by Guy N Smith
‘Barring a sudden inspiration I've run out of ideas,’ said Ron Blythe as he sucked his dead pipe, oblivious of the fact that the tobacco had gone out. ‘We've got a fortnight, according to the authorities. If at the end of that time nobody in Birmingham has suffered any ill effects then it will be officially declared that the water from the reservoir is not contaminated. And we can all go home and forget about it.’
‘See you in the morning.’ Broadhurst fumbled for his keys as they reached their parked cars.
Blythe nodded: a fortnight. A period in which a number of things had to be sorted out - himself, his marriage … a complete break or carry on where he'd left off? The decision was his alone. That wouldn't resolve itself. He remembered that he hadn't phoned Margaret. Hell, he'd have to make the effort tonight.
‘And how's banking today, Simon?’
Simon Blythe stood with his back to the small gas fire in the living room of their detached house in the northern suburbs of Birmingham. There was a distinct similarity between himself and his brother Ron; a facial resemblance, the same curly hair, beginning to thin at the crown. Simon was slimmer, but he had a band of fat around his waist which gave him a somewhat portly appearance. Regular exercise would have lessened it. The extent of Simon's exercise was a walk in Sutton Park with Cathy on fine Sunday afternoons - and ‘fine’ meant brilliant sunshine. A few threatening clouds and they went for a ride in the car.
‘Banking never varies.’ Simon regarded Ron with a faint smile. ‘Systems change over the years, but basically it's the same as it was since money was first invented.’
Ron wasn't listening; just making polite conversation. He had heard it all before. A way of life for those who weren't capable of doing their own thing. Organised, with set rules, and a pension at the end of it if you played it safe. That was basically the difference between himself and Simon. And Cathy, of course.
He glanced through the adjoining door and saw Cathy preparing the evening meal in the kitchen. Slim, dark haired, attractive; the household, their lives, revolved around her. She was the boss, but not in the same way that Margaret tried to be. Cathy didn't nag. She didn't need to. She was sexy enough to get her own way without making it obvious. Simon in all probability wasn't aware of the fact. Ron, as an outside observer, could see it plainly enough.
He told himself that he ought to have been married to Cathy. Margaret would have been all right with Simon, a fetch-and-carry boy who didn't complain. It was strange: two brothers, opposites, and each had a wife that would have suited the other.
Suddenly, Ron realised that he was getting an erection. It hadn't happened to him before over his brother's wife. It should have. A mental picture flashed before his eyes. Cathy. Naked. Small firm breasts. Nipples erect. Thighs slightly parted, allowing you to see just enough to whet your sexual appetite. He wondered how many times a week she and Simon had sex. Probably an average of once. Saturday nights or Sunday mornings. Like himself and Margaret. Well, Margaret, anyway. Ron went elsewhere to get his quota. He wouldn't have needed to, had he been married to Cathy, he decided. Every night. Every conceivable position. A little raver. And she was wasted on his brother. It was ironical.
‘Dinner's ready.’ Even a mundane statement like that was loaded with eroticism.
Ron Blythe stood up. He followed Simon into the other room, taking his paper with him, holding it so that it hid the protrusion in the front of his trousers until he was seated at the table. A spontaneous erection would embarrass his brother. He didn't know about Cathy. But it would be wiser for her not to see.
They sat down to lamb kebab. Margaret was never so adventurous. Roast was her limit. Oh, God, stop making comparisons, he told himself. You're landed with what you've got, so you'd better make the best of it.
‘Well, we're still alive.’ Cathy's eyes were only half serious as she spoke. ‘Nobody's died in the city yet, Ron.’
‘It's early days.’ Blythe could not bring himself to raise their hopes without some justification. The Weedspray could gush out of these taps just as easily as in the city centre. Or anywhere else. There was nothing one could do about it. It was a macabre game of liquid roulette. ‘There's still a fortnight to go before the official safety limit is reached. Personally, I won't breathe freely for six weeks. Why don't you both come up to Rugeley and stay with us for a while after the two weeks are up? It'd be safer.’
‘Impracticable.’ Simon's quick reply covered a host of excuses, and Ron knew that the real reason was Margaret. Her snobbery was far from discreet. ‘The bank, old son. It has to go on, come what may.’
‘Even if all its customers are dead?’
‘I guess so. It's an institution.’
Ron Blythe squirmed in his seat. That was what the capitalist system did for you: brainwashed its servants.He'd no loyalty towards Weedspray. Nor anything or anybody else - except maybe the kids. The world was still a jungle where the fittest survived. Everybody else went under in some form or other.
‘I really think you ought to phone Margaret,’ Cathy said as they finished their second course. ‘It really is too bad of you, Ron. I know how things are between you, but think of the kids.’
Blythe stood up, pushing his chair back. She was right. She wasn't just saying it because it was the proper thing to say.
‘OK,’ he smiled. ‘This very minute. For the kids' sake.’
He needn't have said that. He didn't know why he had. Something kept prompting him to remind Cathy that things weren't all right between himself and Margaret. As though maybe she'd suddenly jump up and take over. A kind of wife swap. Fantasy.
He dialled the number, heard the connecting lines click in, and the telephone ringing at the other end.
Brrr-brrr … Brrr-brrr … Brrr-brrr … Brrr-brrr …Brrr-brrr.
On and on. On. On. No reply.
Five minutes later he replaced the receiver. He frowned. Suddenly his complacency was undermined. He stood there in the hall stuffing tobacco from the manufacturer's polythene pouch into his pipe. Where the hell was Margaret? Out with another guy, lying on the back seat of some parked car with her legs spread? Improbable. It wasn't her scene, even to get revenge on himself. And she couldn't go out and leave the kids. If the kids weren't at home then they were wherever Margaret was - a simple deduction - probably at her mother's. And sometimes when a disillusioned married woman went back to her mother she stayed there.
He bit hard on the nylon stem of his aluminium pipe as he struck a match and applied it to the tobacco. He was angry. He couldn't help it. Margaret should have been at home. Hell, just because he hadn't phoned her before. Didn't she realise he was busy? A crisis. Several million lives at stake. Not that he could do anything except be around when the madness and death began. And as he drew on the tobacco he knew that it was all going to happen. A premonition. Just like that. He knew, but he did not know when.
‘Nobody at home?’
He met Simon's gaze, but there was no mockery in the clear blue eyes. A question, nothing more.
‘I'll try again later … perhaps.’
The evening ritual followed. Television. Coffee at nine-thirty. News at ten. Yawns and a ‘you don't want the telly any more tonight, do you?’ at ten-thirty.
‘Mr Benson's asked me to be in at eight-thirty in the morning.’ Cathy stretched, and her skirt rode up above her knees. ‘We've a load of conveyances going through at the moment.’
Ron nodded, watching those shapely legs, hoping that she would stretch again.
Instead she said, ‘I think you ought to try Margaret again, Ron.’
He glanced at the electric clock on the mantelshelf. ‘She's probably in bed by now,’ he said.
‘I still think you ought to try.’
‘She hasn't bothered ringing me.’
‘You know she doesn't like … phoning here.’
An open admission of the domestic cold war between sisters-in-law. Margaret was the aggressor.
‘Oh, all right.’ He got up, went out i
nto the hall, and started to dial. It seemed the best thing to do in Cathy's eyes. It shifted the blame on to Margaret.
Brrr-brrr … Brrr-brrr … Brrr-brrr …
He let it ring on. Two or three minutes, and still no reply. She wasn't at home, that was a certain fact, and as she never stopped out later than ten-thirty it was reasonable to assume that she was staying the night wherever she was. He hoped that it wasn't at her mother's. Hell, just suppose that some bloke was screwing her. He stiffened with surprise. He was starting another erection. He laughed softly to himself. A little bit of adultery might even bring their marriage together again.
‘Good night, Ron.’
Ron Blythe looked up. Cathy was already at the top of the stairs. From where he stood he could see right up under her skirt. Pale blue undies. He felt his hardness growing. Damn, if he had caught her in the hall he would have got a goodnight kiss. And tonight she would have felt his stiffness against her. He wondered what the outcome would have been. Perhaps tomorrow night he would get the chance to find out.
His room was claustrophobic. He knew that sleep would elude him for some time yet and he wished that he'd picked up a paperback in town. It would have helped to pass the time.
He lay on the bed fully clothed, the light on. His brain was overactive tonight, racing from one thought to another without any logical link. The Carter girl. A tart, now that he had got over her rejection. He wondered why she hadn't let him do anything. It didn't figure. A screw and she would have had plenty to shout her mouth off about instead of having to make up all those lies.
Margaret. He tried to imagine her on a clandestine date. Had she forgotten how to let herself be seduced? He went through the sequence. The guy was the hardest part of it all to conjure up. Probably somebody like himself. Parked somewhere out in the country. Necking. Slyly undoing a button or two of her dress. Feeling at her breasts through the cups of her bra, making the nipples grow. Guiding her fingers down and placing them on a trouser-covered erection. Encouraging her to squeeze, maybe even slide the zip down. A hand between her thighs, noting how they opened up readily, willing him to explore even further. All leading up to a mutual undressing, the conquest an anticlimax.
Margaret had been a willing partner to back-seat sex in their courting days, so why not now? Christ, in spite of her apparent reluctance to screw, she couldn't do without it altogether.
Cathy. Pure fantasy now. Improbable, but not impossible. Maybe he really would proposition her before the fortnight was up. There was really nothing to lose. Margaret never came here.
He reached for the bedside pull, and plunged the room into darkness. He began to undress - not because he was ready for sleep but because another human need had to be satisfied. If he had booked in at a hotel in all probability he would not have been alone in bed. Even if he had had to pay for his pleasures. But staying with relatives did not destroy the urge. It merely meant that he was forced to seek satisfaction in the simplest way possible.
The bed creaked and he slowed down a little. It wouldn't do for Cathy to hear him. Women were funny. They did it, even bought artificial aids in a quest for greater satisfaction, and then pretended they never touched themselves. They thought there was something wrong with a man if he did what was only natural. Hell, he was judging Cathy by Margaret's philosophy again. In all probability Cathy would get a thrill out of hearing him. Maybe even accompany him if Simon was asleep.
As Ron Blythe's emotions escalated he couldn't have cared less if every piece of furniture in the room had vibrated, if that stupid meadow scene picture over the dresser had fallen and smashed the ornaments with it.
Then it was all over. Fantasies evaporated and realities hemmed him in again. Weedspray. Those victims at Rhayader. He didn't need anybody to describe to him what they looked like. He remembered only too well the tests on the horses from the knacker yard, the spreading ulcers, the final madness.
Somewhere a church clock was striking the hour. He counted the chimes. Three. A long night, but it was slipping away. A lot of it had been used up in that fantasy session with Cathy. At least it had taken his mind off everything, and he'd enjoyed it.
He sensed, rather than heard, a movement in the next bedroom. The kind of noise modern beds made, not a giveaway creak but rather a shifting of position by the occupants. Footsteps. Light naked ones across the landing, barely audible. Two faint clicks. The bathroom door and the light pull.
He listened hard. He knew what he was listening for and a sense of guilt flooded over him like a secret voyeur. Water gushed - the wash basin. His guilt vanished. A tap was running at full force. He wondered what Cathy was doing. Perhaps she had forgotten to brush her teeth. Surely not at this time of night. Swilling out a dutch cap? No, she was on the pill.
Another sound. It took him some seconds to place it. Then it registered with him. Slurping. Drinking water out of cupped hands. A common practice with a lot of people in the night when there wasn't a mug handy. But it went on and on.
The church clock struck the quarter. She had been drinking solidly for ten minutes. A nagging thought pushed its way into his mind. Maybe he ought to go and see if she was all right. He would have to put some clothes on first, though. Making a trip outside one's bedroom door in somebody else's house presented difficulties to those who slept in the nude.
He had already found his shirt when he heard another sound. More footsteps, heavier this time. Simon on his way to the bathroom.
The noise made by the tap was magnified in the otherwise silent house. Muffled low voices drowned by a miniature Niagara Falls. Ron could not distinguish the words nor even their tone.
Then the water was turned off, followed by stealthy footsteps, the click of light switches. The bed welcomed the return of its occupants and all was still again.
Outside, the clock boomed the half hour as though with renewed vigour. Ron Blythe pulled his shirt off again and tossed it on to the floor.
He sighed. His eyelids drooped. He knew that this time he would sleep. It had been a busy night in many ways.
An insistent knocking on the bedroom door awakened him slowly. Then he sat up with a start. The cheap alarm clock on the bedside table seemed to have a sneer on its dial, as though it was delighting in the fact that its noisy mechanism had not roused him an hour earlier. It was now 8.30 am.
‘OK, OK,’ he called. ‘I've overslept. I'll be down in a few minutes. Don't wait for me. I'll see to my own breakfast.’
‘Can I come in?’ Simon's voice. Urgent. The handle was already turning.
Ron Blythe slid back down the bed. Stupid, really: they had been used to the sight of each other's naked bodies in their youth, and now his natural instinct was to hide his nudity from his own brother. That was what convention did for you.
‘Sorry to disturb you, Ron.’
‘It's time somebody did. Hell, this is what insomnia does to you.’
‘Did we keep you awake in the night?’
‘No. I hadn't gone to sleep, anyway. It's Cathy, isn't it?’
‘Yes. She's not well. She won't be going into the office today. I wonder if you would have a look at her before you go out.’
‘What's the trouble?’ A sinking feeling hit Ron Blythe, which he hoped he did not betray in his voice.
‘Thought it was a migraine at first. Terrible headache. Then this fever came on. She must have drunk a gallon of water …’
Oh, Jesus Christ! Ron Blythe started to sweat under the bedclothes. He turned his head away so that his brother should not see his expression, the trembling lower lip, the fear in his eyes,
He drew a deep breath and then asked. ‘Have you called the doctor?’
‘No … I don't think there's any need. Not unless she gets worse. Probably a touch of flu.’
‘Don't you think you ought to stay home?’
‘Ican't, old boy.’ Enslaved by the System again, thought Ron. ‘The bank don't like staff being away because wives or relatives are ill. Not unless it's serious.’
>
Not unless it's serious. God Almighty! This is more serious than your conditioned mind could ever accept, brother. You haven't read your papers. Nor listened to me. Now you're going to find out the facts for yourself.
‘I think you'd better hang on. Just until I've had a look at her, anyway,’ Ron Blythe said.
‘I can't! My train goes in seven minutes.’
Blythe sighed loudly, fists clenched beneath the sheets. There was no point in alarming Simon at this stage. It might just be nothing more than a common bug.
He couldn't tell until he had seen Cathy. And by that time Simon would be haring on to the platform of Erdington station, clambering into the last carriage as it began to move off.
‘Look, Ron. If you think the doctor ought to be called …’
‘All right. All right. Don't make yourself late for the bank whatever you do. Leave Cathy to me. I'll do whatever I consider necessary.’
‘Thanks a million. See you tonight. Oh, maybe you could give me a ring at the bank just to put my mind at rest. But not between nine and nine-fifteen. I'll be in the strongroom then ...’
Just piss off, you stupid bastard. Ron Blythe checked his words, heard his brother's scampering feet down the stairs, and began retrieving his strewn clothing.
He was trembling as he dressed. Thiswas it. It had to be. But why Cathy? It didn't necessarily have to be just her. Possibly thousands of others in Birmingham had drunk gallons of water during the nocturnal hours and were now suffering from ‘flu’. The doctors would be called out; not knowing, not even guessing a diagnosis. And they had to be told - right away.
He entered the adjoining bedroom, opening the door quietly and stepping inside. The curtains were still drawn and it took several seconds for his eyes to adjust to the gloom.