The Meddlers (42 page)

You want to sleep more, Georgie, you want to sleep more, my little lovey? Do you want to sleep in your soft beating bed again? Poor Georgie, wanting to sleep.

The water beside the path moved even more slowly, turned itself so that it wasn’t edging the path any more, but lay across it, filling her vision in front and below as well as on each side, moving up her legs, weighting them ever more heavily, pulling downward with a murmuring insistence she could not deny. An insistence she did not want to deny, for she could feel Georgie in the crook of her arm pulling himself down toward it, and she said aloud, just as the
weight of him met the pull of the water and lifted the pain from her, “Georgie.”

  “But suppose they don’t get the child back. What then? You’ve lost your—what was it you called him? The instrument that will lead man back to God. And I—”

“And you are afraid you will lose what I offered you? Isn’t that it? Isn’t that why you are here this evening?”

Joel Wayne’s voice was as urbane as ever, and he smiled at Gurney with great sweetness. “As I said to you before, my dear Kenneth, how little you comprehend the ways of God if you think I will abandon you should matters arrange themselves so that I have no further obvious use for you. For a man of much basic talent, you are sadly lacking in true understanding.”

“I haven’t said yet that I’m prepared to accept your offer,” Gurney said a little sulkily. “But obviously I want to know where I stand in the event of—well, the Briant project failing. That’s reasonable enough.”

“Oh, eminently reasonable, in your terms, Kenneth. But your terms”—he shook his head sadly—“they always let you down, do they not?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t you?” The other man stood up and moved across the room to the coffee trolley beside the couch to pour cups for both of them. “Well, then, my dear friend, let me explain.”

He came back with the drinks and sat down beside Gurney, his every movement filled with friendliness.

“As I see you, Kenneth, all your life you have been rather like Aesop’s dog. You remember that unfortunate animal? He was crossing a river, a bone clutched in his jaws, and he looked down and saw reflected in the water another dog, carrying an even juicier and more toothsome bone—or so he thought. And desire for the better bone overcame him, and he opened his jaws to seize it. And lo, the bone he was carrying was lost, swept away in the flood, and with it went the shadowy bone he had yearned for. Is it not what has happened to you many times, dear Kenneth? You seize what appears to be a great prize—or at least the promise of one.

And then, even before you have time to explore the reality of the prize you hold, you drop it in favor of one that looks more promising, more immediately productive of the treasures you long to possess.”

“A very facile analysis on the basis of a very slender acquaintanceship, Wayne! If it weren’t so amusing, I’d be justified in being very angry at so—”

“If you are not angry, then there is indeed great hope for you, Kenneth. In fact, of course, you are angry, are you not? Yes, of course you are. But there is still hope for you. The hope of the love of God. It is there, waiting for you to accept it—”

“Oh, for crying out loud! Do you have to start on that again? I told you, as far as I’m concerned, that cat won’t jump. I don’t believe one word of your pious mouthings, couldn’t care less about God or—”

“If that were true, you would not be here, trying to make sure that the shadowy bone you saw in my offer is real enough to warrant dropping the bone that is your bill. Oh, I have no doubt that you have assured yourself you are interested only in the money you can get from joining me. That you
think
you couldn’t care less about God. But you care. You cannot help but care, dear man, since God cares for you. As long as He does, even those that seem to reject Him are destined to accept Him. And that includes you.”

“Look, can we leave this? It’s a waste of time, and if you want to waste yours, mine is too valuable to me. I came only to … to find out what you will do if the Briant project comes to an end. That’s all.”

“Then I will tell you that if it does, it is God’s will, and that in His own good time—very precious time, too—He will tell me what to do. And when I know, I will tell you. I will be here when you return to accept my offer of God’s love. And you will return, you know. You will return.”

And again he smiled his smile of ineffable sweetness and finished his coffee.

George was already sitting at the big board-room table when they came in in twos and threes, barely concealing his impatience as they settled themselves around the expanse of gleaming mahogany. None of them looked directly at him, although several of them muttered, “Good afternoon,” as they passed his chair, before sitting and murmuring at one another while they waited for Sir Peter Apthorp to start the proceedings.

He came in last of all and, without apologizing for his lateness, cleared his throat and spoke crisply from his seat in the big carved chair at the head of the table.

“Well, gentlemen, ladies, we have just half an hour to deal with this matter. As you probably know, Briant has asked for an extraordinary meeting of the hospital medical committee, since he wishes to put a motion to us. George, will you explain what it is you want us to discuss, if you please.”

George leaned forward in his chair and set his elbows firmly on
the table, clasping his hands on the blotter in front of him. He spoke to his hands, not raising his eyes to the faces that stared silently at him.

“You will all know, of course, what has happened to the work upon which I have been engaged this past two years. We have lost the child who provided all essential research data, under exceedingly unfortunate circumstances. What I want to talk to you about is the future of the work to which I have devoted myself. It is my firm wish to continue my research. The loss of the present experiment is a grievous loss, but not an irremediable one. I could return to the stage at which I was some thirteen months ago and initiate a new conception, another infant, and recommence my investigations. What I want of you—as my medical colleagues—is your support in achieving this.”

“How do you mean, support?” Catchpole, the cardiologist, stirred in his seat beside George and spoke gruffly. “What possible support can we give you? Your speciality is a pretty esoteric one, as far as I’m concerned, anyway. I doubt there’s much help I could give you—or for that matter anyone else could.”

He looked around the table, his shaggy eyebrows raised. “Miss Guttner, maybe, as an obstetrician, Saxby there, of course—their fields impinge on yours. But what can Cale do, for example? Otolaryngologists, like cardiologists, can hardly—”

“I’m coming to that,” George said. “I must make it clear that I want professional support from you, not direct clinical assistance, of which I have ample and for which I have been and still am most grateful.” He sketched a bow in the general direction of Miss Guttner and Dr. Saxby. “Professional support in the face of lay administrative opposition.”

A faint rustle moved around the table, and he felt for the first time some diminution of the faint hostility with which they had been filled.

“You have all suffered at some time, I am quite sure, from the idiotic attitudes held by our masters in the Civil Service. They control the purse strings, and any attempts we make to further the work of our own specialities is doomed, time and again, by the ridiculous sanctions they inflict on us. They are trying to impose an
intolerable sanction on me now, and I’m asking you, as my professional colleagues, to stand up and be counted. To refuse to accept the embargo they are attempting to put on me and my work.”

“Who are
they
, George?” Neufeld, the psychiatrist, lifted his head and spoke softly. “Sounds a bit paranoiac, doesn’t it, to talk vaguely of ‘they’ and their interference?”

George’s lips thinned. He had never been on any sort of terms with Neufeld; how could he be when he had made no effort ever to hide his scorn of his specialty?

“I mean specifically Kegan,” he said shortly. “And the management committee he holds in his pocket—”

“Now, just a minute, George,” Sir Peter said acidly. “Watch your tongue. I am myself a member of the management committee.”

“I’m well aware of that, Sir Peter. Well aware. But I am equally well aware that you are the only medical member of that committee. That for the most part the membership is made up of … of jumped-up grocers and plumbers and men of that ilk, with as much understanding of the realities of medicine and medical research as I have of … of fly fishing. You cannot deny, can you, that Kegan has the ear of the bulk of that committee, and that any motion he wants to put through it gets through, and no argument?”

Sir Peter said nothing, staring owlishly at George’s tight angry face.

“And that being so, I can tell you—those of you who are not on the management committee, that is—that he delivered to me this morning an ultimatum. My research unit is to be closed forthwith and all hospital funds withdrawn. In other words, I am to give up my research totally, as far as the Sillick Memorial is concerned. And you know as well as I do that my chances of finding another hospital that will permit me to establish a new unit are slender, very slender indeed. Other hospitals, just like this one, are bedeviled by civil servants, and they—if you will forgive a moment’s paranoia, Neufeld—will respond to me just as Kegan and his crew have done.”

“So what do you want us to do, George?” Jennifer Victor, the ophthalmologist, leaned forward from her place at the foot of the
table. “Because I agree with you—we
are
overcontrolled by lay people here. But what do you want of us?”

“A firm avowal, from the medical committee as a whole, that you won’t tolerate this sort of interference. That you believe the work I am doing to be of importance, and that you are prepared to back me in my demand for the chance to continue it. That’s all.”

“And how precisely do you propose we set about giving that support? Do we threaten some sort of… well, industrial type action? A strike?” David Little, the newest general surgical member of the committee, raised his sleek eyebrows at George. “The mind boggles somewhat at the thought of eminent physicians and surgeons marching up and down in front of the Admin Block with placards reading, ‘Unfair to Old George.’”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Little! This is not a matter in which flippancy has any part. You know as well as I do that if the medical committee, as a body, were to make it clear they were not prepared to tolerate this lay interference with medical affairs, even Kegan and his crew of lickspittles would have to capitulate. Important as they are in the running of this place, the medical staff is still of some weight! Or do you admit defeat and accept that these bureaucrats have indeed full power over our activities?”

He slid his gaze around the table and felt again the swing of mood. He had touched on one of their most sore points. He knew how much resentment they had of the lay side of the hospital’s staff. And he pressed his advantage home.

“Look at this matter in a spirit of enlightened self-interest, for God’s sake! Let them get away with demolishing me, and who knows where they’ll stop? Next time it’ll be a clinical unit they’ll try to run their way. And that’s medical anarchy of the most dangerous sort, you must agree!”

“He’s absolutely right!” Jennifer Victor said excitedly, her round cheeks reddening. “Isn’t he? Look what happened in my department six months ago! The management committee, without so much as a by-your-leave, let alone any consulting with me, axed three of my clinics, just because they said they couldn’t afford the clinical assistance I needed! My waiting lists have doubled since then—doubled! That was the thin edge of the wedge, if you like.

And if they’re now trying to get George out, what happens next? To your unit, for a start, Dr. Catchpole—you haven’t got your hypothermia equipment yet for your open heart surgery, have you? What chance of getting it if we let them get away with this now?”

“And of course there’s the dialysis unit, isn’t there? Or will you be able to get that through, since you’re on the management committee yourself, Sir Peter?” Cale asked a little waspishly. “I know how long I’ve been waiting for my new audiology equipment.”

George leaned back, well satisfied, and let them go on. He had touched them on the raw, as he had hoped he would. Fill them with fear for their own pet projects, and he had them. There could be little doubt, he thought now, as he looked from one animated face to another as they loudly talked over one another’s voices of the hindrances they had themselves suffered, that they would give him the support he needed. Just a matter of time now.

And it would be better to let them use that time without his presence. He was disliked on a personal level by enough of them— and was well aware of that dislike—to ensure that his presence was likely to act as an irritant. Let them talk exhaustingly of the principle involved, and then act upon it, and he would be able to start work again soon. He thought briefly of the available data sitting in the Unit; it should be possible, with really hard work on the part of the whole staff of the Unit, to establish a pregnancy within the next three months. And with the research results of the Lawton pregnancy still fresh in their minds, they should be able to make an even better job of the whole thing …