‘What did he say?’
‘Very little. But he took very careful notes. He was obviously taking it very seriously, which of course is exactly why he made no comment to me! It’s all a question of what any individual needs to know, which is what this place is all about!’
‘Which I suppose also means that if you ever do get to hear what it was all about…’
‘Which is unlikely…’
‘Of course… But if you do, you won’t be able to tell me about it!’
‘Exactly so! In fact I’ve probably said more to you than I should! I’d love to know what it’s all about, but I’m sure I never will! Anyway, I’d better be getting back to my office – see you soon! And thanks for the lovely meal last night too!’
‘You’re welcome! Bye, Andrew! See you soon!’ replied Lucy.
A couple of weeks later, there was a family get-together at Peter and Joan’s house, at which Peter spoke at length about the phone call he had received; Lucy and Andrew each found themselves having to bite their tongue to avoid letting on even the fact that they knew that whoever made the call had made a mistake, and had called Peter in error. Then, when a news flash was broadcast in between programmes on the BBC to the effect that the Americans and British had invaded Iraq – in the eyes of many in contravention of Security Council resolutions, although there were reports that the Security Council actually knew of the invasion even before it happened – Lucy and Andrew had to keep mum, and satisfy themselves with exchanging a knowing wink.
So Peter Watmough never did find out the meaning of the call he received, although he stopped worrying about it, because the principal reason for his concern was that Lucy considered her family and his to be separate entities, and she had made it clear to him that nothing was further from the truth.
Margaret read David’s latest chapter, and said, ‘I really thought that was going to be about us and our family! This couple were both on their second marriage, and all their children were from the first marriages, in pretty well exactly the same configuration as our family!’
‘I know!’ replied David. ‘Put it down to author laziness!’
‘Don’t be silly! You lazy? You must be joking!’
‘Can I have that in writing? Anyway, even if the Watmough’s children were exactly the same age as ours, I couldn’t simply reproduce every single detail of our family, because of the changes I needed to make. You see, I needed there to be two people working at GCHQ, because otherwise the story wouldn’t work: the only way to let the reader know what happened is for there to be conversations between two people who have signed the Official Secrets Act!’
‘Do you think that sort of thing happens at GCHQ?’
‘I’m sure it does! In fact I would be surprised if it didn’t. I’m sure that there are just as many cock-ups at GCHQ as there are in any other organisation!’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘Because it is run by human beings, and human beings make mistakes, like misreading phone numbers, for instance! I’m sure it happens all the time.’
‘And our National Security depends on people like that?’
‘I know! Pathetic, isn’t it! But I’d much rather our security were in the hands of fallible human beings than under the control of infallible computers!’
‘Even if there is such a thing as an infallible computer…’ said Margaret.
‘I think there probably isn’t such a thing! The danger with infallibility is that a lot of people tend to think they’re infallible themselves!’
‘True! But let’s get back to your book – which explanation of the phone call is your favourite? Which do you find most convincing?’
‘I think they’re all plausible so far – let’s hope the rest of them appear so! But the GCHQ one, even though it’s the shortest, and in one way the most simple, but paradoxically also the most far-reaching – and the most difficult to write – is in my opinion the most likely to be the true one!’
‘Why do you think that?’
‘Because the importance of a little town like Cheltenham surpasses its size, by far, and the people who work at GCHQ are just as likely to misread or mishear things, and if that happens, inevitably ordinary people like us can get caught up in it, even without realising it. But the global consequences could be far more serious!’
‘You’re frightening me now! Let’s talk about something else. What do you fancy for supper this evening?’
Chapter Seven
The following Monday morning, Margaret said to David over breakfast, ‘I suppose you must be getting towards the end of your book now, are you?’
‘I’m not sure,’ replied David. ‘I mean, for one thing I still have to write the final chapter, which I intend to include the real reason for the phone call. For another, I’m going to write another scenario this week, but, of course, I don’t know how long each scenario is going to be until I’ve nearly finished writing it. I suspect I shall still have to write a further two or three scenarios, quite apart from the final chapter!’
‘Oh,’ said Margaret, ‘I was thinking you must be in the closing stages by now! You seem to have been working on it for so long!’
‘I know!’ said David, ‘It seems a bit like that to me as well!’
‘I’m a bit surprised that you don’t know how long each scenario is going to be! I assumed that you would have a target length.’
‘I did start off with the idea that all the scenarios would be roughly the same length, but I soon abandoned that! It’s not actually as straightforward as I imagined in the first place, because I start off with a basic idea, and then see how it works out. Some ideas need a bit more length, and then, of course, there is the problem of making the decision of when something is actually finished! I often feel the need to add a few more paragraphs, and yet sometimes I simply can’t think of anything else to add! It never seems to be cut and dried!’
‘Well, you’ve got a lot of work still to go, so I’d better not get in your way! Off you go!’
David set himself to work, and this is the result of that week’s work:
Jim Blenkinsop was a trade union shop steward at a big factory in his home town of Nottingham, a factory known throughout the world for the quality of the bicycles it produced. It went almost without saying that a shop steward in such a large factory would also have been elected onto the committee of the local branch of the Labour Party, because the political influence of the trade unions was still extremely strong in those days. There were exceptions however, for he had at least one shop steward colleague who belonged to the Conservative Party; but this was an exception, and Jim belonged to the ‘red in tooth and claw’ faction of the Labour Party, and, as a matter of principle, would not even acknowledge his Conservative colleague if he happened to meet him in the street. His first wife had also been a party member, but she had died in her late forties; loneliness and sexual attraction had been sufficient to suppress his blinkered politics to such an extent that, when he married again, he chose a woman whose political outlook was far to the right of his, although Jacqueline, his new wife, did not take politics half as seriously as her new husband did.
This caused a certain amount of trouble almost right away, for, before their marriage, they had never seriously discussed politics and, when they ultimately did, Jacqueline took exception to Jim’s tendency to dismiss every Conservative voter — or even every Conservative sympathiser – as ‘privileged scum’ – although he frequently used far more dismissive terms than that to describe them. It was a fundamental facet of Jacqueline’s philosophy that she judged everyone as an individual, refusing point blank to consign a whole section of society to the scrap heap just because they had a different point of view, but Jim appeared to be satisfied with finding a label for someone, and then treating them as he would treat everybody to whom he attached that label.
Unfortunately – or so Jim considered it – Jacqueline’s view of politics came to be accepted by Jim’s son Ted, who had been only fif
teen at the time of his mother’s death; not so his daughter Jean, who was one year older than Ted, roughly the same age as Jacqueline’s daughter, Emily, for Jean’s political outlook was similar to that of her father’s, which meant that Ted, who had done A Levels at a Sixth Form College and gone on from there to one of the big colleges of the University of London, was regarded by both sister and father as having ‘sold out’ and turned his back, in their view, on his working-class heritage. Worse was to come, however, for, after university, Ted had opted to become an accountant, a profession which his father inevitably considered as ‘stuck up’ and ‘posh’, which meant that henceforth his views on both politics and ethics could safely be disregarded, which led to a certain amount of animosity between father and son. Needless to say, Jim immediately dismissed the view that Ted expressed in the course of one of their disagreements to the effect that his father, in marrying the conservative Jacqueline, had ‘sold out’ just as much as he had himself in choosing accountancy as his new career; that he did not hold that view too seriously, however, was suggested by Ted’s choice of girlfriend, for she, Eileen, was as left-wing in her political views as was Jim.
One evening, Jacqueline suggested to Jim that in a couple of weeks or so they might go to a production at Nottingham Playhouse in a couple of weeks’ time; theatre-going was not normally to Jim’s taste, but this particular production was of a play by George Bernard Shaw, who, as a red-blooded socialist in Jim’s eyes, was therefore at least worthy of consideration. But when she told him which date she had in mind, he reminded her that, as far he was concerned, that would be impossible, because that would be during the week of the Labour Party Conference, and for the whole of that week, therefore, he would naturally be in Blackpool.
Jacqueline had already bought a pair of theatre tickets, not even dreaming that her husband would be away that week, and not even realising that it might clash with the Party Conference, for party conferences did not loom as large in her life as they did in Jim’s. This was despite the fact that he had attended the Conference every year since they had married, and that it was always held on roughly the same date. So she suggested to Ted that he and Eileen might like to go to the theatre in their stead.
‘Not really up my street, Mum,’ he responded, ‘I don’t really care too much for Shaw, and in any case Eileen is going to the Labour Party Conference in Blackpool that week too.’
A few days later, both Jim and Eileen were at a ward meeting of their local Labour Party, and afterwards, Jim suggested to Eileen that, since the meeting had finished fairly early, she might like to join him in a drink before they returned home. As it had already been arranged that she would have a lift home after the meeting in Jim’s car, she accepted, particularly since she had assumed that there would be a number of people in the pub, not just the two of them.
When they arrived at the White Lion pub, Jim led her into the Lounge Bar, and offered her a drink; she chose a lemonade, but Jim persuaded her to have a ‘proper drink’, so she opted for a port and lemon, while Jim chose a light ale. While Jim was at the bar buying the drinks, Eileen looked round the bar, and could see no one she knew; she remarked as much to Jim when he returned with the drinks, but he replied that, if they had gone for a drink, most of the others would have gone to a pretty rough pub, and wouldn’t have been seen dead in a posh pub like the White Lion.
They started drinking and began talking about some aspects of the meeting they had just attended. After a few minutes Jim pointed out that Eileen’s glass was empty, and suggested that she have another, an offer that she declined. When Jim pointed out that, after he had been talking all evening he really needed another drink himself, she changed her mind, and the second one went down even more quickly than the first.
‘Same again?’ Jim suggested.
Eileen giggled. ‘Are you trying to get me drunk?’ she said. ‘I won’t be responsible for anything I do at this rate!’
‘Promises, promises!’ was Jim’s answer, as he got up to get them both another drink.
‘You are naughty, Mr Blenkinsop,’ said Eileen, raising her third port and lemon to her lips.
‘I know,’ he replied, ‘but I don’t mind if you don’t!’ – at which she just giggled. ‘I think you’re really beautiful, Eileen,’ he went on.
‘Do you really?’ she replied.
‘Oh God, yes, I do!’ he said, placing his hand on her leg under the table, to which, he was relieved to find, she did not appear to object.
A few minutes later they walked out of the pub into the car park, and kissed when they got into the car, after which Jim invited her to join him on the back seat, an invitation which she accepted quite readily, and there, in a dark corner of the car park, they made love before Jim drove her home.
Before she got out of the car, he kissed her again, and then asked, ‘Have you done anything like that with Ted yet?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘I wouldn’t mind, but he says that sort of thing has got to wait until we’re married.’
‘Chump!’ he commented. ‘No wonder he’s a Tory! But don’t worry, his father’s got red blood running through his veins!’
Over the next few weeks, Jim and Eileen saw each other several times after work; for the benefit of Jacqueline, Jim invented a minor industrial dispute at the factory in order to explain his working late, whilst Eileen told Ted that she had been asked to work overtime in the large department store in Nottingham city centre where she had been working ever since she left school, because it had been decided that the shop would remain open until eight o’clock one evening a week.
At an early stage in their relationship too, Jim and Eileen had agreed that they would share a hotel room in Blackpool when the annual Labour Party conference came round. As local delegates to the Conference, each of them was able to claim hotel expenses, and Jim had suggested to Eileen that if they shared a hotel room, they could each claim for a single room and thus make a tidy profit on the transaction.
Eileen was not difficult to persuade; her only reservation was that the Conference proceedings would be shown each day on national television, her worry being that either Jacqueline or Ted would happen to switch on and catch sight of them sitting together. Jim quickly reassured her by saying that, given their political views, neither his wife nor Eileen’s boyfriend would be likely to switch on the coverage; and if they did, they would be able to explain their sitting together quite easily by saying that all the local delegations sat together as a matter of course. He also explained that if they travelled together in his car, Eileen would still be able to make quite a large profit by claiming the train fare from Nottingham to Blackpool.
All might have gone smoothly for Eileen and Jim if Ted had been readier to accept without question his girlfriend’s sudden willingness to work overtime in the store, for, on a previous occasion when overtime had been mentioned, she had turned it down on the grounds that it would mean that Ted and she would be able to spend less time together.
But one evening when she was supposedly working late in the store, Ted decided to go into town and visit the shop where she worked; to his surprise, he found the doors of the store locked. Moreover, when he looked at the notice on the doors listing the opening hours of the shop, he found that there was no mention of late opening on any day of the week.
His suspicions aroused, he went to the store just before one o’clock on a Thursday, which was listed as early closing day, and he saw her leaving the shop on the stroke of one, then standing still for a minute, as if looking for someone; he stayed for a few minutes where she would not have been able to see him, and then, to his surprise, he observed his father’s car pull up outside the entrance to the shop, whereupon Eileen immediately got into the passenger’s seat, kissed Jim passionately, and the car immediately disappeared from sight.
Ted was furious, but decided to say nothing to either his father or to Eileen for the time being, partly because he could not believe that his father would have an affair with his girlfriend,
and partly because he found it even less credible that Eileen could be attracted by a man old enough to be her father, or his father come to that, and partly because, in the two or three weeks before the Party Conference, his father maintained that he was so busy that he spent hardly any time at home. The same was true for Eileen, or at least she claimed it was, and Ted saw very little of Eileen for over a fortnight.
The next time he saw her was, in fact, the very next day, when he did very little else apart from fretting over what he had witnessed as Eileen left work the previous day. So he decided to go to the store where she worked just before closing time. He stood in the precise spot where he had stood on the Thursday, and was soon rewarded with the sight of his girlfriend leaving the shop. As before, she stood and looked around, and two minutes later Ted’s father’s car came round the corner, she got into the car, the pair embraced, and within seconds the car was nowhere to be seen. ‘Right then, you dirty old man,’ thought Ted, ‘I’ll get even with you!’
When Ted arrived home half an hour later, his mother was just setting the table for supper; he noticed too that she was setting only four places instead of the normal five. ‘Mum,’ he said, ‘who’s not eating tonight?’
‘Oh dear, are you feeling hungry, Ted? I think there’ll be plenty to eat for you, don’t worry!’ – deciding to treat Ted’s question as a joking matter instead of revealing to him that she was peeved because her father had only telephoned home an hour before, to let her know that he would not be home for supper himself. ‘There’s only going to be you and me and the two girls this evening, because your dad’s got so much work on with the Party Conference taking place next week.’
At Dead of Night Page 13
