‘Bel,’ I said, ‘they don’t have chimney-pots here.’
She didn’t grace this remark with a reply.
We took a cab back towards Central Park. The driver reckoned we could find a horse and carriage near Columbus Circle. Bel had bought a tiny foldaway map of the island. She kept looking at it, then at the real streets, her finger pointing to where we were on the map.
‘It’s all so crammed in, isn’t it?’
This was before she saw Central Park.
The park was looking at its best. There were joggers, and nannies pushing prams, and people walking their dogs, and throwing frisbees or baseballs at one another, and arranging impromptu games of baseball and volleyball, and eating hot dogs while they sat on benches in the sunshine. She asked me if I’d ever walked all the way round the park.
‘No, and I doubt anyone else has. Further north, the park hits Harlem.’
‘Not so safe?’
‘Not quite.’
Our coach-driver had asked if we wanted a blanket or anything, but we didn’t need one. Our horse didn’t scare easily, which was a blessing, considering the number of cars and cabs crossing town through the park. Bel squeezed my hand.
‘Tell me something, Michael.’
‘What sort of thing?’
‘Something about yourself.’
‘That sounds like a line from a film.’
‘Well, this is like living in one. Go on, tell me.’
So I started talking, and there was something about the sound the horse’s hooves made on the road, something hypnotic. It kept me talking, made me open up. Bel didn’t interrupt once.
I was born near an army camp in England. My father was an army officer, though he never rose as far as he would have liked. We moved around a lot. Like a lot of forces kids, I made friends quickly, only to lose them again when either they or I moved. We’d write for a little while, then stop. There was always a lot to do on the camps — films, shows, sports and games, clubs you could join — but this just set us apart from all the other children who didn’t live on or near the camp. I used to bruise easily, but didn’t think anything of it. Sometimes if I bumped myself, there’d be swelling for a few weeks, and some pain. But I never told anyone. My father used to talk about how soldiers were taught to go ‘through the pain barrier’, and I used to imagine myself pushing against it, like it was a sheet of rubber, until I forced my way through. Sometimes it would take a few plasters before a cut knee or elbow would heal. My mother just thought I picked off the scabs, but I never did. My father had to take me to the doctor once when I bit the tip off my tongue and it wouldn’t stop bleeding.
Then one day I had to have a dental extraction. The dentist plugged the cavity afterwards, but I just kept on bleeding, not profusely, just steadily. The dentist tried putting some sour stuff on my gums, then tried an adrenaline plug, and finally gave me an injection. When that didn’t work — I was on my fourth or fifth visit by now — he referred me to a specialist, whose tests confirmed that I was a mild haemophiliac. At first this gave me a certain stature within my peer group, but soon they stopped playing with me. I became an onlooker merely. I read up on haemophilia. I was lucky in two respects: for one thing, I was a mild sufferer; for another, I’d been born late enough in the century for them to have made strides in the treatment of the disease. Factor VIII replacement has only been around since the early 1970s, before that you were treated with cryo. Acute sufferers have a much harder time than me. They can bleed internally, into joints, the abdomen, even the brain. I don’t have those problems. If I’m going for an operation or for dental treatment, they can give me an injection of a clotting agent, and everything’s fine. It’s a strange sort of disease, where women can be carriers but not sufferers. About one man in 5,000 in the UK is a haemophiliac, that’s 9,000 of us. Not so long ago, nobody bothered testing blood donors for HIV. That led to over 1,200 haemophiliacs being treated with a lethal product. Over 1,200 of us, men and boys, now HIV positive and doomed.
A similar thing happened in France. They gave contaminated clotting factors to children, then tried to hush it up. I was in such a rage when that happened, such a black rage. I almost went out and picked off those responsible... only who was responsible? It was human error, no matter how sickening. That’s one reason I won’t do a hit in a Third World country, not unless the money is very good. I’m afraid I might be injured and treated with contaminated Factor VIII. I have dreams about it sometimes. There are rigorous checks these days, but does every country check, does every country screen and purify? I’m not sure. I can never be sure.
I carry my works with me everywhere, of course, my syringes and powdered clotting factor and purified water. I’m supposed to visit a Haemophilia Centre when I need a doctor or dentist, and for a yearly check-up. The blood products we haemophiliacs use can contain all sorts of contaminants, leading to liver damage, hepatitis, cirrhosis... Then there’s the bleeding, which can lead to severe arthritis. (Imagine an assassin with arthritis.) Between five and ten percent of us develop inhibitors, antibodies which stop the Factor VIII from working. Like I say, it’s a strange disease. We can’t have intramuscular injections or take aspirin. But things are always getting better. There’s DDAVP, a synthetic product which boosts Factor VIII levels, and now there’s even properly synthetic Factor VIII, recombinant Factor VIII they call it. It’s like 8SM and Monoclate P, but created in the lab, not from blood. No contaminants, that’s the hope.
Meanwhile, there is a cure for haemophilia: liver transplant. Only at present it’s more dangerous than the disease itself. There will come a cure; it’ll come by way of genetic research. They’ll simply negate the affected chromosome.
As you can tell, haemophilia has had a massive impact on my life. It started as soon as the disease was diagnosed. My parents blamed themselves. There was no family history of the disease, but in about a third of cases there never is; there’s just a sudden spontaneous mutation in the father’s sperm. That’s how it was with me. My parents, especially my mother, treated me like a china wedding present, as though I could only be brought out on special occasions. No more rough games with the other boys — she made sure the other parents knew all about haemophilia. My father spent more time away from me, at the shooting range. So I followed him there and asked him to teach me. A pistol first, and later a rifle. To stop me bruising my shoulder, he had my mother make a little cushion to wedge behind the stock. I still use that cushion.
My mother was opposed to the whole enterprise, but could never stand up to my father. It was a couple of years before I could beat him. I don’t know whether his eyes were getting worse, or his aim less steady, or it was just that I was getting better. When I finally left home, I left it as a marksman.
I’d always been clever at school, and ended up at a university, but I didn’t last long. After that there were dead-end jobs, jobs which gave me a lot of time to myself. I worked in a library, then in a couple of bookshops, and eventually got a great job working with kayak rentals in the Lake District. Only that fell through when my employers discovered I was a haemophiliac. They said the job was too risky, I’d become a liability.
Was it any wonder I couldn’t hold down a job? The only place I wanted to be was on the range. I joined gun clubs and shot competitively. I even went hunting on a few occasions, looking for a new challenge. Then I met a disarming man called Holly MacIntyre. He swore this was his real name. Friends of his called him ‘Mad Dog’ MacIntyre. He was huge and bull-headed with cropped hair silvering above the ears. His eyes were bulbous and red-rimmed, like he spent too long in chlorinated swimming pools. He was always ready for a fight, and sometimes initiated it for its own sake. He reminded me of a rugby league forward.