Ducie

by Chris Freeman

  Chapter 26. Who the **** is Alexander Fleming?

  Birmingham – 2007

  Despite all the logic to the contrary, Frank Gilbert had never been so sure of anything in his life. He sensed something massive. Something life-changing, perhaps even world-changing, just around the corner. Not literally around the corner of course. And that was the problem. Nearly 7,000 miles separated Frank from Kate Gaffney’s dream-state alter ego….

  - Daniella Diaz.

  Frank whispered the name to himself as if experimenting with how it tasted on his tongue. Exotic, sophisticated, pretty. He closed his eyes and tried to put an imaginary face to the name, but came unstuck when his brain failed to offer forward anything other than Kate Gaffney’s stern looking, freckle ridden face bordered by her two greasy curtains of ginger hair. Daniella had spoken using Kate’s voice, while she slept of course, so it was understandable that Frank associated Kate’s image with Daniella. There was something about the words she used though, something in their tone and the pauses she used in between them that made Frank certain that what he has hearing was neither Kate, nor any subconscious manifestation of Kate’s thoughts and feelings. This was Daniella Diaz, her own person, and she was already starting to feel like an old friend to Frank.

  Giddy feelings of delirium coursed through Frank at an intensity that made him want to kick his legs in pathetic excitement or punch the air and say ‘yes!’ repeatedly. A feeling of uncontainable enthusiasm that made him panic that every second that went by was an opportunity escaping his grasp. Like the head-rush he used to get from that first glimpse of the presents under the tree on Christmas morning, the fairy lights casting a shadowy spectrum of pure atmosphere around the gift-wrapped grotto that was his living room. Or like that kick in the stomach you get when you’re in love. The type that motivates you to be everything you can be, but robs you of all perspective and rationality, the power of it all enough to set the contents of your stomach free. The thing was, Frank wasn’t exactly sure whether he was in love with Daniella Diaz herself, the thought of discovering something to change the world or simply the thought of a little boy’s adventure to Argentina. Whatever it was, by now it had Frank deep in its clutches and however the inevitable debate about it played out with Joe and Harrison, one way or another, Frank was going to go looking for Daniella in Argentina, with or without the approval of the project. True to his skeptical and sometimes rather obstructive nature, Joe McKenna was proving the biggest resistance to Frank’s plans of a South American excursion.

  - So how are you going to sell this to the chiefs exactly Frank? You gonna tell them the truth?

  - Well… why shouldn’t I? I don’t have anything to hide, do I?

  - What, so you’re going to bowl in there and say, ‘yeah, by the way chaps, you know that project to cure drug addicts that you kindly sponsored out of your budget, well….we kind of ballsed it up a bit and now our first test patient is tripping out more than when she was actually on smack and thinks she’s a different person, living on the other side of the world’

  - We didn’t balls anything up Joe….

  - ‘Yeah, and anyway….Sir…. erm….me and my buddies here were wondering if you’d like to pay for us to go on holiday to Argentina, so we can visit this person on the other side of the world that we’re not even 100% sure actually exists. We just want to see if she’s Kate Gaffney’s foreign, sleeping, alien alter-ego or something. You get it, right?’

  - Grow up Joe!

  - You grow up, you soft bastard! You live in a dream world. This isn’t some school project where you can swan off to Snowdonia to dig up sedimentary rock just for the hell of it.

  - So if we found Daniella, you wouldn’t see that as progress then Joe?

  - You talk about her as if she’s your pal or something Frank. Have you even took time to stop and ask yourself what you’re basing her existence on exactly?

  - I heard her speak. We all did. That’s what I’m basing it on.

  - We heard Kate speak Frank. Granted she was away with the fairies at the time and all that, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t Kate.

  - Think what you like Joe.

  - It’s just an inkling you have mate. Probably blown out of all proportion by boredom and your tendency to wet yourself whenever you notice something slightly out of the ordinary.

  - So was Alexander Fleming ‘wetting himself’ when he noticed that the notatum could destroy Staphylococcus aureus?

  Harrison had been quiet until now, but his attention perked at the sound of a name he didn’t recognise. He sucked his teeth as a precursor to his interruption.

  - Who dis bad man Fleming anyway?

  Frank rolled his eyes in belittling disgust.

  - How exactly did you find your way through a medical degree without retaining the name of the inventor of Penicillin? Are you sure your certificate is legit?

  Harrison sucked his teeth a second time in place of a suitable answer. Joe resumed.

  - I tell you what then Frank, you go for it pal. You ring the chiefs and propose this nonsense to them. It’ll be entertaining if nothing else. As long as you don’t mention my name in any of this.

  Frank paused, as if he were getting cold feet now he’d been given the go ahead.

  - Yeah, but I bet you’d want your name all over it if I turned out to be right, eh Joe?

  - That’s irrelevant my friend, because you won’t turn out to be right about anything. And to be quite honest, I’ll be surprised and disappointed if the board are naïve enough to sign off your little foreign goose chase anyway.

  The argument continued a good while without any notable progress towards a consensus. Frank slept uneasy that night, nursing contradicting thoughts towards his own sanity. He was so sure that there was more to this than just a sleep talking smackhead, but Joe had got inside his head now and made him doubt himself.

  Around 8:00am the next morning, Frank awoke to the sight of Harrison’s hulking frame towering over his bed menacingly. He looked wide-eyed for that time in the morning, a look that Frank could only really label with the word ‘determined’. Initially, Frank’s primitive fight or flight response sent an unwelcome shot of adrenaline around his heavy limbs and into his stomach.

  - Er…Hello….Hi Harrison.

  Frank fumbled at his bedside table for his glasses, knocking a tatty paperback copy of Pilgrim’s Progress, by John Bunyan onto the floor in the process. To Frank’s pleasant surprise, Harrison bent down helpfully and handed the book back to him. As he did, his eyes darted back and forth from one of Frank’s eyes to the other, scanning him like a barcode, as if the details of his life story lay encrypted behind his eyes. There was a good 10 seconds of silence, during which Frank equally entertained the ideas that he was about to be hit and that he was about to be hugged. Eventually, Harrison ended his misery.

  - I tarked to da bigwigs last night Frankie.

  The thought of Harrison calling the project sponsors in the wee hours of the night only served to confuse Frank further. He quickly considered a third idea that this whole thing was a dream.

  - Talked to them about what exactly?

  - Aboot your idea Frankie.

  He hated being called Frankie.

  - My idea?

  Harrison sucked his teeth in frustration, as if he fully expected Frank to have understood his intentions from these few cryptic sentences.

  - Your idea abowut our gal Katey being in Argentina.

  That wasn’t his idea at all, but Frank knew what he was referring to. Had he really phoned the project sponsors with that pile of shit of a description? Please, no!

  - So what did you say to them exactly Harrison?

  - What it matter what I say to dem?

  Harrison smiled a knowing look of smugness and self-satisfaction.

  - What? So they said they’d fund the trip? Harrison you….

  Frank searched his embarrassingly low stock of West Indian lingo for a word that suggested camaraderie.

 
; - ….you….brother. You pulled it off? You got their buy-in?

  - Only a brother should carl a brother a brother. And no….I didn’t ex-hactly get dare buy-in Frank.

  - Huh? Well what then? Are they considering it?

  - No Frankie. The ball ‘ead mon laugh at me and tell me to nah come a bodda him again until it’s to tell him abowut some real progress.

  Franks bubble popped unexpectedly, just as he was revelling in a vision of rushing into Joe’s room and waking him up by ramming this story down his smug know-it-all throat.

  - Bastards!

  Frank was sure the bigwigs would have listened more had they heard his more diplomatic explanation instead of Harrison’s bull-in-a-china-shop rant. He was too scared to tell Harrison that to his face though.

  - Thanks for trying though pal, yeah?

  - That’s not why I a come to see you dis marning Frankie!

  - Right. So why did you come to see me?

  - Because you and I Frankie, we gonna go find dis Daniella gal in Argentina anyway.

  - You want to come with me?

  - T’would be an honour Frankie! I av a cooool feelin’ aboot dis.

  - Yeah….I do too Harrison.