“Look, Gerry. It’s new. That’s why it’ll work. We—me and ’Toinette, my sister Toni—we did their tests. You think too highly of people’s intelligence. They aren’t you know. They’re mostly the ones who fail or score about a hundred. We did the tests without trying. Well, I know what an asset we’ve got with me inside. We’ll need more people, more information—I’ll get it. We’ll need weapons, explosives perhaps, we’ll need safe places to hide ourselves or him. This place? Maybe—and the stables and the old barge. There’s a cupboard, an old loo—”
“We’d need a safe way of getting out ourselves—Christ!”
“Fuck me, sorry Miss.”
She reached for the transistor. It was no longer Winnie’s ancient machine. This one fitted easily into the palm of her hand. She switched it on and voices from some other life filled the room.
Yes. It’s a black one. Moving your way. Over.
Gerry laughed.
“You don’t suppose they’d use a channel you could get at with that thing?”
It’s not ridiculous, she thought. Why am I so certain I am not being ridiculous? Under her arm the flat voices were talking at intervals. Yes, if you say so. No, I said it’s a black one. Perhaps they were not police. Perhaps—what? Inside a radio and out there in infinite space that included the world there was audible mystery and confusion, infinite confusion. She moved the control, destroying the voices, passed through music, a talk, a quiz, a burst of laughter, some foreign languages, loud, then faint. And she moved the control back and found the point between all stations; and immediately in the uncleaned room which seemed always to smell of drains and food, and to be organized, or disorganized round an unmade bed—the very light from the window seeming dusty and dim as if the whole world were no more than an annexe to the room—immediately there came the voice of the darkness between the stars, between the galaxies, the toneless voice of the great skein unravelling and lying slack; and she knew why the whole thing would be simple, a tiny part of the last slackness.
Running-down. Dark.
A voice came back faintly on the verge of the hissing. I couldn’t get the number. I said it’s a black one.
A wave of happiness and delight went over and through her.
“It’s going to be simple.”
“Who says so?”
“Think.”
It was a triumph of the will. As if a hand was on them the two men began to discuss the operation they so plainly did not believe in. They began to isolate problems and put them aside unsolved. Sophy thought of the school as she knew it and the people there. She became indifferent to the ineffectual and random kind of suggestions that they tossed from one to the other. She heard nothing of what they said but the tone, understanding by it how they felt themselves to be pawing at a steel wall that surrounded such a centre of the privileged and valuable. In the end they came to a full stop. Bill went off at last. Gerry got the whisky out of the drawer in which he had hidden it. They drank bit by bit as they undressed and then had sex, Sophy absently.
“Your mind’s not on your work.”
“Have you noticed, Gerry, how through this thing we understand each other more?”
“No I haven’t.”
“Well. We’re closer.”
Then there was a time in which he convulsed and gasped and grabbed and groaned and she waited for it to be over. She patted his back and ruffled his hair in a companionable sort of way.
He grunted into her shoulder.
“Can’t be closer than two-in-a-bed.”
“I said ‘understand’.”
“Do we?”
“Well. I understand you.”
He purred.
“Tell me about myself, doctor.”
“Why should I?”
“It’s this recurrent nightmare I have, doctor—may I call you Sigmund?—about a disgusting wench—”
“I wonder. I’m sure you don’t dream, Gerry. You daydream about money, you lovely man. Masses of money.”
“My oh my. I ought to beat you up to satisfy the neighbours. But remember, by the way, that I’m in command.”
“You?”
“Well fo’ lan’s sake honey chile! Sleep time.”
“No.”
“Insatiable.”
“Not that, it’s the school. It’s those questions—”
“Dead end.”
She said nothing for a while, thinking how easily he gave up and how he must be pushed.
“I shall go back.”
He rolled over on his back, stretched, yawned.
“Sophy, pet. Are you getting a thing about him?”
“Fido? My God, he’s such a bore! Only after the three of us talked about it, I can see how much I’ll have to find out. That’s all.”
“Remember whose doggie you are.”
“Wuff wuff O my God. Still—if he ever got me into bed it would be out of sheer boredom. Premarital sex.”
He smiled at her sideways, boyishly, winningly.
“If it’s absolutely necessary. But please, please dear thing, don’t enjoy it.”
She felt a certain pique.
“My fiancé is not like that. He’s in training. All the same, Gerry, I think you might at least pretend to be jealous!”
“We all have to make sacrifices. Tell him if he’ll sell us a boy he can have me too if he wants, the splendid male thing that he is. Has he improved his snatch?”
“You don’t know what I put up with. The headmaster’s wife thinks that as soon as we’re married we should start a family straight away. She’s all for families straight away. I’ll need more money.”
“We’re short. You know that.”
“I have to dress the part. Phyllis isn’t too keen on slacks.”
“Phyllis?”
“Phyllis Appleby. Headmaster’s wife. Cow.”
“It’s all a lot of nonsense. Nighty night.”
*
“Fido? Bless you my love, divine to hear you! Oh super! I was afraid you might be out with the little men. Yes I know it was going to be Saturday but oh my sweet good, good news! There’s been a rearrangement at the agency and do you know it gives me three extra days—yes with pay! I’m coming down to you right away!”
“Oh that’s jolly good, Sophy, jolly good! Bow wow!”
“Wuff wuff!”
“It’ll be great! Of course, by the way, you know I’ll be working and I’m in training.”
“I know dear. I think you’re marvellous. You’re doing what? Sorry, I can’t hear you, it’s this line—you’re doing what? You’re developing what? You’re developing your deltoids? Oh super darling, where are they? Can I help?”
Inside the receiver a tiny voice began to talk about deltoids. She held it away from her and looked at it with distaste. The tiny voice continued to talk. She waited, idly watching a man walk past with a horrid, two-tone face. The tiny voice called her—
“Sophy! Sophy? Are you there?”
“Sorry darling. I was looking for more change. You’ll be glad to see me?”
“Rather! Mrs Appleby was asking after you. Listen. I’ll try and get you a room in the school.”
“Oh super. Then we could—”
“Training! Training, dear!”
“Can you fix it? Ask matron. I’m sure she fancies you.”
“Oh go on, Sophy, you’re pulling my leg!”
“Well I’m jealous darling. That’s why I’m coming down early now I have the chance to keep an eye on you.”
“You don’t need to. I’m not like Gerry.”
“No. True.”
“You haven’t seen him?”
“Good heavens no! If a girl’s got you—”
“And if I’ve got a girl—bow! wow!”
“Wuff! Wuff!”
(Christ.)
“The usual bus?”
“The usual bus.”
“Sophy darling, I must go—”
“Until this afternoon then. I’m sending you a great big kiss along the
wire.”
“And one back for you.”
“Darling!”
She put down the receiver and stood for a moment looking at it and the tiny figure of Fido beyond it, physically so attractive if you fancied a kind of a statue. She spoke in her outside girl’s voice.
“Eek!”
So she got the bus and it humped over the Old Bridge and along to Chipwick and then round the downs into the next valley and Wandicott village where Fido managed to meet it. She put outrage, whether successful or not, out of her mind. Yet she had to act and could not entirely live her part. For though the five days were too full to be unpleasant actively, yet there was a constant kind of glee in her (a song in my heart) that she had a list of things to find out about the school and could tick them off in her mind one after the other, though some had to be approached carefully as a bird sitting on a nest. If Fido had had an ounce more wit or been slightly less preoccupied with the splendours of his own anatomy he might have questioned her insistence on knowing who looked after what. The little boys pleased her too and they were desirable, edible, even. They did not call her ‘Miss’ or ‘Sophy’. Solemnly, from the biggest down to the smallest, they called her ‘Miss Stanhope’. They opened doors for her, picked up anything she dropped. When she asked a boy a question he did not say ‘How should I know?’ but ‘I’ll find out for you, Miss Stanhope,’ and ran off to do so. It was most peculiar. While Fido was working she quite enjoyed watching these edible little boys, so bland and pretty. Watching one of these infinitely precious objects she found herself saying inside herself. Lovely my pet! I could eat you!
As for Fido, it was a relief that he was in training. But they did have sex once. He came to her where she sat under the dying elms and watched the little boys play cricket.
“Come along Sophy to my room after lights-out. I’ll leave the door ajar.”
“But you’re in training darling!”
“It’s good for the system once in a while. Besides—”
“Besides what?”
“Well. We’re engaged and all that.”
“Darling!”
“Darling! Oh well played Bellingham!”
“What did he do?”
“But wait till lights-out as I said.”
“What about the duty master?”
“Old Rutherford?”
“I don’t want to run into him going his rounds and be taken for a wicked woman.”
Fido looked cunning.
“You’d be going to the loo, he’d think.”
“Well then, Fido, why don’t you come to my room?”
“You’ll get me the sack.”
“What! In this day and age? For God’s sake Fido, they think—I mean, look at this ring! We’re engaged! We’re in the nineteen-seventies!”
Fido displayed an unusual perceptivity.
“No we aren’t, Sophy. Oh dear no. Not here.”
“Well. You could be going to the loo as convincingly as I could.”
“You know as well as I do it’s not in your direction.”
So annoyed, but resigned and thinking it a reasonable price for the precious information that was stored unforgettably in her pretty head, she agreed that she should go to his room; and that night did so. She had never felt so indifferent, so divorced from sensuality or emotion. She lay like a log; and this, it seemed, was just as agreeable to Fido as a fuller co-operation would have been. After he had pleased himself, and, as she thought, relieved himself, she could hardly make the smallest token gesture of affection. She spoke to him in the whisper that the place demanded.
“Finished?”
It was a real pleasure to be back and alone in the room that the headmaster’s wife had found for her. The next day, as if sex were something that drove them apart rather than united them, they parted with the merest of pecks.
“Goodbye, Sophy.”
“Goodbye Fido. Have some good deltoids.”
This time, she went straight to the flat. Gerry was there, turned in after a session at the pub that had taken him far into the dreary reaches of the afternoon. He lifted his head off the pillow and looked at her blearily as she flung her four plastic shopping bags on the bed.
“For Christ’s sake!”
“God, Gerry, you do look a mess!”
“Got to go to the loo. Make some—”
“Coffee will you?”
It was instant coffee and ready by the time he came out of the loo. He pushed both hands through his hair and stared into the shaving mirror that was propped on the shelf over where the open fireplace had been.
“God.”
“Why don’t we leave this filthy place? Get a better pad. We don’t have to live in Jamaica.”
He slumped on the edge of the bed, took the coffee and engrossed himself in it. Presently, one hand supporting his bowed head, he held the empty mug out to her with the other.
“More. And the pills. Twist of paper, top left-hand.”
“Are they—”
“You’re making my head ache. Keep quiet, will you, playmate?”
This time she brought some coffee for herself as well and sat on the bed by his side.
“I think it’s Phyllis.”
“Mm? Phyllis?”
“Mrs Appleby. Headmaster’s wife.”
“What’s she got to do with it?”
Sophy smiled to herself.
“She’s training me. I’ve passed the first inspection good as gold. Schoolmaster’s wife. Now she’s on to—you just wouldn’t believe. Women, particularly with small boys about, have to be so careful of their person.”
“Rape?”
“No, you grotty thing!”
“I know that word. You’ve been talking to small boys.”
“Listening. But personal hygiene, dear. That’s what she’s on about.”
“She thinks you stink. B.O. they used to call it.”
“Perfume. That’s what she’s on about. ‘I wear the merest trace, Sophy, dear.’”
She lay back on the bed and laughed at the ceiling. He grinned and straightened up as if the coffee or the pills or both, were working for him.
“All the same I know what she meant.”
“Do I reek?”
He reached out absently and began to mould her nearer breast.
“Lay off Gerry. It’s the wrong time of the day.”
“Exhausted by Fido’s enormous sex drive. How many times did he have you?”
“He didn’t have me at all.”
Gerry put his mug on the floor, took hers from her, set it down, then turned over so that he was lying partly on her. He smiled into her eyes as he spoke.
“What a liar you are, old soul.”
“If it comes to that, dear thing, how many times have you had it off while your little girl has been unavoidably absent?”
“Nary a once, honest to God, marm.”
Then they were both laughing at each other, twins. He bowed down and laid his head by hers, face down. He nuzzled his face into her hair and murmured so that his breath tickled her ear.
“I’ve got such a hard-on I could get right up between your tits and make your teeth rattle.”
But he didn’t. He lay there, breathing lightly, lighter than Fido. She freed a curl that was pulling and murmured back.
“I’ve got all the answers to those questions.”
“Goldfinger would be pleased with you. You do keep on, don’t you?”
“Will Bill have a hangover too?”
“He never gets a hangover. God is too good to him. Why?”
“Well Christ! Another council of war!”
He looked at her, shaking his head wonderingly.
“Sometimes I think you’re—you never give up, do you?”
So once more the three of them met in the gloomy room and the two men went about it and about. She made no suggestions herself, only answered questions they asked her about the set-up. But it became clearer and clearer to her that they were drifting away from the real
world into fantasy. For a while she went with them, and then, bored, she began to invent fantasies for herself, pictures inside her mind, impossible daydreams that she knew for what they were. They would have a helicopter which lowered a hook and snatched one of the black, brown or white highnesses literally. They dug a secret tunnel. They got themselves invulnerable bodies and irresistible strength so that they strode in with bullets bouncing from their skin and the hands of men sliding from their more-than-human flesh. Or she became all-powerful and could alter things as she pleased so that the boy was snatched out of his bed and through the silent air to the place—what place? With a shiver of waking she saw what the place was, and where it was; and as if that place thought rather than her mind, the idea came with it.
The two men were silent, looking at her. She could not remember speaking but smiled sleepily from the one to the other. She could see how relieved they were to have proved the whole thing impossible. When she spoke, her words were as gentle as her smile.
“Yes. But what would they do in the night, if there was a big bang and a fire?”
The silence went on and on. At last Gerry spoke, in a voice that was carefully controlled.
“We don’t know about that. We don’t know what would burn. We don’t know where the kids would go. We don’t know anything. Not about that. For all you’ve told us.”
“He’s right, miss. Sophy.”
“Well. I’ll go back. I’ll go back as often as necessary. We’ve started this thing and we won’t—”
Bill stood up abruptly.
“Well then. Till you’ve been back. Cor.”
The other two waited until he had gone.
“Cheer up, Gerry! Do a daydream about money!”
“Oh my oh my. Is Bill chicken? Honey chile, just be very, very careful!”
“Trouble is I haven’t a good excuse for going back.”
“Passion.”
“I’m suppose to be working at Runways, clot.”
“Say they sacked you.”
“Spoil my image.”
“You sacked them. Better yourself.”
“But I can’t go rushing back to Fido—”
“Go down in a panic and say he’s knocked you up.”
“Knocked me up?”
“Enceinte. Preggers.”
Pause.
“Like I told you, field-marshal, I didn’t have it off with him.”