Ever since Connie Beauchamp had arrived at St Mary's trailing that perfumed sense of power in her wake, Will had felt his nose put severely out of joint, and the passing sense of time had not dulled these feelings.
"Why does she make a dead set at me?" he had repeatedly asked either himself silently, or alternatively Tom, who he had felt would have been most sympathetic to his point of view.
"Let's face it, you're her registrar and you know as well as I, that you have to find some way to get along with her. Some might say that the seasoned consultant doesn't exist without the scars on his back from twenty lashes from when he was a registrar." Tom had chuckled back to him with dry humour.
"I don't think that's very funny." Will had retorted with stiff-necked displeasure.
"Isn't it?" Tom had replied vaguely. "You'll have to learn to live with it. Mind you, whatever you might think of her personally, there's no doubting her professional ability. Look at this way, would you rather have a more easygoing but a less competent consultant? You'll look back in five years and you'll forgive Connie her ways from all you'll have learned from her"
Will's face had remained expressionless while he had been put out by Tom's obvious favouritism. That woman charms everyone except him, he had reflected. Only he knew the truth about her.
He had reflected back to the time when the top surgeons had been taking it in turns to go AWOL to hang around court all day over that wretched trial. All it had meant had been that he and the other registrars had been run off their feet even more than normal, and that he had had more arguments with his wife over the old perennial, of him being an absentee father and missing those school events that came up with bewildering frequency from out of nowhere. They had the knack of landing at the worst possible time. Some of the nurses had been grumbling, and Will, overhearing the gossip, had said nothing but heard everything as always.
Will could remember the day after the trial had finished when Connie had summoned all the staff together. She stood, centre stage, as she spoke with a sweet and appreciative smile on her face, trying to make eye contact with all the staff, as if trying to communicate her feelings to everyone.
"I know that not everyone's here but I personally would like to thank everyone for pulling together unselfishly while Tom, Zubin and I have been away. You might know that we have all given evidence in a major trial over the sad and untimely death of one of our outpatients, the Reverend Mills. I want to thank all of you for covering for our absence and, believe you me, all your efforts will not go unrewarded if it is within my powers."
As she spoke, Connie's violet eyes flitted past Will's stony but impassive stare and passed on to his immense relief. For one second, he had feared that that dangerous power mad woman might expose him publicly for his very secret role in the trial, something that he wanted a discreet veil drawn over as soon as possible.
"I have something of a confession to make about the trial. This is the one and only occasion that I will confess to a mistake in my judgment about the cause of his death. There may have been gossip about differences of opinion between myself on the one hand and Professor Khan, Mr. Campbell-Gore and Mr. Griffin on the other. After hearing the verdict, there is nothing stopping the four of us from working as one for the benefit of this hospital. With the benefit of this valuable experience, I can safely revert to being the power mad, dominant woman that I am sure you all think that I am."
Will could have sworn that Connie's smile was also meant for him personally. When the crowd dispersed, he had heaved a final sigh of relief and strolled along to his next errand. At least he was in the clear.
Connie seemed to have turned over a new leaf in the weeks that followed the trial and was all sweetness and light to him. She even graciously accepted his stumbling request to have the afternoon off for some kind of children's special school occasion. Accordingly, it came as a bolt out of the blue when Connie casually strolled up to him, smiled sweetly before speaking in the softest tones.
"Know any good barristers, Mr. Curtis"
"I don't know what you mean"
"Come come, Will, I think that you and I need to have a little chat about the matter. In my office. Now."
Will's feet took him of their own accord, while the ominous clicks of Connie's high heels sounded in his ears as she made a straight line for her office. Once in the seat in front of her spacious desk, Connie's eyes glared at him and she launched straight into the attack without any preliminaries.
"I've been busy recently and I've had bigger fish to fry but I feel that I can devote all the time in the world to you that you deserve"
Will instinctively that stony self-contained manner of his Army days when he had been hauled up before his C.O. and had been given a good dressing down. He hated himself for reacting that way, as he wasn't supposed to react that way to a woman who had been unaccountably placed in authority over him.
"Well, since you won't talk, let me refresh your memory. Let me cast your mind back to
the events leading back to Barbara Mills' trial when your flapping ears got wind of the fact that I was to be prosecution witness and you couldn't wait to tittle tattle about events at this hospital to that no outsider could have possibly have heard of through the normal channels."
"I still don't know what you mean, Connie"
"Let's get more specific and remind you of to patients that the barrister brought up in court, the Battista operation that I performed on my very first day to save Pat Cowdray's life, and everything about Maggie Thornton right down to the finest detail."
"Barristers are clever people or so I'm told. They must have ways of finding things out"
"In your experience, Mr. Curtis. Somehow I think not"
In the pause that Connie engineered to perfection, Will was dismayed to see that slight smile curve the corners of her lips even while her eyes stared into his soul.
"In that case, how do you account for the details of my sex life which the defence barrister were paraded before court for all to hear. Some grubby hack from the News of the world couldn't have done more of a public hatchet job on me. It took someone with that level of vindictiveness to pull that stroke on me. You had better not come on with your 'holier than thou' routine about the way I lead my life as you will be taking yours into your hands, professional or otherwise." Connie stormed at Will as her suppressed anger boiled over in waves of molten lava.
"You had better blame her for telling tales in court, not me." Will flashed back at her as he was finally provoked to lash back at her.
"Oh, the barrister was a she, Will"
Will felt that sickening jolt as he realized, too late, that that conniving woman had tricked him into making a confession. He didn't know what to say.
"George Channing was very forthcoming about the way you almost tripped over your words in your haste to blacken my reputation. I heard everything I needed to hear from her"
"Why should she make all this up"
"Oh, women talk, Will. You would be surprised what we are able to find out but we don't always say what we know"
"Why are you bringing this up after all these months, Connie?"
"I told you that your efforts would not go unrewarded if it is within my powers. I didn't say how I would reward you. Still everything comes to she who waits." Connie smirked.
"What do you want from me, Connie"
At that point, Connie stood up and paced round her room, dressed in her shortest skirt that she could push the boundaries of professional etiquette. She stared down at him as he sat down in her chair.
"Well, just for now, you could end up back on cadaver practice for a month which is something that I intended but that might be considered unfair. Instead, I am offering you a degree of mercy. Just one little slip in your professional standards and you'll get more than a month as I'll take this squalid episode into account. You had better know that I will be keeping an especially sharp eye on your professional abilities and morals. As you know, there is nothing that goes on at St Mary's that I don't find out about sooner or later. Just for now, I'm giving you an oral warning which I'll note down in your records."
"So you mean to dangle me on the edge of professional ruin?" Will shot back, red faced and humiliated.
"You have to do things my way, Will, or didn't you know that by now. You have no choice about that , not while I'm here. That is all, Will, I don't think that I need detain you anymore." Connie dismissed him coldly.
Somehow, Will got himself to his feet, fumbled at the door handle which seemed to conspire with Connie to trap him, and stalked out, red faced and furious. It had not been his day.