a true fact. You had to be so careful nowadays.
Children passed outside. Home time. Strangely Felix recalled it better now than he’d ever done. The long trudge. The heavy bag. The mock fights that sometimes turned to real ones. Looking down at his scuffed shoes and scabbed knees, with his belly gurgling for tea . . .
Quietly, Felix put his briefcase on his knees.
Mr Collins opened his eyes and looked at him.
‘Do you mind if I eat?’ Felix asked him politely.
Mr Collins looked vaguely amused. ‘You go on,’ he whispered.
‘Can I get you anything to eat or drink?’
Mr Collins shook his head almost imperceptibly.
Felix took out a red tartan thermos flask and tinfoil block which, when unwrapped, revealed his sandwich. It was strawberry jam on white bread – a childish preference he’d never managed to shake off, despite his age and gravitas.
He’d lived through rationing.
The man in the bed watched him eat his sandwich and sip his tea.
The children faded to silence.
The clock pretended to tick.
Chris’s chin drooped on to his chest and his mouth fell open.
Felix finished his sandwich and his tea, then shook a clean tissue from his pocket, wiped the little cup dry and screwed it back on to the top of the thermos. He folded the tinfoil into a neat square for future use. He put both back into the briefcase with the soiled tissue, and quietly closed the lid.
Before he could click it shut, Mr Collins lifted the mask to his face.
‘Thank you,’ he murmured, and died.
They held the debrief at a nearby café.
There wasn’t much to talk about, but Chris ordered a ham and cheese toastie, a slab of coffee cake and a large cappuccino.
Felix had already eaten, of course, but ordered tea to keep him company.
As they waited for the food to arrive, Chris said, ‘I’m not doing this any more.’
He looked as if he expected a fight, but when none was forthcoming he went on, ‘It’s all got too much for me. All this death.’
Felix stirred the teabag in the pot. ‘Well,’ he said, as if about to pass comment, but then he didn’t. Just left Well hanging there between them.
The truth was, he didn’t blame Chris. Of course, he was disappointed that he was leaving, because it meant he’d have to get used to somebody new. He also felt Chris was giving up on important work. There weren’t enough of them as it was. Geoffrey was always saying so in the rambling, late-night phone calls he sometimes made to Felix’s home.
We need more like us, Geoffrey often said. Good men prepared to step up to the crease. Because if we don’t do it, who will? Tell me that, Rob. If not us, who?
Geoffrey often called him Rob. Felix often thought Geoffrey might be drunk, but he didn’t blame him if he was. Geoffrey had Parkinson’s and had to use sticks and sometimes a wheelchair, so Felix felt he probably had the right to be drunk whenever he could hold a glass to his lips without spillage.
He’d never met the man, of course. Didn’t even know where he lived. The Exiteers were very careful about anonymity. Geoffrey encouraged the use of pseudonyms, and was always telling Felix never to speak to anyone on the phone claiming to represent the Exiteers.
Protects us all, Rob, he’d slurred. A secret shared is a secret halved.
It was Geoffrey who’d named them the Exiteers.
Like Musketeers, you see? he’d told Felix on more than one occasion. All for one and one for all. After all, not everybody can afford to go to Switzerland. And Felix had wondered if that meant that Geoffrey couldn’t afford to go to Switzerland.
A bustling pepperpot of a woman with her hair in a golden bun put their food on the table, and Felix blinked out of his own thoughts and back to the café.
‘What do you think?’ said Chris, as if he wanted to be talked out of it, but Felix refrained from trying. Exiteering was all about rights, and that meant Chris had the right to leave the group, just as their clients had the right to leave life – without judgement or question, or attempts at persuasion to the opposite view.
Also, if Chris wanted to give up, then Felix felt he was possibly no longer the right person to be an Exiteer.
Was not steadfast.
Being steadfast was no longer fashionable but it was a quality Felix had always admired. He liked to think he’d been a steadfast husband to Margaret. Even after she had left him alone with their memories.
Even after that.
Steadfast.
‘John?’
‘Yes?’ Felix was blank for a second, then remembered that Chris had asked him what he thought about him leaving the Exiteers.
So he cleared his throat and said, ‘I understand completely,’ and Chris nodded gratefully, as if Felix had actively supported his decision. Chris took a huge bite of his toastie, and a long string of melted cheese looped from his lower lip and draped itself down his navy tie.
Felix twitched but managed to stop himself from wiping it away. Chris was not his son.
Chris finished his sandwich without further cheese incident, and then ate his cake and drank his cappuccino.
They were encouraged to take public transport to jobs to avoid their cars being captured on CCTV, so they walked to Bristol Temple Meads station together and Chris shook his hand and said Good luck, John, and Felix said something similar back, and then Chris walked off to get his train home. Felix thought he lived somewhere near Winchester, but wasn’t sure.
He walked the two miles to the bus station and got the coach back to North Devon.
Mabel was waiting in the hallway to glare at him, and there was a puddle by the back door.
Served him right, he supposed. He looked at the clock. He’d been gone for nine hours. Next time he’d ask Miss Knott next door to have her. Miss Knott was always interrupting their walks to engage him about Mabel, as if she were a Crufts winner and not a scrubbing-brush mutt with breath that could strip paint.
He opened the door to the garden and Mabel gave him a withering look that said it was too late now, before stalking slowly outside.
He cleaned up the widdle using yesterday’s Telegraph sports section and a bottle of bleach. After washing his hands, he put his briefcase on the kitchen table and removed the thermos, then washed it out and turned it and its accompanying plastic cup upside down on the rack to dry. He unfolded the foil that had wrapped his sandwich, shook the crumbs from it and wiped off a spot of jam with the J-cloth. Then he folded it back into its square and smoothed it into the second drawer down, along with more of its kind and a collection of paper and plastic bags, elastic bands and string.
Finally he took out the silver cylinder of nitrous oxide and the clear plastic mask, and wiped them clean of . . .
anything