Page 47 of The Society of Unknowable Objects
“All of my medical training and I could do nothing for you,” hisfather had reflected, his eyes slightly glazed. In those last few weeks of his life James’s father had seemed to spend increasing amounts of his time in his memories. It was probably a more comfortable place for him to be, as his disease progressed. “Couldn’t even be sure what was wrong with you,” his father continued. “But you were always unwell. Sickly and weak.”
James nodded slowly. He had only vague memories of his childhood, much of it spent feverish in bed.
“I thought you would die,” his father had admitted. “And you probably would have, if not for Ellery.”
James knew this story. He remembered Ellery Pinn only vaguely, a man with blond hair and blue eyes, a presence in James’s feverish childhood, but he knew and understood more of the events of those days from what his father had told him about them later.
“Dr.Pinn lives in London,” he would say to James. “He’s a friend, and a very kind man, very kind indeed. He saw how ill you were, and he saw how much it pained me and your mother... and then he brought with him the special medicine you take now. If not for Dr.Pinn, you would still be very sick.”
This story, or variations of it, had been a regular feature of James’s childhood. The tale of the nice man from England who had given James the pill bottle that contained the endless supply of small white pills. From the moment James had started taking these his maladies had vanished and he had begun to feel well. The feverish months of his childhood were forgotten, his mysterious sickness shrugged off as easily as a light coat, and James had never been ill again. He had thrived throughout his adolescence, never even once succumbing to a cold or the flu or tonsillitis or any of the many other illnesses of youth.
James had understood deep in his core that he had been given an opportunity, a chance he should not have had. The pill he took every day, from the little brown pill bottle that never seemed to deplete, was keeping him alive and healthy. And every day that he took the pill it was a reminder of how lucky he was. As a teenager, when he started to understand more about himself and the world, James had committed toliving his life to its fullest, extracting every possible pleasure from the days he was lucky to have. He had studied hard at school and had obtained excellent grades. He had played sports, rugby and tennis, and had built a wide circle of friends. He had become popular and outgoing, but successful too. He studied fine art and history at university, and then he had gone to work at the bank. He worked hard, had earned a good salary and had travelled the world, seeing beautiful things and meeting interesting people. He had gone out with many different women (never more than one at the same time) but had always resisted getting too close, for fear that someone would find out about his pills and the magic, about the thing he could never really explain. He ignored his loneliness and filled his life with the things he had loved: books and music and art, luxury experiences, dressing well, taking every possible trip to foreign lands that he could and staying in the best hotels and eating the finest food. He never forgot how lucky he was, to have lived and thrived. He refused to waste a moment, because at the back of his mind there were always the same nagging thoughts:What if this day is the day when there are no more pills in the bottle? What if the illness comes back?
Throughout his life James continued to undergo six-month checkups, but more than thirty years after he had started taking his daily pills, he was as fit and healthy as it was possible to be. He wondered if that would continue to be the case as he aged. He wondered if he would live an unusually long life if he kept taking the pills. But he had never really wondered about where the pills had come from, or why the man from London had blessed him.
***
“I miss Ellery,” his father had admitted, pulling James back from his thoughts to the moment. James had watched the old man as a complex series of expressions had shifted across his face, like shadows on the ground beneath moving clouds. There had been tears in his father’s hollow eyes. “He and I understood each other.”
James had asked about Ellery, about why it was he never visited anymore. James’s memories from those days of his childhood were limited. He remembered only the short, pale, quiet man inspecting him as he lay feverish in bed, cool hands on his forehead and the ice-cold kiss of a stethoscope on the skin of his back, his father a worried shape watching from the doorway.
On his sickbed his father had shaken his head. “Ellery couldn’t travel anymore.”
“But you could keep in touch?” James had asked, knowing that with these questions he was probing a truth his father would never admit, the truth that had driven a wedge between his parents many years before, sending James’s mother away to live in mainland China
“No,” his father had said quietly. “We decided we shouldn’t.”
That Dennis Wei and Ellery Pinn had loved each other, James was sure, but he was equally sure that both men had been so constrained by circumstance and society that they had denied this truth even to themselves.
“None of that matters now,” his father had said then. He reached out a hand suddenly, a claw on James’s arm. “Do you still have your pills?” he asked, his voice a rasp.
James had removed the pill bottle from his pocket and had shaken it for his father.
“Yes,” he said, trying to soothe his father’s worries. “It’s always with me. Still full of pills.”
“You must keep your pills, take them every day,” his father insisted, unnecessarily. “They are magic. They will give you a long and healthy life. But you must take them!”
“I know,” James had said, trying to be reassuring. “Where did they come from? Where did Dr.Pinn find them?”
“They are magic,” his father had repeated. “That is what Ellery said to me. There are magic things in this world. Hidden, magic items. Just like your pills. Ellery and his friends in London, they look after them, they protect them. He shouldn’t have given you these...” The old man pointed at the pills. “But he did it. For you.”
“For you,” James had murmured, but his father hadn’t heard.
“James, if you find items like this, magic items, things that do unusual things... you must contact Dr.Pinn. Or Frank Simpson. That is his friend. He runs their group, the Society.” James’s father had closed his eyes and seemed to shrink slightly, as if exhaling a long breath. He was so different now from the tall, energetic man James remembered from his youth, so diminished. “Mr.Simpson owns a bookshop in London. Bell Street Books. You must take anything like that to him.”
James had wondered if his father had been delirious, but he had said nothing in response to the request, nodding seriously.
“You might find something,” the old man continued. “You work with things like this. Expensive things and art.” His father had never really understood James’s work. “If you find something, take it to Dr.Pinn. We owe him this, yes? We are in his debt. He has given one of these items to you so that you can live. You must be serious about this, James, do you understand?”
The outburst appeared to tire James’s father, and he fell back onto his pillow, his breathing heavy. But the subject remained on his mind because he came back to it regularly in those last few weeks of his life.
“Ellery gave me your pills,” James’s father had said to him, the day before his death. “He gave them to me and told me to tell no one, because he shouldn’t have done it. He did it because he couldn’t stand the thought of you dying so young.”
“And because he loved you,” James had said, purposefully loud enough that his father could hear. “A man can speak the truth in his last days,” he said. “If not then, when?”
His father had flashed shocked eyes towards him, father and son holding each other’s gaze for a moment.
“Tired,” the old man had mumbled then, rolling over to turn his back to James. “Need to sleep.”
