His wife laughed incredulously. “Oh no, Press, you can’t make him out such an old devil as that! I’ve only met him two or three times, but he always seemed quite a benign old soul to me.”
“Didn’t I just say he had a way with women? You remember when he had pneumonia that time, and you thought I was heartless not to have him here to convalesce?”
“You mean—you surely don’t seriously mean—?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Not that I’d put that past him. If he needed money he would have been after your private account like a shot, and no holds barred. I’m not joking. But he wouldn’t have wasted any time getting round the neighbors. That was the main reason I wouldn’t let him set foot in this place. That and a peculiar aversion to having the house blown up around my ears.”
“Thank you. So you were more worried about the house and the neighbors.”
He lifted his eyes to heaven. “I mean you. And Alan. And, all right, the house too. I’ve made too many sacrifices to get a house in this kind of neighborhood to want to go through it again in a hurry.”
“Alan still sees him, you know.”
“Yes, I do know. You can’t very well stop a kid seeing his own grandfather. But that’s another reason I wouldn’t have him here to live. Being in contact with a corrupting influence like that two or three times a year I, one thing, having said corrupting influence in residence 11 quite another. But the main reason I’ve never asked him is that he would have laughed in my face. I’ve been humiliated by him too many times. If I’d pleaded with him he might have given in, but his unbearability, his dangerousness, his power of scandalizing the neighborhood would have been in direct ratio to my pleading. I know.”
“But he’s old now. You’re letting memories of the past obscure the present—and your judgment.”
“Am I? I can remember the happy times too. You’re quite right; he wasn’t quite such an old devil. Not all the time, anyway. He knew all right what a time he gave my mother, and he would try to redeem himself. When he made a killing he’d come home with all kinds of gifts for mother and me. He wasn’t mean with money. He just didn’t care about it, except what he needed to finance his experiments.
“Some of the things he brought home were ridiculous. He arrived once in a pantechnicon with a grand piano. And once he brought me a boa constrictor—a live one. Another time he came home and showered my mother with gold sovereigns. She was sitting at the table—I shall never forget that night—it was covered with a green baize cloth. And we only had candlelight because the electricity had been turned off for nonpayment. We hadn’t seen father for weeks, and my mother looked up at him, trying to look stem and accusing. Heaven knows she had cause enough to be stem with him. And then he just lifted up this leather bag and showered her with sovereigns.
“At times like that we thought that everything was going to be happy ever after, that he had come to his senses. But he went off again the next day, and we didn’t see him for nearly a year. And the sovereigns didn’t last for ever, even if they were worth about thirty shillings each at that time. There came a. time when we had to make a moonlight flit.
“How old was I?—about eight, I think—and I didn’t know what a moonlight flit was. I didn’t know the name for it, I mean. But I always thought it was funny that we used to move more often by night than by day. And move! We never stayed in one place for long. So much my education! I had almost as many schools as hot dinners. And hot dinners were a luxury. One week we’d on pheasant or Scotch salmon—‘We’ve got to live a manner befitting the Great Scientist,’ he’d say—the next week it would be bread and margarine.”
.“At least you got the Scotch salmon and the pheasant.”
“Oh yes, it was the great romantic life, you mean? It wasn’t. There was too much heartbreak and loneliness for my mother. When we had to move, after the sovereigns episode, you know my mother actually lost all trace of my father. In the circumstances she could hardly leave a forwarding address. We might never have seen him again if he hadn’t sought us out. He was flat broke, of course, otherwise I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have bothered. There was a terrible row. He wanted to know where all the money had gone that he had given my mother.
“The only quiet time we had was during the war. We were down in the country—Somerset. My father was working at a secret factory down there. Ironical, isn’t it? I mean, taking a war to give us a bit of peace and security. I think the old man found peace of mind too. It was the only time, anyway, he seemed to be able to work as one of a team.”
“Was that when he was awarded the M.B.E.?”
“Don’t remind me of it. When the war finished, that was just one more weapon in his armory. That M.B.E. must have been flashed around half the board rooms in England by now—and half the saloon bars. I don’t mention these things to you, but more than once my father’s been a heck of a nuisance to me and my career. He tried to get me to use my influence to get him into a branch of my own Ministry, to carry out research vital to the country—he claimed. I refused point-blank. Afterwards I found him working there under an assumed name. You know what security’s like in our outfit. There he was, as bold as brass, a whole faked history in the dossier, using the Ministry time and resources to work on some harebrained scheme of his own. I nearly had a heart attack. If I showed him up, he’d have landed in prison—M.B.E. or no M.B.E.—and I’d have been out on my ear.”
“How long ago was this?”
“About seven years ago. You remember, when you wanted Alan to go to that expensive prep school in Hampstead and you thought I was being mean about the money?”
“Oh, then.” Her eyes widened. “You don’t mean—”
“Of course.” Self-justification and bitterness were mixed in his voice. “I had to buy him out. It cost me five hundred pounds.”
“Oh, Press, I had no idea.”
“I didn’t worry you with it. He’s my father. Perhaps you realize now just what kind of a father he’s been. And that if I did hate him I’d have every excuse. But I tell you, it’s the other way around. He hasn’t so much hated me as despised me. He always has, even when I was a wide-eyed kid, worshipping him despite all he put my mother through. To me he was the Great Scientist. I dreamed of following in his footsteps.
“But I think I sensed even then that there was something lacking in my father’s abilities—not that I would ever have dreamed of admitting it. I knew he was weak on theory. He never had any formal education. He hasn’t got a single letter after his name, except that M.B.E. By the time he got that, my eyes were a bit more open. By then it was too late. I was about the same age as Alan is now and I had committed myself. I’ve no regrets on that score. I might have been a lousy lawyer.”
“I’m sure you would have been a very good lawyer.”
He shrugged away the stereotyped loyalty. “I thought it was just his way of bringing me up—you know, treat ’em mean and keep ’em keen. An act—until I took my place by his shoulder. Forgive the shining image; I was only a kid. But it wasn’t an act. He just didn’t need me. Yet he never followed through on a single thing. He dropped working on rockets before the war, when it was obvious that the Germans were getting government support and romping ahead. He gave up after a couple of attempts to get our government interested.
“Before then he pioneered television. I found some papers of his once—tucked behind a pipe in the toilet—and they were notes dating from the early twenties—outlining a kind of cathode-ray tube. That was when Baird was working on a cardboard disc with holes in. I never knew why he dropped TV. Perhaps that was when he dreamed up a basic jet engine. Or a patent tie clip. It might just as easily have been one as the other.
“You see, no perspective. Because he never had the education to give him a perspective. And it just didn’t register on him when I got scholarships. On one of the few occasions when he opened up with me—it must have been after he’d had a few drinks—he told me a story about Henry Ford. About how Ford wanted to produce
glass for his cars in a continuous strip process. His experts said it couldn’t be done. So he called a clerk out Of the sales office, somebody out of accounts, and a hand off the shop floor and told them to find a way. And they found it because they had never learned enough to know that it couldn’t be done. That was one of my father’s favorites. I heard him tell it to several people. Once to a headmaster of mine, to put him in his place.”
He sighed. “No, my father had talent all right. But he never learned how to use it.”
“You keep talking in the past tense.”
“I’m talking about the past. All right, I know what you mean. But he’ll never make anything of his life now. There isn’t one of the fields that he pioneered in that hasn’t gone way past any theory he may have had. Anyway, that’s the story of my Life With Father. And once is enough.”
He turned to look out of the window. The early morning sun had given way to rain. He turned back with sudden ferocity. “Except that one day I’ll tell you why I could really hate my father.”
“But—” his wife began, when a third voice interrupted them.
“Why hul-lo.”
It was Alan. His father recognized the pronunciation as a brand mark of a current TV comic, uttered with all the unctuous emphasis of the prototype plus the energy of a sixteen-year-old. Preston was approaching the age when the energy of the young hurt physically. He winced.
“What are we all doing up so bright and early?” Alan inquired. “I heard voices raised in unseemly discourse.” Three He caught a quick glance between his father and mother.
“It’s all right, I couldn’t make out a single word, if you were talking about sex or something.”
“Alan,” said his mother.
His father told him, “We were talking about your grandfather Adolphe. He’s in hospital.”
“Oh no. What’s wrong with him?”
“It’s all right, he’ll survive. He just broke a bone or two. He blew himself up.”
“I bet he was trying out something fantastic.”
“Knowing your grandfather, he probably forgot to read the diagram.”
“Grandfather doesn’t read diagrams—”
“Exactly.”
“He makes them. Ee! When are we going to see him?”
“We are not going to see him at all.”
His wife interposed. “Aren’t you going today?”
“I am, yes. But there’s no need for you to come too, Doris.”
“But—”
“I’d prefer to see him on my own,” he said. “As for you, Alan, you can go and see him if you want to. But not with me today. And I’d better warn you that it’s the other side of London—Erith.”
“So what? I can go down on the hovercraft service. It stops at Erith.”
“You may go down by any route you wish. But kindly desist from saying So what? It’s neither polite nor grammatical.”
Three
By the time Preston Quy had shaved and dressed, had breakfast and got the ’69 Humber out, it had stopped raining and the roads were already dry under an unusually warm sun for April. He had intended to go through the Dartford Tunnel and double back to Erith, but it seemed that half of North London was heading for the Essex coast. Half-an-hour’s holdup made him change his mind and turn southward for Blackfriars.
The roads were emptier here, but as soon as he was over the bridge he got caught up in another sluggish stream. Half of South London seemed to be on its way to the Kent and Sussex coasts.
He swore and tried to take evasive action through backstreets. Three cul-de-sacs and a Sunday street market convinced him that patience among the herd was the only course. He reached the hospital at half-past twelve in a foul temper and had to kick his heels until lunch time was over. He bought a large bunch of daffodils from a barrow at the gate and went in.
He asked for his father at the office, feeling the usual small sense of defeat at pronouncing Quy in his father’s English way.
“Oh yes, the old gentleman who was admitted last night. He’s in Ward Seventeen. Take the lift to the third floor. Turn left. It’s at the end of the corridor.”
Preston followed the directions and found a door marked 17, smaller than the usual ward swing-door. But that was his father all right, propped up in bed and visible through the glass panel. Trust him, Preston thought as he went in. This was a private ward.
His father, in striped hospital pajamas, his left arm strapped across them, looked up from a copy of the News of the World.
“Well, if it isn’t my flesh and blood. I expected the chef. I complained about the standard of the food. One doesn’t pay for a private ward and expect to get National Health cod and parsley sauce.”
“One?” Preston became uneasily aware of the careful neutrality of the word. “Look here—you’re not expecting me to—”
“I’m not expecting you to do anything. That’s all taken care of.”
“Don’t think,” Preston muttered hurriedly, “that I don’t want you to have every comfort, but we pay enough taxes for hospitals, so I firmly believe in—”
“I told you it’s taken care of. Or will be.” His father seemed to have just noticed the flowers. “Wait a minute, are you sure you got the right message?” He cackled derisively.
A nurse came in just then. Old Quy grabbed the flowers and presented them to her, bowing slightly from his sitting-up position. “Here we are, my dear, a tribute from an admirer.”
The nurse, a halfway pretty redhead, smiled. “I’m sure they were brought for you, Mr. Quy. Let me put them in a vase.”
Old Quy’s bright eyes followed her as she arranged them in a vase, which she set by the window sill.
“While you’re here,” he called, “have a look at the radiator tap, will you? It seems chilly in here.” He licked his lips as she bent down, her stiff uniform swaying out to reveal an ample stretch of thigh.
“There’s nothing wrong with the radiator, Mr. Quy,” she said. “It’s full on.” She took his temperature and went out.
“Ooh, did you see that leg?” old Quy enthused. “Black stockings do a hell of a lot for a girl. Weird, isn’t it—they’re the uniform of sisters of mercy and can-can dancers, Salvation Army girls and other sisters of mercy. A small demonstration of the dialectical nature of the universe, eh?”
“You don’t get any better,” his son told him.
“A man’s got to have a bit of recreation, cooped up in a place like this, hasn’t he? Still, I shan’t be here long. Where’s Alan? Haven’t seen him for months.”
“He’s studying hard. He takes his O-Levels this year. But no doubt he’ll be coming down to see you. I thought it best to come on my own today.”
The old man cocked his head. “Why?”
“Well—in case you were in any kind of a jam or—”
“Jam?” He said it as if he had never heard of the word. “Far from that being the case, let me tell you, son, that I’ve just discovered the greatest thing since the steam engine.”
Preston suppressed a sigh. “How do you discover anything blowing yourself up?”
“You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. Getting yourself blown up is as good a way as any of getting your eyes opened for you. I was testing the latest sample of a complex molecule with about a hundred times the current it would have to take in normal operation. It held up to that point. Though I must confess that I didn’t expect quite so violent a reaction. You wait till Maddox comes to see me. His eyes will pop out. I’ll make his fortune—and mine.”
Like any other hospital visitor, Preston felt he ought to make conversation, but he hated himself for saying, “Who’s Maddox? And what have you been experimenting with this time?”
He hated himself even more when his father said, “It’s all very hush-hush yet, my boy. D’you think I’d let drop a hint to any of your mob? I’m going to get this tied up so tight that the government will have to pay a fortune for the use of it. I had enough belting my brains out for th
e government during the war. By rights I should have got fifty thousand, tax-free, out of them for the work I did then. And all I got was a bloody medal. I’m going to get my own back this time. I’ll squeeze ’em till the pips squeak.”
Preston could not suppress a heavy sigh now. He had heard it all before. “Okay, father. If you can win out against the Treasury, good luck to you. But is there anything I can do for you now?”
“No, nothing at all,” the old man said airily.
“Sure? Books, papers, anything?”
“Nope.”
There was a long and awkward silence.
“Well, I’ll be off, then. Oh, Doris sends her love, of course.”
As he reached the door, his father called out, “Oh, there is just one small thing you can do.”
Preston turned. “Yes?”
The old man grinned. “Close that radiator down a bit. It’s got very stuffy in here.”
Preston grimaced but did as he was asked, then left, shaking his head sadly.
A few minutes later old Quy rang the bell. But it was a cold-eyed sister who came.
“No, Mr. Quy, what is it this time? Don’t imagine that having a private ward entitles you to jab that button every five minutes. We have our own remedies for awkward patients, let me warn you.”
“The radiator’s gone cold.”
The sister sniffed suspiciously and knelt down primly to investigate, showing nothing. It wouldn’t have been much of a treat anyway, Quy thought.
“The valve was half shut,” the sister told him curtly. “It’s fully open now.” She halted by the door. “And if I catch you out of bed closing it again I’ll put Plan A into immediate operation. That’s cascara every three hours and a cold blanket bath twice a day. Really, Mr. Quy, I’m surprised at you.”
“What, at my age, you mean? I’m a late developer, sister.”
“No, at the age of that gag,” she told him acidly. She stepped aside as the door opened.
“Ah, Maddox!” said Quy enthusiastically. “You’ve got the news then. I got somebody to phone the works as soon I as I realized. Great, isn’t it?”
The Quy Effect Page 2