‘Don’t do this to me,’ he pleaded. ‘You’re sick and I came and brought you something to make you happy.’
‘I’m sick from being punched in the stomach by a punter last night,’ she said. ‘But don’t feel sorry for me. We all must do our patriotic work.’
He sat down on one of the threadbare armchairs; and seeing that he was not to be removed so easily, Dora took the other, pulling her dressing gown over her body to stop herself shivering.
‘Let’s talk,’ he said.
‘Sure, we can talk. Some guys only want that, though you can watch me doing things if you like.’
‘Stop it! I’m not a punter and you’re not a whore. We’re human beings, and I came because I wanted to see you and be with you. Is that so hard to understand?’
‘No, it’s perfectly easy,’ she said. ‘But although it’s what you want, it’s not what I want. We can talk, fuck, anything you like, but not for free. And I don’t take presents for nothing. Whatever I get in life, I pay for it. The meat’s worth a fuck, so are the thick gloves.’
‘And the beautiful ones? The ones I imagined seeing on your hands that’d make you look like the woman you deserve to be?’
‘They’re worth lots of fucks,’ she said. ‘A whole week’s worth. Or lots of talk if that’s what you prefer, and if you want me to say I love you I’ll do it as much as you like. I’ll be any girlfriend you want me to be.’
‘I really love you, Dora. The truth of it came to me like a blinding light.’
She smiled again at the old joke. ‘I must be at least ten years older than you. Not old enough to be your mother, but old enough to know that at your age, love is something you carry round inside yourself, ready made, until you find someone who’ll let you shower them with it. OK, so you showered me last night. It could have been anyone. What about the scientist I saw you with yesterday at the education centre?’
‘Rosalind?’
‘I think that’s her name. Takes milk and no sugar. She’s younger and prettier than me, and she’s got a better body – so why aren’t you in love with her? Or did you go off her and then start on me instead?’
Robert sat in the uncomfortable armchair feeling unable to offer any counter-argument. He hardly knew Dora; the fantasy in his mind had little to do with the underfed woman sitting opposite him. He didn’t feel ready to give her the most important gift in his bag. ‘Go back to bed,’ he told her. ‘Get some rest.’
She stood up, wrapped the dressing gown round her shoulders, and went towards the bedroom, stopping to pick up her nylon slip from the floor. ‘Come with me,’ she said in a voice that was suddenly both kind and needy, so Robert followed. The bedroom looked squalid and untidy; a red plastic bucket stood on the floor at the head of the bed. ‘I’ve thrown up a few times,’ she explained, and Robert thought he glimpsed a trace of vomit clinging stubbornly to the inner wall of the rinsed container.
‘Why did he punch you?’
‘It’s what some of them are like. One of your crowd, I think; horsey face.’
‘Colin Forsyth?’
‘I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter.’ She dropped the robe again so that she could put on her slip, and her nakedness was somehow less wonderful to Robert than the sight of her once she was lying covered with the blankets pulled up to her chin. He sat beside her on the edge of the bed, looking down at her face, which was more childlike now, enabling him to imagine what she must have looked like in better times.
‘Why did you get sent here?’ he asked.
‘Someone had a grudge against my husband.’
‘You’re married?’
‘Are you surprised? I had a life on the outside. My husband had a good position in a steelworks, I was a music teacher in a school. We lived well. Then another man in the factory wanted Adam’s job – you know how it is. He dug up evidence of corruption – Adam said it was mostly lies, he’d done no worse than anyone else. But he was convicted of fraud and we both lost our jobs. Then the slide began – one thing after another until we had nothing left, no marriage, no hope. I ended up here; I don’t know where Adam is now.’
‘And children?’
He saw her eyes well up. ‘I can’t talk about that.’ Any she had, Robert knew, would have been given to a more law-abiding family for adoption; that was how things worked, and he had never until now questioned the justice of it. Dora’s punishment, he realized, was not to be allowed to forget the life she had left behind.
He lowered his face onto hers and felt her tears against his cheek; her skin was unexpectedly soft. He kissed her hair. Soon it was their lips that met; hers were chapped and gnawed but yielded to his completely. She freed herself only to tell him to get into bed; there was no more hostility now. He quickly undressed and slid beneath the blankets.
‘You’re so warm,’ she said, snuggling against him, even wanting to wrap her toes in the cosy embrace of his feet. She buried her face against his neck and he drank the scent of her hair.
‘I really love you,’ he said.
‘Then make love to me.’
With an initial fumbling that made them both laugh, he did as she asked. There was no thumbs-up to the crowd, no ceremony; instead he got inside the capsule, exploring its dark confines; an unexpected ridge, a slight bend. He was safe and comfortable here, feeling on his ear her rhythmic breathing that aligned itself like an oscilloscope with his own internal frequency. They were floating together on scalar waves, rising, and he began to see the Installation far below as a diminishing map. There was the Town, all of it, like a smoky fuzz; and there the Plant, the College, the outer perimeter with its rows of wire, its watchtowers and minefields, and then the surrounding hectares of forest, crowding with the perspective of altitude until the Installation was a tiny bald speck among the trees. They were high enough to call it space, this throbbing ether they shared, in which she gave voice to what he was thinking.
‘I love you.’
They were there: the event horizon was opening and the singularity stood naked before him, an infinite pearl. This was how space and time began and this was where it ended: the limit and purpose of everything. Whatever had gone before was only a crude simulacrum of what he now experienced; for this was heaven, and he was like a wheel being turned by the force that moves stars.
Exhausted and at peace, he slumped with satisfaction. He never wanted to stir again; he wanted to die like this. Dora eventually gave him a push so that he rolled beside her. He cuddled her again, but she was warm enough by now; there was a resistance in her body. She hadn’t flown to the same place after all.
‘You’d better go,’ she said.
‘Why?’
‘I’m not supposed to have visitors. And I need to sleep. I’m working at the Blue Cat again tonight.’
‘Do you have to?’
‘Yes.’
He got out of bed and walked naked to the bathroom where he hurriedly cleaned himself at the cracked sink. In a blue and white cup stood two toothbrushes. Visitors, he realized, were a transgression she allowed herself as long as the terms were right.
He went back to the living room and lifted his rucksack from the floor, took it to the bedroom and stood before her where she lay covered, too weak even to get up and wash. ‘I brought you one more thing,’ he said.
‘You’ve already given me enough.’
‘It’s the most important gift.’
She looked at him with what Robert at first took to be coldness, then realized it was pity. ‘Stop now,’ she said. ‘Get dressed and go.’
‘Did our lovemaking mean anything at all to you?’
She paused, then slowly shook her head. ‘When you see a beautiful thing in hell it only makes the suffering harder. Don’t you understand? I can’t let it mean anything. You’ll be gone from this place soon enough but I won’t. This is my world – I have to survive here.’
He reached inside the bag and brought out the weapon. ‘This is what I wanted to give you.’
She
stared at it in bewilderment. ‘Why?’
‘You told me last night you’d like to shoot everyone in the Blue Cat, start a revolution.’
She looked at him warily. ‘I never said anything of the sort. Take your gun and get out of here.’
‘Don’t be afraid of me,’ he pleaded, waving the pistol despairingly as he stood naked in the room. ‘All I want is to help you. This is a way.’
‘Who do you want me to shoot for you? The one who punched me?’
‘I don’t want anything except to help you. I took so many risks bringing this.’ He placed the gun on the bedside table. ‘There are people here who want to change things. They’re organizing themselves; I could put you in touch with them.’
‘Get out of here.’
‘Why must you be like this?’
‘I can look after myself and I don’t need your help. Never mind about the gun, leave it here. I know how to get rid of unwanted things.’
It was a strange end to a love affair that never happened. Stealing the gun was an imaginative act; the use it might serve was imaginary too, and so was the love that motivated the theft. They were voltages in his head. Robert dressed himself, aware of what a fool he had been.
‘You know how you could really help?’ Dora said when he was almost ready to go. ‘Take the gun and use it yourself. That’s what I told you last night. Kill the bastards.’
He’d had so many opportunities. Davis, Willoughby, Rosalind, Kaupff – all of them in the seminar room. But he knew the truth. ‘I can’t.’
‘No, I can’t either,’ said Dora. ‘We’re good people. We let the bad ones take all the power.’
He pulled on his coat, lifted the empty rucksack, then leaned over the bed to kiss her. She offered him her cheek.
‘Goodbye, Dora.’
‘Goodbye, soldier.’
He turned and went out, closing the bedroom door to try and seal in whatever warmth the two of them had generated, then left the flat and went down the creaking staircase and into the dark street where he immediately saw the familiar white car parked on the opposite side of the road, its headlights and engine switched off. The rear door opened and a voice called across. It was Davis. ‘Come and join me, Coyle.’
22
Robert crossed the road and climbed into the car’s back seat beside the commissioner. The driver was different this time; a fair-haired, younger man, but he stared ahead in the customary way and said nothing. Davis leaned towards Robert and gave him a pat on the arm. ‘Was she good?’ He laughed at Robert’s silence. ‘Don’t be shy – we’re all men here. It’s the one you were with last night, isn’t it? Wanda, Dora, Zelda – a name for every occasion.’
‘I won’t be seeing her again.’
‘Good idea,’ Davis agreed. ‘O’s have their uses but fraternizing with them can only lead to trouble.’ Then he instructed the driver to set off; there was no indication where their destination might be, but the car went as slowly as usual. This was not like a normal arrest.
‘Now, then,’ said Davis, getting to business as the car moved through the dark, deserted town. ‘What more can you tell me about Kaupff? Have the Franks given you any useful information?’ Robert could see no point in Davis’s questioning except as a way of exercising control. Kaupff was ruined, wasn’t that enough? But Davis had other ideas. ‘This investigation has taken an intriguing new turn,’ he said while they proceeded along a quiet road Robert had not seen previously, the floodlit buildings on either side soon giving way to dimly visible uncultivated moorland. ‘Harvey turned up.’
‘Where?’
‘In the river, dead.’
Robert was stunned; contending possibilities quickly flashed through his thoughts of accident or suicide, the latter seeming likeliest.
‘It was Kaupff,’ Davis declared. ‘He hasn’t confessed yet but the evidence is clear; it’s a repetition of what he did years ago to the Frank child. Sexual assault, then drowning the victim. The doctor who examined Harvey’s body said there was clear evidence of anal penetration.’
‘Rosalind must have done the experiment on him too.’
‘I expect so,’ the commissioner chuckled. ‘But the experiment is secret – a bruised arse isn’t. We’ve got him nailed.’ Davis turned and peered through the window into the night. Every so often they would pass the broken shadow of an old, disused concrete bunker beside the road. ‘This is where they tested some of Kaupff’s earliest bomb designs, before the Town was created. I expect we could get cancer just by setting foot outside the car.’
‘What will happen to him?’
Davis shrugged. ‘He’ll retire honourably, and with any luck he’ll have a heart attack not long afterwards. But for now, keep watch on Vine, Rosalind and the others.’
‘I’m still part of the mission?’
‘Of course!’ cried Davis. ‘You’ve passed every test so far – and I don’t mean medical checks or mind-reading tricks, which are the least important element as far as the Central Committee are concerned. No, what they want is their own man inside that capsule, maintaining a close check on things. Someone who can be trusted absolutely, whose only loyalty is to the State. You rejected Kaupff in exactly the right way, same as you’ve dropped that tart you were with. This is what we need, Coyle – men of integrity and unshakeable principles.’ He lowered his voice. ‘You realize, don’t you, that even a redesigned mission could still prove fatal?’
Robert said nothing. He was a coward who had renounced the only people he cared about; he was doomed and he deserved to die.
‘We’ll have to see what sort of new design they come up with, but whatever the outcome, you can expect the highest rewards. If your duty is to live, you’ll be well looked after until the end of your days. And if things have to go otherwise, your family will receive those benefits on your behalf.’
Looking out, Robert saw in the distance the twinkling lights of the Town; and from the other side of the car he noticed tall security fencing beside the road, with impenetrable pine forest beyond. They were wheeling round the Installation’s outer perimeter, performing the highest and most lonely orbit its topography allowed. They could go on like this forever, circling the closed universe where Robert’s only task was to fall according to the dictates of gravity.
‘Does anyone ever leave the Installation?’ he asked.
‘Certainly,’ said Davis. ‘Willoughby’s going back to his wife and kids and his endless meetings and cocktail parties, and I expect he’ll write a few more of those dreadful books of his.’
‘But will he really go? Or will he simply disappear from here?’
In the gloom of the car, Davis’s teeth could be glimpsed shining between parted lips. ‘Some questions cannot be answered, Coyle, so don’t ask them. Rosalind was assigned to monitor Willoughby and she did a fine job. Now you must monitor Rosalind. I’ve told her to watch you, so you can expect to find yourself in her bed soon enough. Give her a good hard fucking and submit a full report afterwards.’ They drove on in silence for a while until Davis said suddenly, ‘You know you had a very lucky escape? Those infiltrators could easily have killed you.’
Robert’s heart sank even further: Davis knew about Miriam.
‘This morning we caught the one with the radio,’ the commissioner explained. ‘He was trying to send coded messages to his American paymasters – had a transmitter hidden inside an electric heater.’
No, that didn’t sound like Tim or his Christian comrades.
‘We don’t think he leaked anything useful to the Yankees but he squawked soon enough when we collared him. And do you know who his accomplice here was? A trusted citizen who’d been giving apparently loyal service for years, when all along he was a saboteur waiting to be activated.’
‘Who?’ Robert asked nervously.
‘Your driver. He was coming to pick you up at the College when my men arrested him; as soon as he realized what was happening he grabbed for his glove compartment and tried to get hold of something, the off
icers thought it must be a gun or a bomb and took cover but all the poor sod could come up with was his papers and a photo of his wife that he showed them while they put the cuffs on him, crying like a baby.’
So Robert had stolen the pistol from the one man who might have made good use of it. He had foiled the rebellion he’d half-heartedly yearned for.
‘You were being driven round this place by a spy, Coyle. But we know you didn’t tell him anything; we’d have beaten it out of him by now if you had.’
Robert could see the driver in his mind, wearing his crumpled coat with dandruff on its collar, haggling in the butcher’s shop, or passing comment on a pair of gloves. He could see him being kicked in the face, his mouth bursting in a bloody spray of loosened teeth. Robert had disarmed a spy. He was a hero.
‘Mr Kelly came to get you instead,’ said Davis, nodding towards the driver, ‘but you’d already buggered off on foot. So now let’s take you home.’ He gave instructions to the silent chauffeur and soon they were re-entering the Town, following the familiar streets until the car halted outside the Franks’ house.
Robert saw no lights inside. ‘I don’t think they’re back from work.’
‘If you’ve no key I’ll have the door opened for you.’
‘Do you need more information on them?’
Davis shook his head. ‘We’ve got Kaupff; the baby can rest in peace. Don’t go out tonight, have a relaxing evening with the Franks. Tomorrow we begin in earnest.’
Robert got out, and as soon as he stepped away from the vehicle it moved off. He let himself into the house, switched on the hall light, hung up his coat and the empty rucksack that was stained with a small patch of dried blood, and went upstairs to the darkened landing. When he pushed his bedroom door open he was so startled by what he found that he gave a cry.
Miriam was there, kneeling on the floor, her ghostly face illuminated only by the glow from the old radio hissing quietly in front of her. She turned and looked up at him with an air of displeasure at having been interrupted in her prayers.
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