Live, Love, and Cry

by George B Mair

  They motored almost without speaking over the moors to Lanark. The little town seemed relaxed enough, but there were taciturn groups of silent youngsters standing near the old Cross and Grant half smiled when he noted an inspector strolling around in the background. It took big news to bring a small town a cop of that rank on duty on a Sunday afternoon.

  A scrawled message on a poster near the bus station gave the latest headlines.

  hungarian ballet to

  leave edinburgh

  festival cancelled

  official statement

  Deirdre shivered. ‘I don’t like this. It sounds dangerous.’

  Grant gently squeezed her hand. ‘We’ll know the worst on the 6.10 news. Troon should make as good a headquarters as any and the Marine Hotel has got TV in all the right places.’

  ‘And then what?’ The girl was still trembling.

  Grant thanked Providence for an automatic transmission and laid her hand gently against his thigh. ‘Then we see Carol Anne, locate the pilot . . . if any . . . and find your old man.’

  The girl shivered again and he felt her fingers close over his muscles. ‘Not many doctors so strong as you. These legs feel like whipcord or thick rubber or something. Tensed up, as if they were always ready for action.’

  Her skirt had slipped over her knee and an arch of stocking tantalised as the car cut past the racecourse and past a few strolling couples before he asked the question which mattered. Had the girl been living these last days in Edinburgh: and had she taken any water, even for brushing her teeth? Had she too run any risk of being sterilised by her father’s drugs?

  She smiled slightly. ‘I don’t think so. I’m a soft-drink addict and got back home just a few hours before you arrived.’

  Her fingers were moving restlessly on his thigh and he sensed her embarrassment. ‘Having been where?’ he asked tautly. ‘Well clear of Edinburgh or hitting it up in the West End?’

  She flushed. ‘I’ve a sort of boy friend in St. Andrews, so I had a golfing holiday. The last of my annual leave.’

  He covered her hand with his own. ‘How about teeth and so forth before you went to bed?’

  ‘We have a very old house with a spring in the garden. The water is hard and cold so we use it most times. In fact it’s laid on to a tap in the bathroom.’

  ‘And our coffee?’

  ‘Also from spring water.’

  So it began to look as though the girl was safe. And he remembered that she had been drinking lemon juice or something at the Hunters’. His eyes dropped sideways as she crossed her legs and her skirt runkled upwards for another inch or two. Her stockings were blue-black net and tanned gleaming flesh seemed to smile through the meshes. ‘You’ve been in the sun,’ he said, dead-pan.

  She nodded. ‘Greece. For a few days with Dad. He’s got friends there. A doctor who runs a nature clinic and sometimes he puts us up for a few days while the old man sees some patients.’

  ‘What part of Greece?’ Grant was nearer shockproof than most men, but the name rattled him. It had cropped up too often in the last few months. And he could never forget that Zero’s men had more than once tied up with one of his own favourite countries.

  ‘Mykonos,’ she smiled. ‘And it’s absolutely fab. The town is terrific, with its windmills and white houses, but Dad’s friend has a sort of estate on the other side of the island. Rocky mostly, but with coves which he’s made into bathing pools. Terrific, actually.’

  ‘And what sort of people go there?’

  The girl looked at him curiously. ‘Rich neurotics, I think. And millionaires who need a rest. Because it must cost them a packet. But they live very privately. Rest seems to be part of the treatment and each patient has his own little house, a kind of chalet with everything laid on.’

  ‘Everything.’

  She laughed. ‘All they need if they are having a restful convalescence. Radio, books, masseur and so forth.’

  ‘Masseur or masseuse?’ asked Grant grimly.

  She hesitated. ‘Come to think of it, I believe there are a lot of girls about. Nurses and things, Dad said.’

  ‘In uniform?’

  ‘Of course not. The whole atmosphere is designed to be informal. Dad told me it was part of the cure to live quietly in a place which had no atmosphere of disease or tension. So, of course, there are no uniforms.’

  ‘And did you see any of the patients?’

  The girl shook her head. Sometimes there had been a glimpse of some man or other in the distance: or a launch returning from some deep-water fishing trip. But never at close quarters and never anyone she could recognise.

  ‘And what exactly did your father do?’ asked Grant slowly. ‘His work is lab research. How come he was needed?’

  ‘Because the laboratories at Mykonos are terrific and Dad used to carry out what he called field research on how people were responding to treatment, which consisted chiefly of rest, regular hours and good food. He has a theory that lots of diseases are due to modern living, that these things cause changes in your adrenal glands. So he co-operates with Dr. Salamos in assessing the progress of a few more important patients by supervising some of what he calls the “more sophisticated lab tests”.’

  Grant changed the subject. Enough was enough. And the coffee-coloured skin of her thighs was still shimmering through the mesh of her stockings. ‘Your wound,’ he asked shortly. ‘Any pain?’

  The girl shook her head. ‘Sort of numb. But they told me it would need dressing tonight. Would you oblige?’

  He glanced at her curiously. Her voice was flatly neutral but there was a flush on either cheek. ‘Sure,’ he said abruptly. ‘I’ll dress it for you. Provided you have some bandages and things.’

  She smiled. ‘I’ve got everything.’

  They were running along the coast from Prestwick to Troon and he glimpsed the Marine Hotel sprawling reddish crimson along the shore. ‘But first the news. And do you like a room with bath or shower?’

  Deirdre tossed her shoulders and her hair quivered against her cheeks. ‘Let’s have both. You take one with bath and I’ll have one with a shower. So then we’ll be organised for anything.’

  A dead-pan office clerk put them in adjacent rooms and as he opened his case he heard a key gently turn in the communicating door. ‘When do we meet?’ asked Deirdre smoothly. ‘They’ve left the key on my side so it’s easier to talk like this than phone.’

  ‘The drawing-room at six o’clock,’ said Grant abruptly. The girl was playing havoc with his mind and first things still came first. ‘We’ve got about fifteen minutes before the news starts, but after that we’re going to hear the Premier.’

  ‘And then?’ asked Deirdre quietly.

  ‘Then dinner,’ said Grant. ‘Later I’ll dress your wound and we’ll hit the hay.’

  The girl stared at him with level, impersonal steadiness. ‘Sunday nights Carol Anne holds open house for her friends. So how about looking her up? Maybe it will give us a “line”.’

  ‘And how do you know that?’ asked Grant abruptly.

  She smiled slightly. ‘I told you Dad didn’t need to hide much from any of us at home. And once or twice I saw enough in a letter to . . . to make me interested.’

  ‘So you read his mail?’

  The girl nodded. ‘Some of it. And if it adds up to what I think you’re in for quite an evening.’

  Chapter Nine – ‘I do what comes naturally when I feel like it.’

  Grant and Deirdre left the drawing-room as the Premier flickered from the screen.

  The news was worse than even they had expected. Edinburgh’s falling birth-rate had now been estimated at a drop of fifty-nine per cent for the previous month. There had been a steady loss of babies for over five and the Premier’s speech had dotted all the ‘i’s of an earlier official statement that the cause was the addition of a contraceptive agent to three of the city’s water supplies by an Edinburgh scientist who had now disappeared but who was probably suffering from a nervous brea
kdown. Up to date no test had been evolved which could prove whether or not any water sample was ‘safe’, but from the location of areas of sterility the government believed that only three of Edinburgh’s five chief sources had been affected. People in other areas had been advised to carry on normally.

  But twenty miles away, in Grangemouth and Falkirk, there had also been police incidents when certain youngish elements had panicked and created disturbances which had led to fifteen arrests.

  In Glasgow an anti-government procession had been organised by the Scottish Nationalist Party and would be held that same evening from the university gates to George Square.

  A violent swing away from the general use of contraceptive pills had been indicated by spot interviewing on the streets of several main centres of population all over Britain and one general practitioner had given a statement to the effect that he did not know of any medical man whose wife used them. When asked what they did use he had replied that there was only one safe method and everyone knew what that was. This statement alone had already produced a response from the chairman of one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical industries and BBC news had stated that a full discussion would be arranged during the following week between experts from all leading authorities in the matter.

  More important still: a vicious denunciation of Britain had been launched by three communist-bloc countries whose leading artistes had been performing at the Festival. And there was talk of the matter being taken to the International Court of Justice at The Hague. Full compensation would be demanded for all artistes who had been deprived of woman’s greatest desire, and any artiste proven sterile after her Edinburgh engagement would be entitled to maximal compensation.

  All performances for the last week of the Festival had been suspended and there were rumours that thousands of visitors who had been attending would themselves sue the City Council if proof of sterility in a previously fertile woman were to be established.

  Edinburgh’s Lord Provost had refused to comment and the Secretary of State for Scotland was not available.

  The Prime Minister had called in the Medical Research Council, and the Director of Nature Conservancy, together with leading biochemists and research boffins from both Britain and America.

  A flash from Washington had stated that if Britain’s fears were confirmed mankind faced a challenge greater than anything ever presented by the nuclear deterrent and that American physiologists regarded Edinburgh’s immediate situation as one which could face any population centre in the world given that PENTER 15 or its equivalent could be used to pollute food or water supplies. A Senate Committee would shortly discuss the matter and until then the population was warned that there was no evidence of any immediate risk to the people of the United States.

  ‘All of which at least goes to prove how man has mastered communication,’ said Grant grimly as they walked into the dining-room.

  The room was empty, but Grant had fixed a meal earlier than usual and their table by a window overlooking the golf-course was perfect. ‘Let’s change the subject for an hour or so,’ he said. ‘What do you fancy?’

  ‘I leave it to you,’ she smiled. ‘It’s always fun watching what a man will order. Gives a clue as to how he ticks.’

  Grant looked at her without enthusiasm. ‘What do you think I am, a thought-reader? I know nothing much about your taste in anything.’

  The girl shrugged her shoulders. ‘But you are learning quite fast, so let’s see how well you can guess my reactions.’

  He stared at her steadily from top to toe and missed nothing which mattered. Her firm muscles and taut limbs hinted that she went easy on carbohydrates. No superfluous fat anywhere. And the bloom of health on her cheeks pointed to a love of simple things with plenty of vitamins unspoiled by cooking. ‘Okay.’ He turned to the waiter. ‘Shrimp cocktails with half the usual amount of mayonnaise; cream of mushroom for myself and consommé for the lady. With two steaks, Châteaubriand flambée to follow. Both rare and with slices of cucumber, boiled chicory and one portion of roast potatoes divided between the two of us. All clear?’

  The waiter scribbled the order. ‘Wine?’

  ‘Niersteiner Domthal 1959,’ said Grant firmly.

  The waiter glanced at him uncertainly and then nodded. ‘Very good, sir.’

  The girl hesitated. ‘What went wrong there? He didn’t look happy.’

  ‘Wine,’ said Grant shortly. ‘He’s been brought up in the good old tradition that red wines go with steaks and he doesn’t fancy pouring a white.’

  Grant had decided views on wine and on the snobberies of wine stewards. The Niersteiner was a good honest drink from a fine harvest and perfectly suitable to take with anything from cheese biscuits to a grilled steak. ‘But tradition dies hard,’ he ended, ‘and not even increasing foreign travel seems to have taught some people that one can never go wrong drinking the wine of the country with anything anywhere. So if Niersteiner Domthal can match a steak in the Rhineland why not in Edinburgh?’

  ‘Why not?’ said Deirdre. Grant’s change in mood had taken her by surprise.

  ‘And another thing,’ continued Grant slowly. ‘One is better to reserve clarets or the more robust burgundies for evenings which can be lingered over at leisure. Clarets are still the queens of them all. But only for special occasions. Richer wines need time and tonight we are simply taking in a few calories before going on an expedition. So we shall be sensible and drink something appropriate to our mood.’

  ‘Now this is getting really interesting,’ said Deirdre, her eyes flashing with mischief. ‘What do you know about my own mood?’

  Grant smiled. ‘You are reckless. In a sort of champagne humour. Though champagne can never be taken over a quick meal or with steak under any circumstances whatsoever. But I still say you are in a champagne mood. Sort of excited and caught up by events. You are enjoying being near to the centre of things. And you are expecting even more excitement before morning. But I know you for an amoral minx capable of reading her father’s letters and flirting with other men in spite of having a boy friend elsewhere.’

  ‘So you rose to that, after all.’ The words were flatly neutral, but the girl had flushed and her lips were drawn back in a fixed smile which showed the edges of her clean-cut evenly set teeth.

  ‘I rose,’ said Grant, ‘because I don’t know what to make of you. The way you switched on that burglar alarm shows that you’ve plenty presence of mind and I know you’ve lots of guts from the show you put up when Zero was in the house. But I still say you’re a scheming monkey who wants her pants smacked.’

  ‘For reading Dad’s letters?’

  ‘And for keeping that bombshell about Greece to the near-last moment,’ drawled Grant. ‘You must have guessed by now that your old man hasn’t been going to Mykonos for fun and that this health clinic sounds phoney.’

  ‘But it did seem O.K. until I met you. And Carol Anne didn’t seem very important either until you told me the story.’

  ‘Well, then,’ said Grant steadily, ‘have you any other snippets of information about your old man before we start work tonight. Because the more I know, the better it may be in the end.’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. Except that I didn’t tell you what the letters said about Carol Anne’s “open house”.’

  Grant spooned his cocktail. ‘Well, tell me now.’

  Her story was plausible, if not downright ordinary. Carol Anne seemed to be an enthusiastic amateur who ran weekend parties for friends. Anyone could go so long as they were introduced or vouched for by someone ‘in the know’ and it seemed likely that they ended in the small hours after a long session of heavy drinking plus all the usual trimmings.

  ‘Then who is going to introduce either you or me?’ asked Grant slowly. ‘Professor Carpenter’s girl friend is not likely to be enchanted by your own arrival.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ agreed Deirdre, ‘but she must be worried, so if you phoned up and said you were a pal of Dad, who
had worked with him in Greece, that might get you by.’

  Grant didn’t like the idea. The girl would be worried about Carpenter. But she would also be dead suspicious of any stranger.

  ‘But not of me,’ corrected Deirdre. ‘Which takes us back to my original idea. Maybe she doesn’t like me much, but she’ll be keen to hear the latest news and it’s my bet that she’ll at least talk to us. Which will then introduce you.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘I can either push off alone or stay with you to the end.’

  Grant sipped his wine and brooded. It might come off. And it was as good an approach as any other. But if there was a lot of drinking how would the girl make out? ‘Very well,’ he said at last. ‘But two conditions. First you take one damn good meal here, so as to have a full stomach, and before we go you will swallow a couple of pills.’

  ‘Anti-booze or pep? Which?’

  ‘Activated charcoal,’ said Grant shortly. ‘Hefty things which suspend in a glass of water. They absorb alcohol and help at a time like this. Never travel without a few, so if you promise to use them and do exactly what I say I’ll go along with your crazy notions.’

  She bowed. ‘Yes, sir. And just remember that if it wasn’t for me you probably wouldn’t be going at all.’ She lifted her glass. ‘This wine is wonderful. Neither sweet nor dry. And with a lovely sort of hangover in the palate which is terrific.’

  ‘Better than soft drinks?’

  She nodded. ‘I suppose I haven’t had much time to learn about wines properly. But I’d say this is the best thing I’ve ever tasted.’

  ‘And exactly how old are you?’ asked Grant quietly.

  She smiled sourly. ‘The unforgivable question! But I’ll answer it. Mother says I look like thirty. Dad says I’m his seventeen-year-old who’s never been kissed and I know that I’m twenty-three come January.’

  ‘Then your Dad’s nuts,’ said Grant softly. ‘If you haven’t been kissed I’m a Dutchman. Or is your “sort of boy friend” shy?’

  He watched Deirdre sit back in her chair, carefully wipe her lips with a pure white linen serviette and then deliberately lean across the table. ‘Age means nothing. Many a woman at fifty knows less about men than I do. I am my father’s daughter and I like men. But I like men and not private investigators who hesitate to ask a straightforward question.’