Ken McClure - Hypocrite's Isle

‘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.

Gavin was back in the lab by nine next morning, although it was too early, of course, to expect results: he was just checking that the cell cultures were showing no sign of contamination. The fact that they appeared perfectly healthy gave him the peace of mind he was looking for and every reason to take the day off.

The sky was blue and the sunshine perceptibly warm on his cheek as he stood on the pavement outside the medical school and, for once, noticed that there was no wind to speak of in a city that could give Chicago a run for its money. On the spur of the moment he decided that he would go for a walk in the hills. In Edinburgh, he was spoiled for choice: the Braid Hills, Corstorphine Hill, Blackford Hill and the long-extinct volcano, Arthur’s Seat, were all within city limits. On a bigger scale, the Pentland Hills stretched out along the southern boundaries of the city and well into the neighbouring county of West Lothian. He finally opted for the Pentlands because he felt like a longish out-and-back walk rather than a simple up and down.

He bought a couple of sandwiches and a chocolate bar from a sandwich shop at the foot of Lauriston Place and stuffed them into his rucksack as he made his way to the bus stop to catch the number 10 bus at Tollcross. Caroline had mentioned a few weeks ago when talking about Sunday walks that it was easy to get into the Pentlands from Colinton, the leafy suburb in the south-west of the city and the destination of the number 10, although on that particular occasion they had ended up walking by the shores of the Forth at Cramond.

The early view of the hills Gavin got from the top deck as the bus wound its way up Colinton Road whetted his appetite for the walk ahead. There was nothing like a bit of frost and snow for bringing drama and quality to the most mundane of slopes. Two dimensions suddenly became three.

The newsagent’s shop in Colinton Village was open when he got off the bus, so he bought a newspaper and picked up a map of the Pentlands at the same time — they had been placed in a rack near the till. This would now make it much easier to plan his day. As he came out of the shop he noticed that the Colinton Inn was open for business, so it occurred to him that he could not only plan a route, he could have a beer at the same time.

With the folded map in his left hand and his rucksack swung over his right shoulder, Gavin walked up Bonaly Road until the road became a track and the track a path as it wound its way steeply uphill through a pine tree plantation. He paused when he reached the eastern fringes of a small reservoir to check where he was on the map and catch his breath, and noted that if he headed west — up and over Harbour Hill — he would come to a meeting of four paths at a spot marked as Maiden’s Cleugh. This would be as good a place as any to pause and decide on what to do next.

He was breathing heavily by the time he reached the top of Harbour Hill, something that reminded him that he didn’t get enough exercise, although walking to and from the medical school had been doing something to counteract too much beer and crisps in his life. He rested his hands on the boundary fence to take in the impressive view over the city to the Firth of Forth and the hills beyond and found himself wishing that Caroline was standing beside him. It would have been a good moment to share.

He started to feel guilty about enjoying himself so much while Caroline was going through hell, although in reality there was nothing he could do to help. He suspected he was going to feel like this a lot until the inevitable happened, something that led to yet more feelings of guilt as he wished this to be sooner rather than later for everyone’s sake.

As he came down off the hill and joined the main path, he started to meet other walkers and began to feel self-conscious about what he was wearing. They all appeared to be dressed for a major Himalayan expedition in winter — a mobile montage of colourful Gor-Tex strung out across the white landscape. His own attire of denim jacket, jeans and trainers made him feel as if he had turned up at a funeral wearing a red plastic nose — A member of the Pentland Hills mountain rescue team declared Mr Donnelly to be improperly attired for the rigours of the hills at this time of year... A nation shook its head in condemnation...

Gavin sought out a quiet hollow in the hill in which to eat his sandwiches — well back from the path to avoid human contact. As a natural loner this was the usual thing for him to do, but today it made him stop and think. He found himself facing up to the fact that even out here in the hills he felt and behaved like an outsider and, for once, invoking Sartre’s maxim that ‘Hell is other people’ wasn’t working as well as it usually did. It had supported him well through Cambridge, but just recently, the combined efforts of Mary in the lab and Caroline, as well as other kindnesses he had encountered, were exposing flaws in the philosophy. If he wanted his relationship with Caroline to progress — and he did — he would have to do something about changing his outlook. He would not desert his principles, but he would have to consider seeking a happy medium. This was also true in professional relationships. The screw-the-world philosophy had worked throughout his undergraduate years because he had been simply acquiring knowledge that was already accessible without any real need for human contact. Books had told him what he needed to know, and his natural intelligence had enabled him to understand, use and interpret what he’d read.

Postgraduate study, however, was different. Although there was still much to absorb from the scientific knowledge base, he was now a researcher in his own right and therefore expected to increase that knowledge base by contributing to it. While it was not inconceivable that he could do this as a loner, it would be that much more difficult unless he was a genius, and he wasn’t. He smiled wryly as he got to his feet and fastened the straps on his rucksack. Maybe Gavin Donnelly would make some New Year’s resolutions. The thought gave him a fit of the giggles as he started climbing the next hill.