Ken McClure - Hypocrite's Isle

‘It was really great.’

‘God forgive you.’

‘Time to head for your Polwarth party?’ Gavin was eyeing up the rapidly emptying streets as people headed off for parties of their own.

Caroline looked at him for what Gavin thought was an unnervingly long time. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

‘I don’t think I feel much like going to a party.’

‘When it comes to bad nights to choose for an early night in Scotland...’

‘It wasn’t so much an early night I was thinking of, just somewhere quiet where we could be alone? What’s going on at your place?’

‘I think they were all going out...’

Gavin and Caroline spent New Year’s Day together — or what was left of it by the time they got up — visiting Caroline’s friends and generally eating and drinking too much. Gavin didn’t say a lot. Caroline’s friends were almost exclusively medical students and from similar backgrounds. He was aware of one in particular paying her a lot of attention, following her around the room in almost proprietorial fashion as she caught up with what friends had been doing over the break. He was tall and confident and clearly keen on her. Gavin held out the drink he’d been fetching for Caroline.

‘Marcus, you haven’t met my boyfriend, have you? This is Gavin. He’s in cancer research.’

‘Really, what particular aspect?’ asked Marcus, appearing less than overjoyed at the news.

‘Curing it,’ said Gavin, shaking hands with Marcus but not bothering to smile.

Marcus seemed unsure. He’d thought it a joke, but on the other hand Gavin wasn’t sending out the right vibes. ‘Good show,’ he said with a quick glance at Caroline. ‘I’m sure we’ll all be in your debt.’

Caroline gave Gavin a warning look.

‘And what are your plans, Marcus?’ asked Gavin.

‘Any job that pays pots of money, I should think. Cosmetic surgery seems to be the thing.’

‘Nice to have a vocation.’

‘Oh, er, very good, yes. I suppose I asked for that.’ He turned to Caroline. ‘Carrie darling, I simply must go and say hello to Katrina...’

‘Am I in for a bollocking?’ asked Gavin, staring straight ahead as Marcus left them.

‘I haven’t quite decided,’ replied Caroline thoughtfully. She took up stance beside him, also staring straight ahead. ‘I suppose for you that was really quite restrained... but you were rude and Marcus is a friend.’

‘I was jealous,’ confessed Gavin.

‘I know you were. That’s why I’m going to let you off, but be warned, I don’t want to end up friendless. They may be idiots in your book but they’re my idiots and I like them. They may have had an easier start in life than you, but now you’ve joined them on equal terms. We’re all privileged here and working-class resentment can be very boring, especially when there’s no call for it.’

‘Yes, Ma’am.’

Caroline looked at Gavin out of the corner of her eye.

‘Time to go?’

‘I think so.’

Gavin’s cells were alive. The discovery, made on the morning of 3 January, left him staring over the top of the microscope at the rain on the lab windows. Something had changed in the experimental conditions that had allowed the tumour cells to survive in the presence of Valdevan, when in the past, they had always died.

‘Shit,’ he murmured as he leaned back in his swivel chair and crossed his arms. The change in culture medium must hold the key, but he still couldn’t see how and he was rapidly running out of time. Such a pity, because he must be so close to unravelling a mystery that had persisted for twenty years. Understanding the nature of a problem was always the first step on the road to solving it and if — and he realised it was a big if — he could explain the changing behaviour of the drug, the end result might well be what the pharmaceutical company had hoped for all those years ago: a drug that specifically attacked cancer cells — the stuff that dreams were made of.

The phone rang and brought him out of his reverie. It was Caroline.

‘Well, what happened?’

‘They survived.’

‘Damn, so it wasn’t a low drug concentration after all?’

‘Nope.’

‘Is that good or bad?’

‘I think it’s good, and I feel I’m really close to understanding what’s going on, but I need a bit more time and that’s the one thing I haven’t got.’

‘It’ll probably come to you in the bath and you can run stark naked up and down Dundas Street shouting eureka!’

‘If it doesn’t, I’ve got months of bloody biochemistry to look forward to. It’s so frustrating. I know I’m that close, and if I can just come up with the reason... this could be really big.’

‘You could try talking to Frank?’

‘I think I’ve pushed my luck as far as it’ll go.’

‘It’s still worth a try.’

‘I’ll think about it. Are you going home this weekend?’

‘It’ll be my last chance before the new term starts. What’ll you do?’

‘Hit the library and think. Could be my last chance too.’

The Sunday before the start of term had a depressing feel to it. Christmas, with its overtones of warmth and light, imagined stagecoaches and equally imaginary snow, seemed such a long way away, as did New Year with its alcohol-fuelled bonhomie and false promises of new beginnings. What was left was reality, a wet Sunday in January and a biting east wind. But however unpleasant the weather, Gavin felt he had to get out. He had spent nearly every waking hour of the weekend in the medical library, reading up on the kinetics of tumour cell growth — a task made even more unpleasant by the fact that the heating in the library, like all the other university buildings, had been turned off until the start of term. He had learned a lot about cell growth, but nothing that had shed any light on the Valdevan problem.

Now, clad in lightweight waterproof overtrousers and a hooded top, he set out to walk along the banks of the Union Canal. He wanted nothing but the sky above him and the smell of wet winter grass in his nostrils.

He started at the canal basin at Lochrin where in a different century, according to the tourist info he’d read, horse-drawn barges had come into the heart of the city from the west along a route excavated by mainly Irish labourers. Among them had been Burke and Hare, the infamous body-snatchers who had once supplied Professor Robert Knox and the university’s anatomy department with cadavers taken from fresh graves under cover of darkness, but later, as demand outgrew supply, with the corpses of those they had murdered to keep up the supply.

Gavin found himself enjoying the walk. The bad weather had kept Sunday strollers, joggers and lycra-clad cyclists at home, and apart from the occasional intrepid dog walker, he met no one along the way. The going was easy as the Union Canal followed a contour line without the need for locks and level changes, and the wind coming from behind kept his hood up without the need to struggle with cords and toggles. There was even a lightness in his step as he thought about Caroline and how their relationship had grown.

He still couldn’t believe his luck. Despite what she said about their priorities being to get their degrees, he was convinced that Caroline was the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. They would be happy and successful and have lots of children. He’d take them on long walks and play games with them — not the ones he’d played in Liverpool’s back streets, but proper childhood games like the ones in all the nice story books... like the one with sticks, he thought, as he came to a bridge over the canal at Redhall... Poohsticks, that was it.

Looking round to make sure he was alone, he decided to give it a go. He gathered some twigs from below the hedges at the side of the towpath and snapped them into little bunches before climbing up the muddy path and on to the bridge. He recognised that this game really required a flowing river, but a canal with a wind on it would have to do. He dropped the first group of four into the water on the windward side and then moved over to the other parapet to await their reappearance.