George Barnabas - 04 - Fourth Attempt

by Claire Rayner

  But it was difficult to concentrate and after a while she put down her pen and leaned back in her chair, trying to sort out her thinking. Last night, when she’d reached A & E, she’d found Sheila holding court in her cubicle, clearly rather enjoying her status as heroine of a Dramatic Event, and talking far more than she should, George suspected, for the pleasure of hearing her own voice, which was undoubtedly sounding somewhat sexy because of its new huskiness. Sheila was getting increasingly desperate to retain what she regarded as her allure as she reached middle age still unattached. Her evermore urgent search for a husband was something everyone in the hospital knew and joked about. An episode like this was one she would milk of all possible value for as long as possible. George foresaw some weeks of disruption in her department in consequence, and was ashamed of herself for even thinking about it in the face of Sheila’s undoubted misfortune. The fact that Sheila herself was less than warm in her reception of her boss didn’t help.

  She was all charm to Zack, who came to stand on one side of her trolley while George went to the other, but was decidedly distant with George herself. She responded to any attempt by George to be cheerful by looking lugubrious and producing another painful cough, but when Zack said something lighthearted she flashed him a vivid smile. Clearly, George had told herself grimly as she left A & E, Sheila was going to punish her for being so irritable with her last week. Good technician though Sheila was, there were times when George heartily wished her anywhere but at Old East. As she had told Sheila bluntly when they had their fight last week. Was that why she was being so hateful now? Or could it be that she in some way blamed George for what had happened to her car?

  George had stopped short in the middle of the department. What was it Sheila had said to Zack, carefully not looking at George when she said it? ‘It’s strange the way things happen,’ she’d murmured, peeping up at Zack beneath her lashes. ‘One week someone wishes horrible things will happen to shut you up, and the next week, there you go! Just like having your fortune told. Do you read your stars, Dr Zacharius? I always do.’

  No, George thought, moving again as a patient in a hurry almost careered into her. I’m being paranoid. Sheila was using one of her chat-up techniques. Even when she’s flat on her back on a trolley, she’s on a manhunt.

  She’d already said goodnight firmly to Zack when they’d taken Sheila out of A & E and off to the ward, bearing assurances from George that she’d come to see her on her way into the lab in the morning (to which Sheila responded with a wintry little smile aimed at the gallery) and then had turned to go.

  ‘No drink?’ Zack had said. ‘By now I was thinking a little supper too mightn’t be a bad idea. There’s something I’d like to talk to you about, and it would be easier with elbows on a shared table. There’s a great fish-and-chip place not too far away that does the best fillet of sole I’ve ever had.’

  George, smarting after Sheila’s reception of her, might have wavered, but had immediately stiffened at that. She knew perfectly well which fish-and-chip restaurant he meant: Gus’s star establishment, where the engraved glass windows and the silver on the tables glittered and the fish was the most succulent and the chips the most crisp and golden you’d get anywhere in London — where could it be except in one of Gus’s restaurants? He owned eleven now and they showed no signs of losing their charm for their multitude of customers.

  But she couldn’t be seen in one of them tonight. Interested though she was in what Zack wanted to talk about (her native curiosity, always one of her most developed features, had twitched with delicious anticipation at his words) his suggestion of that particular restaurant had reminded her that there was still the possibility that Gus might get home at a reasonable time. She doubted it, but… Well, she wouldn’t eat at the restaurant, all the same. Not with Zack, at any rate.

  ‘I’m going home, Zack,’ she said. ‘It’s been a bit of an evening one way and another and I’m bushed. See you tomorrow, maybe? And thanks for your help with Sheila.’

  ‘I did nothing,’ he said, making no attempt to argue with her. ‘I was just there at the time. OK, George. I’ll tell you what I wanted to discuss with you some other time. If it’s not too late.’ He smiled as the shadow of frustrated inquisitiveness passed over her face. ‘Goodnight, then.’ And to her surprise he leaned over and kissed her cheek briefly.

  The fact that she had found it rather agreeable made her thoughtful all the way home, as did her itching to know what on earth he might wish to discuss with her; and when she arrived and found that contrary to her expectations Gus was there, she was even more thoughtful.

  He was in the kitchen twiddling with various dishes — as usual he had out nearly every pan she possessed — and happily slicing garlic and ginger into a balsamic marinade. It smelled wonderful and she stood at the kitchen door watching him silently for a moment or two till he looked up and saw her.

  ‘Hi there, dollychops! How’s this for a bit of a treat?’ he cried and then bent his head to his slicing again. ‘This concoction is going to be stuffed inside that luscious bit o’ sea bass you see over there looking sorry for himself on the draining board, and then he’ll be baked in the oven and we’ll have him with a pan of rosti and some wilted rocket and spinach salad on the side. Who needs fancy chefs when they’ve got me, eh, darlin’?’

  She found her voice. ‘That fish looks more furious with you than sorry for itself,’ she said, for indeed the fish did have an evil glitter in its full round eyes, as well as on its silvery sides. ‘I didn’t expect you tonight. You didn’t say —’

  ‘Surprise, surprise.’ He finished the chopping and wiped his hands on the tea towel he had tucked into his belt, showing great satisfaction at his handiwork. ‘Give this half an hour, no more, and you will eat a dinner fit for a pathologist.’ He looked at her now and his forehead creased. ‘Well, you don’t have to look so fed up! I thought you’d be tickled I managed to get away so early! I picked up the fish on the way home. I thought I’d have it all ready when you got here and we’d have a lovely greedy sexy evening. And look at you! Face like you’ve lost a half-crown and found a tanner.’ Then his voice changed. ‘What’s up, love?’

  It always infuriated her when she wept. It didn’t happen often and every time it did it was unexpected. Now the tears trickled down her cheeks and as she sniffed lusciously he came trotting across the kitchen to take her face between his garlicky hands.

  ‘Hey, doll, what is it? What happened? A nasty bod got to you? Or has someone been coming the old acid? Just you point me at him and I’ll break his arm off and bash him with the soggy end. Tell old Gus all about it.’

  She shook her head, swallowed and pulled back. ‘Your hands stink,’ she managed huskily. She sniffed again and drew the back of her hand across her nose. He lifted his hands to his own nose, sniffed hard and shook his head. ‘Smells lovely to me. What is it, love? Don’t go changing the subject now. What happened?’

  She told him about Sheila and he listened, concentrating entirely on what she was saying, then put his arms round her and held her closely, crooning into her ear. There was no joking now.

  ‘It’s all right, dollychops. These things happen. You’ve got a nasty case of the might-have-beens. It’s harder to cope with sometimes than the really-did-happens. Sheila’ll be all right as long as she got out before she was burned, and you say she did. She got a nasty fright and a throat full of muck, I dare say, but no worse than that. It does you credit to be so upset over her, but honestly, she’ll be all right.’

  George let herself weep on. It was luxurious to do so, and it saved her having to come up with anything logical to say. She knew why she was weeping: it was indeed stress over the might-have-beens; she might have been having a drink and supper with Zack Zacharius in Gus’s own restaurant, while he sat here forlornly with his sea bass and lovingly prepared marinade and chilled wine, wondering what sort of emergency had pinned her down at the hospital. He wouldn’t have doubted for a moment that that was wh
ere she was; would never have dreamed she was cavorting with someone else, but she would have been. She wept on, feeling almost as though she had actually done it.

  After a little while though, Gus had taken the tea towel from his belt and begun to dry her face with it. She had grimaced. It smelled even more of garlic and ginger than he did, and she spluttered at him, ‘Stop! I’ll smell like the fish all day tomorrow if you go on anointing me with that!’

  He laughed. ‘Better than smelling of the job the way you sometimes do,’ he said comfortably.

  Her tears stopped at once and she reared back and stared at him. ‘Gus! Are you saying I smell of the mortuary?’

  He looked considering. ‘I’ve known you to.’

  ‘Oh, no! I shower and wash my hair and scrub and —’

  ‘Oh, I mean before you’ve done that,’ he said, and grinned. ‘There were times I’ve been there stinking too. It’s a horrible job, ’n’t it? Garlic’s much nicer.’

  ‘I hate you,’ George said, rubbing at her face with both hands. ‘I’m going to shower now. You get on with your fish, and for pity’s sake, wash your hands.’

  He did both and by the time she came out of the shower, glowing with the hard scrub she’d given herself with half a tub of the most expensive exfoliating cream she had, her hair doubly shampooed and tied up elegantly in a deep blue silk scarf that matched her housecoat, dinner was ready, spread on the little table which he’d brought into the living room out of the squalor that was now the kitchen.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll clear up afterwards. Not a dish shall you wash tonight,’ he said. ‘I’m going to spoil you.’

  He was as good as his word. The dinner was perfect, ending with a crème brÛlée that first he swore he’d made himself and then admitted he’d brought from one of the restaurants he’d inherited from his father, and which he still ran in tandem with his police job, with great skill and considerable financial flair. (‘And don’t it taste unbelievably home-made? I tell you, we’re the best restaurants in the whole bleedin’ East End!’) Afterwards he cleaned up, whistling tunelessly through his teeth throughout, the way he did when he was particularly contented, leaving her stretched on the sofa in a pleasant post-prandial doze, refusing to think about Sheila, or her confusion over Zack. All was well. Gus was home and what more could she want?

  Now, sitting at her desk in the path. lab office, leaning back with her hands linked behind her head, her lips curved a little reminiscently. When Gus was in the happy mood he had been in last night, lovemaking was something else. And his mood had been particularly happy.

  Afterwards, as she half dozed, curled up in the crook of his arm, he had told her why he was so pleased with himself. ‘Special new job, sweetheart. You remember Bumble Bee? The all-out effort to prevent burglary? Well, we’re doing something similar on our patch to pre-empt some of these buggers who come in with fancy ideas about uniting to make families to run things on the villains’ side. They get their ideas from watching cruddy American movies about Godfathers and they’ve got to be stopped. You remember how it was with the last case.’

  She remembered. She’d had to work very hard indeed to sort out the mess he had got himself into and she opened her mouth to say as much. But he rode over her, and she let herself slide back into sleepiness.

  ‘Well, it seems they’re trying again. We’re getting a bit of a whisper from here and there, so we’re going in with all the airy grace of Saddam Hussein with a boil on his bottom to clobber them before they so much as get a packet of paperclips ready for their first meeting.’ He tightened his arm around her. ‘I might be out and about a bit more than I usually am. Can you put up with that?’

  She had snorted softly, her sleepiness banished suddenly. ‘Do I have a choice?’

  He was silent for a moment and then said uncomfortably, ‘Well, I guess not, doll. But I’ll tell you what. I’m going to book us a holiday before I buckle down to all this. Just a week, maybe, in France or Spain? We’ll just get in the car, pip through the Tunnel, and then take the route south. How about that? Would you like a bit of French nosh and scenery?’

  ‘Before you start the new project?’ George said, rousing herself. ‘But I’m not sure I can get the time off that easily.’

  ‘Well, tell ’em you’ve got to. You haven’t had a holiday for ages.’

  ‘That’s true, but —’

  ‘So it’s high time. Tell ’em we’re off — oh — next week.’ He began to sing growlingly into her ear an old-fashioned version of ‘The Vagabond’s Song’, which burbled about ‘bed in the bush with stars to see, bread I dip in the river — there’s the life for a man like me, there’s the life for e-e-e-ever’, and she’d fallen asleep to it as to a lullaby.

  Now she sighed, straightening in her chair as she tried to concentrate again. Life was just a little more complicated than it ought to be … She had to think of work and coping somehow until Sheila was back, and dealing with Zack next time she saw him, and … ‘Oh, hell!’ she said aloud.

  By lunchtime when she’d finished her post-mortem and reported death from natural causes to the coroner’s officer, and had showered (scrubbing herself extra hard again with the memory of Gus’s teasing in her memory’s ears) she’d reassured herself that she was being as silly as Sheila was on one of her worst days. Zack Zacharius had only asked her out to dinner last night out of concern for her distress over Sheila (she refused to think about what he might want to talk about; it was probably something minor and just a ploy to get her to make a date) and there was no more to it than that. All was well; she’d just had a silly set of notions because Gus had been away a lot, but now he was back in his old sweet mode there’d be no more problems. If there had to be lonely nights over the coming weeks she’d manage them well enough. I’ll put in for a holiday in two weeks’ time, then, she thought as she crossed the courtyard on her way to the canteen and lunch. Then I’ll be ready whatever Gus comes up with.

  Zack was loitering at the canteen entrance and his face lit up when he saw her, or so she thought. ‘Hello! How are you today?’ he said. ‘Feeling better? How’s the invalid?’

  ‘Oh, she’s doing fine,’ George said. ‘I saw her this morning, and Peter Selby too. He says she’ll be home in a couple of days. No harm done. You were quite right.’

  ‘That’s OK then,’ he said with high satisfaction. ‘We can talk about other things.’ He tucked his hand into her elbow again, the way he had last night, and she stiffened against it. Last night when she had been distressed had been one thing. Now it was something other.

  It felt like panic. It was quite absurd, part of her mind told her, but that made no difference. She pulled her arm away and said quickly, ‘Oh dear! I’m so sorry! I can’t share lunch with you today, I’m afraid.’ She looked over her shoulder and saw the long queue stretching into the canteen, normal at this time of day, and swallowed hard. ‘I’ve — er — I’ve arranged to eat with Dr — um —’ She scrabbled for a name as her glance raked the people in the line and finally seized upon a vaguely familiar face. ‘Dr Corton. About anaesthetics, you know. I’m sorry.’

  And she went in a rush, her long legs swinging her coat behind her and her thick hair bouncing on the top of her head so that it nearly came apart from the bunch in which she’d pinned it up, to slide in alongside a startled James Corton and say a little breathlessly, ‘Do you mind if I jump the queue by joining you? Pretend we had a date to meet, you know? I’m in a mad rush and I’d be so grateful!’

  5

  To say that James Corton was shy would be like describing Mother Theresa as a tolerably well meaning old woman; the label just wasn’t adequate. He gulped at her, managed a sort of convulsive nod and then stepped back to let her slide in front of him. She had to share his tray, since she hadn’t picked up one of her own and was certainly not going back to fetch one in case Zack was still there at the other end of the queue (she didn’t dare look to see), and she chattered absurdly to Corton as she piled a plate with salad and
slapped it on to the tray next to his own plate of sausages and chips. She thought that choice said all that needed to be said about him: he had the schoolboyish look that went with such a diet.

  She insisted on paying for both of them, since the girl on the till would, she knew, make very heavy weather of sorting out separate bills for the contents of one tray, and the last thing she wanted was any sort of delay or fuss to draw more attention to them (they had already had a couple of black looks from people who had been pushed back in the queue by her intervention). He tried to protest, but she would have none of it and, still chattering, led him to a table on the far side of the massive canteen space, which had all the ambience of an aircraft hangar with none of the charm, where she sat with her back to the room as though that would make her less noticeable.

  Beneath her chatter, she castigated herself. She was behaving foolishly. The trouble was she found Zack interesting, the sort of man who, pre Gus, she would have fancied and made a distinct effort to get to know well. Very well, even.

  Pre Gus she had been, and she had known it perfectly well, a woman who was extremely susceptible to masculine beauty. And personality and wit and charm. Frankly, as she had told herself once, long ago, after yet another of her hopeful relationships had foundered, she liked men too much as male creatures rather than as people. She was a goddamn pushover for them. Despite her very real championship of feminist causes and her frequent irritation with male domination of almost everything (well, perhaps not everything, but certainly a hell of a lot) she found male attention irresistible.