The Swan Song of Doctor Malloy

by Robert Power

  ‘I want to find a way to resolve this,’ I say, refusing to rise to the bait.

  ‘Excellent,’ says the bank manager, twirling his cufflink, sending the plane into a spin and nosedive. ‘I am a simple man,’ he continues, shuffling the papers in front of him. ‘I had to leave school at an early age to support my ailing mother. But my mathematics is good.’

  He studies the rows of figures in front of him.

  ‘You have accumulated loans and an overdraft amounting to more than fifty-thousand pounds. Once this was drawn to my attention I felt it expedient to meet with you, and as you say, find a solution. As I am sure you understand, I cannot let the bank suffer such potential losses.’

  The picture of the World War II bomber looms over his pompous head. I wish it would roar its engines and shed its load where he sits. I am not going to tell him about the twelvethousand pounds I had to find for the Friary Centre, and I am certainly not going to mention the way my cocaine bill escalated over the months prior to that.

  ‘I’ve had many expenses recently, largely to do with my estranged wife and daughter. As well as managing a property in Melbourne.’

  He looks at me unsympathetically, his wedding finger sporting a well-worn gold band.

  ‘I have also been using some of my own money to further my scientific work,’ I say, meaning the daily gram of cocaine habit I had decided I needed to keep up with the pace.

  ‘The bank’s money, Dr Malloy,’ he chastises, checking with his eyebrows that I get the point. ‘You have been using the bank’s money. We are not the Medicine Research Council,’ he adds smugly, getting it wrong, but trying to show his knowledge of the academic world.

  ‘So what solution do you suggest?’ I ask.

  ‘Now we have had our little chat, I suggest you once again meet with Mr Opal, my deputy, sometime next week and see what he can come up with.’

  ‘Can’t next week,’ I say, playing for time. ‘I’m travelling with work.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Oh, the Far East,’ I reply unconvincingly, gesturing to some place many miles distant from the bank.

  He frowns. Work once sent him to Headquarters in Swindon for human resources training. He picks up his phone.

  ‘Hilda, Dr Malloy needs to make an appointment with Mr Opal. He’ll be with you in a second. Find him a slot.’

  He puts his hand over the phone and continues speaking directly to me.

  ‘That’s all for now. Deal with my secretary outside. I have another appointment waiting.’

  The bank manager swivels in his perfectly oiled chair and thinks to himself if he had his way all academics would work for a year as a bank clerk, be treated like dirt, and if they dared to speak their mind the only trip they would receive would be to the dole queue.

  I hang my swimming things and wet towel over the radiator in the hallway. In the kitchen I am greeted by the flashing light of the answering machine. Three messages. I take an apple from the fruit bowl and bite into it as the tape rewinds. After a short pause, and some breathing and sighing, comes Lottie’s voice.

  ‘Hi, Dad. I want to talk to you about my recital. The first competition is next week. Speak to you soon, bye.’

  The second is a message from my counsellor from the Friary reminding me of the reunion of alumni.

  ‘That should be a hoot,’ I murmur.

  The third is a voice I do not recognize. It’s that of a well-spoken woman who introduces herself as the regional representative manager of Taneffe, an international pharmaceutical company.

  ‘We understand the impact of the one-use syringe will be enormous in vaccination programs and in controlling infectious diseases,’ the message says, ‘and my company would be very interested in discussing the potential for facilitating its development and marketing.’

  I am wondering how this woman got hold of my home phone number, when the tape continues. ‘I met your sister at a gathering last week and she told us all about your work. I hope you don’t mind my calling you at home, but your sister gave me the number and we felt it might be good to keep the discussions informal at this juncture. You can call me anytime on 032 62523. My name is Dr Foster, Dr Mary Foster. Take care and bye for now.’

  And then the tape clicks dead.

  ‘Dr Mary Foster,’ I repeat, replaying the message and noting the name and number in my pocket diary. I like the sound of her voice. It’s the type of voice I would like to sleep with.

  This could be manna from heaven. My work in developing the one-use syringe is well known in the academic world. I have presented conference papers on several continents. For much of my career I’ve been racing against others to develop the ultimate, indestructible, single-use syringe. Many have tried and failed. Sometimes the lock has been unreliable, the spring in the syringe too strong. Or else what scientists believed could not be taken apart has been dismantled and reassembled. Warren, my guinea pig, a long-time heroin injector and consummate expert, took great pleasure in handing me back my last prototype in several bits. Yet the aim has been the same: to produce a needle and syringe that can only be used once. What an impact! A clean syringe for every immunisation jab in Africa and Asia. Polio, tetanus, diphtheria, whooping cough. And no chance of it being reused, eliminating the danger of passing all manner of infections from one patient to another. Stemming the flow of new infection, of any infection, will mean savings in treatment costs running into billions of dollars. I just need sponsorship to get the invention off the drawing board and into production. And, a little voice in the back of my mind fantasises about the Nobel Prize and its big cash bonus to get that bank manager off my back. But even in my growing excitement, I can’t help thinking that few people outside the lab in the medical school know how advanced things have got. Why is my sister Caitlin telling strangers and handing out my home phone number to them?

  I think about calling Dr Mary Foster. But first, HALT – ‘Hungry Angry Lonely Tired.’ I check the freshly stocked fridge for a microwaveable delight. The instructions on the packet tell me I have time for a cigarette, so I sink back on the sofa, light a Camel, and watch the woman in the window across the road dust the Venetian blinds.

  After a sticky rice and mystery meat dinner, I fish around for more distractions. Keep busy, they’d said at the Friary. I switch on the television and surf from one banal channel to the next. Then I turn on the radio and do the washing up. And the drying up. And put the dishes away in the cupboard. Even the cutlery. As I polish the last glass, my mind returns to the phone message. Is it too late to phone the mysterious Dr Foster? The way she responds might tell me something more about her.

  She answers on the fourth ring. She is expecting me, she says, in a voice I like the more I hear it.

  ‘Taneffe is a newly formed multi-national pharmaceutical company, part of the Doreale corporation. Of course, you know Doreale?’

  ‘Yes, naturally.’ Doreale is a huge player in the world of medicines and innovation.

  ‘Well, one of Taneffe’s remits is to raise its profile by using some profit to encourage and facilitate the dissemination of good ideas. Our public relations department suggested we went into high-profile developments which would have far-reaching benefits, especially those with an impact on the resource-poor nations. It’s a straightforward matter, altruism being relative. Good publicity for us. Activities to help the scientific and research world to get its new technology piloted.’

  I am impressed. Pharmaceutical companies have millions to spare for research and development. Better to channel some of it my way, rather than it all being wasted on perfume and fabric conditioner.

  ‘This all sounds very promising,’ I restrain myself from sounding too excited, as if I’m offered such gifts from the gods every day. ‘It would be good to meet up and talk this through.’

  ‘How soon can you make it?’ she says. ‘I’m in the country all this week and maybe a bit of next.’

  ‘Well,’ I say, flicking the pages of my lusciously empty diary, ‘you t
ell me.’

  ‘How about Thursday. I can meet you in Brighton at the Conference Centre. I’m on a scoping mission. We’re looking at sites for a laboratory complex. How does that suit? We’ll book you in at the Metropole.’

  ‘That’s just great. A couple of days at the seaside will suit me fine.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll get back to you with the details. I look forward to meeting you. Bye for now.’

  ‘Yes, bye for now.’

  I lie back on the sofa, tired and satisfied. Everything seems to be going too well. I avoid the temptation to project into the future. Instead, I decide to go to bed. It’s been another twenty-four hours without a drink or a drug. Just get your head on the pillow without drinking, they said, and you’re a success. Let tomorrow take care of itself.

  ‘Okay,’ I say to myself, ‘enough fun for one day.’

  Lottie’s bedroom is now at the top of the house. Matilda, her mother, suggested the change when the talk of Christine moving in became a reality. Lottie protested, but her mother said they needed to make Christine welcome, to help her feel part of the family, and besides, Lottie’s bedroom was the best place for Christine to finish her thesis in peace and quiet.

  Lottie loved her old room. It had been ‘hers’ even when the family rented it out through the Melbourne years, and she remembered it especially for the times her mum and dad were together and happy. It was the nicest room in the house: big and airy, overlooking the garden. The builders took an eternity to convert the loft to make her a new bedroom.

  ‘Makedo and Son’, Mum had called them, and complained endlessly about the work at the time. But she had nothing but praise for the loft when she wanted Lottie to move out of her own room. There was only one small window opening onto the busy street, with its traffic and noise outside. So Lottie painted the walls mauve and hung up dark drapes as a kind of subconscious protest.

  Her best and only school friend, Trixie, is a Goth and she approves the colour scheme. The two girls sit on the floor, drink cider and listen to music.

  ‘I like it up here,’ says Trixie, passing the bottle to her friend.

  Trixie loves Lottie. She is the only person she feels comfortable with, the only person she feels she can trust. Trixie hates most people she meets. The teachers who tell her she’ll never get a job ‘looking like that’; the girls on her housing estate who call her a freak; but most of all she hates the men her mother gets involved with. Trixie’s mum is an artiste who works the club and pub circuit. Mother and daughter live alone, except for the unsavoury boyfriends that hurtle through their lives, leaving them both distressed and depressed. Trixie’s mother has two talents: one, for taking off her clothes; the other, for finding the most awful, destructive and psychopathic men. The worst of an appalling bunch was Vince, a bouncer at a club in Upminster. One night, after breaking her mother’s jaw, he attempted to rape Trixie. It was only her screams, a neighbour’s call to the police and bangs on the wall that saved her. Vince fled, took a boat back to the Isle of Wight, and was never heard of or seen again.

  Lottie marvels at the tales Trixie tells. Of exotic strip clubs, dramatic escapes from disaster, life on the edge. It all sounds so vibrant, alive, even glamorous. This night Lottie has given up on her flute practice. Somehow it has failed to take her out of herself and the pain and loneliness she feels, feelings she works so hard to hide from her parents. Trixie is talking about her mother needing another operation on her cheekbone. There is something about the timbre of her voice, the shadows on the ceiling of the cars passing in the street, the sound they make as they whoosh by. Lottie looks around at the mauve walls of this empty space and feels hollow and collapsed. On the record player Joy Division tells the girls ‘love, love will tear us apart again’. Lottie feels that if she were not sitting down she would fall over, if she had no clothes on she would explode, if she had a gun in her hand she would fire it.

  ‘Trix …’ she manages to say, slumping onto her side.

  ‘What is it, Lottie? What’s wrong?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ says Lottie, lying on the floor. ‘Something just came over me.’ And with that she sighs and groans and then breaks into sobs that are deep and real and immense.

  ‘My mum, my dad,’ she cries. ‘Just one of them. One of them, please God. I just want one of them to put me first. Dad’s been at this crazy treatment centre. He says he’s alright. But what is he? A middle-aged alcoholic? A junkie?’ she sobs. ‘And my mum cares more about Christine the dyke and her psycho kids than she does about me. I just want to be put first. That’s all.’

  ‘It’s alright,’ says Trixie, shuffling closer and holding her friend in her lap. ‘I know, I know. It hurts. Cry, baby, just let it out.’

  Lottie rubs her eyes. She sits up and moves away from her friend.

  ‘I can’t,’ she says, smoothing down her hair, sniffling the last tear back down her throat. ‘I don’t know how to.’

  Except for the chalky white face powder, Trixie always wears black. Her hair, her lips, her toenails and fingernails, her jewellery, everything is black. As Lottie stifles the pain, chokes back the tears, Trixie rolls up her sleeve and reveals a series of small white scars, like railway sleepers running the length of her arm. Each cut is raised from her skin, whiter still than her milky white complexion. The girls look at each other. Nothing needs to be explained.

  ‘It feels so good,’ confides Trixie, stroking her friend’s hair. ‘It’s a way of crying. To let all the pain seep out. Like the air out of a balloon.’

  Lottie is not shocked. Nothing surprises her. She’s already seen and heard too much from her parents. She thinks about so many things when she is alone. So when Trixie opens her handbag and pulls out a small black velvet pouch, Lottie is simply curious. Lovingly, Trixie takes each object out of the pouch, meticulously placing them on the purple satin material of Lottie’s bedspread: alcohol swabs, a small bottle of iodine, and finally, a delicate china figurine. It’s a mermaid. Trixie picks it up and shows Lottie the tail. It has been broken off to a sharp point.

  ‘This was mine when I was a baby,’ says Trixie, rubbing one of the alcohol swabs on a space between two scars on her forearm. ‘My gran, my dad’s mum, gave it to me.’

  Then she presses the sharp point into her arm until the skin gives way and a small pearl of blood appears under the pressure. Maintaining the force, she pulls the edge of the mermaid tail against her yielding skin, opening a wound that oozes bright red blood. Lottie notes the swoon on her friend’s face, the release and peace in her eyes, and she wants it for herself. In the street outside, two drunks argue over something one of them thinks he has seen. A train rumbles by on the nearby track. But all Lottie hears is the low moaning sound from her new blood sister, like the purr of a cat in front of a warm open fire.

  Next morning after practising her flute, while her mother makes porridge in the kitchen, Lottie reaches up to the top shelf of the Welsh dresser in the dining room. There, behind rows of empty jam jars, she finds the small porcelain figure of the shepherd boy that has sat there all her life. Back in the solitude of her room, the breakfast smells filling the house, she breaks the head of the statue against her bedhead and hides the decapitated figure under her pillow.

  4

  Views from the pier

  I love the train journey to Brighton. Leaving London, crossing the Thames, passing the funnels of the Battersea Power-Station and then all the way down the hill to the seaside, swooping and sweeping through the green, rolling countryside. It’s not the Great Ocean Road, nothing like it, but it’s the best you can get one-and-a-half hours from London.

  Of course, I know all about the bomb and its aftermath. Even someone like me, who from time to time hides away from the news, could not have missed it. It has been on every form of media, the talking point of the past week. The Prime Minister is still in a critical condition, or so we are told, with several members of her cabinet dead. Despite the doom and gloom of the media, Brighton looks the same as I walk along t
he esplanade towards my hotel. Inflated rubber rings flap from the doorways of gift shops, rollerbladers scythe through the pedestrians strolling towards Hove, and the Ferris wheel turns on the end of the pier. The only visible sign of disruption is the barrier cordoning off the bombed hotel, the scaffolding and plastic sheeting bandaging the shattered brickwork.

  I think of my sister Caitlin and the postcard she sent me. We care about each other and always keep in contact, but what with my work and her itinerant lifestyle, we haven’t met up for months. I’ve made a mental note to track her down while I’m in town, especially now this happy coincidence brings me to Brighton.

  I enter the lobby of the hotel. The man at the front desk is most apologetic. Sleepy seaside life has clearly been disrupted.

  ‘Sorry for all the infernal noise. But ever since the bomb, it’s been chaos in this town.’

  The poor man looks exhausted, stressed to the limit, his tidy world turned upside down.

  ‘Not to worry. I’m amazed you’re open at all,’ I try to reassure him.

  All the formalities have already been dealt with. I am handed a folded note with my key.

  Dear Dr Malloy, Hope you have a comfortable night. I’ll meet you outside the Conference Centre at 10am tomorrow morning. Best wishes, Dr Mary Foster.

  It is signed with a flourish. The image in my mind of this woman is the kind guaranteed to alert the attention of my therapist.

  The time is long past eleven as I settle into my room. After ignoring the lure of the mini bar – ‘You can’t get drunk if you don’t pick up the first drink’ – I fall into a deep sleep. The sound of waves crashing on the pebbled beach provides a soothing and rhythmic accompaniment to my dreams. The night takes me to a walled city, where my mother paces the ramparts, howling at the moon.

  Lottie is tired from practising the flute. She lies on her bed listening to the laughter coming from the bedroom below. Her mother laughs. Christine giggles. A door slams. Muffled shrieks and howls. Silence. Then giggles. She runs her fingers along the holes in her flute, counting them one by one ‘… four, five, six …’ then back to the beginning. ‘One, two, three …’ The rhythmic sound of her counting stifles the noise from the bedroom below. She focuses on a crack in the ceiling and follows its meandering path to the far corner of the room.