Second Opinion (39 page)

Sometimes, George was to think later, circumstances conspired for you rather than against you. That was what happened that dull December afternoon in Maternity. As she and Cherry came into the department, they could hear the sound of the television blaring out; the BBC was showing a blockbuster holiday-time movie and George could see all the mothers who were still in the ward (despite the usual heroic efforts to discharge many of the hospital’s patients for Christmas) collected in one bay, sitting on their beds and armchairs that had been dragged in, watching it. They had their babies on their laps and a couple were feeding them. They looked contented and happy. It was a pleasant sight, George thought. The staff who were on duty were there too, and all of them, patients and staff alike, were sharing the last of the Christmas chocolate biscuits and drinking cream sherry from plastic cups. George could smell the sweetness of them both as soon as she and Cherry pushed open the double doors.

It was evidently one of those rare days when a lull had hit the department and there were no labouring mothers at all. The door of the labour suite stood open and the lights were out, a rare enough event, and though there were some obviously pre-natal women amongst those watching the James Bond movie with such absorption, there was no
suggestion that they were about to give birth. Everyone was relaxed, contented and quite unaware that anyone had come into the ward.

‘Nice for them,’ Cherry said as they walked down the corridor towards the Fertility Unit. ‘Must make a change from always rushing round the way they usually have to.’ They were passing the office door as she said it and almost automatically she turned her head and glanced in. ‘Even Sister’s watching that film —’

They were in fact past the office door when Cherry stopped short so suddenly she made George stumble, for she was immediately beside her.

‘Blimey!’ Cherry said and stared straight ahead.

‘What on earth’s the matter?’ George had to speak up, for the TV sound was turned very high and the chatter of onscreen guns and the swoop of dramatic music filled the air with its ersatz excitement. Whether it was the film or Cherry’s behaviour or even a moment of premonition, George would never know, but the flesh on the back of her neck seemed to creep.

‘It’s that thing you did, making me stare at the wall,’ Cherry said, still standing motionless.

‘Staring at — oh, yes,’ George said and nodded. ‘When I was trying to help you remember.’ Her attention sharpened even more. ‘What’s happened, Cherry? What have you remembered?’

‘A basket weave.’ Cherry nodded at her suddenly, a very affirmative movement. ‘I said I could see a basket weave and the crumpled pages which had that sort of writing on — a sort of code you said it was.’

‘Well?’ George was almost on tiptoes, she was so tense.

‘I just saw it.’

‘What?’

‘The basket weave.’

‘Where?’

‘In here. Sister’s office.’

They both stood very still for a moment, looking at each other and then, slowly, Cherry turned and retraced her steps, with George following close behind. She stopped at the door of Sister’s office and stood there, peering in.

Behind them, obliquely across the central corridor, the soft Scottish accent of Sean Connery chatting up one of his luscious heroines seemed to be absorbing every spectator. Certainly no one turned to look or seemed to be aware that the two of them were standing there in the corridor.

‘See?’ Cherry said softly. ‘Over there.’ And she jerked her chin towards the back of the office.

George looked. Cherry had indicated the battered old table against the wall with its overflow of papers from Sister’s desk, which was in the middle of the room. There was a rather battered old Olympia typewriter on it. Beside it there was a stack of flimsy metal trays built up into a tower, each tray held six inches above the other by spindly legs set in the corners. The upper trays were filled with more papers which showed clearly through the mesh of which the trays were made.

‘See,’ Cherry said again. ‘Basket weave.’

George squinted and understood. When Cherry had first used the term she had imagined something made of cane or bamboo or straw, rather like a hat; now she saw that the metal wire of which the trays were made was plaited together in the classic one-over-one-under style used for making so many fabrics out of fibres. She said, ‘Of course!’ loudly and turned to Cherry excitedly.

Cherry had glanced over her shoulder at the bay where everyone was watching TV, alarmed that the loudness of George’s voice might have attracted them, but still no one paid any attention and she relaxed a little.

‘I shouldn’t really go in here unless I’ve got files or something, Sister gets mad.’

‘Well, I’m here and I’ll say you did nothing you shouldn’t,’
George said, her voice lowered again. ‘Come on.’ And she set a hand in the small of Cherry’s back and pushed firmly.

Once inside they couldn’t be seen from the TV bay and they both relaxed. Cherry hurried to the rack of trays on the table and began to riffle through the papers in the top one.

‘Is that what you saw when you saw the basket weave in your memory?’ George said. ‘Stacked papers like that?’

Cherry stopped in the act of lifting a pile of papers and stood still. She thought for a long moment and then deliberately let them go.

‘No,’ she said. ‘No, it wasn’t. They were sort of — crumpled. Oh, damn. I wish I could remember properly.’

‘We need to help you concentrate,’ George said. ‘Sit down and let’s think.’

Obediently Cherry sat down on the chair that was in front of the typewriter.

‘Close your eyes,’ George commanded and again Cherry obeyed.

‘Look at the memory. Build it up in your mind and look at it.’

Cherry closed her eyes and visibly concentrated. There was a tense silence and then sadly she shook her head and opened her eyes again.

‘It’s no good,’ she said. ‘It’s gone. All I can see now is the trays the way they are’ — she jerked her head at them — ‘Full of tidy papers. But I know that isn’t what I saw last time.’

She sighed and swung irritably in the swivel chair. ‘I wish I could remember! It’s so silly.’ She sat with her back to George now, staring down at the typewriter keyboard and George came to stand beside her and put a hand on her shoulder.

‘It can’t be helped, Cherry. It was only a try anyway. Don’t feel bad about it.’ It seemed to George very important now to reassure this unhappy child that she had done no
wrong in being unable to remember where she had seen those coded sheets of paper; she was unhappy enough in her bereavement. To add to her burdens wouldn’t help at all.

Cherry was fiddling now, her fingers tapping on the side of the typewriter keyboard in irritation. She was still looking very doleful and again George tried to comfort her.

‘It’s all right, Cherry, really it is. I’m sure we’ll find another way to sort this out. Don’t fret over it. Come on, we’d better get out of here. That movie can’t go on for ever.’

Cherry had begun to twitch at one of the controls on the righthand side of the machine; a slide marker that went up and down. Like a fretful child she seemed to find some comfort in the repetitive movements, so George brought her own hand down over Cherry’s shoulder to set it on the restless fingers and still them.

‘Come on, Cherry,’ she said coaxingly. ‘Put that back the way it was so no one notices we were here, and we’ll get on our way.’

‘What?’ Cherry said abstractedly and looked at her hand, for the first time seeming aware that she had been fidgeting at all. ‘What’s that?’

‘I said, put that slide bit back where it was and we’ll go.’

‘Back where it …’ Cherry said and peered at the machine more closely. And then to George’s dismay her shoulders began to shake. George sighed softly and bent over her, ready to comfort her again as she dissolved into further tears.

But she wasn’t crying; she was laughing. George looked at her closely in some surprise and she had to admit a little irritation. ‘Cherry, for heaven’s sake, let’s have a bit less of this and get on our way.’

‘But I know what it is!’ Cherry said and turned a face to her that was wreathed in a smile. She looked like a different person; alert and alive and very very pretty, and George
caught her breath, for she saw just what it was that had so captivated Harry Rajabani.

‘What do you mean?’ she said and then straightened her back, hope lifting in her. ‘Have you remembered where you saw the papers?’

‘I don’t need the papers!’ Cherry said, grinning delightedly. ‘I can show you exactly how that code, or whatever it is, works! It’s not a code at all, I mean, not really, though I can see how it could be used like one.’

George frowned, completely at sea. ‘What are you talking about, Cherry?’

‘I’ll show you —’ She reached for a sheet of paper from the half-open drawer beside her and moved towards the machine as though to set it in, and then stopped and looked over her shoulder.

‘I can’t show you here,’ she said. ‘They’ll hear me typing and Sister’ll come in and — I know. Just you wait a minute. I’ll sort it out,’ and to George’s amazement she was up on her feet and running out of the office as lightly as a child called to fetch ice cream.

George followed her, and saw her stop at the door to the bay where the watchers were still happily wrapped up in their fantasy world, straighten her shoulders, and then slip in and go straight over to Sister Lichfield. Cherry bent and murmured into her ear and Sister listened, looked briefly over her shoulder at George, made a face and then nodded.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘As long as you do bring it right back.’

‘Oh, I will,’ Cherry said. She smiled widely and escaped back to the office.

Sister looked at George and nodded. ‘Glad to be of help, doctor,’ she said, and then turned back to look at the TV screen as the sound of a sudden squealing of brakes was greeted by laughter from all the patients and other staff who had paid no attention at all to the little flurry of activity.

George said, ‘Thank you,’ mechanically to Sister’s back and turned to go back into the office only to meet Cherry coming out. She was clutching the heavy typewriter in her arms, and she muttered at George, ‘You go ahead and open the doors. I’ll be fine. I only need it for a bit — but do be quick! It’s ever so heavy.’

They reached the little cubby hole that was Cherry’s office just in time. Cherry, red in the face with the effort, almost dropped the machine on her desk once George had pushed the word processor keyboard and screen there well to the back out of the way. Cherry let out a puff of exhausted breath. ‘Blimey, that thing’s a lump!’ she said.

‘Why on earth bring it here?’ George asked. ‘What’s the — oh, silly question. To use it, of course.’

‘Of course! I told Sister mine got broken and you had an urgent report Dr Arundel needed and no typist on duty on account of Christmas, and she said all right. Mustn’t keep it too long, though. Now, let’s see.’

She began to fiddle at the side of the machine, looking for the flex, plugged it in and switched the power on.

‘Now,’ she said, and sat down at the keyboard with a little flourish like a stage magician about to pull a dove out of a hat. ‘Just you watch.’

She took a piece of paper from her own drawer, put it in the machine and then turned her attention to the slide at the right-hand side with which she had been fidgeting. ‘Look at this, will you, Dr Barnabas?’

George looked. On the left hand of the slide there was a column of figures and letters. The bottom one was 10, the one above it 12 and the one above that 15. At the top of the column were the letters PS.

Cherry moved the slide so that it stood alongside PS. ‘That means proportional spacing. It’s something to do with getting the letters all the same size, apparently. I’ve never found out how it works, on account of no one ever asked for the proportional spacing. You need a special daisy
wheel for it, anyway. But just you watch what happens when you use it.’ And she began to type.

George stood there and watched her fingers. Cherry did not type quickly, but with a certain deliberation. As she hit each key, George could see which one it was; and realized almost at once that it was the basic phrase that offered every letter of the alphabet: ‘the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy white dog’.

But that was not what appeared on the white paper. She stood there fascinated and saw the symbols appear:

‘Good God!’ she said blankly.

Cherry leaned back in her chair and spread her hands wide to display what she had done. ‘You see? It’s one of those things that happens with these machines. I used to have one, but Dr Arundel got me that word processor. You see? But I had one of these ages ago and it happened to me a few times when I hit the slide by accident. It can happen — it’s awful on a word processor or a computer if you hit the wrong key, mind. You can make terrific mistakes.’

‘Like getting blood sugar readings matched to the wrong patient’s name,’ George said with a combined flash of insight and memory.

‘What?’

‘Oh, something that happened in the Diabetic Clinic a while ago — it was a computer error.’

‘Well, there you are then.’ Cherry looked very pleased with herself. ‘Like this, eh? This is a typing error, though, not a computer one. I used to make them a lot. I used to type a page — well some of a page — in the days when I still wasn’t a very good typist and I looked at the keyboard more’n I looked at the page, you know? And I used to get
so bothered! I’d pull the pages out and crumple them up and chuck them in the bottom of my tray and try again. That’s what I think I must have remembered — seeing my crumpled up pages chucked in the tray. Once I knew what did it, of course, I never had the problem no more.’

She pushed the slide down again till it was opposite 12 and again typed: ‘the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy white dog’; and this time the letters appeared exactly as they should.

‘Someone else discovered this and used it,’ George said, with absolute certainty. ‘They made the same mistake and saw how useful it could be and just typed what they wanted to keep, but to keep secretly, and it came out like this and they thought no one’d ever work out what it was. All they had to do was change the letters back to read it.’