Read Online Conrad & Eleanor by Jane Rogers - Free Book Online

going to work by train. Has he even been going to work? Would she know if he didn’t? Yes, of course, George-n-ita would have said something. And there was the Ph.D. student. Of course he’s been going to work.
    Though it might be better if he hadn’t. The work is bad for him, she’s sure of that – despite the fact that it was her prompting that led him into it. Oh, it was innocent then, it was hopeful, it was still possible for them to talk; it was before this awful shutter had come down between them.
    They had a holiday in Ireland, the summer after Dan’s first birthday. Rented an old farmhouse in West Cork, she can still smell the smoky, peaty dampness of the place. There were niggles between them; she had got them a new au pair and gone back to work when Dan was three months, and Con was putting in more time with the kids than he should have been doing. He was already fretting about Dan, who was late to smile, late to sit up, late to crawl. He was on three years’ funding looking at immunosuppressants and the treatment of tumours in rats; it was slow, predictable work. El believed he was sublimating his own stasis onto Dan. And both of them were tired – four children were turning out to be significantly more work than three.
    But the Irish farm was a good place, and they fell back into their old easy way of getting on that went back to before Dan was born, sitting outside in the overgrown garden in the long summer evenings, while Paul and Megan played hide and seek under the rhododendron bushes. Once Dan was settled and three-year-old Cara in bed, they could leave the older two to play until they dropped. They sat in dilapidated deckchairs with a bottle of wine on a wobbly cane table between them, watching as the sky slowly deepened and bats began to carve the air.
    â€˜Tell me something you’d really like,’ she said to him.
    â€˜First star.’ He pointed high above the farmhouse roof. In the bushes all around them the little birds were twittering and fluttering and falling away.
    â€˜Tell me.’
    â€˜I’d like to never see the inside of that bloody lab again.’
    â€˜Well, Con – you must leave.’
    â€˜And do what? It’s secure, there’s funding – I’m working for a megalomaniac and the research is like watching paint dry, but so what?’
    â€˜So that . It’s soul-destroying. Listen, I had an idea. It was just a conversation I barged in on, one lunchtime – they were talking about transplants.’
    â€˜Transplants?’
    â€˜Heart, kidney, lung, whatever. Saul and Brock have got money for a slab of research on monkeys.’
    â€˜I’m not interested in butchery.’
    â€˜Of course. But apart from the surgery, what’s the main thing that’s all about?’
    â€˜Rejection.’
    â€˜Precisely. Finding ways to stop rejection. Immunosuppressants.’
    â€˜I don’t know anything about monkeys.’
    â€˜Duh. No. But you know a hell of a lot about immune systems. About how they break down. About ways of blocking them.’
    â€˜In rats, and humans.’
    â€˜Wouldn’t there be cross over?’
    â€˜El, there are people who’ve been working on monkeys for years. Saul and Brock for a start.’
    â€˜But work on immune markers in cancer might well be relevant for damping down rejection in transplanted organs – they’re all parts of the same system.’
    There was a silence, and they listened to Megan’s clear shrill voice calling out, ‘Ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred . Coming, ready or not.’
    â€˜There must be people who already know about this.’
    â€˜I’m not sure there are. Why don’t you give Saul a ring?’
    â€˜Give him a ring and say what?’
    â€˜Oh Con! Say you’ve heard he’s got money to work on transplants, and where’s he up to on immunosuppressants. Say