‘Wouldn’t it be simpler to cancel the trip?’ I asked.
‘Course work,’ he said. ‘Has to be assessed.’
By whom? I couldn’t rid myself of the idea that Carl was being disingenuous, but on the grounds that he no longer dropped his voice tenderly every time he spoke to me, I agreed. Provisionally. A lot could happen in a week, after all.
When I got back, the coriander was already filling the kitchen with that scent I always see as spring-green. A cup of tea: then I’d deal with the post and then cook. The coriander could soak out its sand in the sink while I ate.
Except I didn’t feel like eating when I’d read the mail. ‘Read’ is an exaggeration. All I had to do was look at a sexually explicit caricature of Andy, mutilated with gusto.
Ian had responded to my panicky phone call. He sat opposite me, sipping Tio Pepe.
‘If you carry on swilling that stuff,’ he said, touching the Jameson’s with his index finger, ‘you’ll start to lose your palate. Before a meal, too.’
He was right, of course. I got up and put the bottle away, reaching for the mineral water instead. He nodded approvingly.
‘I’ll pass this on to the boss,’ he said, touching the caricature which he’d already slipped into a transparent polythene bag. The envelope was in another.
‘Thought so,’ I said, pointing at the second bag. ‘Posted last Thursday, before the Music Centre business. I wonder where it’s been lurking till now.’
‘Wherever second-class post lurks. I wonder why Chummie didn’t send it first-class?’
‘Poor? Or mean? Oh, Ian, why are they doing this to Andy? There isn’t a nicer man on God’s earth.’
He looked unconvinced.
‘Come on! Ruth wouldn’t have married him if he hadn’t been a good guy.’ Not often I serve an ace.
‘I wish young Chris was back here,’ he said. ‘She’s not a bad lass, young Diane Stephenson, but she hasn’t Chris’s clout with them upstairs. They tell her they can’t afford something, she believes them. Chris would spend all night preparing a set of figures to prove they could – and get the other resources he wanted to boot.’
‘She seems to be under a lot of pressure,’ I said.
‘Well, she would be. Only acting Inspector. Can’t afford to put a foot wrong, can she? Though it’s my experience that when you most try to avoid things, you always seem to trample on them.’
I topped up his sherry and my water. ‘Like Christmas tree lights and people’s toes?’
‘Exactly. No more for me after this, love – I’m driving, remember. You’re looking peaky. What are you doing about food?’
‘I’ve got a load of stuff in the freezer – I did some batch cooking over Christmas.’
He stood up. ‘Now, you’ll lock up after me, won’t you? And check under your car tomorrow? Not that it’s you they’re after – but you never know.’
Tuesday was an inordinately long day. I taught from nine till one, and then again from one-thirty till five-thirty. Since the rush-hour traffic was bad yet again, there seemed little point in trying to go home, especially as I’d promised to give Gurjit a lift to the airport that evening. The only bright spot was the discovery of a new Italian restaurant near the Conservatoire. Not that it was new, of course: just new to me. I’d resigned myself to another mass-produced pizza; instead I fell, quite by chance, upon a risotto richly flavoured with coriander and a green salad laden with ripe avocado. As a rare and extravagant treat I polished off a huge portion of lemon tart, so sharp and delectable I could have murdered for the recipe. The only other eaters were a middle-aged couple tucked in one corner; from the expansiveness of their gestures their food was as good as mine. The chef, who had doubled as waiter, talked with passion about coriander and then waved me goodbye as if I were an old friend.
So I was in a much better frame of mind – until I returned to College. Those of us in the fifteen-floor staff room sometimes manage a rota for picking up each other’s post from the general office on the eighth floor; but more often we don’t. As I had just consumed more calories in one meal than I normally would in a week, I decided to walk up the stairs; the eighth floor made a convenient resting place. Convenient! I was so out of condition that I couldn’t possibly have made it to the fifteenth without stopping. There was a fistful of mail in my pigeon-hole, which I sorted before setting off again. Notices of several meetings; minutes for several more; messages from employers about work experience. Junk mail – almost any advertising matter comes under that category if the college it’s sent to can’t afford even the paper for exams. Two requests for references from past students looking for work. And two envelopes tightly sealed with tape, addressed in Karen’s undistinguished fist.
Two?
I sat down at one of the vacant desks, using a canteen knife smelling strongly of oranges to slit the first envelope open. Then the second envelope: this scrawl related to her ‘earlier note’. ‘Note’ was a distinct misnomer: epistle, more like. I went back to the first. Ostensibly, it was a thank-you letter for Saturday; in reality it was a paean of praise for Andy – his looks, his kindness, his compassion. Would I pass on her thanks – or better still, pass on the enclosed letter? That accounted for some of the envelope’s fatness – there was another ‘note’ for Andy sealed – and taped – in with the first. On, then, to letter number two. This was a reprise of number one, except that she would now be too embarrassed for Andy to see the first letter, so would I destroy it and pass on this one instead? She’d asked the secretary to return her first letter to me, but …
Confused, and not altogether interested in her protestations of undying love for my cousin, I gathered the whole pile together and resumed my journey upwards. And damn me if there wasn’t another note, on my desk, also sealed with tape, saying she needed to be alone and, in her absence, asking me to destroy all her letters. Preferably burn them. I thought the shredder might do, but it seemed to be jammed, and rather than trudge back down to the eighth I decided to leave it till morning. I shoved them into my in-tray, under the agendas and minutes, so that no one else would read them and see what a cake she was making of herself.
There was just time to finish marking a pile of assignments well overdue for return. But, at this point Gurjit arrived. I suppose her promptness – she was half an hour early – augured well for her work experience, but at the moment it merely meant a kicking of heels – hers while I ploughed through assignments, or ours while we waited for Mark, if we arrived early at the airport. In view of her obvious anxiety, compromise seemed in order, so she sat through one assignment and one repair of make-up and half an hour later we were in the airport car park, watching the little numbers hopping round on my dashboard clock.
It had turned into an unattractive night. A thin drizzle seemed to be freezing as it fell, and the wind took the absence of major obstacles as an invitation to gust so strongly that the car, usually imperturbable, started bucking sideways. The drive back through the tangle of Spaghetti Junction could well be an exciting one. Meanwhile, I had an evening of work to get through, including a foray on to a cold, wet runway – not a pleasant social evening, starting in the pub and maybe not getting much further.
Despite the wait in the car, we still presented ourselves about five minutes early. Mark greeted us affably, then allowed himself an anxious glance at his desk. ‘Look – I have to complete this for tomorrow. Would you mind terribly – there’s some magazines over there—’
So there were. Nice glossy ones, all about airports. Gurjit devoured the nearest: yes, she’d do well here, or anywhere else for that matter. I thought of the pile of assignments and contemplated with apprehension the prospect of getting up at six to finish marking them. I also looked at Mark, covertly. He seemed to be what might be considered an eligible young male, with, now I came to notice them, the most beautiful eyelashes. Though I didn’t see myself skipping off into domesticity via a romantic sunset, there was something in what Andy had said. Companionship. Someon
e to cook for – or, better still, with. Someone to go to concerts and theatres with. Someone – yes – someone to go to bed with. And then I blushed. All those prepositions at the end of sentences! And me the arch-pedant of William Murdock. In any case, all this speculation was a bit on the previous side. All we’d done was chat about cricket.
Mark sighed and looked up. ‘I suppose you teachers find these things easy.’
‘Reports? Not intellectually challenging. But not easy.’
We exchanged a smile. Hmm. Back to professionalism, Sophie.
‘Only two more minutes,’ he said.
I dug in my bag for the references he’d need for Gurjit: one from me, one from her personal tutor, both testifying to her honesty and reliability. I had a letter from Richard as well, just in case. I would miss Richard quite badly, now I came to think of it. He’d been at William Murdock when I started; though we’d had the odd skirmish, largely because he considered important rules which I merely saw as a challenge, our relationship had been friendly. What would his replacement be like?
‘There!’ Mark said, replacing the top of his pen with a satisfied click. ‘Right, we’ll go and have a quick half – things won’t hot up till about ten.’
‘Half?’ Gurjit asked.
‘Down at The Flying Saucer,’ he said.
‘Pardon?’
‘A drink at the pub. It’s all right – you can have mineral water,’ I said.
‘I have never been in a pub,’ she said, wide-eyed with panic. ‘My parents—’
I believed her. Most of her contemporaries weren’t so inclined to filial obedience, of course; we were used to students of all races and religions discovering the pleasures of drink in the library study carrels. All too soon the pleasures were followed by the ignominy of being sick into a waste basket and being expelled as a consequence: even the most disciplined teetotal families had to receive repentant and hung-over students back to their bosoms. Sikh, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Jew – we’d seen the lot. But it was a long time since I’d come across a student who hadn’t even been to a pub.
I caught Mark’s eye.
‘I can offer you tea or coffee, er, Gurjit?’
‘I don’t take stimulants, thank you. My religion—’ She bit her lip, humiliated.
I tried to rescue her. ‘Mark, I was wondering if you could show Gurjit where she’d be working, tell her roughly what she’ll be expected to do. Then we could see all the action later.’ I passed over the references, which he put in an envelope file.
Although I’d seen no one else around, he locked his door carefully as we left, and took care not to let us see the code he tapped to gain us admission to the outer office. And then he laughed. ‘I’ll have to get you to memorise that, Gurjit. You mustn’t even leave the room to go to – er – the cloakroom without locking up and unlocking it again. Learn it by heart. Don’t write it down anywhere. Treat it like your bank’s PIN number. And don’t feel tempted to tell anyone.’
‘What if I forget? And there’s no one to ask, like tonight?’
‘OK, Sophie – you’d better know too. 1.1.44. My mother’s birthday. I take it Gurjit could phone you up in a crisis?’
I bit back a tart comment about occasionally having a home-life. ‘I’d rather you didn’t forget, Gurjit, if it’s all the same to you.’
Her work station was screened from the others; already there was a suspiciously thick pile in the in-tray. He sat down and we watched: one over either shoulder.
‘Now,’ he said, switching on the computer, ‘this is what happens.’ He tapped in another set of figures as he spoke: a little row of asterisks appeared obediently on the screen.
‘Don’t I need to know the password too?’ she asked.
He shook his head. ‘Security, I’m afraid. Someone will always start up the system for you. We can’t expect Sophie to remember another set of numbers.’
Watching over his shoulder, I thought it more tactful not to tell him that that particular set would take no remembering – the series of numbers he’d tapped in was Andy’s birthday.
‘The system’s very efficient. When a plane logs in with the control tower we know its code. As soon as that’s entered, its payload comes up on the screen – if anyone’s using it – and is printed out there.’
As if on cue, a printer – a nice new laser – hummed quietly and disgorged a print-out. I went into immediate covet-mode: the minimal peace of our staff room was daily assaulted by a dot-matrix printer chugging out thirteen people’s hand-outs. Since photocopy cards were at a premium at this stage of the financial year there was a great temptation to run off sets of notes, so life was dominated by the appalling clatter.
‘What the duty clerk then has to do is check the printout, log it manually, then send out an invoice to the appropriate firms. There you are – this one would go to Parcel Force. And that one. It’s not very exciting work, but it’s extremely responsible. If the invoices go out late, we lose money; if they go to the wrong people, we lose good will.’
‘Of course. Oh, look – that firm belongs to a friend of my father’s!’
‘Better make sure they get the right invoice, then,’ Mark said. ‘Ah! It sounds as if the party’s starting. Back to my office, please.’
We were rigged out in yellow day-glo waistcoats and ear-protectors; our bags were locked in Mark’s safe. I set the security alarm off as we walked through into the passenger area – I’d left my keys in my pocket. I parked them ignominiously on the security counter and tried again – OK, this time. Gurjit watched with what looked suspiciously like a gleam of amusement in her eye, ostentatiously shed her bangles, passed them to Mark, and sailed through silently. His smile as he returned them to her, slipping them over her hand, had an interesting quality.
Although it had stopped raining we stayed under cover while a couple of planes landed, putting on the ear-protectors without being told. I still knew next to nothing about planes, and was amazed to hear Gurjit make some factual observation about the age of the one taxi-ing away from us. So was Mark, to judge from his expression.
‘My father was in the Indian Air Force,’ she said. ‘He has a passion for aeroplanes. But those Viscounts must be forty years old.’
‘Due for honourable retirement in some aircraft museum?’ I asked.
‘They’re safe enough,’ Mark said. ‘There probably isn’t much that hasn’t been replaced since they started flying. In fact, you might wonder if they’re really the same plane.’
Gurjit looked at him. ‘But surely, Mr Winfield, all human cells are renewed on a regular basis. Does that mean that Sophie, for instance, isn’t the same person as she was forty years ago?’
Forty? I opened my mouth to protest, and then realised all I would be doing was interrupting someone else’s conversation.
Mark looked at her seriously. ‘In terms of human cells, no. Except they all configure to make one person, guided by that individual’s DNA. And humans have another characteristic that inanimate objects lack. Any ideas?’
‘Personality? Memory?’
‘Exactly – hell!’ he shouted.
Simultaneously we donned ear-protectors again. Another big plane – red, with the Parcel Force logo – landed and taxi-ed in. We waited until Mark removed his protectors before doing the same.
‘There – there’s a plane over there just about to be unloaded. It’s full of what we call igloos – see?’
I didn’t see much resemblance myself, but I nodded.
‘Those containers?’ asked Gurjit. ‘So the planes aren’t full of loose cargo?’
‘Loose-loaded, we call it. Some are – see that one over there, with the conveyor belt? But that system’s too labour-intensive to be popular – too expensive.’
‘And rather too vulnerable,’ Gurjit said.
‘Vulnerable?’ Mark repeated.
‘To theft, of course. Unless you have strict security?’
I hugged myself. Gurjit had been an inspired choice for this placeme
nt. Her face was more animated than I’d ever seen it; her voice warm with enthusiasm. And it looked as if she and Mark would get on well together. Perhaps too well for my liking.
‘It is pretty strict, but you’re right. Some firms seem to ask to have stuff stolen. Look at that lot over there.’
We looked at a heap of packages in transit towards what looked like a warehouse. They were all brightly taped with the firm’s name.
‘So if you want to steal computer equipment you know which to go for,’ Gurjit said. ‘Have you remonstrated with the firm?’
Mark caught my eye briefly. ‘We have.’
‘But they remain unconvinced?’
‘Clearly!’ I said.
A sudden spatter of rain made us turn with one accord for the warehouse, which turned out to be a huge postal sorting office, noisy from the metal cages holding the parcels and from the shouted conversations of the men and women working there. From there we went to an area full of large lorries playing dodgems. To get back through a hefty gate to the apron we had to be searched – a body search for Mark, despite the fact that his must be a well-known face, or perhaps because of it. They merely ran a sort of electronic baton over us women.
‘Planes take off from here for all sorts of sensitive places,’ Mark said.
‘So, in addition to stopping people stealing from the planes, you want to stop them putting anything extra on.’
Gurjit won another smile from Mark. ‘Exactly.’
Back in his office, with packets of fruit juice he’d bought from the canteen, we sat down, suddenly constrained. I was silent because all I wanted was my bed: but Mark and Gurjit sat staring at each other, he young and personable with an intriguing limp, she suddenly looking as if the black she habitually wore was a fashion decision to enhance a glowing olive skin. Except I’d never seen her skin glow before. Oh, dear …
‘When can you start?’
‘When can I start?’
They spoke simultaneously. They replied simultaneously. ‘Tomorrow?’
‘Good.’ I said, putting down my fruit juice and peeling off the waistcoat. ‘That’s settled then.’
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