George Barnabas - 04 - Fourth Attempt

by Claire Rayner

  He linked his arm into hers and she had no choice but to follow. Anyway, she wanted to. This was precisely the sort of thing she needed tonight, she told herself; someone to make her laugh, someone to take her mind off her troubles and someone to show Gus she wasn’t his property and he could get off her train any time he chose. With which somewhat incoherent and thoroughly childish thought she abandoned herself to Zack and his company at the pub across the road from the hospital.

  It was a new one, part of a chain that went in for silly names. This one had been a perfectly respectable ‘Red Lion’ when she’d first come to Old East; now it had been taken over and tarted up with lots of green paint and tiles and brass and renamed ‘The Fish and Bicycle’ with a suitably arch painting on a board hanging outside to underline the joke. It wasn’t a very good joke, they agreed, but the beer was excellent, and the coffee was even better, being hot, strong — almost as strong as A & E’s — and lavish in quantity.

  ‘I hope you’re not worrying over this business with your technician and her mishaps,’ he said abruptly as they waited for their order of a pint of ale for him and a half-pint for her. (She didn’t really like it, but wanted to show some sort of solidarity with him in such a basic matter of tastes.)

  ‘Um — well…’ she began carefully and he leaned forwards and took one hand in his.

  ‘I thought you might be. I hear the chatter that runs round the place as clearly as the next man. It’s all shit, of course. I can’t imagine you ever doing anything so crass as sending a person poisoned chocolates.’

  ‘I think that’s kind of you,’ she said, managing a smile. ‘You don’t say what I might be capable of, mind you.’

  ‘Oh, something much more sophisticated,’ he said. ‘If you wanted to get rid of someone I’ve no doubt you’d find a way to do it that would be most efficient. Elegant, even. You’re like that, aren’t you? Elegant.’

  She looked at him, her lower lip between her teeth. ‘I think you’re coming on to me,’ she said after a pause. ‘And I think I’d better tell you that I’m kinda spoken for.’

  He looked around with elaborate interest. ‘Oh? Where is he, then?’

  She laughed. ‘Not here, you fool.’ She waved her hand vaguely. ‘At home.’

  ‘It can’t be much of a speaking-for if he lets you out on your own on a Friday evening when you don’t have to work next day. You don’t, do you? I thought not’ — as she shook her head — ‘especially when you look so good. You do, you know. Your hair, all piled up like that. And those crazy big glasses. Really cute.’

  ‘You are coming on to me!’

  ‘God, it’s good to talk to someone who understands me! English women say you’re chatting them up. It’s not as sexy as our version, is it?’

  ‘Well, I’m not up for grabs,’ she said firmly, but not entirely believing it, and he laughed.

  ‘So, we’ll settle for the way it is right now, hmm? Great.’ The beer had arrived. ‘Let’s drink to friendship, if nothing more. At present.’ He clinked his tankard on her glass and smiled into her eyes and she knew he was daring her to go further. And knew also that she was very tempted. Gus had been so very piggish tonight, after all.

  ‘So,’ she said hastily. ‘What was it you wanted to talk to me about?’

  ‘What was — Oh, yes.’ He put down his tankard and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth in an unselfconscious gesture she found endearing. ‘You remember that bash they had for old Prof. Hunnisett?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘And the way the old man — who was it? The Chairman.’

  ‘Sir Jonathan.’

  ‘Yeah, him. He explained that unless we got some more projects on board, and more important ones at that, we hadn’t a hope of getting a good replacement for the old Prof, and the Institute of Research would slide down the tubes.’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Yeah, well, it was true. We’ve been talking about it for weeks now — those of us doing research, and there aren’t as many as there might be.’

  ‘Who?’ she said. ‘Do I know them?’

  ‘Oh, you’ll have seen them about, I guess. There’s Frances Llewellyn. She’s looking at the brain and chemical changes in women at the menarche and the menopause, post natal and all that — it’s a study of depression in women, really. She’s a real right-on sister, that one, have you noticed? Wears trousers all the time and never has her hair done.’

  ‘I wear trousers,’ George said. ‘And I’m as feminist as the next woman. So don’t —’

  ‘Oh, she isn’t so much a feminist as anti-mannist. There’s a hell of a difference,’ Zack said blithely, then hurried on. ‘Anyway, her research is well on, but it’s soft, you know? No outcomes there that’ll actually change anything. I mean, there won’t be any therapies, new drugs that’ll do the business.’

  ‘Is that the only sort of research the Institute’s interested in? The sort that brings in new drugs?’

  ‘It has to be,’ he said candidly. ‘Unless we come up with projects that offer something to the big pharmaceuticals on account of there may be a nice new money spinner in it, like a histamine two receptor — a Zantac — or a great new antidepressant that doubles as a weight-loss inducer, like Prozac, they’re just not interested. So Frances is a non-starter. She’s made it clear she’s not into filling women with hormones to see their effects, but in doing constant very fine assays of their own hormones. Mike Klein isn’t so bad. He’s looking at the patterns of addiction to assorted substances in adolescents. He might be able to identify a causative enzyme, he reckons. I think it’s pie in the sky, but it’s an attractive one because if it is an enzyme, then he could come up with an antagonist, right? So there could be a drug there. But really it’s mine that’s the best.’

  He looked at her sideways and then said a touch shyly, ‘I’m not putting you on, you know. This is a real assessment. It’s not just mine, either. The Prof, says the same. It’s not only motor-neurone disease, you see. If I get what I’m after I should have the key to all the neurological degenerative diseases — the demyelinating ones — brain as well as nerves. Like MS and Parkinson’s.’ He hesitated. ‘And Alzheimer’s.’

  There was a little silence and then she said a touch sardonically. ‘That could be really valuable to the pill-makers, I imagine.’

  ‘As they used to say, “Baby, you blubbered a bibful”.’ He was elated suddenly. ‘The thing is, I’ve come at the problem from the other side. Most of the research homes in on individual conditions. Me, I’m looking at symptoms. Sometimes the same ones affect people with quite different diagnoses. Like, their loss of sensation and of motor ability in MS and to a degree in Parkinson’s, and —’

  ‘Not in Alzheimer’s though. They …’ She swallowed. ‘They lose intellect, don’t they? I should know. It’s happened to my mother.’

  He put out a hand. ‘I’m sorry. But the work I’m doing could apply to Alzheimer’s if we can show it really is due to nerve-cell demyelination and neurone degeneration. And if I can find a way to reverse that degeneration — if I can find a drug … I mean, dammit, that’s what the antibiotics were about. They acted against all the bacteria so they could be used for a myriad conditions. Now it’s different, of course, with resistant strains, only that doesn’t look likely to happen if it’s nerve damage you’re dealing with. If I can find the right drug, or drugs, that could be used for a huge range of illness — not just one drug for one condition … Do you see?’

  He took a deep breath. ‘Anyway, that’s the thing I’m working on. And the Prof, wants to have a demonstration organized to show them how I’m doing with patients and all, invite one really big name, the top people from a couple of the multi-national drug firms, as well as the people at the top of the profession … You see, George? I had to talk to someone about it, didn’t I? I can’t talk to Frances or Mike because they’ll get uptight, not to say screaming crazy jealous. Maybe they’d try to scupper us! And I can’t talk to the other clinici
ans because they don’t see it my way. I don’t have an easy time with the consultants here. They guard their useful patients from me like I was the devil after buying their souls, or about to make their skins into lampshades. But I’ve got to get a few more patients and well — I’m hopeful.’ Again he reached out and touched her hand. ‘I like talking to you about it. I’d like to talk more. I reckon you’re the only guy here I can be comfortable with.’

  ‘Well,’ she said unsteadily. ‘Thank you kindly, sir, she said.’

  ‘Hell, no, I mean it. And I wanted to ask you if you’d help me when it comes to the presentation. I have to get a whole raft of stuff together, and I just can’t make it on my own. I need someone with a bit of pathology in their make-up to see me through. So I wondered …’

  She leaned back in her chair and laughed with real amusement. He watched her, pleased with her reaction at first, but then a little puzzled.

  ‘Look, if I’m putting too much on to you,’ he began, but she shook her head.

  ‘I’m sorry to laugh,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t laughing at you so much as at me. No, I won’t explain. So, you need someone to help you with your presentation? Why not? When is it to be ready?’

  ‘Next week,’ he said eagerly. ‘I have patients to sort out, records and charts to make up, a bit of computer modelling to organize…’

  ‘I’m on,’ she said. ‘Why not? I might as well’ And you can take that, Gus, she thought with a flash of malice, and wrap it round your patronizing neck. See if I care. ‘How about starting on Tuesday evening? I’ve plenty of time to spare then.’

  9

  When she got home she found a message from Gus on her answerphone. ‘Sorry, doll,’ he said and he sounded it. ‘I guess I should have been a bit more sensitive, but you know how it is with me. I mean to do it right and then I go and come over all macho. So, sorry, sorry, sorry. Call me when you get in and I’ll come right over. If you’ll have me. I like the toothbrush I’ve got in your bathroom better than the one I’ve got in my own.’ He managed to sound very plaintive.

  But she didn’t call him. Let him sweat, she thought with a flash of anger. It won’t do him any harm. He wasn’t just macho. He was downright patronizing.

  It wasn’t until she was standing under the shower enjoying the sensation of the water running over her face that she admitted the truth to herself. She didn’t really want Gus to know how late she had got in. To have called him at past one a.m. would have been an admission that she’d been out very late indeed, would have begged a question from him regarding why and where; and she was damned if she was prepared to tell him that.

  Although, as she pointed out to herself with some stern-ness as at last she stepped out of the shower and began to rub her hair dry, there was no reason why she shouldn’t. The evening had been a very pleasant and most proper one. They’d gone for their drink, she and Zack — though she’d deliberately tried to chose a different pub from the Fish and Bicycle when he asked her where she’d like to go — and talked at great length about his research (well, he had; she’d mostly listened and asked questions) and then, discovering they were hungry, had gone in search of supper. George had thought a little guiltily of the expensive and uneaten sole which Gus had provided, but shrugged away her shame at such extravagance and settled with Zack on a small Tandoori restaurant in Cable Street where they ate, they both agreed, far more onion bhajis and lamb korma than they should have done, and went on talking until both were amazed at how late it was.

  ‘I’ll come to your office on Tuesday, then, and show you the stuff I’m proposing to use at my presentation?’ he had said eagerly. ‘And then you can tell me if you think I’ve got it right.’

  She had laughed; he sounded for all the world like an excited child with a new toy to display, and when he quirked his head enquiringly at her laughter, she told him why and he’d rubbed his face with both hands in some embarrassment.

  ‘Oh, hell, I’m sorry, I’ve always been like that. When I want things I go for them baldheaded. My mother said I drove her crazy with it. And then when I’ve got them —’

  ‘You lose interest?’ she said lightly as she turned to pick up her bag. Behind her he caught his breath sharply, and she heard it.

  ‘Oh, no,’ he said softly, looking at her very directly. ‘Quite the contrary. If I get something it’s mine and it stays mine. For always. That’s why I stick at getting what I want, you see. It’s worth the effort.’

  Had she misconstrued what he was saying to her? She didn’t know; all she was aware of was the way he had looked at her and the way he had made her catch her breath too.

  Now, scrubbing herself dry with a towel that was so deliciously rough it made her glow all over, she castigated herself for being so stupid and romantic and childish. The man wanted her to help him with a research project? Big deal. It didn’t mean he had any ulterior motive. So shut up, already. Go to bed; sleep it off; wake up sensible.

  She woke up miserable. It felt odd not to have Gus beside her; even though they still technically lived in separate flats he spent more nights with her than away from her, and those when he was away were due to work, which she understood. To know that she was alone on this rainy summer morning because she had been silly didn’t offer her any comfort at all.

  She spent the day being virtuously domestic: cleaning the flat thoroughly — indeed almost ferociously; then trolling around the supermarket to fill her fridge and freezer, both of which had been sadly depleted; and on impulse buying a number of bedding-out plants from a street trader. If she bought them, she thought, she’d have to plant them; to spend the afternoon busily window-box gardening and perhaps fiddling with a hanging basket to install in her front porch (to match those of others which were blossoming up and down her rapidly gentrifying Bermondsey street) would be fun.

  And it was, up to a point, but when she had the alyssum, the lobelia and the small fuchsias neatly in place, fed and watered, there was still a long weekend stretching emptily ahead of her; and still she refused to call Gus.

  Instead she sat down at her little desk and did what she had come to find was the best way to handle any puzzles with which she was faced. She would write it all down.

  On a piece of paper she wrote ZACK in large letters. And then crumpled it up and tossed it in the waste basket. He wasn’t a puzzle, of course he wasn’t. A silly idea. So she took another piece and this time wrote GUS. She stared at it, and then, slowly, tore the page into tiny segments before throwing it away. There was more to the Gus situation than she could handle this way.

  But she still felt the need to sort out something, and this time she wrote SHEILA in capitals. That’s better, she thought. This one I can deal with. There are real conundrums there, in what’s happening to her, and why.

  NATURE OF PROBLEM, she printed carefully, the way she had been used to at school. She stopped for a little more thought and then began to write in good earnest. SHE WASTES TOO MUCH TIME GOSSIPING INSTEAD OF WORKING.

  Another heading followed rapidly: SEVERITY OF PROBLEM. Beneath, It’s very irritating but in all honesty, she found herself scribbling, not bothering with capitals any more, it doesn’t matter unduly as a rule. Generally she gets through all her work and does it well So why does it irritate me so when she pops off to other departments?

  She thought for quite a long time, and then, knowing she had to be honest, returned to the paper again and wrote, unwillingly: Because she doesn’t tell me all that she knows.

  George contemplated that line for a long time, frowning. It was true and she couldn’t deny it. What had really made her angry was the way Sheila whispered to other people and then when she, George, came into the room, ostentatiously silenced herself. George, who had as urgent a desire to know what was going on in her environment as everyone else, found this infuriating, and even more infuriating the fact that she couldn’t do anything about it. Yes, she was Sheila’s superior in rank at the lab but that didn’t mean she could insist the woman told her the sam
e things she told everyone else. Sheila would just look at her with that blank insolent stare of hers and refuse.

  But what is she gossiping about that I want to know and that she doesn’t tell me? George asked herself reasonably, staring sightlessly at the square of her living-room window down which another rainstorm was now sending its spatter. I’m just being stupid. Childish and stupid and —

  And then she remembered. It was the sort of memory that in her childhood had been a common experience: a sudden visual and aural reconstruction of an event which was as vivid an experience as the original. Nowadays it happened less often, but when it did, it was a powerful experience. And one that she learned from, if she let herself. She relaxed her shoulders and closed her eyes and let the memory happen.

  She had been sitting in her office six or seven weeks ago, quietly checking over a report she was to take in next day for a special court hearing on a death from a drugs overdose when her phone had rung. After waiting in vain for someone in the lab to take it, she had pulled herself away from her complex calculations about the amount of heroin that the dead boy had taken and, annoyed, picked up the phone. She was greeted by a tirade from the senior administrator of the Medical Records department. George had become steadily angrier, until at last she had managed to get a word in edgeways.

  ‘If you will stop and listen for just a moment, Mrs Ellesmere,’ she had said loudly. ‘Perhaps we can sort this out. Now, as I understand it, you’re worried about one of your staff—’

  ‘Of course I am. When a member of my staff, one I need and pay a good rate for, goes sick as often as she does, I’m entitled to know just how much is genuine and just how much is put on! I know the woman’s a diabetic, but other diabetics don’t give this sort of trouble to their bosses. I’m entitled to know what’s what and I thought I could simply have a look at some of the reports and see where the trouble is. I may not be a nurse but I’m highly qualified, well able to understand a path, report. As head of all the medical records, of course I am! But that madam flatly refused to let me see, wouldn’t even talk about it when I’ve seen her, seen her with my own eyes, head down with the woman herself, gossiping like fury over, would you believe, a lab report! I’ve had enough of it. Either you, as her manager, deal with her, or I tell you, doctor, I will make this a proper disciplinary affair and make a report to the Trust management and then you’ll see what a fuss there’ll be. They’ll raise hell with you and with that woman and —’