Kingsley's Touch

by John Collee

  Richard Short began to speak, then hesitated. Behind Kingsley the second pair had played out and were coming towards them: brisk, serious teenagers. It took them a few seconds each to place their tees, sight the green and drive. With the same long, serious expressions they replaced their clubs and strode off over the bluff.

  'Has it occurred to you,' asked Short, watching them go, 'that you may have hit on some agent, something in the Leith atmosphere, I don't know – a mould, which kills cancer? Hmm? I know it sounds ridiculous, but have you thought of that?'

  'No,' said Kingsley. 'I can't afford to think of that. It doesn't happen. And that's the kind of speculation I want to avoid. You know what would happen if someone started blethering about "cancer cures"? I'll tell you – total bedlam. Press all over the place. Clinics flooded with patients.'

  'It's a great research project.'

  'Nothing to research. It's all artefact.'

  'Big news though.'

  'The wrong kind of news. Fiction.'

  'It's worth a fortune,' said Short.

  'Not to me.'

  Short placed his tee and sighed. There were times when Alistair Kingsley's principles were beyond comprehension.

  Short was £1 ahead as they pitched towards the tenth. The sky was changing now, picking out the red from the rocks on either side, the gorse in comparison a violent yellow.

  'Come on, Alistair, cheer up; there's going to be a rational explanation.'

  'I'm glad you see that.'

  Richard Short handed him the hip flask, already half empty. 'Maybe some joker tampering with the slides . . .'

  'Can't be done . . . no way you could reproduce the detail.'

  'I suppose you're right . . . or just some simple infective process. You know, like an abscess forming round Sandra Spears's breast lump.'

  'Mukesh said it wasn't compatible with the histology. For a while I thought maybe I was responsible. I thought maybe I was contaminating everyone I examined. Went to the length of washing my hands in Hibiscrub before each examination, sent a plate of my fingerprints off to bacteriology.'

  'Nothing?'

  'Nothing. How far d'you think?'

  'Seventy yards?' Short flicked a cigarette butt towards the rocks. Above them the pink-bellied clouds converged westwards.

  'Anyway,' said Kingsley, 'Mukesh has got other ideas.'

  'What does he think?'

  'Something allergic. He's been preparing slides for fluorescence studies.'

  'Allergic to what?'

  'God knows . . . the hospital? Me?'

  Short was crouched, his back to the rocks, preparing to pitch. Now he laughed and called across, 'That's it, Alistair.'

  'What's it?'

  'You've acquired the healing touch.'

  'Ingenious. And how do you account for that, Dr Short?'

  'I don't know. God moves in mysterious ways. Maybe you were good when you were little.'

  Kingsley guffawed. Short smiled. His pitch landed three feet from the flag.

  The light was failing as they left the clubhouse and climbed into Richard Short's silver car. The city was reduced to a spreading black stain between the hills and the estuary.

  'Are you sober enough to drive, Richard?'

  'Drive? I'm sober enough to fly.'

  'Don't demonstrate.'

  'Drinks at the Royal Forth,' said Short, 'and on the way there I'll show you my practice range.'

  'What practice range?'

  'My golf practice range – at the hospital.'

  'Let's go straight to the club.'

  'It won't take a minute.'

  'If you insist,' said Kingsley.

  He buckled his seat belt and the car revved away.

  What was it that had worried him about the hospital these past few mornings? Driving to work, the old place now filled him with a strange apprehension. In the evenings he left with a sense of release. Kingsley moved uncomfortably in the bucket seat. Fifteen years he had worked in the Douglas Calder. It had its faults, but Kingsley had had a great affection for the old place. Now it was somehow different – violated.

  They locked the car. Beside the main door the hospital's air vents snored like sleeping alcoholics.

  Richard Short led him through the corridors, childlike in his excitement. They called into his room in the anaesthetic department. Behind the door of his office Short kept an old driver. In the bottom drawer of his desk a lump of putty and a bag of old golf balls. 'You'll love this, you 'll love this,' he kept saying, chuckling his obscene throaty chuckle.

  They passed McCallum and Barton wards on the second floor. Richard Short led him out through the fire escape. A blast of warmth followed them from the hospital, then the cold harbour air, sobering, refreshing. The iron railings were caked with rust.

  'You're sure this is quite safe, Richard?' It was the voice of responsibility. Kingsley quelled it. Perhaps the same sentiment as he had felt all those years back as he and Roderick McDonald fastened their undergarments to the flagpole at the City hospital; the old spectre of propriety which he found so impossible to shake off –dispelled then by the precedent of undergraduate foolhardiness, now by alcohol and curiosity. Nothing changed. He envied Short's lack of self-consciousness – there was true sincerity.

  They were on the roof now. For a moment Kingsley lost sight of his guide. Then, as his vision adjusted, he discerned the nimble grey shadow stepping over pipes and vents, picking a route between the opalescent skylights. Kingsley followed less confidently. He caught up with Short at the northern edge of the roof. Below him the harbour water looked solid as coal. The streetlights on the bridge duplicated themselves in its surface and a matt, forgiving blackness obscured the slums and warehouses. By night Leith was almost beautiful.

  'Are you coming?'

  Kingsley looked round. 'Where are you?'

  'Down here, there's a ladder at your feet.'

  His toes found the rungs. He climbed down. They were standing in a narrow well, two yards wide by three yards long, open at one end, facing towards the harbour and lit by two caged bulbs. Short walked towards the open end and placed the lump of putty at his feet, then he fished in his pocket for a golf ball and pressed it on to the putty. He handed Kingsley the club.

  'You drive, Alistair.'

  'Where?'

  'Out there of course, into the harbour.'

  'You must be joking. What about the offices?'

  'Here,' Short took the club back. 'Nothing to worry about, they're all empty. Nobody does anything in there anyway. Unless you totally duff it, it's not going to drop on the road, and the bridge is five hundred yards away at least.' He stood, legs astride, loosening his shoulders. 'You just make sure you don't hook it to the left, towards the tenements. You've got to make a really poor shot to miss the . . .Whack… the water.'

  The ball rushed into the night. Short waited, shoulders hunched in apprehension. Nothing.

  'Not sure that I go along with this, Richard.' Kingsley took the club.

  'Minimal risk, Alistair, minimal.'

  'Besides,' he said as Kingsley lined up to drive, 'we save the buggers' lives every day. This kind of thing evens up the balance. Whether you like it or not you're one of fortune's executives. Aim for the crane – see the light. It you hit anyone he's hellish unlucky. Had it corning anyway . . . keep to the right now. Straight into the harbour and you're safe as . . .

  The wood whistled. A sharp click, the ball vanished into the night.

  '. . . as houses,' said Richard Short.

  Chapter 6

  The body of an old woman was laid out on the slab. It had been in the fridge for two days now and the surface had turned a glossy yellow. The incision, clean through skin, muscle and bone, began at the apex of the chin and ran to the centre of the pubis. Heart and lungs were still in place, congested purple against the pale flesh. The abdomen was an empty pit. Cranley had removed the abdominal viscera and was now twisting the neck of a plastic sack that contained them. He sealed it with wire an
d took it through to the anteroom. He held up the bag.

  'You'll have finished with her?'

  Chandra Mukesh looked up from the dictaphone. He looked at the bag full of guts and pulled at his chin, momentarily confused by Cranley' s free use of the personal pronoun. Then he said, 'No, hang on, Mr Cranley, I want a bit of that vertebra. I'll be finished with this in two minutes.'

  He offered up an apologetic smile which Cranley devoured in a clattering of false teeth and a smouldering soliloquy in which the words 'Hangin' about all day' featured prominently. Mukesh returned to his dictation. After two months working with Cranley he was slowly learning to accept the old man's choleric demeanour as the normal, against which less perceptible mood swings might be judged. All this week Cranley had been slightly more irascible than usual.

  Mukesh, on the other hand, was feeling quite pleased with himself. The weight of academic opinion had swung behind his interpretation of the aberrant pathology slides. He would soon be given the opportunity to present his findings at the Royal Infirmary. Following that there was always the chance of a small research project. Mukesh had come a long way since leaving India. His intellectual prowess was complemented by a keen yearning for success and now the smell of possible advancement was wafting under his delicately flared nostrils. In the mortuary he tied on an apron and handed Cranley the chisel. 'I am not very skilled at this, Mr Cranley. Perhaps you will do me the honours.'

  This gambit was calculated to mollify the old mortuary assistant. It was a matter of some pride to Cranley that he could still outshine most young pathologists at the more arcane aspects of morbid carpentry. He took out the chisel, sucking contemplatively on his dentures. Cranley was suddenly communicative.

  'The trick is,' he placed the chisel on the diseased lumbar vertebra, 'to not go too low. It's a matter of the angle of the whatsisname isn't it. Put it like this,' Cranley indicated an acute angle of the chisel on the bone, 'you're knackered, aren't you?'

  Mukesh nodded encouragingly.

  'You go straight through the spine,' Cranley explained. '. . . Now put it like that,' he lowered the handle of the chisel, 'and you're away.'

  By way of an explanation he delivered a sharp tap to the handle of the chisel, knocking off a neat sliver of bone. Mukesh caught it in the specimen pot.

  'Cancer,' said Cranley knowledgeably.

  'Yes, a secondary from the ovaries.'

  'That's one that didn't work,' said Cranley.

  Mukesh continued to study his section. A dense pale area indicated where tumour had invaded the spongier bone.

  'What did not work?' He took the formalin from the shelf, tucked the great brown flagon under one arm and covered the specimen.

  'Yon thingummy.' Cranley was threading a needle. 'Kingsley's new treatment.'

  Mukesh looked up sharply from the specimen pot. 'What new treatment?'

  'The cancer cure,' said Cranley. 'So William says.'

  Chandra Mukesh scratched his head. In his short stay at the Douglas Calder he had already learnt the truly seminal role of William Galbraith, head porter, in hospital gossip.

  'I am afraid he has misinterpreted something there,' he ventured.

  'Is that a fact?' Cranley had threaded his needle. Now he placed the bag of guts back in the abdominal cavity.

  'We've just had some unusual pathology results. There's no question of a cancer cure.'

  'Is that a fact?'

  Cranley began to sew, taking big bites on either side of the incision and pulling the thick cord tight. His lips corrugated with effort as he pulled.

  'I hope you'll tell Mr Galbraith.'

  'Aye, I'll tell him.'

  Cranley's free hand crammed the bag of guts under the advancing stitches. 'It's what I thought.'

  'Good.'

  'Ye can't cure cancer,' he observed, pulling at another knot. 'Wouldn't be right. Cancer's God's work – like fishes.'

  Dr Mukesh did not attempt to untangle this parable. He was satisfied that Cranley had the basic message. That kind of rumour could do a lot of damage.

  Mukesh returned to the anteroom and resumed his dictation. Halfway through he stopped again. A thought had struck him. Cranley was hosing down the mortuary floor. He turned off the hose as Mukesh entered. A thin trickle of water fell on the blood at his feet, making small, pink ferns on the tiles.

  'William, the porter,' said Mukesh. 'He knows what goes on in the hospital.'

  'That's his job,' said Cranley defensively.

  'Maybe I should let him know I have seen a rather strange fellow hanging around here recently – an Indian chap.'

  'That bastard,' said Cranley with a degree of venom which took Mukesh off guard. 'Is he a friend of yours?'

  'Good gracious me, no. I just wondered if the security should be informed of him.'

  'They've never been any help to me,' said Cranley acidly.

  'In what way was he bothering you?'

  Cranley sucked at his false teeth and breathed through his nose. The very presence within hospital bounds of a tramp like Dhangi inflamed him to a degree which he could not explain. 'Shouldn't be here,' he said gruffly. 'Got no business has he? Caught him out the back messing about with flower petals and suchlike, singing songs or whatever.'

  'Yes,' said Mukesh. 'He had the appearance of a holy man.'

  'Holy? You call that holy?' Cranley exploded. 'The man's off his head. Damn near assaulted me the last time I saw him.'

  'When was that?'

  'Just recently. Caught him half in and half out of this place. Asked him what he was doing and he thumped me. He's no more holy than fly in the air.'

  Never before having exchanged more than a few sentences with the older man, Mukesh felt a new sense of concord with Cranley. He leant back against the dissecting table and inspected the punctured toe of one boot. 'Perhaps you're right,' he conceded, 'but then again it's a funny thing the Hindu religion. You wouldn't believe what these fellows get up to. In my country they are all over the place – begging for food, starving themselves, this thing and that thing. And some of the beliefs! My God! Do you know it's quite common for some of them to drink cow's urine, or smear themselves with dung. The ancients, the Aghoris, believed you could not communicate with God unless you practised cannibalism. It's quite fantastic, no?'

  Alerted by the sound of running water, Mukesh looked up. Cranley had lost interest some time back and had turned on the hose again.

  'Anyway,' Mukesh shouted, 'I agree – this fellow was most unpleasant.'

  Cranley continued to ignore him.

  'Incredible thing is he said he was a doctor . . . I suppose it could be true,' Mukesh reflected. 'He was asking some questions about the pathology business which were quite technical . . . But then he threatened me! Asked me to give up my job and leave the hospital! Can you believe it?'

  Deaf to all this and mildly exasperated by Mukesh's failure to recognize the end of the conversation, Cranley turned the water pressure down. 'What's that you're saying?'

  'Nothing important,' Mukesh said. 'The Indian chap. He wanted to work here.'

  'If he does,' Cranley returned, 'it'll be over my dead body.'

  Mukesh naturally assumed he was joking.

  At about the same time, Alistair Kingsley received a telephone call in theatre. It came at the end of a heavy list, just a further irritation, along with the dropped instruments and the poor lighting, on an afternoon that had already strained his patience to breaking.

  'Someone answer that,' he growled, as he laboured away in the dark, bloody hole. The patient was an immensely fat woman in her mid-forties. She had complained of symptoms for several years, and now, when they came to operate, the gall bladder was a blighted little organ, welded to the undersurface of her liver.

  Kingsley clipped at the surrounding tissues, up to his forearms in fat.

  'It's for you, Mr Kingsley.' Kingsley said nothing.

  'Mr Kingsley's not available,' said the nurse on his left.

  Kingsley cut furthe
r and was met by a brisk jet of blood. He cursed.

  'Clip.' He applied, with difficulty, a small metal clip to the bleeding point. 'No light,' he added tersely. The anaesthetist had not relaxed the patient sufficiently and retraction was impossible.

  At this point a voice behind Kingsley said, 'He says it's urgent.'

  'Who says it's urgent?'

  'The phone call, sir.'

  'Ask him if it's a matter of life and death.' Again the footsteps retreated, the swing doors whump-whumped, then the footsteps returned.

  'He says yes.'

  'Damn and hell.' The clip had slipped. Kingsley fried the vessel with cautery and tore off his gloves.

  'Carry on, Steve.'

  In the corridor his hand on the receiver was slippery with sweat.

  'Yes?'

  'Mr Kingsley?'

  'Who is this?' Kingsley demanded.

  'It is Dr Dhangi.'

  'Dr who?'

  'Dr Dhangi,' said the nervous voice, ‘we met in the hospital car park, yes?'

  Kingsley tore furiously at the cloth ties of his gown.

  'Yes, I remember you, Dr Dhangi,' he said. 'Look. I don't know what you think you're playing at but you've dragged me away in the middle of a very tricky piece of surgery. If it's about a job, I'll tell you now . . .'

  'It is not simply about a job. '

  'Well perhaps you'd like to tell me what it is about.'

  'We must talk . . . ,' Dhangi said, anxiety filleting his speech, '. . . you are having certain problems . . . I think I can explain . . . this thing is very important.'

  'What problems? What do you know about it?'

  'There is much to discuss . . . I must see you.'

  'See me about what, for God's sake?'

  'There is a public house near here . . . the Carriage Bar? . . . I will be there tonight . . . six o'clock.'

  'Listen,' said Kingsley. 'If you want to meet me, whoever you are, you can damn well phone my secretary and arrange an appointment. I'm not going to see you in some bloody dockland dive . . .'