By the time I reached my flat Louise was back there, sparkling and fresh with loveliness that took my breath away. You would never have believed ... but I did. And it made me grim and bossy and over-protective. Her kiss restored me to a more sensible state. If I couldn’t change anything it would be insufferable to sulk. So I told her cautiously of my plan, and how it involved her. Some aspects of the thing made her giggle. When I warned her of the (actually only slight) risk to her she said, ‘But of course I want to be in on it! I’m an adult and you’ve no right to question my decisions in any case. Have you got another tape recorder? — The one that’s going to be your voice in the bath? You can borrow mine. It’s a good one, so it’ll sound enough like you.’
‘Okay.’ I wanted to be sure she understood where the risks lay. ‘They’ll know you if they see you.’
‘You mean the Little Man?’
‘It might turn out to be their security chap — Tim Fine.’
‘He’ll only know my name, Nigel. You don’t have to use it on the recording. Just shout “I’m in the bath, darling!” ... then there’s a pause, as if you’re handing me the bleeper. Nothing to it. — Henry won’t mind.’
Louise went on to get her tape recorder while I started the wiring arrangements. The Black Box had to be synchronized with Louise’s tape machine, while Henry had to be on hand to show the Little Man.
On Louise’s return we rehearsed the whole thing:
Little Man arrives.
Louise answers door.
Little Man asks where I am.
My voice sings from bathroom.
Louise says she’ll fetch Henry ...
‘ — And where,’ said Louise, ‘will Henry be hiding?’
‘Behind the cistern where it can’t transmit.’
‘You keep many things in the cistern?’
‘By the cistern.’
‘You’re absolutely obsessed with your bathroom.’
‘No, they are. It’s possible, of course, that the Little Man just might refuse absolutely to leave until he’s seen me. That’s the only real danger. But he’s timid about women — that type always is. Be irritable and bitchy.’
‘How do you know I can be irritable and bitchy?’
‘Because no one as flesh-and-blood as you are could be too good to be true.’
‘Very neat.’
*
The next day was a Friday. I could feel in my bones that we were on the brink of action but this could have been because I was ready. It felt like the eve of D-Day. The Little Man called as usual and Louise hid in what was amusingly referred to in my lease as the roof garden. He got his cup of tea and went. No message next door from Chindale. No significant news from the Czechs.
I had one thing left to check and conveniently this fitted in with Louise’s suggestion of going to her parents’ home for lunch — her brother had a job with the Electricity Board and I had some questions concerning the generating plant at Group Three. The brother lived in Chiswick and I was fascinated to go there. Much of Louise’s personality was a reaction from the downtown environment of her upbringing.
I felt guilty because I’ve always been rather cutting about those depressingly identical houses ribbon-developed during the thirties. The ones along the Great West Road beyond Chiswick have come in for some particularly harsh words. I object strongly — for some reason — to those oval windows cut into the doors. God knows why I should be so grand about them; Dad’s place in Somerset was paralysingly bourgeois in a different way and I’d been brought up in a cramping atmosphere of gossip in the church porch. At least Louise’s people hadn’t put up a drawbridge in the total absence of a castle.
I liked the brother but he hadn’t matured as Louise had. He was intelligent, highly paid for his age — twenty-four, I think Louise said — and very slim, physically rather weak-looking. At lunch he ate meticulously, like someone doing a laboratory experiment to a fixed routine. I think he was awed by his sister but neither disapproving nor jealous. He was a nice chap who would marry the girl next door without prior sexual experience and would please her without setting the world — or even Chiswick — on fire. He answered my questions after a few seconds’ careful consideration and came up with the answers like a very polite I-speak-your-weight machine.
Louise, I knew, had a flat in town, but I never got invited there. Obviously this had strong associations with Philip Thorne and somehow I guessed that Thorne, to her, had been an amplification of her brother. But sibling friendship had turned out a blind alley on a lovers’ map.
Jack told me: ‘The people at your Group Three could have several reasons for generating their own electricity.’ — He had already checked that they weren’t supplied at Elstree by the Electricity Board. ‘One could be a desire not to reveal changes in load. In other words they might not want people to know when they’re busy. Another could be fear of actual breakdown ... totally unfounded,’ he added emphatically, ‘as we have one of the highest reliability-ratings in the world. Yet another could be genuine economy. If they’ve got their own reactor they’d get their steam for nothing. But usually experimental reactors are too small to be useful. How big is theirs?’
‘I’ve never seen it.’
Jack sipped some tea. ‘If a very accurate maintenance of line frequency — in England it’s fifty cycles per second — is needed throughout an establishment it might pay them to make their own juice. According to the load on the line — by which I mean the amount of appliances that are switched on or off throughout the nation and whether or not it’s a peak period — the national supply may vary’ a few cycles ... We operate occasionally as low as forty-eight and as high as fifty-one. You can tell this from the note of the hum.’
‘Why can’t you keep it steady?’
‘You could if you knew exactly what the demand was going to be. But you have to think of the national supply as an axle — everything runs as one solid piece in unison. If you’re going downhill it all runs faster, just as it all goes slower in the climb.’
‘What sort of climb?’
‘Well, let’s see.’ He replaced his teacup delicately in the centre of the saucer. ‘We usually quote what happens during a big TV attraction. Like a “Miss World” — or anything really sexy. For instance, they’re putting on some sort of Spectacular next Wednesday. We’ve had warning already that this will be a peak show.’
Knowing who was behind the production I could well believe it. Louise suddenly looked more alert. Jack’s voice was monotonous and she had almost lulled off. Now she was sitting up straight, lips slightly parted, face in perfect muscular balance. I felt a throb of longing, gazed for a second at creases in her dress where determined nipples refused to be flattened by the down-pull of the material from the belt of her waist.
Jack seemed to note my interest as if he were reading the dials of a healthy turbine. But he went on: ‘It’s the Independent channel, too. That means commercial breaks. Millions of people leap up and make tea or coffee or fry an egg. It leads to a sudden, terrific load. We have to time it exactly, at Grid Control ... holding back power stations that can do an immediate switch-on — like Ffestiniog in Wales which is designed just for that purpose — until the commercial; then slamming in the switches over a period of thirty seconds, then out again as the kettles boil and the show starts after the break. That’s when the supply is vulnerable, during the commercial break. One fault in the system could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. You get a progressive blackout, starting from the place where the problem arises — it can be one bit of cable a foot long! — and zipping back along the line knocking out town after town. It doesn’t happen; but we’re always very relieved when the show comes off the air.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘One thing you might like to know,’ said Jack suddenly. ‘The Board do supply Group Three with current at their place in Somerset. We think they only use it for emergencies and they’re not really supposed to use the public supply as a standby. We let
them, because we can’t prove what they’re really doing with the current they do draw. But there’s something odd.’
‘Go on.’
‘I’m not really supposed to tell you. I’m not even supposed to know.’
‘But you will, and you do.’
Louise said: ‘You can trust Nigel.’
‘I only went into this because Louise asked me to keep my eyes open.’ I gave her an eye-query, wondering how long ago and why. She flashed those lovely eyelashes downward and I knew I’d never learn the answer to that one. Jack went on: ‘They’ve been buying in cable ... I mean, really enormous quantities.’ He glared at me, expecting to get asked just how much cable that amounted to.
‘How much does it amount to?’
‘Enough to supply three-phase electricity for a distance of a hundred and seventy miles.’
In the evening I found a message from Chindale. It said I was to meet him for breakfast at the Awful Hotel, Hyde Park Corner. Eight o’clock sharp.
*
Thank God he’d got a supply of teeny cigarettes so I could expect a calm interview. ‘In a minute,’ he said ‘I’m putting through a phone call. This may mean you have to fly down immediately.’
‘I’m ready. Who’s the call to?’
‘The harbourmaster at Bristol. He’s been taking some interesting radar readings.’
‘Subs?’
Probably. How are you fixed for maps?’
I told him about Dad.
‘He sounds a lot nicer than you,’ said Charles. ‘Highly integrated citizen.’
‘I’m lovely too, underneath.’
He gazed at me thoughtfully. ‘Apparently Louise thinks so. Is that wise?’
‘I don’t know about wise ... It’s life. How did you know?’
He grinned. ‘Never mind that.’ — And went off to phone.
When he returned he wasn’t smiling. ‘Now, get cracking. Find out what you can about the subs. What or whom do they carry? What type are they? Where do they surface? Got the gist?’
‘Yes.’ I felt the tingle of excitement and was surprised: I’m not basically a man of action. But I’d been in a state of suspense for too long.
Chindale: ‘How long does your anti-bleeper device give you away from London?’
‘Forty hours.’
‘Not much is it? Better be safe though. Don’t cut it fine. Who have you been seeing? Any one I know? Can’t be too careful right now.’ He’d guessed something, all right.
I couldn’t mention Taggard or the American naval man Duncan. I said: ‘Only friends.’ He fixed my look. We understood each other.
‘Okay. Pick them carefully, though.’
*
Louise drove me in my car to the airfield. I’d phoned Gordon Simmonds and he was ready to go. I checked with him about signing the death sheet — the insurance disclaimer — while Louise stayed across by the car.
Simmonds saw her through the window of his tiny office. ‘That’s the nicest telephone number I’ve seen for weeks. Looks like you really have dialling tone, there. I had one like that in Kenya. They look lovely against a background of flamingos. What have you told this one about me? Does she go for black men?’
‘Don’t be greedy. She has a name, by the way. It’s Louise. I told her I rescued you from the crocodiles at Thompson’s Falls.’
‘There are,’ he said, glancing at the weather map, ‘no crocodiles at Thompson’s Falls. All I ever saw there was tennis courts.’ He signed a document and strode off to the tower.
I went to kiss Louise goodbye. She looked anxious, said slightly breathlessly: ‘I saw Michael in the hangar.’
‘He knows about us already.’
‘But why’s he here?’
‘He flies,’ I said. ‘Like all the other angels.’
‘Take care, darling.’
‘You bet,’ I said. ‘And you.’
*
Flying in a light aircraft with a pilot you trust is pleasant. You forget everything else except the girl waving from the tarmac. There was nothing forgettable about her. Simmonds, always generous with the controls, let me do the take-off despite my ignorance of the Cessna 150. I was rusty on flying: this machine had a tricycle undercarriage and I weaved along the runway a bit. It was a cool day; that means easier to get off the ground.
I felt the wind wrap itself around the wings securely, create a solid ellipse under a classical vacuum just where the designer needed it.
We climbed steeply over a glossy runway still wet from a brief rainstorm overnight. Landscape was dulled in colour by the wash of it, leaves still moist and heavy from their extra load of droplets, and indistinct through the slight haze that was like steam.
We were talking a lot in the cockpit and Simmonds was asking: ‘And your mother? — what was she like?’
‘She must have been all right,’ I said, ‘because she left Mr Paradise Lost quite early on. I don’t really remember her.’
‘So I’m to land illegally in the Garden of Eden and provide you with a cabaret when your dad strides up with the alsatian?’
‘Dad’s terrified of dogs and the landing won’t be illegal.’
Simmonds dipped a wing and inspected the sea. Throttling gently back he said: ‘What’s the field like?’
‘Five hundred yards and only low hedges.’
‘You’ve used it?’
‘Once. It was all right.’
‘Okay.’
What I didn’t tell him was I burst a tyre and vowed from then on never to attempt landing on grass again. Still, Simmonds knew how to fly.
The approach over the rolling hills, at this time in the summer, is sheer tranquillizer. You see Somerset at its best: everything in it looks like a Turner painting and this valley hasn’t been spoiled. The ground undulates; a challenge to the skill of tractor drivers who take secret pride in following up on their forebears’ precision with the equivalent horse and plough ... Furrows are perfectly parallel and yet they trace gratifying loops like the whorls of fingerprints.
‘Low hedges be damned.’ said Simmonds. ‘Those beech trees are forty feet if they’re an inch.’
‘This is no time for nature study, and anyway you should think metric.’
‘Funny, funny, funny. Well, I’ll have a go. The wind, at least, is as you promised.’ It was westerly — usual for this time of year — and offered the best shallow approach. Mollified, Simmonds realized that the trees had a gap in them — three wingspans — and it was really an easy landing. We went round once, kept low to search for obstacles, then came in flat for a neat one.
No one came and nothing happened and Simmonds said: ‘I feel conspicuous. Must we sit in the middle of a field all afternoon?’ He looked at me oddly, smiling a little. ‘I think you’re quite scared of your father.’
I wriggled out of the conversation by wriggling out of the aircraft. The house was only a couple of hundred yards off and we stumbled clumsily across the intervening paddocks, arriving — feeling slightly ridiculous — just as my father’s car crunked up the drive from the other way. He produced exactly the same nettled expression as he always had whenever I appeared suddenly — or even gradually — from anywhere. Far from insulting Simmonds he took the attitude that Simmonds was a sensible chap whose only indiscretion was that of knowing his son.
‘You’d better come in,’ said my father tiredly. ‘I expect there’s something to drink.’ We did; and Simmonds, inveigled into an alliance with Dad against a son who couldn’t even be excitingly prodigal, enjoyed the reversal of roles to an enormous extent, and kept chucking me glances of triumph over my father’s abrupt racial enlightenment. Dad took no notice of Simmonds’ colour to any degree whatsoever. ‘I suppose,’ said Dad, floundering clinkingly among terrifyingly unsatisfactory brands of alcohol, ‘Nigel talked you into landing here? ... Yes I can see he must’ve. I hope you haven’t damaged your aeroplane. When Nigel did he broke a wheel and we had to dig it out.’ This earned me an interesting look from Simmonds. ‘There�
�s gin. Will that do?’ He looked at the label disconsolately. ‘It’ll have to do. It’s all there is. Hale was supposed to send down a dozen bottles from the pub last Tuesday. You remember Hale, Nigel?’
‘I remember Hale,’ I said obediently.
‘No, it was Wednesday. That’s right; because the cocktail party was on Thursday. You wouldn’t have liked it of course, Nigel. Not your kind of people.’ He glanced at Simmonds for a moment, as if Simmonds was for too acceptable to him and therefore couldn’t possibly be my kind of people either.
Simmonds said. ‘I won’t drink, thanks.’
‘Ah!’ My father drew himself up to his full height, a habit I felt he must have picked up from those books in which people are always drawing themselves up to their full height. ‘I suppose you make it a Rule.’ Anything with a. Rule in it made him feel enormously relieved.
‘While flying, yes,’ said Simmonds. He could see exactly how to please Dad, and did so for no other reason than infuriate me. I could see he hated the man on sight. I felt like blurting out that I made it a Rule too, that I hadn’t been anywhere near a bottle before half-burying an aircraft in a perfectly easy field and that it was comparatively seldom that I got plastered when flying aeroplanes.
‘And you, Nigel?’
‘Gin and tonic will do fine.’
‘There’s no tonic. Hale —’
‘ — Just water then.’
Glob-glob-glob. Glob-glob-glob-glob-glob. ‘Here you are. Well, I suppose you want something? — Out with it.’
‘I want your knowledge of the countryside.’
‘That can’t be all.’
‘I want your boat.’
‘Ah.’ He took a few meaningful steps across the room. ‘My boat.’ He took meaningful steps all the way back again. ‘You’d better explain yourself, I think. Can Mr Simmonds handle a power boat?’
Simmonds: ‘I used to do a fair amount of racing. We had a club at Malindi.’
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