George Barnabas - 04 - Fourth Attempt

by Claire Rayner

‘Well, you didn’t see Lamark and Mendez,’ George said. ‘So you’re guessing as wildly as Sheila and everyone else are.’

  ‘Not wildly.’ Hattie insisted. ‘Informed opinion based on experience.’

  ‘It’s your experience of Frean that I want.’ George felt that the argument was getting sharper and the last thing she wanted to do was fight with Hattie. The whole fuss would die down in a few days, the way hospital fusses usually did, and George and Hattie would slip back happily into their old comfortable friendliness. No need to upset her over something so transitory, George thought, leaning forwards to bring her head closer to Hattie in a manner designed to disarm her. ‘Tell me what happened when you saw her.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Hattie said, only a little appeased. Then she shrugged slightly. ‘So you know about that?’

  ‘It was in the notes,’ George said.

  ‘Oh, fair enough. OK then. Well, she was brought down here by one of the other nurses on Laburnum Ward —’

  ‘Neurology.’

  ‘Uh-huh. Well, more neuro-research now, since Laurence Bulpitt died and the new chap came. What’s his name? Zacharius? Polish, I think he is.’

  ‘Hungarian,’ George said. ‘Go on about what happened with Frean. When was this?’

  ‘Um, last month. Let me check my notes.’ Hattie turned to her computer and began to click keys. ‘Here it is. The third of May. Wednesday, May third. Four-fifteen p.m. She passed out, really passed out cold. Not just a fleeting fainting episode but deeply out for several seconds. The nurse she was working with at the time was very sensible, saw it was an unusually prolonged syncope and once she came round insisted on putting her in a wheelchair and bringing her down here. I checked the girl and her blood pressure was … let me see.’

  Again she clicked keys and, as the screen rolled, reassembled its data and then settled, nodded. ‘Here we are. Look over my shoulder. It’s all here.’

  George obeyed, squinting at the bluish-white expanse, reading off the information. ‘Blood pressure low but not too bad. Pulse rate fast — that figures. Normal temperature, normal reflexes, normal — yeah, I see. Looks like a vaso-vagal episode of some sort.’

  ‘That’s what I thought, but then the other nurse went off back to the ward because they were bleeping her and I could talk to Frean on her own. So I asked her, could she be pregnant? Well, you always have to ask, don’t you? And she went as white as a sheet. I thought she was going to go out again, and I had to hang on to her because she’d have fallen off the couch. She didn’t flake out but she started to cry like a fountain and after that it was all pretty much run of the mill. From the story she gave’ — she squinted again at the screen — ‘last menstrual period and all that, she was about eight weeks pregnant. Give or take. She denied it all at first but then I got it out of her. She was just at the point of missing her second period. She was frantic about it.’

  George raised her brows. ‘Wanted an abortion?’

  ‘No, that was the … Well, I asked her how she felt about the pregnancy to see if she wanted to terminate. I could have referred her to the right people then, you see? But I don’t refer girls unless I know they’ve made up their minds about the issue. Some of the abortion clinic people are, well, a bit enthusiastic, you know? These girls need time to think. She said she didn’t know, she’d never thought about such a possibility, and I told her that if she was having unprotected sex it was a very high one and even then she didn’t seem to know what I was talking about. Very naïve, I thought. At first. But then I found out why …’

  ‘She can hardly have been uneducated in these matters, surely? You don’t get to be a senior staff nurse without learning something about the physiology of reproduction.’

  ‘Maybe so. But you can block it out of your thinking if you want to. Her family, you see, are religious. No, not just religious. Barking mad fanatic. The sort who come knocking on your door on Sunday afternoon and preach at you until you have to slam the door in their faces to get rid of them.’

  ‘Ah!’ George said, and let her shoulders relax. She had been right to come to Hattie with her questions. She had no right to dig around in the girl’s history, of course; her job had been just the post-mortem. But George being George, her curiosity was, as ever, uncontrollable. And now it was beginning to be assuaged. The puzzle had been why a pregnant girl should kill herself for such a reason in 1995. In 1895 it would have been understandable, but for a sophisticated nurse today, it was surely excessive. An unwanted pregnancy was a problem — even a major problem — but it was not an insuperable one, unless the girl was subject to pressures most modern young women were not. Strict religious parents could be just such a pressure.

  ‘That makes sense of her note, then,’ she said now.

  ‘I thought so as soon as I heard about it,’ Hattie said. ‘People said they couldn’t understand it, but I knew at once.’

  George shook her head irritably. ‘Then everyone’s talking about the note too?’

  ‘Of course they are! This is Old East, remember? The mere concept of a secret is unknown here.’ Hattie was amused. ‘I told you I knew Frean had left a note. How could I have known if everyone else hadn’t?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ George said. ‘You heard where it was found, too?’

  Hattie nodded. ‘On the screen on the computer in Neuro? Yup.’

  ‘You don’t think that’s a bit odd?’ George said, trying to be casual.

  Hattie was not deceived. ‘Do you?’ she said sharply.

  ‘Well … maybe a little. I mean, to sit down at a computer to leave a note rather than grab a piece of paper and a pen seems a bit calculated, don’t you think? And the ward computer at that.’

  ‘Calculated?’ Hattie said. ‘The whole business of suicide is calculated! As for where people leave notes, I had a patient in here once who had written in lipstick on her belly that she was sorry and it was her husband’s fault she’d done it. That was calculated. For people today to use computers isn’t. They’re as common at work as pens and paper, aren’t they? More common, really. And anyway, what other computer could she use? Unless she had one of her own, and though I know a few of the live-in staff do, they’re not all that common. People on NHS pay can’t afford ’em. I certainly hadn’t heard she had one.’

  ‘You no doubt heard what sort of toothpaste she used!’ George permitted herself to be sardonic. ‘Ye Gods, is there anything that isn’t a resource for chatter in this place?’

  ‘Nope,’ Hattie said cheerfully. ‘And you be glad of it. If we weren’t that way, you wouldn’t be here now finding out whatever it is you’re trying to find out. You use gossip the same way the rest of us do.’

  ‘Oh, shit!’ George went a little pink.

  There was a silence and then Hattie said. ‘It was a weird note, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Not now you’ve told me about the family.’ George reached into her pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. ‘I copied it.’ And she began to read aloud.

  ‘“I broke the fifth commandment. I cannot go on. It is a wicked thing I have done. I have to pay for the wicked thing I have done. Pamela Frean, her days are as grass, as a flower of the field so she flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more. The world shall know Pamela Frean no more. Amen.”’

  Hattie gave a little shiver. ‘Poor creature.’

  ‘Yes,’ George said. ‘Poor creature.’

  There was a little silence, and then George spoke again. ‘Did she tell you more? More than you’ve told me already?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Hattie said. ‘Lots.’

  ‘Can you tell me?’

  ‘Why not?’ Hattie shrugged. ‘She’s dead now, so the confidential bit is null and void really. She told me that her parents were very strict members of a fundamentalist group called … the Enclosed Brethren, I think. You know, no Christmas or birthday celebrations, no TV, no radio, no newspapers — and certainly no romantic entanglements. That was the phrase she used, and
I thought it was rather sweet. It certainly made a change from the way everyone blathers on about relationships and “significant others” these days. Romantic entanglements …’ Hattie sighed. ‘I talked to her for a long time. They really are as hard as nails, those parents. Not that she complained about them, the opposite in fact. You’d think they were angels incarnate the way she talked, but they sounded so mean, so pinched, so … They forced her into nursing so she could go and be a missionary in Africa or somewhere — those people like to go to meddle and make trouble — even though she just wanted to be a musician. They told her that was a sinful way to think and prayed it out of her, she said.’ Hattie gave a little shudder. ‘It sounded a dreadful life, yet here she was, in a “romantic entanglement” and terrified of what her parents would say. That was when I put it to her directly: did she want to go ahead and have the baby? She stared at me and said, “What choice do I have?” I opened my mouth to say a termination and d’you know, I couldn’t? Obviously with that background she’d have been appalled at the mere suggestion, so I just said, well, she’d better tell the father of the baby and make their plans, and sign into an antenatal clinic as soon as possible to get proper care. I told her not to come here for it.’ She hesitated. ‘I think it’s grim for staff to be patients in their own hospitals. You’re so bloody vulnerable to talk.’

  ‘Tell me about it!’ George said. She put the copy of the note back into her pocket. ‘Well, that all makes sense now. I couldn’t understand why the poor wretch should leave a message like that, just because of a pregnancy, in this day and age. Now I do. Poor kid. And what a way to do it!’

  ‘I didn’t know it could be done,’ Hattie said. ‘I thought the reflexes would make it impossible to drown yourself in just a bath.’

  ‘You’d be amazed at what a really determined suicide can do,’ George said. ‘And she made sure she made a job of it. She took some diazepam to sedate herself and then inhaled a really big quantity in the first breath she took under water. She was unconscious in a matter of seconds and by then she was lying on the floor of the bath and it was full so …’

  ‘So they’re both dead.’

  ‘Both?’ George was disconcerted for a moment.

  ‘Frean and her baby.’

  ‘Oh, yes … Bloody religion!’ George said with sudden violence.

  ‘You can’t blame all religion for the fundamentalists,’ Hattie said and George lifted her chin in disagreement.

  ‘You don’t get fundamentalists without it.’

  ‘No? Then what about political ones?’ Hattie said mildly.

  George stared at her and then bit her lip. ‘Sorry, Hatt. I didn’t mean to offend you. Though I have to say I never knew you were religious. We never talked about it, did we?’

  ‘Oh, I’m not.’ Hattie was her usual cheerful self. ‘I’m as much a pagan as the rest of the people here. I just — well, I like to argue. Almost as much as you do.’

  ‘She’s my best friend and I just hate her.’ George got to her feet. ‘OK, thanks for the information. I’ll pass it on to the coroner’s office, together with my PM findings and then they can have the inquest. And once there’s evidence we’ve had just the one suicide at Old East, people’ll shut their goddamn mouths about the other two.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Hattie diplomatically. She stretched as she got to her feet. ‘Listen, I’d better get back outside and see what’s what. Life’s a bit easier here now with those two new nurse practitioners on triage, but I have to keep an eye out all the same. See you later?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ George was at the door. ‘At the presentation for old Hunnisett, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘Where else?’ Hattie brightened then. ‘Maybe we’ll pick up a bit of news about who’s to be our new Medical Director.’

  ‘I hope so. It’ll give people something else to gossip about for a change,’ George said. ‘Especially Sheila Keen. I’ll gag that woman if it’s the last thing I do.’

  ‘Phooey,’ Hattie said good naturedly. ‘You know she’s not all that much worse than the rest of us. Just better at digging out the facts and spreading ’em around, that’s all.’

  ‘I’m not so sure,’ George said grimly. ‘I’ll tell you this much: if I can’t stop her tongue over this poor Frean girl, I swear she’ll be the next suicide for people to talk about. I’ll drive her to it, see if I don’t.’

  ‘Yeah, sure.’ Hattie managed a fair imitation of George’s American accent. ‘I’ll believe that when it happens. See you at the meeting then. Now get out of here!’

  George got.

  2

  The Board Room was in festive mode, which George always found rather depressing. The fact that the imposing furniture had been pushed into different positions to clear the centre of the space, and that trays of sad-looking vol-au-vents and sausages and curly sandwiches had been dotted about, didn’t make it any less lowering, with its heavy dark-panelled walls and looming deeply varnished portraits of long-dead benefactors and faded red Turkey carpet. The room was one of the relics of the days when Old East had been a famous voluntary hospital supported by public contributions and staffed by lofty doctors in frock coats and subservient nurses in a great deal of starch. Now, as a National Health Acute Trust, Old East had sprouted a shabby array of portakabins put in to be temporary but becoming ever more permanent as the increase in work swiftly outstripped the money available to run the place properly, and concrete extensions which sat sullenly in all their stained grey hideousness against the red brick of the original foundation in a way that made both of them look even uglier and more dilapidated than they were. If that were possible.

  But in the years since George had come to work at Old East she, like the rest of the staff, had become inured to the surroundings. It would have been agreeable to work in a wonderland of modern chrome and tile with broad well-windowed rooms and corridors, but since they didn’t, they learned not to see the way the place really looked. They settled instead for the fascination of the work that went on inside these unprepossessing premises and an absorbing interest in the people who did it, both of which were very vibrant indeed.

  Looking around the room now George could see that two of the research fellows, Frances Llewellyn and Michael Klein, had already arrived and was amused. The Royal Eastern Clinical Research Institute had been set up just a year ago by the now departing Professor Hunnisett, and he had been very successful in attracting both money to run it and good people to work in it. There was no way the research fellows already in situ were going to risk losing their plum places at the Institute’s table. If Hunnisett was going, the identity of his successor would be a matter of huge importance to all of them. George watched as they clustered round the rather pompous figure of the old man and was glad she wasn’t into research. Being Old East’s pathologist as well as Forensic Home Office Pathologist for the patch of London served by Old East was quite enough for her to deal with. Anyway, her patrons, if she had such things, were not here, but among the police and the civil service, and she rarely had to see any of the latter. What she saw of the former suited her very well.

  However, she would not let herself be distracted by thoughts of the police, or more accurately thoughts of one particular policeman: Superintendent Gus Hathaway. There were several things that needed thinking about regarding him. But not now.

  Another of the people standing beside Professor Hunnisett caught her eye, smiled and raised one hand. She smiled back. She’d already met him. He’d come over to her table in the canteen one lunchtime a few months ago, very soon after being appointed, to introduce himself as the new research fellow in Neurology.

  ‘I don’t know yet just how much I might want to ask the path. lab to do,’ he said. ‘I do a lot of my own tasks, of course, but you never know. So I thought I’d better ingratiate myself with you as much as possible to be on the safe side.’

  She had laughed at so direct an approach and invited him to join her, which he had, eagerly, and she had found him amusing
company.

  ‘My name, heaven help me, is Zoltan Zacharias,’ he said. ‘Yes, I know it sounds like something out of an eighteenth-century Gothic novel but I can’t help it. People call me Zack.’

  ‘Good to know you, Zack,’ she had said. ‘They call me George, on account of it’s my name, just like yours is Zoltan. I wouldn’t let them call me Barney just because they couldn’t cope with George.’

  ‘Then I guess I just don’t have your courage,’ he said. She had tilted her head at the hint of an American accent she had heard in his voice. He didn’t wait to be asked. ‘Canadian. Why George?’

  ‘Because my mother was a feminist,’ she said shortly. ‘And my grandfather wasn’t. He left all his money to any child of hers named after him. She had me and called me after him. Why Canadian?’

  He blinked. ‘How do you mean, why?’

  ‘All the Canadians I ever met came there from somewhere else. Like Americans dodging the draft and Europeans dodging — well, Europe. The ones who are born there all go to work in the States.’

  He laughed. ‘That’s a gross exaggeration. You’ve clearly met all the wrong Canadians. But you’re right in one way. I’m — I was — an immigrant. Too young to know it at the time, mind you. I went there in ’56.’

  She nodded, understanding at once. ‘The Hungarian uprising? I thought Zoltan was a Hungarian name. And I didn’t mean to be rude about Canadians. It’s a great country, and —’

  ‘Yeah. Some of your best friends, right?’

  ‘No, really. I was just being a smartass, I suppose. Hell, what right do I have to be rude about Canada when I come from Buffalo? So, what are you planning to do here?’

  ‘Research.’ He grinned widely and it suited him. She liked the way he looked: he had thick hair that was the sort of dusty brown that must have been straw-blond in his infancy, and narrow green eyes that almost disappeared when he smiled. The cheekbones and the jawline were pronounced enough to be almost a caricature of the Slav stereotype, but were overlain with enough chubbiness to show that he enjoyed the pleasures of the table. He wasn’t fat but he clearly could be, one day, if he didn’t watch it. Altogether an attractive personality, she told herself. And I like his voice. It’s very dark toffee and luscious with it.