Click, Double-Click

by James Calum Campbell

‘But you wish to draw my attention to something?’

  ‘Yes. Nothing to do with Conference.’

  He frowned.

  I took out my piece of paper and went through my well-rehearsed routine. He resumed his Norman arch pose with his elbows resting on the arms of his chair, fingertips resting against pursed lips. He stared at me without blinking as I droned on. His eyes reminded me of Tallulah my reclusive flat mate. Half way through he had frozen solid. He had suddenly recognised me from our previous encounter. I detected the change in atmosphere. I was a madman. Somehow once again a crazy guy had infiltrated his domain. In a moment he would reach stealthily for the panic button beneath his desk and summon security.

  After I had finished my pitch there was a protracted silence punctuated only by the tick of the grandfather clock. He continued to stare at me icily. He might have bombarded me with questions but I could see him pitching them up and then discarding them. He was a very clever man. He kept his enquiries to a minimum.

  ‘You’ve told the police.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Whom else have you told?’

  ‘My colleagues, the psychiatrists, my medical defence union.’

  ‘And now you have told me.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘May I see your … doodlings.’

  ‘Take a copy.’ I pushed The Bottom Line across the desk top. It sat beside the sandglass. I had about two minutes to run.

  He picked up the wrinkled sheet without diverting his gaze. He held it just off the desk so that his view of me was unobstructed. Then, briefly, he dropped the direction of his gaze and scrutinised the grid. I had the impression of a computerised brain scanning an image. Then the cold watchful eyes settled back on me.

  ‘May I have note of your General Medical Council registration number.’

  I gave it. I could see no reason not to. He jotted it down. He need not have troubled. Ms Foye was taking minutes. He pondered for a few moments longer. I could sense he was evaluating risks. I had a sudden apprehension that we were not singing from the same hymn sheet. I was scared of a lunatic rampaging through the campus with a submachine gun. He was scared of a lunatic going public with a hair-brained piece of adverse publicity that was going to upset his Business Plan. I could hardly blame him. I was the anarchist who had nearly wrecked his exam board.

  Then he made up his mind. Still without diverting his gaze from my face, he crumpled the A4 sheet into a tight ball within the grip of a single powerful fist. Then he leaned across the desk and pushed the litter into the lapel pocket of my jacket. It sat there, bulging out, like a rosette.

  ‘Listen to me very carefully. I don’t know what your game is, but I will not allow you to expose the students and staff of this university to fear and anxiety as a result of a piece of arrant nonsense. If you persist in taking this further I will take steps to ensure that you never practise medicine in this country again. Don’t think I can’t. In short, I will break you. Let’s be clear.’

  He swatted me, like a fly. I grinned at him. ‘Gin clear. Crystal.’

  Back outside in the haar, there was a brief Shakespearian tag nagging away at the back of my mind.

  The proud man’s contumely.

  Funny word, contumely. It looks like an adverb, but it’s actually a noun. It means contempt.

  I wasn’t quite done with Clerk Maxwell that day. After my meeting with Professor Horton I wanted to bathe. I wanted to rid myself of the pungent miasma that had emanated from him and was now clinging to my clothes, my skin, like something poisonous out of Porton Down. So I walked over to the sports complex and bought a casual visitor’s ticket to the pool. The accommodation was Spartan enough. I slipped into my togs and crammed my outdoor gear into a tiny locker and went for a swim. I kept it brief. I didn’t have goggles and there was too much chlorine in the water. There was a women’s water polo team practising, and only one lane roped off for swimming. Twenty lengths, a shower, and back to change.

  There was a football team in the locker room, mud bespattered and voluble. Is there anything more tiresome than the conversation of men without women? Effing this and effing that. The whole sad business of the desperate bravado of being male is summed up in post-match locker room banter. I stood it for as long as I could but in the end I lost patience.

  ‘Put a sock in it.’

  The conversation came to a dead halt.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said save it for the pitch. Just tone your language down.’

  There was a big boy standing with his back to the changing-room entrance. He said to me, ‘Are you talking to me pal?’

  ‘Well I’m not chewing a half-brick, pal.’ It was a statement of provocation tantamount to an act of self-harm.

  My interlocutor turned pale. He was genuinely affronted. He said, ‘Why don’t you mind your own fucking business?’

  ‘And why don’t you step aside?’

  And I thought to myself, you are an idiot. You stick your nose into somebody else’s affairs and now it is going to be broken. I don’t know what would have happened; but abruptly the door behind him was pushed open and a tiny girl, maybe three years old, with a pink dress and blond ringlets appeared, followed by her father. She marched into the company of a dozen naked men with complete aplomb. A generation ago such a scenario would have been unthinkable. I suppose it is the inevitable consequence of collapsed marriages. This afternoon must have been the father’s precious time of access. There was no more profanity. A little girl succeeded where I had failed, and she didn’t even have to try.

  My putative assailant moved to one side and as I passed him he hissed.

  ‘Wanker. Ass-hole.’

  Maybe he’s right.

  XIII

  Back on the other side of the bridge, I told Caitlin to grab her kagool and we would go out for something to eat. We went to an Indian restaurant in Stockbridge. We walked. I remember pacing quickly across the Meadows with my hands in my pockets, deeply preoccupied. Caitlin clutched my arm and scampered along beside me. With extraordinary facility she texted ahead and booked the table. And did I want to order? Yes I’ll take a bhuna lamb with pilau rice and a chapati, onion bhajis on the side, and a pint of lager. Her thumb darted across the tiny console. ‘Sorted. Result.’

  It was very quiet in the restaurant. Even the canned Bollywood chanteuse with her backing combo of violins seemed subdued. There were only two other tables occupied. A lone diner sat quietly in a corner reading a book. And then the Hortons were dining en famille. Table for four. I tried to rationalise it. Edinburgh is only a village. They were a very good-looking family, all blond and blue eyed, terribly Aryan. It crossed my mind the name Horton had rather a Norse ring to it. Professor Sir Douglas had his back to the door, which was maybe just as well. I chose the table furthest from him, where I could hide behind the great drooping fronds of a climbing vine. My attempts to stay under cover were nearly scuppered when I managed to spill my pint, with a crash, all across our table. But the waiter unfussily cleared up the mess, put down a fresh tablecloth, and even brought me a fresh pint, gratis. Caitlin said to him apologetically, ‘I’m his carer.’

  The food came. I can’t remember what Caitlin had. It seemed little more than a piece of water cress. I don’t think she had an eating disorder; more like disordered eating. She said she’d have some pudding. She sipped a glass of dry white Sicilian Catarratto so pale it looked like water. She played with her water cress and occasionally reached her fork across and stole from my plate.

  ‘So what’s on your mind?’

  I had decided to tell her.

  ‘I met a man, a patient. He’s thinking about harming a lot of people. He doesn’t necessarily have a plan. But he’s thinking about it.’

  ‘What’s he going to do?’

  ‘Go on a rampage with a gun.’

  ‘Like Hungerford?’

  She lived in Cheltenham. It would be natural for her to choose Hungerford rather than Dunblane.

  �
��Yes.’

  ‘Tell the police.’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘What are they going to do?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Caitlin frowned. ‘That’s bad. So what now?’

  ‘They think we should leave it to the trick cyclists.’

  ‘The who?’

  ‘Shrinks.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The psychiatrists.’

  I was trying to keep my voice down but we were getting competition.

  ‘The standard of debate – well, Frances – it’s really quite embarrassing.’

  ‘I know, I know.’

  Professor Sir Douglas had a remarkably penetrating voice. It was a deep baritone with an edge to it, as if it were amplified through a megaphone. I wondered if Lady Horton might be deaf. Or was Horton just the sort of man who couldn’t care less that the other diners in a restaurant should know his business?

  ‘And in that frightful accent.’

  ‘Ugh! Don’t mention it.’

  ‘It reminds me of the former Mr Speaker.’

  ‘Not a speaker. They have a presiding officer.’

  ‘No no. I mean, dine scythe. Westminster. What was his name?’ Horton snapped his fingers impatiently. ‘Played the bagpipes.’

  ‘Alastair Campbell?’

  ‘Lord no, dear. The speaker from Springburn. Gorbals Mick!’ bawled Horton. ‘Dumyat does a brilliant impersonation.’

  ‘Uhrder! Uhrder!’ said Horton’s son, dutifully.

  Caitlin caught my eye, suppressed a conspiratorial giggle, and silently mouthed, ‘Dumyat?’

  The Hortons were chortling away. Not the girl. She was staring expressionlessly at her plate. I had an idea she had a long experience of silently enduring her parents in public places. She said something in a low voice.

  ‘Not snobbish at all. I think, Whangie, we have a right to expect that our leaders not be parochial.’

  This time Caitlin only managed to suppress a yelp of laughter by slapping a hand across her mouth. She composed herself, removed her hand, and mouthed at me again.

  ‘Whangie?’

  ‘But really–’ Horton resumed his public address, now speaking through a mouthful of vindaloo. ‘To return to the foot of the Royal Mile –’ He made a vague gesture south-east. ‘Just suppose our noxious rotund little first minister – and his charmless thin-lipped deputy – just suppose they had gained their precious independence, would we really have wanted them to represent us on the world stage? Do they really think they could cope, outside of their Holyrood high school debating society –’

  ‘A pretendy parliament.’ This from Dumyat, still in role as the ex-speaker from Springburn.

  ‘Little Alex.’ Horton was shaking his head. ‘Such a nimby. Scrap Trident, can you imagine? Doesn’t he realise we have enemies? We could be obliterated.’

  The girl named Whangie got up abruptly, tossed her napkin on to the table, and went to the loo. She was six feet tall and had a voluptuous body. Caitlin saw me look at her and gave me a kick under the table. ‘You were saying?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You went to the police.’ Now Caitlin was deliberately speaking in an overloud conversational tone. ‘They didn’t want to know. So what now?’

  ‘I’ve been freelancing. It’s like playing a game for three players. The good guy, the bad guy, and the authorities. You play the game for sport, and then you suddenly realise it isn’t a game. It comes at a cost.’ I thought of the falling masonry on Princes Street. ‘Then you don’t know who to trust. It’s a kind of fatal triangle. It’s like the Monty Hall problem.’

  ‘What’s the Monty Hall problem?’

  ‘You’re a contestant on a game show. The compere shows you three doors.’

  ‘What’s a compere?’

  ‘The emcee. The host of the show.’ I was hopelessly obsolete. ‘He says, “Behind one of these doors is a BMW. Behind each of the other two is a goat. Choose a door and I will open it and gift you what is behind.”’

  Caitlin wrinkled her nose. ‘I don’t like BMWs. Too kraut.’

  ‘As for Scottish Conservatism,’ Horton droned on remorselessly, ‘We really are in a sorry pickle.’

  ‘On the other hand,’ Caitlin was saying, ‘I’d quite like a nanny-goat. Very good for keeping the grass short.’

  ‘Anyway, you choose a door. Call it Door A. “Before I open it,” says the compere –’

  ‘The emcee.’

  ‘“Before I open it, I’m going to show you what is behind one of the other doors.” And he opens another door, Door B, to reveal a goat. Then he offers you the choice of changing your mind. So you can either stick with door A, or you can change and choose Door C.’

  ‘And this affects you how? What’s it got to do with your predicament?’

  ‘I thought I was on the side of the forces of law and order, but I’m beginning to change my mind. It’s as if Richard Hannay lost his faith in the Empire.’

  ‘Who’s Richard Hannay?’

  ‘Character in a shilling shocker. Imagine if he stopped trusting Sir Walter and Mr MacGillivray.’

  Caitlin opened her eyes wide. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘Mr Cameron. He’s still frightfully young.’ Frances Horton was being rueful. I wondered if she was a party activist. All that door-stepping and leafletting. Who could bear it?

  ‘But frightfully good, Frances. A safe pair of hands. And he has that ability to connect, I honestly believe it. Think what we tried and discarded during the wilderness years. Hague always looked like a sixteen year old at the party conference. Sledging in a peaked cap wasn’t a photo opportunity. It was a big mistake. Howard – remember “something of the night”? As for Duncan Smith – Well – he’s a nice chap but hardly leadership quality. “The quiet man has turned up the volume.” D’you remember? Where on earth do they dig up their speech writers?’

  ‘I know, I know.’

  ‘So the question is – do you stick with your original decision, or change your mind?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The goats.’

  ‘Sorry. I was listening to –’ She tilted her head in the direction of the Hortons.

  ‘You’re supposed to be helping me out with my dilemma.’

  ‘I’m on to it. Stick with your original decision.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it’s a fifty-fifty chance. Car versus goat. No point in changing.’

  ‘You’re wrong.’

  ‘You can take a horse to water.’ Lady Horton was despairing of the Scottish nation. ‘You can’t make it drink.’

  ‘I suppose,’ I mused, ‘we could ask le patron to turn up the Bollywood muzak.’

  ‘Le patron?’

  ‘The maitre d’.’ Whangie was walking back to the table. Caitlin gave me another kick.

  XIV

  ‘Tea?’ asked Forbes. ‘This Darjeeling is very good.’ Blue rimmed Minton crockery. Gracious.

  ‘Well, that was a very interesting talk you gave. But if you don’t mind my saying so, you haven’t the foggiest notion how to present a case.’

  Another gut-wrenching assault.

  ‘Oh, I don’t mean a clinical case. You can do that with your eyes shut. I mean a political one. It doesn’t matter how original and insightful your ideas are – and I do think some of them have weight – if your audience stop listening to you. Granted you had bad luck with the visual aids and the mic. But even so, if you tell the nurses they don’t know how to nurse, how on earth are you going to get them to put the drips up for you? It’s a question of pragmatism. Yes, you can present your case in an honest and direct way, and then go off in a huff when nobody pays any attention. Or you can use strategies to get people on board. I thought your chess grandmaster simile was very ill chosen. I had this image of you lording it around the department being cerebral while everybody else formed a team of servants running after you. You’re probably too young to remember a common variety act in which a juggler kept about a d
ozen plates spinning on poles across the stage. He would run from plate to plate giving them a burl. By the time he’d spun the last plate the first one’s spin had decayed badly and the plate was flopping around at a dangerous angle. He would rush across the stage to refresh the spin. The plates would run down at unpredictable rates and the audience took a kind of sadistic pleasure in watching the juggler run himself to exhaustion reacting to each impending disaster. I have the sense that you could be that juggler. You’re just the man to do it. You’re all heart, Alastair. You would run yourself ragged. Throttle back. It’s either that, or you will be burnt out inside ten years.’

  ‘I expect you’re right Forbes. But I’m not a political animal. Maybe I should just stick to seeing patients.’

  ‘Nonsense. What are you, a martyr? I’ve said it before. Learn to be political. And one other thing. Stop picking fights with people. Or at least, be a bit more selective. Choose the fights you can win, and the fights that matter. At the moment, you’re looking for a fight the way other people look for their dinner.’

  It was perfectly true. People would say to me, by way of light passing conversation, ‘I hear New Zealand’s a lot like Scotland.’ And I would snap back, ‘That’s rubbish! Yeah, right, it’s got lakes and mountains. But believe me, New Zealand is nothing like Scotland! New Zealand like Scotland? Pah! Nothing could be further from the truth!’ And they would look startled and take a step back. I wondered if I was turning into an absurd caricature, a kind of swaggering braggadocio. MacKenzie said I was like Don Quixote, tilting at windmills. I went around assaulting thoughts, ideas, and people entirely devoid of sinister malice. I was like one of these punch drunk individuals you sometimes saw shadow-boxing their way down Leith Walk. Or like somebody with Tourette’s, hurling obscenities randomly at startled passersby. I was particularly fond of taking up forlorn, lost causes. I might march with a body of men, but I would insist I was the only one who was in step. MacKenzie would sometimes catch sight of me across a room, filing another minority report. She would catch my eye, shake her head and whisper urgently.