Strong Medicine

by Arthur Hailey

  At the bridge, Celia stopped. Shading her eyes from the bright morning sun, she said with awe, “I’ve seldom seen anything more lovely.”

  Beside her, Martin announced quietly, “King’s College Chapel—the noblest view of all.”

  Immediately ahead were serene lawns and shady trees. Beyond was the great chapel—a vision of turrets, sturdy buttresses and lofty spires rising over a glorious vaulted roof and stained-glass windows. The pale stone buildings of colleges on either side conveyed a complementary sense of history and nobility.

  “Let me do my tour guide act,” Martin said. “It goes like this: We’re an old foundation. In 1441, King Henry VI began what you see here, and Peterhouse, over to the south, is even older. It started ‘the Cambridge quest for knowledge’ in 1284.”

  Without thinking, Celia said impulsively, “How could anyone who truly belongs here ever leave this place?”

  Martin answered, “Many never have. There were great scholars who lived and worked at Cambridge until they died. And some of us—younger and living—have a similar idea.”

  For two more hours they alternately walked and rode, and in the process Celia imbibed the lore and love of Cambridge. Place names stayed with her: Jesus Green, Midsummer Common, Parker’s Piece, Coe Fen, Lammas Land, Trinity, Queens’, Newnham. The list seemed endless, as did Martin’s knowledge. “As well as scholars who stayed, others have taken this place elsewhere,” he told her. “One was an M.A. from Emmanuel College, John Harvard. There’s another place of learning named after him.” He gave his familiar, twisted grin. “I forget just where.”

  At length, as they eased back into the Mini, Martin asserted, “I think that will do. We’ll save anything else for another time.” Abruptly, his face became serious. “Do you still want to see my parents? I have to warn you—my mother won’t know either of us, or why we’re there. The effect can be depressing.”

  “Yes,” Celia said, “I still want to.”

  The terraced house, small and undistinguished, was in a district called the Kite. Martin parked on the street outside and used a key to go in. From a small, dimly lighted hallway he called out, “Dad! It’s me, and I have a guest.”

  There was a sound of shuffling footsteps, a door opened, and an elderly man, wearing a faded sweater and baggy corduroy trousers, appeared. As he came closer, Celia was startled by the physical resemblance between father and son. The older Peat-Smith had the same stocky solidity as Martin, a similar rugged, square-jawed face—though more seamed with age—and even a quick, shy smile as they were introduced seemed a duplicate of Martin’s.

  When the older man spoke, the similarity ceased. His voice revealed a discordant, coarse, provincial twang; his sentences, roughly framed, suggested little education.

  “Pleased to meet yer,” he told Celia. And to Martin—“Din’t know as you was comin’, son. Only just got yer ma dressed. She ain’t bin none too good today.”

  “We won’t stay long, Dad,” Martin said, and told Celia, “The Alzheimer’s has been a big strain on my father. That’s often the way it is—it’s harder on the families than the patient.”

  As they moved into a modest, nondescript living room, Peat-Smith, Senior, asked Celia, “Yer wan’ a cuppa?”

  “That’s tea,” Martin translated.

  “Thank you, I’d love some tea,” Celia said. “I’m thirsty after our tour.”

  While Martin’s father walked into a tiny kitchen, Martin went to kneel beside a gray-haired woman who was seated in a baggy armchair with a flowered cover. She had not moved since they came in. Putting his arms around her, he kissed her tenderly.

  Once, Celia thought, the older woman had been beautiful and even now was handsome in a faded way. Her hair was neatly combed. She was wearing a simple beige dress with a row of beads. At her son’s kiss she appeared to respond a little, and gave the slightest smile, but not, it seemed, of recognition.

  “Mother, I’m your son, Martin,” Martin said; his voice was gentle. “And this lady is Celia Jordan. She’s from America. I’ve been showing her around Cambridge. She likes our little town.”

  “Hello, Mrs. Peat-Smith,” Celia said. “Thank you for letting me visit your home.”

  The gray-haired woman’s eyes moved, again with that tantalizing hint of understanding. But Martin told Celia, “There’s nothing there, I’m afraid. No memory left at all. But where my mother’s concerned I allow myself to be non-scientific and keep trying to get through.”

  “I understand.” Celia hesitated, then asked, “Do you think that if your research progresses, if you discover something important soon, there might be a chance …”

  “Of helping her?” Martin answered decisively, “Absolutely none. No matter what’s discovered, nothing will revive a dead brain cell. I’ve no illusions about that.” Standing, he looked down at his mother sadly. “No, it’s others who’ll be helped someday soon. Others who haven’t advanced this far.”

  “You’re sure of that, aren’t you?”

  “I’m sure some answers will be found—by me or someone else.”

  “But you’d like to be the one who finds them.”

  Martin shrugged. “Every scientist would like to be first in making a discovery. That’s human. But,”—he glanced toward his mother—“it’s more important that someone discover the cause of Alzheimer’s.”

  “So it’s possible,” Celia persisted, “that someone other than you could get there first.”

  “Yes,” Martin said. “In science that can always happen.”

  Peat-Smith, Senior, came in from the kitchen with a tray containing a teapot, cups and saucers, and a milk jug.

  When the tray was set down, Martin put his arm around his father. “Dad does everything for mother—dresses her, combs her hair, feeds her, and some other things less pleasant. There was a time, Celia, when my father and I weren’t the closest of friends. But we are now.”

  “Tha’s right. Used ter have a lot of hot arguments,” Martin’s father said. He addressed Celia. “You want milk in the tea?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Was a time,” the older man said, “when I din’t think much of all them scholarships Martin an’ his ma was set on. I wanted ’im to go to work wi’ me. But ’is ma got the best of it an’, the way it worked out, ’e’s been a good lad to us. Pays for this place, an’ most else we need.” He glanced at Martin, then added, “An’ over at that college, I hear he ain’t done bad.”

  “No,” Celia said, “he hasn’t done badly at all.”

  It was almost two hours later.

  “Is it okay to talk while you’re doing that?” Celia inquired from the comfortably cushioned seat where she was reclining.

  “Sure. Why not?” As he spoke, Martin, who was standing, thrust a long punt pole away from him; it found purchase on the river’s shallow bottom, and the awkward flat-bottomed craft they were sharing glided easily upstream. Martin seemed to do everything well, Celia thought, including handling a punt—something at which few people were skilled, judging by others they had passed on the river and who, by comparison, were bumbling their way along.

  Martin had rented the punt at a Cambridge boatyard and they were now on their way to Grantchester, three miles southward, for what would be a late picnic lunch.

  “This is personal,” Celia said, “and maybe I shouldn’t ask. But I was wondering about the difference between you and your father. For example, the way you each speak—and I don’t just mean being grammatical …”

  “I know what you mean,” Martin said. “When my mother was talking, before she forgot how to, she spoke much the same way. In Pygmalion, Bernard Shaw called it an ‘incarnate insult to the English language.’”

  “I remember that from My Fair Lady, “Celia reminisced. “But you managed to avoid it. How?”

  “It’s one more thing I owe my mother. Before I explain, though, there’s something you have to understand about this country. In Britain, the way people speak has always been a class barrie
r, a social distinction. And despite some who’ll tell you otherwise, it still is.”

  “In the academic world too? Among scientists.”

  “Even there. Perhaps especially there.”

  Martin busied himself with the punt pole while considering his next words.

  “My mother understood that barrier. Which was why, when I was very small, she bought a radio and made me sit for hours in front of it, listening to the BBC announcers. She told me, ‘That’s the way you’ll speak, so start copying those people. It’s too late for your Dad and me, but not for you.’”

  Listening to Martin’s pleasant and cultured, though unaffected, voice, Celia said, “It worked.”

  “I suppose so. But it was one of many other things she did, including finding out what interested me at school, then discovering what scholarships there were, and making sure I went after them. That was when we had those fights at home my father talked about.”

  “He believed your mother was overreaching?”

  “He thought I should be a stonemason, like him. My father believed in that English rhyme that Dickens wrote.” Martin smiled as he quoted:

  “O let us love our occupations,

  Bless the squire and his relations,

  Live upon our daily rations,

  And always know our proper stations.”

  “But you don’t hold a grudge against your father for that?”

  Martin shook his head. “He simply didn’t understand. For that matter, nor did I. Only my mother understood what could be accomplished through ambition—and through me. Perhaps you realize now why I care so much about her.”

  “Of course,” Celia said. “And now that I know, I feel the same way.”

  They lapsed into a contented silence as the punt progressed upriver between green banks and leafy trees on either side.

  After a while, Celia said, “Your father said you pay for most of what both your parents need.”

  “I do what I can,” Martin acknowledged. “One thing I do is send in an agency nurse two mornings a week. It gives my father a break. I’d like to use the nurse more often, but …” He shrugged, left the sentence unfinished, and expertly brought the punt alongside a grassy bank under the shade of a willow tree. “How’s this for a picnic site?”

  “Idyllic,” Celia said. “Straight from Camelot.”

  Martin had packed a hamper with some prawns, a Melton Mowbray pork pie, a fresh green salad, strawberries and thick, yellow Devonshire cream. There was wine—a respectable Chablis—and a thermos of coffee.

  They ate and drank with gusto.

  At the end of the meal, over coffee, Celia said, “This is my last weekend before going home. It couldn’t have been nicer.”

  “Was your trip here a success?”

  About to reply with a platitude, she remembered Andrew’s advice on the telephone and answered, “No.”

  “Why not?” Martin sounded surprised.

  “Sam Hawthorne and I found the ideal director for the Felding-Roth research institute, but he didn’t want the job. Now, everyone else seems second-rate.”

  After a silence, Martin said, “I presume you’re talking about me.”

  “You know I am.”

  He sighed. “I hope you’re going to forgive me for that delinquency, Celia.”

  “There’s nothing to forgive. It’s your life, your decision,” she assured him. “It’s simply that, thinking about it just now, there were two things …” She stopped.

  “Go on. What two things?”

  “Well, a little while ago you admitted you’d like to be first in finding answers about Alzheimer’s and mental aging, but others might get there ahead of you.”

  Martin leaned back in the punt, facing Celia; he had folded his blazer behind him and was using it as a pillow. “Others are doing similar research to mine. I know of someone in Germany, another in France, a third in New Zealand. They’re all good people and we’re pursuing the same objectives, exploring the same trail. It’s impossible to know who, if anyone, is ahead.”

  “So it’s a race that you’re in,” Celia said. “A race against time.” Unconsciously, her voice had sharpened.

  “Yes. But that’s the way science is.”

  “Do any of those others you mentioned have better facilities or more staff than you?”

  He considered. “Probably ‘yes’ to both in Germany. I don’t know about the other two.”

  “How much laboratory space do you have now?”

  “Altogether”—Martin calculated mentally—“about a thousand square feet.”

  “Then wouldn’t it help you get closer, faster, to what you’re searching for if you had five times that space, plus equipment to go into it—everything you needed, and all for your project—plus a staff of maybe twenty people working for you, instead of two or three? Wouldn’t that move things along, and not only find the answers, but get you to them first?”

  Suddenly Celia was aware that the mood between them had changed. This was no longer a social occasion; whatever innocence there had been had fled. Subtly, it was now a challenge of intellect and wills. Well, she thought, this was why she had come to Britain, and to Cambridge today.

  Martin was staring at her in amazement. “Are you serious about all that? Five thousand square feet and twenty people!”

  “Dammit! Of course I’m serious.” She added impatiently, “Do you think, in the pharmaceutical business, we play games?”

  “No,” he said, still staring, “I didn’t think that. You said there were two things. What’s the other?”

  Celia hesitated. Should she go on? She sensed that what she had just said had made a deep impression on Martin. Would she now destroy that, wiping out any advantage gained? Then, once more, she remembered Andrew.

  “I’ll put this crudely and bluntly, in the usual crass American way,” Celia said, “and I’m saying that because I know dedicated researchers like you aren’t motivated by money and can’t be bought. But if you worked for Felding-Roth, became director of our institute and brought your project with you, you’d most likely be paid twelve thousand pounds a year, plus bonuses, which can be substantial. I’ve reason to believe that’s about five times what you’re earning now. Furthermore, having met your parents and knowing what you do for them, and having an idea that there’s more you’d like to do, I think you could use that extra cash. You could certainly send a nurse in more than twice a week, move your mother to better surroundings …”

  “That’s enough!” Martin had sat up and was glaring at her; he had become intensely emotional. “Damn you, Celia! I know what money can do. What’s more, don’t hand me that bilge about people like me not caring for it. I care like hell, and what you’ve just told me is mind-boggling. You’re trying to undermine me, tempt me, take advantage …”

  She snapped, “That’s ridiculous! Take what advantage?”

  “Of meeting my parents, for one thing. Seeing how they live and how much I care. So, using that, you’re offering me a golden apple, playing Eve to my Adam.” He glanced around them. “In Paradise, too.”

  “It isn’t a poisoned apple,” Celia said quietly, “and there’s no serpent in this boat. Look, I’m sorry if—”

  Martin cut her off savagely. “You’re not sorry at all! You’re a businesswoman who’s good at her job—bloody good; I can testify to that! But a businesswoman going all out, no holds barred, to get what she wants. You’re quite ruthless, aren’t you?”

  Now Celia was surprised. “Am I?”

  He answered emphatically, “Yes.”

  “All right,” Celia said; she would give back as good as she got, she decided. “Supposing I am. And supposing all of what you said is true. Isn’t it what you want too? The answers to Alzheimer’s! That brain peptide you’re searching for! Scientific glory! Is any of that cheating you?”

  “No,” Martin said, “whatever else it is, it isn’t cheating.” He gave his twisted smile, though this time with a touch of sourness. “I hope they pay you wel
l, Celia. As a crass American, which is what you called yourself, you do one helluva job.” He stood up and reached for the punt pole. “It’s time to go.”

  They returned downstream in silence, Martin thrusting the punt forward with a fierceness he had not shown on the outward journey. Celia, busy with her thoughts, wondered if she had gone too far. Near the town and the boatyard, Martin stopped his poling and let the craft drift. From his perch on the stern above her, he regarded Celia solemnly.

  “I don’t know the answer. I only know you’ve unsettled me,” he told her. “But I still don’t know.”

  It was early evening when Martin dropped Celia at the Cambridge railway station and they said a formal, somewhat strained, goodbye. Celia’s return train was a painfully slow local which stopped at almost every station, and it was past 11:30 P.M. by the time she arrived at the London terminus, this time King’s Cross. She took a taxi to the Berkeley, reaching the hotel shortly before midnight.

  During most of the journey Celia reconstructed the day’s events, especially her own part in them. What had jolted her, as much as anything, was Martin’s cutting accusation: You’re quite ruthless, aren’t you? Was she ruthless? Looking in a mental mirror, Celia admitted that perhaps she was. Then she corrected herself: Not “perhaps.” Make that “certainly.”

  But, she reasoned, wasn’t some ruthlessness necessary? Necessary—especially for a woman—to have carved a career, as Celia had, and to have made it to where she was? Yes. Of course!

  Furthermore, she reminded herself, ruthlessness was not—or, rather, need not be—equated with dishonesty. In essence it was a commitment to be tough in business, to make unpleasant hard decisions, fight through to the essentials, and dispense with an excess of worry concerning other individuals. Equally to the point: If her own responsibilities increased in future, she would need to be even tougher, even more ruthless, than before.

  Why, then, if being ruthless was a fact of business life, had Martin’s remark so bothered her? Probably because she liked and respected him, and therefore wished him to feel the same way about her. Well, did he? Celia wondered about that briefly, then decided obviously not, after their showdown of this afternoon.