‘Not much.’ I made tea and poured myself a cup. ‘Why?’
‘He seems a nice guy. Mmm ‒ he doesn’t seem to like Linsey.’
‘So?’
‘So this is Robbie’s scene. He should know.’
‘He might if he could see it clearly. His chip’s in the way.’ I drank some tea. ‘When did Pete tell you he’d seen me with Charlie above?’
He hesitated. ‘Yesterday.’
‘Wow!’ I sat down. ‘Bassy, what’s going on? You afraid I’m ripe for a rebound or something?’
‘It could happen, particularly as Charlie’s your type.’
‘Ex-type. He’s nothing like John.’
‘If he had been I’d have been here two minutes flat after that chat with Pete.’
‘Why? You never used to be so concerned with my moral welfare.’
‘I never thought you a case for concern until I’d my first ugly butcher’s at that creep John. Christ, Alix, that ‒’ He broke off. ‘Mind you,’ he went on more gently, ‘it did figure. He was a good-looking bastard, and his voracious technique must’ve been a traumatic as well as novel experience for you after the old Untouchables. Not surprising it rocked you off balance.’ He smiled suddenly. ‘Little Pete thinks you the snazziest bird in Edinburgh ‒ which also figures.’
That scar was even more tender than I had thought. ‘How’d you make that out?’ I asked between my teeth.
‘Use your IQ, woman! Pete’s too dark and half a foot too short, but otherwise, acne and all, he’s a natch for one of your Untouchables. Forgotten how mad you used to get after your dates when you were in sixth form? All that acne, sweat, heavy breathing, and after-shave fumes ‒ and not even your hand held?’
I had to smile faintly. ‘Yes. I remember now.’
‘And that Henry Whatsit ‒ the house surgeon in your first year ‒ and the one that came next ‒ what was his name? Tom Someone. No relation, but they could’ve been brothers. I remember once after one or the other came home with you Dad saying he felt so sorry for the wretched youth, as though he’d spent the weekend chasing you round our house and garden, he obviously hadn’t the faintest idea what to do if he ever caught you. That’s Pete right now,’ he added cheerfully, as the food was sending up his blood-sugar, ‘and you should see the looks he collects from his poor birds after dates. We’ve tried to help him. We’ve given him Fanny Hill, and he knows it by heart, but still can’t get started. And though he’s short on imagination, he’s not thick. At maths, of course, he’s a bloody genius. If he goes into industry ten years from now he’ll be getting ten thousand a year or more. He’ll make the really big league. You’ll see.’ He looked upwards. ‘I have the impression Charlie now has a good bit in common with Pete ten years on. You fancy him at all?’
I could see he was genuinely concerned, and in the circumstances I couldn’t blame him. Had our positions been reversed I would probably now be down at his flat trying to pump common sense into him. ‘No. I just like him. You know?’
‘Yep.’ He stretched his arms as if a weight had rolled off. ‘Hi, beautiful!’ Catriona had come in. ‘I’m free-loading, again! How’s the tooth?’
‘It was just a check-up. Bassy, excuse me, but I’m afraid you’ve lost an earring,’ said Catriona.
After he left I needed to talk. ‘I’d rather we kept this between us, Catriona.’
‘Yes, indeed!’ Oddly, she wasn’t shocked. She was angry. ‘If Sandra ‒ the neighbours ‒ anyone had seen him taking you up to his flat at midnight! Naturally, I understand it was just to save you the stairs ‒’
‘And, possibly, his fiancée from getting the wrong impression. Like I told you, there didn’t seem to be anyone around, but there could’ve been.’
‘In one way that’s a relief. But since he’s supposed to be an engaged man’ ‒ she went scarlet with indignation ‒ ‘I’m not sure that in another way it doesn’t make it look much worse. What could have possessed the man to be so indiscreet?’
‘How about common sense, and kindness?’
She looked at me fiercely. ‘I’m sorry, Alix, but if you still believe in Santa Claus, I don’t.’
Chapter Six
Meggy Drummond was the leader of the infant gang on the stairs. Meggy was nearly five and under a pudding-basin haircut had the face of a Victorian china-doll and the instincts of Genghis Khan. She ruled her gang absolutely, partly as she had the strongest personality, partly as she carried the most physical weight. Any hint of rebellion and Meggy jumped on the rebel, literally, but she was a tough and not a bully. After she had decided to accept me, if the gang spat on me or chucked grit at my car, it was just to give us all a good laugh, and no longer xenophobia.
It was releasing wee Jaimie’s head from the stair railings that got me in good with Meggy. Jaimie was one of her many brothers, and when I arrived that morning the gang were trying to remove the fat infant’s head from his body. The only child not bellowing was Jaimie, as Meggy kept shoving toffees into his mouth. There were no adults about, probably as the children were making such a noise. It was on the very rare occasions when they were silent that the maternal heads popped out of front doors like anxious, be-rollered jack-in-a-boxes.
‘Want any help, kids?’
All but Jaimie looked at Meggy. She looked me up and down. ‘Ye canna shift the bluidy bars. Ye’re no strong enough.’
‘There may be an easier way. Hold my bag, duckie. I may have something inside it to help Jaimie.’ I hoped that would save my nursing-bag from being slung down the stairs directly I let it go. It did.
The children breathed heavily down my neck as I measured the greatest width of Jaimie’s crown against the width of the bars and then used in reverse the technique required when delivering a normal baby’s head in birth. It worked better than I expected. Within seconds Jaimie was sitting in my lap rubbing his red ears and chewing another toffee.
Meggy exploded in relieved fury. ‘Ye daft wee ‒! Try that again and ye’ll no get a sweetie fra me ‒ ye’ll get a boot up the backside!’
Jaimie pushed the toffee into his left cheek pouch, spat efficiently at his sister, and smiled at me angelically. ‘Bluidy gurrrls!’
I had never heard Meggy’s four-letter word. I asked Bassy to translate. He was rather shaken. ‘My God! Who’ve you been mixing it with?’
To Meggy and gang a foreigner was anyone who did not live in their building. The demolition workers had long been targets. The appearance of the van with the dust-researchers was an unexpected and glorious bonus. For a while they abandoned the stairs and haunted the site.
‘I’ll have ulcers before this job’s done, Nurse,’ the site foreman told me. ‘One good charge and we’d have the lot down and be away, but in this built-up area we’ve to go slow. Keeping those wee devils off the job is making an old man of me!’ He ducked as a chip hit my car roof. ‘I’m not a violent man and I’ve never raised my hand to a bairn in my life, but what I could do to those wee ‒’ He cut himself short and substituted ‘those bairns!’
‘You have my sympathy, though when they’re not heaving missiles they’re cute kids.’
‘Cute? Huh! Not the word I’ve in mind, Nurse!’ He was a square man in his forties with a craggy, weather-pitted face and very small grey eyes. ‘You’ll be from England? What brings you up here?’
‘I thought I’d like to work in Edinburgh.’
‘Aye?’ He considered me, dead-pan. ‘How do you like it now you’re here?’
‘Very much, thanks. Missiles and all. It’s such a beautiful city for one reason.’
‘Taken your fancy, has it? No accounting for tastes.’ He allowed himself a very small smile. ‘Maybe it’s no so bad.’
Archie Brown seemed so much better that morning that I was worried. I looked for but did not see Dr MacDonald’s car anywhere in my area. At lunch I consulted my private oracle.
Mrs Duncan advised me to wait until my afternoon’s visit. ‘The doctor’s aware the grass should’ve been green ove
r that poor laddie these last two months. No doubt he’ll be round there himself later, but being Wednesday and his partner’s rest-day, he’ll have the double load of visits. It’s but bad news that can’t wait.’
‘Yet, if this is the terminal rally?’
‘Will that be news to Dr MacDonald?’
Gemmie was alone at our usual table. I asked her advice, but she had her own problems. She was starting a cold and had had a row with a patient’s relative. ‘There was this new cardiac asthma on my list. Her old man was a general but she’s a right lovely old bag ‒ nothing toffee-nosed. Then in comes her daughter with the shopping “Ooh, Nurse,” she says, looking like I was summat nasty the cat’s fetched in, “I’m sorry you’ve been troubled. I asked the doctor to fetch in a nurse for my mother, but I meant a proper nurse. You do understand?” ’ Gemmie was blazing. ‘ “Oh, aye, missus,” I says, “I reckon I do seeing as the language we’re speaking is my mother-tongue, even if I’m not good enough for you.” I let her have it, Alix! She was that mad! Said she’d report me to “my superiors”. Just shopped meself to Miss Bruce.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She was so right nice I feel bloody awful!’
Catriona arrived. ‘Have you two remembered our monthly report has to be in tomorrow? I could shake myself for forgetting! I’ve promised to have supper with Aunt Elspeth this evening, and this means I’ll have to sit up half the night.’
I said, ‘Why not ring your aunt and have supper with her another evening?’
‘I ‒ I can’t. She’s ‒ er ‒ asked friends in.’
I tried to catch Gemmie’s eye, but she was too deep in her private gloom. I finished my first course wondering why Catriona so often these days looked on the verge of an anxiety state when her aunt’s name came up, but by my pudding was back to worrying about Archie Brown.
At four that afternoon Dr MacDonald’s empty car was outside the buildings. The infant gang was minus Meggy and Jaimie, grouped in the main entrance and looking strangely subdued. ‘Hallo, kids! Where’s Meggy?’
The deafening response was mostly incoherent. I caught enough to make me sweat coldly. I had to be careful. The majority were too young for reason, but not for fear, and could easily be frightened into silence. If I had heard right, that could be fatal. ‘So Meggy’s gone for a drive in a car?’ I kept my voice casual. ‘How nice! What kind of a car?’
‘A fine blue car!’
‘Very nice. And with a man?’
‘Aye! The man was away with Meggy and the sweetie bottle.’
I felt sick. ‘Which man was this? Meggy’s dad? Anyone’s dad? Any of you know this man? Had you seen him before he gave Meggy the sweeties and asked her to take a drive?’
‘He didna give Meggy the sweeties!’ protested Fiona. ‘They were Meggy’s sweeties ‒ wee white sweeties, and she liked them fine! I didna like mine. I spat it out ‒ like this!’
‘I spat mine better!’ This was Alistair. ‘I can spit fine ‒ much better’n Fiona!’
‘You’re both top spitters, duckies!’ I held them apart. ‘Tell me more about Meggy. When did this man take her for a ride in his fine blue car?’
‘Just now.’
That could be anything from five minutes to five hours back. ‘How about Wee Jaimie? He go for a ride? He’s up at his auntie’s? What about Meggy’s mother? Does she know Meggy’s gone for a drive? Did Meggy tell her?’
They shuffled uncomfortably, I thought with guilt, until Dr MacDonald’s voice answered, ‘It’s all right, Nurse. Meggy’s away up at the hospital with her mother.’ He patted a couple of the nearest heads. ‘Away now, you bairns. I want a word with the nurse.’
We walked a little away from the entrance, and I breathed as if I had been running.
Dr MacDonald took a medium-sized and empty aspirin bottle from his pocket. ‘New yesterday and left on the kitchen dresser. When Meggy was seen offering them round there were ten left. The rest, give or take a couple, she’d eaten. Apparently she liked the taste.’
‘Oh no! But she’s all right?’
‘Thanks to the mercy of Providence and the observant eye of an itinerant pathologist driving up to join his colleagues across the way. I’ve just come from the hospital. The contents of her stomach have been satisfactorily evacuated, and they’re keeping her in under observation for maybe twenty-four hours, but she should do nicely. Naturally, had there been any delay a dose this size could’ve been quickly lethal on a child her age. Her mother’s very shocked. Maybe she’ll learn from this, but others …’ He shook his head. ‘Do you know how many bairns die annually from poison swallowed accidentally in the supposed safety of their own homes?’
‘Throughout the U.K.? Over a hundred.’
‘Over a hundred.’ He looked back and up at the high, narrow, crowded grey building, and it seemed that from every one of the many windows faces looked down. ‘But figures are statistics that happen to other people. Not to me and mine. So the bottles of medicine and tablets remain on kitchen dressers or in unlocked cupboards and drawers easily available to small, inquisitive hands. The clearly marked ‘Poison’ labels on the bottles of domestic disinfectant will continue to be ignored, and the bottles will remain on draining-boards and lavatory floors. And since to investigate and taste are natural instincts in normal infants, every year one hundred and maybe more bairns will die unnecessarily.’ He sighed with impatient despair. ‘In thirty years in general practice I’ve seen every variety of human grief. There’s none worse than the loss of a beloved child, and when that grief is accentuated by the terrible knowledge that one wee bit of forethought could’ve saved that beloved life, the knife goes in too deep for healing. Yet will the parents learn to think ahead? Not in thirty years,’ he said wearily, ‘not in thirty years. However, this time we can breathe again, thanks to a certain Dr Linsey’s promptness in bundling the mother and bairn in his car and up to the hospital within minutes of spotting the bottle in Meggy’s hand. He got in touch with me at the hospital to explain the situation. He’d quite a time contacting me, as I was over the other side attending my partner’s patients.’
‘Linsey,’ I murmured. ‘Of course! The car fits. I might have guessed had I not been too busy imagining everything from rape to murder.’
‘Unhappily, not without reason these days.’ He lifted his bushy eyebrows. ‘You’re acquainted with this pathologist?’
‘If he’s the man I think he must be, yes, slightly.’ I told him about our flats.
‘That’s the man.’ I thought he seemed about to add more, but was mistaken as he went on to discuss Archie Brown. ‘You’ll have observed this improvement?’
‘Yes. It’s been worrying me. Can it be genuine?’
‘There’s no question that today he’s suffering less discomfort, discharge, feverishness, and jaundice.’
‘Doctor ‒ the final rally? Or could it last?’
‘I wish I could answer that, Nurse.’ He shrugged like a Latin. ‘According to every textbook and expert opinion I’ve consulted on his condition, this can’t possibly last. But according to them, he should be dead already. In my opinion all that’s keeping him alive is his mind ‒ and don’t ask me how, as many a more learned man than myself would be unable to provide a satisfactory answer to that question. The human mind is a strange, powerful, and still largely uncharted instrument. Have you seen any apparently spontaneous cures of the incurable?’
‘Two ‒ no ‒ three.’
‘I’ve seen a few more. Not many. A few. If Archie Brown’s mind can achieve that, though I’ve to admit, sadly, I doubt that’s possible despite today, but once in a wee while the impossible becomes the possible ‒ and if it does I shall rejoice greatly.’ He glanced up as the low clouds unleashed a sudden squall. ‘Ah, good! A drop of rain’ll be welcome after the uncomfortable warmth of this afternoon’s sun.’
Having only shivered at half-hourly intervals all afternoon, I agreed the sun had been unusually warm and we went our separate ways, smiling
.
The rain had stopped and I was smiling on my way out. The previously uncomplaining Archie had just admitted himself fed to the back teeth with the view from his bedroom window. Boredom was always one of the first signs of convalescence. At first unintentionally, my smile enveloped the car slowing opposite. Then I recognized car and driver and waved.
Charles Linsey did not smile back at once, which seemed reasonable, as he was not expecting to see me there. When he did it was a little stiffly. I didn’t mind. I was much too pleased with him for saving Meggy’s life, and over Archie. Also seeing him again reminded me how very nice he had been the night Mrs Thompson died. As his car disappeared behind the plain van on the site I decided Josephine Astley had been born lucky as well as rich. If she could only get him to grow his hair and do something about his suits she really would have it all ways. Then I wondered why she hadn’t done something about both already. Though I had only seen her once, that once was enough for me to expect them to worry her. If I loved him they would worry me very seriously as they clearly proved he and I were on different wavelengths.
I remembered a psychiatrist saying that in the most ideal of human relationships a man and a woman could be on the same wavelength 90 per cent of the time, and in consequence 90 per cent honest with each other. He thought the remaining 10 per cent could and should never be shared, since humans were human and over-exposure only illuminated the less attractive elements in human nature.
I was assessing in retrospect my relationship with John as I drove back and had placed it around the 40 mark when I saw Sandra walking along the pavement ahead. I drew up for her. ‘What’s happened to your bike?’
Sandra and Gemmie were the only two in our set without driving licences. They were having the driving lessons provided by our authorities in these circumstances, but had not yet taken the test. Both had brought their own bikes up with them, and preferred using them to the ones officially provided. Sandra’s was a very high-powered semi-racing job.
‘The gears have jammed. I’ve left it at that shop back there. The man’s promised it’ll be ready first thing tomorrow. He wanted to bring it up to the flat tonight, but I wasn’t having that! I mean! Anyway, I’ve got a date ‒ and guess who I’ve just seen driving by?’
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