Fenton's winter

by Ken McClure

  Fenton dialled the number. It was answered at the first tone.

  "Jenny? The report hasn't come yet. Maybe this afternoon."

  Fenton felt worse than ever but he could not tell her, not like that, not over the phone. He needed time to think.

  So there was no virus involved, no convenient infective agent to take the blame and clear up the mystery. So what did that leave? A poison? That seemed unlikely for too many people seemed to be immune, besides, you did not carry a poison on your person and pass it on inadvertently…

  Fenton suddenly saw a crack in an otherwise smooth-walled enigma. Jenny must have passed on the agent to Jamie but if it wasn't a bacterium or virus she must have known about it! She must have given Jamie Buchan something that she believed to be completely harmless but it had not been. It had killed him.

  Anger, superseding disappointment, erupted in Jenny. "No damn it! I did not give him anything. How many times do I have to say it! You are on the wrong track!"

  Fenton felt the unspoken 'as usual' hang heavily in the air. He stopped badgering to create a silence in the room that threatened to be louder than the argument. Reining his voice, he said softly, "Jenny, you must see that it is the only logical explanation. You must have given the boy something, something you would not give a second thought to, something you have forgotten about, please…think?"

  "No! No! No!" Jenny's eyes blazed as she refused to have any more to do with the notion. Fenton made to put his arm round her but she turned away and stared intently at the fire. Fenton got up and went to the kitchen to make some coffee. The kettle was empty so he had to re-fill it and wait until it boiled. He did not return to the living room in the interim, choosing instead to stare distantly out of the kitchen window at the blackness with his hands in his pockets. Jenny had never turned away from him before. He felt angry, sad, sorry, ineffectual, stupid and, after standing still in the kitchen for some time, cold. He poured the coffee and took it through.

  Jenny did not look up when he put the mug down beside her; she continued to stare at the fire. He sat down on the other chair and looked steadily at her left profile until she did relent and turn towards him then he broke into a half apologetic, half self-conscious grin. "I'm sorry," he whispered.

  "Oh Tom…"

  They held each other tight while the tears, the whispered apologies, the cheek nuzzling tenderness, combined to soothe the wounds that they had inflicted on each other. A new silence ensued but this time it was a comfortable pool of serenity with both of them reluctant to speak lest they ripple the surface.

  Fenton woke at three, his body damp with cold sweat. He sat bolt upright to free himself of the images of a nightmare, Neil Munro's face, a fountain of blood from Timothy Watson's mouth and, through a red mist, the spectre of Jamie Buchan's dead face. A forest of arms had reached out towards him in the dream, Mona Buchan's arm had pointed and accused, Timothy Watson had held out both arms in pitiful appeal and anonymous arms had reached out from a deep freeze to wave like pond weeds. Luke Skywalker had wielded a sword; this image remained with him as he reeled into consciousness. In the darkness of the room he saw again the boy at the harbour, the strangely familiar boy with his hands on the handlebars of the Honda. "Can I have a hurl Mister? Can I have a hurl please?"

  The image of the boy's face exploded into nothingness as Fenton realised something. It was not the boy himself who was familiar it was what he was wearing! He had been wearing coloured plastic bands round both wrists…hospital name tags!

  Fenton shook Jenny hard in his excitement and coaxed her into wakefulness. She covered her eyes from the glare of the bedside lamp.

  "Think Jenny think! Did you give any hospital name tags to Jamie Buchan?"

  An overture of confused sleepy noises gave way to silence as Jenny considered the question. "Yes, yes I did." Her eyes cleared with the recollection. "I had a bunch in my uniform pocket. I gave them to Jamie to play with."

  Fenton stared at her without saying anything.

  "All right, so you were right, I did give him something, I gave him a few name tags but surely you are not going to suggest that he ate them and poisoned himself are you?"

  Fenton conceded that he was not but he was not going to be ridiculed either. He took both Jenny's hands in his and said, "It's a start and what's more it's a connection, a connection between Jamie and the Princess Mary. What else did you give him?"

  Fenton's surge of confidence overwhelmed any argument that Jenny might have considered. She thought deeply before answering. "No, I'm quite sure this time, nothing else."

  "Good, make some coffee will you."

  Jenny's eyebrows arched but Fenton was deep in thought and didn't notice. He sat on the edge of the bed staring into space, his right thumbnail tapping rapidly against gritted teeth. Jenny made coffee and brought it through. "Your coffee oh wise one."

  Fenton ignored the sarcasm or, more correctly, it did not register. He took the cup and said, "Well if all you gave him was a plastic name tag…that's what must have killed him."

  Jenny, with less reason than anyone to scoff at suggestions which diverted suspicions from herself, was forced to do so at this one and said so in no uncertain manner.

  Fenton remained adamant. "If the name tags are the only connection between the hospital and Jamie then they are the reason. It's logical, however unlikely it may seem."

  "How?" said Jenny accusingly.

  "I've no idea," said Fenton.

  Jenny shook her head. She said, "You said that you saw Jamie's friend wearing the arm bands. He was quite healthy wasn't he?"

  "Yes."

  "Well?"

  "I don't know, but I repeat, if the arm bands were the only thing you gave to Jamie then they are responsible. Do you still say you gave him nothing else?"

  "Nothing," said Jenny.

  "I'm going to talk to Tyson in the morning but meanwhile…"

  "Meanwhile what?"

  "How long is it since we made love?"

  "Quite a while," said Jenny.

  "That situation is about to end."

  "Do I have some say in the matter?"

  "Not really," said Fenton.

  "Shouldn't we discuss this first…" murmured Jenny, her body beginning to respond to his touch.

  "No," whispered Fenton, "I've already decided."

  Tyson listened patiently while Fenton told his tale and did not interrupt but Fenton could tell that he was failing to convince. Tyson's eloquent silence diluted his enthusiasm until the implausibility of what he was saying loomed up at him like guilt for some long past sin. Tyson cleared his throat and began to speak. Fenton could tell that he was editing what he had to say in the cause of politeness. "What you are really saying is that Saxon plastic kills people. Frankly, that is ridiculous."

  The words, coming from Tyson, carried the weight of a punch. Fenton tried to defend himself. He began, "I know it sounds a bit…"

  "Not a bit, a lot. It is just plain ridiculous. Saxon plastic has been through every test in the book and passed with flying colours. Do you know what tests any new health product must pass before it ever gets near a hospital?" Fenton did not but he could guess.

  "Saxon plastic is safe. It is non toxic, non poisonous, non inflammable. It is safe when you heat it; it is safe when you freeze it and safe if you are stupid enough to want to eat it! Now I know that you have been under great strain but this kind of nonsense is dangerous. We have enough trouble in this hospital without a law suit from Saxon Medical. Understood?"

  Fenton sat in his lab silently licking his wounds. Nothing Tyson had said had made him change his mind; he clung to his belief like a bull dog gripping a rag. The only thing now was he would have to prove it all on his own.

  Fenton's lonely war was waged on a battlefield of paper as he read and re-read every scrap of information he could find on Saxon Medical and their new product. He examined all the graphs and tables from the original trials and re-plotted the data in what turned out to be a fruitless search
for flaws. Quite simply, there were none, a fact that he had to come to terms with after a week of silently preoccupied evenings during which Jenny had plied him with coffee and kept, what politicians liked to call, a low profile. As he conceded defeat and put down his pen to rub his eyes on Friday evening he heard the sound outside of an ambulance siren floating above the wind and rain. It made him wonder if its occupant was bound for the Princess Mary. She was.

  The week had been special for Rachel Morrison because it had been her eighth birthday on Wednesday, a day she had been looking forward to for weeks because of an anticipated bicycle. As her father had promised it had been waiting for her at the foot of her bed when she had woken on Wednesday morning, all red, white and shiny chrome. Her happiness had been complete, well almost complete for the weather had been so bad that she had been unable to take it outside to ride it, but it was there and she could touch it and that was the main thing.

  After school several of her friends had come to the house for a special birthday tea and they had laughed and played and eaten ice cream and meringues till they were exhausted. Rachel ate so much that she got a pain in her stomach, at least that was what her mother had said, but the pain had become worse as the evening had progressed until, finally, her tears had convinced her mother and father that the doctor should be called.

  By the time the doctor arrived the pain had moved down and to the right so that he had had no difficulty in diagnosing acute appendicitis and summoning an ambulance. There was nothing to worry about; appendicectomy was probably the simplest and most routine operation in the book. On the following day Rachel Morrison died in the Princess Mary following a massive haemorrhage.

  The fact that Rachel Morrison and Jenny Buchan had never met and that Rachel had been admitted to the Princess Mary during Jenny's suspension ended that suspension and freed Jenny from suspicion. Although it had not been discussed, both Fenton and Jenny had been aware that the deaths had appeared to cease after Jenny's suspension. Now they spoke openly about it. Jenny was prepared to construe the pause as an unfortunate quirk of fate, just her luck, but Fenton read more into it.

  It now seemed obvious to him that there would be a pause in the deaths for a pause would be bound to occur when all the susceptible people had died leaving a stable immune population. No one else would die until a susceptible person appeared on the scene again, a new member of staff perhaps or, much more likely in the case of a hospital, a new patient. He blamed himself for not having predicted this earlier.

  Jenny put a stop to his self recrimination by pointing out that it would not have made the slightest difference, a fact he eventually had to agree with. But should he tell Tyson? Predictions made after the event, he decided, were about as useful as three pound notes. He would say nothing, besides, with Jenny in the clear he felt so much better, more able to concentrate, much sharper. He would find the link.

  Jenny looked up from the newspaper she had been buried in and said, "Listen to this, someone…a James Lindsay, aged forty three, committed suicide after being dismissed from Saxon Medical for alleged theft. He threw himself under a train."

  "Poor devil."

  "Where is Saxon Medical?"

  "On one of these industrial estates in Glasgow."

  "That would fit, it's a Glasgow address." said Jenny.

  Fenton took the paper and read the story for himself. He finished by saying, "He wasn't an executive with that address."

  "You know it?"

  "It's near where I was born."

  "Is that the mist of nostalgia I see in your eyes?"

  "No it isn't. They should have pulled that place down years ago."

  "Then what were you thinking?" asked Jenny.

  "I was thinking that I might go to see Mrs Lindsay."

  Jenny was aghast. "Whatever for?" she gasped.

  "Anything to do with Saxon Medical…I am interested."

  Fenton went to Glasgow on the following Tuesday. The Honda ate up the forty odd miles or so between the Capital and Glasgow in as many minutes and Fenton weaved his way expertly through the derelict buildings and cratered sites that defaced the east side of the city until he found the street that he was looking for. He pulled the bike up on to its stand and walked towards the tenement block pulling his gloves off.

  There was garbage everywhere, fish and chip wrappers, potato crisp bags, rotting fruit and the inevitable red McEwan's Export beer can. He flicked it aside with his toe, thinking that one of these cans should be in any time capsule as a universal artefact of Scottish life. There seemed to be one lying on the foot of every river and on the top of every hill.

  The entrance to the close was stained with dried vomit, the protest of a belly too full of beer being asked to accommodate take-away food. Fenton thought of his father and his nights 'on the bevy.' As always when he thought of his father, he experienced mixed feelings of guilt and regret for he had never really known him at all, had never understood what had gone on in his head.

  To all intents Joe Fenton had appeared to have been a simple, rather uncommunicative man who had spent all his adult life labouring in the shipyards of the Clyde. He would work Monday to Friday, drink himself into oblivion on Saturday and lie in bed all day Sunday. His routine had never varied.

  Although by no means untypical of the lifestyle of the area Tom Fenton had always believed that there had been more to his father's behaviour than the blinkered following of macho tradition. There had been something missing in his father's make up, something he had often tried to define in the past but always without success. He had never known his father to display any kind of enthusiasm for anything in all the years he could remember. It was as if he had lived his entire life on a pilot flame fuelled with enigmatic sadness.

  Even when drunk Joe Fenton's thoughts, if any, had been concealed behind a moist eyed smile. The burning political issues of 'red Clydeside' had left him cold as had the titanic struggles between Rangers and Celtic football clubs. It was as if, at some early stage in his life, he had discovered some deep, dark secret, some awful truth, so terrible that it had straightened out the parallax of optimism and forced him to view his existence as one long inconsequential tunnel from birth to grave.

  Tom Fenton had never discovered what his father's secret had been, whether he had found out the meaning of life or that there was no heaven or hell or whether there was just no point. The last possibility seemed the most likely. Joe Fenton had lived his entire life as if there had been no point, no point at all. He had died in the year that Fenton had graduated, never having said much more to him than an occasional, 'Aye son,' in passing, a 'guid fur you,' when he had done well or, 'We'll hae nae mair o' that,' when he had done wrong.

  To Fenton's mother Rose, a simple, kind hearted woman, Joe had been a 'good man' but, within the parameters of marital behaviour in the area, this had simply meant that he had not physically abused her and had handed over his wage packet unopened on a Friday night. Conversation and companionship had been alien notions from another world.

  For some reason, not totally clear to him even now, Fenton hoped that his father had been proud of him when he had graduated, perhaps because he feared in his heart of hearts that it had really not mattered a damn, it probably hadn't rated a mention in the pub. Maybe it had even been an embarrassment.

  Fenton edged deeper into the mouth of the close to be assailed by the competing smells of fried onions and cats' urine. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom he saw the iron gate that barred the way to the back passage and drying greens and was forced to smile at the nostalgia it evoked for it had been down one of these dark passages that he had received a great deal of his street education.

  Levoy had been a popular game among teenagers in the area, a variation on hide and seek that had involved a great deal of hiding in dark closes with members of the opposite sex and not too much seeking. One girl, some two years older than himself, and whose name he now desperately tried to remember, had taken it upon herself to see that he had not wear
ied during the long dark vigils. He recalled with fondness his early sorties into Betty McAlpine's underwear, his discomfort at being unable to unhook her bra, his ecstasy as for the first time a female hand had unzipped his fly and ventured inside. He remembered his bewilderment at being stopped when he had moved his own hand under her skirt to explore a magical maze of underskirts and suspenders. "Sorry," she had said, "The flags are up." Failing to understand and construing this as obligatory feminine modesty, part of the etiquette of back-close loving, he had pressed on to find his hand taken in a vice like grip. "Are you bloody daft or somethin'?" the girl had hissed. The harsh admonishment had dampened his ardour to the point where his proud member had begun to wilt but then the girl, realising his complete ignorance of female menstrual matters, had launched into a kindly explanation as to why he could not go 'all the way.'

  With both his confidence and his erection restored he had rewarded her by having an orgasm all over her dress.

  Fenton climbed the dark stone spiral stairs, stooping down as he came to each door to examine the name plates. He was half way along the landing of the second flat before he reached 'Lindsay'. He paused for a moment to listen to the sounds of the close, harsh laughter from female throats conditioned by cigarette smoke and endless bawling at errant children, that self same bawling as yet another woman screamed her frustration and inadequacy at her offspring. He pulled the door bell and found it unconnected to anything. He replaced the handle and knocked instead. The door opened a few inches to reveal the haggard eyes of a woman about five feet tall and those of a child some three feet below. "I've told you, “she began, "I'll pay you when I can; I just haven't got it right now."