‘Yes,’ replied MacLean, holding his hands out to the flames and rubbing them to restore circulation. ‘I moved to Glasgow, rented a flat in my own name and re-established contact with the BMA. I told them I had been abroad for some time and apologised for losing touch. I had three missing years to catch up on so I spent my mornings in the university medical library going through the journals and my evenings with the latest text books.’
‘What about the afternoons?’ asked Tansy with a smile.
MacLean took the question seriously. ‘The afternoons were for keeping fit. I would either run or swim.’
‘Not much social life,’ said Tansy.
‘It wasn’t all work,’ said MacLean. ‘I joined a couple of societies, mainly for conversation. It had been a long time since I’d been in company that spoke about anything other than money or women.’
‘What kind of societies?’
‘Conversational French,’ said MacLean.
‘You wanted French conversation?’ asked a surprised Tansy.
‘I pretended to myself that the language didn’t matter it was the subjects that were important and I could speak French well.’
‘But there was an ulterior motive?’ said Tansy.
MacLean admitted, ‘I needed to remember what it was like to be with Jutte. In the beginning she was always with me; I could remember every single thing about her but gradually the memories started to fade; I felt guilty. It had been nearly three years since I had heard or spoken French. I wanted to hear it again… use it as a trigger, make it re-kindle old memories, keep Jutte alive in my mind.’
‘Did it work?’
‘In a way,’ smiled MacLean. ‘But no matter what you do or how hard you try to cling to old memories they start to fade and drift out of reach.’
‘It’s part of the healing process,’ said Tansy. ‘If it didn’t happen, none of us would ever get over anything.’
MacLean nodded.
‘What about the other society?’
‘English literature. I wanted to come out of the closet.’
‘What?’ exclaimed Tansy.
MacLean smiled and said, ‘When I first went to work on the rigs I had three books of English poetry in my bag. I kept them hidden. They kept me sane in a world of bulging biceps and monosyllabic grunts. My bunk was where I escaped to read them. My secret world.’
‘I can understand why you kept it a secret,’ smiled Tansy.
‘I was wrong about that,’ said MacLean.
‘In what way wrong?’ asked Tansy.
‘Wrong to judge by appearances. When I got to know them, one of the men turned out to be lifelong student of Greek mythology, another did the most beautiful water-colours of sea birds.’
‘It’s amazing what people do when their heart is in it,’ said Tansy.
‘Absolutely,’ agreed MacLean.
‘So you joined the English lit club. You took tea with the ladies of Kelvinside, ate home-baked scones and discussed the relative merits of Byron and Keats. You politely applauded Mrs Williams’ offering on the lark,’ said Tansy.
‘It was a bit like that,’ MacLean conceded. I didn’t stick it very long. I decided that it had better remain a personal thing after all. How did you know?’
‘I tried it too and came to the same conclusion,’ said Tansy. ‘Not in Glasgow of course, but here in Edinburgh. It was after Keith died when I was being encouraged to go out and “join things”. I joined a poetry society.’
‘You like poetry?’
‘Very much.’
‘Favourites?’
‘Elizabeth Barrett Browning when I’m in love, Phillip Larkin when I’m in pain.’
‘Doesn’t that just exacerbate the condition?’ asked MacLean.
‘Yes,’ smiled Tansy. ‘Go on with the story.’
‘Eventually I got a job in the burns unit at Queen Charlotte Hospital.’
‘Right up your street,’ said Tansy.
‘In a way,’ agreed MacLean, ‘but it was so depressing to go back to long, painful skin grafting regimes for the patients after the magic of Cytogerm.’
‘Can I ask a silly question?’
‘Go on.’
‘Was there no way that patients could be screened for dormant cancers before being given Cytogerm treatment?’
MacLean smiled and said, ‘That’s not a silly question at all. It’s one I asked myself a thousand times in Geneva but the answer always had to be no.’
‘The risk was too great?’
‘The best figure we could come up with suggested that one in twelve patients would die from Cytogerm side-effects. No drug company could contemplate applying for a license with statistics like that and no government in its right mind would grant one. Mind you… ‘
Tansy waited for MacLean to continue but he hesitated. ‘Go on, say it,’ she prompted.
‘It’s a purely personal view but assuming there were no legal problems, I think if my face was burned beyond recognition and someone offered me a chance of complete recovery at these odds I might just say yes.’
‘Just what I was thinking,’ said Tansy. ‘So why didn’t the company hold on to Cytogerm?’
‘I suspect the legal problems would have been too great,’ said MacLean. ‘Apart from that the drug would not have made any money for the company under these circumstances. It couldn’t be used for cosmetic purposes. In fact, it couldn’t have been used for anything but the very worst burns cases.’
‘That doesn’t explain why the company wanted all traces of the drug eliminated,’ said Tansy.
‘No it doesn’t,’ agreed MacLean. ‘I’ve had a long time to think about that and I’m still no nearer an answer.’
‘Is money always the prime consideration with a new drug?’ asked Tansy.
‘In a word, yes,’ replied MacLean. ‘With the best will in the world you cannot run a drug company for anything other than profit. That’s just a fact of life. The best companies will take on some charitable commitment and the worst will not but profit is the first motive for them all.’
‘I’ve never been able to understand how drug companies can sit on mountains of drugs while people all over the world are dying of the very diseases they could cure,’ said Tansy.
‘That’s a very simplistic view,’ said MacLean. ‘In our society you can no more give away drugs than you can TV sets.’
‘You sound as if you support them?’ said Tansy.
‘I’m a realist,’ said MacLean. ‘If the last three years have taught me nothing else, they’ve taught me that. Only governments have the power to give away drugs.’
‘So why don’t they?’ asked Tansy.
‘I don’t know.’
Tansy smiled and apologised. ‘I’m sorry, I’m giving you a hard time. Go on. You had this new job?’
‘Everything seemed to be going well and then it started all over again. It was August, one of these beautiful summer evenings when the air is still and the grass green, the trees hung heavy with their leaves and the whole world seemed a haven of peace. There had been a brief shower of rain about seven o’clock, but just enough to feed the flowers and make the grass smell fresh. I left the hospital about nine and started to walk home, feeling good. As I turned the corner into the street where I lived I noticed a man standing on the other side of the road. He was looking in a shop window. I’d walked another fifty yards or so before I realised that I’d seen him before.
‘You knew him?’
‘No, but I’d seen him. He’d been looking in the same shop window on the previous evening.’
‘Maybe he was waiting for a bus?’ suggested Tansy.
‘I went through the list of possibilities too,’ said MacLean. ‘But I’d arrived home at a different time on the
