by John Gardner
Boysie signed and took the envelope. The door had hardly closed before he began to open the flap. It appeared to be twice as bulky as Mostyn’s.
‘CIA probably want you to sort out a couple of problems for them.’ Mostyn’s sarcasm was fringed with irritation.
Boysie scanned the typewritten notepaper. ‘Hardly,’ he said, unmoved. ‘Terribly sorry and all that, but ‘fraid I won’t be able to help choose the right girl tomorrow. Going to have a look round Cape Kennedy. My own money of course.’
Mostyn visibly called upon his personal guardian angel to give him strength. ‘You are going up to Cape Kennedy tomorrow?’ He spaced the words, letting them drop like icicles.
‘Fly up to Melbourne, Florida — oh, I will be able to help. Don’t leave until five-forty-five in the evening. Back the following afternoon. Old Rupert Birdlip’s fixed it. Remember old Birdlip? San Diego?’
‘I remember Birdlip.’ Mostyn’s lip twisted, the villain in a Victorian melodrama.
‘Good song title that.’ Griffin perky, waiting for the confrontation to explode into a shooting war. ‘I remember Birdlip and my heart still sings.’ He warbled in a stucco off-key.
‘Shut up.’ Mostyn in black fury. ‘As we cannot start interviewing the girls until three-thirty I do not see Boysie being much help. Which means,’ He chewed the words like mincemeat, ‘that you, Boysie bloody Oakes, are a fellow traveller.’
‘So sue me.’ Boysie turned away quietly singing Lullaby of Birdland, substituting Birdlip where necessary.
‘I’ll do better than sue you, Boysie my old mate, I’ll charge your share of this excursion to your salary.’
‘Okay.’ Boysie shrugged. He had expected it anyway and the victory was choice, even though Mostyn did not speak a single word to him until after his return from Cape Kennedy.
Boysie stuck it for half an hour while Mostyn pontificated to Griffin about the New York office and its prospects. Their senior partner was becoming horribly repetitive. At last Boysie got up and casually sauntered towards the door. Nobody tried to stop him.
In the elevator, alone but for the operator, Boysie made a blatant study of his reflection in the long mirror. Age, he thought, was a strange thing. In childhood one imagined the years between forty and fifty to be an age of great wisdom. Or a time when you were washed up, on the beach with sand nagging at the wrinkles, senility coming on target fast.
Yet, when you reached, and passed, your two score years you did not feel much different. The same old desires and the same treacherous mistakes. He looked at himself, carefully tailored in his second best grey. Mauve shirt and black tie discreetly spotted with matching mauve dots. The line was good. In the mauve if not quite in the pink. In spite of the overdoses life had offered, his face had taken it pretty well, the eyes still clear, the hair line untouched by time’s erosion.
‘Main lobby.’ The elevator boy broke up Boysie’s narcissistic affair with the mirror.
‘Come on, lad,’ he said to himself with a sidelong glance at the reflection, ‘Be your age.’
The action was centred around the bar in the main lobby. Boysie chose a table, ordered a cognac, and sat back to take in the dizzy square scene.
During the early evening, the lobby of the Waldorf Astoria has the faint flavour of a theatre foyer on some bizarre first night. You have the feeling it has all happened so many times before. Really you don’t want to know any more. Fifty per cent of the folk who trip and totter through that hallowed area at the cocktail hour look, as though they ought to be known. The remainder desperately want to be known, or at least needed and cared for. A grazing pen. Fodder for the analysts’ leather couches.
It was, thought Boysie, like a velvet and scented railway station where, if you were lucky, one evening could reward you with the glimpse of some face fitting an international name. The hand of dead luxury fingered scarlet drapes. All was gilt, gingerbread; cosmetics, to set the clock back; perfume, to put it on; faces in search of reassurance: bodies probing desperately for relief. Old schoolfriends (Class of ’19) were reunited; spiteful little dinner parties gathered momentum, grew, became swollen with gossip as they headed for the restaurants where they would finally explode in a fallout of smoked salmon and rare Adam rib. Middle-aged men felt life stirring for the first time as they looked into the deadly eyes of vibrant teenage girls who may, or may not, have been their daughters.
People, thought Boysie Oakes, stank. On every strata they reeked. He dropped his head, looked at the cognac, decided that he niffed more than most and downed the biting amber liquid in one. Lifting his head again, Boysie’s eyes zoomed in like a movie camera, focusing clear on a white dress overlaid with shimmering organza nylon, the dress itself hanging in the simple line of an underskirt. A seven pound lead weight seemed to attach itself to Boysie’s jaw. His eyes brightened and morals began their take-off run.
The dress covered a body he knew. Golden, lithe, leggy. You name it, this one had it, right up to the tawny hair piled neatly above the familiar face.
The girl had not seen him. Boysie edged from his chair and moved round the slum areas of the lobby crowd. She was conspicuous and kept tapping her foot, indicating that she waited for some tardy male.
Now, Boysie was behind her, advancing quietly on that back he knew so well. He stopped apace away, then moved in close, speaking softly out of the corner of his mouth. ‘Okay sister, just standing there you’re infringing some by-law so let’s go.’
‘Get lost buster I …’ She turned and let out a shriek of joy, stopping the world for a good ten seconds. ‘Boy-SIE.’
‘The Triplehouse girl from Joplin, Missouri.’
Chicory Triplehouse held him at arms’ length, studying the picture. ‘You don’t change. Not one bit. Hey, what’re you doing here anyway? No, on second thoughts don’t tell me, let’s get the hell out of here. I got a date and he’s already four minutes late.’
‘In my book that makes sacrilege.’
‘Sacrilege in a pornographic book?’ Chicory raised her eyebrows in a great arch, linked arms with Boysie and hustled him towards the doors.
*
Boysie and Chicory had first met during the same disastrous summer that Birdlip came into contact with Oakes and Mostyn. Now, standing next to Birdlip, watching the monitors, listening to the staccato procedure, Boysie could not get the luscious Triplehouse, and what followed on leaving the Waldorf Astoria, from his mind.
‘Main buss twenty-four volts, twenty-six amps …’
They had taken a cab straight to her place, still the same apartment high over Fifth Avenue, with the big mirrors and golden wallpaper that matched her skin.
‘Ten … Nine … Eight … Seven … Six … Five … Four … Three … Two … Zero … Ignition … Lift off.’
The cluster of eight H-1 Rocketdyne engines started their incredible roar of power, beginning to burn up the Rp-1 fuel and Lox. Soon the first stage thrust would develop to 1,600,000 pounds. An inferno of crimson; a mushroom of smoke. Dante would have been at home down there below the rocket. Slowly the slim projectile rose.
‘Roger, lift off and the clock is started … . Apollo Two fuel is going, one decimal two G; cabin at fourteen psi; oxygen is go … Apollo Two still go … Fuel is still go; One decimal eight G, eight psi cabin and the oxygen is still go … Cabin pressure holding at five decimal five …’
Boysie knew well enough what Chicory meant by the pressure of her fingers on his arm. Their personal ignition and lift off was, had been since that summer of ’64, as spectacular, in its own way, as the Saturn B lifting out on Launch Complex 37.
Their kiss, her back firm against the door was like a deep dive into clear water.
‘It’s been a long time, Boysie,’ she said as they broke surface. It was standard stuff but sounded different from her.
‘Remember the first?’ He undid his tie.
Chicory smiled, unzipping her dress.
‘Fuel is go. Two decimal five G. Cabin five decimal five, Oxygen is go. Main buss is t
wenty-four. Isolator battery is twenty-nine …’
‘Aren’t these grippernickers a gas, Boysie?’
On her they looked splendid, firm, small, holding tight, white as a boiling sea fringed with a tiny stimulant of lace. Chicory’s hand went up to her brassiere and it dropped to the floor as Boysie stepped out of his trousers. Her breasts still had that magnetic curve calling out for a hand to caress, a pair of lips to brush the nipples.
‘Gee, I think it’s great men are wearing sexier underclothes now.’ She needed to talk. With Boysie words were not necessary.
Boysie stood naked but for the tiny bulging blue nylon briefs.
Chicory’s hands went to her pants, thumbs hooking into the waist, peeling them off like cellophane from a cigarette packet. Boysie, eyes never leaving her, stepped from his briefs and moved close.
‘All systems go. Projected out Okay.’
‘Fuel is go. Four G. Five decimal five cabin. Oxygen. All systems are go … It’s a lot smoother now. A lot smoother now. A lot smoother.’
‘I see you’ve started shaving.’ Boysie’s hand hard, high between her thighs.
‘Like it?’ A kiss stopping the answer.
‘Smooth.’
‘You must recommend a good foam.’
‘Always use the best.’ Another kiss.
Her hand was on him, pulling. On the floor. The rug between the armchairs and sofas, their bodies briefly reflected in the mirrors together with the whole room. Two pairs of lovers reeling down with all systems go.
‘I always use the best, like …’ The voice cut out. A moan as he straddled and entered her. Then pitching and wild bucketing storm, rising, grappling, scratching, biting, kissing until they could not tell which was which and the rise seemed unending before it exploded in that moment of a thousand lights which rake over the bodies of lovers at their eternal five seconds of knowledge. A stillness, followed by temporary separation.
‘Five G. CAP SEP green.’
‘Roger. We read Capsule Separator is green.’
‘Disarm. CAP SEP is green.’
‘CAP SEP comes up.’
‘CAP SEP is coming out … and the turn round has started.’
‘Roger. We read turn round started.’
‘SCIP no movements’
‘Roger.’
‘Okay, switching to manual pitch.’
For a second time the floor became their bed. Hands touched and fingers probed. Their tongues became tiny flames of sensuality.
‘Manual pitch.’
‘Pitch is okay. Switching to manual yaw.’
The rugs, then the ceiling, yawed as they rolled. Neither could tell who was man or who woman.
‘Yaw is Okay. Switching to manual roll.’
The roll was building into a second climax. A dizzy spin as the strength pulsed out of their bodies and they drifted on the warm air.
‘Roll is Okay.’
‘Roll Okay. Looks good here.’
‘On the periscope. View fine.’
‘I’ll bet.’
‘Cloud cover over Florida. Clear and identify Andrus Island …’
They dressed in silence. Chicory, remembering Boysie’s delights, changed her underwear. They dined at Le Valois off Madison Avenue, a favourite haunt of Chicory’s. Gay, happy at their reunion. Boysie did not bother to go back to the Waldorf Astoria that night.
*
‘Pity you can’t stay for the rendezvous.’ Boysie heard the voice as if from a distance. Like from Africa.
‘Sorry?’
‘I said it’s a pity you can’t stay for the rendezvous and docking exercise. They’ve got four hours in orbit up there before the docking.’ Birdlip gave him a strange look. ‘Impressive isn’t it?’
Boysie shook himself reluctantly from his strange suspended state. Birdlip had, almost telepathically, repeated something he had said to Chicory the night before. Now he found himself coming up with Chicory’s reply.
‘It’s impressive all right.’
There was a lull. Indecision crackling around like a badly tuned transistor radio.
‘Well, if you really must be getting back to New York.’ Birdlip made motions as though shovelling snow away from a doorway to speed an unwelcome guest off the premises.
‘I’ve got to get back to New York.’ Boysie spoke like an educated parrot. It had all been too much. The trip to New York; meeting Chicory again, the crazy duet that followed; the journey to Cape Kennedy and, finally the launching.
In a highly Anglicized manner Birdlip suggested that they should go and have a bite before Boysie’s departure. Reluctantly, Boysie took a last glance around the Launch Control Centre and allowed himself to be hustled through the thick blast-proof doors.
Outside the blockhouse the stiff breeze which plucks consistently across the Cape hit them with a warm slap. Boysie stood still, eyes bulging, staring out over the landscape towards the extraordinary roadway which runs across Merritt Island from the huge Vertical Assembly Building up to the three launch pads of Complex Three Nine.
The roadway, lined with palmetto and streaked with blowing sand, consisted of two great strips of concrete slashing over the arid ground like some enormous motorway or a pair of giant runways designed for handling jumbo jets on some parallel system.
What really took Boysie’s attention was the strange object which crawled along the road. It moved with the speed of a wounded insect; some hideous futuristic hybrid creature. A great squat structure crawling fantastically on, from what Boysie could see, eight caterpillar tracks. Atop the thick metal structure rose a tower of metal girders, quivering even at the snail slow place of the whole piece of apparatus: an umbilical tower for yet another rocket, a tall metal phallus twice the size of Nelson’s Column shaking slightly as the breeze clipped away through the tower on to the unbelievable metal projectile. ‘Quite a sight,’ muttered Birdlip.
‘The Saturn V?’ Boysie did not need an answer.
‘In the metal. Just about the most expensive piece of scrap you’ll find around here.’
‘And just the thing for whopping people up to the moon, eh?’
‘Moon, June, croon, spoon …’ chanted Birdlip heading towards his Landrover.
‘Loon,’ tried Boysie. ‘When you have a base established up there think what a time the song writer’ll have finding rhymes for earth.’
‘Earth, mirth, curse, girth … Dearth?’
‘Dearth is good.’ They were in the Landrover now, engine started Boysie looked over his shoulder at the creeping crawling Saturn V transporter, the rocket that would ship men out over the oceans of space into the new world. The sky was now its familiar blue. High up a tiny straggle of cirrus made a small abstract pattern. The Landrover moved off towards lunch, brunch, munch whatever one had to eat at that time of day.
Birdlip began to chant: ‘I look up at the earth, and chuckle with mirth, because, like you, it has not lost its girth.’
Boysie smiled out of politeness and added: ‘Yet my heart is full of dearth, because you have the …’
‘Curse …’ finished Birdlip.
‘That was my line.’ Boysie, sulkily.
‘Okay. It was a lousy line anyway.’
In the canteen they sat down to bacon and eggs, over and easy, Birdlip lacing his with gouts of tomato sauce. The coffee was good.
Lighting his cigarette when the meal was done, Boysie quite suddenly felt the old sensation that all was not well. Someone seemed to be boring through the back of his neck with laser beam eyes.
Until then Boysie had, between bouts of exceptionally light banter with Rupert Birdlip, been indulging himself with offbeat thoughts about life in the real space age — Make it Mars this Summer. Only £600 down and seven easy payments of £200 for the holiday of a lifetime. It’s a kaleidoscope of colour; soft fragments of light fuse around you giving the most tender and enchanting background; the softest light and the sweetest music — music of the outer lands, and again that colour, gold, silver, crimson. The Lunar H
ilton provides all. Six swimming pools, twelve bars, fully air conditioned, and here, folks, you can relax in complete safety without a helmet or pack. All this and television in every room, plus the freshest iced and pure water — transported for you and you alone. Luxuriate at the LUNAR HILTON.
Then the eyes pricked the back of his neck. With as much graceful subtlety as he could muster, which meant a cumbersome scraping of his chair and a distinctly suspicious turning of the head, Boysie centred his eyes in the direction from which the sense of surveillance was coming. That he was being observed was not in doubt. The watcher sat alone at a table some twelve feet away, a man who could only be described as sparse. Slight, small, in his middle fifties, short cropped blond hair, narrow eyes which seemed huge behind a pair of very executive spectacles. For some odd reason, which Boysie could not pinpoint, the man reminded him of a weevil. It was probably the nose. In any case B. Oakes only knew about weevils because he was a subscriber to the Time-Life Nature Library.
‘Who’s that?’ he grunted softly turning back to Birdlip.
‘Who what?’
‘That. Over my shoulder. Blond crew cut.’
‘Oh Christ, don’t say he’s looking at us.’
‘Observing not looking. He’s been carving up the back of my neck with his eyeballs. Who is he? Mad Scientist?’
‘Right on the button, baby. Let’s get the hell out of here. That guy’s hotter than a volcanic eruption when it comes to security and I’d like to keep this job. The hours suit Paula.’
‘Who’s Paula? I thought your wife’s name was Janice.’
‘It is. Paula’s my twice a week girl with thighs …’
‘Like in the Playmate of the month. I know, I see them all the time.’
‘Better. Smoother. Sort of more …’
‘Caressable?’
‘You might say that.’
‘It still doesn’t answer my question. Who’s the nut?’
‘Ellerman von Humperdinck. Doctor Ellerman von Humperdinck.’
‘Spooky?’
‘Sepulchrally. They say von Braun won’t speak to him.’
‘Perhaps it wasn’t his department.’ Boysie knew his Tom Lehrer.
‘According to von Humperdinck they’re all his departments.’