Cull

by Tanvir Bush

  ‘Bom-dia, Alex!’ calls a young woman from the doorway, expertly swinging her unresponsive legs forward between two red wooden crutches. Alex pockets her phone and steps forward to greet Hyancinta, the local solicitor. It’s time to get to work.

  WONDERWEB

  The Free Encyclopaedia: Conclusion of the Gallagher Inquiry into the Grassybanks Residential Home

  The Gallagher Inquiry sat for a total of 31 days and published a final report that outlined general recommendations on residential-care practice. This became known as the Gallagher Report.

  Lord Justice Gallagher concluded that there was no evidence of systemic abuse at Grassybanks Residential Home and that the so-called ‘Chiller Beds’ designed by Dr Binding were ‘practical and highly effective palliative care apparatus’. General care of patients was deemed satisfactory, and the Resomator would soon be in common usage in the USA and several countries across Europe, and therefore not something to be feared or prohibited.

  See: Dr Barnabas Binding

  Resomator

  Chiller Beds

  Euthanasia

  Palliative Care

  The National Deaf and Disabled Unity Movement claimed the Gallagher Report was a whitewash and called for direct action. Over 50,000 people gathered to protest the report outside the Houses of Parliament. The police used water cannons to disperse the crowds. One person was fatally injured, and over 200 other protesters suffered a range of injuries, some severe, including irreversible eye and ear trauma and broken bones.

  See: National Deaf and Disabled Unity Movement

  Houses of Parliament

  Water Cannon

  An independent panel was set up to investigate further allegations against Doctors Binding and Pansy but was declared invalid when several documents were discovered to have gone missing from the original file.

  THE GRAPH BUSINESS REVIEW

  End of recession

  According to a new report from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR), Britain’s growth will exceed its 2008 high in the coming months.

  Tamil Doors, director of NIESR, said: ‘The end of the Great Recession is an important moment. The British economy is very close to exceeding forecast expectations.’

  Mr Doors also expressed gratitude to the government. ‘We would suggest that benefit cuts are pushing more people into self-employment and helping to create a new generation of entrepreneurs.’

  The Bank of England said the trend was partly down to government welfare reforms, such as the benefit caps, pushing people back into work. John Thorpe-Sinclair, the Minister for Work and Pensions, told The Graph: ‘Every one of our welfare reforms has been about getting Britain working, so it’s encouraging to see the Bank of England explicitly linking our reforms with the strength of the UK labour market.’

  The prime minister agreed that although mistakes had been made in the past, it was time to look forward and think positively. ‘You cannot make an omelette without cracking a few eggs,’ he declared.

  THE SUNDAY MAGAZINE FEATURE

  They call me Dr Death: Britain’s top columnist Roman Telling meets Dr Barnabas Binding and, in a candid interview, discusses the notorious ‘Chiller Beds’ and the doctor’s design for ‘a better way to die’

  I am meeting with Dr Barnabas Binding at a small café on the corner of his street. He is running late, and so I am already perched nervously inside the café when he arrives, accompanied by his companion, a good-looking, dark-haired young woman he introduces as Gina.

  ‘This is my favourite café,’ the doctor tells me. ‘When I got the wheelchair they raised money for the outside ramp saying I had probably paid for it with espressos by now.’ He has agreed to the interview on one condition; that he gets to put across his side of the story about those infamous Chiller Beds.

  Binding is greeted warmly by the café owner and takes time to pass on his regards to the man’s wife, before he settles himself opposite me and reaches across to shake my hand. He is wearing a pale blue shirt, open at the neck, and an elegant cravat in darker navy, and looks relaxed and tanned from a recent trip to Sardinia. He is in his indoor chair, he says, ‘pushable’, and more slender than his favourite motorised beast. ‘Both my wheelchairs are prototypes designed by the Kitty Fox Foundation,’ he adds, while Gina is up at the counter, ‘which is indeed ironic given that it was a Kitty Fox wheelchair that my own daughter was held captive in during the Grassybanks incident last year.’

  It was this same incident that outed the doctor as the brains behind the Chiller Bed concept and ended in the shooting of two women, Julia Kirkpatrick and the Boudicca founder, Helen Shandy, as well as Shandy’s husband.Binding himself was hit in the spine by an H5 policeman’s stray bullet.

  ‘They weren’t sure what to aim at,’ muses the doctor. ‘There was glitter everywhere. They just sprayed the room with bullets.’ His face contorts at the memory. ‘Bunch of idiots,’ he adds.

  We chit-chat until Gina returns with his coffee, which she places in front of him quietly and takes a seat, protectively close. He smiles at her and shakes his head. ‘Gina worries too much.’ He is not in any pain, he says. ‘At least not currently.’

  ‘The bullet got me in the lumbar region and left me a stage-three paraplegic.’ He assures me without irony that it’s been a very interesting experience. His patients are adjusting to it too.

  I ask him how he had felt when he had been struck off by the Medical Council. The doctor is rightly affronted.

  ‘You should have done your research, young man. I was reinstated. After the Gallagher Inquiry I was completely exonerated.’ He smiles at me but his teeth are clenched. His eyes are hard to read, and he has downed his coffee. I suspect that if I am not careful, he will end the interview. Gina says nothing, but she is staring at me quite intently. Her eyes are dark brown, her hair immaculate, her stare openly hostile.

  A little disconcerted, I apologise and try another tack. ‘You say you feel misunderstood, yet, you were the man,’ I venture, ‘who designed Chiller Beds to despatch people with your very condition.’

  The doctor leans forward, his face suffused with blood. I fear I may have seriously upset him now. Gina puts a soothing hand on his arm and pats, as if the doctor is a recalcitrant child.

  ‘Not true at all.’ The doctor’s colour has not improved. ‘Let’s get this straight. I was commissioned to help find ways to assist those who were already in the process of dying. Initially the Chiller Beds were designed to ensure that my late-stage alcoholic patients, the ones who were already in kidney and liver failure and with no hope of successful transplant surgery, would be given a pain-free end. Chiller Beds were a mercy to many. They prevented weeks, possibly months, of terrible pain, of agony.’

  I have to interject. ‘But, to be cynical, they also prevented excess money being spent on the patients’ care.’

  The doctor blinks and sits back. Then he smiles. He seems easier with this truth. ‘Yes. I admit that they saved money as well. I am proud of that fact. Look at the economy now … it is a vindication of our experiment.’

  Gina points at his coffee cup, now empty, and he nods without taking his eyes from me. She gets up to buy another round, taking his wallet from the table. The doctor’s gaze is intense, but he offers nothing. I feel compelled to fill the silence.

  ‘You have stated on record that you were aware that the beds were being installed in several different institutions and were to be used to speed the deaths of people who were deemed unfit to live.’

  ‘People in desperate situations … for them, those beds were … are a blessing.’ The sun comes out at last and the café floods with light, giving the doctor’s face an almost beatific quality. In that moment, stern and yet serene in the golden light, I can almost imagine him healing the sick with a single gesture. (Interview continues on page three.)

  *

  Advert: Bath Literary Festival. We are honoured to announce that the Minister for Health, Stella Binding, will be introd
ucing and reading selections of poetry by her late husband, the renowned Gunter Gorski, from his newly edited anthology, The Choking, posthumous winner of the W. H. Auden award. To book places please ring the box office.

  THE DAILY SPUN

  The People Speak: Don Poppet on Tuesdays

  Ram raids and reality checks for crip fraudsters!

  The cheating scumbags who pocket the nation’s wealth are in for a good old-fashioned shakedown! Our mate, John Thorpe-Sinclair, MP, has got it in for the phoney crips! From this week on, and at any time of day or night, government officials will be allowed to storm the homes and bank accounts of anyone claiming any type of ‘crip’ benefit and cheats will be immediately cut off. They could even get put in the slammer!

  Eve Barrellman has said this will ‘infringe on basic human rights’, but we say what about the human rights of the majority of hard-working British people? These so-called ‘crips’ are extracting the urine, Ms Barrellman. They say they need extra care and more money to get through each day when, in fact, we know from previous investigations and revelations from this very paper that they lie around doing bugger all or head for the golf course or a swimming pool in Majorca.

  At last we will uncover what really goes on behind the doors of these fraudsters! We the people salute you, John Thorpe-Sinclair.

  The Dog’s Epilogue

  The darkness all around the veranda creaks and squeaks with living things. High above Chris’s head, the security light is a disco of shiny, hard-shelled insects and soft furry moths, popping, tapping and whacking against the glass. Below him, the wood under his paws is leaking the heat it soaked up from the sun. He can smell the wood oil, sharp and fresh, a hissy wisp of glue. In the surrounding bush, night-scented flowers open maws to the moon and the dusty moths. Wild things abound and everything is moving, growing, sinking, shifting. Alive, alive oh! Something small and hungry skitters through the grass at the bottom of the steps, followed by something bigger and hungrier. Chris hears and smells all these things, but what he is meditating on is a whole other stink, the incredible, ever-changing stench of iron and salt, blood and ancient rock. The sea.

  He is lying on his belly, his snout raised into the little breeze blowing in from the bay. Alex, cold beer in hand, sits beside him in a creaky canvas chair reeking of the lemon eucalyptus oil she uses to keep off the mosquitoes. She swigs and sighs happily, her hand dropping to ruffle Chris’s ears.

  The sun has disappeared into the sea, and from their hillside hut they gaze out on a star-studded night sky with shed snakeskin filaments of cloud passing in front of a rising moon. Soon, the night guard will light his fire in the driveway, and Alex and Chris will head inside to the cool of the bedroom and the thrumming fan, but not yet. Chris can smell tomorrow coming in the hot sea wind. He wishes he could tell Alex about it. It’s going to be exciting.

  Ah well, he thinks, sighing and settling his muzzle on her bare foot, we’ll find out together …

  Afterword

  In November 2016, the United Nations published a report citing ‘grave and systematic violations of the rights of disabled people in the UK’.

  In addition to two reports produced by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) for the UN’s Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) periodic review, the EHRC followed up in April 2017 with a report titled Being Disabled in Britain: A Journey Less Equal, in which it presented research showing how, in every sector, from education and employment to basic care, independent living and human rights, disabled people in Britain were being denied equality and parity.

  In August 2017, the UN once again reiterated the findings of its report. Cuts to social services have ‘totally neglected’ the needs of disabled people and created a ‘human catastrophe’, the chairwoman of a UN human rights committee has said.

  Theresia Degener, who leads the UN CRPD, accused British politicians of failing vulnerable members of society.

  UK officials have also faced allegations of misrepresenting the impact of policies through unanswered questions, misused statistics and statements on policies and legislation.

  As cited in the Independent, 24 August 2017, Ms Degener said evidence seen by the committee and a review it carried out last year made clear the impact of austerity policies on the disabled.

  She said the controversial ‘fit to work’ tests were based on a correct assumption that disabled people could find employment. ‘However, evidence before us now and in our inquiry procedure as published in our 2016 report reveals that social cut policies have led to a human catastrophe in your country, totally neglecting the vulnerable situation people with disabilities find themselves in.’

  A Note on the Author

  Dr Tanvir Bush is a novelist, film-maker and photographer. Born in London, she lived and worked in Lusaka, Zambia, setting up the Willie Mwale Film Foundation, working with minority communities and people affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Her feature documentary Choka! – Get Lost! was nominated for the Pare Lorenz Award for social activism in film in 2001. She returned to the UK to study and write her first novel, Witch Girl, published by Modjaji Books, Cape Town in 2015. She is the designer and facilitator of the Corsham Creative Writing Laboratory initiative and an associate lecturer in creative writing at Bath Spa University. She is based in Wiltshire with her guide dog and research assistant, Grace.

  To have your say and let Tanvir know what you thought of Cull, visit https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/2PRZP8S

  Acknowledgements

  I give heartfelt thanks to Irving, Joan and Suzie Shapiro, without whose incredible generosity, kindness and continuous support this novel would not have happened at all. The same goes to Ruth Hartley and John Corley for all their generous support and encouragement.

  My thanks to my sister Rachma and her husband Steven for feeding me up, propping me up and cheering me onwards, and to lovely Jennie Brunton, my support and comma-checker. Also to Polly Loxton, for being, always, the port in the storm.

  My thanks to Tim Middleton, who kept me on track and on course, and Maggie Gee, an outstanding mentor, supporter and friend.

  To the Cleeve Book Club and all who took part in the Book Club Experiment – thank you so much!

  Thanks to my agent Karolina, and to the wonderful team at Unbound, and to everyone, too many to mention here, who supported and encouraged me all the way down this long road.

  And lastly, thanks forever to Grace, my furry muse and friend.

  Unbound is the world’s first crowdfunding publisher, established in 2011.

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