Requiem

by Clare Francis

  He left by the stairs to avoid the public scrutiny of the lifts. As he approached the main lobby, he employed his usual technique for getting through busy places, putting his head down, keeping his eyes on the floor in front of him, and walking very fast. Half-way across the lobby, just as he was beginning to think he’d made it, a female voice called his name. Without breaking his stride he gave the briefest of glances over his shoulder to establish that he’d never seen her before in his life. Then, accelerating, he punched open the swing door and made it to the kerb in five seconds.

  His car was nowhere in sight.

  He heard panting at his elbow.

  ‘I’m Daisy Field,’ came the voice. ‘We were going to meet.’

  Nick stared obdurately ahead. There wasn’t a single opening gambit in the entire world that he hadn’t heard – it was astonishing what people would do to get his attention.

  ‘Daisy Field, from Catch,’ the girl persisted.

  A memory stirred in his brain. Frowning, he looked down at her.

  ‘The Campaign Against Toxic Chemicals,’ she explained, reading the mystification in his face. ‘We were due to meet at eleven, but they told me you were held up. Your manager suggested I come and wait here.’

  Nick pressed his fingers against his forehead in a gesture of forgetfulness and apology. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ she said quickly. ‘I mean really okay. You must be having an appalling time.’

  Nick was silent. He had learned to cope with disbelief and puzzlement, but pity and understanding were altogether more difficult.

  The car appeared at last, racing up to the kerb and swaying to a sudden halt. He was aware of wanting to be alone, yet not alone.

  She must have sensed his uncertainty, because she offered: ‘We could make it another time if that’d be easier.’

  She was young, with an open face and a steady gaze. Making up his mind, he shook his head and gestured her into the car. She slid across the seat and settled in the far corner. As he climbed in after her he saw her inspect the car interior with open interest. ‘How’s it going with the doctors?’ she asked. ‘Are they saying there’s nothing wrong?’

  Nick hesitated, surprised that she should have guessed, but not sure that he was quite ready to discuss it. The car moved off; he looked ahead and gave a noncommittal shrug.

  ‘It’s their usual answer, I’m afraid,’ she went on. ‘Saying there’s nothing wrong. That’s what they told a forestry worker in Dumfries who’d inhaled 2,4,5-T. Not to mention a farmer’s wife in Norfolk who miscarried after the next-door property had been sprayed with some cocktail or other – we never discovered what exactly.’

  There was a pause; he was expected to respond. He shot her a quick glance, taking in those steady eyes, and an expression that was sympathetic but eager.

  ‘Or are they saying it’s all in her mind?’ she asked in a sudden burst. ‘That’s another favourite, I’m afraid.’

  She must have read the answer in his face, because she exclaimed: ‘You mustn’t believe it, you know. They only say that when they haven’t a clue. And most of the time they haven’t a clue, I’m afraid. That’s what we’re up against – a total failure to understand what chemicals can do to people.’

  She was obviously very sincere and very idealistic. He dimly remembered feeling the same at that age, though his ire, directed as it was towards the Vietnam war and the arms race, appeared in retrospect altogether more aggressive and far less attractive. ‘They’re very … convincing,’ he commented.

  ‘Of course. That’s their job, isn’t it, to create confidence, to make you believe they have all the answers. It keeps the system going.’

  He wondered how far to take this discussion. In his long experience of strangers it was best to be cautious until one was absolutely certain how far it was safe to go. It was amazing how little confidences got blown up into major items that ended up as so-called stories in the gutter press. On the other hand, this girl was a professional, she was offering help, and if he was going to take advantage of that he was going to have to trust her sooner or later.

  He took another look at her. She was nice looking in a fresh unaffected sort of way. She was dressed carelessly, in a loose sweater and long flowing skirt with a diaphanous scarf of muted blues and purples tied round her shoulders. Her hair, which was copper-coloured and curly, almost bushy, was tied back to the nape of her neck with a loose bow, though several strands had escaped to form a soft frame for her face. Her skin was clear and slightly freckled, her eyes light-brown and very bright. She had a quick smile, a glowing energy and the sort of spontaneous sincerity that seems to leap out at you.

  She was just the type to be an environmental campaigner, he decided: young – still in her twenties, he guessed – tenacious, unafraid and too sure by half.

  ‘They say it’s just trauma,’ he said, and the admission was like a wrench. ‘And when I try to argue they make me feel like I’m being difficult.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ she said, rolling her eyes expressively. ‘Modern medicine’s like an ancient religion. Full of mumbojumbo and powerful witchcraft, and anyone who dares to question it gets labelled a heretic.’ She had a chirpy voice with a slight accent that he couldn’t quite place – south or maybe east London.

  ‘Talking to them, I feel like I’m back in school,’ Nick said. ‘They keep trying to explain the thing to me, first one way then the other, and when I refuse to accept it I know they’re giving me another bad mark. One step nearer to being chucked out of class.’

  The driver wove the car expertly through the traffic clogging Cavendish Square before grinding to a halt in the inevitable jam behind Oxford Circus.

  ‘But there are other doctors in the world,’ Daisy said.

  ‘Are there?’ Nick gave a short sharp laugh, which sounded caustic even to his own ears. He thought back over the long weeks of tests and opinions and referrals. ‘We seem to have tried most of medical London,’ he said. ‘I’ve even spoken to people in the US. They form a fairly united front, believe me. None of them can say for sure what’s wrong.’

  ‘What about the alternative doctors?’ Daisy argued. ‘They’ve been into environmental illness for years.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve talked to them all right,’ he replied.

  ‘And?’

  ‘And they said, sure they could help. But when it came down to it, they couldn’t offer much – vitamins, detoxification, herbs, that sort of thing.’

  ‘But holistic medicine’s all about being gentle with the body, letting it heal itself in its own time,’ she said with a conviction that bordered on the evangelical. ‘You take the load off the body and – ’

  ‘We’ve done all that,’ Nick interrupted softly. ‘Alusha’s used alternative medicine for years. She went on a total health kick as soon as she could.’

  ‘Oh.’ Daisy withdrew, momentarily chastened before flinging him an uncertain smile. ‘Well, there’s still the scientific data. That might produce something.’

  ‘On the phone you said the scientific evidence was thin, that it didn’t mean much.’

  ‘I meant the original toxicology data. That’s bound to be suspect, simply because it was done so long ago. Chemicals like Reldane, stuff that’s been around for years, it all got waved through on a nod and a wink. Trials that would be a joke today. You know, they’d feed the stuff to a couple of mice for a week and, eureka, when they didn’t immediately keel over and die, it was given the green stamp and put straight on the market.’

  ‘That bad?’

  ‘Yep. Well – not far off anyway.’

  Was this as much of an exaggeration as it sounded? he wondered. Was she just saying this to help win him over? And if so, what else was she prepared to say to persuade him to her point of view? It occurred to him, not for the first time, that she was latching on to him purely for his publicity value to her campaign, and his heart sank, as it always did when people wanted something out of him.

  ‘But there m
ight well be something tucked away in the literature somewhere,’ Daisy remarked with blithe confidence, ‘something that shows Reldane has damaging effects.’

  ‘But if anything like that had been published, surely the doctors would know about it?’

  She sucked in her breath. ‘Oh dear,’ she said gently. ‘You do have a lot to learn.’

  Nick looked stiffly ahead, feeling rebuked and suddenly and inappropriately close to anger.

  Turning abruptly, as if she had just appreciated her gaffe, Daisy added hastily: ‘We have contacts with all the experts. Really – I’m sure we can find someone who can understand your wife’s illness. We’ll follow it through, I assure you. We’ll back you all the way, for as long as it takes.’

  He thought: Or until my publicity value runs out. Her support was a little too unconditional, her outlook too optimistic to be entirely believable. Aloud, he murmured a cursory: ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I think the press coverage went well, don’t you?’ she said breathlessly, rushing the conversation forward. ‘Have you seen the cuttings?’

  The truth was, he hadn’t dared look at a single newspaper since he’d agreed in what he now realized to be a rash and ill-judged moment to go public on what had happened. Despair, the ache for crude revenge, the terrible piercing fear that Alusha would never recover, had overridden his natural caution, and, as he was doubtless about to discover, he had probably paid the price.

  Daisy Field pulled a collection of newspaper cuttings out of a voluminous bag. ‘The Star ran something on Friday. Did you see it? A full-page feature. It means we’ve made a clean sweep of the tabloids – every single one.’ Her voice shifted into a minor key. ‘Though I have to admit, the qualities weren’t quite so good. Nothing in the Guardian or Independent. But the Sunday Times ran a good piece – the environment correspondent’s a friend of mine. I thought The Times would run something too – they seemed so sure – but their medical correspondent probably killed it off. He’s one of the psychosomatic school. You know, life events and all that – thinks everything stems from getting a nasty fright in the woodshed as a child.’

  Suddenly she laughed, an earthy chuckle that came from the back of her throat, and he turned in surprise.

  She was already on to the next cutting. ‘And here – a front page, no less.’

  Nick glanced at it and shuddered. The headline ran: Pop Star Wife in Poison Horror.

  ‘God, I can do without this sort of stuff,’ he said with feeling.

  ‘Oh.’ Her voice fell.

  He was about to tell her exactly what was wrong with that sort of coverage, but stopped himself. It was he, after all, who, having given Catch permission to push the story, had failed to tell David or his own PR people about it, effectively ruining any chance of the story being handled properly.

  Daisy was looking puzzled; she thought she’d done a good job.

  He said: ‘Not your fault. It’s just – them.’ He flicked a hand at the cuttings. ‘If they didn’t use photographs you’d have trouble recognizing yourself.’

  ‘But they’ve got most of the facts right.’

  Bracing himself, Nick glanced at the first few lines.

  Ex-Amazon megastar Nick Mackenzie announced today that his Bahamian model wife is gravely ill after a poisoning accident. Alusha, 35, was found unconscious in a pool of poisonous chemicals on their hideaway West Highland estate in June, and has been lying in a coma at a London clinic ever since. Close to tears, Nick, 46, stated yesterday …

  Nick flung the paper down. Close to tears – Christ. He was only close to tears when he realized he’d never be able to get hold of the reporter who’d written that garbage and squeeze him by the throat until he screamed for mercy. It was extraordinary how they always got your age right but precious little else. Alusha was not and never had been Bahamian, nor a model, nor was she in a coma. He’d never even spoken to the reporter, let alone cried.

  Daisy picked up the paper, read it, and said in a quiet ironic voice: ‘Well – they spelt your name right.’

  He gave a rueful grunt. She had a point: it was absurd to worry about the press. They simply weren’t worth it.

  ‘We’re going the wrong way,’ Daisy announced suddenly.

  They were crossing Oxford Street, heading south towards David Weinberg’s office. ‘Where should we be going then?’ Nick asked.

  ‘To Gower Street. To see Dr Peasedale.’

  Nick wondered if he should know who Peasedale was. Grasping the problem, Daisy explained: ‘He’s our toxicologist at University College. The one I told you about on the phone. Our tame pesticide expert.’

  ‘Ah,’ Nick said, though he remembered nothing about it. Leaning forward, he redirected the driver. ‘A toxicologist?’ he murmured. ‘I met one of those this morning.’ He told her what had been said in the hot airless room high in the clinic.

  ‘Ah, well, they only know what they’re given the opportunity to know,’ Daisy declared, moving into her polemic mode. ‘And that’s only what other people have told them, isn’t it? They believe in research, but they forget that the only research that’s being done is what the chemical companies and the governments choose to have done.’

  So clear-cut again; so sure. ‘There must be other research programmes,’ he argued half-heartedly.

  ‘But why should there be? Who’s going to fund them? Groups like ours don’t have the money, and the big charities only support the projects the doctors advise them to support. And the doctors aren’t interested in the idea of wide-ranging non-specific chemical damage. It upsets their neat little theories of disease. They want tidy little boxes – viral disease, bacterial disease, neurological disease, any disease as long as it can be seen under a microscope – and when their box theories won’t fit, they throw up their hands and say the problem doesn’t exist. What’s failing, of course, is Western medicine itself – stuck in tight compartments, totally reliant on drugs and drug companies, spineless, visionless.’ In full flood, she had an extraordinary almost hypnotic fluency, so that her words flowed without break or hesitation. She gave an impression of both rehearsal and spontaneity, as well as vibrant indignation.

  ‘And if things don’t fit,’ she went on, ‘you throw them into a convenient catch-all, which in Western medicine is psychiatry, which has to have pulled off the greatest intellectual coup of the twentieth century, by passing itself off as scientifically based when in fact it’s the only totally non-scientific speciality, based as it is on almost complete ignorance of the organ it’s meant to know about.’ She paused, as if to remind herself of what she had set out to say. ‘No, they’re simply not interested in difficult untreatable diseases. Untreatable diseases make them feel powerless, and powerlessness makes them resentful and uncooperative. If they can’t fire drugs at something, then they don’t want to know about it. And I tell you’ – she waved a finger, emphasizing her point like a seasoned politician – ‘they certainly don’t want to know about anything that suggests we’re on the brink of widespread trouble, not to mention environmental disaster.’

  But one disaster was more than enough for Nick; he couldn’t take on responsibility for the rest of humanity as well. He let Daisy talk on for a while until, realizing she had lost her audience, she broke off quite amiably and lapsed into silence for the rest of the journey.

  Chapter 8

  PEASEDALE, A YOUNG bird-like man with thinning hair and spectacles, was summing up. ‘Not much to offer you, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘Consumed in large quantities Reldane would, of course, poison anybody. But in a small dose – I can’t find any evidence to suggest it could cause such catastrophic symptoms.’

  Daisy glanced across to Nick Mackenzie by the window. He was sprawled gracefully in his chair, one elbow on the sill, gazing intently out at the blank walls of the building opposite. Daisy, who for once had been keeping commendably silent, now burst out: ‘But what about inhalation? Surely if you breathe something for an hour …’

  Peasedale shook his head apolo
getically. He was perched on a high stool, his long limbs entwined in its legs like a double-jointed insect. ‘If you breathe enough of almost anything over a long period, then you’ll get adverse effects. That’s true of even the commonest fumes – petrol, glue, spirit-based substances. And of course cigarettes. But you wouldn’t get such dire symptoms after just an hour, not when the substance is mixed with plenty of air, as it was in this case. The only circumstance I can think of that might change that would be previous exposure to a chemical or chemicals that create extreme sensitivity, then – well, I suppose even something as modest as Reldane could provoke a strong reaction.’

  There was a silence as they waited for Nick to respond. But he seemed to be completely absorbed by the view from the window, and it was left to Peasedale to prompt him.

  ‘Has your wife been exposed to any strong chemicals in the past, Mr Mackenzie?’

  ‘What?’ He seemed to wake up only with an effort. ‘No. Nothing unusual. Just the usual hotchpotch.’

  ‘You mean …?’

  He half turned. ‘Oh, antibiotics, that sort of thing. But not recently – she won’t take anything like that now – when she was younger.’

  That was it then. Mixed with Daisy’s disappointment was a creeping sense of guilt. All that chatter, all that confidence – she regretted it, not only because it now looked totally misplaced, but because normally she would have known better than to raise false hopes. Something had gone wrong; she had misplayed the scene in the car. It was partly that old demon of hers, optimism; partly her uncharacteristic nervousness at meeting Nick Mackenzie. She’d banged on like an inane schoolgirl.

  ‘Can’t you run some tests?’ she asked Peasedale.

  ‘What sort of thing? If you mean standard toxicology tests, they were done on Reldane’s active ingredient years ago. I looked it up. There was some evidence that, given in massive doses, the active ingredient might eventually cause cancer in a tiny proportion of rats.’

  Nick’s voice drifted in from the window. ‘They test these things on animals?’