Ken McClure: Chameleon

'Who's a sentimental old softy then?' said Sue.

'Me,' said Jamieson. 'Until tomorrow.'

Sue turned her face up to Jamieson and said softly, 'At least I've got you until then.' She pulled his mouth down on to hers.

Jamieson was up first in the morning. He was in the bath when he heard Sue get up and go downstairs. The sounds from the radio drifted upstairs as he towelled himself dry and looked out to see that it was still raining. He cursed softly at the thought of having to travel north on a wet motorway with spray from heavy lorries obscuring his vision. He looked up at the sky in both directions, hoping to find a break in the clouds, but found none. With a grimace, he padded back to the bedroom to begin dressing.

Jamieson came downstairs wearing a dark blue suit and adjusting his tie as if it were too tight. 'Do I look like a detective?' he asked.

'No, you look like a doctor.'

'Is that bad?'

Sue smiled and said, 'No, that is just fine.'

'Maybe I should wear a dirty raincoat and scratch my head a lot?'

'The nurses would probably give you a bath,' said Sue.

'All right,' conceded Jamieson.

'There was a murder in Leeds last night.'

'Not at Kerr Memorial I hope.'

'A prostitute in the city. It was on the radio.'

'Not the safest of professions.'

'I'll bear that in mind in case you don't take to your new job.'

Jamieson smiled and Sue said, 'You are nervous. I can tell.'

'A bit,' confessed Jamieson. 'I'll be glad when today is over and I've made a start.'

'I can understand that,' said Sue. 'You will call me this evening?'

'Of course,' said Jamieson. 'With a bit of luck this really shouldn't take too long.'

'This bug that's causing all the problems up there, what exactly is it?' asked Sue.

'It's called, Pseudomonas. It's a fairly common bug that likes to live anywhere where there's moisture. You often find it in flower vases and the like in hospitals but it becomes a problem when it gets in to open wounds and sets up an infection because it's difficult to treat. This one seems particularly bad.'

'It must be an absolute nightmare to go into hospital for something fairly simple and catch something much worse while you're there,' said Sue.

Jamieson nodded and said, 'It can happen all too easily and it's the sort of thing that erodes public confidence. That's why the Ministry are eager to see an end to it.' Jamieson picked up his bag and put his free arm round Sue. 'I'll call you tonight,' he said.

'Take care,' said Sue.

Gordon Thomas Thelwell was a product of his upbringing. Whatever capacity for human care and concern he had started out life with had been distilled out of him by a public school obsessed with self discipline and a lifetime's unquestioning adherence to upper-middle class notions of respectability and correct behaviour. His thin lips rarely smiled and, on the odd occasions when they did, bestowed on him the uneasy look of a man performing an unnatural act. When he spoke, his voice followed a level monotone as sombre as the suits he favoured. The starched rigidity of his shirt collars seemed to have been specifically designed to afford him the maximum of discomfort, always an essential element in the dress favoured by lay preachers.

Although eloquent enough when passing on the views of others, be they medical when instructing junior doctors or religious when reading the Sunday lesson, unscripted communication with his fellows had always been a bit of a problem for Thelwell. Small talk was uncharted territory. Humour lay in the province of the vulgar. Anger was displayed by a slight clipping of the vowels when he spoke and he had a penchant for biting sarcasm that showed scant regard for the sensibilities of others. Satisfaction on the other hand would be indicated by a cursory nod and a momentary puckering of the lips. In short, G.T. Thelwell was not going to win any popularity contest among the staff at Kerr Memorial Hospital but he was respected as a competent if unapproachable consultant surgeon and a pillar of the local community.

The fact that Thelwell was the father of two girls was the subject of some disrespectful comment among the more junior nurses at the hospital who could not, or preferred not to, imagine the cold, wooden Thelwell ever relaxing enough to make love to anyone. Those who knew his wife, Marion, recognised that she was the exact female counterpart of Thelwell himself but whereas Thelwell seldom smiled Marion wore a permanent dutiful smile of the kind adopted by royalty when opening biscuit factories and having to greet the entire production staff.

Marion, when not dealing with the day to day problems of 'Les girls' as she habitually referred to her daughters, immersed herself in charity work. Her particular interests being dumb animals and under-privileged children although lately she had taken to organising fund raising ventures associated with the buying of new equipment for the hospital. As chairperson of the Friends of Kerr Memorial, she had recently handed over two new incubator units to the hospital in a small ceremony reported in the local paper. A print of the photograph accompanying the article had been framed and now stood on her dressing table.

Like her husband, Marion Thelwell saw humour and passion as the enemy of duty. In another age she and her husband might well have found their true niche in India or some other far flung corner of empire where Thelwell would have been an authoritarian district commissioner and Marion would have played her full and supporting role in whipping the natives into order.

The alarm went off in the Thelwell’s bedroom at seven and Marion rose first as she always did to wrap her gown loosely about her before going to the kitchen to switch on the kettle. On the way back she checked that the girls were awake before returning to the bedroom to open the curtains. 'Oh dear,' she tutted. 'More rain.'

'Really,' replied her husband automatically.

'Do you have much on today dear?'

'Two exploratories and a hysterectomy and that damned man is coming up from the ministry.'

'Man, dear?'

'Some interfering busybody from the Department of Health is coming up from London to 'take a look at our problem' as they put it.

'I'm sure they're only trying to help, dear. Do you think you will be back by four?'

'Seems unlikely. I am informed by our illustrious medical superintendent that I must humour this nosey parker, give him every office, to use his words. Thelwell's voice was heavy with vitriol. 'Why do you ask?'

'I have a committee meeting at four. I wondered whether I should ask Mrs Rivers to look after the girls.'

'It would be as well. I'll call you later when I've dealt with Mr Nosey Parker.'

'Aren't you being a bit hard on this man?' asked Marion Thelwell. 'Surely the sooner this infection business is cleared up the better for everyone?'

Thelwell gave his wife a look that suggested she was questioning Holy writ and said, 'It's not a man from London we need at Kerr Memorial, Marion, it's a competent Microbiology department. If we had a laboratory that could do its job properly and find the source of this damned bug we wouldn't need outside interference. I thought you understood that?'

'Yes dear.'

'Good Morning Daddy.' A girl of eleven came into the room, her face pink from washing.

'Good morning Nicola.'

'Good morning Daddy.' A second girl, slightly taller than her sister but with the same scrubbed complexion came into the room and stood beside Nicola.

'Good morning Patricia.'

The ritual over, both girls were ushered out by their mother leaving G.T. Thelwell to rise and face the day.

'There was a murder in the city last night,' said Marion as she served Thelwell's breakfast of two boiled eggs. (Three minutes, fifteen seconds.) 'A prostitute.'