Cutting Edge

Fourteen

When Karl Dougherty had told his mother he was going to be a nurse, she had pointed through the kitchen window at the way the chrysanthemums were leaning over and blamed the rain. When he had told his father, the look in the older man’s eyes had made it clear he thought his son was telling him he was gay. Not that Dougherty would have called it that: nancy boy, shirt-lifter, plain old-fashioned poof-those were the expressions that would have come to mind.

“You can’t,” his mother had said after the third time of telling.

“Why ever not?”

Karl watched as she placed six pounds of oranges on the Formica work top and began to slice them with a knife. The copper jam-pot she had bought at auction was waiting on the stove. Soon the kitchen would be studded with glass jars, scrubbed and recycled, labeled in her almost indecipherable hand. Quite frequently at breakfast one of the family had spooned gooseberry chutney onto their toast by mistake.

“Why can’t I?”

“Because you’ve got a degree.” His mother had looked at him as if that were the most obvious reason in the world and she couldn’t understand why he hadn’t thought of it for himself.

He had shown her the letter, accepting him for a place at the Derbyshire Royal Infirmary as a student nurse.

“There you are,” she said. “You’re not a student. You’re a BA, a good upper second. They’ve got it wrong.” She smiled up from the last of the oranges. “There’s been a mistake.”

Karl had found his father in the cellar, planing a length of beech. “We can’t support you,” his father said. “Not again. We’ve been through all that.”

“I shall be paid,” Karl explained. “Not very much, but a wage.”

“And living? Where will you live?”

Karl looked at the woodworking tools, arranged on and around the shelves in neat order, each wiped and cleaned after use. “There’s a place in the nurses’ home. If I want it.”

“Good.”

When Karl was at the steps, his father said, “I never wanted you to go to that bloody university in the first place, you know.”

“I know.”

“Waste of bloody time and money.”

“Maybe.”

“And you know one thing-this’ll do for your mother. She’ll not begin to understand.”

A few nights later, Karl had been in his room to the rear of the upstairs, writing a letter. His father had come in with a half-bottle of Scotch and two glasses, tumblers that had been given away with so many gallons of petrol.

“Here,” sitting on the bottom of Karl’s bed and handing him one of the glasses, pouring a generous measure into them both. He had seen his father drink bottled beer on Sunday afternoons, port and the occasional sherry at Christmas; he had never known him to drink whisky.

They sat there for close on three-quarters of an hour, drinking, never speaking. Finally, his father tipped what remained into Karl’s glass and stood up to leave.

“Was there something you wanted to say to me?” his father asked.

Karl shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“I thought there might have been something you wanted to tell me.”

“No.”

The incident was never referred to again by either of them, but for some time, whenever they met, Karl’s father would avoid looking him in the eye.

There was scarcely a week went by during Karl’s training, he didn’t consider throwing it in. Neither was there a week when something took place-usually an interchange with one of the patients-which didn’t confirm for him the Tightness of his decision. For the first time since he could remember, his life had a purpose: he felt he was of use.

“This is my son, Karl,” his mother said, introducing him to friends when he made an unannounced visit home. “He’s training to be a doctor.”

“A nurse,” Karl corrected her.

She smiled at her guests. “There’s been a mistake.”

The evening after Karl received notification that he had qualified, he called his father and arranged to meet him for a drink. They went to a pub on the old road from Eastwood to Nottingham and sat with halves of bitter while youths in leather jackets played darts and Elvis on the juke box. “You think I’m gay, don’t you?” Karl asked. “Homosexual.”

His father sucked in air and closed his eyes as if a heavy foot had been pressed down on his chest.

“Well, I’m not. I just don’t like women very much. I mean, only as friends. Okay?”

When his father opened his eyes, Karl reached out a hand towards him and his father pulled his own hand, sharply, away.

After his registration, Karl did a couple of years of general nursing before specializing; he worked on a genito-urinary ward for three years, not bothering to tell either of his parents the day-to-day focus for his skills. He spent two years nursing in the States, Boston and San Francisco, well paid and, he felt, under-used. Patients paying for their private rooms thought it was okay to summon him to fetch their newspaper from across the room, reposition the TV set away from the sun. Before he could do as much as issue an aspirin or clip a toenail, he had to call a doctor and obtain permission.

Back in Britain, he clung to his short haircut and the habit of wearing colored T-shirts under lightweight suits, at least until the weather beat him down. For months there was a touch of a transatlantic accent to his speech and he wore a watch on either wrist, one of them set to West Coast time. After two years of general surgical work, he was appointed senior staff nurse, with the expectation of being promoted to charge nurse within the next eighteen months.

Karl Dougherty had been a qualified nurse for nine years; aside from Christmas and his mother’s birthday, he had not visited his parents more than half-a-dozen times in the last four. Soon after returning from the States, he had breezed in wearing an off-white suit, a short-sleeved green T-shirt with a breast pocket and yellow shoes. He had a box of Thornton’s special assortment in one hand, a vast bouquet of flowers in his arms.

“Oh, no,” his mother had exclaimed. “There’s been a mistake.”

“Hello, Karl,” one of the patients called. “How was your night off?”

“About as exciting as yours.”

“Hi, Karl,” said a nurse, swinging the bedpan she was carrying out of his path.

“Is that accidental,” said Karl, “or are you just not pleased to see me?”

Karl liked to get on to the ward a little early, have a sniff round before handover, things he might notice and want to ask questions about that might otherwise go unremarked.

“Where’s Sister?” he asked.

A student nurse glanced up from the care plan she was adding to and pointed her Biro towards the closed door. “Hasn’t shown herself for the best part of an hour.”

Oh, God! thought Karl, moving on, in there wrestling with the menopause again!

He turned into the side ward and found Sarah Leonard sitting on Tim Fletcher’s bed, holding his hand.

“This isn’t what you think,” Sarah said.

“You mean you’re not taking his pulse.”

“Absolutely not. This is therapy.”

Karl raised an eyebrow.

“Comfort and consolation,” Sarah smiled. “Tim’s feeling forlorn today. His girlfriend failed to pay him a visit.”

“There’s a singularly ugly man with halitosis and very little bowel control, back down the ward; he hasn’t had a visitor in three weeks. Perhaps you’d like to hold his hand as well.”

Sarah Leonard poked out her tongue and got to her feet. “I’d better go, before Karl here asserts his authority.” She gave Fletcher a smile, Karl a toss of her head and hurried away.

“Impressive!”

Tim Fletcher nodded agreement.

“How are you feeling?” Karl asked. “Apart from horny.”

“Sore.”

“No more than that?”

Fletcher shrugged. “I’m okay.”

“You don’t want anything for the pain?”

“Thanks. I’ll be all right.”

Karl patted his leg. “I’ll check with you later.”

Helen Minton came out of her office just ahead of Karl as he walked back down the ward, making a slight nod of acknowledgment in his direction and nothing more. Karl didn’t think it was that she felt threatened by him, not that alone. She spent her days on duty as if everything around her might explode or evaporate unless she held it together by sheer force of will.

Poor woman! Karl thought. He had stumbled across her late one evening, standing with Bernard Salt beside the consultant’s BMW. Whatever they had been talking about, Karl didn’t think it was hospital business.

“Sister,” he said breezily, catching her up. “Another fifteen minutes and you’ll be finished. A free woman.”

The look she gave him was not brimming with gratitude.

Naylor and Patel had found Ian Carew sitting in the small yard at the back of his rented house, drinking pineapple juice and reading about ventricular tumors. For several moments, it seemed as if he might tell the two plain-clothes men to go and play with themselves; he might even have been tempted to take a swing at them, Naylor in particular. But then he grunted something about being left in peace, something else about people who could have been making better use of time and resources, grabbed an Aran sweater and followed them along the narrow alley at the side of the house.

“I don’t have to put up with this,” Carew said as soon as he was in Resnick’s office. “This is harassment.”

Resnick was careful to keep his hands down by his sides. “Coming from someone who not so many hours ago beat up a young woman in her own home and …”

“That’s a lie!”

“… and forced her to have sex with him …”

“You’ve got no right …”

“… that comes over as a bit rich.”

“You can’t say that.”

“What?”

Carew looked at the inspector, standing behind his desk, at Lynn Kellogg, in a white blouse and a mid-length pleated skirt standing off to his right. “I want a solicitor,” Carew said. “Now. Before I say another word.”

“You don’t have to say anything,” Resnick said. “And you don’t need a solicitor. Just listen.”

Carew opened his mouth to say something more but thought better of it.

“In accordance with Home Office instructions,” said Resnick, “I am issuing you with a warning about your future behavior, in so far as it concerns Karen Archer. Although, up to the present, she has declined to press charges, there is little doubt from what she has alleged, backed up by medical examination of her injuries, that you have been guilty of an assault upon her person.”

“What assault?”

“Shut it!”

“What …?”

“Shut it and listen!”

Carew retreated the half-step he had taken towards Resnick’s desk.

“That girl,” said Resnick, “was elbowed in the face, she was punched in the mouth, she was struck in the body. You’re a big man, you’re strong and my guess is you’re used to having your own way.”

“That’s bullshit!”

Resnick was around the desk more quickly than either Lynn or Carew would have given him credit. He didn’t stop until his chest was all but touching Carew’s, face almost as close as it could be.

“We’ve got photographs of her injuries, Polaroids of the bruises and they’re going on file. Your file. I hope for your sake I never have to refer to them again. Stay away from her, that’s my advice. A wide berth. She doesn’t want anything to do with you. That’s over. Leave it.”

Resnick moved his head aside, rapidly swung it back, so that Carew blinked. “Word you’ve got to learn: no. Doesn’t mean, yes. Doesn’t mean, maybe. Girlfriend, wife, whatever. No means no. Understand it any other way and you’re for it.”

Resnick stepped back: not far. He stared at Carew for ten seconds more. “Now get out,” he said quietly.

Carew had to walk around Resnick to get to the door, which he left open behind him, anxious to leave the building as fast as he could. Lynn Kellogg wanted to go over to her inspector and say well done, she wanted to give him a hug; she settled for offering him a cup of tea.

Before Resnick could accept or decline, his phone rang.

“Yes?”

“Someone down here asking for you, sir,” said the officer on duty. And then, before Resnick could ask further, “Think it’s personal, sir. Should I …?”

“I’ll be down,” said Resnick. “The tea,” he said to Lynn.

“Some other time.”

All the way down the stairs, Resnick’s insides danced themselves into a knot. He knew what he would see, when he pushed his way through into reception: Elaine standing there, that distraught expression on her face, impatient, who do you think you are, keeping me waiting-what was it? — ten years?

“Charlie!”

Ed Silver was sitting with his back to the wall, meager gray hair resting below a poster asking for information about a thirteen-year-old girl, last seen in Louth three months ago. Something matted and dark clung to the front of his jacket.

“Charlie,” he repeated, rising unsteadily to his feet. “Lost my glasses. Didn’t know where you were.”

Resnick looked at his watch. “Half an hour,” he said. “Three-quarters at most. I’ll take you home.”