A Time to Heal Page 6

“All right,” she said, and smiled and he nodded at her, and started his pacing again.

  “So what do we do? I can only suggest we handle the whole thing as though we were cooperating fully, in order to keep some control over what is published. We’ve already seen what they can do without cooperation, so let’s for God’s sake be sensible, and get some of the situation back under our own thumbs. You see the sense of that?”

  Theo was watching Oscar’s pacing, his eyes half-closed, and Harriet, glancing at him, wondered briefly about the expression on his face. Not precisely angry, but …

  “Harriet—I suggest you agree to see this man McClarrie. I’ll sit in on the interview, if you don’t mind. Just to extricate you from any awkwardnesses that might come up. Does that sound reasonable to you?”

  “If you think the best thing would be to talk to him, then of course I will. You’re in charge, after all!”

  Theo stood up sharply. “I must go,” he said, and Harriet looked up at him, surprised by the clipped note in his voice. He was angry, but why? He wouldn’t look at her, and went to the door.

  “I’ll be in theaters, Hattie,” he said, not turning. “Until six or so. Come and see me, will you, before you leave? Good afternoon, Oscar.”

  “Now what on earth—?” she began as the door snapped behind him, but Oscar shrugged and came to stand beside her.

  “Theo and his moods always bore me. I can’t think why you pay any attention to them. Now, we’ll call the front lodge and see if McClarrie is still hanging about—and I suspect he is—and get them to send him here.” He leaned over and kissed her cheek briefly. “And tonight, we’ll have dinner at the flat, hmm?”

  She laughed at that. “Kiss and make up? Of course. I’d like that. I’ll phone Mrs. Davies and see if she can stay the night with George. I’m sure she will. She usually doesn’t mind on Thursdays.”

  “Splendid,” he said, a little absently, for he was already dialing. “Foster? Is there a newspaperman—hmm?… Yes, that’s the one. Ask him his name and paper, will you?… Yes, that’s it. Tell him Dr. Berry will see him, and send him to my office, will you?… Thank you.” He reached for his intercom. “Miss Manton, tea for three, please, with sandwiches and biscuits and the like. Make it look attractive, will you?”

  “Fatted-calf treatment?”

  “Why not? It works like a charm, in my experience. Now, listen, Harriet. If there are any difficult questions, let me handle them, will you? I’ve had a good deal of experience of these newspaper wallahs, over the years, so—”

  “With the greatest of pleasure,” she said fervently. “I hate the whole business, believe me. Look, let me go and tidy up, will you? There are times when a woman needs a little extra lipstick.”

  When she came back, with not only a freshly made-up face and well-brushed hair, but a crisply clean white coat, she found Oscar and a tall thin bearded man sitting in a haze of cigar smoke, a tea tray adorned with food and a small vase of dahlias in front of them on the desk.

  They both stood up to greet her, and the tall man shook hands with her in response to Oscar’s introduction and looked at her closely.

  “How do you do, Dr. Berry? I feel I might well be shaking hands with our next Nobel prizewinner. It’s a privilege to meet you, and I’m most grateful to you for agreeing to this interview.”

  A little flustered, Harriet looked beyond him to Oscar, but he showed no expression at all, leaning over his desk to pick up her teacup and offer it to her.

  “That sounds rather exaggerated to me, Mr. McClarrie. But it’s kind of you—thank you, Oscar. No, no sugar. Well, Mr. McClarrie? Where do you want to begin?”

  He held her chair for her as she sat down, and then returned to his own. “At the beginning, please,” he said promptly. “I’ll try to make it easy for you, though. I have a modest degree in physics, so I do speak a little of the language, if not as much as I might.” He smiled a professionally brilliant smile. “I sometimes suspect that the culture gap doesn’t exist only between arts and sciences, but in an interdisciplinary way within the sciences themselves. It’s surprising how little biology a physics man gets. But I’ll do my best.”

  “In very basic terms, then, Mr. McClarrie, I used on Mr. Ferris—following a very large series of successful animal experiments of which I believe you know—a method of inducing growth regression. I exhibited to him a culture of RNA-virus-type bodies grown on his own normal body cells, under special conditions designed to enhance the speed of their action. I used heat and I used hyperbaric oxygen—”

  “Hyperbaric oxygen? One of the high-pressure chambers they sometimes use for radiotherapy?”

  “That’s it. A highly oxygenated cell is more vulnerable. There is a good deal of evidence that the use of hyperbaric oxygen enhances treatment effects. I daresay I might have got results without it, but I thought it important to use as much speed as I safely could in so ill a man. It was a risk—but he was at risk of dying anyway, so I felt it justified.”

  “In the event you were right,” McClarrie said and smiled gently, “there’s no need to be on the defensive about that, Dr. Berry.”

  “I wasn’t on the defensive!”

  “No? Forgive me. I thought—however. You applied the treatment. May I just ask a few questions about the details of the method? Of the way you developed your vaccine? Because that is in effect what it is ….”

  He launched into a series of extremely intelligent questions, and Harriet found herself beginning to enjoy the interview. To talk shop in depth with a person who really understood her subject had always been a pleasure to her, and she became more and more animated, letting her tea cool as she talked eagerly about her hypothesis, and not noticing Oscar’s silence until he cut in suddenly after one of McClarrie’s questions.

  “How about the costings on this, Dr. Berry? It sounds to me—”

  “Ah, Mr. McClarrie,” Oscar said quickly, “this, I suspect, is where I must join in. Budgeting and so on is my department. Not nearly as interesting, of course, as the grass-roots work, but very vital, all the same.”

  “Oh, indeed, Professor Bell! And it must be very tedious for you to have to cope with all this administrative side. I know how distinguished a scientist you are in your own right, of course. Bell’s test—”

  Oscar smiled thinly. “And I still work at the lab bench, I can assure you, Mr. McClarrie. The only reason I am not completely au fait with every detail of Dr. Berry’s recent project work is that I have just returned from the States where I was conducting a series of trials of my own. However, that is by-the-by. You were asking about costings. I can assure you that this method that Dr. Berry has developed is in fact an extremely expensive one. I have a breakdown here …”

  He opened a folder on his desk and took from it a sheet of folded blue foolscap, carefully ruled into columns of figures.

  “The cost of Mr. Ferris’s total treatment, including full hospital inpatient care, of course, is in the region of three and a half thousand pounds. I haven’t, of course, included costs of preliminary work, animal trials, and the like, which have been going on under my direction here since Dr. Berry started work on this project–when was it, Harriet? Two years ago? Yes, two years ago—which would have vastly increased the bill, of course. Quadrupled it at the very least.”

  “Three and a half thousand. Is that what it would cost today to treat another patient in the same condition?”

  “Oh, probably far more, far more! We have the equipment here, in use, and I didn’t account for that in my costings. If a general hospital wanted to apply the treatment, Mr. McClarrie, they would first have to install the extra pathological laboratory equipment, then the hyperbaric oxygen unit, improve staff/patient ratios considerably—say, the cost of treating one patient would be approaching, say, five thousand pounds, and you’ll be pretty accurate.”

  “A lot of money.”

  “A great deal of money indeed. And I have in operation at this Establishment a number of extremely important in
vestigations into dangerous—in the sense of life-threatening—conditions, all of which must be financed on a very meager budget indeed. Frankly, Mr. McClarrie, if you could, in your account of today’s interview, make mention of the fact that we here at Brookbank are doing the work we do on a veritable shoestring, and if you could suggest that we should be given more realistic—not generous, but realistic— sums of money, I for one would be very grateful. And I imagine my staff would … hmm, Harriet? They must all be tired to death of listening to me preach economy at them.”

  “We know why you have to,” Harriet said. “Look, I’m sorry, but I hadn’t realized we’d been talking so long. I really must go—there are some things I must do before I leave tonight, and I—er—I don’t want to leave too late if I can avoid it.” She let her eyes slide a little wickedly across Oscar. “Will you forgive me? I’m sure there’s no more I can usefully add.”

  McClarrie stood up at once, and held out his hand to her.

  “Of course, Dr. Berry, and I am immensely grateful to you, immensely. May I perhaps talk to you again if by any chance there should be any extra details I want to sort out when I write my copy?”

  “As far as I’m concerned, by all means. But you’d better check with Os—Professor Bell.”

  “Of course. And thank you again.”

  It was past six, but she went at once to the operating theaters, and she found Theo sitting in theater sister’s office drinking tea while he wrote his notes of the day’s operations.

  “Well? How did the great confrontation go?” he asked without looking up.

  “Oh, it was fine. He’s a nice chap, McClarrie, and mercifully bright. Knows enough about biology to be able to ask intelligent questions. I’ll look forward to seeing the articles he writes out of it all. Theo,”—she came and perched on the desk beside him, and put her hand over the notes he was writing—“stop a minute, will you? I want to know. Why did you leave in such a huff?”

  “A huff? A huff? Good God, woman, I was raging! I couldn’t trust myself to speak! And you call it a huff? Look, my dear benighted creature, when will you see that Oscar uses you as though you were his doormat? He stamps around on you, uses you outrageously, and you smile and simper and say ‘yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir’—”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about that sickly apology stunt he pulled. You’ve drifted into the ludicrous habit of treating Oscar and his sensibilities as though they were the rarest porcelain, but even you must surely see that you’re being manipulated in the most outrageous fashion!”

  Harriet felt her own anger rising. “I most surely do not! You’re getting as paranoid as George with these delusions of persecution of yours! Except that for some extraordinary reason you choose to believe it’s me who’s being persecuted rather than yourself! You sometimes make me wonder, Theo, whether you oughtn’t to go away for awhile and do some straight thinking about yourself, believe me you do—”

  “And I begin to wonder if your brain is softening, believe me. You think he apologized for the sake of a tender glance from your beaux yeux? Not a bit of it, my dear sweet, naive half-wit! He knows as well as he knows his own name that now the Ferris story is out, you’re going to get a hell of a lot of glory. And he wants in on it. It’s as simple as that, and you are as simple as that if you haven’t the wit to see it! Either simple or addled by some sort of absurd passion for the man even if you don’t know it. Now do you see why I’m furious?”

  She sat and stared at him for a moment, her own anger draining away, for he looked far more unhappy now than furious, and clearly totally believed in the truth of what he was saying.

  And it had to be admitted that Oscar had apologized with what was for him an unusual alacrity. Over the many years they had had their disagreements, but usually it was a matter of weeks rather than days before an episode was forgotten, and rarely indeed had one ended with an actual apology. Oscar had always tended to behave as though the argument had never happened, and that therefore no apology was needed. Yet this time he had apologized. Perhaps Theo had some justification for what he was saying.

  She closed her eyes for a moment. “Theo, I’m so tired I could drop. Look, forget it, will you? I take your point, and I’ll think about it. But please, right now, stop being so disagreeable. I really don’t feel I can cope with any more alarums and excursions today. I’ve had enough.”

  He was immediately transformed. “Dear Hattie! I am sorry! You’re quite right, of course. It’s too bad of me to be so thoughtless and harangue you in this fashion. Shall we drive into King’s Lynn tomorrow and have ourselves a fancy lunch, and talk quietly then? Mmm? Oysters and a steak tartare, and some very ancient claret? How does that sound? You go home and have a peaceful evening, and we’ll talk tomorrow. I’d drive you, but I’ve promised to do a case for Geoffrey at nine. Will you be all right?”

  “I’ll be fine, of course. And thank you, lunch would be lovely. Bless you. Good night, Theo.”

  And she went, feeling a little guilty at not admitting she was spending the evening with Oscar, but there seemed little value in irritating Theo any further.

  But it was not as pleasant an evening as it should have been. Oscar prepared as delectable a meal as he ever had and, refusing to talk about work in any way whatsoever, was an amusing companion, talking about theater and books, both subjects he knew she enjoyed. And later, in bed, he was particularly tender, making considerable efforts to please her; not that he was a particularly selfish lover, but he did not always give her the sort of caresses she most enjoyed. Tonight, his very willingness to provide the stimulation she wanted added to her sometimes-felt embarrassment about her sexuality. She had always recognized in herself a certain distaste for her own desires, and could never be quite sure what disturbed her most—wanting extended loveplay and not receiving it, or receiving it and being swept away by the violence of response it woke in her.

  So, long after he was asleep, lying close to her with one hand carelessly thrown over her breasts, she wondered. Did he behave so to please her, or because he really wanted to? That had always been something she wondered about, his response. Certainly he seemed at times to need her body as much as she needed his, but even when he appeared most absorbed in their lovemaking she felt a certain remoteness in him, as though a small part of his mind were standing by, watching. But that could be, she told herself as she had done so often over the years, because of her own still lingering guilts about their relationship. No matter how emancipated a woman she might seem to be in some ways, she was still the middle-class daughter of a middle-class puritan G.P., still felt not only guilt about a sexual relationship outside marriage but a faint disloyalty to the long-dead David.

  And tonight, added to her layers of often experienced doubts and questionings, there was a new dimension. Was Theo right in his anger? Was Oscar manipulating her for his own ends? If he was, could it not be simply that this was part of him, an inevitable result of the day’s events? He was a somewhat devious man; it was one of the aspects of his personality she had long since recognized and accepted. No one could become head of such an Establishment as Brookbank without a gift for and a decided taste for intrigue, nor could it be run efficiently without an ability to manipulate people and events. She had always rather admired this in him, knowing she could never herself be capable of the complexities of his position. C. P. Snowery, Theo had once called it, watching the way Oscar had rid himself of an unwanted man and obtained the cooperation of another he had been angling after. “You’ve got to admire it,” Theo had said, “even as you despise it.”

  But she didn’t despise it, and she didn’t despise Oscar either. She moved gently, turning to look at him in the thin light thrown by the street light outside the window, and he stirred and moved closer to her, and his fingers flexed a little, moving over her skin. She felt it rising in her again, that well of sexual need that lay in a heavy pool deep in her pelvis, and reached for his body, using th
e skill of long familiarity to arouse him sexually enough to rouse him in fact. And not until they had made love again did she sleep, optimism about the future returning, as it usually did, to wash away the niggling doubts and foolish guilts.

  But it proved to be an ill-founded optimism. She had hoped that the interview with McClarrie would lead merely to a few days of artificial newspaper excitement, which would then leak away to nothing, leaving her to go on with her work, the road neatly open to proper publication of her results. She said as much to Theo, when they lunched cozily together next day, but he laughed at her.

  “You sound like a child, Hattie, sometimes: ‘It won’t rain tomorrow because it’s my birthday and no one would let it rain on my birthday.’ This is out of your hands, dear heart, totally. This isn’t anything nice and simple like a new fission bomb or something of that nature. That sort of thing people lose interest in because it can merely kill millions. You’ve come up with something quite other, something that really interests people in a big way. Joe Doakes couldn’t care less about methods of killing millions, but he cares like hell about methods of keeping Joe Doakes and Mrs. Doakes and all the little Doakeses alive and well. Even if the newspapers laid off in a few days—and you could be right about that, depending what else happens in this delicious world of ours–you’re going to find a lot more will happen yet.”

  “I don’t see—”

  “You never do, do you? Well, I won’t make any more prognostications. I get very bored with being Cassandra. Marrons glacées, I think, yes? Outrageously juvenile to like those as much as you do. And then we must go. I’ve a list to get through this afternoon somehow—” And he refused to say any more.

  She was able to accept that refusal with equanimity, for she found other things to think about when she returned to the unit.

  “Your son Gordon phoned, Dr. Berry,” John told her as she came into the unit, a little sleepy from the excellence of the lunch. “Just after you left. He said to tell you he’ll be down tonight, about half past seven—in time for dinner, you see—but on his own. And I’d no sooner hung up and written it all down for you, but the phone rings again, and this time it’s your daughter, and she’s coming down tonight too, for the weekend, and she said she’ll bring some extra food with her, seeing you’re being invaded. I must say, they are a splendid pair, rallying round like this, aren’t they?”