by Paul Markham
The mid-afternoon sunshine cast a dappled light, through the thinning foliage of lines of silver birch trees, as residents and visitors went about their business in a wide suburban street in the late autumn. The air was pleasantly warm, but with a slight hint of a cool night to come. It was filled with a cocktail of sound, in which the noise from light passing traffic mingled with the buzz of conversation and laughter, the rhythmic pattern of footsteps with various acoustic characteristics and the chirping and warbling of the local bird population, as it took heed of the lengthening shadows and sang out its Vespers canticles.
Among the pedestrians making their way along the popular thoroughfare, with its elegant Georgian facades on either side of the road, was a young woman in her early thirties. She was walking at a fairly slow, deliberate pace and, although she was obviously navigating her course carefully between other pedestrians, it was clear that she was also deep in thought.
Agnes was, in many ways, an old-fashioned young woman. She had been brought up as the third of five siblings, the offspring of a clergyman, in an affluent provincial parish and his quite-mannered, gentle and kind-hearted wife. She had enjoyed a good childhood and adolescence and had made herself very popular amongst deeper-thinking friends, by her rare blend of incisive thought, clarity of perception, analytical skills and a gift for diplomacy that ought to have seen her career take root in the Foreign Office.
In fact, Agnes had followed a very different career line after graduating from a good red-brick university with a first-class Honours degree in Psychology. As a child and teenager, she had grown up in a climate in which newspaper headlines and news broadcasts often highlighted the troubled state of industrial relations in the United Kingdom. She had read page after page of comment on the consequences of this turbulence for all who were directly affected by it and she had listened with avid interest to numerous discussions involving her father (her mother rarely contributed to such debates) and his colleagues and friends; even the bishop, on one occasion; dealing with the ethical and social complexities of life within industrialised societies. She had been totally absorbed by the passions that the turbulence had engendered and she had been impressed by the efforts of those who had sought to pour the oil of calm and reason upon the troubled waters of strife and conflict. It had, in fact, been such people who had led her to seek a career in conciliation and arbitration, to which her rare blend of characteristics and skills suited her well.
Such is the nature of diplomacy at this level that, no matter how skilled the arbitrator may be and no matter how experienced, the work is bound to affect anyone who is a sentient human being, particularly in cases where all reasonable attempts at bringing people face to face with reality and their duties towards one another lead only to deeper intransigence.
Agnes, who was just reaching a critical point in negotiations involving parties who gave every impression of having a doctorate in obduracy and whose block-headed attitudes had convinced her that they deserved one another, felt herself under particular stress but had been reluctant to seek medical advice. She had no problem where her GP was concerned, for the two women, of similar ages, got along very well together both professionally and socially. But on this occasion, Agnes felt particularly vulnerable, even to the point of being unable to cope; the kiss of death to many a promising career in this demanding field.
Despite her reluctance, she had finally arranged an appointment with Dr Menzies, an extremely efficient and skilled medical practitioner whom many regarded as a model for general practice. She had graduated with a good medical degree at the same time as Agnes had started her career some seven years earlier, and had moved into general practice four years later.
Fiona Menzies knew Agnes quite well, but she was also aware, intuitively, that the root cause of her friend and patient's problems were not so much physiological as psychological. The two young women had discussed the situation briefly at a late surgery one cold, wet and depressing mid-autumn evening. On the basis of what she heard, Fiona had invited Agnes to visit her socially, since she had an idea to discuss with her, but one that was probably best deliberated away from the confines of the GP surgery.
It was, perhaps, a measure of Agnes' trust and confidence in Fiona that allayed her misgivings when, half way through a deliciously-chilled bottle of Frascati Superiore, Fiona had suggested to her that she should visit The Bamboo Suite, which had been set up fairly recently by a couple whom she knew well.
Despite Agnes' gentle persistence, Fiona had not been forthcoming in terms of the detail of her knowledge of The Bamboo Suite, but she did assure Agnes that she had familiarised herself most effectively, not only with the staff there, but also with the services they offered.
Fiona explained to her friend and patient that it had all started with the notorious 'MacBride' case, in which she had been accused; baselessly, as it turned out when judgment was finally given in Court against the offending parents. An exemplary sentence was handed down for contempt of Court and attempts to procure a miscarriage of justice - of both neglect and abuse of two of the MacBride family's six children, who were temporarily in her care whilst resident for a few weeks in the area served by the Mitcham, Saunders and Menzies practice. Once it had transpired that the same allegations had been made against other GP practices, with the active help of an unscrupulous firm of ambulance-chasing lawyers, the police had made further investigations and the entire scam had been exposed publicly and splashed across headlines ranging in tone from measured anger to lurid calls for retribution.
Despite the welcome outcome, the experience had been harrowing for Fiona and her colleagues. Allegations had been made that had left her totally repulsed and fuming with indignation that anybody, whether in their right mind or not, could dream up such a tissue of mendacity. So drastic had been the effect of these dreadful events that Fiona had been on the point of giving up medicine altogether. However, she had confidence in the substance of her defence and was aware of how resignation would look at such a critical stage, to a salacious public with a voracious appetite for perceived wrongdoing amongst supposed 'pillars of Society'. Also to news media with an unhealthy aptitude for Schadenfreude; delighting in the misfortunes of others; and with a pathological allergy to rational deliberation and fairness of mind. She had therefore resolved that she would not let these unscrupulous people thwart ambitions that were motivated as much by altruism as by the desire to make her mark on her profession.
Agnes was bemused, but she respected Fiona greatly, whilst admiring her in her capacity as a physician and respecting her enormously as a woman. In fact, unbeknown to Fiona, and hermetically-sealed against perception by anyone else, Agnes felt a deep warmth of comfort and trust when she was with her friend, extending on occasions to what she took for a desire to take their friendship to a deeper level of mutual understanding and enjoyment. Whilst both women had close, even intimate, male friends, neither was immune to the appeal of her own sex, predominantly at a social level. Yet neither had betrayed even a hint of this to the other.
"Agnes!" The quiet urgency of the tone in Fiona's voice caught the arbitrator's full attention. "Please trust me and my judgement and try to suspend your own natural instincts when you go to see Helen and Stephen. I promise you it will be worth it."
Agnes smiled at the physician and the latter recognised the hesitancy and uncertainty in what was usually a radiant gesture of precious closeness between trusting friends. Nonetheless, Fiona was confident that Agnes would follow her advice, although it would have been incorrect to say that she was totally confident!
Agnes walked up the short flight of steps, flanked by freshly painted black wrought-iron railings capped with gold-coloured finials, and approached the pale olive-green front door with the brass knocker, handle and letterbox. To the side of the door, there was a polished brass plate that read The Bamboo Suite, with a tasteful, elegant but simple logo featuring a bamboo plant silhouetted against the sun. As she approached the door, it opened unbidden and she was greeted with a natural and comforting smile from a young woman who appeared to be in her mid-twenties.
"Good afternoon, Miss Carradine, Helen and Stephen are expecting you."
Agnes returned the smile with the craft of one able to mask her real feelings beneath a convincing diplomatic social laminate and was ushered into a spacious hallway decorated in very pale olive-green, with dark straw-coloured coving and a pure white ceiling, from which an elegant chandelier hung in sparkling splendour. The receptionist, who was dressed in a comfortable and stylish cream-coloured short-sleeved tunic that came down to just above her knees, with the Bamboo Suite logo embroidered just above the left breast, showed Agnes to a comfortable chestnut-coloured leather sofa and then made her way behind a white American oak desk that had obviously not been a bargain. The receptionist, whose name badge bore the italicised name Sophia, sat down and picked up the handset from the trim olive green telephone on the desk.
"Miss Carradine is here, Helen," she said, almost in a whisper, to the person who answered her call.
Agnes looked around at her surroundings, taking in the soft and soothing décor and admiring the original ink drawings, very obviously of Eastern origin featuring the flora of the Orient in a style that made the viewer's mind work effortlessly in following the flowing black and coloured lines against the pale background. In fact, Agnes felt that she could well have been in a Harley Street consulting suite or at the practice of some highly sophisticated practitioner of complementary medicine. In this line of thinking, she was closer to reality than she may have realised ... as she was about to discover.
The sound of a perfectly oiled self-closing door mechanism operating at the top of the broad, sweeping staircase drew Agnes' gaze upwards towards a woman of medium height and build, probably a few years older than her, who was making her way with a light step down towards her. This woman, whom Agnes correctly took for Helen, was wearing a cream coloured two-piece suit and a moleskin coloured satin blouse. For a moment, Agnes could not make out whether this lady was wearing very convincing tan-coloured hosiery or if she was, in fact, sporting a very expensive tan. She looked into the woman's deep brown eyes as she approached and held out a hand of greeting, accompanied by yet another warm and sincere smile.
"Hello, Agnes, I'm Helen Oakley. Fiona has told me a little about you. Would you like to come upstairs, where we can talk in more relaxed and private surroundings."
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