by Helen Smith
‘Vegetables?’
‘Genetically altered vegetables. My client, Emphglott—’
‘Dog people?’
‘Well, they’re probably best known for their work with dogs; they sponsor the dog show. As a matter of fact, they research scientific advances into all aspects of animal husbandry. They’re currently pioneering genetic research on animals. The thing I’d like to find out, Flower, is whether Emphglott is on the hit list, or whether the terrorists are restricting themselves to vegetables. Dick Masters and his animal protectionists have hired the Fitzgerald woman again. I’m not sure yet whether her brief is to monitor Emphglott or to take action of some kind, but she’s put her best agent on the case.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘Woman called Alison Temple. Apparently also uses the name Wonderland. Divorcee. If Dick Masters knows the extent of the genetic experimentation Emphglott is undertaking, if he’s going to coordinate the saboteurs to target Emphglott and Emphglott are on the hit list, he will have shared that information with Mrs. Fitzgerald. I’ve got a contact at Fitzgerald’s agency and I’m going to try and find out whether the saboteurs are coming after Emphglott. “Discretion Assured” be damned. There’s a lot of money at stake here. If you hear anything or see anything, let me know.’
Chapter Seven: The Shig
There is a creature that lives in paradise on disused Ministry of Defence land near Weymouth, rooting among the dabs of colour in the field where wild flowers grow. It is called a shig. There are so many butterflies on the land that eyes are drawn at first to the dazzling yellows or blues flickering as their wings move among the wild flowers. But another, closer look reveals the fattest, woolliest animal on earth, the product of a union between a pig and a sheep. Its size is as remarkable as its ancestry, because it is as big as a small van, never having stopped growing since it was first bred, in great secrecy, on land that used to house the underwater weapons research buildings where scientists built missiles for nuclear submarines during the Cold War. The shig’s fleece is a lustrous mass of golden curls. When it is slaughtered for its delicious meat, there will be no bristles to shave, only fleece to be shorn. The shig’s existence is significant less for the attributes of the creature itself—nice meat, nice wool—than for the fact that it proves that animals can be bred across species. Now the scientists responsible for the creature face two problems: first, it has proved impossible to breed from it. Second, the keeper is so attached to it that he’s going to be reluctant to give up the beast for slaughter when the time comes.
There have been other, less successful experiments in the past. A pow, bred for meat, leather and milk, was notable for its attractive, snouty face and curly tail, but its stunted legs caused its udder to drag unhygienically on the ground. A dig, a fierce fighting creature, had to be destroyed because of its snarling ruthlessness and propensity to attack whoever came near it, even if they were bringing it food. There was a rumour that it was to be sold on the black market as a ‘digbull’ to violent men of low intelligence as part of a programme to deter these men from procreating. The pets were to be encouraged to turn on them and savage their private parts. In the end, according to the rumour-mongers, it was agreed that the dig was too vicious and unpredictable to be released commercially, and the eugenics programme would continue using pit bulls and Dobermans.
Only the shig remains, a beautiful if overlarge example of man’s triumphant meddling with the fabric of the universe. The initial process to produce this example of mixed breeding was complex and fraught with failure. The gene was put into a newly fertilized egg cell called a blastocyst and the embryo planted in a surrogate mother Merino sheep. The shig is female because scientists mapped her gender characteristics from her mother. As was the case with Dolly the cloned sheep, it is only possible to produce more female shigs using genetic science. The future of the species will not be assured until the shig can be persuaded to breed, as continued cloning will produce a species that isn’t resistant to disease. Many attempts to fertilize the shig with sperm created under laboratory conditions have proved futile. There’s a long way to go. It takes five generations before a breed can be called pure.
The keeper is desperate. He has formed such a bond with the gentle, amiable, beautiful shig that he will be inconsolable without her. As he stands on a stepladder to style her fleece, combing away the twigs and leaves that have caught up in it, the keeper murmurs endearments to her. He loves her in a way that it is only possible to love something that is entirely dependent on you, like a baby or a pet. In both cases it is tempting to talk to them because they seem to understand you even though they can’t talk back. The keeper cannot get his arms all the way round the shig’s body because she is so large, but he clasps her neck and whispers very close to her ear so he can tell her about the Cerne Abbas giant.
Scientists reporting on the genetic trials taking place around the world are very cautious about revealing the locations of the test sites because of opposition to their work from activists, and have decided to use a code rather than name the locations. Tiring of the over-familiar letters of the Greek alphabet they have used in equations since their school days, they have assigned the following symbols for each test site:
In Europe, transgenic celery, tobacco and sugar beet are being grown under controlled conditions, monitored, then destroyed to comply with tough licences issued by cautious EC countries. In the Republic of Ireland, a previously unknown group of activists have claimed responsibility for slashing a field of genetically altered sugar beet. In London, a group of naked protesters has climbed on the roof of advertising agency Bartle, Bogle & Hegarty to register disapproval of their work for geneticists. In Japan, people are frightened that genetically mutated vegetables will escape into the wild. In view of the growing sympathy for the havoc wreaked by environmental activists, Emphglott’s project in the southwest of England is being carried out under conditions of utmost secrecy. It is only in New Zealand, a country celebrated by some for being reminiscent of England in the fifties, that people are relaxed about the changes being wrought on nature by man and are prepared to consume genetically altered vegetables.
Tired, dirty activists, their hair matted, their hands muddy, their fingernails broken from stabbing at sugar beet and wrenching it from the earth by the roots, make the ferry trip between Ireland and England. Before dispersing to tea and hot baths in their respective homes, a folded piece of paper annotated with runes is passed from hand to hand, slipped under a mohair jumper and tucked into a safe hiding place inside the waistband of an activist’s second-hand combat trousers. Hands clasp and release as the ferry draws into port, taking leave of each other until summoned by the list-keeper, by mobile phone, to hit the next target.
At midnight, too late for a social visit, Clive stops for a moment by the stone birdbath in his sister’s moonlit garden. His reflection, caught on the oily film of the surface of the water, is like the wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz. Clive, excluded from Fitzgerald’s Bureau of Investigation because he is a man, and because he is irritating and selfish, is undertaking an investigation of his own.
Close to the darkened glass of her kitchen window, his fingertips smear the surface of the windowpane as he leans in among the geraniums and watches the interior of his sister’s house. In the sitting room, under the bright light shed by a maroon silk, tasselled standard lamp, Mrs. Fitzgerald dozes in a high-backed armchair, her spectacles in her lap. Papers and files, telling the stories of her life and the lives of the people she is investigating, stack and fall around her feet.
Clive walks along the flowerbed that runs the length of the wall of the house until he reaches the sitting room window. He looks in at his sister but he doesn’t wake her.
Chapter Eight: Surveillance
Tonight I’m keeping an unfaithful husband under surveillance in a singles bar in Kensington and it makes me think about my love life, which makes me morose. If you want to pick up a rent boy you go to the Crystal Rooms in Le
icester Square, and if you want a married man you go to a singles bar. My job makes it difficult to meet a boyfriend and sustain a relationship, but I’d like one anyway. I’ve no idea where you find single men. I can’t meet anyone at work because the detective agency has only women working there.
It must be a perennial problem because the Evening Standard often runs features with advice on where to meet men. You’re supposed to be able to find love at the supermarket. I popped into Iceland once on the way home from the tube but the man behind me at the checkout had four large blocks of lard and two bottles of bleach in his basket, and kept looking at me with an urgent, hungry desire, possibly because I’d also bought bleach. I love bleach, I glug it down the toilet and slop it into the sink as a substitute for proper cleaning. However, I don’t think it’s a basis for falling in love with a man carrying so much lard in his basket. It was pretty obvious that I wasn’t going to find the right kind of man in Iceland, anyway. It’s quite rough, particularly in Brixton, where a security man guards the meat. The one near Clapham Common tube isn’t much better, even though there’s a plaque claiming it was opened by Princess Anne. Why this snobbish, horsey woman ever got mixed up in opening such a place I cannot begin to imagine. I’ve switched from Tesco’s in Brixton to Sainsbury’s in Clapham as there’s a better class of single man, including some minor celebrities, although I haven’t had any luck with any of them yet. I think you’re supposed to go to Safeway in the King’s Road, with its innovative range of exotic fruits, but it’s rather out of my way.
Once I went to the National Gallery. It was awash with beautiful foreign men, their eyes filled with longing. They didn’t look at the paintings; their eyes swept the faces of the women there, searching for a sign. I wasn’t sure what sign to give so I went home.
Now I’m sitting in a bar with lipstick and a push-up bra on, purely in the interest of blending into the crowd. No wonder I never do this. I have a suspicion that everyone else here is younger and has more stamina than me for sitting around in a smoky, masculine atmosphere surrounded by tossers talking about sport and money. I’d much rather be at home lying full length on my sofa on soft cushions in loose, shabby clothes without underwear, reading the Sunday colour supplements or watching ER with a large packet of peanut M&M’s or a box of liqueur chocolates, the mix of alcohol and sugar crystals oozing under my tongue and dribbling down my chin. Still, you can’t have everything. So here I am sitting in a bar feeling old and looking tarty and pitying the other women who seem to hope a man in a suit will want them, even though they don’t really want him.
To get off with a man in one of these places you need to know the names and makes of cars and have more than a rough idea of how many people you need to make up a football team. I went to a girls’ school where we played net-ball and hockey, but I think there are either eleven, twelve, or fourteen people in a football team, including the goalie. I don’t suppose they’d have thirteen players as that would be unlucky. I don’t really want to know. I’d rather die a lonely spinster than make concessions to the brittle new-laddishness sweeping the country by taking an interest in sport.
I’ve ended my ‘just sex’ arrangement, although it was convenient because I could ring him when I wanted to have sex and he’d come round. He always smelled of soap when he visited me. He was meticulously clean, scrubbing his whole body carefully in the shower before he visited me, shaving and dabbing himself with aftershave. Soap is very nice, but only strangers smell of soap. It’s nice to wake up next to someone who smells of sex and sweat and sleep, to smell them when they come home to you before they take a shower. Maybe that’s why women have office affairs, brushing next to someone at an after-work drink when he smells tired and vulnerable, his shirt smelling of sweat and just the mellow top notes of his aftershave because the astringent has faded since this morning—nothing unpleasant, but the shirt would be no good to wear tomorrow. It’s an intimacy you usually only share when you live with someone and kiss them hello after work and talk to them with a gin and tonic while they have a bath and then perhaps mix their clothes up with yours to go in the washing machine while they dry themselves off.
I’ve been sitting at the bar sipping at an orange juice, but thinking about gin and a naked man in a bath makes me want to swish some alcohol around my mouth, so I order a Bombay Sapphire and tonic. One drink won’t hurt, it might even cheer me up a bit. After two mouthfuls of the drink, which is expensive enough to be a double, the alcohol flushes through my blood and I realize that I’m miserable and I’ve been scowling. I totter off to the cigarette machine to get some Marlboro Lights. I gave up smoking when I was married, but I’ve started again since I got this job. It’s a dangerous and expensive habit, but on the plus side, it’s a great way to get people talking. Have you got a light? There’s a confederacy of smokers; we’re outnumbered, out of fashion, desperate for a fag. Also, I’m a bit afraid of the dark and I find it comforting to sit in my car on cold nights watching someone’s house and sniffing the nicotine on my fingers.
Although we’re both quite drunk by the time we leave the bar, the unfaithful husband doesn’t score and nor do I.
The next night I’m sitting in the car to keep his house under surveillance. It’s his night for babysitting while his wife goes to evening classes to learn Mandarin at the local sixth-form college. I don’t expect him to go out anywhere, so Taron is with me, keeping me company. We tell each other stories to pass the time. We have to turn off the radio and concentrate very carefully (Taron’s idea, she calls it telepathy) so that the words we say can project images into each other’s mind.
Taron tells me about her husband. He’s appeared in different mythologized incarnations each time she’s talked about him. Sometimes he’s a cartoon, square-jawed and handsome, his character served up as the sum of his features—neat, dark hair, sparkling eyes, cleanly shaven, his mouth a cupid’s bow. Taron almost makes me taste the delicate, expensive scents she tells me her perky little nose always sought on his neck—freshly laundered cotton, rose and citrus in the soap he used, a plume of cigar smoke, cinnamon or burnt orange in his aftershave, the peppermint from kisses where Taron tucked her chewing gum into her cheek and she licked his skin to taste it with her tongue. (The word for taste and smell in French is the same, she told me. It isn’t, I looked it up when I got home.) At other times she describes humour and quirkiness spilling out of him like liquid mercury on the science bench at school, silvery and slippery. I see a smiling, smaller, slighter, younger, quicker man with curlier hair and a more rumpled appearance. Sometimes he’s kind and brave, and sometimes he’s mischievous.
‘We met at a fabulous party celebrating the end of the decade,’ Taron says, describing herself in a too-tight, too-short dress, a shimmering, cushion-breasted beacon of sex standing near the middle of the room.
Large glittering disco balls twirling ironically from the ceiling temporarily suspended their movement, the thumping base and siren diva voices in the house tunes faltered, other people in less arresting clothes fell back as mesmerically
the
beautiful Man
walked
towards
Taron,
the Woman who was able to stop the world.
The Man, who was to become her husband, took her into his arms and started the world again.
‘We met in a café and started talking because we were reading the same book,’ says Taron, who can’t give me the title of the book. In this version, Taron, fragile and beautiful in the artificial light of a greasy spoon caff, sits at a Formica table near the window reading a book and sipping a cup of very strong tea—or perhaps she’s toying with a large fried breakfast, as thin people do. She hunches over her book concentrating, her tiny feet on the chair opposite, her legs cold in her jeans because it is an early morning in autumn, arms crossed in an effort to keep warm the perfect breasts softened by folds of her sloppily too-big, cream-coloured, casual jumper. She is Youth. An attractive young man, messy brown hai
r, oval face, huge, brown, intelligent eyes, smiling cupid’s bow, shyly comes into the empty café, taking the seat opposite. He is Youth. He has seen her through the window and fallen in love. He mentions the book; his comment is witty, diffident and intelligent, and she also falls in love. He is the man who is to become her husband, and they warm the world with their laughter.
‘Isn’t he French?’ I asked once, making the mistake of taking one of her stories too seriously.
‘French?’ She widened her eyes very, very slightly. ‘He has some French heritage, yes. He looks French.’
‘Torn from the pages of a magazine?’
‘That’s beautiful, “torn from the pages of a magazine”, yeah, that’s him.’ She gave me the most wonderful smile, with a faraway look in her eyes as if I were the one making him up, not her. It really breaks down my defences when I’m trying to pick a fight with someone and they agree with me. I grinned at her.
‘We just got married for the ceremony, we thought it would be fun. The wedding cake was a tower built of white icing with those little figures of a man and woman on the top. We never really moved in together, though, we kept our own places. He’d come and stay for a while, and when he left I’d lie in bed enjoying the peace and enjoying missing him. At first, when I was with him I was more like me than I was with anyone else. I mean, when I was with him I sparkled, I felt beautiful and exotic. I said things that were funny and cute. It was like he inspired me and I really fell in love with him. But then I found I was depending on him to make me feel like that. He even seemed to be manipulating my moods so that at other times I was withdrawn and quiet. He seemed to switch me on and off. At the end I spent more time “off” and more time lying in bed missing him.’
