George Barnabas - 04 - Fourth Attempt (4 page)

There was a little flurry at the far end of the room which was now quite crowded as more and more of the staff arrived. Surgeons congregated with surgeons as usual; George could see Keith Le Queux and Robert Gray, the gynaecologist, with their heads together as Kate Sayers, like Le Queux from the Renal Unit, and Peter Selby, an ENT man, talked earnestly to them over Gerald Mayer-France’s shoulder, while in another cluster the physicians huddled in exactly the same sort of way. Agnew Byford from Cardiology was standing next to Barbara Rosen, the psychiatrist, as Maurice Carvalho, the diabetologist, talked confidentially into his left ear. Only Neville Carr, the oncologist, stood aloof from his colleagues, though he had found congenial company; standing with an air of eager subservience at his side was one of the young men from Radiology, the senior radiologist, George seemed to remember, and she was amused. The only person no one at Old East gossiped about was Neville Carr. Not any more, not since he’d come out and told everyone in the sunniest manner possible that he was gay, had been gay all his professional life and was damned if he was going to apologize for it any longer.

The only people who weren’t talking to each other were the anaesthetists, who had distributed themselves amongst other groups. There was David Denton, chatting up Margaret Cotton, the Head of Finance, and Heather Dannay, the Head of Anaesthetics, scowling into her glass and clearly hating everyone around her, and the most recently joined of the Gasman Team (as they were commonly known), James Corton, leaning against the wall in a brown study, clearly
anywhere but here. George felt sorry for him, he looked so lonely; and she had a sudden memory of her own first days at Old East. It wasn’t the most welcoming of places to newcomers, and she would, she decided, make an effort to talk to him some time.

Someone tapped a microphone in the maddening manner that microphones seem to force on certain types and there was a booming ‘testing, testing, can you hear me?’ followed by a cough that made several people with acute hearing wince. Professor Hunnisett looked expectantly at the corner of the room where the microphone was and slowly the chatter died away.

‘It’s good to see so many of you here tonight!’ Matthew Herne, the Hospital Chief Executive Officer, was looking exceedingly dapper, George decided, in a fine houndstooth suit which had the silky sheen that spoke of expensive cloth. I wish he were more thoughtful, though, she thought, looking sideways at some of the other younger men in the room, the registrars and the lesser lights of the administrative staff. He makes them all look so shabby when he dresses so well.

‘Very good of you to turn out when I know how busy we all are. We’re running at over ninety per cent capacity at the moment, I have to tell you. Pray there isn’t a major push on A & E, or we’ll find ourselves in the papers again!’

A faint rustle moved round the room, not quite a sigh, not quite a laugh. They’d read the attacks on them in the local paper, and indeed in several of the nationals as well. The NHS was a choice political football at the moment and Old East in particular got more than its share of the kicks. All they needed was one more patient forced to spend the night on a trolley for want of an available bed in a ward and all hell would be let loose. The threat of closure always hung over them, they felt, even though the Department of Health had promised them they were safe. But then the Department had promised all sorts of things to all sorts of hospitals that somehow never quite happened.

‘And of course, we have had some unfortunate publicity over the sad — um — loss of three of our staff.
Not
all suicides, of course, though the papers tried to suggest so, using unfounded surmise as a stick with which to beat us.’ Herne scowled slightly, as though he were mentally castigating Mendez and Lally Lamark for having the temerity to die accidentally, let alone Pam Frean for actually killing herself. That he disapproved of all three of them rather than pitying them was very clear. ‘But we will no doubt weather this little storm as we have weathered greater ones. Yes. Hrrmph.’ He coughed, rearranged his facial expression to one he clearly regarded as suitable for what he had to say, and went on.

‘Now, tonight we have bad news and good news. The bad news you all know. We’re losing our esteemed and trusted colleague and long time medical guru, Professor Hunnisett.’ He turned towards the old man and made applause gestures and obediently everyone joined in. ‘We wish him a long and happy retirement and fruition of all his plans for the future. You’ll hear more about that in a moment. Right now, with the good news that will help cushion us against the loss of Professor Hunnisett, here’s our Chairman, Sir Jonathan Spry. Sir Jonathan, let me just move the microphone down a little for you.’

Sir Jonathan, who was a little tetchy about the fact that Matthew was at least five inches taller than he was, smiled in a wintry fashion and firmly took the microphone stand from Matthew’s hand and made it his own. For the next half-hour.

What he had to say did matter. He had to announce that Professor Hunnisett was retiring in one sense, but not in another; he would still be part of the Research Institute he had founded. That much he managed to make clear fairly quickly. The rest of his news was less easy to comprehend. But when he’d finished and there was a spatter of applause and the presentations of engraved silver salvers (‘Who uses things like that these days?’ hissed Hattie into George’s ear in disgust),
George leaned towards Zack and murmured, ‘I need a précis. I’m not sure I got hold of all that.’

‘It’s not as splendid as he tries to make out.’ Zack sounded unusually serious. Generally he was a relaxed and cheerful individual, but now he looked enclosed and tight and George looked at him curiously.

‘As I understand it, the Research Institute is to go on working while they look for a new chap to take over from the Professor?’

‘Yeah,’ Zack said. ‘That’s what it sounds like, but the fact is unless we can get more money in on all our individual projects, no one worthwhile will want to come. He implied all that without saying it. We have to get more projects in place to make the job a really interesting one for a high-flyer. It’s a bastard.’

‘What happens if you don’t get more money in?’

He grimaced. ‘End of Institute, I suppose.’

She was horrified. ‘Hunnisett would surely never let that happen?’

Zack looked at her and shook his head. ‘He’s not the man he was. Tired, to tell the truth. That’s why he’s announced his retirement. He could have gone on for a couple of years more if he’d pushed for it. But he’s — well, he’s a weary old man now. We’ll just have to fend for ourselves, I guess.’

He seemed to realize that he was saying more than he meant to and smiled at her, and was at once his usual comfortable self. ‘But no need to worry. I have a few irons in the fire to get my money in. Here’s hoping the others do. Some of ’em need a hell of a lot of capital.’

‘Don’t you?’

‘Uh-huh. But I’ve got every chance of getting it. I told you, irons in the fire. Nothing like a cheerful cliché to make a point, hmm? Look, let’s get out of here and go for a drink somewhere, what do you say? This wine’s warmed up now and it’s getting very stuffy.’

She hesitated. Hattie had drifted away from them now and
they couldn’t be overheard. She could easily accept and go out with him and no one would know, so there would be no gossip. But, dammit, this wasn’t a date he was asking for, just a drink. So she smiled at him and nodded.

‘Let me do a quick whirl round the room and talk to the Prof.,’ she said. ‘And have a word with my own staff who turned out, then I’ll be ready. Give me — what, twenty minutes? Will that be OK?’

He looked at his watch. ‘You can have nineteen,’ he said.

She bowed her head ironically. ‘Nineteen it is. See you by the main door?’

‘The main door it is.’ He laughed and she knew he was thinking just what she had: if they left the room together there might possibly be talk. It would be much safer to bump into each other accidentally downstairs on the way out.

She went round the room as fast as she could, nodding at people and stopping for a few moments to ask after Kate Sayers’s brood of babies and to talk to Barbara Rosen, the crumpled and always rather grubby-looking psychiatrist for whom she had a particular affection; then she looked round for her own staff before making her final sortie towards the Professor and her way out.

She saw Jerry and Alan Short talking in a corner and made her way through the chattering hubbub towards them. Jerry greeted her cheerfully. ‘What ho, Dr B.! Not poisoned by the vol-au-vents yet? I ought to run a salmonella check on them, only I don’t dare. We’d have to close the whole hospital down if we really knew how much death and disease lurked in ’em. Have you tasted one? I have and I’m not long for this life, I swear to you.’

‘More fool you for risking it,’ she said. She tried not to frown as she asked, ‘Where is everyone else?’

Alan went scarlet. ‘Um, Jane wasn’t feeling too good,’ he muttered. ‘I told her I’d make her apologies.’

‘Oh, that’s all right,’ George said quickly. ‘I didn’t mean her. It was Sheila I wondered about. She left the lab early
especially to go home and change. Which shouldn’t have been necessary if she’d remembered to dress suitably this morning.’ Her current irritation with Sheila, who was indeed being more than usually captious, spilled over into her voice to sharpen it.

Jerry all unwittingly fed the flames. ‘Oh, she always has to go home to change for these shindigs. You never know
who
you might meet,’ he said, in a fair imitation of Sheila’s rather high voice and pinched would-be upper-class accent.

‘Yeah, no doubt,’ George snapped. ‘All the same, she should be here. I told her I expected all the senior people to turn out. It doesn’t look good if the most senior technician cuts the Prof’s farewell do.’

‘She definitely said she was coming.’ Jerry now realized he’d put his foot in it and rushed to Sheila’s defence, though normally they sparred like a pair of bad-tempered puppies trapped in the same basket. ‘She knew it was a three-line whip, because I told her as well as you. Anyway it’s not like her to miss a party. She actually likes the vol-au-vents.’

‘I’ll talk to her tomorrow.’ George set her jaw. ‘I can’t have — Well, thanks for coming, you two. And tell Jane it’s all right, Alan, I do understand. Throwing up, is she?’ Alan went even redder, if that were possible, and started to stammer. She patted his shoulder affectionately. ‘It’s all right, Alan. We all know, you know. This is a hospital, remember. No secrets here.’

Indeed, however hard the couple tried to hide the fact that Jane was in the very early stages of a pregnancy, everyone in the department knew about it, and were making snide comments about the speed with which the pair were launching themselves into parenthood. ‘Give her lots of glucose and a hint of salt and she’ll feel better,’ George said.

She said her goodbyes to Professor Hunnisett, who assured her that he would indeed see her again since this was just a retirement from active clinical practice they were celebrating rather than a total eclipse of all his medical activities.

‘The work of the Institute of course often involves your special contribution,’ he said and beamed in a way that she found quite nauseous. Clearly the old boy was hoping to get cut-price work out of the department. Well, he’d have to deal with Ellen Archer, the Business Manager for the lab, not herself; she smiled sweetly at him and said, ‘Of course,’ before escaping downstairs to meet Zack Zacharius.

As she went she was planning exactly what she’d have to say to Sheila next morning for her defection of duty tonight. Really, she thought furiously, goddamn Sheila. She’s getting too big for her boots altogether. She just took an early evening off and ignored what I told her about tonight. I really must do something about her.

Zack wasn’t at the main door when she reached it, and she felt a stab of disappointment. He had tired of waiting for her, she told herself; after all, she’d taken rather longer to escape from the party than she had meant to. But all the same, he could have waited a little longer.

Oh well, she thought, and pulled her silk jacket a little closer. The weather was unseasonably cool for June and she regretted not wearing something warmer than the red silk. The sooner she got home and into a thick tracksuit in which she could spend her evening curled up on her sofa watching TV, the better. And again she felt a stab of disappointment, but this time because of Gus.

She’d done all she could to help him get his promotion to Superintendent, and when he’d got the job he most wanted, which was heading the Area Major Incident Team which covered the territory that included Ratcliffe Street nick, she had celebrated with him with enormous glee. But then she’d told him to get the job sorted first and himself well settled before they returned to the suggestion that had been made, in the heat of the investigation that had led to his getting the job, that they should be married. She had felt suddenly unsure of taking so massive a step, afraid of upsetting the status quo in which they were so comfortable. Well, comfortable most of the time.

And now look at what had happened. The job was an onerous one and very absorbing. He loved it, and she was delighted for him, but she saw even less of him than she had during the bad times just before he left the rank of Detective Chief Inspector behind him, all during that awful summer when she had been so frightened for him and he’d been under a cloud. Now the only thing he was under was the warm sun of police approbation. There didn’t seem to be a committee on which he didn’t sit or a job of any importance that the powers-that-be didn’t want him for. And he, damn his eyes, accepted all the invitations with enthusiasm because, ‘Well, it’s the job, darlin’, ain’t it? You wouldn’t want to hold me back, would you?’

And because she didn’t, there she was with more and more evenings to spend sitting watching TV on her own and more and more time to notice the attractions of other men. Gus was the man she wanted, but he wasn’t there; and talking — even flirting — with other men could help fill the gap. But would that be wise? Remembering how Gus had reacted once before when he had thought her interested in someone else, she doubted it.