Second Opinion

by Claire Rayner

  Didier St Cloud came in as she sat contemplating her list, smelling of sweat and the labour ward; he was in his theatre greens and looked rumpled and a little tired but she ignored that and launched herself into the same tale she had given Sister Lichfield as he looked around for the coffee tray that was usually in evidence at this time of day. He swallowed it as easily — even more easily in fact — and George sighed inside; bad enough a senior midwife should be so unknowledgeable about public health measures; that a doctor should be too almost embarrassed her for her profession.

  ‘It’s the Professor’s Rolls to my clapped-out Mini that I was on duty,’ he said lugubriously, ‘I usually bloody am,’ and he too reached into his pocket and hauled out a small diary.

  But matters were not as clear with him, George realized as she talked to him in more detail. Being on duty didn’t necessarily mean being in the maternity unit. He was sometimes in Accident and Emergency.

  ‘You’d be amazed how often they need an obstetric opinion down there. We get a fair number of pregnant girls drugged to their eyebrows or mashed up in RTAs,’ he said. ‘I’m up and down there like the old yo-yo. Paediatrics, too, come to think of it. Sometimes they want me to consult on an infant — but that’s no problem to you, is it? I mean, it’s only the possibility of there being strep viridans here in Matty that worries you, isn’t it? I assume you’ll be taking swabs from us all?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ George said, her heart sinking. He wasn’t as accepting of her tale as she had thought, after all. Now she would indeed have to take swabs from everyone’s nose and throat to shore up her story. A lot of work for nothing. Not that it did any harm to do a survey of the reigning organisms in such a department from time to time, but all the same she could have done without the chore right now. ‘I’m just collecting data, at present. Seeing whom I need to swab.’

  ‘Oh, umpteen people,’ Didier said, finishing his coffee. ‘Christ, I’m tired! I’ve got to hang about though. We’ve got a twin delivery on the boil. Yeah, you’ll have to do masses of swabs, won’t you? Not just the consultants and me and the houseman among the medicos, and of course all the midder and nursing staff, but the cleaners and the porters and the physios and so forth. It must run to a huge number, hmm?’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ George said, extemporizing. ‘I gather it’s not every single person who ever comes here they’re interested in surveying. It’s the full-time regulars, you know?’

  ‘Really? I’d have thought almost anyone could leave a nasty bug here on just one visit. But even if they are leaving the occasional people out, it’s still a lot you’ll have to deal with,’ Didier said. ‘I mean, this office alone, you’d be amazed who comes in and out of here!’

  ‘So tell me!’ George said. She settled back in her chair, trying not to look too eager. ‘It’d be a great help to have some idea of the population in transit, as it were.’

  ‘Well, everyone who has anything to do with Maternity, of course — oh, umpteen. Phlebotomists for example, some of your people come up here to take bloods, don’t they? And like I said, physios and so forth. But then there are the other departments —’

  ‘Which others?’

  ‘Well, Paediatrics for a start. Every one of the babes is checked by someone from Paed., you know that. Some of them more than once, if the babies are a worry. We see as much of the paediatric staff as we see of each other, here. GPs come in sometimes too, of course, but I doubt you’ll have to concern yourself with them. They’ll come under the Community Trust, won’t they?’ He looked at her, bright eyed and knowing, and she hoped her confusion didn’t show. He was after all one hell of a lot smarter than she’d given him credit for being.

  ‘Hmm? Oh, yeah. So, Paediatrics.’ She scribbled something meaningless on her clipboard, and then stopped short as an idea came to her. Paediatrics; the senior consultant was a person who made many trips to Romania. She caught her breath as she considered that. Why on earth hadn’t she remembered that sooner? Could Susan Kydd be the person they were looking for?

  ‘Does Dr Kydd come to see babies here?’ she asked as casually as she could.

  ‘Mmm? Oh, sure, of course! They all do, and not just the medical staff. The senior nurses do sometimes, too. It depends on the condition of the baby, you see. We all do all we can to keep the mother and baby together and if that means bringing the Paediatric people here instead of sending the baby to them, that’s the way it has to be. It’s Fay Buckland’s policy, and no one — not even Susan Kydd — argues with our esteemed boss!’

  ‘So,’ George said, working hard at being matter-of-fact, ‘Paediatrics people come here. Who else?’

  He frowned. ‘Let me see. Last night we had one of the cardiologists in here. We delivered a girl with severe mitral stenosis and we started to have problems. Oh, and then the Endocrine lot come in a good deal. For our diabetic mums, you know. Fertility, of course, are involved with Endo. — though they’re really part of us, aren’t they? The Radiology people come in a good deal, and, oh yes, we’ve been working a lot with Oncology for the last few months. We’ve got a couple of patients in remission with leukaemias, and they monitor their progress very closely. There’s a nice piece of research going on.’ He stood up and made for the door. ‘So you see, you’ll have a lot of people to sort out, won’t you? If this investigation’s a really necessary one.’ And he smiled slyly at her and was gone, leaving her discomfited, trying to gather her ideas into some sort of order.

  Had he been teasing her? Did he know perfectly well that her story about investigating a possible outbreak of infection in the department was so much hogwash? Had he been trailing his coat as far as his own alibi went, so confident he wouldn’t be found out that he wasn’t worried about her? She frowned. It was hard to think of Didier St Cloud as a suspect; certainly harder than seeing Susan Kydd in that role. She was now very high on George’s suspect list, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t prepared to consider other possibilities, and Didier was a very real one. And yet he always seemed so straightforward and so genuinely enthusiastic about his job, so good with the mums and babies. She had seen him with them in the corridors and in her dealings around the department, and she couldn’t believe it all had been a con trick or mere professional good manners.

  Philip Goss conned you, she told herself then. You thought he was a deeply caring nurse and look what he turned out to be. A fascist bastard who manipulated people for his own racist ends, fomenting trouble and deliberately causing fights … But does that stand in the way of his being a good nurse? Certainly as far as those children I saw him with were concerned, he wasn’t acting. They trusted him, felt comfortable with him. Maybe Didier isn’t acting when he’s with his patients either; yet he could still be the man we want.

  Except that isn’t it a woman we’re looking for? The Hillmans, at any rate, said so. Was there any other reason for thinking so? She frowned again, trying to think it through. At the Rag and Bottle the landlord had been quite clear, as she remembered it, that the person Harry had been talking to was a young man. Why had she been so certain they were looking for a woman? And even if they were, there was always the possibility that more than one person was involved. There could be two criminals, one of each.

  She looked down at her clipboard again and sighed. Her idea of sorting out the culprit or even culprits simply by means of excluding those who hadn’t the opportunity to carry out the various actions that built up this case was so much nonsense. This department was like Victoria Station; the world and his wife went through it. And, she reminded herself, she’d only been thinking of staff. What about the patients and their families? Every time she came here there were women wandering around in the corridor, strolling up and down, chattering in corners; and visitors too were much in evidence, since there were no officially set hours for them. They could and did come with their flowers and sweets and helium-filled balloons and smuggled bottles of booze any time between nine in the morning and eight at night. Couldn’t the criminal have co
me from anywhere and reached the babies, and later the typewriter on which the codes had been typed, at any time? The office door was always open, and as far as she knew there were no locked doors anywhere in the unit.

  She got up to go. She’d have to go back to Gus with her head low and admit failure. They would have to find another way to sort it all out. She shoved her clipboard under her arm and scowled as her bleep trilled in her pocket. That was all she needed, she thought; some sort of emergency in her own department. That was the last thing she was in the mood for right now. She hit the off button on her bleep and reached for the phone.

  ‘Oh, Dr Barnabas!’ the girl on the switchboard fluted. ‘I knew you wouldn’t mind me bleeping you — I told her so, though she did say not to. She’s holding on.’

  ‘Who’s holding on?’ snapped George, irritated by the smug tone in the girl’s voice.

  ‘Your mother, Dr Barnabas,’ the girl’s voice said smoothly and George’s belly lurched. Oh, God, an emergency at home. Ma was ill. She was suddenly very aware of the way she had neglected the old ladies this past few days. She’d hardly seen them, rushing out to the hospital each morning as she had and coming in late and being monosyllabic until they seemed to take the hint and trailed off to bed early. And now … She swallowed as the line clicked in her ear and she heard Vanny’s voice say uncertainly, ‘Hello? Hello?’

  ‘Ma, are you all right?’

  ‘George? Oh, I told her not to bother you, honey, I am so sorry.’

  ‘Ma, what’s the matter?’ She was sharp with anxiety and she almost felt Vanny shrink away at the other end of the phone.

  ‘Why, not a thing, George, not one tiny thing! I’m having a marvellous time, truly I am. Please not to worry.’

  ‘I’m not worried. But — I mean, why did you call? You’ve never called me here before.’

  ‘Well, I told Bridget that! I said to her, we have never bothered George when she’s at the hospital and it won’t be right to do it now but she said it was our last chance and you’d want me to, so I did, but I am so sorry.’

  George took a deep breath. She was almost giddy with relief; clearly her mother was well. There had been no need for that lurch of fear and she deliberately relaxed her shoulders, making herself breathe more easily.

  ‘Do explain, Ma,’ she said in as neutral a voice as she could. ‘What last chance?’

  ‘Well, it’s only today, you see, honey.’ Vanny sounded apologetic. ‘We have to pack tomorrow. There is no way, and so I told Bridget, no way that I’ll be hurried over that. I would rather we sit about for hours with nothing to do than be hustled. So —’

  ‘Pack?’ George said blankly and whirled to peer at the calendar on the wall behind Sister’s desk. ‘Ye Gods, Ma, what’s the date? Oh, no! I hadn’t — Look, Ma, I’m so sorry. I hadn’t realized how soon you were supposed to be going home. I’ll get back early this evening and we’ll — Ma?’

  At the other end of the phone she could hear Bridget’s voice expostulating and her mother answering her and then there was a rattle as the phone changed hands. Bridget’s voice came crackling at her, brisk and cheerful.

  ‘Your ma won’t come to the point, but I’m not so scared of you. George, you promised you’d spend this last free day we have with us. We talked about it, remember? We saved the Tate Gallery for today. And I told Vanny she should ask you what time we were to be ready for you and she just shillyshallies round it. So here I am asking you. What time should we be ready? Will we meet you there, or will you come home and we start from here?’

  George had, of course, totally forgotten. It had been one of those vague promises people make and she could remember now the conversation a couple of days after Christmas. At that point the departure of the old ladies had seemed aeons away; and now it was here. She looked at her watch and did some fast planning at the back of her mind.

  ‘I hadn’t forgotten, really,’ she lied. ‘I mean, it had sorta slipped my mind just at present, but I’ve got just a couple of things to deal with here, and I’ll be on my way. We’ll be at the Tate in plenty of time to see all you could possibly want to. And I’m sorry you had to chase me.’

  ‘That’s all right, honey,’ Bridget said serenely. ‘We know how it is with you, saving lives and all.’ The phone clicked and George hung up, wondering just for a moment if Bridget had been digging at her. After all, she knew perfectly well that George’s job was in no way a life-saving one.

  She called Gus then, knowing he wouldn’t be there, and left a message saying she needed to talk to him as soon as possible, and the young constable at the other end of the phone showed no surprise, which was one comfort. The last thing she needed was the sniggering she sometimes suspected was going on when she made contact with Gus at his office. Was their relationship the subject of gossip there? She supposed it was possible, even likely, and found the thought uncomfortable.

  She came clean with Sheila, telling her directly what had happened, and Sheila nodded and was as nice as she knew how to be.

  ‘It’s all right, Dr B., I can hold the fort here easily. I shan’t say a word to anyone about where you really are, and never you think it. Not even the staff’ll know. Just you and me. It’s not every day you get the chance to be with your mum, is it?’ She sighed sumptuously. ‘Not that I mean to be morbid, but after all, she is an old lady, isn’t she? And think how awful you’d feel if you’d missed today and she went home and then Something Happened.’ Sheila was the only person George knew who could actually speak in capital letters. ‘You be on your way, Dr B. Leave it all to me.’

  So she did; and at half past two the three of them, she and Vanny and Bridget, climbed the steps of the Tate Gallery, where Vanny was to find for George the last piece of the jigsaw puzzle that was presently filling her thoughts.

  35

  ‘My dogs,’ said Bridget with deep feeling, ‘are barking!’ She kicked off a shoe and rubbed her foot with a pained expression on her face.

  George, sitting beside her on the long bench, grinned in sympathy and leaned back. They seemed to have been walking through the huge rooms for hours, gazing at canvas after canvas, trailing behind Vanny who was indefatigable. She trotted happily from painting to sculpture and back again, peering at the labels, reading her catalogue with absorbed interest and then looking again. George had forgotten now just how much her mother had always enjoyed paintings; had forgotten the long afternoons of her childhood when she would sit curled up on a museum bench with a book while her mother wandered, as she had this afternoon, rapt and happy.

  ‘I hope you’re enjoying it, though,’ she said to Bridget. ‘It’d be a pity to spend your last day doing something you didn’t want to —’

  ‘Oh, don’t get me wrong, sweetheart! I adore paintings — those impressionist rooms were darling. It’s just that my feet don’t have the stamina my eyes do. I don’t know where Vanny gets it from —’

  She looked across the big space to where Vanny was contemplating a trio of Victorian story paintings by Augustus Egg. ‘Look at her there. What’s that set called? ‘Past and Present”, isn’t it?’ She peered at her own catalogue. ‘Yeah, that’s it. I ask you. What could that poor wife have done to have suffered such a dreadful fate? And why does Vanny care so much what it was?’ She shook her head fondly as Vanny came back towards them.

  ‘I just love the way these painters could show you a whole world and way of life in just one little painting,’ she said as she came up to them. ‘The painting itself is so — well, so perfect! Just look at the wallpaper and the tablecloth in that one, the first of them.’ She waved a vague hand towards the Augustus Eggs she had been looking at. ‘But it’s more than that.’

  ‘What more, Ma?’ George said a little lazily. It was difficult to concentrate on the luscious detail of the paintings that surrounded them in the big airy rooms, but concentrate she should. Ma would be gone in a day or so and she wouldn’t have the chance to talk to her then about anything.

  ‘Oh, what their l
ives were really like,’ Vanny said, her eyes bright and alert. She looked far more like the mother George remembered from her more vigorous middle years than she had at any time since her arrival in London. ‘What the cities were like, what the people did and the jobs they had. There’s that marvellous one called “Work” with so many things going on it, it’s like you were living at the time to look at it. It’s not here though. May have it in a different gallery. But the same painter — Ford Madox Brown, his name was — did my real favourite. Look here.’ She reached down and pulled on George’s arm. ‘It’s over here. I’ve always loved it. This one and the Richard Dadds are what I wanted most to see. Over there.’

  ‘Richard who?’ Bridget said as she replaced her shoes and stood up too. ‘Is he someone special?’

  ‘He went mad and killed his pa with an axe,’ Vanny said matter-of-factly over her shoulder as she led them to a far corner of the gallery. ‘And he painted fairies like no one else ever did. Take a look at the “Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke” if you want to see how good he was. It’s in another room. I’ll show you in a moment or two. But this one’s even more of a favourite. I just love it. Here you are!’

  She had stopped in front of a small painting which hung almost in the corner. It was oval and simply framed, barely a foot wide and not much longer. It showed two mid-Victorian people, a man and a woman sitting side by side and staring out sombrely at the viewer. They were young and neatly dressed, she in a large bonnet and warm, voluminous shawl, he in a round hat and a heavy overcoat buttoned to his neck against the cold. They had a large umbrella keeping the wind off them, for they were shown sitting beside the ropes that served as a rail on a ship. In the background other passengers smoked and laughed and beyond them there was a view of rough seas and white cliffs. The whole mood of the painting was of deep sadness.