The Swan Song of Doctor Malloy

by Robert Power

  I am safe, but there is something unsettling about it. There is too much: the sun, the rain, the mist, the look in the eye of the cob.

  I complete a circuit and turn on my back to look towards the only gap in the trees. Through the space I see the slope of grass rising to Parliament Hill. There are no kites flying this evening, no walkers on the brow. Just the curve of the ridge and the clouds clearing to the east. As suddenly as it came, the rain ceases, as if a stopcock has been wrenched shut. All is calm again, the pond refreshed, the air rejuvenated. This is swimming. This is magic.

  Then unexpectedly, the water around me becomes turbulent. I turn to see the cob rising up behind me, his breast swollen full, his wings flapping around me. I kick my legs frantically to beat a retreat, and as I do he glides after me like a carnival float. I carry on kicking, the water lashing up from my legs, propelling me away from the onslaught. The cob slows down and gives me one last look before he heads back to his brood.

  As I dry myself on my towel I think about what he is telling me: to beware where I swim and to keep looking over my shoulder.

  5

  Walkabout

  Waking up and realising I don’t have a hangover, I am glad to be clean and sober. It is Friday morning, time for a day off after the trip to Brighton. The next thought is of Caitlin and the terrible situation I’ve landed myself in. I pick up one of the leaflets by my bedside, given to me when I left the Friary. It tells me to have a plan for the day, even if I don’t stick to it. To keep busy at all costs. I’ve already polished my shoes and cleaned out the kitchen and bathroom cupboards: activities highly recommended to keep the mind off the drink and the white powders. No work today. My only commitment is lunch with Matilda and an Aftercare Meeting. I dig around for some other good advice and hear the voice of my counsellor say, ‘If in doubt, go for a walk.’ So I do.

  To me, Bloomsbury’s Gordon Square is like the Heath. Not as vast and expansive. No rolling hillocks and wooded glades. But still it makes me feel like I am no longer part of the city. Ever since coming here from Melbourne I’ve sought out open spaces. As soon as I enter the gates and hear the crunch of gravel beneath my feet I am in a secret garden. The bluebells massed on the small bank in the far corner are in full flower. The huge plane trees tower above, muting the sound of the traffic. Between their dappled trunks I can see the white facades of the elegant town houses of the square. I imagine Virginia Woolf standing at a first-floor window, watching me as I follow the path around the lawns, then weave my way back through the arch made by the rambling roses and on down the central path. Most of the benches are empty; the lunchtime visitors, the academics, students and passing tourists are an hour or so away. How many times have I walked around this wonderful garden? There is such a maturity about this square. How many footsteps have I followed? The trees stand ancient and proud; the lawns are worn and hardy. Here is a place to hold the mind in check. Even the bluebells convey a sense of assuredness. There is a solidity about this square that holds me and asks nothing. The sound of the stones underfoot is the melody for my unfolding thoughts.

  I think of my daughter Lottie and how scared she looked when it all turned so bitter between her mother and me. When the whiskey did all the talking and the furniture began to fly. She retreated all the more into her music, told me she loved me, but hated the way I was with Matilda when I drank. What is it that binds us together? Father and daughter, brother and sister, husband and wife? What are the limits of our responsibility for each other? Even when it is over, even when it is finished?

  I leave the orbit of the square at Gordon Street and cross the road to the tiny chapel of the Apostolic Church of Christ. Here is another place to seek some peace and tranquillity, where I can quieten the storm in my mind. Outside the sign tells me, ‘The chapel is open for private prayer.’ I walk down the corridor. When I reach the door to the chapel I pause to dab my forehead with some holy water from the font set in the wall. For good luck, for the Catholic in me. Inside, I sit down on one of the cushioned pews. The main church seems to have been under renovation forever, but, as is often the case, someone is playing the organ in a far corner on the other side of the chapel wall. The chapel itself is small, with it wooden ceiling rising to a sharp-angled apex. I look up at the familiar stained-glass images of the windows. The bull and the serpent, the father and the son. Etched into the glass are the words I recite like a mantra. ‘Seek and you will find, ask and you will be heard.’

  I wait for a feeling of calm to waft over me, but it is not easy in the coming. Thoughts of Caitlin merge with the words on the stained glass. ‘Suffer unto me little children.’ I remember the desperate days of our childhood, before she left to stay with Uncle Declan. When we would hold each other tight against the storms in our house, as the glass shattered and the cries from our parents’ bedroom roared around our ears. Now she lies waiting somewhere for me to find her and hold her again. The sound of the organ reminds me of Lottie’s concert next week, the first round of competition. I look at the row of carved faces lining the perimeter of the chapel and, to distract myself, fancy them as all the lovers I have had and will have in the future. I count them and pair them with riotous nights and desperate mornings. Each has its own expression, its own story to tell. Mouths open, words frozen in the air. The altar has been set for the Eucharist. A plain white sheet, a silver cup. A shaft of sunlight trickles down the wall, refracting greens and blues, a vein of softest pink in the grey stonework.

  Does all this thinking we do ever make a difference? All the toing and froing, the weighing up and setting down? I check my watch. It is more than time to go.

  Back outside it seems strange to join the throngs of people hurrying along towards Gower Street, Tottenham Court Road, and beyond. I feel like a monk who has been tossed from the abbey to the outside world. As I cross Soho Square the lunchtime crowds are gathering, in pairs or groups, or alone with a pre-packed sandwich. On to Old Compton Street and its constant flow of crazies: the sex workers and drug users, hustlers and tourists. Beer and coffee is in the air and a sniff of violence for those with a nose for it.

  When I get to Poon’s in Lisle Street, Matilda is already there. She looks elegant in a mauve turtle-necked sweater and a yellow silk scarf. She seems younger than her years and has done something interesting to her hair. I decide not to comment on it, for fear of a look.

  ‘You’re half an hour late,’ she says. ‘I’ve already ordered some soup.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I reply, sitting down opposite her, looking out onto the street. ‘I’ve been thinking.’

  ‘Well, think about this,’ she says, pushing a letter across the table to me.

  I notice the logo. It’s the builder.

  ‘You missed the last payment.’

  ‘If you remember, I’ve paid all the others.’

  The soup arrives. The waitress ignores the icy atmosphere at our table and smiles at me. I do not want anything, but I order some vegetable noodles. Outside, the rain has begun, splattering against the window. Inside, the only other couple stand up, caress, and leave the restaurant hand-in-hand.

  ‘Well?’ says Matilda, raising an eyebrow and slurping her soup.

  ‘I’ll pay when I can.’

  ‘It’s Lottie’s new room.’

  ‘I know that. How is she?’ Our only really safe ground.

  ‘She’s practising really hard for the concert. I daresay she’s wondering how you will be now you’re back in the land of the drinkers. What with all the temptation.’

  ‘In case you were wondering, we’ve already spoken about it, when she came to see me, and I’m doing just fine.’ I take a cigarette from my pack and offer one to Matilda.

  ‘I don’t smoke.’

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘I don’t smoke,’ she repeats.

  ‘Well, I do,’ I say, and light up.

  ‘Good time for me to go then. I’m done with passive smoking. Passive anything, for that matter. I must dash,’ she says with a smile,
heading for the door. ‘I’m meeting Christine. You were late, remember, not me. Don’t forget about tomorrow night. Lottie’s expecting you for dinner. Don’t let her down – her grandparents meant a lot to her.’

  Her soup is half eaten, the bill left unpaid, the letter like a summons looms in front of me.

  The waitress is standing beside me, a bowl of steaming vegetable noodles in her hands by way of compensation.

  When I leave the restaurant the rain is tumbling down. I run across the road and take shelter in the door of the Prince Charles Cinema. I look into the foyer. A young woman with dyed blonde hair sits beside the popcorn, flicking through a magazine. Above her is a poster of a man and woman in traditional Japanese costume. The couple are set in a snowy landscape, linked together by a thick rope. The man is walking a few yards ahead of the woman. They look tired and confused. The show times tell me it is five minutes to the next performance. Feeling like a guilty schoolboy playing truant, I push through the swing doors and offer my five pounds to the usherette behind the magazine.

  Finding a seat inside the cinema, my eyes slowly become accustomed to the dark. There is a smattering of people, dotted here and there amongst the rich plush velvet seats. As the curtain opens and the lights dim I feel my concerns drift away. The magic of the cinema and the beauty of the cherry-blossomed Japanese countryside captivate me. Slowly, the story of the young couple unfolds. So in love are they that the young woman loses her mind when her paramour is forced to marry the daughter of the company boss. When he hears of her plight he flees the altar and takes her away from the mad house to which she has been consigned. From here, the love-struck couple commence their trek through life. Bound together by a thick red rope, crossing gorges and bridges, taking on the robes of the ancient puppets that appear in the opening scene. Few words are spoken and I wonder what drives them on, what chains them together as they walk to their inevitable destruction? Finally, like lemmings, they plunge into a void and are left dangling on the rope, each suspended either side of a tree that grows from the side of the ravine.

  Walking out into the rain, crossing Shaftesbury Avenue and heading back towards Old Compton Street, I look out for the couple with their thick red rope. But, of course, they are nowhere to be seen.

  I hurry past the pubs of Soho. Each is a magnet, their interiors beacons of light and fascination. ‘No problem can be made better by a drink or drug,’ I remind myself. Keep busy. Polish the shoes. Go for a walk. So on I go. Walking my polished shoes the length and breadth of Soho. Tomorrow I’ll get to a Meeting like they told me. I’ve got the list. But for today I’ll keep to the ‘walking and doing’ therapy.

  Before I realize it, as if by habit, I am standing at a familiar doorway. Squeezed between strip-joints, the small unmarked door opens to an unlit stairwell leading to a large room on the first floor. Small groups of people chat together. Some sit alone on the hard benches skirting the room; others hug the coffee bar in the corner, sipping from plastic cups. Three full-sized pool tables dominate the floor space. The one by the wall, farthest from the window, is occupied by the Maltese, who gamble for a thousand pounds on a single frame. The other two are in constant use. Pool played on these less exclusive tables is perfunctory. The players are biding their time; their minds are on other matters. They look up now and again to see where the action is, who is coming and going, who is buying and who is selling. For pool is not the main activity of the room. At the top of the stairs, leaning against the balustrade, the dealers keep a keen eye on the flow of people coming up from Old Compton Street below. Even before their heads come into view between the struts of the banisters, the gauntlet of dealers make their offers.

  ‘You looking?’ says one. ‘Want some smack?’ asks another. ‘After gear?’ whispers a third. Every heroin user in London’s West End knows of the ‘pool hall’. It’s the one place where it is guaranteed that Class A drugs will be on sale day and night.

  Each morning, before the doors open, the dealers gather together with the Maltese gamblers who own the place. The Maltese divide up the drugs amongst the regular dealers, and that’s the last they have to do with it. From then on they relax, drink wine and play pool on the alpha table and joke around with Little Ed, the bartender who can just about see over the counter. The system works well for everyone. The Maltese shift large quantities of drugs each day, the dealers have a reliable source, and the users don’t have to linger for hours on a street corner waiting for ‘the man’. Some of the less chaotic users act as ‘runners’. These carefully selected foot soldiers work for payment in kind. The dealers supply them with £10 ‘bags’ of heroin that they peddle around the streets of Soho and the West End. When they’ve sold their load they come back to the pool hall for more, inject some drugs in the toilet, collect some more bags and head out again. Everyone is happy.

  The atmosphere in the pool hall is heavy, but rarely threatening and never violent. It’s a club where no one stumbles in by mistake. Even the police and drug squads are content. It keeps the drug injectors off the streets and that keeps the residents and politicians happy. Every now and again there are busts and a few small-time user-dealers are hauled off to the courts. But this is an occupational hazard for the illicit drug user.

  I first heard about the pool hall two years ago when I was having a drink with Jack, who used to sell me cocaine from time to time. I was telling him about my work on the one-use syringe and he said I must meet Warren, an old hippy on a methadone maintenance prescription. Warren, according to Jack, knew more about injecting illicit substances than Job knew about suffering. So we met up, and over the months Warren schooled me in the assembly and reassembly of the most buckled and overused injecting equipment. He took to pieces our lab’s prototypes and handed them back to me as good as new, ready for the next fix. He would laugh. I would frown. And then it would be back to the laboratory. I became something of a fixture in the pool hall and everyone knew me as the ‘Kitman’. They were all aware of my job – better to be straight than be suspected – and I carried a letter from the university, just in case I was stopped by the police. Every six months or so I would turn up with the latest offering from the lab, assured that it was invincible. Everyone would gather around. I would hand it to Warren and the crowd would wait for him to wrestle it to submission.

  ‘Go on, Warren, you can do it,’ someone would shout.

  ‘Kick its butt,’ another would say.

  It was like a street fight. I was the outsider, challenging their champion. I was the bare-knuckled traveller laying down the gauntlet to the King of the Gypsies. If they’d had a billboard it would read: ‘University Kitman versus Junkie Lord, fight to the death for the undisputed one-use syringe world title.’

  Then one day, a couple of months ago, there was a silence amongst the crowd as Warren stepped forward. As always, he imitated a real injection, just to give the process some street cred and to play to the audience. He knew the ethics of my research prohibited any hint of my encouraging illicit drug use, so he mixed sterile water with some salt on a spoon and heated it from below with a lighter. Then he placed a small cotton bud for a filter into the mixture. In an injection of heroin this would trap impurities and adulterants. He pulled the plunger to draw the solution from the spoon up through the needle and into the barrel of the syringe. Being a seasoned injector, he flicked the side of the syringe to check for air bubbles. He then placed the needle on the skin of his arm at a forty-five-degree angle with the needle bevel facing out, just as he would for a real injection. Finally, with all eyes on him, he depressed the plunger, releasing the mixture as it squirted onto his arm and then dribbled to the floor. With the syringe emptied the plunger would not come away from the barrel. They were locked together like solid steel. He huffed and puffed, twisted and turned, but all to no avail. I raised my arm to the ceiling, alone amongst the home supporters. I had done it. The title was mine. Warren shook my hand, the crowd cheered, and I ordered drinks all around, though I think most were hoping fo
r something a little more potent.

  All in all, the pool hall had been a great place to do work and also a great place to pick up the occasional gram of cocaine from Jack. Not that I was ever foolish enough or desperate enough to pocket my drugs there. These would always be left for me behind the toilet in a nearby coffee shop. But not anymore, thank you very much. Not for me. Clean these last three weeks and counting.

  This evening I appear at the top of the stairs and the dealers who know me give me a cursory nod. Those who don’t look slightly alarmed, but receive a tacit reassuring glance from the others. I look around for familiar faces. One or two I recognize, but there are a lot of new people in tonight. They sit on the benches, looking anxious, fretting that they may have got here after last orders. All the pool tables are occupied, so I stroll over to the bar. Ed is cleaning glasses with his back to me, his small head and narrow shoulders are all I can see of his tiny frame. I think back to my last visit, my euphoria at finally cracking the code. Ed is still here, just as he was that night when he opened the bottle of whiskey and drank my good health, along with Warren.

  ‘Hi, Ed.’

  ‘Hello there, Professor,’ he says, swivelling around, a real and welcoming smile on his face. ‘And how is Frankenstein, today?’

  ‘Oh, I’m just fine,’ I say. ‘The monster’s got the night off, roaming the streets of Knightsbridge, so I thought I’d stroll down here for some high-class company.’

  ‘Well,’ says Ed, looking around the room with a snigger, ‘you’re surely in the right place.’

  There’s a slap on my back. I get a sudden mental image of the swan on the Heath, the flap of a wing, but when I turn, it’s Warren.

  ‘Great to see you, Prof. Have you heard the news?’

  ‘What news?’

  ‘The police. Things are hotting up here. They must be getting orders from above.’