Hypocrite's Isle

Twenty-one

Gavin couldn’t bear to be in the lab any longer. He knew that the police would want to speak to him, but at that precise moment, he didn’t want to speak to them, or anyone else for that matter. His world had collapsed and he needed to be away from the epicentre of the disaster. He collected his rucksack and left the building by the back stairs, where he paused for a moment, undecided as to which direction to take until he remembered the package in his rucksack. He would have to go back to the flat and put the drugs in the fridge before he did anything else.

As he crossed the road, he saw a number 27 bus coming up Lauriston Place and sprinted to the stop in Forrest Road where he got on board, fumbling in successive jacket pockets for his travel pass, to the annoyance of the driver, who sucked his teeth and tapped his fingers on the wheel.

Back at the flat, Gavin removed the ice from the polystyrene box, resealed it carefully with tape and put it in the fridge. He was out again within five minutes and, after a short walk, standing in the Abbotsford in Rose Street, where he had two packets of crisps and a pint of lager for lunch. It was still early: the bar was quiet. Another half hour and it would be buzzing with the atmosphere Gavin liked so much, but not today.

‘Day off?’ asked the barman, wiping the bar top.

‘You could say,’ replied Gavin, putting an end to conversation. Normally, he welcomed talk with strangers, often finding it, as most people did, easier than with people he knew, but today he needed to be somewhere where he could think clearly and without distraction. A pub wasn’t going to fit the bill. He drained his glass and left, still not sure about where he was going.

He joined Princes Street at its east end and started walking west past a row of buses, waiting line astern like a string of sausages as they took it in turn to move in to their appointed stops. The one at their head had ‘North Berwick’ on its destination board. On impulse, Gavin got on. He’d never been there, but he knew that it was beside the sea and about twenty miles or so east of the city. The plan was to find a beach and start walking. On a cold day in February this should afford him the solitude he needed.

There was an icy wind coming from the east so he decided to walk in the opposite direction, so that he would have it behind him. The tide was out, so he was able to walk on firm wet sand instead of the strength-sapping soft stuff at the head of the beach, something which also meant that he wasn’t forced to adhere strictly to the line of the shore and could cut across small bays and inlets at will, making straight lines out of curves.

His attention was drawn to a big rock situated about a hundred metres out from the shoreline. It was over two metres high, but had barnacles all over it, suggesting that it was routinely covered at high tide. Feeling drawn to it, Gavin went over, doing his best to avoid the puddles and rivulets left by the receding water, which threatened to swamp his trainers. He rested his hands on the surface, very conscious of the weight of its years.

‘Well, big rock,’ he murmured. ‘What are you saying? I’d appreciate your input. You were here a long time before I was born, and you’ll be here a long time after I die. What’s it all about, eh? Why do we do what we do?’

Gavin found a smooth section to rest his cheek against while he looked idly at the water, which was lapping the sand with a sluggishness that suggested extreme cold.

‘Nothing to say, huh? Maybe you don’t know either.’

As he turned away, Gavin looked back and said, ‘You’re quite right: saying nothing is probably the best policy. That way, you don’t upset anybody...’

Gavin had been walking for just under an hour when he came across a log that had been washed ashore and sat down on it for a few minutes to give his legs a rest. Almost immediately, he felt himself grow colder as the wind caught his right side, making him pull up the collar of his denim jacket and fold his arms, although this had little effect. It was less than five minutes before he decided that he had to start moving again, but as he stood up, his mobile rang. He could see on the screen it was Carrie. It had rung four times before he summoned up the courage to answer.

‘Hello.’

‘Gavin? Can you talk?’

‘Sure.’

‘What’s that sound in the background? Where are you?’

‘It’s the wind. I’m on the beach.’

‘Where?’

‘Somewhere near North Berwick.’

‘What’s going on, Gavin?’

‘Where do I begin? There was a fire at the lab — Mary was burned: she’ll probably be scarred for life. Tom Baxter has committed suicide because he caused the fire. He meant it for me. Apart from that...’

‘Stop it, Gavin! Talk sense.’

Gavin took a moment to pull himself together. The enormity of all that had happened had given him a strange feeling of detachment which, even in his upset state, he recognised as an escape mechanism from the hell of reality. ‘Tom thought my research was going to screw up his job prospects with Grumman Schalk, so he set me up to have an accident in the lab.’

‘An accident?’

‘A flash fire involving ether, only Mary Hollis got it instead. She was doing me a good turn — setting up some cultures for me. She was badly burned: she’s in intensive care. When he realised what he’d done, Tom couldn’t handle it. He threw himself down the stairwell. End of story.’

‘Oh, my God.’

‘Why did you phone?’ asked Gavin, closing his eyes.

‘I need to talk to you.’

‘It’s bye bye Gavin time, right?’

‘No, you idiot, I just need to talk.’

‘I’m not dumped?’

‘You can be a prat at times, but I still love you.’

‘You do? Christ, I thought it was all over.’

‘No, but I do need to talk to you, although, after what you’ve just told me, this is probably not the best time.’

‘No one else wants to talk to me. I think even Frank wishes he’d never laid eyes on me. If I hadn’t come to his lab none of this would have happened.’

‘Don’t blame yourself, Gavin. None of this was your fault.’

‘What was it you want to talk about?’

‘My mother.’

‘I’m sorry I said all those hurtful things. I wasn’t thinking straight.’

‘Oh yes you were,’ said Caroline. ‘It’s just that sometimes it’s so painful to be confronted with the truth. It can be so cold and unforgiving, not what you want to hear at all...’

‘I guess.’

‘Let’s not talk over the phone. Maybe we can meet up later? I came back this morning. I’m in Edinburgh.’

‘Sure. Eight o’clock in Doctors?’

‘Fine.’

Gavin, seeing signs of habitation, turned inland, climbing up through the sand dunes and plantations of stabilising marram grass to find the village of Gullane, which didn’t take long to impress its comfortable middle-class and golfing credentials on him, as he made his way up to the main street looking for a bus stop. He had less than fifteen minutes to wait before he was on his way back to the city.

Jenny Simmons found her husband sitting in the house when she got in from work at the surgery. He had his back to her and was looking out of the window. ‘This is becoming a habit,’ she said. ‘Not sex again?’

‘No,’ sighed Simmons, ‘Nothing like that.’

‘Oh,’ said Jenny feigning disappointment. ‘I didn’t think it was that bad last time...’ The smile faded from her face when she saw the look in her husband’s eyes. ‘Oh, my God, Frank, what’s the matter?’ she asked, sinking to her knees beside him.

Simmons told her what had happened to Tom Baxter and why. ‘Christ, Jenny, what a mess.’

‘I really don’t know what to say,’ said Jenny. ‘I thought things couldn’t possibly get any worse after yesterday.’

‘Tom’s dead, Mary is going to be disfigured for life, and my lab is in ruins. To top it off, everyone wishes the one remaining member of my group had never been born... and all because he came up with something that looks like a cure for cancer.’

Simmons looked at his wife in wide-eyed disbelief. ‘Can you believe it?’

Jenny shook her head. ‘It’s crazy.’

‘I’m desperately trying to find something positive to concentrate on,’ said Simmons. ‘But I’m damned if I can find anything. Help me?’

‘I wish I could, Frank,’ said Jenny, hugging him. ‘Maybe when the awfulness of what’s happened to Mary and Tom... passes... you’ll be able to concentrate on Gavin’s research again... and the good that can come from it?’

Simmons felt himself go tense.

‘I know... I know that’s what caused all of this but... nevertheless...’

‘Maybe,’ agreed Simmons.

‘I think you should call the doctor and get something to help you sleep. You didn’t get much last night,’ said Jenny.

Simmons waved away the suggestion.

The phone rang and Jenny answered it. She turned and said, ‘It’s Graham Sutcliffe. Do you want to speak to him?’

Simmons took the phone.

Jenny couldn’t tell anything from her husband’s expression, which seemed to stay blank throughout the short conversation. ‘Well?’ she asked.

‘He wants a meeting.’

‘Tonight?’ exclaimed Jenny.

Simmons nodded. ‘At Old College.’

‘Of all the insensitive...’

‘They’ll probably want to discuss damage limitation over Tom’s death.’

Gavin met Caroline outside the pub just before eight. He took her in his arms and felt a wave of emotion overcome him as he held her close. ‘God, it’s so good to see you.’

‘You too. You’ve been through such a lot since I last saw you. I’m still finding it hard to believe what happened in the lab.’

‘Let’s not go there,’ said Gavin. ‘I’ve been over it so many times in my head that I don’t want to talk about it any more. Instead, you can tell me what’s troubling you.’

‘Is it that obvious?’

‘To someone who loves you.’

‘My mother’s asked me to help her.’

Gavin closed his eyes as it dawned on him what Caroline meant. ‘Oh, God,’ he murmured.

‘She feels she can’t ask Dad because it would be against everything he stands for. She sees having a medical student for a daughter as her next best option.’

‘What a nightmare.’

‘She sees it as a simple request to her daughter. I get her some pills; she takes them, and there’s an end to her pain, her suffering and her indignity. We kiss, say goodbye and it’s all over. Done and dusted. Only, of course, it isn’t quite like that for the rest of us...’

‘What did you say?’

‘I told her not to be so silly. She should hang in there. She could still beat this thing if she put her mind to it. The papers are always full of stories of people beating the odds. The medical profession is proved wrong on an almost daily basis. But of course, that was all rubbish. I was bullshitting my own mother. I know damned well that things are only going to get worse for her, and there’s a doctor’s surgery in the house for God’s sake. Getting the drugs wouldn’t be a problem. I was just desperate to get out of a situation I didn’t want to be in. In the end, I just put up the shutters and refused to talk any more about it.’

‘Did she accept that?’

Caroline shook her head and her eyes became moist. ‘She pleaded with me to change my mind. Can you imagine what it’s like to have your own mother plead with you to end her suffering?’

Gavin grimaced and shook his head.

‘But you know the worst thing?’ continued Caroline. ‘It wasn’t feelings of pity or compassion that overwhelmed me. It was anger. I was angry that she’d put me in that position. She was my mother and I was furious she was doing that to me. I stormed out of the house and came back to Edinburgh and now... I am so ashamed of myself. I am so consumed by guilt that I just want to curl up and die.’

The tears were flowing freely down Caroline’s face now as she looked to Gavin. ‘Well, Gavin... what should I do?’

‘You know I can’t tell you that.’

‘Not good enough. You’re big on truth and telling it like it is. I need your take on this.’

‘It was you who pointed out that people don’t always want to hear the truth.’

‘This time I need to hear it,’ countered Caroline.

Gavin’s reluctance made him consider for a long time before he said, ‘You can’t afford to become involved in ending your mother’s life. It would be illegal and you’d probably get caught. You’d be charged with murder, or more likely manslaughter, and possibly go to jail. There would be lots of sympathy and understanding for you, but it wouldn’t translate into permission to break the law. Either way, there would be no place for you in medicine any more. Your career would be over before it started.’

‘And Mum’s wishes?’

‘They don’t come into it.’

‘Ouch.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Now tell me the right thing to do, Gavin. Not the legal thing or the sensible thing but the right thing.’

‘I can’t do that.’

‘You can tell me what you think the right thing to do is?’

‘That can get messy when it’s different from the legal, or even the moral, thing.’

‘Stop fencing. Tell me what you think.’

Gavin took a hesitant breath. ‘The right thing to do is to help your mother end her suffering. She can’t be cured, and the medics are only interested in keeping her alive as long as possible to make their survival rate figures look better. Success is measured by how long they keep you alive, not how good your quality of life is. There are no boxes to be filled in for pain and indignity. They don’t figure in the notes.’

‘Thanks, Gav.’

‘But you can’t. The stakes are too high.’

Caroline nodded.

‘Your father should do it.’

Caroline recoiled at the sting in the tail, and made a face to emphasise just how out of the question Gavin’s suggestion was. ‘You don’t know my father,’ she exclaimed.

‘No, but I know the situation. If anyone should help your mother it should be him.’

‘My father gets ill at the thought of parking on a double yellow line,’ exclaimed Caroline. ‘His whole life has been governed by rules and regulations, manners and convention. The idea that he should help my mother commit suicide is just...’ Words failed her.

‘Maybe he needs you to spell it out for him.’

‘How?’

‘Shock him out of his comfort zone. He obviously believes that he is doing all he can to help the woman he loves so dearly. Tell him that feeling bad about everything doesn’t do a damn thing to help her. Point out to him that he has the means to stop your mother’s suffering if he’d just start thinking for himself instead of having the BMA and Church of England do it for him.’

‘I couldn’t do that to him.’

‘Desperate times, desperate measures.’

Caroline shook her head as she thought it through and came to the same conclusion. ‘I just couldn’t.’

‘Then you’ll both watch your mother go through hell until the Good Lord or whoever relents and lets her go. Still, a couple of choruses of “The Lord’s My Shepherd” and a few words of comfort from the vicar should make everything all right. Flowers on the grave every first Sunday of the month and a picture on the piano...’

‘You bastard!’

‘Sorry.’

‘No, I asked you to tell me what you thought,’ said Caroline, enunciating each word carefully ‘And that’s exactly what you did. I thank you for that. And, if it’s any comfort, I still love you.’

Gavin’s shoulders relaxed.

‘But just who the hell are you to talk?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Come on, Gavin, you’re in cancer research. You’ve come up with a way of treating tumours, and not once have we discussed this in relation to my mother. Why not?’

Gavin sat back in his chair and appeared to look in all directions for inspiration. ‘Because I work with test tubes. It’s a world away from real people. A few lab experiments have worked out okay and things are looking promising but...’

‘Do I hear the sound of furious back-pedalling, Gavin?’

‘Okay, I do think it has a chance of working if anyone ever gets round to giving it its chance, but even then there will be hurdles to jump before it’s tried out on people.’

‘But you have the wherewithal to try it?’

‘I’ve got the drugs, if that’s what you mean...’

‘So your objections are... legal? You don’t have the necessary paperwork, permissions, approvals, etc?’

‘I suppose... but there’s more to it than that. There’s what you have to prove before you get the paperwork.’

Caroline chose to ignore the proviso. ‘How about moral objections? It’s wrong to experiment on people?’

Gavin shrugged, clearly unhappy with the way the conversation had turned.

‘So if you can’t do the legal thing and you can’t do the moral thing, what does that leave us with... the right thing... does it not?’

‘Carrie...’

‘I just thought I’d tell you what I thought, Gav, since you were so obliging when I asked. I think it all boils down to me finding it strange that we’re sitting here discussing who should kill my mother, when you might well have the means of saving her.’

‘Wow,’ said Gavin under his breath. ‘Where did all that come from?’

‘Come on, you’re not telling me the idea never crossed your mind?’ said Caroline, looking incredulous. ‘We both know that we’ve been avoiding having this conversation, ever since you got that great result in the lab, right?’

‘I suppose,’ conceded Gavin. ‘When you first told me your mother had cancer I remember thinking how great it would be if I came up with a cure for her... how impressed you’d be. You’d fall in love with me and we’d live happily ever after. And then again when I saw the tumour cells dying in the lab — but these were just fairy-tale thoughts, like standing on the terrace at a Liverpool game when the manager comes up to you through the crowd and says, “Gav, we’re a bit short of strikers.” It’s just a dream. It’s just not the way things happen...’

‘She’s got cancer; you have a possible cure. I think you should try it.’

Gavin shook his head. ‘It would be wrong. I don’t even know if it works on all kinds of tumours. There could be a cross-reaction between the two drugs in human beings. There are all sorts of reasons...’

‘And none of them valid for a woman who is in pain and dying. Paperwork is for people who are guarding their own arses... if I might quote you.’

‘But if every —’

‘We are not talking about every here. We are talking about my mother.’

Gavin rubbed his temples.

‘Think about it, Gav. That’s all I ask. Give it some serious thought?’

Gavin nodded.

‘Another beer? Crisps?’

Gavin shook his head.

‘You’re not going to go all quiet on me, are you?’

‘No, this is exactly the kind of moment when we should go on speaking to each other.’

‘So tell me what you’re thinking.’

‘I suppose I’m thinking that if I got caught doing something like this, there are a lot of people in the department who’d have a field day. Smart-arse Donnelly isn’t content with doing all the science on his own; he’s now started treating the patients. They’d laugh all the way to the courtroom.’

‘I’ll treat Mum,’ said Caroline. ‘You just give me the drugs and tell me what to do.’

‘It could destroy us both.’

‘On the other hand, it might just work.’