by John Collee
The light came up. More offers from the floor. Kingsley steadied himself on the lectern, appeared to listen, but his thoughts were in rout. Memories swarmed over him now, like flies to a wound, seemingly validating Dhangi's ridiculous claim – the strange warmth he had experienced on feeling the cancers. Mrs Stoke, the other breast woman, had jumped and complained of the heat of his fingers. The heat? Niven felt 'ten times stronger, doc.' the day after his examination. The fantastic made sense.
Now the meeting was over. Those on the higher tiers filed out on the galleries to either side. Most of the men near the front were his peers, the senior consultants. As they left via the door at the front of the lecture hall, behind the lectern, Kingsley cast his eyes down, taking great pains over the shuffling and filing of his notes.
'Very interesting.'
He looked up to find Cullen, the orthopaedic surgeon, offering a huge palm.
'You all right?'
'Yes, fine thank you, Tony.'
A traffic jam formed behind Tony Cullen and he moved on, surprised by Kingsley's untypical vacancy.
The others filed before him, smiling and nodding. Sometimes a word. Kingsley said little. They passed by him and out into the bright, clattering corridor. Kingsley, shocked and expressionless, avoided their eyes like a man in an identification parade. Eventually, finding a handful of colleagues around him, he managed to chat about the possible course of Mukesh's research. The topic afforded him some consolation and he found himself warming to the subject. Moments ago he would have been prepared to bet that research on the cases would ultimately prove fruitless. But now he was forced to pin his hopes on it. That or nothing. What Dhangi had suggested was beyond science.
Chapter 9
Kingsley glanced across at his wife. She appeared to be watching the scenery. He was still occasionally caught off guard by her beauty. His eyes returned to the road. She moved across and put her head on his shoulder.
'Do you love me?' he asked.
She sat up again. The question was spectacularly untypical.
'Why do you want to know?'
'Just wondered.'
'Of course I do,' she said, settling herself. Kingsley leant back, relishing the rolling, fluid motion of the car. The town had exhausted itself, petering out now in tentacles of roadside cottages.
'Why?'
'Why what?'
'Why do you love me?' said Kingsley.
'What are you getting at?'
'I'm not getting at anything. Come here. I just want you to tell me.'
'Well, you're never usually interested. It's a bit worrying, out of the blue like this. You're not building up to tell me something?'
He smiled.
'All right then,' she said at length, itemizing the points on her fingers.
'You're sincere, and honest . . . and straightforward . . . and principled . . . and fantastically conventional . . .' she broke off. 'God, I don't know, Alistair, you never asked me before. Why do you want to know?'
'Just looking for reassurance.'
They drove on in silence.
'What do you need reassurance for?'
Kingsley shrugged. 'Nothing. Just every now and then things start gnawing at your self-confidence.'
'You're still worried about that cancer research thing.'
Kingsley winced. She had an uncanny knack for identifying his problems. 'What do you know about that?'
'Just what you tell me. Which isn't much. You don't approve of it?'
'It's nothing to do with me,' said Kingsley.
Nothing to do with me. He was gradually persuading himself to believe that. He cast his mind back to his meeting of the day before:
Mukesh was perched on a high stool in the window of the pathology lab when Kingsley had entered. He turned from the tube-racks and bottles of stain.
'Sorry, Chandra, don't let me disturb you.' Kingsley helped himself to a stool. Mukesh followed his lead and sat down again. 'I just dropped in to see if you needed any help getting this research project on the go.' Kingsley leafed through a stack of files on an adjacent table. 'You're obviously not wasting any time.'
Mukesh smiled modestly. 'I am just acquainting myself with the patients a bit more fully. It's quite possible they all had something in common before they arrived here.'
'Absolutely.'
Mukesh pointed to a sheaf of papers with the pipette he was holding. 'At the minute I'm drawing up a draft questionnaire asking them all about their past medical history and so forth. The outstanding common factor is, of course, that they all came with cancer during the same two weeks. So I need to look at everyone who came with other complaints during that period, and at those people who presented with cancers at the same time but elsewhere.' Mukesh indicated the staining work he had in hand and shrugged. 'I'll find time for it all somehow.'
Kingsley patted him on the shoulder. 'We can cut out a lot of the repetitive paperwork with the computer,' he said, 'and I'll see about finding you a research assistant.'
'That would be most kind of you, Mr Kingsley.' Mukesh seemed genuinely encouraged.
Kingsley fingered the fine control of the microtome. 'The fact is,' he admitted, 'I still feel rather guilty about having cast aspersions on your initial observations.'
Mukesh's walnut skin darkened to a rich mahogany. 'It's of no importance, Mr Kingsley. As a child in India I became accustomed to insults. My mother's family were Untouchables.'
'I know,' said Kingsley, then hurriedly corrected himself. 'I know about that kind of thing . . . I mean I was talking about it recently . . . I met a Hindu man who was full of that kind of nonsense.'
'You saw him too?' Mukesh's dark brows rose. 'That Brahmin – that holy man? You talked to him?'
'He collared me and blethered away,' Kingsley said evasively. 'Said he was a doctor, wanted a job blessing the hospital or something – I don't know. You don't believe that sort of mumbo-jumbo do you, Chandra?'
'I’m a Hindu,' said Mukesh, 'but only in name.'
'This holy man seemed to take it all pretty seriously.'
'Oh they do,' said Chandra Mukesh, 'but in India there are almost as many holy men as there are cows. It follows that most of them are terrible charlatans.'
Kingsley had agreed wholeheartedly and walked back through the hospital with the feeling of having significantly reinforced his stance against superstition.
Now he flexed his hands on the steering wheel – normal hands, he told himself, the hands of an artisan.
The car climbed through the valley to Dalkeith, a pile of pointed, grey houses on the ridge above. Half a dozen idle teenagers were loitering round the shopping centre. Sheila chose this moment to drop her next bomb.
'Who's Roland Spears?'
One wheel caught the edge of the experimental roundabout. The car lurched, then Kingsley turned southwards towards the Borders.
'He's a journalist.'
'I know. There was a newspaper article.'
'He apologized to me for that. He was mad about me removing his wife's breast. In the end I think he gathered we can't cure cancer.'
'You never know. Your Dr Mukesh might make a big breakthrough.'
Kingsley patted her thigh. Personally he didn't believe in breakthroughs. He saw medical science as a great ponderous dredger advancing inch by inch, sifting and distilling. Every now and then it came up with a nugget. But the process itself was the important thing. Being a part of that had its own rewards.
'Things don't change that fast.'
'Well, you have,' she said.
'In what way?'
'You normally don't put your arm round me when you're driving.'
The sun was setting as they reached the Gala water, nudging and flirting with the road, wide sweeps of water behind the fir trees. Nervous sheep crammed the grass verges as they passed and the car dug into the darkening landscape, rolling itself in a rich quilt of heather, grass and bracken.
They called in at the caretaker's cottage and picked up the keys. Jac
kie stood framed in the door of his cottage with the dogs in his shadow, the little Yale key in his huge red hand. He talked about the dipping. Up at the cottage Kingsley put on a pair of gloves and brought in the coal. The night, punctuated by the rasping of his shovel, was full of noises – distant crying sheep, the creaking of the Scots pines, a pair of quick soft wings, the almost inaudible sucking and crackling of his pipe.
Inside Sheila was winding all the clocks. Kingsley turned on Radio 3 and life seeped back into the room. Beige walls; pink sofa; the thinning Persian rug; iron latches on every door. Upstairs a lonely wind rattled the loose window.
They cooked dinner together. The smell of dust was displaced by the smell of the fire, then, in the kitchen, a mixture of garlic and pipe smoke. Then they sat elbow to elbow on adjacent comers of the heavy oak table, saying little. When Kingsley chewed, a muscle on his temple corded and relaxed. She pressed it with a finger. Something classical and embalming played on the Bakelite radio. They ate, shared silences, exchanged smiles.
While she bathed he was flicking through an Agatha Christie. He didn't usually read detective novels, but the book shelf offered few alternatives – Mrs Beeton's Cookery Book, The History of Salt, Across Africa by Land (printed in 1910) and What Katy Did.
By the time she came out of her bath he had lost interest in reading and stretched out from the sofa with his feet on the hearth.
'What are you thinking?'
'Just thinking.'
'Hospital stuff? You're not indispensable, you know!'
'I agree.'
'You don't usually.'
'It's easier to see things in perspective now . . . down here.' She sat on the sofa with the towel wrapped like a turban on the top of her head and licked his nose. The log fire farted and whistled. His hand was warm on her stomach. It rested there, curled and heavy like a sleeping dog. Later it moved upwards, smoothing her skin, nudging the soft underbelly of her breast. The bath robe had fallen open. Firelight played on her breast, leaping and dancing on the plump contour. The nipple sprang between his fingers.
'Do you feel anything when I do that?'
'Yes,' she said, beginning to unbutton his shirt.
'No, I mean anything abnormal . . . warmth.'
'Yes, warmth,' she said luxuriously, then kissed him.
The old bed was piled high with quilts and blankets. The varnish had aged on the paintings, reduced in the moonlight to polished black squares. Sheila kicked off her slippers.
'Why are you laughing?'
'Slippers – my mother used to call them passion killers.'
'They don't work.' Kingsley encircled her waist.
He rarely spoke when he made love, sometimes groaning as his mind thickened with lust, sometimes a sigh of release at the moment of orgasm. Sheila would whisper incessantly, hum, coo, blow in his ear. Beyond her soft coaxing gibberish he could hear the clanking of the grandfather clock and the various complaints of the stolid old bed. Then she said Ah! very loud and straightened both legs.
'What.'
'Cramp. Ah, hell. Get off.'
Kingsley fumbled among the books and glasses for the switch of the bedside light. When it came on, her face was contorted with pain.
'Where does it hurt?'
'My leg. This one. Oh. Ah.'
He began to rub at the muscle. 'You never usually get cramp.'
'Well, I've bloody got it now. Oh, hell. God!'
Kingsley kneaded and mashed at the flesh. Sheila's string of expletives devolved to a staccato of agony, bordering on tears.
When the pain subsided, the bed was in turmoil. Quilts and pillows littered the floor. Kingsley started to laugh.
'It's not funny.'
He smacked her bare bottom.
'What causes it?'
'Yoga and cycling.'
'Rubbish. What can I do about it?'
Kingsley closed his teeth on the bundles of muscle at the back of her neck.
'Roll over,' he said, 'and I'll show you.'
In the deep impenetrable sleep that followed, Kingsley had a dream: two images in succession – the first was of Dhangi, his dark face suspended in the Carriage Bar. Kingsley was watching him from a distance, from the far door. The cigarette smoke cleared, and there was Dhangi's face, looking at him, as he had looked at him before, manic and accusing. The red mouth moved and Dhangi's reedy voice came clearly across the void between them, as if from a separate person by his side. He turned, pushed through the door, to be confronted not by the docks, but by Henley, and behind him the banked, wooden amphitheatre of the Infirmary lecture hall. He strained to recognize the faces that filled the auditorium. Colleagues? Inquisitors? Then he searched Henley's clear, bright expression. Henley was waiting for something. They were all waiting for something. His confession. He opened his mouth to speak. Then Henley dissolved and faded, the listeners faded, the tiered wooden seats melted into nothing and he was looking at a window – the small wooden window of the cottage bedroom, and beyond that the black Denholm countryside.
Kingsley lay back and tried to sleep.
He awoke to butter-yellow sun pouring through the window. There was a crescent of cobwebs at the bottom of the lower pane. He walked through to the bathroom and produced a rattling, bellowing symphony from the ancient plumbing. He splashed water on his face and searched unsuccessfully for his sweater, then padded through to the kitchen. He cooked bacon and eggs in an iron frying pan, drinking milk from the jug and skating lard around the circumference of the pan. He cracked the eggs, fabulously undamaged, and shovelled thick slabs of bread under the grill.
Sheila was painting in the garden. He wrestled with the latch and the window swung open.
'Have you eaten?'
'I'll have a coffee,' she said.
'What are you painting?'
She turned the canvas towards him.
'Very good.'
She made some reply he couldn't hear. She was holding the brush between her teeth. She took it out. 'How did you sleep?'
'OK.'
'You were thrashing about a lot,' she told him.
'What, before or after?'
When she laughed a small puff of condensation appeared in front of her mouth. Kingsley turned back into the kitchen. The toast was burning.
When he came back to the window she was engrossed in her painting. Kingsley surveyed the garden. Jackie had cut the grass but the vegetable patch was burgeoning with cabbages and the roses needed pruning. Sheila was facing towards the hill, painting the copse of Scots pines at the foot of the garden. Beyond, Sickle Hill rose in a long, gentle plane of brown and purple, then blue sky, traversed by idle clouds. A small bird stirruped across the lawn. The toast was burning again.
After lunch they climbed the hill, the valley stretching below them like a complex green tartan. They could see the river from here, and the small castellated turret of Lord Moncrief's folly. Jackie was rounding up sheep in the corner field: at times his distant whistle pierced the wind. Sheila turned.
'Why didn't you tell me about Spears?'
'Because I was worried and confused . . . I didn't understand what was happening. You wouldn't have been able to help. It would just have made you miserable too.'
'It did make me miserable. I thought we were heading for a divorce. Besides, how do you mean I wouldn't have been able to help you? Sure, I don't understand medicine, and all the technical stuff, like pathology, but I do understand guilt.'
'I didn't feel guilty.'
'Yes you did, you looked like Martin Borman. It was all to do with Spears, wasn't it?'
'Yes,' he told her.
'I'm just hurt you didn't share it with me.'
'I'm sorry.'
'Accepted,' she said.
'Coming on?'
'No – I think I'll go back. My leg's beginning to hurt again.' He crouched down in the heather. 'Where does it hurt – here?'
'No, a bit higher, just above the knee,' she said.
'Does it hurt when you move the kn
ee itself ?'
'No. It's just a dull, sickly pain. It comes on when I put weight on it for a long time, or sit in certain positions.'
'What about when you move your hip?'
'What's that got to do with it?'
'Well, it could be referred pain,' he told her.
'What's that?'
'Well, it means what's wrong isn't actually where you think it is. You identify the pain as coming from one place, the knee, but it's actually being caused more centrally, in the hip. It's due to the nerve connections.'
She prodded him. 'You're so wise, Alistair.'
They began down the hill again. The heather forced them to take long steps. By the time they reached the pond, Sheila was limping noticeably. Back in the cottage Kingsley got her to take her trousers off and lie on the bed. He felt the painful spot. Nothing. Then he bent her knees up. Then he sat on her foot and rocked her foreleg backwards and forwards. There was no pain. Then he examined her hips, pressing in the groin over the head of each femur, crossing and spreading her legs as far as possible. He bent her knee and rotated the foreleg like the hand of a clock. The hip rotated perfectly in its socket. Kingsley slipped unconsciously into his professional tone of voice – the virgin uncle. 'Maybe you've got a bit of arthritis. We'll get Tony Cullen to X-ray it.'
Sheila Kingsley folded her long brown legs. 'There's just one other thing, Mr Kingsley, before you go.'
'Isn't this called professional misconduct?' he asked as she pulled him towards her.
'No,' she replied. 'It's called physiotherapy.'
Kingsley climbed over the ridge, through the long dense wood that crested it, like a cockscomb, and down to the small, grey, chiming village. The trees on this side of the ridge were mainly deciduous, following the line of the path, their trunks tangled in hedgerow and undergrowth. Beyond Denholm the river wound on in a glistening silver band towards Hawick.
