“They did, but it wasn’t a simple task. The easiest thing to do was cut the trousers, of course, but they still needed a step ladder to get up there. And an ambulance carries a whole load of useful things, such as defibrillators, oxygen cylinders, even tool kits of sorts.”
“But not step ladders.”
“Spot on. They had to get the old bloke from the gate house to get one from his store room. It was then, talking to the policeman, that he told them about me.”
Christine looked mildly confused.
“I could hear. I’d stopped shouting by then, because I assumed that if you had been in you would have already heard. He was just a few yards away, walking alongside the policeman who was struggling to carry the steps. ‘He’s been making a nuisance of himself’, he said. ‘Been trying to get in after hours to harass one of the students’.”
“And of course the police knew it was a women’s college.”
“Can’t have been the first time, can it?”
She shrugged. “I doubt it. You men...”
“I take full responsibility for the foibles of the entirety of my gender.” He turned a little to ensure the remark had registered. He then continued without emotion. It was history. “They got me down. I’d lost the right leg of my trousers. They’d cut the fabric without realising that the false leg was secured by tapes round my waist, so after the first attempt I was half naked, but still hanging from the fence.”
“Half-naked, but the only thing exposed was a metal frame.”
He nodded.
“Were you hurt in any way?”
“Chris, I was devastated. You weren’t there!”
“I meant physically.”
“No, not a scratch. Just starting to go dizzy through hanging upside down for twenty minutes. That’s all.”
“So what next?”
“They realised they had to undo the tapes, but they cut them to release me and then they got the leg off the fence. So the result was that I was on the pavement, dizzy, no trousers, with the world spinning round, and beside me was a false leg I couldn’t wear again. And anyway it was all bent...”
“You suffered a broken leg.”
They both laughed for quite a long time.
“The problem started when I tried to stand.”
“Problem?”
“I can remember trying to stand, saying that I had to see you. I fell over a couple of times.”
“They assumed you were pissed.”
“Correct. I tried to break free of their clutches, which were only intended to help me, but I was in no mood to appreciate such help at the time. I was obsessed with the idea of seeing you.”
“But they weren’t listening to you...”
“Spot on. The old codger wanted me off the premises. The ambulance men wanted me in the ambulance. And the police? They just wanted me off. But I wasn’t helping matters. One of the policemen pushed me against the fence to restrain me. I hit my head against the railings. I was already dizzy. Now I had another reason to stay so. He meant me no harm, but I couldn’t stand up. I overbalanced. And then he called me ‘Laddie’.”
Christine’s initial confusion was quickly humour. “He called you ‘Laddie’. Injury upon insult!”
“‘Mind your step, laddie’, he said. He had me pinned against the fence. It was ironic, because I couldn’t take a step to mind!”
“And then?”
“I clocked him.”
“You did what?”
“I thumped him. Right, left, right, aimed at the face, but I couldn’t balance, so only the first one hit the target.”
“And one was enough.”
“It certainly was.”
“And then?”
“They beat me up. Not badly, but enough to make sure I wasn’t going to lash out again. And then I spent the night in a cell.”
“You are joking.”
“Why should I joke? Why would I joke, Chris? It’s mere history now.” He paused for a few seconds. Christine did not try to speak. “And I got done for assault. Police record. A fine. Small in money terms, but a lot more than I could afford. My mother paid it. But the police record proved devastating for my prospects of employment, as I came to realise a few years later, certainly any employment in the public sector. Even in the 1970s, the agencies already had full searching capability on computerised police records, so that was that, as far as I was concerned.”
“And so you became an expat.”
“I got a few part-time jobs, cover-teacher, and the like and some supply work, all through an agency. But it was clear that a full time job was not going to come my way. Most of the time I didn’t even manage an interview. I put it down to the criminal record, but looking back, I’m not so sure. It could easily have been the fact that I was disabled and I would have needed special consideration in timetabling, and perhaps some other things as well. I gave up trying and applied to do a master’s degree. I did a little part-time work in the university and then came here on a contract.”
“And you never tried to contact me again?”
He shrugged. “Seems so.”
“Why?”
“I wish I could say. It was as if you had a spell over me. You were the very key to my survival, at least that’s what I thought when I set off to see you that Saturday in November. By the time I’d got out of the police cell, gone to court and been found guilty, perhaps I realised I had better stand on my own two feet.”
She laughed.
“Foot.”
She laughed again.
“And of course you never contacted me. I took the hint,” he said, blankly, staring straight ahead. A prolonged silence followed.
“Were you there, Chris? Were you in your rooms? They told me you had gone away for the weekend.”
Christine did not answer. She thought long and hard. There was no emotion. She too looked ahead over the apparently unchanging sea that in reality was in constant, unpredictable, turbulent motion. “I was away,” she said.
***
But she wasn’t away. She was inside with me and the two other adolescent prurients, who were hard at it on the bed while she crashed out, comatose on the sofa. And somehow, for I had never told her, she had come to learn both that there had been a commotion outside her window and that it had something to do with her. She did ask, but I didn’t tell, and I had also specifically asked the porter to play the whole thing down, if he was asked. After all, I couldn’t tell her it had been Cartwright who had caused all the problems that night, because at the time I didn’t even know he existed. All I knew was that there was a bloke going ballistic in the garden, a bloke who was shouting his head off while hanging upside down, having impaled his leg on the fence-spikes. All I saw was that police and ambulance were both in attendance, that the idiot had come to grief on the fence and that he had responded to assistance by assaulting a policeman, an act for which he was bundled into the car and detained.
The next morning, when I inspected the area of lawn inside the fence, I was relieved to find no traces of blood or injury, just a few scraps of the bloke’s trousers plus some off-cuts of thick cream, bandage-like fabric, which I picked up and disposed of. I felt relieved, because this proved my belief there had been no injury, and thus the matter might end. Certainly the ambulance, which had arrived with sirens blaring, left without its alarm running, at moderate speed, and with no emergency on board, since I could see through the curtains that the man had got into the police car. I thus resolved not to trouble Christine with details of the incident. How was I to know that a one-legged Yorkshireman was stalking my girlfriend?
It was not until months later - and it may well have been years - that I first learned from Chris that she had not been alone in her three-year battle against bone cancer. Even then I never knew the other person’s
name, because she never told me. The revelation came as a passing remark in conversation with fellow students. I remember a reference in conversation to how unlucky she had been to contract the disease, and her reply was that lightning had struck twice in the same place, because there had been two of them. And that’s all I ever knew about the other person, at least until the discussion stage of this One-On-One assignment. Even then, I had to put one and one together to make more than two to realise that her co-victim, Cartwright, had been the bloke on the fence all those years ago. I realised this during the early planning stages, but by then it was far too late to change our plans. I should have spoken up, but I didn’t. I had knowledge that could materially affect the assignment.
I could claim that I don’t know why I kept quiet, but that would also be false. This was a big one. It would do Christine’s rather flagging career a world of good, would generate substantial operational bonuses for us and, after all, there was probably no-one else who could do the job. It came as a package, and could only be undertaken by Christine, because she had shared Cartwright’s illness and had been part of his history. The incident on the fence was forty years ago and I was convinced that Christine still did not know about it. But, I should have flagged the issue... mea culpa.
Then, on that first morning, when Chris got into Cartwright’s boat and snagged her trousers on that hook, my only expectation was that he would immediately stop, help her up and, as any near stranger would, check she was all right. But he didn’t. He laughed - and then she laughed - and then they both laughed. Clearly, the irony got the better of them. The last time they had been that close, he had a spike through his trousers, his false leg impaled on a fence. Forty years later, on their next encounter, Chris got a spike through her trousers, her false leg impaled on a boat hook. She knew. That’s why she laughed. So Christine had not been altogether honest in her reply that night as they sat again on Cartwright’s veranda at sunset, and neither had she been honest in declaring the knowledge she might bring to the assignment. She was as culpable as I was. We had both lied. I had lied to her, and she to me. And she had just lied to Cartwright who, no doubt, was lying about everything.
***
Their conversation continued, but I did not. I had to sleep. Their sun was sinking and so was mine. I had tried throughout the assignment to live by their time, using artificial light only during daylight hours and a bare minimum desk-spot during their darkness, but my body simply could not do it. During the days of their absence, I had hardly slept at all, and now the confusion had caught up with me. Something inside me demanded instinctive sleep.
When I awoke, they were themselves asleep. Christine, presumably, since I could not see her, was on the high-backed couch. Cartwright was definitely in his office, slumped at his desk, where he had clearly been trying to work. I had now learned, of course, that these apparent scribblings might just be shorthand for something assumed and understood, rather than the gibberish my specialists claimed. This knowledge, however, changed nothing and helped no-one, since we still had no access to any of the material to which he claimed the symbols might refer. I took the trouble, once more, to zoom in on a still of the paper I could see exposed in an open file, and forwarded it for specialist feedback. I indicated in my message that presumably the symbols might be shorthand for whole procedures, but I knew what the response would be. It came back less than an hour after I sent the message. “Gibberish again, old bean. As for shorthand suggestion, cannot comment without seeing this ‘other material’.” Further attempted analysis of Cartwright’s scribblings would clearly be pointless without first accessing his store of previous work. And, of course, we had no idea where that might be.
When I reviewed the three hours or so that passed before they retired for the night - separately, I was gratified to record - I found a good deal of exchange of pleasantries about drinks and snacks. Christine’s definitive declaration that she had not been in that night, her definitive lie, perhaps, had effectively brought the discussion to a close. Cartwright seemed to take the hint that Chris wanted to discuss nothing more of substance that evening. He proposed he make them a snack and had gone to the back balcony to prepare it. Christine, meanwhile, retrieved her laptop, which she had returned to its protective cover, and began another revision of her notes for their third interview. Cartwright was back in twenty minutes with sandwiches and coffee.
“I forgot to check my fishing lines and crab pots,” he said.
She looked rather quizzically at him. “You can’t do them now. It’s dark”
“It has to be done,” he said, as he placed the tray he had carefully carried with one hand onto the low table between their chairs. “I have enough light from here to see what I am doing. Excuse me for a moment. It’s sweaty work making coffee. This will be a relief.”
It was clear he was going into the water again, which he did carefully, without a jump or a dive, this time climbing down his pole ladder.
“That’s rather unspectacular for Tom Cartwright,” said Christine as he disappeared from view.
“It beats diving into the boat,” he mumbled amidst a splash.
Just three minutes later, he was back in his chair, dripping, and sipping his coffee.
“Lines and pots? You needed a pee.”
“Again. I am over sixty,” he said.
Christine smiled. She wanted to get back to business. “Why that stinking flower? Why not something else?”
He turned to face her. “Why did I concentrate on it? Well, it’s there. Second, it’s already been studied quite a lot and there’s a good deal of reliable data relating to it. Thirdly, my hunch was that it does tend to exist in identifiable locations and known habitats, both of which are accessible from here. Lastly, it’s quite rare, so a correct prediction of its location is pretty strong evidence that the technique works.”
“I have been thinking of ridiculous parallels.”
“How ridiculous can a parallel be?”
“The plant grows like a cancer in its host. It grows unnoticed and then makes a tumour, which is the flower. This gives rise to male and female manifestations. It’s rare, but your work suggests that when conditions are right, then both the male and female will develop nearby...”
“All reasonable observations thus far.”
Christine turned to face him, pivoting on the stump of her left leg. “It’s like us,” she said. “A cancer, tumours, unlikely, but with male and female occurrences nearby and at the same time...”
Cartwright smiled. “I thought you’d never notice. It’s only taken you a day and a half to work that out.” He leaned across and patted her patronisingly on the shoulder.
“So it’s been in your mind as well?”
“All along.”
“And you never thought to make the connection explicit?”
“I prefer the heuristic to the didactic, Chris.”
She grew impatient with him. “Don’t be facetious, Tom. Just be straight with me.”
“I wouldn’t dream of being anything else, Chris. How about you?”
She did not even pause. “Seriously, you can predict where and when a disease might occur using your systems... Is that true?”
“No, not at all.”
“But you can do it with flowers.”
“I can do it with one type of rare flower, in one type of habitat, where there is already a wealth of research data.”
“So you knew there were plants in that specific place before we left?”
“Not exactly. I predicted there would be plants somewhere in that area.”
“And if there were plants, then other conditions and analysis also predicted there would be flowers?”
“That’s about it. It’s like saying, ‘I can’t tell where there will be an outbreak of bone cancer, but once I know there is one, and I know its characteristics, I can predic
t how it is likely to develop.’”
Christine was clearly dumbfounded. She tried to speak several times, but could not find a word.
“But the research is still incomplete. I cannot make that claim yet.” His words were in the form of an apology. He seemed aware of her thoughts. “I have run trials on biological systems that ought to be predictable, given what I know about my systems and the data they require, and I have had limited, partial success.”
“Like finding the location of the giant flower...”
“Exactly. I did get lucky with that one. But I have also looked at animals, specifically turtles, considering when they mate, where and when they lay their eggs, the probability of a hatchling’s survival... It’s all far too complex at the moment, but I feel I am making good progress. Until I can get a better match for a species where there is already copious data and previous research, I cannot begin to extend the ideas to other, less well documented areas.”
“So what about your financial markets?”
He smiled. “Market indices are calculated from prices of a relatively small number of securities that change fairly slowly. Data on their historical price movements is available and copious. General economic data is hardly reliable, but it is available and it has been collected with some regularity for fifty years.”
“But anyone can have access to that material.”
“But only I have the mathematics to manipulate it. Everything else is only partial or particularistic. The analogy is straightforward, Chris,” he said, leaning across and touching her arm. “They know what happens when you put a match under a test tube of water. I have the laws of thermodynamics.”
5 Place names have been redacted from the original.
One-On-One
Christine Gardiner on Haji Salleh Abdullah (Thomas Cartwright)
Programme three of three
Awaiting transmission
Unedited text
[Standard title sequence and credits; cut to specific caption for this edition, as above; fade to continuity shot of host and subject sitting in large upholstered chairs behind a large, low, glass-topped table. There are drinks on the table, garnished fruit juice in cocktail glasses alongside tumblers of water, with tall blue bottles at their side. There is a large bowl of tropical fruit on the table, set with foliage to hide the rim. Christine Gardiner, the host, is on the right, Haji Salleh, the subject, on the left; both two-thirds facing the camera but looking at each other; host holds clipboard and pen; cut to host full face for introduction. They are seated outside on a terrace, but the backdrop is the lobby of a large hotel. It is an open space, obviously not air conditioned, with supporting pillars, but no obvious walls. The camera is adjusted to the external shade, so the interior behind them appears quite dark. An occasional figure can be seen moving through the shadows behind them.]
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