Ferris leaned toward her, and said very seriously, “I tell you what, Dr. Berry. I’ve talked to a lot o’ people since I left the ‘ospital, and there’s not one doesn’t say the selfsame thing I do. No matter what the scientific rights of it might be, it’s now as matters—and right now I’m large as life and twice as natural, and I just wish the same was true for all those other poor bugg—poor devils as is lyin’ in ’ospitals all over the place right now. I mean, what if it does turn out not to last for always, this cure o’ yours—none of us is goin’ to last for always anyway! Could be run over tomorrer, couldn’t we? As I see it—and no one should know better’n me–it’s a cure you’ve discovered and that’s all about it. And I’m as grateful as—”
Suddenly her control snapped; she could feel the heat of temper rising in her and almost luxuriously let it go.
“If you were half as grateful as you profess to be, you wouldn’t have done so stupid a thing as to go and talk your head off in this nitwit fashion! Did it never occur to you—just once—that in common courtesy if nothing else you should have told me what you were up to?”
She could feel the silent startled audience as a weight across her back, but she no longer cared about them, no longer cared about anything but letting her anger vent itself into the relief of words, and she heard her own voice going on and on. “Just for the sake of a few miserable pounds you go and expose me to all this wretched nagging and chasing—not to mention the sort of fuss you’ve started at Brookbank. I tell you, as far as I’m concerned you’ve behaved abominably! You’ve been selfish and greedy while professing this great concern for other ill people—”
“’Ere, ’ang about a bit, Dr. Berry! There’s no call for you to go on at me like that! What’ve I done to make you so—I mean, it’s not right! I did it out of gratitude, talkin’ to the paper. I knew you was too modest and that to blow your own trumpet, so I reckoned as I’d blow it for you and get other patients helped like me. As for the money—” His monkey face creased even more into a ludicrous expression of anxiety. “I felt bad about that, I really did, and I told my—well, I decided, last week it was, I decided what was to be done with that money, and it’s gone already—well, most of it–gone to that relief society, the one that’s always advertising to buy comforts for cancer patients. So you’ve got no call to—”
The applause crashed out, and he turned and blinked at the audience, and his face lifted into a tentative grin, and he made a halfhearted V-for-victory gesture, but almost immediately turned his head back to look at her again, his eyes dark and questioning.
“Oh, all right. So it wasn’t just done for money,” she snapped, not waiting for the sound in the studio to die away. “All the same, if you’d stopped to think for just one moment you’d surely have realized what would happen when you got yourself—and me–splashed over every newspaper there is! You said you just wanted to blow my trumpet for me, and help other patients, but for God’s sake, Mr. Ferris, how could you possibly think all this would help other patients? Here I am, wasting time here and dealing with all this flap instead of getting on with my job. And I’m not the only person who’s been seriously held up by it all! There are other pieces of research going on at Brookbank, and people I work with are having to waste their time too, with all the—”
“Oh, come, Dr. Berry, I do think, if you’ll forgive my saying so, that you’re being less than fair to Mr. Ferris here!”
She blinked and looked up and beyond Ferris to see William Ross-Craigie leaning forward, his hands between his knees, and as she did so was aware of J. J. Gerrard sitting back, his arms folded as he regarded her with an expression of almost eager amusement on his face, and she wondered fleetingly why he should look at her so.
“I mean …” Ross-Craigie went on, his voice filled with a sweet reasonableness. “Mr. Ferris here isn’t as aware as you and I of the—er—the intricacies of laboratory life. He wasn’t to know that the—er—there might be people with whom you work who would be jealous and resentful of your successful endeavors and who would make your working life—urn—uncomfortable because of it. I believe Mr. Ferris genuinely did think he was acting for the best. I believe he truly does care a great deal for your work and—”
“I’m not going to talk to you about such matters as loyalty to working colleagues,” she said hotly. “You, of all people! After the way you behaved at Brookbank—” J. J. Gerrard leaned forward, and now there was no hint of a smile on his face but a greedily inquisitorial look.
“Dr. Berry, you must let me come in at this point. Why should you feel so very strongly about Mr. Ferris’s action? He’s told you he didn’t do as he did just for money. Is it perhaps true, and Dr. Ross-Craigie has suggested, that there are—er—other pressures being put on you?”
“Of course not! Complete nonsense. I can surely show a decent concern about the people with whom I work without it being suggested there are—that I’m motivated by anything but decent concern!”
“Yet, if you’ll forgive me, Dr. Berry, what comes across to me from your displeasure with Mr. Ferris is not so much a concern about the work itself as about these colleagues. From your response to Dr. Ross-Craigie’s remarks it’s pretty clear that there have been—er—internal problems, shall we say?—at your Establishment. You and Dr. Ross-Craigie worked together there some time ago, as we all know, and—well, one cannot help wondering.” He looked at her with his head on one side, his eyebrows raised in interrogation.
She stared back at him, and sharply became again aware of the audience, of the weight of their disapproval, and with the surge of her anger now dissipated by speech, felt the chill ripples of anxiety come seeping back. She had made a fool of herself, and she knew why, was aware that there at the back of her mind had been throughout the image of Oscar, hurt and embittered by the treatment he had received from Ross-Craigie, and the knowledge that he had wanted her to tell everyone about it. And she realized with equal clarity that her attempts to satisfy this unspoken demand of Oscar’s had not only failed but rebounded on her own head.
“Oh, there’s nothing wrong at Brookbank,” she said wearily. “Nothing at all. But surely you can understand that one needs peace and quiet in order to work well! All the commentary there’s been on my work—everyone seems very concerned that the treatment should be used, now, for patients. Well, I’ve told you why it can’t be yet. I’ve told you there’s a lot more research to be done. And I’m trying to tell all of you now that the more fuss there is, the longer it’s going to take to do it. When you come right down to it, I have to say it again, I’m most particularly upset by the premature publication of this work. That’s the real point for me ….”
J. J. Gerrard looked at her, as the audience moved and rustled in its rows, and then glanced at Ross-Craigie on his other side, sitting in arm-crossed sulkiness and clearly very put out by Harriet’s attack on him; and then at Ferris who sat shifting his gaze from one face to the other as he tried to understand what had gone wrong.
“Now, come on, Dr. Berry!” J. J. Gerrard said, and there was a very sharp edge to his voice. “While that sounds very—uh—public-spirited, full of scientific conscience and all that, I have to say that from my seat in the stalls what really comes over is your anxiety about the reactions of the people with whom you are working. That was quite an—uh—accusation you hurled at Dr. Ross-Craigie’s head there! Now let’s really get down to the nitty-gritty, hmm? Like most ordinary men-in-the-street, I always reckoned the doctors, the researchers, the lifesavers if you like, were above the sort of pettiness that most of us get involved with—the jockeying for position, the—uh—keeping up with the Joneses bit. But now, listening to you here tonight, I have a distinct impression that all is not as ivory as it might be in the ivory towers—”
His eyes, which had been fixed on her face all the time he was speaking, seemed to shift and glaze slightly, and she realized he was looking at something over her shoulder, and automatically turned her head. Lister was waving furiou
sly, one hand making tight rotary movements in the air, the other cupped over his ear. She turned back to J. J. Gerrard as he turned his swivel chair to face the camera.
“But that is something we’ll have to come back to in the next part of the program. Stay tuned, won’t you, and we’ll be back with you in a few momentary moments—”
There was a second or two of immobility and then Lister was hurrying across the cable-cluttered floor to clamber on to the platform, his face creased with anxiety.
“J.J.! For Christ’s sake, cool it, will you? The front office are going spare—they’ve had Monty himself on the line, not to mention the bloody ITA. And you’re to cool it. I tell you if the break hadn’t come as it did they’d have blacked you.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” J. J. Gerrard looked genuinely startled, and Harriet realized almost with amusement that this was the first time she had been sure that his face was accurately expressing what he felt. “What the bloody hell do they want me to cool it for? We’ve got a great thing going here, got onto something that’s really news, bloody marvelous television, and they wanted to black it? Why, for crying out loud? What’s bugging them?”
“It’s Monty, I think—you know what he’s like about medical stories. You’ve got to be straight up—no probing on the medical stuff unless you know there’s a quack to get at—and there’s someone at the ITA too, I tell you, who just isn’t happy about it—”
He stopped, and squinted a little, staring into space as he listened to the thin clacking coming from the single earphone strapped to his ear, and then he nodded and said, “Okay, Dave … J.J., David said we can fight it out afterward, but cool it now—we’re back on the air under the thirty, so get off this laboratory politics stuff and back to the running order we’d planned. He wants Sefton next … okay, Dave … ten seconds, studio … let’s hear it for J. J. Gerrard.” And he was off, scurrying off the platform, his shoulders hunched and his head well down as he ducked under the camera that barred his way.
Now Harriet could see the monitors again, with the audience clapping furiously, and then a shot of the platform with herself and J. J. Gerrard and Ferris and Ross-Craigie in their waxworks row.
“Welcome back to the program that really digs deep—” J.J. cried but he sounded almost perfunctory, with a hint of sulkiness underlying his words. “Back to discussion of the problems involved in medical research. For viewers who may have just joined us, we were talking about the—uh—communication problems of the scientists who work in this rarefied field of endeavor, as well as the problems of making the new treatments devised by our special guests tonight, Dr. William Ross-Craigie and Dr. Harriet Berry, as available as possible to as many people as possible. Dr. Ross-Craigie’s treatment is already sufficiently developed for practical use right now. Dr. Berry feels her treatment has received—uh–premature publication, and is concerned about the effects of this. Right, now read on! What we must go on to discuss is the search for ways of making this premature publication anything but. In other words, how is Dr. Berry’s treatment to be made—uh—available now? And how is Dr. Ross-Craigie’s treatment to be made available to all the people who need it? Let me ask you both something. Isn’t the main problem basically one very simple factor? Money? Isn’t that the only bar to helping hundreds of thousands of sick people?”
Ross-Craigie nodded heavily. “Of course it is. Money always is the biggest hangup we have—”
“And time.” Harriet cut in irritably. “Time—that’s what I need.”
“And time is money,” J. J. Gerrard said smoothly. “Money can provide time just as it provides everything else. So let’s get down to the real nitty-gritty, what do you say? Let’s look at this whole problem of providing money and time to work on these new lifesaving treatments, of making them available to everyone who needs them—how are we going to find that money, hmm? I have to tell you I invited representatives of the Government, Treasury and Health officials, to come here tonight and tell us what provision the State is prepared to make. I have to tell you that they couldn’t quite manage to accept. And I have to tell you that I for one wasn’t a bit surprised.”
Laughter rose and spread and someone at the back of the audience yelled, “Too busy voting themselves a rise in their pay!” And there was a spatter of clapping mixed with the laughter.
“No comment!” J. J. Gerrard called good-naturedly. “Still, I didn’t see much joy in settling for that! I made a few inquiries of my own, and as a result of them, I want to introduce to all of you somebody else—somebody who can give us some information even if the Treasury can’t. Ladies and gentlemen, may I present the man you meet every morning over your cornflakes and marmalade—Sir Daniel Sefton of the Echo—can we have a spotlight on Sir Daniel, please?”
The audience craned and stretched its composite neck as a light sprang up round Sir Daniel Sefton in the front row, and J. J. Gerrard leaned forward and smiled at him.
“Well, Sir Daniel? Would you care to comment?”
“Thank you, Mr. Gerrard. I’ll be glad to.” His voice was fairly quiet, but it carried an authoritative note that silenced the hiss of whispers moving through the rows of seats and that made it easy to hear every syllable.
“I of course share your concern that these treatments should be available as soon as possible. And on the basis of experience, I knew that the Government was hardly likely to provide much impetus. So, being a practical man, I set about finding some impetus. I am happy to tell you I met with some success. I now represent a consortium of people—financiers, businessmen, industrialists and the like—who regard these medical breakthroughs as of prime importance. We have established a sum of money—a very large sum indeed—and have already found suitable premises in which to establish a major research organization, where patients can be treated while at the same time research goes forward. Dr. Ross-Craigie is coming to us, and we wait only for a final decision from Dr. Berry to join us and work at our establishment in order to admit the first patients to the clinical unit.”
There was a short silence, and then a roar of approval came with a violence that made Harriet feel momentarily breathless, almost flattening her fresh wave of anger, this time directed at Sir Daniel.
To have announced in so public a way that she had been invited to join him was outrageous, and for a moment she wanted to jump up and shriek at him, “I won’t—I won’t—leave me alone—I won’t!”
J. J. Gerrard held up his hands, but the noise went on, yet despite it Harriet became sharply aware of another sound rising above it—of a single voice calling insistently. She peered into the dimness of the audience, puzzled, and then saw him, a tall middle-aged man standing up and shouting at the top of his voice. The audience seemed to become aware of him at the same moment, and stopped their noise, and J. J. Gerrard saw him too and called, “You have something to say, sir?”
The man nodded eagerly, and shouted, “Indeed I have—my God, I have. I want to say that this country needs people like Sir Daniel as much as—more than—it needs scientists—and I want to say that though I may be no industrialist or banker, just an ordinary bloke, I want to show how much I care about what he’s trying to do. Like Mr. Ferris up there, I want to take my share—and I offer a regular five percent of my pay packet to help in the work—”
There was a sudden hush, and J. J. Gerrard looked at him for a long moment. “Well, that is the most … I really can’t say …” He shook his head and bit his lower lip, so that the audience could clearly see how moved he was. “I don’t know what to say …”
“And I will too—” came a sharp call from the other side of the studio, and after a very brief pause, three more people jumped to their feet and shouted, and then it seemed as though almost all of them were on their feet, all waving and shouting; and looking at the faces she could see as spotlights swung to pick out sections of the audience, Harriet felt a sudden chill of fear. They looked so blank, so brightly blank, and it was as though she weren’t in a real p
lace at all, as though these were shadows of real people whose substance had been left somewhere else.
Sir Daniel stood up, and moving forward spoke quietly to J. J. Gerrard, and then jumped onto the dais, and turned to face the audience, holding his hands up to them in exactly the same controlling gesture the other man had used, that J. J. Gerrard himself had used, fingers spread wide, the palms downward, moving his arms up and down. “Like a marionette operator,” Harriet thought, almost seeing the fine threads running from each finger to the people in the rows before him.
They stopped, gradually, and sat down, and Sir Daniel waited for an impressive moment before speaking.
“I’ve always known the people of this country are the most responsive and responsible in the world. And tonight has proved it. So spontaneous and wholeheartedly a generosity is humbling to see. It makes me feel a deep gratitude and pride in being an Englishman.—No, please—wait. Hear what I have to say. Much as we—and I know I speak for my colleagues in the consortium–much as we are touched and moved by your warm response, much as we would like to let you all feel that you too have a part in forwarding this particular work, I have to tell you that we can’t, we simply can’t, accept your splendid offers. And for a very simple reason. We are a business consortium, not a registered charity. We cannot legally accept charitable gifts of money. To do so, we would have to be licensed, as it were, by the Government, and the wheels of Government grind so slowly—indeed, that is why we set up our scheme in the first place—that we just saw no sense in wasting time applying to make the scheme operate on money collected from the great-hearted public of which you are all such splendid examples. May I ask you, if you want to give so generously to research, to send your money to those bodies which do exist as charities? I will see to it that the Echo publishes a list of them in the next day or two, so that you here tonight, and those among the watching millions who I know share your great-heartedness, can know where to send their donations—”
A Time to Heal Page 13