Hypocrite's Isle

Nine

‘Trish, I need some normal human cells. Any chance of getting some before the holidays?’ asked Gavin, who had been waiting outside the Cell Culture Suite since 8.45 a.m.

A look of dismay came over the technician’s face. ‘You’re kidding... no, you’re not, you’re serious.’

‘There’s some doubt about the behaviour of normal cells in the literature; I have to be sure.’

Trish looked uncertain. ‘Shit, Gavin, we were actually counting on closing down the suite this afternoon and spending the last day just cleaning up and replenishing stock solutions.’

‘I’ll love you forever...’

‘Not sure if that’s a good enough... I’d have to check with the maternity unit to see if a placenta is liable to become available for amnion cells...’

‘Forever and a day?’

Gavin followed Trish into her small office and stood by as she phoned the maternity unit. After a short conversation she said, ‘They are expecting four births this afternoon.’

‘Great.’

Trish broke into a resigned smile. ‘You do realise this means I won’t be going to the Christmas lunch with the girls?’

Gavin saw that she was serious. ‘Shit, I’m sorry, I didn’t realise it was that big a deal. Maybe this is something I could do myself if you pointed me at a book of instructions?’

‘I won’t pretend it’s not tempting to walk off and leave you to it, but primary lines are a bit tricky if you’ve never done them before.’

Gavin grimaced.

‘They’re not like tumour cells which go on dividing forever as long as you feed them and dilute them. Healthy cells have a limited lifespan. We have to prepare them fresh each time and break down the tissue into component cells before we can even start.’

Gavin sighed. ‘I’m sorry. I should have thought. I really didn’t realise there was so much to it...’

‘Having said that,’ said Trish hesitantly. ‘It’s not impossible... providing the maternity unit comes up with the goods early enough. If they do, I’ll set you up a batch before I go off.’

‘You’re an absolute ace person; I really won’t forget this.’

‘Yeah, yeah... I’ll give you a call when they’re ready or leave a message on your desk saying where you can find them.’

When Gavin returned upstairs to the lab he found a note on his desk from Frank Simmons, asking if he was coming to Christmas dinner or not. He had to know today. When Gavin went over to knock on Frank’s door, Mary Hollis called out, ‘He’s not there. Sutcliffe’s called a meeting of senior academic staff.’

‘Was he wearing a Santa suit and carrying a sack?’ asked Gavin sourly.

Mary broke into a smile. ‘And just when I thought you were beginning to mellow...’

‘You’ve not exactly been all sweetness and light yourself these past few weeks if I might say so,’ said Gavin.

‘Fair comment,’ said Mary, her smile fading. ‘Simon and I broke up. He found himself a blonde staff nurse with big tits.’

‘Seems reasonable to me,’ said Gavin with his back to Mary, but he was smiling, looking at the wall, waiting for the come-back.

Mary threw a box of tissues at him but she too managed a small grin. ‘At least everyone knows where they are with you, Gavin. What you see is what you frighteningly get.’

‘But really, I am sorry,’ said Gavin, turning round to face her. ‘You two looked good together, like it was the real thing.’

‘It was for one of us.’

‘I guess this has ruined your Christmas.’

‘We’ll see. I’m going home to Dublin to stay with Mum and Dad. My brother Pat is coming home from Germany, so it’ll be nice to see them all again. I’ll be leaving just after lunch. Tom’s already gone off home to Bristol, and I think Frank said he was heading out to do his Christmas shopping after Sutcliffe’s meeting. He probably won’t be back this side of the New Year.’

‘It’s going to be lonely round here.’

‘You’ve decided to work through the break?’

‘They don’t give you a Nobel Prize for eating Christmas pies.’

‘So that’s where I’ve been going wrong.’

Gavin scribbled a note saying that he would love to come to dinner on Christmas Day and sellotaped it to Simmons’ door.

‘Are you off out?’ asked Mary.

‘Just to an off-licence to get a bottle of wine for Trish. She’s doing me a favour and setting up some human amnion cells for me.’

‘You asked Trish for primary cells the day before we break up and she said yes?’ exclaimed Mary.

‘I told her I’d love her forever and she took pity on me.’

Mary seemed lost for words until she affected an exaggerated shake of the head and came out with, ‘Men are something else.’

‘Cancer doesn’t stop for Christmas.’

‘Neither does bullshit.’

Frank Simmons walked briskly along the corridor, determined for once not to be the last to arrive at the latest departmental meeting called by Professor Graham Sutcliffe. He had no idea what it was about — the memo hadn’t said — but took comfort from the thought that his research group had done nothing lately to upset the smooth running of the department. Apart from that, it didn’t take much for Sutcliffe, who saw communication as a great virtue and an essential element of academic life, to call a meeting. In Simmons’ book this translated into nothing being too trivial to merit endless discussion.

Sutcliffe, wearing a light grey suit with a trouser waist that threatened his armpits and a university tie in deference to his later lunch appointment at Old College with the deans of the faculties, perched his reading glasses on the end of his nose and looked over the top at the people in front of him. He apologised for the short notice in calling the meeting. ‘I understand that several of you have recently received letters from the pharmaceutical company Grumman Schalk, inviting you to apply for funding under a new research support scheme they have just announced?’

Five staff members, including Frank Simmons, agreed that this was so.

‘Good. I thought that might be the case. As soon as I read the company’s press release in Nature, I got in touch with the their administrators to ask for clarification about the wording concerning “special cases” and, without going into too much detail, it would appear that our department would almost certainly be viewed as a special case. The fact that we have so many distinguished researchers and an international reputation means that we could make a block grant application and expect to receive — assuming we were successful — a sum in excess of twenty million pounds sterling. A rough estimate says that that would be around twelve times as much as we could hope to achieve from the sum of individual applications. I’ve called this meeting to ask what you think about the idea.’

‘There must be some serious conditions attached,’ suggested Simmons.

‘The company would want certain safeguards,’ said Sutcliffe, as if to belittle the comment. ‘It does not pretend to be a charity.’

‘The power of veto over papers submitted for publication perhaps?’ said Simmons.

Sutcliffe moved his feet uneasily. His voice took on a note of irritation. ‘I should think that the company would almost certainly like to see such submissions before they were sent off, if only to check with their patents people in case something might require legal protection. Grumman Schalk would naturally want to protect their investment — perfectly reasonable in the circumstances, I think you would all agree?’

‘Can you assure us that only their patent lawyers would want to examine submitted work? Their scientific directors wouldn’t have the power of veto over results they didn’t like or wouldn’t want made public?’

Sutcliffe moved from irritation to exasperation. ‘Look,’ he snapped. ‘It’s early days to worry about things like that. Are we or are we not in favour of making a block grant application to Grumman Schalk? That’s what we have to decide today. Competition is bound to be fierce. I know that Gerald Montague certainly intends to apply.’

The murmurs in the room seemed positive. Sutcliffe struck while the iron was hot. ‘I need hardly point out that this would mean a considerable expansion of our department — certainly to a size where I think we could accommodate the creation of two more personal chairs...’

‘Nice move,’ thought Simmons. ‘Money and personal advancement on offer.’ He decided not to swim against the tide. It was unanimously decided to try for a block grant.

‘Good, I’ll formulate a first draft over the break and you can let me know your thoughts when you get back. It only remains for me to wish you all a very Happy Christmas and continued success in the New Year.’

Frank Simmons found Gavin’s note stuck to his door. ‘Ding dong,’ he murmured, although his thoughts moved on quickly from ‘Merrily on high’ to ‘Pussy’s in the well’...

As it happened, Christmas Day passed without incident at the Simmons’ house. Gavin turned up bearing books for the children and a bottle of Glayva liqueur for Frank and Jenny. He made a point of being careful over what he drank — sticking strictly to beer — and no reference at all was made to the events of his previous visit. Jenny’s elderly parents, Tom and Matilda, were there, as was Frank’s widowed father, Patrick, who had recently suffered a stroke and was showing frustration at not being able to express himself properly, nodding vigorously when someone filled in the blanks correctly, but shaking his head and slapping the arm of his chair when they got it wrong. There had been little opportunity to talk science — something that suited Gavin more than it did Frank, who kept looking for opportunities to question him about what he was doing in the lab. He finally succeeded when he found Gavin alone in the kitchen after gathering in empty glasses.

‘So what are you up to in the lab?’

‘Oh, you know, just trying out a few things: getting used to working with cell cultures on a regular basis...’

‘With a view to starting the biochemistry of S23 cells, yes?’

‘Actually... no,’ confessed Gavin, stopping what he was doing and staring straight ahead at the wall in front of him. ‘I thought I might try out one or two other things first... in my own time, so to speak.’

‘Valdevan,’ sighed Simmons. ‘It’s Christmas Day, Gavin, and I’ve no wish for us to fall out. But come the first day of the new term, I want to see you start work on the biochemistry of S23 cells. Understood?’

‘Sure, Frank.’

Simmons put his arm round Gavin’s shoulders. ‘Fancy a whisky?’

‘Maybe just a beer,’ smiled Gavin.

‘Let’s join the others.’

Gavin got home just after seven and called Caroline.

‘How’s the cat?’ she asked.

‘Alive and well. Everything was fine. I’ve been on my best behaviour all day but now I’m going to get guttered — Christ, I never knew behaving yourself could be so stressful. How was your day?’

‘A nightmare of long silences and remembrances of times past. I didn’t know cutlery could sound so loud on china. The sun came out for a little while this afternoon after we’d finished eating, so I took myself off for a walk in the woods.’

‘And your mum?’

‘She’s started chemo and radiation therapy so she’s very tired. She keeps trying to challenge fate by declaring that it’s against her better judgement this time. How’s the science been going?’

‘Pretty good. I expect to get some results tomorrow from the primary cell lines I treated with Valdevan. Everything has been going smoothly, except for the fact that I had to tell Frank I wasn’t working on the biochemistry.’

‘Shit,’ said Caroline. ‘How did that go down?’

‘I guess he wasn’t best pleased, but he didn’t hit the roof or anything, and I am working in my own time...’

‘But you’re using up his resources,’ countered Caroline.

‘Yeah, I know, and he’s been really good about it. On the other hand, he made it clear he wants me to start work on the biochemistry come the new term or I’m in deep shit.’

‘Quite right too.’

‘I could do with a little more support here.’

‘We’ve been through all that.’

‘Yeah, we have,’ conceded Gavin. ‘So what lies ahead for you?’

‘An evening of Christmas telly stretches out before me like an ordeal by mirth,’ said Caroline.

‘Maybe it will take everyone’s mind off things,’ said Gavin.

‘I’ll feel guilty if I laugh.’

After a long pause Gavin said, ‘Call you tomorrow?’

‘Sure.’

Boxing Day was a landmark day in the lab for Gavin. Wearing two sweaters and a scarf against the cold and sitting at the inverted microscope, he got a nice clear answer to his question. Valdevan did affect normal cells. He could see distinct changes, and the typical membrane pinching that was now so familiar to him. But this, of course, was another conundrum.

After forty minutes of making absolutely sure, he rubbed his eyes and put his hands behind his head while he thought about his findings. Valdevan killed tumour cells in test tubes but not in the human body — although it caused membrane damage in both. It caused pinching but not death in healthy cells in test tubes, but had no effect at all on healthy cells in the body. Just what the hell was going on? What was the difference?

Gavin got up from the microscope and fetched a sterile glass beaker from the glassware cupboard. He filled it with cold tap water and placed it on a bench tripod before lighting a Bunsen burner below and adjusting the flame. Walking back to his desk, he brought out a small carton of tea bags he kept in the drawer and placed one in his Liverpool FC mug — noting that it could do with a clean: the mug was red but the inside was dark brown with tannin and coffee residue. But that was something that could wait for another day. Instead, he walked over to the window and looked out while he waited for the water to boil. There was very little traffic about, and he guessed that the cars that did pass by contained families on the way to visit relatives. Your folks Christmas Day, mine Boxing Day.

The water in the beaker started to bubble so he turned off the Bunsen and used an oven glove to lift it off and hold it while he filled his mug. He took a sip and gave a sigh of satisfaction which sounded unnaturally loud in his surroundings. Although it was cold in the lab — the heating had now been off for several days — it wasn’t so much the temperature that was getting to him as the quietness. All the usual background sounds of heating and ventilation in the building were missing — it took their absence to make him notice — but other sounds were now more apparent. The on/off click of thermostats on incubators and water baths, the compressors on fridges and freezers cycling on and off as they kept their precious contents at steady temperature, unexplained creaks and moans from an old building. It started to rain as he drank his tea. The patter drew him back to the window. The glass had obviously not been cleaned in a long time; the rivulets followed a tortuous course down the tall panes, inviting parallels with life.

Gavin turned away. Maybe if he were to set up two cultures side by side — one tumour cells and the other normal, healthy cells — and added Valdevan to both at exactly the same time, he might be able to compare differences as and when they happened. He returned to the bench. This was what he’d do. He got out the necessary sterile glassware and checked the cultures he had available in the incubator. The tumour cells looked as if they needed diluting, so he fetched what he noted was the last bottle of tissue culture medium from the fridge. He sat it on the bench while he put on surgical gloves. As he did so, he noticed a slight tear in one of the gloves and made to strip it off. The tightness of the fit and the sudden movement of his arm when the glove finally gave way caused his elbow to hit the bottle of tissue culture medium and send it crashing to the floor, where it shattered and left him looking down at a spreading red puddle round his feet.

‘Sweet Jesus,’ he exclaimed. ‘The last bottle...’ He stared at the puddle as if unable to believe his appalling luck. ‘Of all the fucking rotten...’

The tableau continued in silence for a few moments before he realised that it wasn’t quite the end of the world he’d imagined it to be. There was nothing to stop him making up some more. He had the recipes Trish had given him and a good range of chemicals in the lab cupboards. All it would take was time and he had plenty of that: no one was waiting for him at home.

He looked at his watch and reckoned that it would be well after eleven before he’d be finished, but there was a chip shop on his way home which he knew stayed open until midnight. This was now his goal, something to look forward to. He would treat himself to steak pie and chips, and maybe even a large pickled onion.

He found everything he needed in the chemicals cupboard and lab fridges except for one ingredient, human serum. There was none in the freezer where it was usually stored, and now he remembered Trish saying that getting it at this time of year was always difficult, if not impossible. He wondered if the tissue culture medium would support growth without the addition of serum but was doubtful — human serum was a very rich source of nutrients. But Trish had given him recipes for a variety of different tissue culture media and he was pretty sure that at least one of them didn’t list human serum as an ingredient. He rifled through his desk drawer until he found the relevant notes and checked through all the formulae. ‘You beauty,’ he murmured as he found the one he was looking for. He didn’t need serum. He had everything he needed.