“But you haven’t any staff yet, have you? The labs and rooms I’ve seen are all empty.”
“Ah!” His affability returned immediately. “What can I do? I have in fact a great deal of staff for this section on the payroll already. Technicians, statisticians, physicists, computer programmers—you haven’t seen the computer yet, of course. A really outrageously expensive piece of equipment, that—but none of them are here yet for a very good reason. I’ve shown you the cancer research side of the establishment. The heart research side is already very busy, well staffed and active. But there, that division has its head of research, Dr. Ross-Craigie. This one hasn’t.”
He looked at her, his head on one side, and then smiled again and took her arm. “But there, I mustn’t go on like this, must I? You’ll accuse me of having an ulterior motive—which of course I have! This way, now.”
He talked only of inconsequential things as they left the cancer research wing behind and moved across a paved courtyard, in the middle of which a ferociously modern brass fish vomited water into a broad green bowl surrounded by banks of very luxuriant plants, and into the heart research division. And she knew why he chattered on, giving her neither need nor opportunity to answer him. He wanted her to see all she could, to recognize the lavishness of his establishment, and marvel.
And of course she did; she couldn’t fail to do otherwise. Everything she saw was so incredibly expensive; even the breath of deodorized warm air that occasionally made itself felt as they passed a corridor junction spoke eloquently of the most costly air-conditioning and heating systems. To have equipped so remarkable a place in so short a time—for even if he and his consortium had started work on it the moment they had heard the first rumors of Ross-Craigie’s success, they had had only a few months in which to operate—was a remarkable achievement.
And though she didn’t want to, she could not help comparing what she saw with the conditions under which she had worked at Brookbank for so long. The converted sheds that were her animal pens, the cobbled-up consoles and gauges she had to use to control her treatments in the oxygen chamber, the collection of antiquated calculating machines which was the nearest they had to a computer—it was pathetic compared with this lavishly flowing cornucopia of facilities.
And the staff, too; this part of the establishment was humming with activity, people bustling along corridors, doors swinging open to show heads bent industriously over lab benches, and uniformed nurses pushing wheelchaired and trolleyed patients from place to place. They had a cheerful purposeful look that again compared very favorably with the slightly weary ploddingness most of the Brookbank staff displayed. The only thing that was the same, she noticed with a spark of amusement, was the way they reacted to the sight of Sir Daniel. They showed the same wary, slightly scornful expressions of respect the Brookbank staff displayed when Oscar made his somewhat majestic way along the corridors.
“And here we are!” Sir Daniel said, opening a door and ushering her into an office that was decorated in vivid splashes of orange and lime green. “Dr. Ross-Craigie’s sanctum. I’ll let him know you’re here. Do sit down and be comfortable, won’t you?”
He crossed the room to a door on the far side to ring a bell that was fixed to the jamb and came back to help her out of her coat, bustling a little as he settled her in a chair.
The door opened, and William Ross-Craigie came in, his hair vigorously sleeked back across his scalp, his square glasses clamped to the bridge of his nose in a way that announced, as clearly as if he had worn a placard, “I-am-a-scientist-at-work!”
“Harriet, my dear!” He took his glasses off with a sharp twist of his wrist, shook hands with her with dispatch, replaced his glasses, and sat down in a straight-backed chair, all in one cohesive movement. “Splendid to see you! What can I do for you? You said a professional matter, so we won’t waste any of our time with superficial chitchat, hmm? What’s your problem? I’ll do all I can to help, of course.”
She blinked, and then stared at him, curiously tongue-tied. It had seemed the obvious and sensible thing to do, yesterday, when she had phoned him and asked to come here this morning. Why should she feel so uncomfortable now? Damn it, this young man had been her junior at Brookbank for a very long time, had deferred to her not only because of her seniority but because of her greater scientific ability, and she had accepted that as her due. Yet now, facing him sitting there in a laboratory coat that was almost insulting in its brilliant whiteness, its perfect crispness, she felt as though she were the one who ought to be humble before him. The realization of the effect his posturing had had on her made her angry, and she spoke with a sharpness she had not intended.
“I don’t, of course, intend to waste your time, William. I came to offer you a patient. I hope you don’t feel patients are too time-consuming to interest you.”
“My dear Harriet! Did I give that impression? Do forgive me! I’m afraid we work at a much greater pace here, you know. Greater than you’re used to, that is. It’s one of its charms for me—so like the Stateside places I worked in. So invigorating, you know what I mean? Not a bit like dear old sleepy Brookbank!”
“Not that sleepy. I’ve managed to stay awake long enough to do some useful work there, anyway. For my part, the quality of work one does depends not so much on external conditions as on the inner equipment one started out with. You can’t get that out of expensive catalogues.”
“Oh, oh, oh!” Ross-Craigie beamed at her, and looked over her shoulder at Sir Daniel, and it was as though he’d winked at him. “Do I detect a note of green old jealousy there, Harriet? My dear, I do understand! The first time I was shown over an American laboratory, I hated them for having so much! And this place—my dear, Whyborne is twice, three times as good as any lab I ever saw there. But I’m sorry to have been so … well, you know how it is! Every place has its own special … ambiance, you could say, and I guess ours here is of pace and worthwhile effort and endeavor. You can’t waste a second here, not one second. There’s something in the very fabric that makes you give of your best the whole time, won’t let you waste a thing.”
“Then I won’t waste your time. Simply, William—”
“If this is a professional matter, perhaps I had better go?” Sir Daniel said from behind her.
Ross-Craigie looked up at him, and his eyes narrowed slightly. “Mmm? Oh! I see!—er, no—no, please don’t! I’m sure Harriet won’t object. After all, you’re heading this establishment, so you have a professional involvement with anything that happens here. And I’m sure you won’t mind, Harriet, when I tell you that Sir Daniel sits in on a great many of our scientific discussions. He asked us to try to—er—help him learn as much as he could about research, and this is an excellent way to do it, isn’t that so, Sir Daniel?”
She looked over her shoulder at the older man’s face, and as he caught her eye he looked as near to embarrassed as she had ever seen him. Clearly Ross-Craigie’s sledgehammer tactics were intolerable to him, in his guise of subtle manipulator, and she almost smiled. There was at least some humor to be found in this situation.
“I don’t object in the least,” she said. “How could I, after all? I’m in no position to do so.”
There was a pause, and then she said baldly, “I want you to take a relation of mine, William. He had an infarct on Saturday night, late. Sam Lemesurier gave him emergency treatment, and he’s in Brookbank now, but he can’t stay there. I want him to come here for treatment by you. I’ve brought his notes. You’ll find all you need there—cholesterol levels, ECG tracings, complete blood picture.” She took the package of notes from her handbag, and gave them to William, who settled back, immediately surrounding himself with concentration, and began to read.
She watched him for a moment, and then shifted her gaze to stare out of the big picture window at the gentle Buckinghamshire countryside beyond. It was a gray and white day, with traces of frost still edging the stark black arms of trees, and trailing narrowly along grass verges an
d under hedges. She could see birds minutely wheeling and swooping far away, over a tractor absurdly small as a child’s toy which was turning a yellowish stubbled field into a rich deep brown, and wished, quite violently, that she was a bird or a worm or a tractor driver, anything rather than herself sitting here listening to Ross-Craigie concentrating over George’s notes.
“He seems to have done very well, considering,” Ross-Craigie said eventually. “But he’s an old man. And in my experience, I’m afraid, the older patients need more treatment. They haven’t the stamina to tolerate concentrated effort, you see. One must tailor it to their individual needs. For him, I’d say at a guess, he’d need a couple of months here.” He looked up at her, and then bent his head to fold up the notes and carefully replace them in the folder.
“I see. Well, if necessary. Will you take him?”
He frowned a little, and sat turning the notes in his hand, tapping each comer in turn on his knee. “Are you suggesting he come here as a normal patient, Harriet? That we book him a bed in the unit? I have a couple of beds to offer, but—” He looked up at her very directly. “Look, Harriet, forgive me for saying this, but I know your situation—goddammit all, I worked with you long enough. I know the sort of miserable money they pay Brookbank people, even the best of them. Can you afford to send a patient here? Or has he enough money of his own?”
“Afford? I don’t know. I’ll do my best. George has a little of his own, and I’ll subsidize the rest.”
Ross-Craigie looked up at Sir Daniel again, and raised his eyebrows. “Over to you, Sir Daniel. I really can’t—Harriet, Sir Daniel is the person to talk to about this. Not me. I can only discuss the research side, the treatment side.”
“Is Mr.—er—I don’t know the name of the patient we’re discussing?”
“Berry. My father-in-law.”
“Ah, yes. Mr. Berry. Is he a—how shall I put it? Is he a worthwhile patient from your point of view, Dr. Ross-Craigie? Can you treat him successfully?”
Ross-Craigie nodded. “Oh, yes. Almost undoubtedly.” He kept his eyes fixed on Sir Daniel who was still standing behind Harriet, out of her line of vision. “I must tell you, Harriet, that these notes, slender as they are, indicate a patient who would respond well to treatment as long as enough time was allowed, for his general frailty, that is. But as I said it would mean a good deal of time.”
“How much?” Harriet said baldly. “Not time. How much money?”
There was silence, and then Sir Daniel moved across the room, to stand with his back to the window, so that his face was partially shadowed.
“The cost of a month’s treatment of a coronary patient here averages out at somewhere between a thousand pounds and fifteen hundred. I imagine, from what Dr. Ross-Craigie says, that in this case it would be nearer the greater figure.”
“Undoubtedly,” Ross-Craigie murmured. “And as I said, a couple of months.”
“And we do have a major problem here,” Sir Daniel said smoothly. “Independent though we are of Government pressures, we are of course subject to the rules of—ah—our own making. We had to make a firm statement of intent at the very start if we weren’t to jeopardize the very existence of this establishment. We knew, full well, that if we did not make such a rule, so sensitive are we—our staff—to the needs of patients, that we would—urn—shall we say, we would be likely to accept every patient who came for care, irrespective of his ability to contribute the cost of that care. And within a few months, generous as was our foundation sum, we would be bankrupt. This must not, of course, be allowed to happen. To destroy a potential power for good of the sort we have here at Whyborne, by misguided philanthropy aimed at individuals rather than at the mass of need, would be—”
“You’re saying that people who cannot pay will never be treated here. That the Clarion was right, in saying that this place is to be used only for the very rich?” Harriet cut in. “Let’s be direct and not waste any time!”
“Then, yes. That is what I am saying. I don’t like to be put into a defensive position on this, but so many people hold such woolly sentimental views that totally ignore the real practicality of the situation, so many people show absurd and unthinking emotion when they hear that a medical establishment does not intend to become the sort of useless place a charity institution inevitably is—consider the National Health Service—that I find I do produce a defense, almost automatically. In fact, it is not so much a defense as a statement of good intent. However, that is not the point—”
She stood up and smoothed her skirt with both hands, and buttoned the jacket of her suit, keeping herself busy so that she need not look at either of them.
“Then there’s no point in any further discussion,” she said, and her voice sounded thin and flat in her own ears. “I can’t, of course, afford to pay three thousand pounds. We just don’t have anything approaching that sum available. So there it is. I’ll have to find some other way of looking after my father-in-law.”
“Well, now, let’s not jump to conclusions!” Sir Daniel said, and there was a note of jocularity in his voice that made her look up sharply. He was smiling at her, his head on one side in what she was beginning to recognize as one of his most characteristic poses. “Do wait and hear the remaining content of our statement of intent. We wanted to attract the finest staff to our establishment. Wanted to offer them the best we could, not only in working conditions, equipment, facilities and the rest, but in salaries, staff welfare, and—um—allied matters. So as part of our constitution it is laid down that treatment for members of staff and any one member of their family they nominate should be quite free of any charge.”
15
SHE NEVER KNEW how she managed to drive back to Brookbank without smashing the car and herself with it; from time to time she became aware of herself driving, noted road signs and traffic lights; from time to time she was startled to find she had reached a particular point on her route. But for most of the long hours she was lost in a welter of thoughts that ran round and round in her head like mad mice.
He had offered her lunch, offered a car to drive her to the nearest station, had done all he could to make her feel important to him; it had reminded her of the way David’s mother had behaved when she had first visited their home; but that thought brought back into her mind the core of her dilemma—George. What was she to do about him? What could she do that would be right for him, and right for her, and right for Oscar and—
And so it had gone on as she drove through the drooping twilight and early darkness, and by the time she reached the short stretch of side road that led from the main highway down to the driveway and the gates of Brookbank she was stiff and numb with that sort of edgy fatigue that forbids sleep and relaxation but that continually creates more exhaustion with its demands for conscious attention. She wanted, quite desperately, to crawl into a hot bath, to drink a great quantity of hot tea and then to creep into bed to stay there for days on end. But she had to get back to the unit to see how George was.
And, she remembered with sudden guilt, to check with Catherine and John on the day’s work, and the state of the animals. Not even when Patty had gone down with a severe attack of measles and had had to be admitted to the local hospital, or when Gordon had nearly killed himself on his bicycle and had needed half his scalp sewn up in the casualty department, had she been so remiss about work, so wrapped up in her personal concerns.
But then, she thought bleakly, I wanted them to get well. I did the best I could for them, and wanted them to get well, and got on with my work while I waited. But this time, it’s different. This time I have to keep making decisions.
She swung the car into the short twisting driveway that led to the front gates, and braked sharply, peering ahead through the dimness, puzzled about something but unable to realize for a moment just what it was. And then she noticed that the lights that were strung along the curving old roadway were dark, and realized at the same time that they had been out on the other road as well. E
ver since she had left the highway, she had been driving only by the car lights. She strained her head to one side, and listened, and was even more puzzled, for somewhere ahead of her there was noise and confusion and other lights that should not be there.
She got out of the car, moving awkwardly in her cold weariness, and stood still in the darkness, smelling the heaviness of rotting leaf mold and damp earth, and listened. The car engine chugged softly beside her, but above it she could hear confused shouts and a sort of high yet hoarse chanting, and she thought confusedly: it sounds like a lot of drunken monks playing about with their plainchant. And then, irritated at herself, she shook her head and got back into the car. Whatever it was, she’d never find out here, out in the darkness of the road.
She put the car into gear and slowly moved forward to curve around the last bend of the driveway; ahead of her should have been just the porter’s lodge flanking the gates, the single light suspended from the arch of rather rusty iron which was all that still remained of the original design, put up by the Georgian petty squire who had built the house, burning above her. It should have been dim and quiet and peaceful, and for one brief moment she thought she was half-asleep and seeing things that weren’t there, so startling was the sight before her.
The driveway seemed to be paved with a mass of people, seething and rolling and heaving under smokily bright lights that were blazing flames that seemed to leap out of the crowd. She blinked at their haloed brilliance, feeling the cruelly sharp light almost piercing her tired eyes, and then peered again, and saw the flames came from old-fashioned naked torches which were being waved about by a few people. There were probably no more than half a dozen of them, but in her tiredness they seemed multiplied many times over.
The sound was even less understandable here than it had been a hundred yards up the driveway; the chanting was louder but just as confused, the shouting angrier but no more comprehensible. Irritably she wound down the window, and put her head out and shouted, “Get out of the way! Let me through—” but her voice was lost in the din.
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