A Sleep and A Forgetting. Gregory Hall
had often teased her sister on her devotion to homeopathy, herbalism, acupuncture, reflexology and other such alternative therapies, for which the town was notorious.
Afterwards they had had tea in a restaurant which rejoiced in the name Demeter’s Pantry. ‘So how does Bill stand on complementary medicine?’ she had asked Flora, somewhat disingenuously.
‘About where you’d imagine a loyal employee of Avalon Laboratories would stand,’ she had replied, tartly. ‘He thinks it’s all, to quote his elegant phrase, “a load of eyewash.”’
‘I thought,’ continued Catriona, impelled more by mischievousness than by any real interest in the subject, ‘that modern medical opinion was tending not to regard such things so dismissively?’
Flora snorted. ‘Maybe there is some enlightenment in some quarters. There are some GPs who also offer homeopathy, for instance. But drugs companies exist by selling drugs. They’re never going to promote a drugs-free therapy, for obvious reasons.’
‘But I bet they monitor such things, nevertheless. Surely if their research indicated that some of these treatments really worked, they’d have to take account of that in some way?’
Her sister had laughed derisively. ‘Honestly, Cat. For someone who’s such a brainbox, you’re awfully naïve sometimes. It’s those ivory towers you’ve inhabited for so long. Look, there’s research and then there’s research. For instance, you do research into Wordsworth. You discover a previously unknown manuscript. It contains, what? I know, a pornographic poem, yes, as explicit as anything in Rochester. What do you do?’
‘I’d suspect immediately it was a fake!’
‘OK. Apart from checking its authenticity. If you were satisfied it was genuine, you’d publish it, wouldn’t you? With all the usual critical apparatus.’
‘Of course. It would be as though a Force-Eight earthquake had hit Grasmere.’
‘You wouldn’t say that, as the blessed Wordsworth’s pure reputation as the poet of daffodils and misty mountains would be sullied, the manuscript should be suppressed?’
‘Of course not! I’d be fascinated that the sensuality that is latent in his work had fully emerged in some private moment. It’s such an intriguing idea, Flo!’
She laughed. ‘Cat, you’re a genuine scholar, a sea-green incorruptible. No one’s paying you to keep Wordsworth safe for generations of GCSE students. You’re not in hock to the Lakes poets industry, preserving their heritage of clean-living and mountain-walking for the coach parties that flock to worship at the shrine! But what if you were?’
Catriona smiled. ‘I see what you’re driving at, you devious woman. You mean, there are some scientists who might fudge their findings to preserve the status quo.’
‘Precisely. That’s what scientific research is for. To prove that what you, or rather the person who is paying you, would wish to be the result, is the result. Genetically modified crops? Absolutely safe. BSE? Absolutely not transmissible to human beings. Mobile phones? No problem. It happens over and over again. Until, that is, the weight of the evidence is such that even the scientists in the pay of the governments and the big corporations can’t ignore it or argue it away any longer, and then, of course, there’s a need for yet more research into ever-more expensive drugs to cure – or preferably to alleviate, there’s more profit in alleviation – AIDS, or vCJD, or any of the other horrid plagues that their masters have inflicted on us in the first place.’
Catriona had been genuinely taken aback by the hornet’s nest the discussion had stirred. She had never heard her sister speak so passionately, and yet so cynically on a matter of this kind. She told her as much.
And Flora had said, ‘I’ve been interested in these things for a long time. You just haven’t noticed before. I read a newspaper – a real one, the Guardian, not the Daily Mail. I listen every night without fail to the midnight news on Radio Four. I’m a member of Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. I read books, too – not novels but serious stuff on the environment. For years you thought of me as just an empty-headed blonde. The air-stewardess factor, wasn’t it? You always thought my job was a joke. A glorified waitress, you said once. Remember those awful sexist adverts years ago for that airline? “I’m Flora, fly me!” I’m Flora, fuck me, more like. Well, it wasn’t like that. Not for me. I never had the time to fuck a passenger, never mind the inclination! At various times, I delivered a baby, I gave heart massage, I dealt with a fire in the galley. I was on two flights on which there were full-scale emergency landings: sirens, fire-tenders, chutes out, the works. I wasn’t ever hijacked, but that was a real and constant danger. And every time we took to the air, someone was sick, someone was drunk, someone was a pain in the arse, some unaccompanied minor needed a mummy to hug. Oh yes, and I had to serve drinks and meals non-stop!’
There had been defiant fire in her blue eyes as she had drunk up her tea, and a decisive clink as she had set down her cup.
‘Excuse me, are you Frank Churchill?’
The tall, sunburnt, middle-aged man with greying chestnut hair, wearing a leather jacket and standing at the bar in the crowded, smoke-filled pub, turned around at her light touch on his shoulder. She could see from the way he paused to look her over, his eyes widening and his smile deepening, that he was a man who was accustomed to appraise a woman in the manner that in, another century, he might have assessed a horse. The only difference was that he did not grab her jaw to examine her teeth. But he did not trouble to disguise the fact that he was mentally running an appreciative hand over her withers. ‘Yes, that’s me. And who are you?’
‘My name is Catriona Turville. I’m Flora’s sister.’
She spoke the latter words softly, only loud enough for him to hear the words. He hesitated for a long moment, as if he hadn’t heard, or perhaps as if he’d heard only too well. Then he nodded casually at an empty table in the far corner. ‘Why don’t we sit down over there? It’s a bit more private.’
A few heads turned as he ushered her away from the bar, his arm on her shoulders. She itched to shake off the unwanted guidance, but to do so would have drawn more attention to them. Nonetheless, she could hear vaguely salacious murmuring from some of the other drinkers as the two of them crossed the floor together.
‘Don’t let them bother you,’ he said as they sat down.
‘I won’t,’ she assured him.
‘Can I get you anything?’
‘No, thank you, Mr Churchill.’
‘It’s Frank. No one calls me Mr Churchill. Too prime-ministerial. Though family legend has it that we are a cadet branch of the Marlborough dynasty. On the wrong side of the blanket, of course.’
‘I’m not here to discuss your family tree.’
Unmoved by her rudeness, he took a swallow from the pint glass, then set it on the stained deal table before him. ‘So, what are you here to discuss?’
‘Please don’t waste time by pretending ignorance. I’ve already told you, and, by your reaction, you’ve already acknowledged being told. Flora, as I’m sure you are aware, has disappeared. You, more than anyone, have a reason to know or to suspect where she might have gone. You were, by all accounts, having an affair with her.’
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