It happened so suddenly that he fell forwards, still holding the key, and collided with the figure emerging from inside whose intention had been to open the door only partially; a young man, just as startled as Robert, the two of them simultaneously stifling a joint cry of surprise.
‘Who are you?’ the stranger whispered, his voice a mixture of fear and anger. Inside the house, at the top of the stairs, Robert saw the pale figure of Miriam, in a night-dress, holding her hands to her mouth in a frantic mime of shock. She began tripping down the stairs as swiftly and silently as she could while Robert came inside.
Miriam told her companion in an agitated hiss, ‘He’s the volunteer they’ve billeted here – I did warn you.’ Then to Robert: ‘You’ve seen nothing, OK? If Dad finds out he’ll kill me.’ The man, his composure regained, looked at Robert and raised his palms in a gesture of truce. Robert stood aside to let him out. ‘Goodnight, Tim,’ Miriam whispered after him. ‘Love you.’ Then as soon as she sealed the door with a soft click, she turned to Robert, her glowering expression easily visible in the dim light. ‘Well, Mr Volunteer, now you know.’
‘I won’t say a thing. I honestly couldn’t care what you do.’
‘I don’t need your charity or your consideration,’ she immediately interrupted. ‘If you breathe a word to anyone then I’ll personally cut off your balls and feed them to the cat. I want you to be clear about that as long as you’re underneath this roof of ours.’
‘No problem,’ said Robert, whose interest in Miriam’s private affairs – or even her public ones – was by now about as great as his concern for German poetry. ‘I never knew you had a cat.’
‘Figure of speech.’
‘And the bit about my bollocks?’
‘Literal.’
‘Got you,’ said Robert. ‘But if you don’t mind, I’m going to sleep. Long day. See you tomorrow.’
‘Enjoy your bed,’ she whispered sarcastically after him as he began to ascend. ‘Maybe it’s still warm.’
He reached his room and took off his coat, hearing Miriam quietly close the door of the spare room to which she’d been exiled. When he turned on the table lamp he saw that the bed appeared undisturbed – either Miriam had been teasing or else she had remade it very carefully.
He slept heavily until a knock signalled the start of his first full day at the Installation. Mrs Frank was calling to him through the door. ‘Will you be wanting a cooked breakfast?’ It was seven o’clock, still dark outside, and sleep weighed more heavily than sausages on the scale of his desires, but Mrs Frank was quite insistent about getting an answer. ‘We thought we’d better wake you,’ she called in generous plural, ‘because we forgot to give you the alarm. Miriam took her clock with her to the other room because she always starts early at the library and likes to get herself sorted first – will you be wanting hot water? Should be enough but we might need to set the boiler to come on a bit earlier if there’s both of you using it every morning and I’ll go and see to those eggs now but if you’re wanting porridge too then I can always sort it out because Mr Frank sometimes has it …’
He heard her retreat downstairs, still talking, and got himself ready to face the world. Miriam was already out of the bathroom, and when Robert eventually came down he found her in the kitchen, seated with her father at the carefully laid table while Mrs Frank scraped bacon from an iron frying pan she rattled unnecessarily on the gas hob.
‘Sleep well?’ Mr Frank asked jovially. He had cut himself shaving, and a small corner of white tissue paper was stuck to the wound on his scrawny neck with a bloody spot.
‘Like a log,’ said Robert, seating himself and surveying the small regiment of toast slices lined up in a steel rack in readiness. The place mat in front of him showed a picture of the Marx Memorial in London – Mrs Frank soon buried it beneath a heavily burdened plate.
‘A young lad like you needs a good feed in the morning,’ she asserted, as though stating an axiom of logic.
‘Nothing like home cooking, eh?’ Mr Frank chimed in. ‘Bet you don’t get this sort of thing every day. Where did you say your base is?’
Robert hadn’t said, and had no intention of doing so. He deposited a buttered slice of toast onto his feast and began eating. ‘This is great,’ he said, reverting the subject.
‘Did you manage all right with the key last night?’ Mr Frank asked. Robert shot a glance at Miriam, who ignored him and looked very steadily at her teacup.
‘Yes, fine,’ said Robert, called upon by Mr Frank’s rapt silence to elaborate. ‘I had to give it a few tries, but it opened.’
‘A few tries?’ Mrs Frank echoed with concern as she sat down.
‘Only a couple,’ Robert insisted.
Mr Frank looked sceptical. ‘Maybe I ought to see that key. You weren’t out there long in the cold, were you?’
‘Not long – it’s nothing, really. Don’t trouble yourself.’ Even as Robert offered these reassurances, he realized that not only was there no reason why he should cover for Miriam, but he also had a key in his pocket that he had found himself unable to use.
It was as if Mr Frank could read his mind. ‘Let me have a look at it,’ he said. ‘We haven’t tried it for a while so I’d better check.’ Robert reached into his pocket, gave Mr Frank what he wanted, and watched his host rise from the table with a scrape of his wooden chair on the linoleumed floor. Through the kitchen doorway, Robert could see Mr Frank go to the front door and open it, admitting an icy chill from the early morning blackness outside that soon reached the diners.
‘Do you have to be doing that now, Arthur?’ his wife called.
Mr Frank was rattling the key in the exterior lock with the same difficulty Robert had experienced. ‘That’s odd,’ he muttered. ‘It’s not usually this tricky.’ He retracted the key, closed the door and stood in the hallway examining the gleaming paradox beneath the electric ceiling light. Still the truth had not materialized; and it was only when Mr Frank brought out his own key and looked at both side by side, one in each of his upheld hands, that his face transformed. ‘I gave him the wrong one!’ he exclaimed.
‘Oh, you stupid man,’ Dorothy scolded.
Arthur’s smile froze as the full implication of his eureka moment bedded into his brain. He looked through the kitchen doorway at Robert. ‘How did you get in?’
Robert didn’t know what to say. Lying had proved the easiest way to deal with the Franks so far, but why lie for Miriam’s sake? ‘Actually …’
‘I let him in,’ said Miriam.
‘You?’ Mr Frank had evidently never before experienced so much puzzlement over breakfast.
‘I heard him at the door,’ Miriam said simply. ‘All his struggling woke me up. So I came down and let him in.’
‘Well then,’ Mrs Frank chuckled, ‘why didn’t you say?’ She seemed to sense there was more to it than either Miriam or Robert had admitted, but was still trying to pin down the natural conclusion that evaded her.
‘I didn’t want to make a fuss,’ Miriam replied, taking a sip of tea, lifting a slice of toast from the rack, then changing her mind and putting it back again. ‘I know how you and Dad want everything to be perfect for our new guest, so I thought I’d save your embarrassment and swap his key myself, without bothering to tell you.’
‘Is that so?’ said Mr Frank who came and sat down again, his words directed nowhere in particular, though his gaze was on the newcomer.
‘Yes,’ said Robert.
Dorothy Frank’s ruminations were meanwhile leading her to an ominous deduction. ‘I just hope you two don’t catch a chill, wandering around the house at night together. And you’d only have had your nightdress on, Miriam. It’s good to know you’re looking after Robert and making him feel welcome, but you don’t have to keep any secrets from us. It makes it all sound as if the pair of you were up to no good!’ She chuckled again, even less convincingly than before, and remained quiet until breakfast was finished and it was time for everyone to leave. ‘Arthur,
get Robert sorted; and Miriam, will you stop off at the butcher’s when you finish at the library this afternoon and get a kilo of diced mutton if they’ve got any? They’ll be closed when my shift ends and I want to make a casserole tonight. Will you be eating with us, Robert?’
‘I don’t know—’ He was interrupted by the sound of a horn tooting outside. ‘I wonder if that’s for me?’ He went to the hall, looked through the lace-curtained window and saw a waiting bus like the one that had brought him the previous day. ‘I’ve got to go,’ he called back, dashing upstairs to get his greatcoat, which was in his bedroom, tossed over the old, bulky radio set where he had left it last night. The book Kaupff gave him was still wedged in one pocket, Robert pulled it out and threw it onto the bedside table; but when he glanced at the radio again he noticed something else. The radio had been tuned to London when he first saw it yesterday; now the pointer was aimed at neighbouring Athlone.
Mr Frank was waiting for him at the front door. ‘You need the right key!’ he exclaimed, handing over his own.
‘And don’t forget to leave out any clothes that need washing,’ Mrs Frank interjected. ‘Or put them in the laundry basket …’
‘Yes – see you later,’ Robert called, running out to the impatiently rumbling bus in which, when he climbed aboard, he found Rosalind and the recruits sitting amid the numerous empty seats.
‘Good morning, Volunteer Coyle,’ Rosalind said smoothly. ‘Now that we’re all here, we can proceed.’ She gave a nod to the driver, who immediately set off, making Robert lurch as he went to sit down. There were four other volunteers, he noticed, sitting in pairs. Yesterday there had been five.
‘We’re going to the College,’ Rosalind announced. ‘This is the area of the Installation where all the highest-level scientific and technical personnel live, and where theoretical work is carried out.’ She shot a glance at Robert, who realized he must have visited part of it last night. ‘Any questions?’
One man asked, ‘Why aren’t we staying there too? My landlady’s a sweet old dear but she can’t boil an egg.’ The others laughed.
‘There is a reason for the present arrangements, Volunteer Macleod,’ Rosalind told him. ‘There is a reason for everything that happens here. But I am not able to discuss such matters.’
From behind Robert another man spoke. ‘Where do you live, Rosalind? Can’t they give me quarters nearer yours?’ Again there was laughter, in which Rosalind allowed herself to participate, as if in a calculated gesture of informality like some prearranged elevation of the group to a new status in the Installation’s social hierarchy. ‘I find it best to keep some distance,’ she said, her smile unwavering. ‘I shall be watching you, Volunteer Forsyth.’
‘And we’re watching you!’ he called back, to yet more laughter.
Robert felt unable to share the mood; he gazed through the bus window at a route he had already viewed in darkness, seeing it differently in the winter dawn. The industrial zone looked less dramatic now, almost shabby. When the bus began to crawl up the gently sloping hill leading to the Lodge it took a side road, bypassing the grand Victorian mansion and arriving instead at a group of modern buildings ringed by a security fence.
‘All of this is what we call the College,’ Rosalind explained to the volunteers. ‘It was the original Installation – the first part to be built, with the old hunting lodge serving as an accommodation wing, and the newer research buildings alongside. This was where Professor Kaupff and his colleagues created Britain’s nuclear deterrent.’
The bus paused at a checkpoint; two helmeted soldiers approached, one of whom came on board and silently scrutinized the occupants, then nodded towards Rosalind. ‘All right, pet?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Be seeing you, then.’ He turned to alight, his submachine gun tucked under his arm with its barrel lowered. ‘At the Blue Cat tonight?’ he called back to her. She shrugged mysteriously, the bus doors concertinaed closed, and he offered a comradely wave as the vehicle proceeded slowly onwards through the raised barrier. Rosalind recommenced her commentary while the bus reached a car park beside a large ugly concrete-and-glass structure that in any other place might have been a theatre or civic centre. ‘Fabrication was carried out in the industrial area we passed earlier – an interconnected suite of manufacturing and technical facilities we collectively call the Plant. As the Installation’s activities expanded, the two zones became enclosed sectors of the single high-security community we see today, along with the military base where you arrived yesterday, and the Town where you are staying. Town and Base are the Installation’s backbone; the Plant is its muscle, the College is its brain.’
‘Where’s its heart?’ Robert called out.
She fell silent, and the bus doors clunked open.
5
Rosalind led them into a place that reminded Robert of the university he’d been slung out of: they were in the foyer of what appeared to be a lecture building. Several dozen people, mostly male and in their early twenties, stood in clusters, chatting and smoking, sipping coffee whose source was a wheeled trolley bearing a large copper urn. A tall woman stood beside it wearing the uniform of a caterer – a stiff blue blouse and coarse black skirt extending just below her knees, with a white apron in front. Her sleek black hair was tied up behind her head to reveal a long and delicate neck whose gracefulness was somehow incongruous. One of the waiting men brought his empty cup to her for a refill, and Robert saw that as she handed the replenished cup to him, she seemed to give his wrist a friendly pat. It was the same inscrutable familiarity he had witnessed on the bus, between Rosalind and the soldier. Everyone here knew everyone else; they were all interconnected, like Kaupff’s vision of the universe. No, Robert didn’t think Kaupff was mad, as the old man had petulantly suggested. Instead, in the waitress’s handing over of a cup of coffee, Robert perceived something of the cosmic mission which had brought him here. He was also reminded that unlike everyone else, he knew nobody.
A tannoy crackled. ‘The professor’s lecture is about to resume in Auditorium A. Please have your passes ready for inspection at the door.’ There was a swift stubbing of cigarettes and draining of cups as the crowd converged towards the open entrance of what Robert could see to be a spacious theatre.
‘This building,’ Rosalind explained to her charges, sweeping the emptying foyer with her outstretched arm, ‘is the focus of the College’s educational activities. New researchers need to be trained in advanced nuclear or plasma physics, aeronautics, nonlinear optics – much of it classified information of a highly sensitive kind.’ Robert was in no doubt that his guide knew about every one of those topics – while he hadn’t even been able to manage an essay on quality versus quantity. The imbalance was one that Rosalind seemed to relish. ‘The discoveries we make here can’t be published in normal journals. There are brilliant workers whose entire careers have been secret, known only to their fellow initiates – and now you have the privilege of being among them.’
She began walking towards the far end of the foyer, gesturing the others to follow her to the lift whose dark shaft was sealed by a steel door with a frosted-glass panel. Rosalind pushed the button and a few seconds later a wedge of light slid down inside; when she went to open the heavy door, Volunteer Forsyth moved in front of her.
‘Allow me, dear,’ he said gallantly, his gesture revealing the wood-lined compartment with its caged inner door, and a picture of Karl Marx on the rear wall.
‘Your strength has its uses,’ Rosalind said acidly, then observed the notice inside the compartment. ‘I wonder if all six of us will fit in – the limit’s meant to be five.’
‘Let’s make two trips,’ someone suggested.
‘Never mind,’ said Rosalind, whose lips trembled with the rapid ticking of a mental calculation. ‘Our combined mass is below the recommended maximum.’ Being able to weigh a man by sight was evidently one of her many secret skills. She slid aside the cage and waved everyone in, entering after them and demo
nstrating when she pulled the cage back in place that they could indeed all fit, though not without touching. Robert had been the last of the volunteers to step inside and had immediately turned to face the door in order not to find himself staring at the other men; and when Rosalind came in, also turning so as to close the door, she backed into him until her shoulders met his chest, her hair stroked his chin, her rump touched his crotch. ‘Press three,’ she instructed, and somebody’s finger found the appropriate button on the compartment wall she was unable to reach.
It was a comically crowded scene. When the lift began to move, Volunteer Forsyth said, ‘I hope no one had beans for breakfast.’
‘No, only that egg,’ said Macleod, the compartment bearing its laughing occupants upwards.
For a few delicious moments, Robert savoured the numerous points of contact between Rosalind and himself. As well as the perfume he had noticed yesterday there was another scent now – the earthy, natural fragrance of her hair. No more than four slow breaths separated the ground floor from their destination, yet each was more delightful than the last, bringing a steadily intensifying image of Rosalind into his nostrils while his skin conceived its own detailed landscape of pressures and frictions. Most of all it was on the push of his crotch that his thoughts were concentrated; the dull prod of his folded member against a portion of her buttock which, in the short duration of the bumpy lift ride, was sufficient to elicit a rebellious swelling against the constrictions of the compartment. She, as if aware between the first and second floors of some impropriety, shifted slightly, but a moment later returned, contributing her own equal force to the unacknowledged encounter, having chosen for herself, it seemed, a more agreeable position during the final seconds of the ascent.
Sputnik Caledonia Page 17
