Sweet Talking Money. Harry Bingham

each of whom was like a kind of Shake-n-Vac dispenser for builders’ dust, and the kitchen, living room, bathroom, and bedrooms were full of enough beer cans to threaten a glut on the aluminium market. Offers when they came were scanty and low, and Bryn ended up settling for eight hundred and fifty, pleased to get even that.

      ‘Where are you going to live now?’ asked Meg.

      Brandishing a wire brush, a boiler suit, and twenty-five litres of white paint, Bryn pointed from the reception room windows. Seagulls wheeled in the empty sky above while, beneath them, the barge they shat on, like a tarnished crone, swayed uneasily on the oily water.

      ‘You’re kidding,’ said Meg.

      3

      Like a cross-Channel swimmer hesitating at the waterside, the first two weeks had been spent with Cameron and Kati locked in anxious theoretical discussions about the best way to handle patients.

      ‘It’s a challenge for us,’ admitted Cameron during a rare interlude. ‘Rats can’t launch malpractice suits, and if you get it wrong, you don’t have to spend too much time worrying if someone else could have done it better. Patients are different. I mean, after all, they’re people.’

      Kati’s big spaniel eyes blinked slowly in agreement. ‘On the other hand,’ she said, ‘it’s true, we do know a lot about nutrient therapy. Like, a lot. Combining that with conventional medical care could be of incredible benefit. But still …’ She shook her head, unhappy with the responsibility that came with looking after people instead of rats.

      ‘Maybe we should focus on a particular disease group,’ said Cameron. ‘Hepatitis A, perhaps. Even flu.’

      ‘Or how about just one patient a month?’ queried Bryn sarcastically. ‘Have you actually made any progress at all? Apart from working out that patients are people, that is.’

      ‘Got anywhere?’ repeated Cameron. ‘Sure. We’ve identified some real issues, a laundry list of points to get thinking about.’

      ‘OK,’ interrupted Bryn. ‘You know what? I think you should start seeing some patients, and soon. We’ll open for business on Monday.’

      4

      On the following Monday, they threw their doors open to a wondering public, ready for all comers. On Monday evening, they closed them again, not having admitted a single patient; no one except a lady who’d wandered in asking for directions, and a bloke from the Eternity Wharf industrial estate who’d cut his finger and wondered if they had any plasters.

      On Tuesday it was the same, except that no one asked for directions, and the bloke next door now had a packet of Elastoplast and no further need of medical attention.

      On Wednesday, Bryn got serious about advertising.

      5

      London is an expensive place in which to advertise.

      You can buy space alright – space on hoardings, space in papers, space on the tube trains, space on radio, space on TV, space in the freebie magazines shoved in your face at Underground stations, space on those green or pink photocopied fliers that crowd London’s air like pigeons. There’s no shortage of outlets for your advertising pound, but that in itself becomes the problem. Londoners close off from advertising. They develop a kind of sight-blindness which cuts out the excess of noise. To catch their eye and hold it, to keep their reading gaze for enough seconds to transmit the required information, you need to buy a mountain of space, an unmissable island in the info-cluttered sea.

      ‘Damn it,’ said Bryn, slamming down the phone. ‘How the bloody hell do people get started round here?’

      He picked up the sheets with his advertising budget and began to redo the numbers, trying to trim a number here, cut a figure there, knowing in his heart he should be doubling the numbers, not halving them. He was sitting with Meg in the new reception area. A cleaned-up boat hull topped with waxed oak boards formed a reception desk and Meg sat behind it reading a gossip magazine. ‘Maybe I should retrain as an aromatherapist,’ said Meg. ‘Most of the calls we get are from people who hope we do aromatherapy and that thing they do with feet. Foot poking.’

      ‘We’ll get patients. Just a question of time.’

      ‘Reflexology,’ said Meg. ‘That’s it. What you need, matey, is a bit of free publicity.’

      ‘Thanks, Meg. I’d stick to foot poking if I were you.’ Bryn’s voice skirted an edge of irritation. He wasn’t angry at Meg but he was frustrated with the way things were going and was worried that he’d miscalculated badly.

      ‘No, really. I mean it,’ she said, returning to her magazine. For a few minutes there was silence, then Cameron wandered in, distractedly, looking for Kati. Meg interrupted her.

      ‘Hey, Cammie. How good are you at fixing mysterious viral illnesses which have baffled literally dozens of America’s best doctors?’

      Cameron shrugged. ‘Depends on the virus, depends on the blood.’

      Meg passed over her magazine and Cameron read briefly before commenting, ‘Probably virally induced mitochondrial collapse. Enteroviruses, one of the retro-viruses, could be anything. Result is what we’d call CFIDS, what you guys would call ME. It’s a serious illness, in bad cases very nasty indeed.’

      ‘Can you fix it?’

      Another shrug. ‘Look, with time and resources, I reckon Kati and I could fix pretty much anything. But we’ve only got three patients in the whole of next week and somehow I don’t think she’s one of them.’

      Meg passed her magazine over to Bryn.

      ‘Free publicity,’ she said. ‘Always listen to your Auntie Meg.’

       NINE