The Egg-Shaped Thing

by Christopher Hodder-Williams

  “And he’d hit back with it? Against you? Why you?”

  “People aren’t very specific when it comes to the point.”

  “Nicola…What kind of power? You must tell me.” But I could see this was just closing her up. “All right…So you’re going to keep me from meeting him.” I added: “Just as he’s kept a great many things from you. Dick Davvitt, for instance.”

  “The man with the tomato juice?” She seemed to go chill. “I wonder,” she said, “if Miles realized you knew Dick Davvitt when he took me up to Doncaster?”

  “That’s why we’re both scared,” I said, reaching for the ignition switch. “We must have sensed it all the time.”

  My hand met hers for an instant as I turned the key.

  As I drove back on the road she said: “Engineer’s hands.”

  “I didn’t realize they were all that rough.”

  “Nothing wrong with them,” she said, “except they must miss the work they are used to doing. I don’t feel like going home yet.”

  “Good.”

  “Take me somewhere.”

  “I will…But it’ll stretch your sense of humour to the limit — after what we’ve just been talking about.”

  “Oh? Do you know a millionaire too?”

  “Well…not a real one. As you say…they never are!”

  *

  As I swung into Park Lane I found myself throbbing with the sort of hopes I thought I’d thrown overboard; and if you really want to know the truth, one symptom of this was a first-class headache that cut across the front of my head like a cheese wire. For a moment I longed again for the safe hermitage of Trasgate with all its reassuring freedom from responsibility; and no doubt the headache was because of the conflict between that and Nicola…for here in Park Lane was plenty of evidence of the fruits that had shrivelled on the dish of my old sense of ambition: the fast life of my formerly untethered personality and my secret, repressed appetite for glamour, which had finally opened the trap for others to snap tight behind me.

  We took the bend into Hyde Park Corner, raced by the sudden squadron of sports cars darting out from the area of White Horse Street and the Hilton. Ostentatious young men indulging senseless road-kicks as comic relief from the Stock Exchange…

  Nicola was watching me, looking slightly amused. “I think,” she said, “you can never make up your mind whether to sneer or cheer.”

  “It’s a hairline decision,” I said, crossing into Belgravia, “but at least one expects them to give vent to it all at Brands Hatch — with their girl-friends safely tucked away near the pits, ready with the garlands.”

  “And you think, I suppose, that they’d be made to look pretty silly if they had to compete with real drivers?”

  “You’re laughing at me.”

  “You haven’t got it in perspective,” she said. “If ever you do, I’ll laugh at them instead. Who are we going to see?”

  “A chap called Tesh Philbar.”

  “And did he ever own a sports car?”

  “No. There wasn’t room on the runway for them.” I chucked her a look — quite unfairly angry, and with her — suddenly — the victim. “He had four engines and several tons of aeroplane.”

  She said calmly: “And several tons of bombs as well, James? You may think these people have only damp squibs to play with, but that’s not their fault.” She sugared the pill with: “I agree that Park Lane is easy to conquer, and that’s what you really hate…good blood being used up on such facile ground.”

  I felt a sudden great warmth for her. She had so neatly turned my negative comment into a positive issue. I showed her that I took her point: “Of course, you’re quite right. They’re just free-wheeling.”

  Her smile opened and young, provocative lips were glossed by the showroom lights of Tesh’s local garage…neon blue for Hillman and neon pink for Humber and neon-rich lighting that found a mixing palate in Nicola’s face. I thought her expression, at that moment, was a delicious sensual challenge; she was determined to hear the last of that bankrupt edge on my voice.

  I forgot about the headache and experienced only that response which proved she could swing the competing elements of such conflict just by looking and being the way she was. Then, with a natural good taste, she contrived to acknowledge the fact that she was aware of my awareness; “I think you could be pretty game in a sports car, James, if you let yourself go.”

  “Would you wait in the pits for me?”

  “Yes, if you gave me a good enough reason.”

  “I’d probably think of something.”

  “You’d have to drive with a bit more concentration though. Most people go round Belgrave Square clockwise.”

  “I’ve never done that before.”

  “I find your lapse rather impressive.”

  I pulled up outside a phone box. “I think,” I said, “I’d better warn Tesh that we’ve arrived.”

  “Oh yes. Please do!”

  *

  “Nice flat,” she said, as we followed Tesh into his apartment, “but what an hour to call!”

  Tesh said, over his shoulder: “Not to worry…The people who dropped in for drinks two nights ago have only just left. What’s your poison?” And glanced at me: “You can have anything, long as it’s not coffee.”

  Nicola said: “What does he mean?”

  I felt a bit sheepish. “My staple diet since the crash of my company.”

  Tesh went to the drink cabinet. “Come off it, James. Your size business doesn’t crash. They merely come apart! Brandy all right?” He glanced at the Stereo. “Music? — or no music?”

  “Music, please,” said Nicola.

  Tesh took care of that first, but grinning back at her he said: “What’s funny?”

  “I’d recognize it anywhere,” she said. “This place…it’s a girl trap. Isn’t it?”

  Tesh stooped over the machine. “If it is, I must be using the wrong bait.”

  Nicola, totally unconvinced, sprang up from an enormous settee and explored it carefully. “Let’s see: first, as soon as she comes in, you seat her…” she stroked her chin thoughtfully and made an assessment — “ah, yes — there!”

  “Not on the settee, you think?” asked Tesh, closing the lid of the Stereo.

  “Not the settee. It’s too soon. Even though she knows perfectly well what she’s in for, the ritual must be observed. The chair I’ve chosen commands the best view of the flat. A promising view of the kitchen, I see, through a half-open door. The vague suggestion that the food is available, for her to show off her cooking — but with you really having done all the dirty work beforehand. No spuds to peel, or any nonsense of that sort.”

  “What sort of nonsense,” said Tesh, pouring the brandies, “do you visualize? — I mean at this stage?”

  “Well, the record you’ve put on is wrong, of course. It’s too slushy, too pointedly romantic. I suggest Oscar Peterson, to start with.”

  He said: “You’re making Oscar blush.” He went to the record stack, picked off a sleeve near the top. “See?”

  “Then,” said Nicola, executing a neat little turn and gazing toward the closed door of the bedroom, “then, you take her things in there. Her wrap, and so on. I’m sure she’d have a wrap. And you don’t fling wide the door of

  “The in there?” put in Tesh.

  “Exactly. You sort of barge in absent-mindedly. But she can see enough of the in there to know it’s available for, er, some future occasion. Not too definite. Still, you’ve taken her wrap in there. One of you has to go in, just to fetch it…How am I doing?”

  “Well enough, young woman, to make me turn my mind to a few improvements…and fervently take care never to entertain a female of your perception on these premises! What do you say about it, James?”

  “I would say that Nicola is just a little out of her depth.” I knew Tesh was concealing his view that she had overdone it a bit.

  She looked crestfallen. “Oh…was I merely being rude?”

  T
esh said: “How can such painful truths be merely rude?” He beamed in a friendly way. “I expect you know the kind of people not to say that to, though! If the means to an end is the vital prerequisite, you’re in dead trouble. Sometimes men are seducing themselves as much as they are the lady in question. And who’s to say who the schmaltzy decor is really for?”

  “I see,” said Nicola, and sat down, watching me.

  So I experimented to see whether I could talk to her with my eyes. I said: “It’s all right, darling. You feel like a princess and you look like one, too. And you’ve been led to believe that princesses have a right to do that kind of thing, and that everybody else thinks it charming. But actually, you know princesses do nothing of the kind — if they’re real princesses like you — except just once, as you did, to find out that they shouldn’t.”

  Nicola got up suddenly. “I,” she announced firmly, “am going to change that record.” And she marched across the floor. Characteristically, she had responded to an inexpert chastening with a show of spirit.

  I could tell, as the evening progressed, that Tesh liked her — though he seemed puzzled. And when Nicola went to investigate the kitchen on her own, Tesh asked me: “Isn’t that the Gray girl?”

  “Yes. Why?” I found myself slightly defiant, knowing what I could expect him to say.

  He did. “How is it that she happened to be at the Doncaster do?”

  Before I could think of anything in reply, Nicola had re-emerged from the kitchen. Later, she kept looking at Tesh, as if wondering what he knew, and what his relationship with me really was; and although she was by no means irritable she was restless.

  It was in this mood that she suddenly discovered Tesh’s immaculate bathroom, and declared the bath was the largest she had ever seen. “I’m going to try it out,” she declared. I had to go and look at it.

  I said: “You could get four of you in that.”

  “There are four of me.” With unashamed self-worship she indicated the mirrors responsible for the sudden profusion of Nicolas. “In fact, there’s an infinite number of me…”

  Tesh produced a huge, fluffy towel and that was that. I felt very guilty; because I was subscribing to a shameless dodge whereby Tesh and I could talk privately.

  She was way ahead of me. “Go on, you two! I know you’ve been longing to talk. I shall be ages in here, so don’t panic.”

  Tesh said: “I’ll switch the music through.”

  She was laughing at him outright now. “Oh, you would have speakers in the bathroom! But I love it! Can I have sloshy music! To go with the water?”

  I said: “Then I’ll come and dry you.”

  She answered: “I’m not going to share that fluffy towel with anyone, thanks.” — I was so glad she was able to meet this without being either coy or outraged.

  So Tesh put on some more records and plugged in the bathroom speakers and I fixed her a luxurious-looking drink with frappe ice and sugar stuck around the inside of the glass and a lemon slice on top. The huge bottle of bath salts that Tesh produced finally clinched it.

  “I,” said Nicola, sipping the drink and curving her lips smugly over the top of the glass with a delicious look at me, “I am going to have a ball!”

  It was possible for the Stereo to play in the bathroom without disturbing the peace of the living-room and over cigarettes Tesh and I were able to talk seriously.

  “You don’t trust her,” I said.

  “In what sense?” He spoke with much conviction. “As a woman? But that’s not what you’re asking me.”

  “No.”

  Tesh didn’t enlarge on this and there was an awkward silence.

  I think he wanted to see whether I was prepared to volunteer any information about what had happened during the night.

  I told him some of it, but not all. Something held me back from repeating the apparently meaningless garble I’d overheard in the lavatory at Doncaster. Nor did I choose to discuss Nicola’s celebrated dirty weekend that never was. This was a private matter and I didn’t see how it could bear upon anything which involved Tesh.

  He heard me out without comment, then said: “I think I’d better tell you some of the circumstances of my joining K.L.K. Electronics…Did it ever strike you there might have been anything gimmicky about it?”

  “Was there?”

  “After I’d finished Operations in the Air Force I joined Intelligence. Well…you can’t fly ops for ever. And after a few fairly worrying moments in those decadent Liberators I got quite scared of big-plane flying, anyway. I was glad of the chance to change jobs when Allied Counter-espionage contacted my A.O.C. requesting my release for special services…”

  He went on to tell me that his job had brought him into contact with the enormous desert establishment where the atomic bomb had been evolved; and how when he got there he hadn’t become entangled, as he’d expected, in any dramas involving security leaks to the Russians, but something very different.

  I found this revelation startling, coming so soon after Nicola’s account. A whole series of coincidences were suddenly struck off the register. Our meeting at Doncaster was meant.

  “What’s on your mind, James?”

  I told him.

  “Yes…a pattern is beginning to pan out — at last. That’s why I’m telling you this now.” He continued: “Of course, my arrival at Los Alamos produced the biggest bloody muddle in Christendom. They thought they were getting a special services man with at least an engineering knowledge of physics; whereas I was simply a useless bomber pilot who didn’t know an atom-smasher from a road-roller. But they cut their losses and trained me — at least to the point where I began to understand what the trouble was.” We both listened to the cheerful splashing noises coming from the bathroom. “That was one thing of course…” — he gestured toward the bathroom door — “…they were away from their women, a lot of them, except for the American scientists who’d got their wives penned-up in the unit. But not so hot for the travellers from afar. Gray was one of the exceptions but he had his own reasons to escape. An escape was found. And that’s what I was there to study. It was a new kind of job for me.

  “James, I have to tell you I have never been so out of my depth in my life! How they expected a rank outsider to spot what was happening I’ll never know — ”

  “Perhaps they thought they needed a fresh view.”

  “They certainly got it. I wrote dossiers ad nauseam and got to know some of the scientists quite well — ”

  “And you say Gray was there?”

  “Gray was there. And Davvitt. Not Miles — he came in on the BRUNDASH business much later.”

  I stared at him. “You mean to say the BRUNDASH affair started all that time ago? Back in the forties?”

  “That’s right…but, of course, I didn’t know at the time. All I knew was that certain people there were…odd. Davvitt himself was removed altogether eventually — mostly as a result of my report.” He broke off, went to a door this side of the kitchen, one neither Nicola nor I had been invited to enter. From the door he said: “I still have it.”

  Through the open door I could see that the little room was rigged as an office, with its own telephone — one of those green ones with a box of tricks underneath for voice scrambling. This was when I first realized that Tesh was not purely a company director. A Secrephone has to have another end. The other end of this one (I was to learn) terminated in rather an interesting government department.

  Tesh came back with a dossier, started leafing through it, threw himself back in his armchair, picked up some pale-rimmed spectacles. “I won’t worry you with all the boring details; but here’s a typical entry” — he looked up at me briefly — “made only three weeks before the first nuclear test…‘Davvitt and Gray again meet at the same point’ — that was a spot of desert about twenty miles from the main camps — ‘and this time I’ve managed to bug Davvitt’s car, in which they usually talk.’

  “I had been watching them, you see, through
binoculars, from my position about a mile to the south. My transcript went on: ‘The fact that neither is now involved in any major development-work on the Device [my least favourite euphemism!] seems very much on their minds…But what unholy idea are they substituting?

  “‘I take up position and start the wire recorder. All normal at first. Starts with a few nostalgic references to England, a few gripes about being kept out of the major research projects and design teams. Some anti-American talk that wouldn’t interest anyone very much. No question of espionage and the regular security boys bear this out. (Though none of us knows the full picture)…’

  “This was part of the problem, James, there was so much secrecy, so many competing watchbirds, you never knew what was really happening. And because the BRUNDASH thing didn’t directly concern the Bomb no one bothered to cross-check.”

  “Go on with the report.”

  “‘Through binocs can clearly see they’ve got that document in a green folder I checked yesterday. This seems to be something of their own — not officially classified. Have requested that this be photographed page by page for investigation.’ Then there’s an asterisk and I see I wrote at the bottom: ‘Returned to me marked merely okay, if slightly nutty’ — and little did they know!” Tesh leafed through a couple of pages. “They prattled on a bit…Oh yes. Then we come to the interesting part — here, you’d better read it yourself.”

  I did. And I must say it did feel rather weird. It was almost history by now, and I’d got quite a clear picture in my mind of these two men, in the blazing heat of New Mexico, talking solemnly of the apparently outrageous, the apparently impossible, the apparently ‘slightly nutty’. To get the matter in perspective I had to keep reminding myself that one of these remote figures, clamped into a stifling-hot car on the mesa, was Nicola’s father. Three weeks off was the first nuclear flash.

  GRAY: What we don’t know is whether the idea would work in practice. Herbie isn’t sure. We certainly aren’t going to have a chance of finding out here…I think if we start up in England we’re going to have to cover the experiment with some other ‘front’ activity.

  DAVVITT: That would take some doing. The funds…