No Cure for Love (13 page)

Picking up the wax-sealed jar, Robert applied the new label with his thumb. He placed it alongside the others on the shelf and stood back admiringly. Sections of guts taken from patients, suspended in formaldehyde and catalogued by age, sex and street wouldn’t be considered by most people as something to prize, but what those jars contained could be as valuable as an Old Master if it helped him unlock the secret of what caused cholera. Over his desk in the outer office was a wall chart plotting the new cases. The good news was that there were fewer cases among those people around the newly repaired pumps.

He took the duster off the shelf and wiped his hands on it. The pumps had been hastily repaired before he had been able to question the builder contracted to do the job months ago. Herbert Cashman had managed to dodge his first two visits and was the model of hospitality on his third, after the swift completion of the long overdue work. Robert wasn’t fooled. He had already heard more than a few whispers that it was Danny Donovan’s navvies who had been paid long ago for the work.

He returned to the workbench and was about to put his microscope into its case when the door opened and Bulmer entered.

‘I am sorry to disturb you, sir, but there is a Mrs O’Casey to see you.’

‘I told her that the casual ward was still open but she insisted on seeing you in person. I’ll send her away if you wish.’

‘No! No, thank you, Bulmer.’ Robert hastily rolled down his sleeves and refastened the cuffs. ‘Show her in.’

As Ellen entered she stopped and gazed, wide-eyed, around the airy laboratory.

Standing unnoticed in his corner, Robert let his eyes run over her. Ellen was wearing a faded cotton day dress, with a bright stripe of the original fabric a few inches above the hem revealing that it had been made for a shorter woman. Over this she wore a short velvet jacket which, in its time, had been of some quality. The pile was now worn clean from the elbows and cuffs, but the richness of the jacket’s deep russet colour might have been made for Ellen’s earthy tones. Her hair was held back in a tight bun at the nape of her neck but several strands had escaped and curled around her face. Robert’s gaze slowly traced the curve of her neck. How could a woman dressed in cast-off seconds look so elegant?

Although it shouldn’t have mattered to him at all, seeing Ellen O’Casey again gave Robert a moment of uncertainty. That she had sought him out after their last meeting gave him a thrill of unexpected pleasure, but it also caused him a problem. He couldn’t ignore the fact that he was very attracted to her. As a doctor he knew these that these things were physical in nature and often transient, and while he believed her to be Danny’s mistress it had protected him from acting on that attraction.

Ellen O’Casey is a pub singer,
he reminded himself, but it did no good. He might be a scientist but he was also a man.

The floorboard creaked under his foot and Ellen spun around. He saw her eyes open wide on seeing him and in an unguarded moment a look of joy crossed her face.

‘Mrs O’Casey. What a pleasure to see you.’ It was.

She matched his smile. ‘I am sorry if I am disturbing you. I know you are a busy man.’

‘Never too busy too spend time with a pretty woman,’ he heard himself say.

Ellen blushed and lowered her eyes, but not before he saw a spark of alarm in them.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said stretching his hands out palms up and shrugging his shoulders. ‘I seem to have an extraordinary talent for saying the wrong thing to you.’

Much to his relief, Ellen’s shoulders relaxed and she smiled up at him. ‘I have a talent for ripping the ears off your head every time you do.’ She laughed and he joined in.

‘It’s for that reason that I’ve come to see you, Doctor Munroe,’ she said. ‘I want to thank you properly for your kindness towards Kitty.’

‘There is no need.’

‘There is every need,’ she told him. ‘I begged her not to rid herself of the child.’ There was a momentary quiver in her voice, then she said, looking at him directly, ‘You treated her with consideration and for that I thank you.’

‘I am a doctor and my concern is for the sick. How is Josie?’

A broad, unreservedly maternal smile, the type that his mother never could quite manage, lit up Ellen’s face.

‘She’s grand. Her ears are too big and she has too much to say for a young woman of her age,’ she told him, pride belying her words, ‘but she is fit and well, thanks to your medicine.’

‘I owe you an apology,’ he said, noting how the things in the laboratory fascinated her. He wondered if she had spotted Napoleon the skeleton.

He had taken Caroline to his laboratory in Edinburgh some time ago, hoping that showing her his work might help her to understand its importance to him. It had been a vain hope. She had only been in the room a few moments when she spotted a preserved heart in a jar, screamed so loudly that the orderlies had rushed in from the next ward, and stormed out. She had berated him for his unnatural fascination with dead things for the whole of the journey home.

So far Ellen hadn’t screamed, even though she had noticed William’s collection of eyes.

‘I accept your apology,’ she replied, and held out her hand.

Robert took it. ‘Friends?’

Had he known the effect it would have on him Robert would not have been so quick to grasp her hand. As she pressed it against his palm, a fire ignited within him. He took a step forward, but she snatched her hand away, put it to her hair and tied a couple of strands back.

Then she turned her eyes away from him and glanced at the dishes on the bench. ‘What on earth are the squiggly things in these saucers?’

If anyone had asked her at that moment, Ellen could have told them truthfully that she knew what it was like to feel the earth move under her feet. Because the whole world had shifted to one side and then back again as she placed her hand in Doctor Munroe’s. So much so that she was in real danger of reaching her hand up and running it over his clean-shaven face just to see what the bristles felt like on her palm.

She should leave. She had thanked him for Kitty and he had apologised. They were friends. That could have been an end to it.

If she had any sense in her head she would leave now but she couldn’t. If the room had been on fire she would have looked for an excuse to stay until the flames licked her ankles, just to be near him. As he stood there, his work surrounding him, she was seeing a whole new side to Robert Munroe and she wanted to know more. She wanted to know what made him laugh and why he was so passionate about his work. She wanted to know... well... everything.

His face came alive. ‘These are specimens of gut from people who have died of cholera in the last five days.’ She drew back sharply. Robert caught hold of her arm. ‘They are quite safe as long as you don’t touch them.’

‘Why do you keep them?’ she asked.

He beckoned her nearer to the dishes, splaying the hand that had just held hers so firmly towards them, and Ellen was mesmerised by its form. She studied the way the line of small hairs tracked up from his wrist towards his little finger, noticed the clean, square-trimmed nails, and the way the thumb above the joint sat at a right angle.

All the while he was bent forwards, telling her his ideas about the invisible things that caused diseases, Ellen studied his profile, examining the texture of his skin, the contrast of rough beard with his smoother upper cheek.

‘I hope to prove they are the same things that make meat rancid,’ he said.

‘I’m sorry.’ Ellen had been too busy staring at the shape of Doctor Munroe’s mouth as he spoke to actually hear what he was saying.

‘I’m boring you.’ He looked deflated and made to move away. Ellen caught hold of his arm.

‘Not at all,’ she said. She stepped over to the charts on the wall. ‘Is this to do with blood?’ she asked, pointing at the detailed prints.

He followed, and smiled at her in a way that made a joyous laugh start deep within her. He started to explain how the heart moved the blood around the body.

How did he know all those things? He moved over to the cabinets of specimens and pulled out a shallow drawer with what looked like dried leaves all carefully pinned on top of blotting paper. He described to her how he catalogued all his specimens and kept detailed notes, explaining that it was vital because he never knew where a link between one illness and another might be found.

Following him around the spotless laboratory, Ellen found herself caught up by his passion. She enjoyed seeing how his eyes sparkled and the corners crinkled up. As he leant forward she found herself staring at his ear and wondering how his beard knew to make an orderly line alongside it.

Robert guided her over to the tall shelves.

‘Now this,’ he said pointing to a jar in the centre of the shelves, ‘is a section of duodenum and this a section of colon. I took both from a docker who had been complaining for weeks of stomach cramps before he died. See where the organ wall has been eaten through?’ He jabbed at the jar.

Ellen screwed up her eyes and followed the line of his finger. The names he spoke were alien to her but the pale flesh Robert pointed to looked just like the tripe in the butcher’s shop. He moved to the next jar.

‘Here are the lungs of a coal heaver. See how the dust has settled on the surface.’ Ellen dutifully stared at the spongy objects. ‘And these are—’

‘Kidneys,’ Ellen interrupted, recognising the half-moon shapes in the next container. She gave him a crooked smile. ‘I must say, Doctor Munroe, it’s more like a slaughterhouse than a hospital.’

He threw back his head and laughed. Ellen joined in.

‘Once I start on my work it is hard to stop me,’ he said, his eyes happy as he looked at her. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘I am interested,’ she said, actually finding she was. ‘But I have a question.’

He pulled a mock serious face. ‘I always get very worried when a student says that to me, but go on, ask away.’

She looked around at the disembodied organs and then her gaze fell on the bleached bones of the skeleton grinning across at them. Her hand went up and she made a swift sign of the cross on her chest.

‘If these specimens are from dead people, does that mean on Judgement Day they will appear before God incomplete? And don’t you worry that God might not like you taking something he made in his own image to use for yourself?’

For one moment Ellen wished she had held her tongue. Whatever would he think of her questioning him in such a manner?

‘That is a very interesting question,’ he replied, after a long - a very long - pause. Ellen’s shoulders relaxed. ‘I believe that the Almighty doesn’t take any pleasure in seeing His creation suffer and that He will not judge me too harshly for trying to alleviate suffering. As for taking specimens from those who have died, in my view it puts them in no different a position than those who have lost a limb or an eye due to disease or accident.’ An apologetic smile crossed his face. ‘If you want a more theological explanation, then you’ll have to ask my father. He is a minister.’

‘Your father’s a priest?’

She knew that priests in the English church were allowed to marry, but she had never come so close to the son of a priest before.

‘Er ... um ... the Church of Scotland doesn’t use the term priest,’ he told her flatly.

‘You didn’t want to enter the church?’ she asked, desperate to move the conversation on but not sure where it would be safe to lead it.

‘No. Too many cold churches.’ There was a hollow-ness in his voice, an echo of the boy he must have been.

‘I’m afraid I am a bit of a disappointment to my family. Mother wanted me to follow her family and go into the army and my father wanted me to inherit his fervour for winning souls. But I was more interested in the here and now than the hereafter, so, in the end, my parents and I agreed to disagree. Even as a boy I was fascinated with living things, much to my mother’s horror. Try as she might, Mother couldn’t stop me collecting animals and insects to study. In the end she let me keep my collection in the stables, well away from the main part of the house.’

An image of a vast house with surrounding buildings, like the houses she collected daily washing from, came into Ellen’s mind. Those houses didn’t have one ten-by-ten-foot room downstairs and one the same size upstairs, or rag rugs on the floor; nor did their owners have to brew second-hand tea. They had well-sprung carriages, and servants, and chocolate to drink, and of course daily skivvies who were paid tuppence a bundle to take away their laundry.

‘It was Mr McKay, my housemaster at the Stirling Academy, who nurtured my interest in medicine and finally persuaded my parents that doctoring was as respectable a career as the army or the church.’

Behind him, the orderly had completed his task and was coming towards them.