Johnny Swanson - Eleanor Updale [15]
‘A what?’
‘Vaccine – that’s another good word for you (double “c” – you don’t get that very often). It’s a special medicine to stop you getting a disease in the first place. It’s a wonderful thing – made of living cells. But it’s very hard to produce – they have to grow it in a special liquid made from potatoes.’
Johnny laughed. ‘Potatoes?’
‘Yes, I know it sounds comical, but it’s actually a very tricky process.’ The doctor picked up the lever again, and carefully manoeuvred the inner tube back inside the tyre. ‘It’s not something you can just boil up in your kitchen. You need controlled laboratory conditions. But if you get the process exactly right, the vaccine contains a tiny dose of the disease.’
‘Isn’t that what was in the test you gave us?’ Johnny held out his wrist to show that he was in the clear.
‘A vaccine’s much more potent than that. It’s strong enough to teach the blood to fight against invading germs, but it doesn’t make people ill. Do you want some more strange words? This vaccine’s called Bacille Calmette-Guérin. We make it easier for ourselves by calling it BCG. It’s named after the Frenchmen who developed it – lucky devils.’
‘Lucky?’
The doctor wiped his hands on his trousers. ‘Oh, Johnny,’ he chuckled. ‘There’s nothing a medic wants more than his name attached to something: a piece of equipment, or a disease.’ He screwed the nozzle of the bicycle pump back onto the valve. ‘That way your memory lives on even after your death. I knew them both, you know – Calmette and Guérin – when they were starting out on their research, long before the war. In fact, that’s how I met my wife. She’s a distant relative of Professor Calmette.’
‘Mum told me she was French,’ said Johnny, looking longingly at the pump. ‘But she doesn’t sound foreign, does she?’
Dr Langford turned round. ‘Would you like to do this bit?’ he asked, and Johnny gladly got to work re-inflating the tyre. The doctor set an empty apple box on its end and sat down. ‘Well, she’s been living here for more than forty years, remember. And her English was pretty good to start with.’ He smiled, and his eyes grew moist as he thought back. ‘It was the first thing I noticed at that dinner party in Lille all those years ago. She’s very well educated. From a fine background. It was good of her to give it all up for a humble English doctor.’ He cleared his throat and slapped his knees. ‘Still, as it turned out, her family lost everything in the war, so it’s probably just as well that she married me.’ He reached over and felt the wheel. ‘That’s enough now. Leave it for a bit to make sure it doesn’t go down again.’
‘But the professor,’ said Johnny; ‘the one who made the vaccine – did he survive?’
‘Oh yes. He’s still around – though, like me, he’s ageing now. I saw him quite recently. My wife and I went over to visit the laboratory where they produce the vaccine. France has gone overboard for it. They’re giving it to babies – free.’
‘Why don’t we have it here?’ asked Johnny, collecting up all the bits and pieces from the pavement, and putting them back in the tin.
Dr Langford sighed. ‘It’s complicated. There’s a law against bringing new medicines into this country unless they’ve been approved by the government.’
‘So why don’t they approve it?’
‘All sorts of reasons. Some people are against vaccination on principle – they think it’s wrong to interfere with Nature; and there are big-wigs here who aren’t convinced that the BCG works. But the fact is, Johnny, we British have never liked being taught anything by the French. Our government is paying British scientists to search for a British treatment. They haven’t come up with anything yet, and I don’t think there’s any need for them to try.’
‘Couldn’t you tell the government to let us have the French vaccine?’
‘Oh, I’m a nobody as far as they’re concerned.’ Dr Langford dropped his voice. ‘But, as it happens,