‘I’m sure.’ George was dripping with sympathy. ‘Any idea why they attacked you?’
There was a silence and she realized he wasn’t going to deign to answer her and she sighed. A tricky man, this. Hard done by and ill treated, of course, but still, not an easy man to deal with. She decided to go in bald-headed. This was not a person who would respond to any sort of softly softly approach.
‘Racist,’ she said loudly. ‘After you for the colour of your skin?’
He looked up at her and now his visible eye was blazing with fury. ‘What do you think? You sit here in a country that treats its citizens like so much garbage and you ask so stupid a question? Of course it was! What else? These animals, this witless garbage that should be put down and out of the way of decent citizens is allowed to roam the streets and scream its filth at anyone it wants to, and when they hit out and do damage like this, who gives a damn? No one. No one at all!’
She almost recoiled at the venom in his voice and caught her breath. ‘God, it must be hell for you,’ she said without stopping to think. He peered up at her.
‘Hell? Yes, you could say that. It’s hell and a lot more besides. It’s particularly hellish when people who one is led to suppose are intelligent — if you’re a consultant here you must have something inside your skull — ask asinine questions.’
‘Ouch,’ she said. ‘Look, I know you’re angry, Dr Choopani, but you don’t have to kick the cat. I’m actually with you, you know. If I had my way I’d lock up people like the men who attacked you and make their lives as hellish as they make other people’s. So try not to attack me.’
He looked at her for a long moment, his good eye dripping malevolence, but then slowly leaned back against the pillows and closed his eye, sighing deeply.
There was a long silence before she ventured: ‘Was there any special reason tonight? Or was it just because you were there — all-purpose malice, as it were?’
He smiled, a chilly grimace, and she studied his face, a pleasant one with high cheekbones, finely shaped lips and an aquiline nose. His skin was fairly dark, like coffee with the minimum amount of cream in it; he must be, she found herself thinking, very good looking when he smiles. Smiles properly, that is.
‘It’s so silly,’ he said, still not opening his eyes. ‘I come of a family who regard those who buy fast food of that sort as the lowest of the low. We have always had servants to cook for us, money, status, yet I come here to work in this slum because I can’t get any better job — no one in a high-class practice is interested in me — and I try to fit in, I truly try to fit in. I even go at the end of a late surgery to collect food from a place like that. I will be like the people I care for, I tell myself. I will not be a snob. And what happens? You see what happens.’
She bit her lip. Had he stood there oozing disdain for his surroundings, showing in every move he made how low he believed himself to have stooped? If he had, that could have been enough to inflame the sort of youths who were already predisposed to despise those they regarded as aliens. It was an unjustified attack, of course it was. But if he had behaved so …
‘Not that I was thinking such things as I waited there,’ he went on, almost dreamily now. ‘I was just tired and thinking the food smelled good and looking forward to getting it and going home to get some rest. And suddenly they leap on me.’
His good eye opened and he glared at her. ‘Believe me, I did not provoke. I don’t provoke. I understand the smallness of the brains of these people. I understand the immediacy of their responses. I know better than to make any action or to use any facial expression that could be construed as hostile. Yet see what happened. It makes no difference what we do. If we are foreigners in this great country we are despised whatever our status.’
She was silent, just sitting, looking at him. And suddenly he grinned a wide smile that made his face light up, for his teeth were very even and white. ‘And don’t think it is possible for you to distance yourself from the matter because you’re American. Your country is as bad if not worse.’
‘I know that,’ she said. ‘Do you think I don’t? But I’ve got more goddamned sense than to let the way some idiots behave change the way I behave with individuals. If you treat everyone here the way you treated young Adam Parotsky, then you’re going to make a hell of a lot of personal enemies. I’d have thought you have enough of the other kind to be getting on with. You’d be better off being a little more — agreeable, surely?’
He opened his good eye and looked at her with obvious puzzlement ‘In what way was I disagreeable to — who was it? — Parotsky?’
‘You were very rude to him. And to me too. Insisting on seeing a man consultant, for heaven’s sake!’
He seemed to be considering that ‘I make errors from time to time,’ he announced. ‘I come from the sort of family that has difficulty in seeing its women as professional persons. Just understand and forgive me.’
She laughed. ‘You’re quite something, you know that? Even when you apologize, you come across as a — well — as definitely on the hostile side!’
‘It is a problem I seek to overcome,’ he said calmly. ‘So, the young doctor you recommend, he takes his time.’
‘You’re not the only patient here, you know,’ she said. She’d heard the sounds from beyond the curtains that told her other people had arrived in the waiting hall. ‘He could have been caught up in a greater emergency.’
‘No doubt,’ he said, and seemed to go to sleep. She hesitated for a moment but then he opened his eyes again. ‘I did not, of course, believe your promise that he was a great surgeon. I know a young beginner when I see one. However, I also looked carefully at my own wound. It is a clean one and has happily missed doing damage to any important structures. He will, I dare say, be exceedingly careful. If I am not happy with his work I can insist on someone else doing it again. I tell you this so that you don’t think me a complete fool, Dr — ah —’
‘Barnabas,’ George said. ‘And no, Dr Choopani, I don’t think you’re a fool. I also suspect you’re not quite as unpleasant as you make people think you are by your behaviour.’
‘Unpleasant? I am never unpleasant! I speak directly, perhaps, but never unpleasantly.’
‘Don’t kid yourself,’ she said firmly. ‘You can be very unpleasant. You had an argument on the phone with the people in Paediatrics this morning.’
He frowned, a movement that made him wince slightly. ‘Paediatrics?’
‘I was there. I heard all about it. You wanted to admit a child with gastroenteritis —’
‘They are so silly!’ he snapped. ‘I need a bed for a sick child, they say they cannot take her because they have no isolation bed! Such nonsense! Don’t nurses know any more how to prevent the spread of infection? Are they so useless they cannot do the job they are trained for without special wards? Yes, I complained about this, but I am fair — I am fair! When I managed to get a bed elsewhere I told them so that they would not waste time looking for a bed here at Old East. Yet this does not seem to please them!’
She shook her head slowly as she gazed at him. ‘You really do have a communication problem, don’t you? It was the call you made to tell them you’d got your patient in at Kings that I overheard. They thought you were gloating — that that was why you called.’
He was furious. He reared up on the couch so that he was once more sitting bolt upright and stared at her in outrage. ‘Gloating? Gloating? I would waste my time telephoning to gloat? What do they think I am? An idiot with nothing better to do with my time? I wished only to save them trouble! I don’t understand these people.’
‘Obviously.’ She got to her feet as the curtains parted and a nurse came in pushing a trolley loaded with surgical equipment, followed by Adam Parotsky. ‘I’d better go. If there’s anything I can do to help, let me know.’ She stopped at the curtains. ‘Meanwhile, a word of advice. Don’t think everyone understands what it is you mean. They don’t.’
He made a sound, half sibilan
t, half barking, that reminded her powerfully of old black-and-white movies about unspeakable villains and impossible heroines, and she grinned at him. To her amazement, he made an effort to smile back.
‘I must thank you,’ he said. It was clearly an effort for him. ‘You were very quick and saved me much blood loss. I would not have died of it, but it could have been tiresome. I am grateful.’
‘You’re welcome,’ she said. ‘Any time,’ and went.
She got back to her flat at about eleven-thirty, a little surprised to find it wasn’t later. It certainly felt as though it had been a very long rime since they’d been sitting there in Leman Street over that wreckage of bread-and-butter pudding while Gus talked to her — about what? Better not to think about that.
He might still be there she decided and, curling up on her sofa, reached for the phone. Worth a try, anyway. Maybe she’d find out a little more about the odd Dr Choopani, for whom, she had to admit, she had a warmer liking now than she had when she’d first talked to him. Arrogant and proud he might be, but there was no malice in him. He had obviously been reared to be the man he was, and had no insight at all into the effect he might have on other people. It wouldn’t hurt to tell Gus that. Or so she told herself.
He was still at the nick, she was told by the switchboard operator, they’d try to find him, please hold on, and hold on she did for what seemed an age until at last he was on the end of the line, sounding tired and a little distracted.
‘Mmm?’ he said in response to her question. ‘Oh, yes, we’ve got them sorted. No one hurt much. The one who ran away we picked up half an hour ago. It was on his behalf they did it, they say.’
‘How do you mean? On his behalf?’
‘He’s got a girlfriend lives over the other side of the Watney Road estate. Never goes near her if he can help it, as I understand it, since she had the baby, but very swaggering about it, you know? Anyway, it seems the baby died a couple of weeks ago.’
‘Died,’ George said, feeling suddenly horribly sure that she knew exactly what was coming. ‘What of?’
‘Um — cot death, according to our community liaison girl,’ Gus said. ‘Yeah, I know. It made me think a bit too.’
‘Well, we do seem to be having some sort of epidemic. This one wasn’t sent to Old East for the PM by any chance?’
‘No, it went to — let’s see …’ There was a rustle of papers in her ear. ‘Um, St Chad’s took it. But really, Dr B., it’s got nothing to do with tonight’s events. Or, not really …’
‘Not really? You can do better than that.’
‘Well, it has in a sense, a rather oblique sense. The thing is, the father, this precious father who didn’t give a tuppenny damn about his kid while it was alive, takes violent umbrage when it dies and blames the doctor. The mother gave him some story about the doctor seeming to suggest she’d done it — you know how ham-handed some of these doctors can be —’
‘I know how ham-handed this one can be,’ she said feelingly. ‘Mind you, so can your coppers.’
‘Not on this patch,’ he said swiftly. ‘My people are very carefully trained now on how to deal with parents in cases like these, so mind your —’
‘I’m minding, I’m minding,’ she said. ‘So that’s the story? The grieving father gets his mates and goes after the doctor because they want someone to blame?’
‘That’s about the size of it. They followed him from his surgery — one of them’s singing like a bird, of course, there’s always one that does — and jumped him from outside.’ He took a deep breath. ‘You’ve got to hand it to the buggers. Plate glass that thick and they jump through it, would you believe, jump through it! Could have killed themselves and I wish they had, the money it’s going to cost to put that glass back, notwithstanding the insurance! The size of the premiums they’ll be asking in the future — I tell you, who’d be a businessman?’
‘I know a copper who likes it,’ she said.
‘Yeah, well the charm’s wearing off. Listen, George, are you OK? If I hadn’t been so thrown — and I don’t deny I was — I’d have seen you home properly. I’m ashamed to have sent you on your own. And anyway, we hadn’t finished talking.’
‘We have for the present, Gus,’ she said firmly. ‘I must go.’
‘Let’s try again tomorrow?’ he said. ‘Eh? What about it? Different place this time. I’ll take you down to my “Sole Provider” by St Katherine’s Dock. What do you say? It’s not so posh as the “Plaice To Be”, mind you, though at least it’s got all its bleedin’ windows in position.’
‘Not tomorrow night, Gus,’ she said and was genuinely sorry. Or at least she thought she was. Talking again in the way he had been might be a bit — well, never mind. Stick to the situation as it was. ‘My ma and her friend arrive from Buffalo to spend Christmas with me tomorrow. I have to be at Heathrow to meet them at the crack of dawn.’
‘Bring ‘em with you,’ Gus said after a moment. ‘Glad to meet your mum, I’d be. Maybe she’ll help me make some sense out of you.’
She ignored that. ‘They’ll be jetlagged. Some other time, Gus.’
‘Well, all right. If you insist on being such a misery. How about Sunday night?’
‘Gus, I’ll let you know,’ she said firmly and almost hung up and then snatched the telephone back. ‘Hey, Gus?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Let me know anything interesting about that cot death, will you? Like the PM report. Can you do that?’
He was silent for a moment. ‘I might. For a consideration.’
‘What sort of consideration?’
He chuckled and there was a leer in it ‘I’ll let you know.’ And it was he who hung up first
7
Heathrow, as usual, made her feel restless. The ebb and flow of totally self-absorbed people all screwed up into a state of excitement over impending or just completed travel filled the air with the reek of anxiety and she caught it.
She had once thought it might be interesting to set up some research into pheromone levels in airports; was there more fear about or more sexual signallers? Certainly watching people greeting each other and saying goodbye revealed a good deal of high-level sexual tension, she thought now as she pushed her way through the hubbub, past Sock Shops and Knickerboxes and Menzies Bookstalls filled with people eager to spend money on something, anything, with which to assuage their unease, towards the exits out of which the passengers on the overnight plane from Kennedy, New York, would appear.
Please let the plane be on time, she prayed inside her head to a deity in which she did not believe; please let them be reasonably relaxed and not miserable when they get off; please help me keep a control on my tongue if Ma starts saying things that make me mad …
The plane was only fifteen minutes late touching down and by some miracle the passengers cleared the customs hall and began to come out within half an hour. ‘They’re shovin’ ‘em through immigration and customs fast today,’ confided the cab driver standing at the barrier next to her with his slate marked ‘Mr Jabowalski, United and Combined Services Ltd’ in large letters. ‘I’m always glad when people come on this flight. It’s never that much of a wait, but today’s magic.’
He was right; she saw them only a few minutes later, pushing their trolley of luggage, looking a little dazed and uncertain, two white-haired women in the neat clothes and sensible shoes that she remembered so well; she pushed her way forwards to wave furiously and Aunt Bridget’s face lit up — her mother still looked rather vague — as she reached them.
The next twenty minutes were a flurry of hugs and chatter and sweating as they got the luggage — rather a lot of it, George noted with a slightly sinking sensation — to the car park. She’d borrowed Hattie Clements’s car this morning, since she had no car of her own and had to explain all this to an incredulous Aunt Bridget as she manoeuvred her way out of the airport and on to the route that would take her to the M4 and the middle of London.
‘No car of your own?’ Bridget sai
d, shocked to the core. ‘How can you possibly not have a car, honey? How do you -?’
‘I really don’t need one,’ George said, trying to concentrate on the unfamiliar stick gearbox. She’d only driven the car a couple of times in the past, apart from this morning on the way here. ‘It’s easier to use buses between the hospital and my flat, or walk, and parking’s hell in London. Public transport’s terrific though. Hattie — the woman who owns this car — hardly uses it for the same reason. Listen, are you OK back there, Ma? Are you comfortable?’
‘I’m fine, thank you, sweetheart,’ Vanny said and smiled at George in the rearview mirror. ‘Just a bit weary, I guess. It was kind of noisy on the plane, what with the babies and all’
‘Tell me about it’ Bridget said with great feeling. ‘Jesus, the way that kid bawled! I thought it’d never stop. I told the mother I had some Valium tablets in my bag and a half of one wouldn’t do any harm, give the poor little scrap a bit of peace — as well as the rest of us, though I didn’t say that, of course — and you’d have thought I was trying to poison the child! But kids do fine on small doses of the stuff. My niece Mary has to fly her three over to Hawaii all the time and she always knocks them out. That way it’s no hassle and the kids don’t act cranky for days after they arrive.’
‘The food on the plane was not good,’ Vanny announced suddenly. ‘I have to tell you, George, I am famished, famished and tired. Could we stop for breakfast, please?’
The car was now on the motorway at last, locked in the usual morning rush hour, and George swore under her breath.
‘I wish you’d said at the airport I could have got you something there easily. Now, it’s not so good. It’s a fair way into town and I didn’t see any clean eating places on this road.’ She peered out at the heavy traffic and shook her head. ‘And I do have to go into the hospital some time today, so I have to … Look, hold on in there and I’ll do the best I can to get us home fast. Then I can fix you some breakfast and see you settled before I have to go to work.’
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