by John Halkin
‘Three squid?’ Sir John – their host from the Ministry – glanced around the table, an eyebrow raised. He was a distinguished civil servant of the old school: dark suit, well worn; greying hair; close-shaven. Not one of the new young whizz-kids. ‘Alan?’
‘One way of getting our own back. No jellyfish on the menu?’
‘No, sir. Though I did hear some West End restaurants are trying it. Without much success, I believe. They say it’s rather tough.’
‘Right then, squid it is,’ said Alan. ‘And I’ll have the steak to follow.’
‘Tim?’
‘Yes, squid and… er… lamb chops.’
Down the centre of the room was a long table where members without guests were lunching. Their own smaller table, booked in Sir John’s name, was near the window a few feet away. Once the old waiter had taken their orders and wandered off towards the service door, there was no danger of their being overheard.
‘More secure here than in my office, I’m afraid,’ Sir John pointed out. ‘It’s a leaky place, Whitehall, these days. Now I think you know, Tim, why I’ve called this meeting? Did Alan explain?’
Tim nodded.
‘Briefly, it’s this.’ Sir John kept his voice low. ‘This jellyfish scare is turning out to be a much bigger thing than anyone thought in the early stages. Up to a few days ago, the general view was that it was no different in essence from freak weather conditions. A bad winter, say; or floods. We’d need to pump some money into emergency aid to help those affected sort out their lives – we’d the holiday trade particularly in mind, naturally. However, the way things are turning out, it now looks considerably more serious than that.’
‘How serious?’
‘The government is to lay a bill before the House of Commons this afternoon giving it emergency powers similar to those granted in wartime.’ He paused while the wine waiter showed him the bottle of Puligny-Montrachet he’d ordered and then opened it. ‘This should go well with squid,’ he commented when the waiter had gone. ‘I’m afraid I am far from optimistic about the situation. In the circumstances, gentlemen, I feel we’ve a duty to enjoy this lunch. It may be the last luxury we shall ever know.’
‘Oh, come!’ Tim protested. ‘Is it really as bad as that?’
‘Don’t you know?’ Sir John demanded. A worried look crossed his lined face. He seemed tired, Tim thought. ‘I imagined that you of all people would have realised.’
‘Realised what?’
‘We have kept a great deal back from the general public,’ he admitted, ‘but you’ll need to be fully informed if you’re to be as effective in your part of the operation as we hope. Let’s begin with the reason why there’s no fresh fish on the menu. Not a single fishing boat has left port anywhere in the country over the past seven days. With jellyfish forming a high proportion of every catch it’s simply too dangerous. Then there’s oil.’
So far, North Sea oil had continued to flow, he explained. Gas, too. But the men on the oil rigs were worried. All diving operations had been suspended, which meant essential repair jobs were being neglected. Two divers had died in circumstances which left no doubt that jellyfish had been responsible. Observers on the rigs had spotted vast shoals of them drifting towards the coast, real giants, they said, as big as two yards across.
This was confirmed by reports from a Royal Navy frigate using both sonar and echo-sounding equipment.
‘The frigate ran into heavy seas,’ Sir John went on confidentially. ‘No problem in normal circumstances – the sea washing over the bows, that sort of thing. But this time it brought jellyfish on board. Again, big ones. To make matters worse, their screws tangled with something. They didn’t know what it was at first, but it turned out to be more jellyfish.’
‘The poor buggers,’ said Tim soberly. He could visualise the scene, the panic on board.
‘Comparatively little panic, it seems.’ Sir John must have read his thoughts. ‘The Navy’s a highly disciplined force. Even so, one officer and three ratings were killed dealing with the jellyfish on deck. Or below decks, rather: they thought they’d got rid of them all, the storm had blown over, time to tidy up, make everything shipshape again, when they found two more. One dropped down a hatch and landed on the back of the rating’s neck. He was eighteen years old.’
‘That wasn’t in the papers,’ Tim commented.
‘We made damn sure it wasn’t. His parents were informed he’d died accidentally during a training exercise. I’m relying on your discretion, Tim. By the time I’ve told you everything you’ll understand why.’
‘How did they deal with the screws?’
‘Sent divers down. Cleared the water a bit first.’
‘What does that mean?’
Sir John hesitated. ‘This is strictly hush-hush. They were at sea, unable to move, and surrounded by jellyfish. Four of the ship’s company already dead. No diver could have survived without the right precautionary measures.’
‘Which were?’
‘They exploded two nerve gas grenades just below the surface of the water. Killed the jellyfish all right. They could see them for yards around, underside up.’
‘The Navy carries nerve gas grenades?’ Alan Brewer asked, his eyes alert with interest. ‘As part of their regular armament?’
‘That’s something I just don’t know,’ Sir John said blandly. ‘And I’d advise you to forget it.’
Before Alan could pursue this line of questioning, the ancient waiter returned with the next course. ‘Enjoyed your squid, I hope?’ he enquired as he removed their plates.
‘Very tasty,’ Tim said.
‘Nasty-looking creatures. Saw them on TV once. Most unpleasant.’ His serving spoon hovered above the vegetables. ‘Mushrooms for you as well, sir?’
‘Please.’
He emptied his glass, then eyed the bottle of claret which their host had chosen with such care. It lay in its basket, almost purring with content at being fetched out of the cellar after all these years. He felt a pang of regret that Sue was not there to share it with him. She had a good palate for expensive wines. That morning he’d tried telephoning her again, but it was no use. There had been no answer from the flat. When he’d dialled the theatre he was told no one was there; it had closed down and they’d all gone.
At last the waiter withdrew, but for the next few minutes they concentrated on their food. His lamb chops were tender and juicy; the wine was gentler than anything he’d ever tasted before. Sir John looked up and nodded to him as if to say enjoy it while you can.
It was a strange setting for such a conversation, he thought, looking around the room at the other men lunching there, several famous faces among them, and the portraits on the walls of an earlier generation of celebrities. Although for the most part it was the painters who were remembered these days, and the celebrities were forgotten.
Before coming here, he and Alan had called at the Ministry where they had been required to sign the Offical Secrets Act. The establishment was obviously very worried, and high time too. Ministers regarded the public relations exercise – public morale, they called it – as vital. In addition to normal press facilities, they were planning a series of information films on TV, both to give advice and to keep the public up to date. Tim was to be the front man. He was already acknowledged in the country, one nameless civil servant pointed out, as ‘Mr Jellyfish’. They needed to cash in on that reputation.
For the public good.
‘As I get older,’ Sir John said at last, laying down his knife, ‘I find these simple physical pleasures are the best.’
You and Jacqui both. Tim only just managed to refrain from speaking the thought aloud. ‘One-night Jacqui’ he called her in his mind: it had not been from lack of interest on his part, either. Perhaps it was merely that she disliked the idea of a male taking the initiative; the 1980s syndrome. Yet she was all surprises. With her clothes on, she looked down to earth and dowdy, as though she’d just dropped in from a CND march; without them, she wa
s St Tropez class. Her filming was good, too. Those latest Gulliver rushes were brilliant. Alive. Full of movement. He was glad she’d be staying with him to direct this project.
‘Tim?’
‘I beg your pardon! I was dreaming.’
‘It’s time we completed this part of the briefing,’ Sir John remarked, leaning over to refill his glass. ‘No, carry on eating if you haven’t finished. I can talk while you eat. The one major factor I’ve not yet mentioned is that these jellyfish – or, rather, their young – have now been discovered in inland waters.’
‘Fresh water?’
‘Lakes, reservoirs, rivers, streams. Oh, and canals. About eight to ten sightings so far.’
‘But is it possible?’
‘Our first reaction was the same as yours. Probably hysteria. People were mistaken. But I’m afraid it’s true. We have specimens which were taken out of the river at Totnes.’
‘Jane came across them,’ Alan explained.
‘What was she doing in Totnes?’ Tim demanded furiously. Bloody hell, he knew only too well what she was doing there. Trying to screw information out of Sue for that article, what else? Going behind his back. Well, she wasn’t going to get away with it; he’d put the lawyers on to her. ‘She’d no business in Totnes.’
‘Good job she went there,’ Sir John approved. ‘Showed initiative. She went back the following day with her sister to search for polyps. I suppose you know about polyps in the reproductive cycle of the jellyfish?’
‘Of course.’ He felt bitter. The news had soured the whole day for him. The divorce would get into the press before he’d had a chance to try and stop it. ‘So what’s the first step?’
‘On Friday you go down to Somerset to film the polyps. Our science staff has prepared a detailed brief for you. From there you’ll be transported to the Dorset coast where we’re mounting a combined services operation against the jellyfish – army and Navy together. This is a trial run to discover which methods work best.’
‘I’d poison the buggers,’ Alan said flatly, draining his glass. ‘Spray them from the air.’
‘D’you think we haven’t considered that?’
‘You used nerve gas once.’
‘In an emergency,’ Sir John agreed. His eyes never left Tim. ‘Everything in the sea around that spot died. We don’t want to mention that. It’s classified information. As for other poisons, dioxin has been considered. It has been used in pesticides and defoliation gases: in Vietnam, in particular. In Britain, the problems would be unimaginable. Take the amount of dioxin you could get into that claret bottle, drop it into our water supply, and you could wipe out half the population, humans as well as jellyfish.’
‘So roasting them alive is the only alternative?’ Tim asked.
‘It’s not very satisfactory, I know, but it causes less long-term damage. When this is all over we’re still going to need food to eat, water to drink. It’s ironic, isn’t it? We survived Hitler, we laughed at Mussolini, we dodged clear of Stalin, and the American president has yet to be elected in whom we’ve felt total confidence – yet all the time the real threat was in the sea. Jellyfish.’
‘It’s that bad?’
‘We have lost control of most of our coastline.’ He spelled it out gravely. ‘However many we kill, more come to replace them. Now they’ve found their way into our inland waters. If they multiply there in the same numbers they could overrun the entire country. So far there has been surprisingly little civil unrest, but when food shortages begin to bite –’ He left the sentence unfinished and beckoned to the waiter. ‘Now let’s have some brandy with our coffee. The best.’
Tim declined the brandy. He should ring Jane, he thought; possibly she might know where Sue was. At least she could tell him what was happening down there.
Outside, the rain was lashing down again. It had been a bad year all round; location work had taken twice as long as it should. From the members’ table came a sudden outburst of laughter, followed by a thin voice exclaiming that, anyway, it was good weather for jellyfish.
The speaker did not know how right he was.
Sue came away from visiting Mark feeling worried and depressed. He still had that intermittent fever and his cheeks, always thin, had taken on a hollow, sunken appearance. Her own hands had almost healed, but Mark’s were still in bandages; his forearms too, as far as the elbows. And they now knew that other jellyfish had found their way up his trouser legs and a few had landed on his waist below the hem of his pullover.
‘He’s going to pull round,’ the young doctor had said, though without conviction. ‘We just have to be patient. We’ve taken blood and urine samples together with scrapings of pus from the sores. When the reports come back from the lab we’ll know much better where we stand. The poison these tiny ones use is not quite the same as the big jellyfish.’
He was obviously one of those doctors who believed in telling everything; too enthusiastic about his work to be reassuring. Sue had nodded, hardly taking it all in.
What no one could explain was why she herself had got off so lightly. The young cyclist had died without recovering consciousness. His girlfriend, pale and silent, was taken home the next day by her father. Sue had watched them loading the two bicycles and rucksacks into their van, then driving slowly away.
Mark might die, she told herself.
The doctor himself had admitted that jellyfish poison could affect each person differently. He suspected Mark’s case might be complicated by a particular allergy.
It was a bitter irony, she thought as she stood on the hospital steps waiting for the downpour to ease before she risked dashing across the flooded car park to where she’d left her Mini. Before this had happened she’d been wondering whether she could stay with Mark much longer; whether, in fact, she’d done right to move in with him in the first place. She couldn’t leave him now, of course: that was obvious. Not now he needed her.
‘Oh, excuse me!’ It was the sister from the children’s ward, a friendly West Indian woman in her mid-thirties with flashing eyes, full of humour. ‘It was today, wasn’t it? D’you want to cancel it? We’re all terribly sorry about your friend. I told the children, so they’ll understand if you cancel.’
‘Cancel?’ Sue looked at her blankly. Then she remembered the show they had promised to put on for the children. It had completely escaped her mind. ‘Four thirty, wasn’t it?’
‘We do understand if you –’
Sue interrupted her. ‘You have jellyfish cases on the ward, don’t you? Among the children?’
‘That’s right, several. Two more came in this morning, though they’re in intensive care still. These floods, you know.’ She waved her arm vaguely in the direction of the car park. ‘Though we’re expecting fewer now they’ve evacuated the Torbay area. I don’t know if you’ve been told, but there are plans to evacuate this hospital if the front line gets any nearer.’
‘The front line?’
‘That’s what they’re calling it.’
Sue reckoned it out quickly. With the theatre closed, most of the company had already left, although Adrian and Tony were still around. Mark always did the children’s shows with her; he was out, of course. But they had started rehearsing the new one, a couple of short sketches at least: if they used those, plus some material from last time and a bit from the Christmas show…
It was not yet eleven. They had five clear hours.
‘Four thirty – we’ll be there,’ she promised. ‘It won’t be what we planned, but we wouldn’t want to disappoint the children. We’ll be there.’
As she ran across the car park, her feet kicking up the water which lay a good two inches deep in places, she could hear the now-familiar wail of an ambulance coming closer. Oh please God, let that be just an ordinary, everyday case, she prayed. Something simple like an appendix; or a baby coming into the world – anything but jellyfish.
She remembered her disbelief when Tim had first told her about them. God, how blind they’d all bee
n!
The noise in the room was excruciating as people shouted at the top of their voices, trying to make themselves heard above the amplified sound of an eight-piece rock band.
It was stifling, too. They were crushed back against the walls to keep the floor free for the dancers who’d just been announced, which made it impossible to get anywhere near the drinks. Then somebody had the bright idea of passing freshly-opened bottles of champagne from hand to hand above their heads, dripping their contents down the necks of anyone unfortunate enough to be immediately beneath them.
Tim swore as one bottle passed him, but managed to grab the next to refill Dorothea’s glass.
‘Where’s the rest of our lot?’ he shouted.
‘No idea.’
‘What?’
‘No idea!’ she bawled.
They clinked glasses and drank, giving up their attempt at conversation.
The lamps dimmed, to be replaced dramatically by wild strobe lighting for the dancers: six girls in all, clad in flowing transparent robes beneath which they were completely naked. The robes were pink with red sequins; matching masks covered the girls’ faces. At first their movements were wild, dervish-like, but then the music changed, the strobing became slower, and they began a sinuous dream-like dance as if beckoning some god to appear before them.
The curtain parted and four young male dancers appeared, also in speckled pink and red. Into the centre of the floor they drew a large, covered object on wheels which they secured before moving back to join the girls in a dance of worship around it. The music became slowly louder and louder in a steady crescendo until the throbbing beat seemed to vibrate through the entire building and the strobe lighting became so wild that the eyes ached.
Then it stopped.
Blackness.
Silence.
A soft drum roll, faintly at first as the dark object in the centre of the room was slowly unveiled and they saw what it was. Around the room ran a cold shiver of fear as first the pale green light became visible, then the great glass-sided tank with the jellyfish floating lazily in its water.