The Meddlers (29 page)

“… and even with the sedatives, I’m no better off,” Miriam was saying. “I find myself—look, this isn’t easy for me, but I’ve got to talk to someone about it, and there’s no one I can trust to… to understand.”

“Apart from the sleep problem, are there any other symptoms?” George had dredged a little from what she had said, despite the undertow of his own thinking. “Physical symptoms?”

“I… I can’t concentrate. Is that a physical symptom? Probably not. I’ve been trying to work, but I’ve made no progress at all. And I can’t eat. And”—she swallowed—“I get odd ideas.”

“In what way odd?”

She looked at him helplessly and then to the horror of both of them began to cry, her face suffusing with a patchy redness.

“Oh, my dear girl! You really are distressed.” He moved around the desk swiftly and sat on the edge of it, facing her, putting a hand on her shoulder. “I’ve never seen you in such an emotional state! What on earth is it?”

She rubbed at her face angrily, and the crying stopped, and the color faded, leaving her with a violet-tinted pallor. “That’s… that’s just it. I’ve never known anything like it. I cry for no reason. I find myself thinking constantly of my feelings—me! I’ve never been like this in my life! It’s… it’s
infuriating
.”

He smiled at her then. “That’s better!”

“What?”

“Being angry. That’s more like you. And it’s made you feel, a little better, saying you’re angry? Yes, of course it has. Anger has that effect on me too. Useful, isn’t it?”

She was indeed feeling better, and she nodded, even managing a thin smile. “Yes. It does help.”

“Good. Now, tell me. What are these odd ideas that so distress you?”

“I think I understand them better than I did. Something my—the GP I saw said some things that made a sort of sense.”

She spoke carefully, trying to be detached, objective. “One of the reasons you selected me for the project was my… my sexual inexperience. You told me that.”

“Yes. There were excellent biological reasons for it. And practical ones. You had no personal entanglements that would complicate your involvement in the project.” He trust his hands into his pockets. “Sexual experience usually creates complications.”

“Does it? I suppose so.”

“Yes.” He moved sharply and went back to his chair behind the desk. “But what has this to do with your present problem?”

“I, I have discovered in myself a… drive that I was not aware of.” She tried to keep her voice colorless. “And not having previous experience of it, I don’t know how to… to cope with it.”

He became suddenly remote, leaning back in his chair, and she felt the chill in him and stopped and looked down at her hands again.

“Coping with sexual drives can be problematic, but I hardly see what relevance this has to your present situation. What precisely is it you are trying to tell me? I find myself at a loss to understand.”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” she shouted at him, enraged. “Do I have to spell it out? Ever since that bloody baby was born, I’ve been
obsessed with sex! Obsessed with it, do you hear me? I sit there in my room, trying to work, and I… I find myself thinking about—oh, what’s the use? I’m sorry I came and bothered you. I should have known better. Look, I won’t come again, but since I’m here, you can give me a sedative. I’ve used all I had, and if I don’t have something, I think I’ll go completely out of my mind—such mind as I have left. You owe me that much, at least. Give me a supply of barbiturates and leave it at.that.”

“
I
owe you that much? What does that mean? I promised you nothing! You went into your part of the project with your eyes open. I made it clear to you that after the birth your involvement would be completed, and that, I trusted, made it abundantly clear that mine with you would be equally at an end! I don’t say that I lack any… any reasonable concern for your welfare, but to suggest I
owe
you that concern is outrageous! I will not be subjected to these pressures, to this sort of—”

He stopped and took a deep breath, and then went on more calmly. “Look, Miriam, if you ascribe this… this syndrome from which you believe yourself to be suffering to the birth of the infant, I can only assure you that there is no reason why this should be so, unless—” He stopped suddenly and stared at her, frowning. Then his face cleared. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m not thinking well at all. Of course I understand! I have been remarkably obtuse!”

She looked back at him coldly, her face set in harsh lines. “Really? How good of you to say so!”

“Yes,
that’s
what it is. Post-partum depression! A common enough phenomenon in normal situations, but in yours—of
course
! There is ample biological evidence. Dugald’s work with macaque monkeys—yes, of course! When an infant is removed from a mother, and lactation is suppressed, the incidence rises sharply. Now, this is easily remedied. Very easily. I’ll arrange for treatment—”

“Treatment?”

“Indeed. A course of antidepressants will resolve your symptoms rapidly, I assure you. Now, if you’ll just wait, I’ll send over to the pharmacy.”

She looked at him uncertainly. “Post-partum depression? Norma said—well, I suppose it could be. But—” Then she shook her head. “It may be as you say, and it may be some drug treatment will relieve some part of the… my difficulties. But this other thing—”

But he seemed to be no longer listening to her, writing quickly on a form he had taken from his desk drawer, and she bit her words back and sat in sullen silence staring at him.

Behind her the door opened, and a voice said urgently, “George, please, may I speak to you? It’s important.”

Miriam looked over her shoulder to see Barbara standing there and she muttered, “Good morning.”

The other woman looked at her blankly for a moment and then nodded abstractedly. “Er, good morning. Excuse me, will you? George, this really is—”

George frowned at her as he folded the slip of paper on which he had been writing and said crisply, “Just a moment, please, Barbara. Will you be good enough to tell young Isaacs I want him to go to the pharmacy and bring this prescription back for Miss Lawton at once.”

“Miss—oh!” Barbara looked at Miriam again and said awkwardly, “I’m so sorry! I—I should have recognized—it’s just that— look, George.” She turned again to him, her face twisted with anxiety. “Your—Mrs. Briant is here and says she must see you
immediately
. Unless you can see her right now, she says she… she’ll go to see the man, er, our opposition.”

She looked at George with desperate appeal. “You do know who I mean?”

“Opposition?” George said sharply. “Who do you mean? Oh, Gur— The man Kegan tried to get me to see?”

She nodded. “And you may have forgotten that, er, young man is here this morning. He’s seeing some reruns of the rooting reflex film, but if she should happen to realize who he is and speak to him, she might—it really is important you see her immediately.”

George stood up sharply and nodded. “Then I had better do so. Have you spoken to her yourself? Is she alone?”

“She’s alone, and I didn’t see her. Isaacs did. He put her in the histology lab. She… she gave him a most explicit message and he spoke to me about it because you—”

“Yes, quite. Well, send him to get this filled, as I said. I’ll see her in here. If you will take Miss Lawton to—let me see—the small records room, and get Isaacs to show Mrs. Briant in here, and you’d better go to—oh,
blast!
” He looked uncharacteristically agitated. “This is like some bloody French farce. Go up to the nursery, will you, and stay there. I’ll come up later.”

Miriam felt angry again as she let Barbara anxiously hustle her out of the office and then show her with scant ceremony into the tiny cluttered records room before disappearing. Her part on the project might be over, but what right had they to treat her in so abrupt a fashion? Without her there wouldn’t be any bloody project.

And then she stood holding her head between her hands, hating herself. Here she went again, tied up in knots about her personal feelings, instead of recognizing and accepting the fact that some emergency or other had arisen and that individual sensibilities had to be subservient to it. To have produced so infantile a thought as that exaggerated idea of her own importance to the project—it was appalling.

She stood still, consciously taking slow controlled breaths, and then moved with decision. There was no point in waiting for the prescription. George had been so patently abstracted that he could not possibly have reached an accurate diagnosis of her problem, and to swallow some unknown drug prescribed on the basis of so hasty a judgment would be ridiculous. She would tell one of them to tell him so and go.

The corridor outside was deserted, although she could hear voices from the office at the far end of it. A loudly shrill voice: “… told me exactly what she saw, and if you think…” And then George’s deeper tones cutting in. But she couldn’t hear his words clearly, even had she wished to.

She moved across the corridor to the nearest door and pushed it open. A man looked up, his face politely inquiring in the flickering half-light, for the blinds were drawn and a film was running on a
screen on the far wall. He stared at her for a moment and then reached for the projector on the table in front of him and turned it off before switching on the gooseneck lamp beside it.

“Hello,” he said. “Looking for me?”

“For anybody,” she said sharply, not liking the considering way he looked at her. “I wish to leave a message for Dr. Briant. If you will tell him, please—”

“He’s in his office, isn’t he?”

“He’s occupied at the moment,” she said irritably. “And I have no wish to disturb him. So if you’ll just tell him, please, that I won’t wait for the—for the material for which Isaacs was to go.”

“You aren’t one of the team here.” It was a flat statement.

“If you will please give him that message.” She stepped back, pulling on the door knob, but he moved swiftly and held on to the door.

“I can’t unless you tell me who sends it.”

“He’ll know. And thank you.”

She turned and walked quickly along the corridor and out of the main door, but he followed her, walking along the path beside her with such long strides that she could not have outstripped him without breaking into a run. Irritably, she stopped and turned to look at him.

“Did I not make my message clear? I am not able to wait for—”

“I rather think I know who you are.” He stood and looked at her, his eyebrows slightly raised. “Dark hair, blue eyes. She put it rather sloppily you know. ‘Blue eyes put in with a smutty finger,’ she said. Your eyelashes are dark enough to warrant the whimsy, I’d say.”

“What are you talking about? If you will forgive me, I have no time to be—”

“And only people involved with the project in some way are permitted into the Unit. Now, you are not a member of the team. I’ve already said that and you didn’t deny the fact. And you are certainly not Kegan or Dr. Saxby or Miss Guttner, and dietitians and the like usually wear a uniform of some sort—”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” She turned and started to walk away again, but again he fell into step beside her.

“And since you fit the description so admirably, you must be an individual for whom I have been searching for some time. Tell me, as the baby’s natural mother—if one can use the word natural in this context—what are your views on the ethical aspects of this project?”

She stopped and looked sideways at him, and then started even more determinedly to walk toward the hospital side gates.

“You’re completely demented. I imagine the gate porter will be only too willing to assist me in getting rid of you.”

“And what will you tell him? That you have been recognized as the baby’s mother and want the fact kept quiet? He’ll be fascinated, I have no doubt. There are usually a couple of other newspapermen hanging around, and they’ll be suitably grateful for his information—”

“Other newspapermen?” Again she stopped walking and turned to face him. “Ah! I see. You’re one of those muckrakers, are you? If you can’t get hold of any real facts, you invent them out of whole cloth?”

“Do you lie awake at night thinking up nice insulting phrases, or do they come to you naturally?” he said equably and smiled at her with great friendliness. “Oh, come on, admit it! I’ve hit it, haven’t I? You’re the baby’s mother, and I recognize you and claim the five pounds—”

Suddenly, she felt as though she had been driven as far as she could go. It wasn’t until she saw the red weals rising on his cheek that she realized she had actually hit him, and she stood in amazement at her own action, feeling the palm of her hand tingling.

“Oh, dear me!” The mildness of his voice didn’t match the glint of temper in his eyes. “In hitting it, I get hit. I hope that made you feel rather better than I do at the moment.”

He touched his face delicately. “If you’re going to go about slapping people, you really shouldn’t wear rings. That one has actually drawn blood.”

She looked at the scratch on his red cheek and muttered, “I’m sorry. You provoked me—”

“Oh, don’t apologize. I can imagine how you feel. To manage to
keep a secret like yours for all this time must create strain. Enough to lead to a wholesale slaughter. I’ll do the handsome thing and forgive you. If you’ll come and have coffee with me and talk to me.”

“No.”

“Why not? You’ll have to eventually.”

“Indeed I will not.” But she made no move to go, staring at him curiously. After George’s abrupt treatment, to have a complete stranger recognize the strain she was feeling made her feel less angry than she had been. “There is no reason why I should.”

“Oh, there’s every reason. You see, if you refuse me, I shall simply follow you at a discreet distance. Eventually you will have to go home, and I will then know where you live. Thereafter I will stand at your door like Cesario, waiting for you if not actually calling upon your soul within the house, and every time you emerge, I shall repeat my invitation. Ergo, you will eventually accept it, since scientists are practical people, unlike us muckrakers, who are merely persistent.”