Cath Staincliffe - Go Not Gently

We looked at all our potential weapons: car keys, earring wires, Agnes’ brooch pin. Weedy or what? There was precious little likelihood of getting near enough to Goulden to plunge a pin accurately into his eyeball or his Adam’s apple.

‘We need something we can knock him out with,’ I said, ‘something heavy. Something big so we’ve more chance of hitting him with it.’

It was bracketed to the far wall. Big, red, shiny and extremely heavy. We debated briefly whether it would be better to spray him with the fire extinguisher or clout him. Clouting had far more going for it.

‘The foam might just make him wet. What happens when it’s all used up?’ I said.

I practised lifting the thing above my head. I remembered log-splitting on some faraway holiday, the stance, the importance of watching the target instead of the tool, the satisfying thwack as the logs split and the shock that rippled back up arms and shoulders if the angle was wrong and the axe bounced off.

We rehearsed our moves, The door opened inwards to the right. I would stand behind it. We needed to get Goulden into the room far enough for me to move out and take a swing at him. There would only be one chance. If he remained on the threshold it wouldn’t work.

‘If he does that,’ I told Agnes, ‘don’t leave the room. He can’t force you to, not unless he’s got a gun. But I don’t think he’s going to come back with a gun.’

‘If he can only see me then he will realise that there’s something strange going on, he will know that it is a trap.’

‘OK.’ I pulled my jacket off. ‘Get some paper towels. We’ll make a guy.’

Agnes caught on quickly, screwing towel into balls and stuffing them into my jacket. Meanwhile I peeled off my damp trousers and started on them.

‘We can use this inside the hood.’ She held up a long roll of paper sheeting like they cover examination couches with. She formed it into a big ball for my head. When my dummy was stuffed I dragged boxes of paper off the shelves and constructed a sort of cardboard sofa we could sit on. We arranged the dummy beside Agnes and I surveyed it from the door. It was too obviously not a real person. ‘Lie it down, like I was before I came round. That’s better. Tuck the feet away. Yes.’ The paper face was hidden now and from the door it looked like I was lying prone, pretty much as I had been when I’d regained consciousness.

‘When he comes you’ll have to say something like I’ve passed out again or I haven’t come round. Something to make him think he’s only got one of us to worry about. If he does want us out of here he’ll have to carry me out. Tell him you can’t wake me.’

There was little else we could do. My stomach was rolling with anticipation. My sweatshirt covered my bottom but I felt exposed as well as cold without my other clothes. There was no heating at all in the room. I’d no intention of losing Agnes, or myself, to hypothermia.

‘We must keep warm,’ I said. ‘Paper’s a good insulator. Here, put some of this on your head.’ I handed her an armful of the paper sheeting. We both draped our heads. ‘Very stylish.’ I tore more off to use like shawls. I wrapped sheets around my hips like a skirt. We sat on the sofa.

She adjusted some of the paper sheeting over her legs like a blanket.

‘I’m so hungry. I was about to eat when you rang.’

We leant close. I could feel myself warming up where we shared our body heat.

‘Somewhere,’ she muttered as she fiddled through her coat pockets. ‘Aah.’ She held out two sweets. ‘Barley sugar or Murray Mint?’

Oh, Agnes. ‘Barley sugar.’

We unwrapped our sweets and sucked.

How long would he be? What things had he gone to get? He’d never let us go now, would he? We knew so much.

‘When did you realise,’ I asked Agnes, ‘that they’d deliberately made Lily demented?’

‘Once we knew the high dosages were deliberate. Why else would they do that to her? But I couldn’t fathom out what was behind it all. Then when Dr Goulden was talking, I realised there were two lots of patients involved. Remember when you found out what had happened to them, Mr Theakston at Homelea and the other ones from Aspen Lodge, I can’t recall all the names.’

‘Never mind, it doesn’t matter. They all had Alzheimer’s, progressive dementia, like the textbooks. All except for Mr Braithwaite, he was a bit different.’

‘Yes, and he was the one who had surgery,’ she said.

‘For the tumour.’ I sucked on my sweet, turning it from one cheek to the other. ‘They did a biopsy. A bogus operation, like Lily’s. And he was on medication,’ I pointed out. ‘His daughter said something about it.’

‘To make him appear senile. He was healthy, he was one of their guinea pigs. Like Lily.’

‘Two lots of patients,’ I continued piecing it together, ‘the healthy ones who were made mad, then operated on, and the others the ones who really had Alzheimer’s.’ I paused. ‘Their brains went to Malden’s for research. Oh God.’ I felt sick. Barley sugar was supposed to be good for travel sickness, but what about other forms of nausea? ‘They were using material from those brains. That’s what he meant when he said they’d introduced tissue-diseased cells.’

‘They can do all sorts, can’t they nowadays, clone things, transplant things, use genetic material?’ She spoke softly.

‘Oh, Agnes, it’s horrible.’ My mind grappled with the scenario. Everything seemed to fit. ‘And if they can develop the disease, they can study it, see how it behaves.’

‘That’s what they do with animals, isn’t it? Grow tumours in mice and monkeys and what not.’

‘Do you remember when he was talking to his wife, that bit about the drug companies? That was what they were after. Research that would help them produce a drug. That pathologist I talked to, he said something similar, you’d make millions. Be like inoculations, everyone would want it. Oh, Agnes. Poor Lily.’

‘There must have been others too, like Lily and Philip Braithwaite. People they thought no one cared about very much, healthy people getting ill suddenly, having unexpected operations. Lily was their breakthrough, he said, she hadn’t rejected the…’ She stopped abruptly, emotion taking charge. She snuffled.

‘And no one would have been any the wiser if you hadn’t been so suspicious.’

‘Because we’re old, do you see? We’re not people, we’re pensioners or OAPs,’ she stretched the initials out, ‘old biddies. No one’s surprised if we get demented, it’s almost expected.’

‘Oh, come on..

‘You’d be surprised.’

‘And the donors.’ I shivered. ‘They were all transferred when they were very ill. Montgomery could send them to Simcock for scans…’

‘He would make sure there was plenty of material to harvest,’ she said bitterly.

‘And once they died the doctors could take the brains, ship them off here, to Malden’s. Get the cells they’d cultivate for use on the healthy patients. Yes. And I bet the relatives were only too happy to agree to samples being taken after death, hoping it would help someone in the future.’

I wondered which of the people involved had first come up with the idea for their covert experiments. And why? Had it started off as scientific interest, an altruistic desire to relieve suffering by finding a cure, or had the prospect of money been the beacon from the start? Had all four of them slept easy in their beds?

My toes had begun to go numb. I circled my ankle, trying to keep the blood moving.

‘Are you warm enough?’ I asked her.

‘Just about.’

‘I’m freezing. If only I had a mobile phone we could ring for help.’

‘Well, he wouldn’t have let you keep it, not if he’d known about it.’