Playing James

by Sarah Mason

  As a double bonus, the doctor who treated me was ab-so-lute-ly gorgeous, a real-life version of George Clooney from ER. His dark, smoldering looks nearly made me forget why I was there. The blood all over my face made my natural charms a little hard to see, so I tried to show off my feet as they are my second-best feature (so I’ve been told). I don’t believe he really noticed them though, and when I offered to take my plimsolls off he said he didn’t think that was necessary. I remember his name quite well. It was Dr. Kirkpatrick. I think it is an absolutely magnificent name and I rather fancied being Mrs. Kirkpatrick at the time (although that is quite out of the question now because I am in love with Ben and intend to stay that way).

  The small boy is finally led off, being cuffed round the head by his mother all the way, and Lizzie and I step up to the reception desk.

  “Hello!” I greet the receptionist cheerfully.

  “How can I help you?”

  “Well, I called earlier and was advised to come down. I have a bit of a delicate problem.”

  The lady raises her eyebrows inquiringly and purses her pink-frosted lips accordingly, so I lower my voice to a whisper and continue. “I have a condom stuck inside me.”

  We gaze at each other for a second. She looks as though she has swallowed her lips, then reaches over for a form and asks me to fill it in. I do so and Lizzie and I go through to the waiting room and take a seat.

  I pat Lizzie’s knee; she is looking a little strained, poor thing.

  “See?” I whisper. “Easy.”

  “When I’m called, will you come with me?”

  I take a quick look around and spot two official-looking blokes talking animatedly in the corner—they might be the police officers on my fraud case. “Well, I really have to go and cover this story,” I say, staring at them.

  “Please?” She turns puppy eyes on me.

  I sigh. “All right. But look, I think those men over there must be police officers, so I’m just going to go and make a few inquiries while we wait. But I’ll be back,” I say with a fake Arnie accent, “and the dinosaur will take at least ten minutes.” And with this I scurry over to my suspects.

  “Hello!” I greet the two men cheerfully. Both are dressed in shirts and ties, with their shirt sleeves rolled up but no jackets. The one I am facing smiles lazily; he’s rather nice-looking with dark, thick hair. The other one swivels round. The greenest pair of eyes I have ever seen bore into me suspiciously. The green eyes, I can’t help noticing, belong to the head of an immensely attractive young man. And the head is atop a rather splendid physique.

  It takes me by surprise somewhat. “Yes?” he snaps.

  “Er . . .”

  “Well?”

  “Are you police officers?”

  “Do you need to report something?” he asks with, I fancy, a soupçon of derision.

  I am tempted to refer to my notes, but I bravely plough onwards instead. “I understand one of your suspects from the Stacey fraud case has been involved in a car accident?”

  “Do you indeed? And which newspaper are you from?”

  “Bristol Gazette.”

  “And what do you want to know?”

  “Anything you can tell me?”

  “Go and talk to our PR department. They’ll be issuing a press release.”

  “But has the suspect been badly injured? Were you about to arrest him? And on what charges? Have you arrested anyone else in connection with the case? Or—”

  “What’s your name?” he cuts in. I’m starting to wish Old Green Eyes’ manner could match his looks.

  “Holly Colshannon.”

  “Well, Holly Colshannon,” he says grimly, “as persistent as you seem, you will have to wait for a press release.” And taking me firmly by the elbow, he escorts me to the front desk.

  “You can’t do this!” I protest as he frogmarches me across the waiting room. Lizzie watches in horror. He doesn’t answer.

  “Please don’t admit this young lady again,” he says to the woman on the desk.

  The woman looks at me. “But she’s here to be treated, Officer.”

  “Yes! I’m here to be treated, Officer,” I indignantly echo.

  “Really?” He lets go of my elbow and looks me up and down. “And what exactly is wrong with her? She looks pretty healthy to me.”

  Oh shit. Both the lady and I hesitate.

  “Well?”

  “It’s, er, personal.”

  “Big coincidence, isn’t it? That you happen to need treatment and then, lo and behold!, one of the suspects from the story you need to cover is admitted too!”

  “Well, I am terribly sorry for being a coincidence,” I say in my best sarcastic voice.

  “Holly?” A voice interrupts us from behind. It’s Lizzie. “They’re calling you,” she says acidly, with eyes open wide and teeth gritted. She jerks her head pointedly.

  “Excuse me, Officer. But I have to go through for my treatment now.” And with this, I draw myself up, hold my head high and march over to Lizzie.

  “Of all the pig-headed, nasty, sly rats,” I rave at Lizzie as we follow a nurse down some corridors.

  “Er, Holly?”

  “Bad tempered, odious, repellent worm . . .”

  “Holly?”

  “Lily-livered, vicious, detestable—”

  “HOLLY!!”

  I jump. “What?”

  “Do you mind if we concentrate on me for a second?”

  “Of course not, Lizzie.” I rub her arm comfortingly. “After all, we are here for you. Do you know,” I continue, “that he was practically accusing that poor lady of—”

  “HOLLY! STOP IT!”

  “Right. Sorry. I’m one hundred percent here.”

  We follow the nurse toward a bed, where she draws a curtain around us and says that the doctor will be here shortly. We wait for a few seconds and I fume silently to myself.

  Finally I say, “Lizzie, would you mind if I just had a little poke around to see if I can find the bloke who’s been injured? He must be in here somewhere and I can’t stand the idea of that slimy git back there getting the better of me. I’ll just be a couple of minutes . . .” Lizzie waves her arm at me impatiently and I slip out into the ward.

  I start walking past the beds, wondering exactly how I’m going to find this person when I don’t even know his name (not released in my brief) or the type of accident he was involved in. I stop short as I spy something in a far corner.

  It’s an old-fashioned English bobby, dressed in the habitual black and white uniform and wearing a considerably more friendly expression than his plain-clothed colleague. He’s sitting next to a bed which is shrouded by curtains, sipping a cup of tea. I quell the desire to run over squealing with joy, which may alarm him somewhat, and instead execute a more steady pace.

  Ten minutes later I have all the information I need to make an excellent story. I have to cut short my jolly conversation with PC Woods as I spot my green-eyed friend striding up the ward toward me, and from the look on his face he has spotted me too. I nip out of a door behind me, resisting the urge to flip a V-sign, and then, with a smile I can’t wipe from my face, cut back round to Lizzie.

  “Lizzie?” I call from the other side of the curtains. “Can I come in?”

  “Yes, Holly.”

  I poke my head around the divide to find Lizzie sitting on the edge of the bed, gloomily staring ahead of her. “Been seen yet?”

  “No.”

  Before I can tell her about my news story, the curtain is flung to one side and a nurse asks, “Which one of you is Holly Colshannon?”

  “I am,” I say automatically, before my brain engages itself.

  She points at me and says to an approaching figure, “This is the patient.” The gorgeous Dr. Kirkpatrick stands before us.

  I have never been so embarrassed in my entire life. Never. The emotional scars from the last hour or so will be with me for a long time. I will probably never be able to have sex again without at least a year in
therapy.

  Dr. Kirkpatrick was still gorgeous. I know I said that I am in love with Ben and I am, but that doesn’t stop me admiring other people and, even worse, craving their good opinion. I think it would be quite fair to say that Dr. Kirkpatrick’s good opinion and I are destined never to meet. The first thing he said was, “You’ve been here before, haven’t you? I recognize the name.”

  Damn and blast it forever. The nurse was looking at me in rather a strange manner, as though I was a serial condom-bagger and did this on a regular basis.

  I went bright crimson and was completely incapable of saying anything. Unfortunately he wasn’t.

  “No need to be embarrassed. Pop your knickers off and get up on the bed.”

  Aaaarrgh! I could have killed myself! How mortifying is that! And what was my best friend doing in the midst of all of this? A very good question. She, too, was apparently struck dumb by his sheer beauty and was not quite ready to own up to her predicament. One wonders how far everything could have got before she had felt ready to own up.

  At this point I still hadn’t uttered a single word (charming or otherwise). I glared at Lizzie so viciously I expected her hair to go up in flames. It’s fair to say our friendship was hanging in the balance in those few seconds. She knew exactly what my look was saying—it was the business. Squinty eyes, the works. It wasn’t saying, “Could you give me a hand up on to the bed?” It was shouting, “OWN UP NOW!!”

  Things got worse. A minor tussle ensued between me and the nurse. She was trying to hustle me toward the bed with a, “Come, come, the doctor hasn’t got all day,” when at long last I found my voice. My face still burning, I bellowed, “LIZZIE, TELL THEM NOW.” At this point Lizzie simultaneously found her conscience and the ability to speak and told them that it was her with the problem and not me. I sank, absolutely exhausted, into the chair by the side of the bed. It’s not every day that you have an overenthusiastic nurse tugging at your knickers.

  We were then treated to a lecture from the nurse about practical jokes and wasting hospital time. She moved swiftly on to the state of the NHS for which, it seemed, Lizzie and I were solely to blame. Darling Dr. Kirkpatrick bustled around; he probably hadn’t seen such pandemonium since the last time I was in and I’m certain I will be the talk of the hospital staff room for some time. I can almost hear it now. I will become one of those stories that starts, “And do you remember the time when . . .” Cue raucous laughter.

  Now and then he patted a freshly weeping Lizzie on the arm and said, “It’s not that bad.”

  I felt like roaring, “Au contraire, Monsieur le Docteur, it is that bad. And don’t pat her, she doesn’t deserve a pat.”

  But it might have seemed a little uncharitable. Why I was worried about what would seem uncharitable in front of Dr. Kirkpatrick after what he had just witnessed I will never know.

  Excuse me, but I don’t want to talk about this any longer. It’s eleven o’clock in the morning and I have already been in a ruckus with a plainclothes police officer and been manhandled by a nurse who believed me to be harboring a condom with intent.

  Sod the Jaffa Cakes. I’m just going to have the brandy.

  two

  The Bristol Gazette wasn’t my first choice of newspaper when I started work fresh out of university four years ago. I had planned to live in London and was desperate to get on to one of the national newspapers, but applicants needed some really good work experience. My only work experiences were picking strawberries in the holidays (and I must be the only person alive to actually be fired from that) and some waitressing work. I realized I would have to lower my sights when I opened my twentieth rejection letter, and I would have taken ANYTHING by the time this job in Bristol popped up. And I was very lucky to get it because you have no idea of the sort of lies I had to tell to bag the position of sports correspondent. Really. You just don’t want to know.

  When Joe made the lightning deduction that I knew absolutely nothing about sport, which may have been at the same time I asked if Tiger Woods was seeded in Wimbledon, he put me on to features. I am the most junior of the junior members of the features team, which basically means I get all the jobs no one else will do. I seem to specialize in pet funerals at the moment. But it’s very hard to show off one’s superior writing skills when waxing lyrical about a cat: “...and Persil’s virgin white coat looked like driven snow against . . .” Yes. Exactly.

  It’s Friday and I am late into work as usual. Even though the paper’s offices are only a ten-minute drive across town, I just can’t seem to bring myself to make it there on time. As I stand waiting for the lift which will take me to the third floor, I try desperately not to think about yesterday’s hospital incident. The mere sight of white coats starts me twitching nervously. The lift arrives and the doors open. I zip in, only to run full-pelt into Smug Pete, the crime correspondent. He is carrying a large cardboard box. Such is the force of our collision, I nearly invert my own breasts.

  Smug Pete and I don’t get on. I think he is smug and he thinks I’m annoying (fair enough, I probably am). Luckily we don’t go through the pretense of liking one another.

  “Pete!” I gasp with a wince, resisting the temptation to sink to my knees clasping my mammaries, “what’s the box for? You’re not leaving, are you?” I add on hopefully.

  Smug Pete has a self-satisfied smirk on his face. I don’t do it very often, but this time I seem to have inadvertently banged the nail square on its proverbial head. Damn.

  Pete smiles a smug smile. “Just handed in my notice. Got a job with the Daily Mail. They’ve said I don’t need to work my notice so I’m off.”

  “Right. Well. Best of luck with that,” I spit out.

  “Thanks.”

  We shuffle around each other as he gets out of the lift.

  “By the way, Holly,” he says as the doors start to glide shut, “Joe wants to see you.” He smirks once more and the lift doors clunk home.

  I take a swift left toward Joe’s office on arrival at the third floor and knock on his door, just below the “Editor” sign. I am answered, as usual, by a bellowing, “COME!”

  He’s on the telephone and so I gaze round his office while he continues to lambast some poor bugger. It is the most impersonal room I have ever seen. It never ceases to amaze me how a man so large in life, metaphorically and physically, can have so little effect on his surroundings. He has no photos on his desk, just mounds and mounds of paperwork. There are no pictures on the wall or indeed any evidence of personal effects whatsoever. Ironically, I think this is because he loves his job so much. He puts the receiver down.

  “Joe, hi.”

  “Holly! How’s that cousin of yours? I looked for him in the Spanish Open last night.”

  While I was trying to get the post of sports correspondent, I made up an imaginary superstar sportsman cousin called Buntam. I was about to call him Bunbury after Oscar Wilde’s fictitious invalid in the country, but as soon as the first syllable was out of my mouth I realized Joe might get the literary connection. Buntam, bless him, clinched the job for me. The problem is that he plays championship golf (I’m nothing if not ambitious).

  “He was ill. Couldn’t play.”

  “Too bad! What was wrong?”

  “Er . . . flu.”

  “Flu?” Now he says it, flu doesn’t sound serious enough to keep Buntam out of a major championship.

  “Well, flu-like symptoms. It was typhoid actually.” I nod vigorously.

  “Typhoid? In Spain?”

  “Well, he didn’t catch it in Spain,” I hedge.

  “Of course he didn’t!”

  “That’s right! You know your tropical diseases, don’t you?” I beam at Joe. It’s just a pity I don’t know mine. Or where to catch them. “He caught it in, er, Africa?” Poor old Africa seems a large enough continent to harbor all manner of epidemics and Joe seems to be nodding sympathetically at this so I add more firmly, “Yes, Africa.”

  “What was he doing out there?”


  “In Africa?” I ask needlessly to buy some precious thinking seconds. Joe nods.

  “Er, well. He was playing golf, of course. For charity.” An unlikely vision flashes before me of the rugged plains and forests of Africa interspersed with twee little golf courses.

  Happily, the same vision doesn’t appear to Joe. “Gosh, that was unlucky!” he exclaims.

  “Well, you know Buntam. Disaster seems to dog his every footstep!” I resist the temptation to fan myself with one of the wads of paper from Joe’s desk.

  “He’s certainly jinxed! I mean, he’s played how many tournaments this year? Two? And both times I was away. And the things that have happened to him! Shame. Maybe I’ll catch him next time.”

  “Maybe!” But don’t count on it, I add silently to myself.

  I am so exhausted after the effort of my verbal gymnastics that it takes me a few seconds to remember why I am actually here. “You wanted to see me?”

  “Yeah. That was a good article you wrote yesterday on the Stacey fraud case.”

  “Oh, thanks.”

  “Is your friend OK?”

  “Lizzie? She’s OK.”

  “Good! Your story is part of the reason I wanted to see you. Pete is leaving.”

  “Yeah, I know. I just met him in the . . . er . . . in the . . .” I stumble as I remember that I shouldn’t be in the lift at a quarter past nine. I should be in the actual building. Joe waves my amnesia to one side.

  “But it’s good news for you! What’s the phrase? A foul wind that blows no fair? A fair wind that . . .” I think he may have got it right the first time. This is a nasty habit of his, mixing his metaphors. It’s quite tricky working out what he actually wants to say. I stop the agonizing.

  “Is it?” I ask warily.

  “Yeah, yeah, great news!”

  “It is?”

  “Yes, because do you know who the new crime correspondent is going to be?” Old Colshannon here may be slow on the uptake but I’m getting a pretty good idea. I blink nervously. Crime correspondent is a despised position and Smug Pete was on it in a last-ditch attempt to improve relations with the local police department (why Smug Pete would seem the obvious candidate I will never know). From what I can make out, the police are really aggressive toward us, we’re aggressive back and write bad stuff about them and so it goes on. When the police post becomes vacant, folks hide under their desks for days. It is a career black hole and I’m about to be sucked into it.