Cath Staincliffe - Go Not Gently

I was sure Mrs Knight had known nothing about the link between the doctor and Malden’s or that there was any problem with the drugs. She hadn’t tried to hide anything. She’d been stunned by my revelations. Her fear for her own reputation, fear of litigation, were at the forefront, not a fear of being found out. Strange woman, prickly but obviously scared of Goulden – and how odd the way she never smiled. Why had she gone into nursing? She didn’t seem particularly caring of people. For all her shock-horror expressions of concern she’d never once asked me how Lily Palmer was.

Nana Tello had come for tea. She was holding court in the kitchen as I walked in. Sheila, Maddie and Tom were at the table. Ray was at the cooker.

‘Hello, stranger,’ she interrupted her story to greet me. ‘You been on your bike?’

‘Yes.’ I peeled off my cagoule.

She shook her head, tutted, pulled a face. ‘It’s not safe. I don’t think it’s so good. The cars these days, they are so impatient.’

It was a fair comment but given the history of our relationship it felt as though she were criticising my recklessness in still cycling rather than anything else.

‘They have no manners, no courtesy.’ She grimaced her disapproval.

‘I can curtsy, look.’ Maddie leapt up and performed a jerky bob. Sheila and Ray burst out laughing.

‘I’ll have a wash,’ I muttered, and withdrew.

When I tried to ring Agnes there was no reply. She was probably visiting Lily.

Tea was a strained affair. Ray had made a baked aubergine dish which only Sheila and I enjoyed. Maddie declared it was like ‘slugs and blood’ and refused to try it. Tom followed suit. Meanwhile Nana Tello embarked on her customary discourse on the need for meat (red meat at that) in the human diet, especially for young children. I’d been through the argument with her before, as had Ray, but she still managed to needle him.

‘Come on, Ma,’ he said. ‘How many times a week could people back home afford meat? They didn’t have it every day, did they?’

‘Can we get chips?’ Maddie whined.

‘No,’ I said.

‘Aw. Please. Be your best friend. Please.’

‘No. If you don’t want this then you can have a sandwich.’

‘There’s beans,’ Ray offered.

‘I hate beans,’ Maddie announced with passion.

‘Since when?’

‘I hate beans too,’ Tom said.

‘No, you don’t, you’re just copying me. Copycat, copycat, you don’t know what you’re looking at.’

‘Sandwich, then.’ I got up and made a round of Marmite sandwiches. I wasn’t even going to introduce the option of what particular type of sandwiches were acceptable on this particular Friday.

Sheila had managed to steer Nana Tello off meat and on to Italy. Sheila had spent several holidays there and was extolling the delights of the different regions she’d visited. Nana Tello was beside herself with joy to find that Sheila knew her home town of Reggio Calabria and went off into long rhapsodies about the market, the churches, the people, the climate, the soil and the schools.

We made it through apple pie and ice cream and coffee without further tantrums.

Later, comfortably ensconced in the pub, I let Diane’s conversation and two pints of Boddies wash away my tension. Diane was still full of the Cornerhouse exhibition and a little daunted by the amount of work she needed to do for it. ‘And I’ve got to write one of those awful little autobiographies too. For the catalogue. That’s the pits,’ she said. ‘Can you imagine it? What do you say? What do you leave out?’

‘What do other people say?’

‘Well,’ she ran her hands through her hair, which had become a savage blue-black since we’d last met, ‘some of them go on about where they’ve trained, who’s influenced their work, then there’s the “loves crochet – lives with six cats” style..

‘You could stick in a bit of both.’

‘It’s so difficult, you’ve no idea. I spent three hours last night trying to come up with something but everything sounded either totally boring or horribly pretentious.’

‘How long does it have to be?’ I took another satisfying swallow of beer.

‘They said up to two hundred words.’

‘You could try keeping it really short.’

‘What, like “Diane Davis lives in Rusholme”?’

I grinned.

‘What do people really want to know?’ She threw her hands wide as she asked the question. ‘I mean, if you go to an exhibition, you can see the work, what more would you want to know about the artist?’

I thought for a moment, took a swig from my glass, frowned in concentration. ‘How many cats they’ve got and if they do crochet.’

‘Sod off.’

Over our next drink I told Diane about the case of the dodgy tablets.

‘Someone’s for the high jump then. What a cock-up. Reminds me of those awful stories about keeping weed-killer in pop bottles.’

‘Oh, don’t,’ I muttered.

‘Bit embarrassing, eh? Use the family firm and they give you seriously shoddy goods. You reckon this doctor’s in on it, then?’

‘I’m sure he is, but it’s just a gut feeling. I can’t find a reason for him to be deliberately overdosing patients, in fact some of the patients he had transferred to Kingsfield weren’t even on medication. He seems to have pretty easy access for his patients to the Marion Unit there – his brother-in-law is the consultant.’

‘All in the family. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours?’

‘Possibly. You wouldn’t think they could get away with it, what with all these reforms and the Patient’s Charter and all that. And the bottom line is the woman’s got advanced Alzheimer’s anyway. She was ill in spite of the tablets, not because of them.’

‘But they can’t have helped.’

‘Oh, no. Moira reckoned they would have made anyone demented, especially when mixed with other drugs.’

‘Do you think he’ll get away with it, then, that sort of negligence?’

I nodded. ‘Unless something else crops up he’s home free. Everything points to the chemist, who will probably be suspended or whatever they do. I don’t think there’s much to be done about the doctor using samples from Malden’s – free market and all that. Anyway the police are looking into it now. And I need to find some more work.’

‘You could run an ad again,’ Diane suggested.

‘Yeah. It’s about time I did something like that.’

‘Hey, you could make one of those ads for the cinema, you know, stick it in with the ones about local jewellers and car dealers.’

‘Oh, spare me, please.’

‘Or one of those videos they show in taxis,’ she cackled, ‘or a bulletin on the Internet.’

‘You need a computer first,’ I replied, ‘and seeing as neither of us has one…’

‘I’m going to get one.’

I stared at her.

‘Yep, CD ROM, colour printer, the lot, fax as well.’

‘Bloody hell.’

‘My own personal technological revolution. You ought to think about it, Sal, you’ll get left behind.’

‘Yeah, yeah. Besides, I have thought about it, like window shopping. I just can’t afford it.’

‘When you win the Lottery…’

‘Hah!’ I sneered. ‘You have to play to win. I never play, thought you knew that. Even if I did I’ve more chance of flying to outer space than winning that.’

‘But just think, all the things you could do with a good system, with so much less effort.’

‘I know. I know, technology’s a wonderful thing. Take my answerphone…’

‘Sal!’ she complained.

‘Listen. My answerphone got someone off a murder charge.’ I told her about Jimmy Achebe’s alibi, how it fixed him in time and place.