Lonie29

When Audrey left the office, after lunchtime, to see Carol Peters, Lonie was surprised that the phone hadn’t rung. He’d have attributed it some kind of minor miracle, as if he believed in that sort of thing. Father Campbell was easy undemanding company. He didn’t demand anything of him, but Lonie passed him a Woodbine anyway. They settled each side of the desk into a companionable smoker’s silence.

Lonie smiled like he would have to an old friend ‘So. You were tellin’ me about how you became a jump-the-dyke, from a Kirk goin’ youngster, to a rabid fanatical Papist.’

His gross over-exaggerations did not go unnoticed. ‘Was I?’ Father Campbell giggled. ‘You’re at that cruel age, where you judge people too harshly.'

‘Aye, but that’s what my job is. I’m paid to be cruel to everybody. And if Ah’d a dog Ah’d kick it, even if I didnae get paid for that.’

‘I think I was telling you about my difficulties as a young doctor.’ Father Campbell raised an eyebrow.

‘Aye, Ah think you mentioned that.’ Lonie put his feet up on Father Campbell’s desk and tilted his head back as if he owned the place.

A snigger escaped from Father Campbell’s nose. ‘Well, the thing is, even though I intended to specialise in psychiatric care, they couldn’t let me loose without some practical experience in what they saw as real medicine.’

Lonie sat up a little, trying to scratch an itch on his ankle, by rubbing at the bone with the heel of his black Weejun shoes. ‘So you got to be a real doctor then?’

‘Exactly.’ Father Campbell shook his head in agreement. ‘But it was something I actively avoided. On ward rounds, as a student I got the shabbiest white coat, more a kind of rheum-eyed yellow. I was routinely humiliated, the butt of a parade of consultant’s put-downs and snide comments. They saw this as their duty. A toughening up process for real life. In truth, some of them took it too far, but there is little point in dwelling on that. I wasn’t the only one. But we weren’t actually expected to do anything. A consultant might ask a student doctor for his views on a particular patient, who’d be cleaned up and perched on a tubular bed in front of us like a working still life; he might fling a plate on the X-ray machine and ask us to point out to him where the possible thickening of the arteries in the atrium where and what was the possible causes, but he’d never physically think to ask us to do anything about it. And if by some dim chance we were expected to do some medical procedure, there were lots of thrusting young junior doctors, from good homes that were willing to perform. In truth, I could barely, take a pulse, fumbled when putting a cuff on a patient’s arm, and had real trouble making a reading on the sphygmomanometer.’

‘You were hopeless.’ Lonie nodded his head in recognition. He’d been deemed pretty hopeless countless number of times too.

‘That about sums it up.’ Father Campbell puffed on his Woodbine. He was in no hurry pacing out the measure of his life. ‘But I stumbled over the finish line and that was all that counted. I started in The Royal Infirmary, just up the road from here. I got a new white coat every day from laundry, freshly ironed and creased. The difference was the name tag on the collar. It read Doctor.

Lonie lip muttered indifference and scratched his nose. ‘So you were the big cheese then?’

‘No. I was more like a little cheese. But I was treated differently. All the nurses were at my beck and call and hung on every word. Apart from the Ward Sisters, of course. Every September they got to see the white-coated swagger of a new doctor and the wide-eyed madness in their eyes, when it dawned on the new start that the esoteric symptoms they’d boned up for in their Final exams meant as much as a bucket of urine in the real world. I was no different. I was unlucky and lucky.’

Lonie shifted the weight of his feet on the desk to get a better listening position. ‘Ah’m sure glad to hear it. All that misery was fair wearing me out.’

Father Campbell’s looked down at his gloved hands resting in his lap. ‘Well, the Lord was preparing me and in my desperation I’d cried out to Him. And He answered as He always does…’

‘…with more misery?’ Lonie looked across at Father Campbell getting all serious, which was not the way he wanted the interview to go, by getting lost in a tangent of God bothering.

‘Yes, in a way,' admitted Father Campbell, ‘but my heart was being changed from within, as the Lord says “Call to me and I will answer you, and tell you great and hidden things which you have not known.” ’

‘Well.’ Lonie took his feet off the desk and leaned forward, his eyes narrowing, speaking in confidence. ‘Can Ah be honest?’

‘Of course.’

‘Well, don’t bother telling about all the happy-clappy things, just tell me about the misery. Ah’m trying to sell newspapers. I’ll leave it to you to sell the good news.’

‘It’s a deal,’ agreed Father Campbell. ‘You serve up the misery. And I’ll serve up the good news, but you know the Lord works in mysterious ways?’ He smiled on that note. ‘You see my direct superior; the SHO was everything I was not. His father was a surgeon and his father before him and so on. He was brilliant and charismatic and everyone loved him.’

‘You hated him.’ Lonie chuckled. ‘He was probably wielding a plastic scalpel before he started primary school.’

‘No. No.’ There was a measure of shock in Father Campbell’s voice, but there was a smile on his lips. ‘I didn’t hate him, but I did dislike him. He’d a certain inborn arrogance and everything came easy to him, so he expected it to be easy for others.’

Lonie spat out, ‘he was a bully.’

Father Campbell pushed his back into his chair and sat up straighter, staring into the space of the office window, behind Lonie, as he considered this. ‘Yes. I suppose he was.’ He finally nodded in agreement, ‘but what you’ve got to understand is it was a feudal system. Each consultant has his own domain. General Medical, which receives admissions, is no different from the osteopaths or the cardiologists, but the influx of patients waiting to be allocated to those other domains can be more varied. This is a plus point for any medical student wanting to work with a wide variety of patients, but for a bumbling fool like me it was the worst kind of torture.

‘On my first day, I met my SHO on his home patch of his ward, leaning against the nurses’ station. David didn’t even see me. He saw a white coat like his that he could pile with drug charts to be filled in immediately. Prescriptions to be written out immediately. Patients to be assessed immediately. Clinical tests that needed to be sent away, brought back, deciphered and presented as an answer and not a question. In case I forgot any of this I was given a bleeper. I was never very good with gadgetry, so I asked him how it worked.

‘David said, “if it bleeps. Phone me. That’s why it’s called a bleeper.” He made a fist and knocked on my forehead as if to say knucklehead. I didn’t say then I didn’t know how to use a ward phone. It was, for him, a simple system. I was his dog and he was showing me how the whistle worked. I’d to run and jump when he called. ’

Lonie laughed, slapping his chest. ‘Ah can’t say Ah’m much use on phones either, but you seem to have improved. Ah see you talkin’ Italian, nine-to-the-dozen on it now. Is it Italian?’

Father Campbell nodded that it was Italian.

‘Who are you talkin’ too?’

A shrug of the shoulders indicated Father Campbell didn’t think it that important. ‘Someone in the Vatican.’ Some element of the Italian male crept into his face, a dismissive gesture around the lips, as he spoke, as if he’d imbibed the facial nuances with the language.

‘Whit were you talkin’ to them about?’

‘Ah.’ Father Campbell smiled brightly. ‘Their interest is the same as your own. They are worried about the possible closure of this part of the hospital and what it might mean for our two residents Carol Peters and Larry Murray.’

‘They know them by name?’ Lonie sat up on the edge of his chair.

‘Indeed they do.’ Father Campbell admitted. ‘And they know what they are capable of. That is why it would be such a disaster for this hospital to close.’

‘Whit are they capable of?’

‘Ah.’ Father Campbell gave a little Italian shrug. 'They’re capable of nothing when they are here, buttressed by a fortress of prayer. That is why we need your help to keep this place open.’

‘Ah’m no’ sure what you’re gettin’ at.’ Lonie squirmed in his chair uncomfortably. A sly look came into his face. ‘I’d need to meet with Larry myself, to find out what kind of man he is.’

‘That’s possible.’ Father Campbell licked his lips. ‘What worries me is Larry has been asking to meet you.’

Lonie reached for his fags. ‘That worries me to. How does he know me and whit does he know about me?’ He lit a Woodbine, stuck yet another in his lips for Father Campbell, and having lit both, passed the unlit end across the desk to him.

‘Oh, Larry knows a great many things he shouldn’t know.’ There was a sudden look of anguish in Father Campbell’s face. He coughed as the fag smoke seemed to go down the wrong way. ‘He makes his business to know.’

‘You’ve got me worried now.’ Lonnie put his feet up on the desk and fell backwards into his chair. ‘Ah’m no’ so much worried about Larry, as about you thinkin’ Ah’m on the same side as you.’

Father Campbell bent over, spluttering out smoke as he giggled, but he pointed his gloved finger upwards in reference to God.

‘That worries me even mair, if you think God is on my side. Look whit he done to Job. Look whit he done to Jonah. Look whit he done to the Israelites. That’s the kind of friends Ah don’t need.’

‘Well, in that case, the only other friend you will have is…’ Father Campbell seemed to take great relish, as a so called holy man, in pointing downward.

‘Ah think Ah’ll take my chances with the devil. At least we’d understand each other better.’

‘No my friend. The devil can know of you, but he cannot know you.’ Father Campbell’s eyes were filled with so much tenderness Lonie looked away for a place to quietly kill himself, but had to endure looking at the print of poor suffering Saint Sebastian. ‘God has known you from before you were in your mother’s womb. He knows the good and bad. He knows you better than you know yourself. And if you let him into your heart, He will guide you.’

‘Sounds good, but Ah don’t want to be cheeky here. Ah’m no’ a little sunbeam. And Ah don’t need a guide dog.’ Lonie flicked his fag into the ashtray. ‘Ah need a cuppa tea.’

‘Sure.’ Father Campbell smiled across at him. ‘That’s what I like about you…’

Lonie held his hand up in mock surrender. ‘Usually when Ah hear that the next word is…nothing.’

Father Campbell laughed on cue. ‘No. I like your honesty.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘I think you have a good heart. And I’d like you to know that God loves you very, very much.’

‘Magic.’ Lonie couldn’t help grinning. It was getting chased round the room by teddy-bears. ‘But He’s no’ here to make us a cuppa tea, is he?’

Jim came into the office first with Audrey behind her. ‘Lorna’s gone to make the tea,’ he explained.

‘Ah take four sugars,’ said Lonnie.