Past Lives (14 page)

Just before setting out for the airport in the morning, Macandrew noticed the file containing the strange Israeli news report that Karen had given him: he hadn’t had time to read it yet. It was sitting on the window ledge next to the slim folder he’d compiled on Hartman’s tumours. Remembering that what little work there had been done on them had in fact, been done in Edinburgh – where he just happened to be going - he slid both files into the wide front zip pocket of his leather travel bag along with Karen’s taped interview with Jane Francini and looked out of the window to see that the cab had arrived.

Macandrew already felt that it had been a long day. He’d had a five-hour wait at O'Hare airport between the domestic flight’s arrival in Chicago and the transatlantic take-off, but now the Atlantic Ocean was thirty-five thousand feet below and they were into the comfortable phase of the journey. The passengers had been airborne long enough for them to relax. Jackets had been removed, ties loosened and the cabin lights dimmed in deference to those watching the movie. The flight was only three-quarters full and the seat next to Macandrew was free so he kept his travel bag on it.

Having no interest in the movie, he brought out the Hartman’s tumour file and switched on his overhead reading lamp to give him an island of light. He cut out background noise by putting on his headphones but without plugging them into the seat socket.

After an hour and a half without interruption, he understood quite a bit more about the work of John Burnett and his co-workers but was no nearer to figuring out why a line of research, which had seemed so promising, had come to an abrupt halt. But thinking about it wasn’t going to help, he concluded as he recognised he was going round in circles and it had been a long day. He asked the flight attendant for a whisky. The alcohol put him in the mood to catch a few hours sleep.

It was eight-thirty local time on Monday morning when the Boeing 747 touched down at London Heathrow: it was raining heavily. Macandrew made his way through throngs of unsmiling people to find the British Airways shuttle desk and barely had time to down a cup of coffee before he was airborne again and on his way to Edinburgh. In a little over an hour, he felt the aircraft bank steeply to the left as they made a turn over water.

'First time here?' asked the man beside him. It was the first time he had spoken on the flight.

'It is, yes,' replied Macandrew.

'You're an American?'

‘
Yes.'

'These are the Forth bridges down there. The red one's the old, Victorian rail bridge, the other's the road bridge, built in the sixties.'

'I must have seen the old one at least a hundred times in photographs,' said Macandrew. ‘And I remember it featured in a famous film . . .’

‘
The Thirty-nine Steps,’ said the man. 'A John Buchan classic. I take it you’re not here on holiday?’

‘
Actually I am.’

‘
In November?’

Within seconds of stepping outside the terminal building to join the queue for taxis, Macandrew understood the man on the plane’s surprise. An icy wind was driving rain almost horizontally across the tarmac and gusting so strongly that his suitcase was almost snatched from his grasp. He turned quickly to keep hold of it but, as he did so, his travel bag slipped from his shoulder and splashed down in a puddle at his feet. A leaden sky suggested there was more of this to come.

‘
Where to?’ asked the taxi driver.

'City centre, I guess,' said Macandrew. On the way, he asked the driver about accommodation. ‘I just need some place to stay until I can get my bearings and decide what I'm going to do.'

The driver nodded without saying anything and Macandrew sat back in his seat to look out of the window as they sped towards the city. Thirty minutes later he was standing outside a hotel in the Bruntsfield area of the city with the driver's assurance that he was only a mile or so from the city centre. The man smiled for the first time when Macandrew tipped him well.

Macandrew woke at seven thirty. He knew this because he’d looked at his watch. What he wasn't quite sure of for a few moments was whether it was morning or evening. He could hear traffic sounds but it was dark outside so that wasn't much help. It was evening, he decided after a little think. Jet lag was always worse travelling west to east but at least, on this occasion, he was on vacation. He wasn't attending some conference or medical meeting with a tight schedule and possibly a paper to present. He could relax and take account of what his body told him instead of his diary. Right now it was telling him that he was hungry. He got up, showered, dressed and went off in search of food.

With a meal of pasta and ice cream inside him and feeling refreshed from a long unbroken sleep, Macandrew acknowledged that he felt a lot better. As a bonus, the wind had dropped, the rain had stopped and he could see that Edinburgh was a place he was going to like. He walked the entire length of Princes Street, admiring the huge rock to the south with its floodlit castle on top.

At nine-thirty in the evening, most of the shops were closed but a couple of large bookshops were still open so he went into one and looked through the tourist guide and maps section. He hadn't actually planned on doing this until the following day but if he could get what he wanted right now, so much the better. Once he had the maps, he could spend the remainder of the evening making plans. He picked up a couple of road maps and also 1:25,000 Ordnance Survey sheets for three areas in south-west Scotland. There wasn't much in the way of tourist guides for the area he was interested in but he felt sure he would be able to get these locally.

Unlike many Americans who came to Scotland armed with little real knowledge of where their forbears had originated, Macandrew knew exactly where his great grandfather, Neil Morrison Macandrew, had come from. He had been born in the village of Drumcarrick on the Ayrshire coast in Southwest Scotland, one of three sons of a farm labourer who himself had worked as a farm labourer in the area before setting out for the New World. His father had been James Alexander Macandrew and his mother, Matilda Leadbetter.

His plan was to rent a car, drive down to the Ayrshire coast and take a look at Drumcarrick. He would hunt through local graveyards and parish records if he could find them, hoping to find mention of his family. As he spread out the map in front of him, he hit his first problem. He couldn't find Drumcarrick on it. This was annoying but he refused to see it as a major setback. Drumcarrick might well be too small to be recorded on the map. He felt sure that once he was in Ayrshire he would have no trouble finding it. In the meantime, he wanted to see more of Edinburgh and to do it in daylight. He arranged for car rental through hotel reception but said that he wouldn't need it until Wednesday – the day after tomorrow.

The weather was cold and clear on Tuesday so Macandrew dressed warmly in cord trousers, a thick sweater and a tan leather jacket. Around his neck he wore a navy blue scarf and on his head, a waterproof cap. He chose shoes that would be comfortable for walking in and checked his wallet to see that he had enough British money.

He spent the morning exploring the Royal Mile, the famous old street that ran down from the castle at its head through the old town of Edinburgh with its high tenements and ancient buildings, to the royal palace of Holyrood at the foot. Here he found exactly the kind of escapism he was looking for. Edinburgh was as different from Kansas City as Mars was from Earth.

Being the only tourist around - or so it seemed - marked him out for special attention. People were friendly and seemed anxious to tell him things. He had lunch at a pub near the palace and sampled British beer for the first time. He wasn't overly impressed nor was he with the food but it didn't matter. The landlord was friendly and talkative – if only about American football, which he followed on television. Macandrew was enjoying himself.

There was still no sign of rain when he had finished eating so he continued exploring the myriad streets and lanes leading away from the main thoroughfare and the small shops he found there with their treasure troves of times past. He was beginning to feel a little tired – but not unpleasantly so - when he happened upon a large dark-stone building and a notice outside telling him that it was the medical school of the University of Edinburgh. He realised that this must be where Burnett and his team had carried out their work on Hartman’s tumours.

The huge, arched entrance spoke of an age when doctors wore frock coats and stolen corpses were trundled through the streets by body snatchers under cover of darkness to supply the needs of the infamous Dr Knox’s anatomy classes, an age when anaesthetics had yet to be discovered. Come to think of it, anaesthetics
were
discovered here. Simpson had carried out his early experiments with chloroform in this very city. And antiseptics too! Joseph Lister had introduced carbolic acid to the world of surgery in the hospital adjoining this very medical school.

Macandrew felt suitably awed to be standing outside a building that had played such an important role in the history of medicine but its more modern link to the Francini affair through the work of the Burnet group was making him feel uncomfortable. He flexed his fingers subconsciously as he looked up at the windows surrounding the quadrangle, wondering if John Burnet was sitting behind any of them. He even considered going in and asking but stopped short of doing that. For the moment, the events in Kansas City were a long way away and that’s how he wanted to keep it. Maybe he’d call in before he went home but, for now, he was here on vacation. He turned his back on the med school and walked off. He had a trip to the Ayrshire coast to plan.

Hertz delivered the hire-car to the hotel just before nine on Wednesday but Macandrew decided to let the morning rush hour pass before setting out - although he did want to be in Ayr, some seventy miles away - by lunchtime. It was his intention to spend the afternoon visiting the local tourist agencies – hoping that they would be open at this time of the year - to ask about Drumcarrick. If not, he’d try local museums or historical societies.

'Your luck's still holding,' said the breakfast waitress as she cleared the table and nodded to the sunshine outside the window. It was another cold clear day.

‘
I think you were kidding about the weather here,’ said Macandrew. ‘It’s beautiful.’

The waitress – who had told him earlier that the weather could change every ten minutes – gave him a pitying look.

Macandrew decided against using the motorway and opted instead for a meandering route across the central belt. He wanted to see as much of the countryside as possible.

'There's no much tae see either way, mind you,' warned Willie Donaldson, the hall porter. ‘If it’s scenery yer after, you should be headin’ north.’

After thirty minutes of driving through a bleak landscape that even sheep seemed vaguely unhappy with, Macandrew was ready to concede that Willie had a point. The countryside he’d passed through had been mainly barren, windswept moor land. His spirits began to pick up however, when the road started to wind down the slopes of the Clyde valley with its more fertile soil and fruit farms – although it was entirely the wrong time of year to visit. Two hours had gone by when he finally joined the dual carriageway that led south from Glasgow to the Ayrshire coast. Another twenty minutes and he was entering the outskirts of Ayr.

It struck him almost immediately that the town had a feeling of small town prosperity about it as he headed slowly towards its centre between rows of neat bungalows sitting smugly behind well-manicured gardens. The roads were pleasantly wide, giving the place an air of space and openness and the traffic seemed light. He eventually picked up a sign pointing to Beach Car Park and couldn't resist following it. This would be his first glimpse of the western shores of Scotland from where his great grandfather had set out for the New World and a new life.

On a November day, Macandrew found himself the only person in the car park by the sea. He brought the car to a halt, facing the water, and leaned forward to rest his arms on the wheel and take in the view. The beach was windswept and utterly deserted but the sand seemed white and clean and the wind was whipping it up in small clouds making the surface seem liquid. Gulls wheeled and screamed above white crested waves which, with the tide out, were a good hundred yards away. He buttoned up the front of his jerkin, pulled his cap firmly on to his head in deference to the wind and got out of the car to jump over the low wall and start making for the water's edge.

After only a few minutes standing there, he was forced to turn his back to gain respite from the biting wind and also to get his bearings. There was a wide expanse of parkland between the shore and the first houses, which were large, stone-built villas, but he could see the spires and towers of the town to his left. He found it slightly unnerving that he seemed to be the only living thing in the whole wide, flat landscape and felt relieved when he saw a woman step on to the beach about three hundred yards away with her dog. He walked by the water’s edge for another ten minutes before returning to the car and rejoicing in its calm stillness while he thought what to do next.

A first priority was a whisky to warm himself up and then he’d have some lunch. With this in mind, he headed back along the route he had come in on - remembering that he had passed a few likely hotels – and pulled into the car park of one of them. A large whisky was followed by hot soup, smoked trout and apple crumble and several cups of coffee – the waitress insisted on refilling his cup while she sought his advice about a Florida holiday.