“So the power’s running from that casing, which we’ve got mounted in the same position as the other engine, through to the back wheel?” she said.
“He’d like to alter the shape of the bike but I said, ‘Leave it,’” Wayne told her. “He reckons, get rid of the pushbike design, forget the pedals and chain – all it needs is two bars for the rider’s feet – and I told him, stick to the old design for now. Maybe people like new things to look like the old ones for a bit, maybe the old design is more practical than you know – all that’s for later. The point is – he did it.”
“Aren’t you going to hook it up, Mum?” said Fred, still in the doorway. He came in.
“Haven’t we got a bike to mount it on?” demanded Molly, still trying to put off the moment when she had to believe George had managed to work out a way of producing enough power from a silver globe the size of a football to take a small machine up the road at 15 mph.
“Have to fix it up tomorrow,” Wayne told her. “It’s too dark to play around out there now, anyway.” He added, “Molly – do you want to see this or not?”
Molly picked up the engine and handed it to him. “It must weigh three pounds,” she said. George, as she picked it up, had stirred and woken. His eyes went to Wayne, who linked the engine up to a control panel on the wall and said to Molly, “Watch the needle on the panel over there.”
Molly watched as the static needle arced steadily across the face of the dial. Fred, in the corner, raised his hands above his head and shouted “Yeah!” Molly put her hand on George’s head and found herself saying, “My God, George. Your mother would’ve been so proud of you.”
His eyes were red as he looked up at her. “I don’t know what to say,” she said. “I’m speechless. I can’t believe you did it.”
“Wait till tomorrow – you can ride it,” George said.
“Come in the house and have something to eat, George,” she told him. “Then I’m driving you home. I want you to get some sleep.”
They all walked out. She was about to shut the door when she turned and said, “Christ! Don’t leave that thing in here!”
“What’s the matter?” George asked.
“It’s worth bloody millions,” Molly told him. “So are your plans and notes. They’ve got to go in a safe place till you’ve taken out the patents.”
“Oh – yes,” George said vaguely. “Well – where are we going to put it all?”
“I’ve got a safe in my room,” declared Fred. “I got it off a boy at school whose father’s a lawyer. He was putting in a new one. It cost me fifteen quid.”
“I hope you haven’t forgotten the combination,” Molly said. They carried the engine and some of the drawings back to the house and locked them in the safe in Fred’s room.
They ate in silence. Molly produced a bottle of champagne but there was something in George’s pale, thin face, in his air of complete exhaustion which inhibited a real celebration. In the end she got up saying, “Congratulations, George, and thanks. I’ll see you in the morning.” She turned in the doorway and said, “Better say nothing about all this – till we’ve thought what to do.”
Fred had gone upstairs to his room. Molly joined Isabel in the drawing room. She was watching a soap opera on TV and Molly sat down silently, wondering what Wayne and George were saying to each other. She began to realize what a lonely life George must have been leading in Framlingham since Wayne and his wife had moved north. He was lodging in the village with a niece of Vera Harker’s. He had no interests and, it always seemed, no close relationships. Cissie came down for a week occasionally to visit him and that was all. From now on he would be wealthy and she wondered what he would do with his money – nothing, perhaps. It seemed sad. She waited until the programme was over and asked, “Where’s Richard?”
“Oh,” Isabel said, “didn’t he tell you? He went away suddenly to see a film producer in Berlin – about a script.” Molly nodded.
“Anything the matter?” asked Isabel.
“No,” said Molly.
“I thought you looked rather preoccupied,” Isabel said.
“No,” Molly told her. “Just thinking about something.”
“I’m sure he said he would leave a message for you at the office in London,” Isabel said.
“It’s not that,” Molly said. Isabel looked a little disconcerted. Molly supposed that if she and Richard parted the rose garden plan would be spoiled. And Isabel got on well with Richard. She would be lonely without him. Then, somehow feeling she was interrupting Isabel’s viewing she stood up and said, “I think I’ll go and read in the library.” She could hear George and Wayne talking in the dining room where they had eaten, and the sound of the TV and even Fred’s record player, coming faintly from upstairs. She lay by herself on the sofa in the library, staring at the dark windows and letting thoughts run round her head. If she were to exploit the new engine she would need a great deal more capital. It would mean a new factory, or factories. And after she had thought that she began to wonder about the wider implications of George’s discovery. Her musings made her sit bolt upright, groaning aloud, “Oh, my God – is it true?” She slept very little that night, was up at dawn and had cooked Fred’s breakfast too early. “What I’m thinking, Mum,” he said, surveying his dried-up sausages, “is you’d better get another safe somewhere else for all that stuff. I don’t want my room turned over by agents from Dallas just as I’ve got all my tapes organized.”
Molly nodded numbly at him. “There’s such a thing as industrial espionage, you know,” he informed her.
“I’ve heard about it, Fred,” she said.
“Give Isabel a shock, see,” he said. “Arabs sneaking round the house trying to get in to steal the plans. Can we have security guards?” he added hopefully.
“And Alsatian dogs?” she said.
He nodded with enthusiasm. “What a world you kids are growing up in,” she said. But she was impressed that Fred had come spontaneously to the same conclusions as herself. George did not see the new engine in this way and Wayne, if he saw it, had said nothing. She had reminded them to take the engine from the workshop. But Fred had followed her line of reasoning on from that point. Now she told him, “If we have to take precautions some of them might not be much fun for you.”
“I don’t mind having a minder,” he told her.
George and Wayne arrived before half past eight. Molly stood in a corner of the workshop while they mounted the engine on the new Messiter. “If it comes off, what happens?” Molly asked. “It lies on the ground,” Wayne told her. By eleven thirty she was sitting on a stool, dozing, when Wayne said, “Molly – do you want first ride?”
“George first,” she said.
“I’ve had one,” George said. “When I thought the casing was dodgy. I had to prove it worked –”
“I’ll get on,” said Molly. She gripped the handlebars and wheeled it into the yard. “You’ve got to keep controlling the speed with this,” said George showing her the lever on the handlebars. “It controls the output of power. But it’s sluggish so while you’re doing it, left for less power, right for more, keep your other hand on the braking system on the other side. If you have to stop quickly you can’t cut the power fast enough so you have to rely more on braking than with the petrol-driven engine.”
Molly thought she would drive through the entrance to the yard, along the narrow path to the area in front of the house, then take the machine down the drive to the road beyond. George gave her a push, she turned on the engine, pedalled a little and, before she reached the entrance to the stable yard felt the machine begin to pull. She found she was careering through the entrance and turned the handlebar on the left. As he had said, the response was sluggish. She had reached the semi-circle of gravel in front of the house before the bike slowed down. She went smoothly along the drive, hearing only the crunching of the gravel beneath the wheels. She turned into the road and travelled through the misty air, so silently and so effortlessly tha
t she felt she was flying. She half expected the little bicycle to take off under her and sail into the air. Making a half-circle, rather recklessly, to get back on to the other side of the road she found the machine turned sharply and was in danger of being hit by a car which had swept round a bend further up. She sailed on, with the fields on one side and the wall of Allaun Towers on the other, quite unwilling to go back. She dismounted outside the house and said, “It’s really fun – George – it’s really fun. There are a lot of other things about it but – I can’t explain it. I can’t see anyone not wanting one of these. You feel like a kid when you’ve first learned to use roller skates. Or ride a bike, for that matter.” She looked affectionately at the little bike and, discharging these thoughts, said, “It looks dirt cheap to produce. What I haven’t got is figures for the small modifications to the frame and the different brakes and so on. Any idea, Wayne? I humbly ask – I don’t expect anyone to tell me these things.”
“Sorry, Molly,” he said. “But it wasn’t strictly necessary. Fact is, these would come cheaper than the old petrol engines, if the materials involved don’t suddenly leap up in price. Course – there’s testing.”
“We’ll have to do at least 10,000 miles,” Molly said. “And in different climates, too.” She handed the bike back to Wayne and said, “Lock it up.”
“What is this?” Wayne asked.
“At the moment,” she said, “it’s my son, Fred. He’d give anything for a go –” She looked at George and said, “George – you put him on the unsafe one.”
“I found him on it,” said George. She watched Wayne taking away the new Messiter and told him, “I’d give anything to have that.”
“When we’ve finished with it,” he said. He was beginning to look proud of himself.
Inside, over coffee in the dining room she said, “Here’s the problem – no, here are the problems. First – I’ve got to work out in my own mind whether I’ve got the nerve, or the capital, to develop it. Second – well, the second’s a question. Would it drive a car – this engine?”
“Nothing to stop it,” George said. “The principle’d be exactly the same. They were working on something like it in the States in 1981–2. There was a hitch. I couldn’t see –”
“That’s the problem,” Molly said. “From the moment you apply for a patent you’re in trouble, George. I think you’ll get offered money for this. I think if you phoned any big motor manufacturer now they’d offer you a few million. Either to develop it themselves or to secure the patent so they could wait until they wanted to develop it – or suppress it.”
Wayne was smoking a thin cigar. “I thought about that,” he said. Some rooks cawed in the trees nearby. “That’s got to be your decision, George.” Molly told him. The front door banged. “And another thing,” she said, “give us one of them cigars, Wayne. The trouble is, you’re in danger, George – we all are.”
George looked at Wayne. Wayne nodded.
“Chuck us the matches,” she said. Richard Mayhew put his head round the door. “So’s he,” she said, pointing at him. “Hullo, Richard,” she said brightly. “Back quick from Berlin?”
“Wouldn’t mind a cup of coffee,” he said.
“Get it yourself,” said Molly. “We’ve got a bit of a problem.”
He shrugged and answered, “OK. I’ll see you later.”
“Fred saw it, you see,” she told the others when he had gone. “He took it for granted he’d need a minder. You know there’s more kidnaps these days. We’ve got to imagine we’ve got an engine which can drive cars, trucks – anything. Conservationists cheer – what are all the others going to say and do? There’s billions of pounds at stake here – do you see what I mean?”
George said, “Yes,” in a slightly doubtful voice. Wayne said, “I’m going to ring my wife and tell her to be careful.”
“You mean people might try to get the plans?” George said. Molly could have cried. Poor Lil – she had not lived to see her brilliant child fulfil himself. She had not lived, either, to see him remain a brilliant child.
“Look,” she said, “George – supposing you’d been a stagecoach operator when they invented railway trains. What would you have done?”
“Gone into steam,” he replied humourlessly.
“Never mind,” she said. “I think you’d better take out this patent and disappear. You can go down to stay with Sid in Ramsgate. And while you have a seaside holiday, which, God knows, you need, the rest of us’ll have to be careful. We’ll have to have security men – Wayne, when you ring your wife tell her she’s going to have to share her life with a couple of ex-coppers. I’ll have to stay here for a bit and live with a few of the same. Isabel’ll go spare but I can’t help that. Meanwhile I’ve got to decide if I can handle going into this business and you’ve got to decide, George, if you’d like to sell off the idea and go into a wealthy retirement. Is it all right if I ring Sid and tell him to expect you?”
George nodded. Her urgency was beginning to affect him. Molly took another of Wayne’s cheroots and said, “I didn’t expect this.” Wayne went out to the telephone. “God knows why we haven’t got a handset in here,” muttered Molly. “We’ll have to get some technology in this place.” She looked at George, who said, “You’re right, you know – it’s a pity Mum isn’t alive. I could’ve done a lot for her. She had a rotten hard life.”
“Don’t I know it,” Molly said. “Time you got married yourself, George. That’s what she’d’ve liked.” But, she thought, please God, to a sensible widow, not a blonde tart after his money.
Wayne came back. “How did she take the news?” Molly asked. He laughed. “Like usually – told me she wished she married a local farmer’s boy. Then she says make sure the guys’re good-looking.”
“You make sure to get ugly ones,” Molly said sympathetically.
“You could get government backing for this,” Wayne told her.
“Money got selling off hospitals,” Molly said.
“You need backing, Molly,” he warned her.
“There’s got to be a better way,” she said. And went out to ring the security firm.
The day went on quickly. George left in a car for Ramsgate. The lawyer came from London. Wayne was collected by the security men who would stay in his house in Liverpool and went back up north. Molly made some brief explanations to Isabel, who took the news that the house was to be heavily guarded very well.
Richard Mayhew, however, said that he would find it unbearable to live in an armed camp and left an hour later to stay with a friend in London. She and Isabel were eating a sandwich together in the dining room when the telephone rang. Herbert Precious said that he had something important to say to her and asked her if she would meet him in London as soon as possible. Molly, now unable to pause, agreed to drive up immediately. She told Isabel she would be back before ten that night and as she drove out into the main road, crossed the security men driving in with a couple of Alsatian dogs in the car behind a grille. As she went to London she knew she must begin to see beyond present emergencies and work out what to do, but she now felt very fatigued. Her doctor had told her almost a year ago, when she visited him with a minor throat infection, that she should try to lead a calmer life. “It’s all right,” she had said, “I’m the sort that thrives on stress.” And he, the quiet country GP who had attended Mrs Gates at her death, had said, “Even your sort can’t go on forever. There’s a kind of battle fatigue I’ve seen in people who live as you do. In the end they do collapse – it surprises everyone, but they do. It doesn’t need to happen if only you live sensibly. Take proper holidays, for example.” Of course she had taken no notice but now the conversation came back to her. Why had she automatically agreed to go to Meakin Street to meet Bert, when she had, half an hour before, been turning Allaun Towers into a fortress? Was she simply running too fast herself, unable to work out what was important and what was not? Bert’s voice had sounded urgent, she thought, not like someone about to make a declara
tion of love – and why should he, after all this time? He had sounded more like someone with urgent business to discuss. Perhaps, she thought, Tom Allaun was in trouble. But her secret hope was that Corrie Precious had fallen in love and run away to Trinidad for at that moment, tired and with urgent decisions to make, she felt urgently that all she wanted was a peaceful, loving life with Bert. But, “No such luck for you, Mary Waterhouse,” said a voice inside her head. “Pull yourself together, gel – count your blessings and think what’s happening to everybody else.” This was not difficult as the frozen, darkening countryside gave way first to the suburbs, where houses, a long way back from the street, had lighted windows and people moving about inside, then to the city, where the streets were almost empty except for small bands of young men, walking about. In the wide, inner city thoroughfares some shops had already put tawdry Christmas displays in their windows, many of which were protected by mesh grilles. Other shops were boarded up, showing “For Sale” signs.
She went on, through Parliament Square. There was a police cordon blocking off Piccadilly and Regent Street. Ambulances and police cars stood with their red and blue lights revolving. She made a detour and got to Meakin Street. By now it was completely dark. She opened the door with her keys and knew that Bert Precious was there already.
“Sir Herbert Precious –” the office manager began.
Molly nodded. She said, on impulse, “You and Tony and Sarah can go home now.”
As he protested she said, “Take whatever it is home with you and do it.” The office manager glanced at the ceiling. She said, “A friend – very harmless.”
As she walked up the stairs she heard her own voice saying, “Very harmless.” She did not believe it.
There he was, stretched out in a chair. She could not help smiling at him but his own face was serious. Feeling even more alarmed she offered him a drink and as she looked through the cupboard in the kitchen, finding only gin and Armagnac, wondered what was going on. Had Corrie died – surely Bert wasn’t the kind to bring his bereavement instantly to her doorstep? Did he need a loan? She could not believe he would summon her to London to ask for money. No contingency she could think of, indeed, no area of life she could think of, seemed to fit the urgent summons. Carrying the Armagnac and two glasses back into the room where he sat, she poured him a drink and handed it to him. As she did so she said, “How are you, Bert? I’ve wanted to know but I decided, with Corrie back, that the less seen of me the better.”
All The Days of My Life Page 73
