The Swan Song of Doctor Malloy (17 page)

As I have done at so many other meetings (of politicians, scientists, academics, doctors, bureaucrats), I go on to outline the logistical problems. One-use needles and syringes require meticulous disposal to minimise the risk of needle-stick injury. The cost, especially to ‘resource poor' countries, could be prohibitive. But on both these counts there are optimistic signs from donors and funders. To which, I add (with a slight, if forced, inflection of enthusiasm), my work has the backing of a major internationally renowned pharmaceutical company. With more genuine enthusiasm I tell them that the WHO and UN are eager to support distribution and disposal worldwide.

‘One of the main objectives of the project,' I continue, at last reunited with my voice, no longer the detached observer, ‘is to involve a range of countries around the globe in a venture of global implication, real capacity-building with global benefits.'

Like a transatlantic telephone conversation, delayed nods of approval ripple around the table as Miss Pham's translation catches up with my speech.

‘And,' I add, with a pause for emphasis, ‘the main purpose of my visit to Vietnam is to begin the process of international cooperation by obtaining samples of your excellent rubber to be shipped to our colleagues and collaborators in Colombia, South America, where the assembly and production plant will be based.'

In the afternoon, as the sun and beach beckon and tease, I am taken on a guided tour of the People's Democratic Plastic Refining Factory on the industrial outskirts of the town. While the turtles bask on the shores of the small islands fringing the bay, I peer into vats of boiling rubber and feel and smell sheets of the finished product.

Sitting in the windowless production manager's office, the fan competing with the hum and the burr of the fluorescent light, my head pounds in unison with the throbbing noises from the factory floor.

Over the next four days I get used to the sight of the sea and the sun, through the window of a car or the door of the People's Committee offices, alluring and always just out of reach. My days are filled with meetings and workshops. My companions are lab technicians and scientists. My conversation centres on formulae for rubber compounds. My quest is not for secluded coves, but for the perfect rubber solution to lock and bind with the unique plastic I created for the barrel of the syringe. To form a cement impossible for even the most ingenious and street-wise junkie to unlock without breaking the barrel.

In the evenings, I return to my hotel room, fling open the French windows and gaze across the moonlit bay. Later on, and without drugs, I take my walk along the promenade. This particular night I stand at the water's edge. I've calculated the time difference for London and imagine myself in the crowd, awaiting Lottie's entrance, just as I promised I would do. I check my watch and listen to the music form in my head, encouraging Lottie to play her best. After a minute or two, I sigh and walk on. Children stop and speak to me in their newly acquired English. I smile back, but have learned to keep on moving, or else every evening becomes a circus, with me as the main attraction.

Tonight, an old woman cycles by, slows down and addresses me in perfect American English. She is dressed in a floral skirt and a crisp white blouse and introduces herself as Madam Hui. A straw bonnet is tied under her chin with a sky-blue ribbon. She continues to cycle beside me at walking pace, recounting how, before the war, she was rich, owned a house and worked with the Americans. When they left, she laments, her house was taken by the government and she was unable to work. She is helpless, she says. Could I do something for her? she pleads, the tears welling in her eyes, distress filling her face. Could I just write a letter on her behalf, now, right now, to the authorities? I smile and shake my head. There is nothing I can do, I explain. No way that I can help her.

She stays at my side as we pass down by the river and the illegal kiosks lining the banks. They sell cigarettes, sweets and toys, but the merchants are constantly on the lookout for the open-top police van that swoops from nowhere to confiscate their kiosk, goods and all. Sometimes the stall-holders will throw everything in the river and then pay small boys to swim into the deep waters to retrieve what they can.

The air is clear and the stars outshine the occasional streetlight. The woman in the bonnet continues to harangue me, and, as I squirm and protest my impotence, she looks at me with an air of total dejection.

‘Where can I find hope?' she cries finally, and pedals off into the stream of youngsters – two, three and four to a cycle – who have all come out for the evening's two-wheeled parade.

I watch her disappear into the darkness of the ill-lit road edging the beach and consider my dilemma. I speak aloud. To hear my own words, to reinforce my own self-loathing.

‘I am here to save my sister's life, to promote my invention, to peddle drugs across continents. But no, I cannot and will not stick my neck out and write a letter to the authorities for an elderly lady in an Easter bonnet cycling on a rickety old bike.'

I light a cigarette, find a bar and get wrecked.

After a week of daytimes in labs and night-times walking along the beach, the most suitable rubber compound is agreed upon. As the preparatory research showed, the rubber from the lowlands of Vietnam is ideal for the project. The signing of the contract makes headline news on State television, pushing the record-breaking rolled-steel production into second place. The formal ceremony includes the local agent from Taneffe presenting the sealed document of agreement to the Deputy Minister for War, Invalids and Health. It transpires he specialises in standing in for foreign donors, a kind of rent-a-sales-rep for the Far East. Production of the rubber is to begin immediately, with the first delivery despatched to Colombia within ten days.

At the reception I find myself talking to the Taneffe agent. He is a small bespectacled man with a narrow bird-like face. His eyes flit around the room, eager for prey. He takes me by the elbow, guiding me to a quiet corner of the room.

‘I am sorry I have had little time to speak to you before,' he says in perfect English.

We had met briefly at the People's Committee offices the day before the ceremony.

‘But in my line of work, representing a variety of international interests,' he continues, sipping at his tea, nibbling at a cake, ‘I live an ephemeral life. No time to make real links. An intermediary, an enabler, if you see what I mean.'

‘I understand,' I say, decidedly uninterested in this obsequious man who looks over my shoulder in case he is missing something.

‘Anyway,' he says, ‘I was asked by my contact to pass on this message to you.'

Opening his briefcase, he hands me a sealed envelope.

‘Much good luck with your project,' he says, spotting someone of greater long-term use to him. ‘Goodbye for now.' And without waiting for a reply, he heads across the room.

The note is brief and formal. I am to expect a call at my hotel this evening from a Mr Thuc, a shipping agent acting on behalf of the Taneffe company.

On my way back to the hotel I call in at a noodle shop and sit amongst the families on the long wooden benches by the roadside. I am not hungry, but I need some time away from the nether world I have slipped into. I order a bowl of steaming noodles and spoon in the spicy sauce from the jar on the table, wishing life was as simple as it seems to be for my fellow diners.

Later, when the telephone rings in my hotel room, I am dragged from a dream of a wooded glade where a woman calls for me somewhere in the distance. The voice on the end of the phone is not the woman, but that of a man with a slight American twang. He is calling from the lobby. I agree to meet him in five minutes.

The man is sitting by a large fish tank. My first sight of him is framed amidst a shoal of bright lemon-and-black striped angelfish.

‘I am Mr Thuc. Dr Foster told me all about your work.'

He sounds totally disingenuous, but he smiles and his eyes sparkle. He is taller, thinner and younger than the agent at the reception, but he seems to have been moulded in the same factory. I have little patience for his niceties.

‘I appreciate your compliments, thank you. But I doubt we have much time to get to know each other, so please let's get on with the business of the evening.'

The man drops his sunny disposition.

‘As you please,' he replies coldly. ‘In this bag,' he points to the large leather briefcase between his legs, ‘is the additional cargo for the rubber consignment.'

With a knowing smile, he adds, ‘The seeds of all our future fortunes, so to speak.'

I give him a deliberately cold look. He looks away into the aquarium. A small electric blue neon tetra is nibbling the tail fin of a Siamese fighter. He continues to speak while watching the watery scene.

‘You are to place them in the hotel safe and call a colleague, Mr Hoang, when the rubber samples are ready for packaging. You need do no more for the present. Everything, of course, is attended to and the authorities taken care of. Here is Mr Hoang's phone number. Enjoy the rest of your stay in Vietnam.'

He rises, pushes the case along the floor in my direction and hands me a business card.

All is quiet in Macaroni Wood. The moon is strung like a hammock between tall poplar trees. It is one of those crisp, clear English nights where the stars, saved from the suffocation of the city, flicker against an inky-black canvas. It is deep into night-time and all are asleep save Matilda and Christine, who lie arm in arm in one of the small narrow beds in their cabin. It has been a stressful day and they are relishing their peace. On their morning's trip to Cheltenham the kids terrorised the town centre, notably relieving the pharmacy of all its sunglasses. While one of the girls feigned interest in reusable contact lenses, the boys pilfered the sunglasses stand. When Matilda saw them strolling towards her with labels still dangling from the frames, she herded them all up and shepherded them onto the minibus, heading at top speed for the woods. The minibus has been borrowed from a friendly Catholic school, with ‘Our Lady's Convent' emblazoned on its side, a good cover for a vanload of hoodlums. Back at their hide-out in the woods it was decided no more trips would be scheduled, with the rest of the week comprising games and activities under the careful supervision of Eric, the camp commandant.

‘Thank God, they've finally quietened down,' says Christine, taking a long drag on a joint before passing it to Matilda.

‘They're damaged and damage does damage,' replies Matilda. ‘But, yes, thank God.'

She cuddles up to her lover, stroking the nape of her neck with her fingertips.

‘I love that,' says Christine, ‘it tingles down to my toes.'

Matilda smiles. It is only with Christine she can relax and feel at ease, drop her tough veneer to allow something soft and yielding to take its place.

‘I'm so happy to have you in my life,' she purrs, gently caressing the smooth skin of Christine's back. ‘With men everything was always so different.'

‘In what ways?'

‘Every way. You know. You had carnal knowledge of two or three of that team, didn't you? You brazen hussy.'

‘Yes, I know it's different,' laughs Christine, tussling the older woman's thick black hair. ‘But how? How did you find it different?'

‘It's like now, we can talk. We connect. Not like with men. There's never real intimacy with men.'

‘Ah, the old “in-to-me-see” chestnut.'

A woodpigeon coos in the tree outside their open window. The smoke from the joint is drawn up into the air.

‘I used to think,' continues Matilda, moving closer, nestling under Christine's arm and snuggling into her warm naked breast. ‘That it was all social, all conditioning. But look at this lot here.' She gestures to the huts where the boys and girls sleep. ‘The girls spend all day painting their nails and talking about romance and the boys race around thumping each other across the head.'

‘Testosterone in the womb, my dearest,' replies Christine, kissing Matilda's cheek and nibbling her ear.

‘You can't always blame testosterone.'

‘When I was doing my degree …'

‘Don't tell me,' interrupts Matilda, ‘you did a course.'

‘Correct.'

‘You've always done a course. Sculpting, Mayan Civilisation, Motor Car Maintenance …'

‘Well,' interrupts Christine, ‘on this course, Social Evolution it was called, we had a lecture on the differences between men and women. Forget all the liberal agonising; just look at the brain. They've done studies to show that in the womb, during foetal development, the sexes are exposed to differing levels of testosterone. This has lasting effects on the hypothalamus. That's the bit influencing sexual and aggressive behaviour throughout life.'

Matilda loves it when Christine tells her things. This young woman who is so eager for knowledge, so adept at passing it on. When she speaks like this her face takes on a different quality, elements of beauty and wisdom. But Matilda will never tell Christine this. About the way her face changes shape when she's explaining something, how her eyes shimmer, how the air becomes electric. Or the way the sound of her voice hypnotises the older woman into a place that is deep and calming and nurturing. No, she will never tell her this, for fear of breaking the spell, in case things might be changed. Even amongst women, some things are best left unsaid.

‘But wait for this,' enthuses Christine, unaware of the peculiar spell she has cast over her companion. ‘Scientists have done studies on humans to show sex differences in a frontal lobal region responsible for emotional reasoning. Right here,' she says, stroking Matilda's forehead. ‘It's your corpus callosum, a massive bridge of fibres connecting the two halves of the brain. And, my darling, just like with yours, the studies have shown it is bigger in women than in men.'