Ken McClure: Hypocrite's Isle

Although Scottish by birth, Simmons had spent five years at the University of California at Los Angeles and had only returned to Scotland a year ago when he and his wife, Jenny, decided that they wanted their two children, Mark and Jill, to have a Scottish education — or, more correctly, grow up as British children rather than develop the mores and attitudes of sun-kissed Californians. They had bought a house a few miles outside Edinburgh — a converted farm steading — and Jenny, a nurse, had returned to working part-time as the practice nurse at the local GP’s group surgery.

‘You’re very quiet this evening,’ said Jenny as they cleared away the dishes. ‘Something on your mind?’

‘You could say,’ agreed Simmons.

‘Why don’t you go up and tell the kids their story and then come down and tell me all about it? I’ll have a whisky waiting for you.’

‘But you can’t feel personally responsible for the slowness of cancer research,’ exclaimed Jenny when Simmons told her about the doubts he’d been expressing to Jack Martin at lunchtime.

‘I’m part of it, though. I can’t divorce myself from it and blame the lack of progress on other people.’

‘But you work hard and you’ve been very successful. That’s why they gave you the position in the first place.’

‘It’s academic success,’ insisted Simmons. ‘I’ve published a lot, but when it comes to the question of whether that has made the slightest difference to people actually suffering from the disease... that’s another matter.’

‘But surely the only alternative is to stop doing it and walk out. Will that help them?’

‘No, but...’

‘Look, you said yourself, you need lucky breaks in science and if you’re not there at the bench when the break comes along, you’ll miss it, right?’

Simmons nodded and took a sip of his whisky.

‘What brought this on anyway? You’re not usually so negative.’

‘I suppose it was that damned seminar.’

Jenny smiled. ‘What else is bugging you?’

‘Gavin Donnelly.’

Jenny raised her eyes. ‘The charming Gavin. What’s he been up to?’

‘Damn all. That’s the trouble.’

‘Well, he’s not a child, even if he acts like one. It’s his funeral if he doesn’t do any work and finishes up not getting a PhD.’

‘True, but he’s clearly not stupid. He knows a lot. He obviously reads the journals. He saw right away why Tom’s experiment last week hadn’t worked: he noticed immediately what was missing from Mary’s results when she chalked them up. It’s just... that he does damn all himself and thinks he knows everything...’

‘Which is your prerogative,’ smiled Jenny.

‘... and has the social skills of a lamp-post.’

‘Quite. I’m not liable to forget his first visit here.’

‘Let’s not go there. How was your day?’

‘Remarkably stress-free, I’m pleased to say.’

Simmons looked at her affectionately. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you,’ he said. ‘You’re always the same; so supportive, so steady. I go up and down like a yo-yo and...’

‘Sssh. You’ll be telling me next I’m your rock.’

‘Anything good on the telly tonight?’

Jenny looked up the schedules in the paper. ‘Nothing inspiring... there’s a documentary on ancient Egypt on Channel 5 at ten — a quest to find the treasure of someone-hotep. But Channel 5 at ten?... I think we both know what they’re going to find, don’t you?’

‘Zilch.’

Gavin Donnelly left the medical school, pausing to fasten up all the buttons on his denim jacket and wrap a scarf round the lower half of his face as he felt the cold air hit him. He stopped at the hospital gates, considering whether he should go back to the flat and have spaghetti on toast or nip round for a pie and a pint at the postgrad union. The halo round the street lights — a sure sign of a heavy frost to come — swung his decision in favour of the union and he skipped across the road, dodging in and out of the stopped and slow-moving traffic of the evening rush hour. The union was nearer and it would be warm — unlike the flat, which depended on electric heating, and whoever was in first to turn it on. He shared a third-floor tenement flat with three other people — a nurse and two office workers — about two miles away from the med school, in Dundas Street on the north side of Princes Street. This had been his choice over the alternative of staying in halls of residence when he arrived in Edinburgh some two months before.

Gavin ordered his food and picked up a pint of lager at the bar, before moving to a seat and shrugging his rucksack from his shoulder to guide it under the table with his foot. He draped his jacket over the back of the chair and smoothed his collar-length hair back before straightening the holed green sweater he favoured most days — Carla, the eldest of his four sisters, had knitted it for him when he’d first left home for Cambridge.

‘Pie and beans!’ the short, bald man behind the bar called out as the microwave bleeped. Gavin went over to pick up his food. He was halfway through eating it when he became aware of a figure at his shoulder. It was Mary Hollis.

‘That looks good,’ she said pleasantly.

‘Then it looks better than it tastes.’

Mary sat down opposite, looking both amused and exasperated. ‘Don’t you ever lighten up, Gavin?’

Gavin looked bemused. ‘What’s the problem? I just...’

‘Told the truth? Yes, I know.’

Gavin sighed and looked at her. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘What should I have said?’

Mary shook her head and spread her hands, ‘God, I don’t know; made a joke or something. If you’d laughed before you said it looked better than it tasted it would have been fine, but you automatically slap people down. You defend yourself when no one’s attacking you. People generally mean you no harm... honestly.’

Gavin suddenly smiled broadly and Mary capitulated. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Lecture over.’

‘All right, Mary,’ said Gavin. ‘I’ll believe you... despite a long list of acquired evidence to the contrary. I haven’t seen you in here before.’

‘I’m meeting Simon, my boyfriend; he’s a houseman at the hospital. He gets off at seven. This is as good a place to meet as any and it’s warm.’

‘Can I get you a drink?’

Mary shook her head. ‘He’ll be here any minute, thanks all the same. We’re going to see something at the Filmhouse. How about you? How are you going to spend your evening?’

‘Medical library.’

‘Is this to fuel the thinking process?’

‘You got it.’

‘You’ll be doing experiments next.’

‘Ouch. What was it you said about not slapping people down?’

‘Sorry, but you haven’t exactly been bursting a gut in the lab since you arrived and people have been noticing.’

‘It’s the easiest thing in the world to keep busy in a lab.’

‘So?’

‘Keeping busy is not doing research. It’s window dressing.’

‘Doing nothing isn’t doing research either.’

‘Like I said, I’ve been thinking.’

‘I won’t say you don’t get a PhD for thinking when you do, but eventually you have to do something with the fruits of your thinking...’

‘Unless you’re a philosopher.’

‘You probably still have to tell someone...’

‘As Jean-Paul Sartre once said to Simone de Beauvoir, Whatevah .’

Mary smiled. ‘You can be quite funny when you try. Oh, here comes Simon.’ She got to her feet as a slim, fair-haired man entered the bar and came towards them. Mary did the introductions before turning to leave. ‘See you tomorrow. Don’t work too late.’