The front door bell rang about five minutes later. She stiffened at once, remembering Gillespie and his parting advice. Let nobody in. Nobody. She closed her eyes. The bell rang again. She swallowed hard and eyed the clock on the mantelpiece. Twenty to nine. In half an hour, she knew, Martin was due to broadcast. They’d said so on the radio. The Controller speaks, they’d said, at ten past nine tonight. Public Communiqué Number One. The broadcast, she assumed, had been prerecorded. Maybe he’d come down to see her, to be with her when the thing went out. It was the kind of careful surprise he liked to spring, bringing home his trophies, her clever, clever man.
The door bell rang for a third time, and she got up, unsteady on her feet, but determined to be proved right. Martin. Her Martin. Back at the door. Without the key. Full of apology. Full or remorse. Full of love. She walked through to the hall, bare feet. She felt slightly woolly, but not at all afraid. She hesitated for a moment at the door, then peered through the tiny glass peephole. A woman stood outside. She was middle aged. She wore a tan raincoat, well cut. She had a scarf round her neck, red silk. Her face was quite expressionless. Suzanne closed her eyes for a moment, knowing at once who it was. The ring of the bell, much closer, made her jump. She opened her eyes and reached for the chain on the door. Better this, she thought, than Cartwright.
She opened the door. The woman in the tan coat looked at her coldly.
‘My name’s Joanna Goodman,’ she said, ‘I’m his wife.’
‘I know,’ said Suzanne.
The two women stood there for a moment, then Joanna nodded beyond her, up the hall.
‘May I come in?’ she said briskly, ‘this won’t take very long.’
Suzanne nodded, holding the door open, standing to one side.
‘Of course,’ she said.
Joanna walked past her, up the hall. Her perfume reminded her of Martin. His suits. His cuffs. The collar of the big cashmere coat she must adjust for him, every morning, before he left for work. Little, wifely gestures, eighteen years in the making.
Confused again, unsure of her bearings, Suzanne closed the door. Joanna had already walked through to the big lounge. She seemed to know her way around. Perhaps they’ve talked about it, Suzanne thought, maybe they’ve discussed the lay-out of the place, the make of the carpets, the colour of the sheets. She shut her eyes and leaned briefly back against the wall. The gin was beginning to envelop her again, waves of it, lapping at her brain. She steadied herself and walked into the lounge. Joanna was standing by the window, staring out. She turned back into the room, loosening the scarf at her neck.
‘Must be an interesting view,’ she said, ‘in daylight.’
Suzanne nodded. ‘It is,’ she said. ‘Would you like a drink?’
Joanna glanced round, surprised at the invitation.
‘Yes, please,’ she said, ‘I would.’
‘Gin OK? Orange?’
‘Fine.’
There was a silence. Suzanne bent to the drinks cabinet and felt for a glass, pouring a measure of gin while Joanna circled the room, hands deep in the pockets of her coat, inspecting this and that, touching nothing. Suzanne recognized what she was doing, taking charge, the older, wiser, woman. She stopped by the framed photo of her husband, the smile in the sunshine, Parliament behind. She picked it up, reflective. Suzanne heard herself talking, and listened wonderingly to her own voice, so sure of itself, so suddenly bold.
‘I’m pregnant,’ she said. ‘Did he tell you that?’
Joanna glanced round. She tried to keep her voice as neutral as possible, total self-control, but the contempt was all too obvious.
‘No,’ she said, ‘but I suppose I should have expected it.’ She paused. ‘He got the last one pregnant, too.’ She put the photo down, carefully, and inspected a line of books on a shelf over the television. ‘You’d be surprised,’ she said, ‘he’s careless like that. Dirty shirts. Socks. Babies…’ She shrugged, turning round again. ‘Do you want to know the rest?’
Suzanne stared at her, holding out the drink. She felt dizzy. Joanna took the glass and sipped thoughtfully at the gin and orange. Suzanne sat down.
‘Rest?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ Joanna smiled, ‘about the other one.’
There was a long silence. Suzanne began to reach down for her drink but then thought better of it. No amount of gin and orange could possibly halt this woman, her hideous lies. She shrugged.
‘Say what you like,’ she said, ‘if it makes you feel better.’
Joanna nodded, accepting the invitation.
‘Her name was Sheila. He had an affair with her. Years ago. He was passionately in love, of course. They meant the world to each other. It was …’ she frowned, remembering her husband the day he confessed, tears on the sofa, the words he used, trying to justify it all, ‘very warm … very tender … very real …’ She smiled again. ‘Sound familiar?’
Suzanne said nothing for a moment, fighting the urge to reach down for the heavy crystal glass, and throw it in the woman’s face, bringing the whole charade to an end. Instead, she tried to keep up, tried to argue the conversation to a standstill.
‘So why did you stay with him? If he put you through all that?’
‘Because he was the father of my child.’
‘And now? Me?’
‘Because he’s the father of my three children.’ She paused. ‘Our three children.’ She glanced at the photo a moment. ‘Does he ever talk about them at all? As a matter of interest? In between trips to London?’
Suzanne nodded. ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, he does. We both do.’
‘Do you?’ Joanna looked at her. ‘How sweet.’
‘Yes, he’s devoted to them. And he thinks there’ll be no problem, you know, afterwards …’
‘After what?’
‘The divorce.’
Joanna checked a moment, a body blow, and for the first time Suzanne began to think there might, after all, be some hope, that she might have got it all wrong, the message from Fiona, the visit from this terrible woman. Maybe Martin really meant what he said. Maybe he did love her. Maybe. Suzanne picked up her glass, bolder.
‘Tell me something,’ she said. ‘Do you still love him?’
Joanna nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I do. Funnily enough.’
‘He thinks you don’t.’
‘Is that what he says?’
‘Yes. He says you’re cold.’
‘Does he?’ Joanna smiled, totally at ease again, totally in charge. ‘He said that to the last one, too. Before she got pregnant, and he came crawling back.’
She put her glass carefully on the mantelpiece and started to button her coat. Suzanne gazed at her, beginning to question her sanity, her grasp on what she’d always mistaken for reality. Martin loved her. He’d told her so. A million ways. There was to be a divorce. A remarriage. And now, a baby. Yet here was this icy woman, this wife of his, contradicting it all, telling her lies about a previous affair, lies about a woman called Sheila, lies, lies, lies. She remembered the phone call again, Fiona, and she decided on one last test. Do or die, she thought, looking at Joanna. You or me.
‘Enjoy the trip,’ she said carefully.
‘Trip?’
‘The boat,’ she said, ‘the boat that’s going tonight.’
‘Ah …’ Joanna nodded, ‘you think we’re leaving? Me? The kids? Leaving you to it? Is that what he told you?’
Suzanne stared at her, refusing her the satisfaction of an immediate answer, all hope gone.
‘Yes,’ she said at last, ‘that’s what he told me.’
Joanna looked at her for a long moment. She’d been thinking of the postcard all day, the big loopy characters, the teenage prose. It was a crazy thought, but she almost felt sorry for the girl. She’d signed herself Suzy. That’s the word they probably used together. Fond. Close. The adolescence he’d never had.
‘Suzy …’ she said, ‘my husband’s a child. A creature of whim. Very charming. And very plausible. And quit
e inadequate. He’s a very bright man. But he knows not what he does.’ She smiled. ‘Good luck,’ she said, ‘you’ll need it. Both of you. Assuming we all survive.’
Suzanne nodded, her eyes drifting back to the photo on the television.
‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘I’m sure we’ll cope.’
Joanna smiled again.
‘I meant you and the baby, dear. Goodbye. I’ll find my own way out.’
She turned on her heel and left the room. Suzanne heard her footsteps down the hall, the turn of the latch, the door shutting softly behind her. She lay back in the chair, numbed again, quite dead, the hot tears falling down her face. Joanna’s glass lay on the mantelpiece where she’d left it, barely touched.
Gillespie parked Suzanne’s Golf two streets away from the photo shop. He pocketed the keys, and jogged along the pavement, towards the corner. The windows in the tiny bay-fronted houses were curtained against the world outside. From room after room came the opening bars of the National Anthem. The Queen, Gillespie thought. Nine o’clock.
The camera shop lay on the main road. He used the place a lot, and he knew the owner well. The shop was fully alarmed, a sophisticated system on which Gillespie himself had offered advice. The alarms were triggered by a combination of touch-pads and photoelectric cells, and Gillespie knew there was no way he could short-circuit them. The alarms were wired direct to the city’s Central Police Station, but he also suspected that no squad car would arrive for at least five minutes. Ample time to lay hands on the gear he needed.
On the main road, Gillespie checked right before climbing the wall beside the camera shop. The road was quite empty. On the other side of the wall was a small yard. The back door of the shop was double bolted, and the ground floor windows were barred on the inside. Upstairs, was a rented flat. There was a light on in one of the rooms, the ceiling purpled with the glow from a TV set. The other window was dark, a kitchen perhaps, or a bedroom. A drainpipe ran up the wall. Gillespie shook it, testing how firmly it was bedded in the brickwork. He began to climb, one foot on either side of the pipe, body well out, taking the strain on his arms and thighs. At window level, on the first floor, he stepped sideways onto the narrow wooden sill, and reached in to release the catch. The window swung open. He stepped in, onto a draining board. He froze a moment, recognizing the smell of stale chip fat, and the steady drip of water in the sink.
Next door, he could hear the Queen counselling resolution and good neighbourliness. Sticking together, she was saying, was the best possible antidote to the fear and anxiety she was sure everyone was feeling. High technology, she said, has broken down the barriers between classes. The missile and the H-Bomb have turned us into a single nation, all equally vulnerable, all equally at risk. Gillespie smiled grimly, one foot on the draining board, one foot on the window-sill, remembering the list in his pocket, the names, the money, the men and women determined to buy their way out at all costs. Equality, bollocks, he thought. It’s power, and money, and the same old network of favours. Just like always.
He levered himself slowly onto the floor, and padded across to the door. Outside, in the hall, he headed downstairs, away from the blare of the television. On the ground floor, there was a connecting door through to the shop. The door was locked, but it was old technology, wonderfully responsive to a Smith and Wesson .38. He drew the revolver, stood carefully to one side, and shot obliquely at the door. He fired twice. The sound of the shots was deafening. The hall stank of cordite. He pushed the door. The door opened.
Upstairs he heard a chair moving. Then footsteps in the hall overhead. A figure appeared at the top of the stairs. A man. Medium height. Less than eager. Gillespie stood at the foot of the stairs. Take charge, they’d always told him. Be firm. Call the shots from the start.
‘Put the light on,’ he said evenly, ‘and don’t be frightened.’
The man did what he was told. Gillespie let him see the gun. He motioned the man downstairs. The man was pale with fear. First the Queen, and her list of cheerless homilies. Now this.
‘Go in there.’ Gillespie waved him into the shop. The man did what he was told. He was about 45, with a cardigan and slippers. His mouth was smudged with chocolate. Gillespie followed him into the shop. In the flat above, Gillespie could hear the National Anthem again. The Queen must have finished. Gillespie pushed the door half-closed behind him with his foot. He spoke very quietly, but slowly, too, risking not the slightest ambiguity.
‘Lie down on the floor …’ he said, ‘and don’t move. Otherwise I’ll shoot you.’
The man got to his knees and lay full length on the brown tiles. The light from the hall through the half-open door was enough. Gillespie circled the shop, as quickly as he could, choosing the equipment he needed. A Pentax camera body. A Vivitar zoom lens. He crossed to the big white fridge in the corner and opened it. Two rolls of the new 1000 ASA colour stock. He closed the fridge again and motioned the man to his feet. They walked into the hall, Gillespie behind, the gun steady in his right hand. Upstairs, from the television, he could hear a voice announcing a series of measures for the city. A curfew was to be imposed, effective immediately. Anyone on the streets after ten faced summary arrest. Shops would open tomorrow for one hour only. Demonstrations of any kind were banned. Looters risked being shot. Gillespie told the man to open the back door. The man did so. Gillespie pushed past him, still carrying the camera and the lens. The owner, he knew, would be down within an hour, summoned by the police.
‘Tell Paul I owe him,’ he said. ‘Tell him not to worry.’
He stepped out into the dark, hearing the click of the door behind him, and the footsteps up the stairs as the man with the cardigan raced for the phone.
By half-past nine there were at least twenty cars drawn up at the quayside at the dock, Jaguars, and Mercedes, and a couple of the big new Audi estates. Husbands and wives ferried provisions to and fro, cardboard boxes full of heirlooms, favourite knick-knacks, oil paintings, family pets. Children stood in groups, clutching teddy bears and comics, not saying very much. Some of them were wearing pyjamas, or light tracksuits, dressed by mothers with visions of en suite cabins and cocktails with the Captain. The reality, an ancient over-loaded trawler with all the charm of a public lavatory, had come as a profound shock. One or two of the women had simply turned away, shaking their heads, and driven back home, telling their husbands it was a hideous con, totally unacceptable, but the majority – more than fifty individuals – had simply accepted it, just another twist to the nightmare that had so swiftly engulfed the city.
Many of the families, having lowered their possessions on board, had chosen to remain on the quayside until the very last minute, preferring the relative comfort of their cars to the chilly squalor of the fish hold. They sat in silence, windows up, engines on, the car heaters keeping the darkness and cold at bay. After listening to the Queen, and to Goodman on the radio, they knew they were lucky, the chosen few, and under these circumstances the Timothy Lee seemed no longer quite so bad. Indeed, the very state of the boat seemed to mirror the world they’d found themselves suddenly part of. Everything was crazy. Everything was upside down. Too bad the boat stank. Too bad it cost the earth. Needs must, they told each other. Grin and bear it.
Mick Rendall, who’d decided to have as good a war as possible, had detected this mood early on, and had made the most of it. When one mother reproached him about the state of the lavatory – no toilet seat, the floor thick with grease – he shook his head, and took the woman to one side.
‘My grandad was at Dunkirk,’ he told her, ‘and he had to do it in the sand dunes.’
The woman nodded, none the wiser.
‘Did he?’ she said politely. ‘How ghastly.’
And so it went on, the big cars arriving, pulling onto the dock, spilling out wives and children, joining the mêlée around the boat. Cartwright watched it all from the bridge, keeping track of the money, storing the bundles of notes in a biscuit tin McNaught had produced from the
tiny galley. Some of the money, £30 a head, would go to McNaught himself, the agreed charter fee. The rest, he now decided, would go to Mick Rendall to be split with Albie. The latter had buried his reservations for the time being, and was doing what he could to impose some kind of order on the chaos around him, finding stowage space for the endless suitcases, allotting mattresses in the big hold, and keeping the stroppier kids quiet with handouts of chewing gum. The gum had come from Mick, who’d lifted a large supply from the Oriental cash and carry. He’d tried some himself, at first, but decided it didn’t fit the nautical image and so Albie now had the lot. Mick sauntered towards him, hands in pockets, looking for the phrase that would finally bring a smile to Albie’s face. A big Ford Granada had just arrived on the quayside above. Four kids and three adults. Mick tapped Albie on the shoulder. Nodded up to the car. Grinned.
‘Seven hundred quid, mate,’ he said. ‘Think positive.’
The fire and contamination drills in the Bunker went better than Quinn had expected. At nine o’clock, all work stopped while the staff gathered round the three TV sets. The reception, for some reason, was appalling, but most of the sound got through, and by the end of Goodman’s broadcast, the mood was sombre. The fire and contamination drills had ceased to be rehearsals, make-believe for the day when it might all come true. On the contrary, after the curt phrases about district Dressing Stations, and the wisdom of keeping a bath full of cold water, it was all too real.
It began with Quinn blowing a whistle. This was the signal to robe up, to shake the Noddy suits out of their plastic bags, the long baggy trousers with the Velcro fastenings, the anorak-like jacket with its drawstring hood. Quinn insisted on the buddy system, everyone working in pairs, checking each other for mistakes, uncovered areas where the poison gas, or the thin mist of air-dropped germs might penetrate. One moment’s carelessness, he kept telling everyone, moving from group to group, one square inch of exposed flesh, and the whole exercise would be pointless.
Rules of Engagement Page 31
